Mrs Orso had by now quietened down; her daughter had been taken to her sister’s. Ella was still in a state of shock and had not spoken. Emmerick Orso was demanding his lawyer. It would be a long night.

  They would question Mrs Orso first, then Ella, then go for the driver, whose name was now known to be David Johnson. Next up would be Emmerick Orso. Camorra would be kept until last.

  Mrs Orso sobbed that she knew nothing. She kept saying she came from a very respectable family, that her parents were doctors who ran a hospital in Uganda, and that she was innocent: she had no idea who this man Camorra was or what he had done. She insisted that she knew nothing of her husband’s business: she was just his wife and mother to his child. She did nothing but cry.

  It was time-consuming and irritating but, as they got no information, she was possibly telling the truth. Via her solicitor, it was agreed that she could be released to stay at her sister’s with her daughter, pending further enquiries. She would not be allowed to have any contact with her husband whilst he was detained, as she was co-accused in the same case. Anna had been wary about releasing Mrs Orso, as she felt that her being held in custody might be a strong lever on her husband. Langton dismissed her worries, saying that he felt Mr Orso would not care.

  As the interrogations continued, the Orso house was being stripped and searched by SOCO teams. Bags of papers and files were taken away. The room occupied by Camorra was being carefully checked for fingerprints; his packed suitcase was opened, and items removed. The two Alsatian dogs were driven to police kennels and fur samples were taken to see if they would match the hairs discovered in the back of the Range Rover.

  Emmerick Orso sat in his stinking cold cell, his shoelaces, belt and tie removed. Allowed to make one call, he had arranged for legal representation for himself and his wife. He was returned to his cell to wait.

  Orso’s driver, banged up next to him, was pacing with nerves. David Johnson was scared stiff: he had been charged with the attempted murder of Eamon Krasiniqe. He couldn’t believe it and was trying to shout to Orso that he needed to talk to a lawyer. Orso asked the officer outside his cell to tell Mr Johnson that his legal representation was already organized.

  Camorra sat in sullen fury. He would not give any of those bastards the pleasure of seeing him show any emotion. He had been taken aback when the murder charges were read: her name obliterated anything else. Carly Ann had been the only woman in his life he had ever cared about. All the others were just meat, and the one woman he had chosen had betrayed him; it still stung him and it was all he could think about. He had loved her; the bitch could have lived like a princess, but she had betrayed him and fucked one of his flunkies. It was all her fault; if it hadn’t been for her, he would still be living the life of a prince in Peckham. Carly Ann’s death had begun a spiral of murders to which Camorra gave not a single thought.

  Anna called in Langton to sit with her as Ella put pieces of the jigsaw together, although some Anna had already determined. When asked her name, she had said it was Ella Orso, and when this was questioned, she shook with nerves. She wept throughout and crumpled the tissues provided in her hands. She had a terrible air of defeat; her body sagged, her voice was scarcely audible. After being given some tea and treated kindly, she stuttered that her name was Ella Sickert.

  She admitted that Joseph Sickert was her husband. He had come to England five years before her. When shown the photograph found in his clothes, she sobbed heartbrokenly. She had seen neither child since they had been brought to England; she had been told that her sons were with a good family and being educated. Joseph had promised to send money from his wages. She waited for years, but none ever came.

  ‘Did you see your husband?’

  Ella looked to the floor. Anna persisted, asking if Joseph Sickert had made contact with her. They did not think she was going to be able to continue, but she straightened up and pushed herself back in the chair.

  ‘Mrs Orso took me in when I arrived in England. I was told that Joseph would come to see me, but he was working. They said I had to give it time. I was always worried about my boys, but Mrs Orso said I was not to keep asking: I was in the UK illegally and I should be grateful to have a roof over my head.’

  ‘So she knew you were an illegal immigrant?’ Langton asked.

  ‘Yes, sir–and Joseph and my sons.’

  ‘So you never saw him?’

