Cold Blood: A gripping serial killer thriller that will take your breath away

by Robert Bryndza

  Mariette was now back in control of her emotions. ‘Hand on my heart, I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you know where it’s headed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The number plates are now being fed into the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system, so if Max and Nina drove or are driving the van using any of those plates, they will have been captured by ANPR cameras.’

  ‘But you won’t know the number plates they’re using now,’ she said with a small smile.

  ‘Do you know the plate numbers?’

  Mariette folded her arms.

  ‘Whatever happens in this interview, Mariette, you are going to prison for a very long time. So you can speak, and a judge might view you with more lenience. Tell me where Max and Nina are going with those two girls. What they are planning?’

  Mariette clamped her mouth shut childishly.

  Moss slammed her hand down on the table. ‘Goddammit, Mariette, you can at least tell me where they’ve taken Mia and Sophie Marsh!’

  She cocked her head and gave Moss a nasty smile. ‘I think I’d like to go back to my cell.’

  Moss signalled to the camera, and two officers came into the interview room and removed Mariette. Her solicitor picked up his paperwork and followed.

  Moss waited until she was alone, and then yelled out in frustration, kicking the large table across the room.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Nina was jolted awake. At first, she didn’t know which day it was or where she was, she just felt warmth and a lulling motion. Then one of the twins moved. She opened her eyes and found she’d fallen asleep propped up against the side of the van. Mia and Sophie were under her arms, sleeping with their heads on her chest.

  She realised what had woken her up. The van had stopped moving. It was very dark inside; the glow of the display on the car radio gave them a little light, but she couldn’t see anything through the front window.

  ‘Shit,’ she said under her breath, as she shifted awkwardly. Her leg was curled under her and it had gone dead. A glow of light appeared outside and got brighter, and the driver’s side was pulled open. Wind came screaming through the doorway, and flurries of snow. Max poked his head through the door. He was wearing one of the black woolly hats Mariette had bought them.

  ‘You need to wake them two up and we need to get moving,’ he said. He threw a carrier bag with the other hats and gloves at her, flicked the interior light on, and slammed the door. The grubby inside of the van came into view. One of the girls stirred, and Nina couldn’t tell if it was Mia or Sophie. She opened her little eyes, and then remembered what had happened.

  ‘Oh. Where are we?’ she asked, her eyes quickly filling with tears.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Nina. She leaned over and poked her sister. ‘Mia, Mia, wake up.’

  Mia opened her eyes and when she realised, she was scared, but appeared a little more stoic, reaching out with a tiny hand to comfort Sophie. Nina looked down and found their interaction heartbreaking.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s cold outside and I think it’s still late. Just stay here for a moment,’ said Nina. ‘Look, there’s some hats and gloves in here, can you put them on for me?’ she added, handing them the carrier. She managed to extricate herself from them and climb through the front seats. Her leg was completely dead and she tried to wiggle her toes to get the blood moving. The girls were staring over at her.

  ‘You’re leaving us?’ said Sophie.

  ‘No. I’m just going outside to see where we are. I’m not leaving, I promise. Now please find yourself some hats and gloves in that bag and put them on…’ Nina forced a smile on her face, but didn’t think the girls were buying it. She opened the door and a gust of wind blew in with a whirl of snowflakes. ‘Girls, please put on hats and gloves. I’ll be back.’

  She got out and slammed the door, emerged into a wailing storm, and it was pitch-black. There were no stars or moon in the sky. She started to stagger back to Max, trying to inject some feeling into her dead leg, when he shouted.

  ‘Watch out! There’s a huge drop!’ He was a little way behind the van with a torch. He directed it down to the ground beside her, and she recoiled and grabbed the side of the van. The arching beam of the powerful torch showed she was standing on a strip of grass less than three feet wide, with a steep drop down to a water-filled quarry.

  ‘Jesus! Where are we?’ she shrilled, gripping on tight and inching along the strip of grass to the back of the van where the grassy platform opened out.

  ‘On the edge of the moor. It’s about five miles over that way to the cave,’ he said, pointing to the left. She joined him at the back of the van, where he had a rucksack on the grass. He was pulling on a thick winter coat, and he pulled another one out, and two smaller ones for the girls. ‘Put this on.’

  She pulled it on, feeling the warmth immediately.

  ‘These are thermal, no cheap shit,’ he shouted.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Just after 3 a.m. We should hang here until first light, okay? Can you keep them quiet?’

  ‘They need water, and I think one of them has wet herself.’

  ‘Deal with it, then,’ he said. He took out a pack of cigarettes and crouched down, cupping his hands around it, trying to light up. ‘Don’t just fucking stand there, help me, Neen.’ She crouched down and held open her coat until he got his cigarette lit. He took several deep puffs, and the tip glowed bright. ‘Go back in and get some sleep. It won’t be light for a few more hours.’

  She could see snow was lying on the ground around their feet, and she took the two little coats and inched her way around the steep drop and got back into the van.

