‘And you found all this out from one interview?’ replied Fortune, impressed in spite of himself.
‘If you know the questions to ask, people can be surprisingly helpful.’
Charlie couldn’t help a note of smugness – the smugness of superior experience – creeping into her voice.
‘Have you got anywhere on the list I gave you?’
Edina, Charlie’s reluctant snitch at Brookmire, had furnished her with the names of all the girls currently working there.
‘Getting there. A lot of them have been bussed straight from Poland via the docks, some are students from the local universities, but several others – including our victim – seem to have been poached off the streets.’
‘Tarted up and relaunched at Brookmire?’
‘Why not? It’s safer, and by the look of Alexia’s flat well paid too.’
‘Edina suggested that Alexia was walking the streets for the Campbell family before joining Brookmire. Any of the other girls?’
‘Yup, the Campbells had lost a few to Brookmire. Anderson’s lot too.’
Charlie had a sinking feeling. Prostitution wars were never pretty and it was always the girls that suffered, not the people who ran them.
‘So did the Campbells kill Alexia to make a point?’
‘Makes sense. Not that we can prove it.’
‘Anything else?’
DC Fortune had been waiting for this, keeping his trump card up his sleeve until the appropriate moment.
‘Well, I chased Brookmire through Companies House and HMRC. Took a bit of doing, lots of shell companies and foreign-based holdings, but in the end I traced it back to Top Line Management, an “events company” owned by a certain Sandra McEwan.’
Charlie should have known. Sandra McEwan – or Lady Macbeth as she was affectionately known – had been involved in prostitution and racketeering in Southampton for over thirty years – ever since she’d allegedly killed her own husband to take over his crime empire. She was driven and fearless – she’d already survived three stabbings – but she was also smart and imaginative. Had she taken prostitution to the next stage with Brookmire, provoking her rivals into a deadly response?
‘Well done, Lloyd. Good work.’
It was the first time she’d used his Christian name and it had the desired effect. He muttered a shy thank-you and Charlie smiled. Perhaps they were going to make a good team after all.
‘Let’s keep on it. See if you can find out what rock Sandra’s hiding under these days, eh?’
DC Fortune scurried off. Charlie was pleased. It was good to be back in the groove and she sincerely hoped that she could now get justice for Alexia and put one more violent lowlife behind bars. It would be quite a feather in her cap. And one in the eye for Helen Grace.