  The woman began to cry. She explained that one night, two months ago, she had been told to stay in her room; from the window, she had seen her husband with two white children. Mr Orso had been very angry and there was an argument in the hall. Ella left her room and ran down the stairs. Joseph had tried to get to her, but she had been taken back. She said he had looked sick, hardly recognizable. She had not seen him or the children again, but knew the others were searching the woods for them. She said that Mr Johnson had punched her husband, and made the children cry.

  She remained silent for a moment and then looked up. ‘I heard Joseph asking for Mr Camorra: he made threats and he was very angry. He was asking him about our boys, they were only seven and nine years old. He kept on saying, over and over, “Where are my boys?’”

  Anna asked for a blood test. There were tears in her eyes; it was so pitiful. She found it hard to produce the photograph of the child’s torso.

  ‘We think your son was murdered,’ Langton said gently.

  Ella gasped. If she had been defeated before, she now sat in mute grief.

  ‘We do not know the whereabouts of your other son, but we hope we will be able to trace him.’

  Ella nodded, but she was staring at the wall. A steady stream of tears ran down her cheeks and one hand rested on the photograph in the plastic evidence bag.

  An officer came and took a swab from Ella for DNA testing. She was left in the interview room while one of the clerical staff tried to find a hostel where she could remain in protective custody until the trial. Once Ella had given her evidence, she would be handed over to the Immigration Services for a decision.

  The Desk Sergeant had never in his entire career known so much action. The car park was filling up with an array of expensive vehicles, as Emmerick Orso’s legal representatives arrived. They were each allowed to speak to their clients in private before the murder team interrogated them. All three would then be taken before magistrates, as Langton was not prepared to let them go after the obligatory thirty-six hours: he wanted a three-day extension, as the preparation for the interviews would be lengthy.

  At ten o’clock that night, the team was released. They all needed to recharge their batteries: it had been an exhausting day and evening. The lawyers could sit with their clients through the night, if they wished: the team all needed time to recuperate. None had expected to sleep, but even Langton had crashed out without his usual handful of sleeping tablets.

  The next morning, each prisoner was led out, handcuffed to an officer, and driven to court to go before the local magistrate. The amount of work to organize this had been a major headache, but it gained Langton three days for further questioning, due to the severity of the charges laid against them.

  Harry Blunt and Frank Brandon were set to prepare the list of charges that would be brought against Camorra. Mike Lewis, with assistance from a Fraud Squad officer, began to plough through the mass of paperwork they had accumulated against Emmerick Orso. The paper trails were so complicated that even to pin down the ownership of the house in Peckham took half an hour. They wanted to know just how much he was involved with Camorra; if he did own the house, then he would have been privy to the flesh trade and barbaric murders that had taken place there.

  Camorra refused to eat the food offered, insisting it was his right to send out for a proper breakfast. He appeared not to care about the charges mounting up against him; quite the reverse. He was cocky and kept on calling out to Orso, who remained silent, determined to distance himself from Camorra as much as possible.

  Langton had decided they would go for the weakest link first, the one who appeared to be most agitated: Johnson.

  He sat sweating and twisting his hands. His solicitor tried to calm him, as Langton told Johnson that he had been identified as the man who had visited Courtney Ransford in Parkhurst prison and had passed poison to him to be given to Eamon Krasiniqe. Johnson would therefore be implicated in Krasiniqe’s murder.

  He interrupted. ‘Listen, I just work for Orso, right? I do what he tells me to do. I was told to take the stuff in; it was nothing to do with me, I just carried out orders. If I didn’t do what he wanted…’

  ‘So are you saying that Emmerick Orso handed you these rock cakes?’

  ‘No, he didn’t give them to me. I had to go to Peckham and collect them from Camorra. I didn’t know what shit was in them; I swear before God, I didn’t know. I am not going down for this. I just did what I was told to do.’

  Langton sighed. ‘Yes, but who told you to do it?’

