Godden was about to continue when his phone rang. He answered, listened, thanked the caller and rang off.
“They’ve found the right Alessandro Rossi,” he said, smiling. “Unfortunately he has no other address for Fairbright, although he did say she was renting a villa in Tuscany while the villa she’s buying, also in Tuscany, is being renovated.”
Henry sat back on his sofa, sighing. “Tuscany’s huge,” he said. “She could be anywhere.”
“It is,” agreed Godden, “but given what she’s buying is probably pretty grand, if we trawl the bigger estate agents, perhaps we’ll strike lucky.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” said Henry, shaking his head, “Even the one-man-band agents will take on big properties given half a chance. And agents like that are two a penny.”
“Well, we have to start somewhere, and Felice’s drafted in some extra hands to call every architect, design studio and geometra they can find in Tuscany.”
“Geometra?” asked Derek.
Henry leaned forward to explain. “They’re a cross between a surveyor, engineer, estate agent and general middle man. You can’t do without one in any property deal; they have all the contacts. With luck, if the names of both Fitchley and Fairbright are floated around, someone might have heard of them.”
“All we can hope for at the moment,” said Godden.
“Have other dealers apart from the Cambronis been contacted?” asked Derek. “We know that Fairbright is buying up paintings.”
“Yes, and it’s turning into quite a list. The problem for Felice is that it’s all being done in the context of the Cambroni gallery and the investigation there, which is something he’s trying not to advertise, as you know. So he can’t just call in huge extra resources without questions being asked; he doesn’t want the wrong people hearing about it.”
Henry shook his head in disgust.
“Talking of resources,” he said, “if this Fairbright person has spent liberally at various galleries, surely one or more of them must have some details of the woman. Credit card information and so on.”
“Not necessarily,” said Godden. “All we’ve had so far is from a couple of galleries in Rome that sold to her. When it came to payment, the money all came directly from an account in the US. That’s all they had. As I said, this woman likes her privacy and she can afford to pay for it.
“However, on the positive side, we do now know that Freneton works for Fairbright and that she most likely intends to relieve her of some of her money, and we also know that both women went recently to the Cambroni gallery where Freneton must have recognised Jennifer. Unfortunately, it would appear that Jennifer didn’t see her.”
“So having stumbled across Jen,” added Derek, “once she’d got over the surprise, she must have followed her, discovered where she lives and somehow, somewhere, abducted her.”
“Do you think the gallery is involved?” asked Henry. “Could Freneton have tipped them off about Jennifer?”
Godden shook his head. “You know, I doubt it,” he said. “She’d be in great danger of blowing her own cover. I mean, she could hardly admit she was once a UK police officer and had recognised Jennifer as one of her former subordinates.”
“Who she tried very hard to kill,” snarled Derek.
“Exactly,” agreed Godden. “No, in my view she’s snatched Jennifer and taken her somewhere that Fairbright doesn’t know about.”
Henry’s voice was quiet and reflective as he spoke more to himself than the others.
“The question is where the bitch has taken her and how she intends to use her.”
He was already making his own plans which he had no intention of sharing with anyone.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
From nowhere a pounding headache hit Jennifer like a punch in the face as she snapped into consciousness. She groaned and rolled onto her side, the sudden movement creating a tornado of nausea that stretched her stomach in all directions. She clenched her jaw to combat the bile in her throat, trying to breathe deeply through her nose.
She opened her eyes and immediately regretted it as the dazzling light ten feet above her head added to the torture of what felt like a band of metal crushing her brain.
A violent shiver pulsed through her body. The thin, hard mattress she was lying on offered little insulation from the cold stone floor beneath it, and, while unconscious, she had kicked away the single sheet that had been thrown over her.
Her hands were free and she pushed herself up into a sitting position. That was when she discovered her legs were shackled together at the ankles. She must have been moving on the bed during her dreamless sleep: her tights were in shreds around the bands of the metal shackles.
She squinted, forcing her eyes to focus, and looked around the room. It was about fifteen feet square, high-ceilinged with broad wooden beams and a powerful, central light bulb way out of reach. A small metal table against the wall opposite the mattress appeared to be bolted to the concrete floor. The wooden chair next to it was not. There was a plastic jug of water on the table, a single plastic beaker and what looked like chocolate bars. She pushed her tongue through her lips, her throat felt parched, but the overriding demands of her bladder were starting to consume her.
To her left was a doorway with no door. Was that the edge of a wash basin? A bathroom?
She turned, pushed herself up onto all fours and then tried to stand, but the nausea returned sending her stomach and head into orbit around each other. Gritting her teeth, she tried again and this time, by reaching out to the stone wall for support, she managed to stand.
She took a breath, turned towards the doorway and, still using the wall for support, shuffled forwards, the eighteen-inch chain connecting the shackles preventing her from walking properly.
The room was indeed a bathroom and she almost cried with joy as she stumbled the three small steps to the toilet.
Standing up after peeing, she pressed the button on the wall-mounted cistern. As she did, the nausea returned, triumphant and sensing victory. Her stomach gave up the fight and she just managed to spin around and kneel on the floor before she vomited.
