“An individual who has intelligence, ambition and imagination. Someone who’s happy to kill without qualm or conscience and who is adept at misleading the police. I’d say that’s Sandra McEwan to a T, wouldn’t you?”
There was no point fighting it anymore, so Helen conceded the point and departed for the interview room. Charlie was waiting for her, and opposite her, flanked by her lawyer, was Lady Macbeth.
•••
“Lovely to see you, Inspector.” Sandra McEwan’s grin spread from ear to ear. “How’s business?”
“I might ask you the same question, Sandra.”
“Never better. Still, you’re looking well. Don’t tell me you’ve got a man on the go?”
Helen ignored the taunt.
“DC Brooks is investigating the murder of Alexia Louszko. She worked for you at Brookmire, I believe, under the alias of Agneska Suriav.”
Sandra didn’t deny it, so Helen continued.
“She was murdered, mutilated and dumped in the open boot of an abandoned car. Her murder was meant to send out a message. Perhaps you could translate it for us?”
“I’d love to help you, but I barely knew the girl. I’d only seen her a handful of times.”
“She worked for you—you must have vetted her personally, spoken to her...”
“I own the freehold of the building that houses Brookmire. I couldn’t say who runs the business.”
Her lawyer didn’t say a word. He was just window dressing, really. Sandra knew exactly how she wanted to play things.
“You plucked her off the street,” said Charlie, keeping up the pressure. “Trained her, polished her. But the Campbells took exception, didn’t they? They abducted her. Killed her. Then put her back on the streets where she belonged.”
“If you say so.”
“Your girl. They took her from under your nose and killed her. How did the rest of your girls feel about that? I bet they were shitting themselves.”
Sandra said nothing.
“You knew you had to do something,” Charlie continued. “So why not kill two birds with one stone? Tell me about your properties on the Empress Road.”
Finally a reaction. It was small, but it was there. Sandra hadn’t been expecting that.
“I don’t have any...”
“Let me show you this, Sandra,” Charlie went on. “It’s a list of holding companies that have financial relationships with each other. Let’s cut the chat and acknowledge that they are all owned by you. This one”—Charlie pointed out a company name—“purchased a row of six derelict houses on the Empress Road nearly two years ago. Why did you buy them, Sandra?”
There was a long pause and then the tiniest of nods from her lawyer.
“To redevelop them.”
“Why would you want to? They are rotten, derelict, and it’s hardly a neighborhood that’s ripe for gentrification.”
“You don’t want to do them up,” interrupted Helen, suddenly getting it. “You want to knock them down.”
The tiniest flicker from Sandra. The closest thing they would get to an acknowledgment that they were on the right lines.
“Nobody wants the properties in the red-light district—they are used by prostitutes on a nightly basis. But if you bought them, knocked them down and then neglected to rebuild them, what would the girls do? Risk their lives getting into punters’ cars every night or look elsewhere for employment? Somewhere safer. Somewhere like Brookmire. I bet if we do some more searching, we’ll find a lot of property has changed hands on the Empress Road recently. Am I right?”
A hardness was entering Sandra’s eyes now. Charlie pressed home the advantage.
“But what if you wanted to go a step further? The Campbells had struck at you, tried to unsettle your workforce. What if you decided to raise the stakes? You could have killed one of their girls in return, but far more imaginative to kill a punter or two. The press coverage alone would drive the Campbells’ clients away in droves. I have to hand it to you, Sandra—it’s a smart play.”