  ‘Camorra–well, my boss sent me over there. He said Camorra needed to sort something out. It was connected to this guy Arthur Murphy, that was all I knew. I swear before God I didn’t know it would send the kid crazy.’

  ‘Did you know Arthur Murphy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How often did you go to the house in Peckham?’

  Johnson gasped, taking short sharp breaths; his eyes bulged.

  Langton tapped his pencil on the table with impatience. ‘Did you go on a regular basis?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t. It belonged to Eugene Camorra.’

  Langton turned to Anna. ‘Eugene Camorra? You sure about that?’

  ‘Yeah. He uses a lot of other names, but that’s the one I know him by. Eugene, that’s his real name.’

  ‘Do you know what the house was used for?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how often did you go there?’

  ‘Not recently–I didn’t go there recently.’

  ‘Well, if you didn’t go there recently, when did you go?’

  ‘Few years back.’

  ‘One? Two? How many years back?’

  ‘Listen, Eugene was doing stuff there. He’s a freak. I mean, sometimes I’d go, you know, for sex–but not recently.’

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘Yeah, he had girls working for him.’

  ‘What girls?’

  Johnson was now sweating; he used the same box of tissues that poor Ella had plucked at to wipe her face. ‘Oh shit, every time I open my mouth I feel like I’m digging myself into a hole, but I done nothing.’

  ‘These girls, were some of them underage?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, were some of the girls underage?’ Langton snapped.

  ‘I never went with them, but yeah, some of them were.’

  ‘Do you know this girl, Carly Ann North?’ Langton slapped down the photograph that Dora had given them.

  Johnson stared for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No, I don’t know her. I had nothing to do with her.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Ah, shit man. I’m getting all wound up. This isn’t right. I didn’t know her.’

  Langton now placed the mortuary shots of Carly Ann in front of him. Johnson recoiled. This was followed by the horrific photo of the mutilated boy found in the canal. Now Johnson was really caving in: the sweat stained his jacket and dripped down his face.

  Langton placed more photographs down as if he was dealing a game of poker: Arthur Murphy, Eamon Krasiniqe, Rashid Burry, Gail Sickert, her little girl. The more he was forced to look, the more agitated Johnson became. Lastly, he was shown the e-fit of Joseph Sickert.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t know him,’ he said, gasping for breath.

  ‘Let’s start again from the top, Mr Johnson. Tell me what you know about Carly Ann North.’

  Johnson stood up. He was shaking. ‘No, you can’t. I got nothing to do with these people, I swear before God.’

  ‘Sit down!’

  The man slumped into his seat. His lawyer leaned close, whispering; he sat listening, his head bowed. He repeated that all he had done was take the food into Courtney, that’s all he had ever done, and he was not connected to any of the other crimes.

  ‘But you do know about them, don’t you?’ Anna said. ‘You must know about Rashid Burry. You said you went to the house in Peckham.’

  Johnson’s lawyer held out his hand. ‘Could I please have a few moments alone with my client?’

  Langton spoke into the tape recorder that they were leaving the room and turned it off.

  Anna followed Langton into the corridor. ‘He’s sweating like a pig and we haven’t even got to his boss yet.’

  Mike Lewis walked towards them. ‘Thought you might like to know: we have been on a paper-chase that was mind-blowing. Emmerick Orso bought the house in Peckham eight years ago. It was buried as a company purchase, for use by his employees. Water bills, electricity and gas bills are sent to a box number in Clapham. So far, we’ve got over a hundred and fifty different post office boxes! Household bills also appear to be paid out from another property in Clapham and another one in Tooting. We reckon he also owns numerous others, but I thought you’d want to know about the Peckham house and the other properties as they link to the bus tickets found on Joseph Sickert.’

  Langton nodded and turned, as Johnson’s lawyer came out and said quietly that his client wished to give a statement. In return for assisting their enquiries, he wanted a deal on the charge of being an accessory to the murder of Eamon Krasiniqe. ‘I truthfully believe that my client is only directly linked to that case; perhaps he has information regarding the other.’