Five minutes later she was sitting at the table drinking her third beaker of water and munching on an energy bar. Feeling a thousand times better than when she woke up, she took another look at her surroundings. As well as the table and chair, the mattress and discarded sheet, there was a thin duvet on the floor near the mattress, but nothing else. The room itself had a concrete floor and rendered walls painted white. The stock of food on the table — mainly energy and chocolate bars and a large slab of cheese — was enough to feed her for a few days. Water was available from the bathroom. A forbidding-looking metal door was located in the centre of the wall opposite the bathroom, with a small inspection panel set in it at head height.
She stared at the stock of food, puzzled. How long was she going to be kept here? But right at that moment, the answer to that question was secondary to her hunger. She unwrapped another energy bar and broke off a lump of cheese, washing them down with more water.
Her senses now back on full alert, she looked down at herself. Her clothes were the pencil skirt, jacket and blouse she had been wearing when Freneton ordered her into the car.
Freneton! It all came flooding back. She had been waiting for her outside the apartment, armed with a gun. The bitch had some nerve. True, the apartment block where Jennifer had been living for the past few months was in a quiet back street, but there was occasional traffic, including prowling Polizia patrol cars. It could have all gone horribly wrong for her. What would she have done then? Shot Jennifer and run? Whatever: it hadn’t gone wrong and now here she was. A prisoner. How long ago was that? A day? Two days? More? No, it couldn’t be too long since she hadn’t soiled herself and she’d woken up needing to pee. Ten hours? Twelve tops, she reckoned. Which made it now sometime in the middle of the night. However, since she hadn’t been wearing a watch and there were no windows, there was no way of te
lling whether it was night or day.
She shuffled back to the bathroom and this time noticed that as well as a hand-towel, there was a larger bath sheet. She looked up and saw a shower head high on the wall, a tap at waist level to control the water. There was only one pipe so the water for the shower had to be cold, and like so many basic Italian bathrooms, there was no shower pan; everything around just got wet.
Again the thought: how long was Freneton intending to keep her here?
She made her way back into the room and over to the metal door. The small panel, about a foot by nine inches, looked as if it could either be slid or pulled open from the outside. An inspection panel to check Jennifer was well away from the door before opening it, the hole large enough for Freneton to be able to see the entire room.
She pushed and pulled at the panel, but it wouldn’t move.
Sitting back down on the mattress, Jennifer leaned forward to examine the shackles around her ankles. She pulled a rueful face as she registered their strength. There was no way she would be able to pick the lock or break them. Same with the chain, which was made of heavy-duty steel links.
She reached out to grab the duvet, folding it to form a large backrest, and settled against the wall, her legs stretched out ahead of her as she tried to remember every moment of her brief encounter with Freneton.
And it had been brief. A couple of words of foreign-accented Italian, a silencer thrust at her chest, barked instructions and then oblivion.
What had Freneton been wearing? How did she look? Was she confident or nervous? In control or on the edge? However she appeared, the abduction was well planned and confidently executed.
She shut her eyes to think. What was her hair like? It was short and blonde. Not the colour Jennifer remembered. A wig?
And her clothes. She had a vague impression of jeans and a short jacket.
She leaned her head back against the wall and sighed. She would presumably find out the answers to these thoughts when Freneton appeared from behind the panel in the door. Clearly with the food and facilities, and the fact she wasn’t bound hand and foot, Freneton wanted to keep her alive. She hadn’t left her to starve to death.
The thought made her shudder as she considered the alternative. Being the crazed psychopath she was, Freneton would want to witness every moment of Jennifer’s death, would want to be in complete control of it. She’d more or less said as much in the past.
She let her eyes wander around the room, taking in as much detail as she could, anything that might trigger a thought as to what Freneton was intending. She studied the ceiling. The large rough-cut beams had smaller cross-beams running above them at right angles, those beams in turn supporting terracotta tiles. Standard old-style construction. The single light had a cable running to it from the side of the room, but the position of the light in relation to the beams meant that the recesses were poorly lit. She peered into the corners and that was when she saw the tiny camera, well hidden in the half darkness. So Freneton was using more than just the hatch to observe her; she could watch her any time she chose. What about the bathroom? Jennifer stood and shuffled back there, this time searching the ceiling recesses and quickly finding the second camera.
She pulled a face. No hiding place, even when she was on the loo or braving the cold water to take a shower. The thought didn’t please her.
However, what was still puzzling her was why Freneton was keeping her alive. What had she to offer? What was her value?
She returned to the mattress and lay down. Convinced it was the middle of the night, she decided she might as well try to get some proper sleep, not the drug-induced variety. She grabbed the duvet and pulled it over her, covering her head in an attempt to shield her eyes from the harsh light.
After several hours of tossing and turning, Jennifer finally fell into a deep sleep troubled with many tortured dreams, all of them featuring a demented Freneton chasing her, threatening her, attacking her with a huge knife, binding her, lifting her protesting body over a bridge parapet and letting it fall into the depths of an endless chasm.