  Max didn’t return for several hours. They sat in the dark as the van shook in the wind, and Nina sang to the twins. Nursery rhymes she remembered her own mother singing to her. She also told the girls that this would soon be over, and they would be going back to their mummy and daddy later in the day.

  ‘But why have we come here?’ asked Mia. Nina was now able to tell them apart by their voices. Mia had a slightly higher, more questioning inflection, whereas Sophie spoke with more certainty and confidence.

  ‘We’re here because Mummy and Daddy are having builders in—’

  ‘What are they building?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘A brand new bathroom and kitchen.’

  ‘But we’ve got a new one.’

  ‘This is a brand spanking amazing new one,’ said Nina.

  ‘And who is that grumpy man driving the van?’ asked Mia.

  ‘He’s my boss. You know what bosses are like.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mia. ‘Daddy has to be a boss. Are bosses called bosses cos they’re bossy?’

  ‘Yes. They are.’

  Nina was appalled and strangely comforted that the girls accepted this explanation. The night seemed to go on forever, but finally she started to see the sky through the front window of the van moving from black to dark blue and then becoming lighter.

  As the sun came up, the swirling mist of the snowy moors came into view. Nina watched it for some time, marvelling at its beauty. Then abruptly the door was yanked open, and Max poked his head back inside.

  ‘It’s time to make the call,’ he said.

  Chapter Seventy

  Erika slept in the incident room at Lewisham Row Station, along with Moss. They had attempted to question Mariette Hoffman again in the early hours of the morning, but it yielded nothing, until her solicitor told them they had to give her eight hours of sleep in the cells before they could resume.

  Erika opened her eyes. One of the officers from Detective Paris’s Kidnap Unit, who had set up base in another of the incident rooms in the basement, was shaking her awake. She’d been sleeping in a chair, and using her coat as a blanket.

  ‘We’ve had a call come through the switchboard that we think is Max Kirkham. It’s just being checked before it comes through to us,’ said the officer, a young lad with a kind face.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ said E
rika. She shook Moss, awake who was sleeping in a chair on the opposite side of the desk and they followed the officer over to the incident room.

  Everyone had congregated around a group of desks, wearing headsets and cradling cups of coffee. Superintendent Paris was sitting at a desk in the middle, and putting on a headset. Erika and Moss were given a spare headset each and they pulled them on. An officer sitting to the side of Paris gave the thumbs up.

  ‘We’re recording,’ he said.

  Paris nodded and pressed a button, opening the microphone.

  ‘Who am I speaking to?’ asked a male voice. It was confident and sounded working class yet cultured.

  ‘This is Superintendent Paris,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m head of the Metropolitan Police Kidnap and Hostage Unit. Can I ask who you are?’

  ‘This is Max Kirkham,’ said the voice. A look passed between Erika and Moss as they were finally hearing the voice of their suspect. There was a pause on the end of the line, and they could hear wind and interference in the background. Superintendent Paris wrote something down on a piece of paper and held it up:

  ‘TRACING?’

  One of the officers looked across and shook his head.

  Paris nodded.

  ‘You still there, cocker?’ said Max.

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Max.’

  ‘Okay. Well, I’ll cut to the chase. I can confirm I have the girls.’

  ‘Can you please state the names of the two girls you have with you?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s, um, Sophie Marsh and Mia Marsh, and they are the spawn of your very own Commander Paul Marsh.’

  ‘Okay, thank you,’ said Paris.

  ‘What the fuck do you mean thank you?’ said Max. ‘I feel like I’m calling up to complain about my electric account, and you’re giving me the customer service chat.’

  ‘I want nothing more than a peaceful conclusion to this. I am here to talk without judgement.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about your judgement, and I’m not gonna keep on chatting here so you can trace me. However, this is a disposable phone so good luck.’

  Erika scrawled something on a piece of paper and held it up to one of the officers:

  ‘WE HAVE RECEIPTS 4 PAY & GO PHONES. CHECK IMEI.’

  The officer nodded.

  ‘Can you confirm that Mia and Sophie are alive and safe?’ asked Paris.

  ‘Yes and yes. And they will stay alive and safe as long as you do exactly what I say. So here’s what I want. Have you heard of bitcoin?’

  Paris looked up at the officers in the room.

  ‘Yes, we are aware of how bitcoin works.’

  ‘I have a brand new bitcoin account,’ said Max, the line crackling with the sound of the wind. ‘What I want is £200,000 put in my bitcoin account in the next twenty-four hours. Now, I know that dear old UK PLC don’t cough up ransom payments. But I bet Commander Marsh and his wife have a few quid. I’m sure he can re-mortgage that beautiful house or rent out that fine pussy of hers, which I’ll add is as smooth as velvet, and it’s nice to see that the Brazilian wax hasn’t taken over the suburbs of south London. She’s certainly a woman who suits looking wild.’

  Erika closed her eyes and had to grip her headset. Superintendent Paris, however, was unmoved.

  ‘If Paul and Marcie Marsh decide to comply, and deposit £200,000 into this bitcoin account, you will return both girls safely to their family?’

