The Hangman's Song (Inspector Mclean 3) Read Free Page B

McLean’s teeth on edge. Ambled slowly to the door and paused before opening it.
    ‘Black, no sugar for me.’ McLean tried not to flick his head in a gesture of dismissal, but he might have failed a little.
    Buchanan left the door open. Whether on purpose or because he lacked the basic motor skills to close it, McLean didn’t want to guess. He got up, closed it, and sat back down again. The young woman said nothing, but her eyes followed him all the time. Only when he was back in his seat did she finally speak.
    ‘You’re not like the others. I’ve not seen you before.’
    Her voice surprised him. He had assumed she was from Eastern Europe, but she spoke with a Midlands accent.
    ‘I’m on secondment. Filling in while they decide who gets to be promoted.’
    ‘You must have fucked up pretty badly to get sent here. What did you do?’
    What did I do? My job. Only it was bloody Dagwood who got made up to acting superintendent when we broke open that cannabis operation, and he didn’t want anyone around pissing on his chips. McLean kept silent, studied the young woman’s face for a moment, trying to see past the Slavic features that had made him jump to such an erroneous conclusion earlier on.
    ‘The other girls. They from England too?’
    ‘Nah. Most of em’s Poles, Romanians, think I might’ve heard some Russian spoke too. Don’t really know them that well. We only got picked up a couple days ago.’
    ‘Picked up?’
    ‘There an echo in here?’ The young woman pushed back her greasy hair, scratched at the side of her nose, sniffed. For an awful moment McLean thought she was going to spit on the floor, but she swallowed instead. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
    ‘There were sixteen of you in that van, being loaded onto a ship bound for Rotterdam. Normally we have to deal with people coming the other way. I’m curious as to why you were being trafficked out of the country.’
    ‘You not even going to ask my name?’
    ‘Would you tell it me if I did?’
    ‘It’s Magda. And yeah, I know that’s Polish. My grampa came over in the war and never went back.’
    ‘So what’s the score then, Magda? Why were you being sent overseas?’
    ‘Cos I speak Polish, probably. Cos of the way I look. Mebbe they thought I was like all the others. Mebbe I tried to tell them and got a smack in the face for my trouble. Mebbe they didn’t care who I was. Long as they get the numbers.’
    ‘Numbers for what, though? Where were they taking you?’
    Magda gave him an odd, quizzical look, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.
    ‘You know I’m a whore, don’t you? You know what that is, y’know, apart from the whole sex for cash thing?’
    McLean didn’t answer. He wasn’t quite sure he could.
    ‘Means I’m a piece of meat, dunnit. Owned and traded. I get passed from one pimp to the next and I don’t get any say in that. Who’m I gonna complain to anyway, the filth? Ha, that’s a laugh. You lot either don’t give a fuck or just want a free one. I got no rights, no protection. Just a habit needs feeding and only one way to feed it. So when Malky says I’m going with Ivan now, I don’t argue. Cos what’s the fucking point, eh?’
    ‘You don’t know where they were taking you.’
    ‘Top marks for the inspector.’ Magda clapped her hands together in mock applause. For a moment something like the ghost of a smile spread across her face, and then the door clicked open. DS Buchanan appeared, arse first, carrying two mugs of coffee. By the time he’d turned around and placed the mugs on the table, Magda’s face was blank, eyes down, staring at the hands folded in her lap, fingers worrying at the scars of track marks on her inner arms. It was almost as if the whole conversation had been no more than a dream.
    ‘Thanks. Not having one yourself?’ McLean picked up the mug with black coffee in it, nudging the other one carefully across the table to Magda. Buchanan opened his mouth, looked at the