  ‘I can’t offer any deal until I know what he’s got in exchange,’ Langton told him.

  ‘I think a deal will really be beneficial, Detective Chief Inspector Langton.’

  ‘For him or for us?’

  ‘For you, obviously: he’s going to give information on Eugene Camorra.’

  Anna and the rest of team were unaware that Langton already knew that Camorra was the man who had attacked and almost killed him.

  ‘Let’s see what he’s got then, shall we?’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The case that had felt as if it was running away from them was now back on track. David Johnson’s work as bodyguard and driver to Emmerick Orso had been lucrative. He had kept his mouth shut, and it had paid off: he and his family owned a house in Esher. He had been a trusted employee, working first at the warehouse, but said he knew little of the actual running of the business; he had been orchestrating the deliveries and the lorry drivers. He had, however, been fully aware that the cargo was often not African artefacts, but illegal immigrants.

  He said that he had first met Joseph Sickert at the warehouse; he was an illegal immigrant, one of the loaders, and had been a big strong man, with no signs of his sickle cell disease obvious at that time. As Sickert couldn’t drive, he was moved out to work at the house in Peckham, as one of Camorra’s henchmen. It was here that Sickert met Arthur Murphy and Vernon Kramer; this was before Murphy murdered Irene Phelps. Rashid Burry was dealing drugs and often used the women at the house. Camorra ran the house, selling children and women, who often were addicted to drugs by this time.

  ‘Sickert was a big guy and knew how to handle his fists; he could be a real mad bastard. Nothing phased him–he was always ready for a fight.’

  Johnson was unclear about what had caused the rift between Camorra and Sickert; all he knew was that Sickert was being kept short of money. Sickert’s earnings were being siphoned off to pay for his wife and two children to be brought into the UK, and he constantly asked when this would happen.

  Johnson became a little confused about the exact time it had all started running out of control. Sickert had begun to be disgusted by the scene at the Peckham house and tried to get to see Orso, turning up at the factory and causing trouble.

  Camorra was heavily into voodoo and drugs, and had orchestrated a sickening ceremony with a young boy who had just been brought to the UK. Carly Ann North, his girlfriend at the time, was terrified and tried to run away. She had started to have sex with one of the Camorra gang, Eamon Krasiniqe; when Camorra found out, he went berserk. He caught up with Carly Ann and brought her back to the house, where he raped her and then forced Idris, Eamon’s brother, to also have sex with her. Then he killed her.

  Rashid Burry ordered Idris Krasiniqe to dump her body and cut off her head and hands. When Langton asked Johnson if he was one of the men in the white Range Rover, he denied it, but said he was certain that Camorra was sitting in the car, watching, with Rashid Burry. He said that Burry had told him what a close shave it had been when the street cop had turned up.

  When Idris Krasiniqe was arrested and charged with Carly Ann’s murder, he named two other men who were with him: both had been, at some point, working for Camorra. Camorra and Rashid Burry went to a halfway house to track them down. This was, coincidentally, the same time that Arthur Murphy killed Irene Phelps and went into hiding at Vernon Kramer’s hostel–the time when Camorra had, wrongly, surmised that the police were closing in on his operation.

  According to Johnson, this was also around the same time that Orso became concerned by Sickert. Orso wanted him taken care of. Orso knew that Sickert’s two sons were in the UK: he was even employing his wife, Ella, as his maid! Orso had given Johnson orders to get rid of Sickert. The latter was sent to stay at Murphy’s sister’s bungalow.

  Then Murphy turned up, threatening Camorra. He had killed Irene Phelps and he wanted a passport and money to get out of the country; if Camorra didn’t supply them, he said he would tip off the police about the Peckham house.

  Murphy was caught and sent to Parkhurst prison, where Eamon Krasiniqe was already an inmate. Krasiniqe had been forced to work for Camorra like a pack mule, due to his relationship with Carly Ann; he had also been pumped full of drugs, and was out of his skull when he was arrested.