She awoke with a start as the metal panel in the door clanged open. She pushed away the duvet and stared into the darkness beyond the open panel. A pair of eyes was watching her. Freneton’s eyes.
“You may sit up, Cotton, but don’t attempt to stand. When I enter the room you are to stay exactly where you are. And just to let you know, since you’ll no doubt be thinking you might overpower me, I have a taser, and I won’t hesitate to use it.”
Jennifer sat up, leaned against the wall and waited. After ten seconds a bolt was pulled and the door swung open.
Olivia Freneton took a step into the room and stopped.
“And remember, I am also taller, stronger and more ruthless than you, so if you do decide to go for it, keep in mind that I’d enjoy inflicting pain on you,” she said, her eyes piercing into Jennifer’s.
“What do you want from me?” said Jennifer, her eyes fixed on Freneton’s.
Freneton’s smile was malevolent. “For now, just your living, breathing and conscious body.” Her eyes narrowed. “Conscious is very important.”
“I don’t understand,” said Jennifer.
“All in good time, Cotton. You’ll soon be up to speed. Now, a little housekeeping, just so you know the score. Firstly, you are in one of the rooms in the cantina, the cellar of an old farmhouse. But it’s no ordinary room; I had it reinforced to make escape impossible. Secondly, the farmhouse is mine. It’s deep in the woods, at least three miles from the nearest building, a house that is anyway currently empty.”
“And that interests me because …?” said Jennifer trying to sound flippant in an attempt to get under Freneton’s skin.
“I’m telling you,” snapped Freneton, “simply to inform you that there’s no future in yelling and screaming. There’s no one within earshot and since the house is some distance from the fence, even if someone were to come as far as the gate to this property, there’s no way you would be heard. I’ve tested it.”
She dropped her voice, but made no attempt to hide the threat. “There will be plenty of opportunity to exercise your lungs in due course.”
Jennifer shrugged her indifference.
“What about the food? A few rubbish bars and some cheese aren’t going to last long.”
“I’m not anticipating that you’ll be here long,” replied Olivia. “If it turns out otherwise, I’ll replenish the stocks.”
“And if you’re arrested and don’t tell the police about this place?”
“Then I suppose you’ll die of starvation. Not actually what I have in mind for you but in the unlikely event of my being picked up, it would give me solace to think of you sitting here getting weaker by the hour.”
Jennifer stared at her. How did this crazed bitch get so far in the police force? She was completely unhinged. However, she said nothing in response to Freneton’s taunting. She wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of their exchange becoming a conversation. She was still mulling over how Freneton had discovered her. It had to have been at the gallery, although she doubted the Cambronis were involved. If they had suspected Jennifer at all, they would have had ways of getting rid of her that would not require the involvement of a crazy English woman. But what had she been doing at the gallery? As she continued to search Freneton’s eyes, the pieces suddenly fell into place.
“It was Connie Fairbright, wasn’t it?” said Jennifer, “It has to be. She’s rich, widowed, likes the good things in life. You’re operating some sort of con on her, aren’t you? You’re after her money. Well, good luck with that. She’s nobody’s fool.”
As she was speaking, she was checking every nuance of Freneton’s face for a reaction, for an indication that she’d guessed it right. She only had limited experience of interviewing suspects, but she’d also read all there was to read on the subject and experimented with many role plays at police training school. She was good at it, considerably better than average, and she cou
ld tell she’d guessed correctly with Freneton.
“You were at the gallery last week with Fairbright and that fawning Roman art expert, weren’t you? She said there was someone she wanted me to meet. That would have been interesting since you can’t have known in advance I was there. You were the person who rushed out of the gallery claiming you needed some air.”
She noted the fire in Freneton’s eyes and was determined to continue, to push the woman. “Did you spot me on the CCTV? That must have given you a surprise.”
Freneton’s smile was cold. “It did, but not for long. I couldn’t believe my luck; still can’t. To have you served up on a plate, Cotton, was more than I could have hoped for. Oh, and in case you think I overlooked your phone, I didn’t. I switched it off immediately and as soon as I reached somewhere more remote, I smashed it to pieces. So no cavalry, I’m afraid.”
“I shouldn’t expect anything less,” replied Jennifer with a shrug, hoping her disappointment didn’t show.
Still watching her captor’s every movement, Jennifer was hoping Freneton would move close enough for her to throw herself at her, to inflict some sort of injury. If there was a whisker of a chance, she’d go for it, although she knew that from a sitting position it would be almost impossible, especially with the shackles. But Freneton was good; she was keeping just out of range, almost as if she were tempting Jennifer to try something. Then she took Jennifer by surprise.
“Stand up!” she ordered.
“What?” Jennifer couldn’t believe it; she’d have a far better chance from a standing position.
“You heard me. Do it!”
Jennifer swung herself onto her knees and pushed herself up, keeping Freneton in view out of the corner of an eye.
She stood and faced her. They were about ten feet apart so she made to take a slight step forward.
“No you don’t,” said Freneton, moving back to maintain the distance between them. “Stay exactly where you are!”
She reached behind her to take something from her belt.
Remorseless Page 27