by Ray Clark
“Mr Armitage.”
“Does he live here?
“No, sir, I think he lives on the south side of the village – about a five-minute walk.”
“Right, we’ll need to speak to him.”
Gardener was about to speak again when a pinging sound came from behind him. He turned, glanced down, and noticed a flashing light coming from underneath the counter.
He reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a pair of gloves. Slipping them on he bent down and retrieved a phone: the screen indicated a message had come through.
Gardener pressed a button and read the message.
Rearrange the dear nun: it’s where you should be!
Chapter Nine
Gardener read the message two or three times before showing it to his partner. “Any thoughts?”
Reilly said nothing, he simply studied what was on offer.
Gary’s mobile suddenly chirruped. He answered.
“Are you still at the shop, lad?” Cragg asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve just had some information through that you need to know–”
Cragg completed his sentence, but Gary’s mobile was cutting out. The only words he caught were “station” and “landline”.
“Sorry, sir, what did you say?” Gary asked Cragg.
“I said, the suspicious call made to your phone at three o’clock came from a landline, the one in Armitage’s shop.”
Gary glanced at Gardener and told him what Cragg had said before thanking him and terminating the call.
The SIO thought about everything that had happened so far. A strange call, a message, a video feed on a monitor and, finally, another message.
He stepped around the side of the counter, surveying the shop, before finally slipping outside for a breath of fresh air.
Reilly joined him. It was growing lighter. They were going to have to act if they wanted to close things down. The fact that dawn was breaking meant the town would be full of people before too long. A fancy car drove by and the occupant paid them little attention. Gardener noticed it had a private plate, and asked Reilly to jot the number down in his pad.
“I have a friend…”
“Apart from me, you mean?” said Gardener, smiling.
“I never actually included you.”
The senior officer appreciated the working relationship that he and Reilly had. No matter how serious the situation there was always banter between them. It helped.
Gardener glanced at the phone and then his partner. He summarised what had happened before saying, “Someone’s controlling us, Sean. He wants us here for a reason.”
“Backs up the fact that what Gary saw on the monitor was real.”
“I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.”
“I have a friend,” said Reilly, continuing with his earlier statement. “Very good at crosswords, and I remember him telling me how to interpret the clues.” Reilly pointed to the retro mobile that Gardener still held in his hand. “‘Rearrange the dear nun.’ He means shuffle the letters around to make another word. If we do that, it might help us decide what to do next.”
Gardener wasn’t happy. He knew at the moment it wasn’t a full-on investigation: that there was no body, but he was trapped here because it could be serious – so he had to do something.
He stared at the phone, willing himself to figure it out. The light-bulb moment came when he thought about the trapdoor.
“I’ve got it.”
“Go on,” said Reilly.
“The trapdoor, jumble up the letters, and you get the word ‘underneath’.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Might be a trap when we get down there. What if he’s rigged the place with explosives?”
Reilly hesitated but still answered positively. “I don’t think he has. He wouldn’t run us ragged just to blow us up. He wants us to find the answer.”
“To prove what?”
“At the moment,” replied Reilly, “I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m going back into that shop, the one that’s full of tools. I’ll grab an angle grinder and grind that fucking lock off. At the end of the day, boss, if there is someone down there then our first duty is to preserve life.”
Gardener didn’t think about anything else. “You’re right.”
Before entering the shop, he ran over to the pool car and searched around for an item he desperately needed – a Faraday Bag. It was slightly bigger than a Walkers crisp packet and made of a shiny metal foil. The phone was bound to be part of an ongoing case, but until the tech boys could download all the information, he would have to treat it as live. The bag would allow him to read the contents without altering it. If another text message came in and forced the last one to drop off, no one would be very pleased.
Once inside the shop, Gardener slipped back around the counter. Reilly found what he wanted before ripping apart the box.
“Christ, Sean, couldn’t you find a bigger one?”
Reilly laughed, connected the blade to the machine, plugged it in and set to work.
Within five minutes the job was done. The padlock was no longer a problem, and access was theirs.
Chapter Ten
Gardener slowly lifted the hatch.
The first thing that hit him was the smell, the unmistakable sour stench of bodily fluids and blood.
As he carefully dipped his head into the room, he noticed a number of cardboard boxes. They had all been neatly stacked according to size, and the floor was very clean, as if it had been swept regularly.
“Sean, pop back to the car and grab three scene suits, will you? Judging by the smell it’s serious.”
Reilly returned and within minutes they were suited and booted. The Irishman nodded and took the first tentative steps into the cellar below. Gardener followed, with Gary Close in tow.
The room was lit. On the wall opposite the opening, the naked body of a man had been crucified, using pretty big screws from what Gardener could see. His head dropped towards the floor, and his body hung limply upon the cross.
Gardener wondered if he’d been alive while he was being fixed to the wall.
Reaching the corpse – and he was pretty sure by now that the man was dead – would not be a problem. The rustling of the paper suits created an eerie atmosphere as they made their way to him. Gardener could hear the distant sounds of traffic outside.
