by Peter James
For a while she’d wondered if he had broken it, or if the battery had run out. But then she’d seen something that chilled her.
A very faint red glow.
It was not an area of technology on which she was clued up, but she remembered a movie in which a character had used night-vision equipment and that had given off a barely detectable red glow. Was that what he was using in here, she wondered?
Something through which he would watch her, without being seen?
So why hadn’t he already sneaked up on her? There had to be only one reason: he had not been able to find her.
That’s what this pretend call from Benedict was all about.
*
He knew one thing for certain. He’d searched every inch of this floor and she wasn’t down here. She had to have climbed up, but where? There were two vast upstairs areas housing the long cooling pipes and the kilns that blasted the hot cement clinker into them. Any number of hiding places, but he thought he had searched them all.
She was clever, this bitch. Maybe she kept moving. He was getting more anxious and desperate with every passing minute. He had to get her away from here and somehow secure her in another place. And he had to be at work tomorrow. It was a very important day. A major new client and a key meeting with the bank about his expansion plans. He was going to have to get some sleep before then.
And his eye needed to be looked at. The pain was worsening all the time.
‘Jessie!’ he called out again, all friendly. ‘It’s for yooooooooouuuu!’
Then, after a few moments silence, he said, ‘I know where you are, Jessie! I can see you up there! If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, then the mountain’s coming to Mohammed!’
Silence greeting him. Then the bang of a metal flap. Four seconds later, it banged again.
‘You’re only making this worse for yourself, Jessie. I’m not going to be happy when I find you. I’m really not!’
*
Jessie did not make a sound. She realized one thing. All the time it was dark, this creep had the advantage. But the moment dawn broke and some light started seeping in here, however little, all that changed. He frightened her and she did not know what he was capable of. But she was sure she had hurt his eye badly. And she still had the knife, on the floor, right by her hand.
It was midnight. Dawn would be some time around seven o’clock. Somehow she had to find the strength to forget her raging thirst and her tiredness. Sleep was not an option.
Tomorrow maybe there’d be a chink of light coming through a wall. This place was derelict. In semi ruins. There had to be a hole somewhere that she could crawl through. Even if it was on to the roof.
115
Monday 19 January
Despite the vigorous protests of the taxi driver’s solicitor, Ken Acott, Grace had refused to allow John Kerridge – Yac – to be freed, and insisted on applying to the magistrates’ court for a further thirty-six-hour extension. It had been granted readily, since, after the solicitor’s insistence on having a specialist medic present, they had not yet been able to start interviewing Kerridge.
Grace was still not happy with this suspect, although he had to admit the evidence against Kerridge did not look strong, so far. The man’s mobile phone had yielded nothing. He only had five numbers stored on it. One belonged to the owner of his taxi, one was for the taxi company, two were for the owners of the boat he lived on, who were in Goa – a mobile and a landline – and one for a therapist he had not seen in over a year.
The taxi driver’s computer had not revealed anything of interest. Just endless visits to sites involving ladies’ shoes – mostly on the fashion rather than fetish side – visits to eBay, as well as countless visits to perfume sites, sites concerned with Victorian period toilets and mapping sites.
A medical expert, a psychologist of some sort who was trained in Asperger’s syndrome patients was on her way down. When she arrived, if she assessed Kerridge favourably, Acott said he would allow his client to be interviewed. Hopefully they’d find out more then.
Just as he returned to his office from the morning briefing, his mobile phone rang.
‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.
It was a technician he knew at the forensic laboratories and she was sounding very pleased with herself. ‘Roy, I’ve got DNA results for you!’
‘On what we sent you last night?’ he replied, astonished.
‘It’s a new bit of kit – it’s still undergoing trials and it’s not reliable enough for court work. But we had such good DNA from both of those samples, we took some to experiment with, knowing the urgency.’
‘So, tell me?’
‘We have two hits – one for each sample. One is complete, a 100 per cent match, the other is partial, a familial match. The complete match is on DNA from a hair follicle from the corpse. Her name is Rachael Ryan. She disappeared in 1997. Any help?’
‘You’re certain?’
‘The machine is certain. We’re still running conventionally with the rest of her DNA, so we’ll have that result later today. But I’m pretty sure.’
