Subcomisar Radu Constantinescu had a swanky office in Police Station No. 15 in Bucharest – at least, swanky by Romanian police standards. The four-storey building had been put up in 1920, according to an engraved plaque on the wall, and did not appear to have been dusted or redecorated since. The staircases were bare stone and the floors covered in cracked linoleum. The pastel-green walls were chipped and scored, with plaster crumbling from some of the cracks. It always reminded Ian Tilling of his old school in Maidenhead.
Constantinescu’s room was large, dark and dingy, and shrouded in a permanent blue-grey fug of cigarette smoke. It was starkly furnished, with a wooden desk that was bland and old, but almost as big as his ego, and a conference table of indeterminate vintage, surrounded by mismatched chairs. Proudly displayed, high up, beneath the nicotine-stained ceiling, were the policeman’s hunting trophies – the mounted heads of bears, wolves, lynxes, deer, chamois and foxes. Framed certificates and photographs of Constantinescu rubbing shoulders with various dignitaries filled a little of the wall space, along with a couple of photographs of him in hunting kit, kneeling by a dead boar in one and holding up the horned head of a stag in the other.
The Subcomisar sat behind his desk, dressed in black trousers, a white shirt with braided epaulettes, and a slack green tie. He busied himself for a moment, lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the previous one, which he then crushed out, ineffectually, in a huge overflowing crystal ashtray. Several screwed-up balls of paper, which had clearly missed the waste bin, littered the floor around the desk.
Constantinescu was forty-five years old, short and wiry, with a gaunt face, jet-black hair and piercing dark eyes with dark, heavy rings beneath them. Ian Tilling had got to know him when the officer had started to visit Casa Ioana on a regular basis.
‘So my friend, Mr Ian Tilling, Member of the British Empire for services to the homeless of Romania!’ Constantinescu said, through a fresh cloud of noxiously sweet blue smoke. ‘Yes? You have met your queen, no?’
‘Yes, when I got my gong.’
‘Gong?’
‘Slang,’ Tilling said. ‘It’s English slang for a medal.’
Constantinescu’s eyes widened. ‘Gong!’ he said. ‘Gong! Very good. Maybe we should drink! To celebrate?’
‘It was a few months ago.’
The police officer reached under his desk and produced a bottle of Famous Grouse whisky and two shot glasses. He filled them both with a clear liquid and handed one to Tilling.
‘Spaga!’ he said, indicating shamelessly that he had been given the whisky as a bribe. ‘Good whisky, yes? Special?’
Tilling did not want to disillusion him that it was a basic blended whisky. ‘Special!’ he agreed.
‘To your – gong!’
Reluctantly, but understanding the protocol, Ian Tilling drained his glass, the alcohol hitting him almost instantly on his empty stomach, sending his head reeling.
The police officer set his empty glass down. ‘So, how can I help my important friend? All the more important now that Romania and England are partners in the EU together!’
Ian Tilling placed the three sets of fingerprints, the three e-fit photographs and the close-up of a primitive tattoo of the name Rares on the man’s desk.
Looking at them, Constantinescu suddenly asked, ‘And how, by the way, are all your pretty girls working for you?’
‘Yep, they are fine.’
‘And the beautiful Andreea, she is still working with you?’
‘Yes, but she’s getting married in a month’s time.’
His face fell. ‘Ah.’ He raised his head, looking disappointed.
The Subcomisar occasionally popped into Casa Ioana on some pretext or another. But Tilling always knew the real reason was to chat up the girls – the man was an inveterate womanizer, and every time he came, he tried, unsuccessfully, to hassle one or other of them for a date. But being good diplomats, they were always polite to him, always leaving a faint window of hope open, just to keep him onside for the hostel.
Trying to steer the meeting on to business, Ian Tilling pointed at the E-Fit and fingerprint sets, then explained their provenance. The Romanian was distracted twice by internal calls, and once by what was a clearly personal call from his current squeeze, on his mobile.
‘Rares,’ he said, when Tilling had finished. ‘Romanian, sure. Interpol have the fingerprints?’
‘Would you do me a favour and run them yourself? It will be quicker.’
‘OK.’
‘And could you get copies of these photos of the three kids circulated to your other police stations in Bucharest?’
Constantinescu lit his third cigarette since the meeting had started and then had a bout of coughing. When he finished, he poured himself another slug of whisky and offered the bottle to Tilling, who declined.
‘Sure, no problem.’
He burst again into a series of deep, racking coughs, then, when he had finished, he slipped the photographs and fingerprints into a large brown envelope and, to Tilling’s dismay, slid them into a drawer in his desk.
From long experience dealing with the man, Tilling knew he had a habit of forgetting things very quickly. He sometimes suspected that once something entered that drawer it never came out again. But at least Constantinescu was a man who actually did care about the plight of the city’s street kids – even if his motivation was to try and bed the women who looked after them.
And hey, better safe in that drawer than lying, screwed up, amid those other balls of paper littering the floor in front of his desk.
In seventeen years of battling the authorities in this country, Ian Tilling had learned to be grateful for small mercies.