“Jesus Christ,” said Gary Close, bringing his hand to his mouth.
Reilly turned. “Do that outside if you’re going to.”
Gardener approached the body very slowly. He could see no signs of life; the man’s chest was not rising and falling, and he could hear no breathing. Then again, he wouldn’t: the victim’s lips had been sewn together.
“There must be a mirror in here somewhere, Sean.”
One was soon found and passed over. Gardener held it under the victim’s nose. He then tested for a pulse, which confirmed the man was very definitely dead.
With Reilly one side and Gardener the other, they searched the room for something that might give them a clue as to what had happened. Peering at the body, Gardener noticed puncture marks in his arms.
“Is he a user, Sean, or has this been done to him?”
“I think he’s a user, boss. Look at the veins. There’s a bit of damage where he’s tried to find one. If someone had done that, I’m pretty sure it would be more clinical.”
Gardener stared at the small, sutured wound in the area of the abdomen. “I wonder what the story is there.”
Reilly leaned in a little closer. “It looks fresh. Do you think someone is harvesting organs?”
“I hope not, but it’s a big business.”
“Dangerous as well.”
“And a lot of misery to go with it, especially with the rampant poverty in some of the lesser-developed countries.”
The DS studied two white envelopes placed against the wall above the victim’s hands. “What do you make of these?”
>
Gardener was itching to take them down and see what they revealed, but he was reluctant to contaminate the scene any more than they already had.
“They’re obviously significant. But I think it’s time we called in the team. Let the SOCOs do their job. We need to find and speak to Mr Armitage, and set up an incident room, the closer the better. So the station at Bramfield will be our best option.”
“We’ll also need to call in your friend and mine,” said Reilly. “Good old Fitz, and his bespoke body removing friends.”
“God help us,” replied Gardener, smiling. Despite Fitz’s offhand manner, he was very probably the best Home Office pathologist in the country.
Reilly turned to Gary Close. “Don’t happen to know him, do you?” Gardener lifted the head of the deceased.
“Yes,” replied Gary Close. “His name’s Alex Wilson. He lives in the flat above the shop. Albert Armitage is his uncle.”
Chapter Eleven
Gardener had spent the last hour bringing his team up to speed, with actions including an inner and outer cordon around the shop and a chat with the two officers from Bramfield – PCs Nice and Graham. Everyone else had been given door-to-door duties. By the time they were leaving, Steve Fenton and his team had run the scene tape around the area.
He now studied the police station as Reilly brought the pool car to a halt outside.
It was a huge building that resembled a town hall, or a Methodist church. There were four steps leading to the front door, flanked either side by Grecian pillars, with mock battlements. Above the front door was a wrought iron canopy with potted plants that suggested the second storey was still in use. The windows were old-fashioned wood, not double-glazed, and the exterior was surrounded by lamps with gas mantles, which was probably more for effect.
Once inside, Gardener smelled lavender and furniture polish, and saw a middle-aged cleaner hard at work. She simply smiled as he passed.
Gardener and Reilly flashed their warrant cards and introduced themselves to the desk sergeant.
“Good to meet you at last, Mr Gardener, Mr Reilly. I’ve heard such a lot about you.” The desk sergeant offered his hand. “I’m Maurice Cragg.”
“Maybe we’d best leave now, then,” replied Reilly.
Gardener sensed Cragg was close to retirement. His features were solid and dependable, and the detective suspected that was probably a good measure of his character. He had close-cropped, iron grey hair, and a hard, rugged complexion – his face pock-marked. He was stocky, but not fat.
Gardener asked if there was somewhere they could talk, and Cragg took them through to the back room. He mentioned that although he was officially off-duty, he had no wife and family to return home to, so he was happy to put in an extra few hours to help.
Gardener and Reilly explained what they had found so far, and the fact that he would like to take over the station for the investigation.
“What can you tell us about Old Man Armitage, Maurice?”
“He’s a bit of a legend round these parts. Been running that business most of his life. Shop belonged to his father. He came into the business when he was fifteen. It’s a very old-fashioned place, run in an old-fashioned manner. You won’t find any computers in there, keeps everything in his head.”
That wasn’t what Gardener wanted to hear. It would certainly slow down the investigation.
“So he’s not likely to be involved in this, in your opinion?” asked Reilly.
Cragg’s expression could have frozen an active volcano. “No, Mr Reilly, not a chance.”
Gardener noted his opinion. “Okay, Maurice let’s get things sorted here and maybe you can give him a call. He needs to know what’s happened and we need to speak to him.”
Chapter Twelve
Graham Johnson lost his concentration for only a couple of seconds, less than the time it took to blink. The blade of the screwdriver slid forward, bounced into the guts of the phone he was working on, then somehow jumped clear and scraped across the ball of his left index finger.
“Bollocks!”