  ‘Yes, I will. I’ll know the moment that the money arrives, and in turn I will text you the location of where I’m keeping the girls. As you probably know, I don’t value human life, but I don’t have the appetite to kill these two little shits. I just want my money and then they can be free to roam in the world again. Free to go to their private schools and grow up to be bourgeois little cunts. I’ll give you six hours, and then I will call back. I won’t answer this number, so don’t try to call.’

  The line then went dead. There was a pause as the team removed their headsets, and they watched Paris as he carried on writing on a piece of paper.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We want to get a trace on this phone. We’ll have to triangulate with the nearest mobile phone masts. This needs to be a level one priority. We also need to put out a nationwide search for all white vans with the make and model we have from the person in custody. Again, level one priority. We also need to have people on the ground; we should conduct a door-to-door in the immediate houses around the day care centre where these girls were abducted. I want all resources diverted away and this becomes our number one priority.’

  ‘The second two are already underway,’ said Erika. ‘I also have Nina Hargreaves’s diary, which was recovered from their council flat. The entries could prove useful.’

  Superintendent Paris paused, and didn’t look thrilled to see her.

  ‘Thank you, DCI Foster, but I am making a recommendation that you are not involved in this case from here onwards. You have been welcome here as an observer, but after the events of last night, I think your involvement has crossed over into personal territory.’

  ‘With respect—’ started Erika.

  But he put up his hand. ‘That’s all I’m saying on the matter; please can you leave my incident room.’

  Chapter Seventy-One

  It was now light, and Nina stood with the girls, shivering in the cold. They watched as Max retrieved the last of the bags from the back of the van and slammed the doors shut. There were two large rucksacks filled with their supplies, and another two bags of food.

  Now it was light Nina could see they were standing on a low ridge of rock and heather, and the road had finished a hundred yards further up behind them. In one direction they could see across Dartmoor, the weather was clear, but the green landscape was speckled with snow. To the side of the van was the rocky lip of a large water-filled quarry with a layer of ice. Large wisps of low-hanging cloud drifted past, and the twins, who now had their coats on and their hoods up, gazed at them, momentarily distracted by the sight of clouds that you could reach out and touch.

  Max went over to the front of the van and leaned in to the passenger side and undid the window, then moved around and did the same with the driver’s side. He turned the wheel until the front wheels were angled towards the frozen water, then took off the handbrake and slammed the door. He leaned into the back and gave it a push. Nina and the girls moved closer to the edge of the quarry and watched as it rolled over the edge, gathering speed before it hit the ice. It stayed there for a moment, bobbing up and down, with the back half poking up out of the water, and then it was still.

  ‘Come on,’ said Max as they watched it for a couple of minutes. Nothing happened. Then, slowly, there was a creaking, sucking sound and bubbles floated up as it slowly started to sink through the hole in the ice. As the lip of the front windows reached the water, it filled rapidly and sunk fast, disappearing through the ice.

  Max came over to the girls and crouched down. He pulled a little bag of the Haribo sweets out of each pocket and handed them to the girls.

  ‘Now, these are for you, okay?’ he said. The girls nodded with wide eyes and each took a packet. ‘If you keep being good, and quiet, and do exactly what you’re told, you’ll see your mummy and daddy again. If you misbehave...’ He turned and pointed to the bubbles still floating up through the hole in the ice. ‘You’ll end up in there, with the van… And you know something?’ He leaned forward and whispered: ‘If you go in there, you never stop sinking. You just keep going down, and down, and down into the dark. And you’ll never be found.’

  The two girls began to cry, silent tears running down their faces.

  ‘Max, you don’t have to—’ started Nina.

  ‘Shut up! Now. We need to get moving.’

  Max pulled on a large rucksack, and he gave the other one to Nina. They set off down the bank opposite the quarry, towards the green landscape stretching out ahead and speckled with snow.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Paul and Marcie sat on the sofa in their
front room. They hadn’t slept, and they wore hollow empty stares. Marcie’s mother came into the room with a tray of tea, looking a little less coiffed than she had the previous day. She handed out cups to Paul, Marcie, Marcie’s father Leonard, Colleen, the Family Liaison Officer, Superintendent Paris and two other uniformed officers. Paris had just outlined what had happened on the phone with Max.

  ‘We’ve got how much in our joint savings? Fifty-five, sixty thousand?’ said Marsh, standing up and talking to Marcie.

  ‘Fifty-six thousand,’ she said, cradling her steaming cup of tea. Her nose was still bandaged and the bruises on her eyes were blooming now to a bright purple and green.

  ‘We can make up the rest,’ said Leonard.

  ‘Yes, we have the rainy day account, and this is…’ started Marcie’s mother. ‘This is…’ She broke down and put a hand to her mouth. Marcie’s face crumpled and her mother took her in her arms.

  ‘I’d just like to reiterate that we want to resolve this without you having to send such a large amount of money,’ said Paris.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say!’ shouted Marsh. ‘Have you seen our two little girls, they’re just... angels... they’ve never even spent the night away from home, and now they’re… Where are they? You’re supposed to be the bloody crack team for kidnapping. They’ve been missing for almost twenty-four hours!’