He allowed himself only a couple of seconds for this to sink in. It was what he was expecting, but even so it was a shock. A confirmation of his failure to save this young woman’s life. He made a mental note to contact her parents, hoping they were both still alive and still together. At least now they would have closure, if nothing else.
‘And the familial match?’ he asked.
Familial, Grace knew, meant a near match, but not an exact match. It was normally a match between siblings or a parent and child.
‘That’s from the semen inside the condom that was found inside the corpse – Rachael Ryan as we now know. It’s a woman called Mrs Elizabeth Wyman-Bentham.’
Grace wrote the name down, checking the spelling with her, so excited his hand was shaking. Then the technician gave him her address.
‘Do we know why she’s on the database?’
‘Drink-driving.’
He thanked her, and as soon as he had terminated the call, he dialled Directory Enquiries, gave the name of Elizabeth Wyman-Bentham and her address.
Moments later, he had the number and dialled it.
It went straight to voicemail. He left a message with his name and rank, asking her to call him back urgently on his mobile number. Then he sat down and Googled her name to see if he could find out anything about her, in particular where she worked. It was 9.15 a.m. If she worked she was likely to be there already, or on her way there.
Moments later on his screen appeared the words, About Lizzie Wyman-Bentham, CEO of WB Public Relations.
He clicked on them and almost immediately a photograph of a smiling woman, with a mass of frizzed hair, came up, together with a row of details to click on for information about the firm. Just as he clicked on Contact, his phone rang.
He answered and heard a rather breathless, effusive female voice. ‘I’m so sorry, I missed your call – heard it ringing just as I stepped out of the house! How can I help you?’
‘This may sound a strange question,’ Roy Grace asked. ‘Do you have a brother or a son?’
‘A brother.’ Then her voice changed to panic. ‘Is he all right? Has something happened? Has he been in an accident?’
‘No, he’s fine, so far as we know. I need to speak to him in connection with a police inquiry.’
‘Gosh, I was worried for a moment!’
‘Can you tell me where I can reach him?’
‘An inquiry, did you say? Ah yes, of course, probably something to do with work. Silly of me! I think he does a bit of work with you guys. He’s Garry Starling and his company – well, he has two – Sussex Security Systems and Sussex Remote Monitoring Services – they’re both in the same building in Lewes.’
Grace wrote the information down, and took Starling’s office phone number.
‘I’m not quite sure why – why exactly have you contacted me?’
‘It’s a little bit complicated,’
Grace replied.
Her voice darkened. ‘Garry’s not in trouble, is he? I mean, he’s a very respectable businessman – he’s very well known in this city.’
Not wanting to give anything further away, he assured her that no, her brother was not in trouble. He ended the call, then immediately dialled Starling’s office. The phone was answered by a pleasant woman. He did not reveal his identity, but merely asked to speak to Garry Starling.
‘He’s not in yet,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure he will be shortly. He’s normally in by this time. I’m his secretary. Can I take a message?’
‘I’ll call back,’ Grace said. He had to struggle to keep his voice sounding calm.
The instant he hung up, he hurried along to MIR-1, formulating his plan as he strode down the corridor.
116
Monday 19 January
There was less light than Jessie had imagined there’d be, which in some ways she thought was good. If she was very, very careful, keeping totally silent, she was able to tiptoe a short distance along the gridded walkway and look down at the camper van.
It sat there, cream and grimy, with its side door open. It was the kind of camper van that used to be one of the symbols of the hippy era – flower power, ban-the-bomb, all that stuff she recalled from what she had read about the 1960s and 1970s.
This creep didn’t seem much like a hippy.
He was inside the van at the moment. Had he slept? She doubted it. Once or twice during the darkness she’d nearly dozed off, and on one occasion had almost cried out when an animal of some kind brushed her arm. Then a while later, as dawn brought with it a weak, grey haze of light, a rat came and took a look at her.
She hated rats and after that incident her tiredness was banished.
What was his plan now? What was going on in the outside world? She’d not heard the helicopter again, so maybe it hadn’t been looking for her after all. How long would this go on for?
Perhaps he had supplies in the van. She knew he had water and maybe he had food. He could sit this out indefinitely, if he didn’t have a job or a life that was missing him. Whereas, she knew, she could not go on much longer without water and something to eat. She was feeling weak. On edge, but definitely weaker than yesterday. And dog tired. Running on adrenalin.
And determination.