Graham hurled both screwdriver and phone across the room, where it bounced off a bench and disappeared behind the rest of the mess in the shop. That was the third one he’d ruined, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock.
What the hell was wrong with him?
After he’d checked his finger and decided he would live, he glanced in the direction of the items he’d thrown. He’d never see them again. The benches were covered with hard drives, keyboards, tower carcasses, speakers, and monitors.
Some would ask how he could ever find anything in such a godforsaken place. Finding time to clean would be a bonus. But business was booming, and it was all his. Everyone that came to him did so through word of mouth. He was very good at what he did, and he didn’t rip people off.
If his work was so profitable, why then did he not hire himself a cleaner, his mother had asked on more than one occasion. The answer to that one was pretty simple. Who in their right mind would want to attempt to clean up the mess he’d created? He had spent years making it; it’d probably take even longer to fully straighten out. That aside, though, he valued his privacy, and didn’t relish the intrusion into his work environment.
It wasn’t as if he couldn’t put his hands on any of the things he really wanted. That’s what surprised most people. Customers often entered, and the expression on their faces was one of such distaste that he could almost read their minds. They were trying to invent an excuse to leave: wrong shop; I’ve left my wallet at home; I don’t think you’ll have what I’m after. He’d heard them all. Within minutes however, he could overcome even the most awkward interaction with his devastating repartee and his charming manner.
Graham glanced at his watch and made his way to the back of the premises, deciding it would soon be time for his morning cuppa and a daily dose of the pop quiz on the radio. He’d have no problem finding that; it was the one item he refused to throw around no matter how foul his mood.
Graham eventually returned to the shop with tea and biscuits. He located a free stool and switched on the radio. The station was midway through playing one of his favourite oldies, We’re Through by The Hollies.
The bell to the front door pinged, and in walked two likely lads carrying a laptop. They were of school age – though why they weren’t attending classes today, he had no idea. Neither one of them could have weighed more than seven stone wet through. Both were wearing T-shirts, with faded denims that had vertical slits all the way down. Both had ginger hair and wore glasses.
The song on the radio finished and the DJ announced the quiz was about to start.
“You do know what time it is, don’t you?” said Graham to the pair. The brothers glanced at each other and then said “No” in unison, leaving Graham to ponder if the rest of their meeting would be spent the same way. He lifted his biscuits and pointed towards the lads as if he were holding a loaded shotgun.
“It’s quiz time. But if you guys behave yourselves, I’ll let you stay. If you manage to answer the questions correctly, I may even let you have a biscuit. And if you answer one that I can’t, then you can tell me why you’ve brought the laptop in.”
The brothers glanced at each other with concerned expressions, perhaps wondering what to make of the idiot with the biscuits.
“Do you understand the rules, boys?” asked Graham.
“Yes, sir,” replied one, nervously.
“Good, then let’s get started.”
Graham edged up the volume. The DJ had finished talking to his contestants and started on a first-round question, which was considered easy. “How is Elaine Bookbinder better known?”
Graham pointed to the brothers. “And your answer is?”
The brothers were clueless. They simply shrugged their shoulders.
“It’s Elkie Brooks,” said Graham, delighted that he was right when the DJ confirmed the answer.
The brothers relaxed for the rest of the quiz and earned themselves tw
o biscuits each. All three had laughed about what they did and didn’t know, though that wasn’t much in Graham’s case. The final question however, earned the ginger ringers – as he’d nicknamed them – some real respect, because Graham was stumped.
“Whose stabbed head appears on the front cover of her first solo album?”
Excitedly, one of them shouted, “I know that.” He even put his hand in the air.
“Go on, then, clever-clogs,” replied Graham.
“Debbie Harry. My dad has that album.”
“Give that man a medal,” shouted Graham, switching off the radio. “So, now you’ve redeemed yourself, and eaten half my biscuits, let’s get down to some serious business. What’s wrong with the laptop?”
Expressions grew serious. “We don’t know,” said one.
Graham pulled out a job sheet. The shop may have a resembled the aftermath of an explosion, but he still worked to a system, and that meant crossing the ‘t’s and dotting the ‘i’s.
“Okay, suppose you guys take it from the top. Tell me your names, addresses, and phone numbers. I’ll take down all the details, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Although he’d discovered they were called Richard and Roland, he couldn’t tell them apart to save his life, so he didn’t address either of them personally. After he’d filled in the form, he continued with the questions.
“So where and when did you start to have problems?”
They seemed to take it in turns to answer. “Yesterday,” replied one of the boys.
“What happened?”
“We were on the Internet,” said the other.
“Doing what?” asked Graham. Neither wanted to answer that one.
“Come on, you’ll have to tell me eventually. You know I’ll find out anyway.”
“It’s not our computer, mister.”
“What? You mean you’ve stolen it?”
“No, it’s our dad’s.”
“And where’s your dad?”
“Away on business.”
“Till when?” Graham asked.
“Saturday.”
“And let me guess, he has no idea you’ve been using it.”