She was going to marry Benedict. This creep was not going to stop her. Nothing was.
I am going to get out of here.
The wind was strong today and seemed to be getting stronger. The cacophony of sounds all around was worsening. Good, because that would help cover any noise she might make moving around.
Suddenly she heard a howl of rage. ‘ALL RIGHT, YOU BITCH, I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR DAMNED GAMES. I’M COMING AFTER YOU. HEAR ME? I’VE WORKED OUT WHERE YOU ARE AND I’M COMING AFTER YOU!’
She tiptoed back to her vantage point and looked down. To her shock she could see him, still with his hood off, with what looked like a big red weal around his right eye. He was running across the ground floor, holding a big spanner in one hand and a carving knife in the other.
He was running straight for the entrance of the silo beneath her.
Then she heard him shouting again, his voice an echoing boom, as if he was shouting through a funnel. ‘OH, VERY CLEVER, BITCH. A LADDER UP INSIDE THE SILO! HOW DID YOU FIND THAT?’
Moments later she heard the clanging of the rungs.
117
Monday 19 January
Glenn Branson was already waiting for Roy Grace in an unmarked car at the entrance to the industrial estate. He had the signed search warrants in his pocket.
The map they had studied earlier, in their hasty plan for this operation, showed there were only two possible routes in or out for vehicles visiting Garry Starling’s headquarters here for his two companies, Sussex Security Systems and Sussex Remote Monitoring Services. Tucked discreetly out of sight, at this moment, were the vehicles of the team he had organized to carry out the arrest – when and if Starling turned up.
He already had four covert officers in place on the estate, in casual clothes. Parked up a side street, and ready to move in the moment Starling returned, were two dog-handler units to cover the exits to his office building. He had one of the Local Support Team vans, with six officers in body armour waiting inside it, plus four plain cars covering access to the network of roads linking into the industrial estate should Starling try to make a run for it.
Grace left his unmarked car parked in the next street along and climbed into Glenn Branson’s. He felt tense. Relieved, yet hurting from the confirmation of Rachael Ryan’s death. Thinking through the plan now. Plenty worried him.
‘Rock ’n’ roll?’
Grace nodded distractedly. The Shoe Man had never left DNA traces. His victims reported he had been unable to maintain an erection. Did this mean Garry Starling was not the Shoe Man? Or that killing Rachael Ryan – assuming he was the killer – had turned him on enough to ejaculate?
Why was he not in his office this morning?
If he had sex with a woman twelve years ago who was then found dead, how were they going to prove Starling was the killer? If indeed he was. What view would the Crown Prosecution Service take?
A million unanswered questions.
Just a growing certainty in his mind that the man who had murdered Rachael Ryan was the man who had abducted Jessie Sheldon. He desperately hoped he could do a better job of finding her alive – if there was still a chance – than he had done of finding Rachael Ryan. And that he would not be disinterring her from a grave in another twelve years’ time.
As they drove up to the smart front entrance of Sussex Security Systems and Sussex Remote Monitoring Services, he noticed the cars parked in allotted bays, and the empty one marked CEO. But what he was looking at more was the row of white vans bearing the companies’ joint logo.
It had been a white van that had driven off at speed from the car park on Thursday after the failed attack on Dee Burchmore. And a white van in which Rachael Ryan had been abducted twelve years ago.
They climbed out of the car and walked in through the front door. A middle-aged receptionist sat behind a curved desk with the two logos emblazoned on the front. To their right was a small seating area, with copies of Sussex Life and several of today’s papers, including the Argus, laid out.
Grace thought grimly that they probably wouldn’t be laying out tomorrow’s Argus, with the kind of headline it was likely to contain.
‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’
Grace showed his warrant card. ‘Has Mr Starling come in yet?’
‘No – er, no, not yet,’ she said, looking flustered.
‘Would you say that’s unusual?’
‘Well, normally, on a normal Monday morning, he’s the first one in.’
Grace held the search warrant up and gave her a few seconds to read it. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises. I’d be grateful if you could find someone to show us around.’
‘I’ll – I’ll get the manager, sir.’
‘Fine. We’ll start. Tell him to find us.’
‘Yes – right – yes, I will. When Mr Starling turns up, shall I let you know?’
‘It’s OK,’ Grace replied. ‘We’ll know.’
She looked lost for an answer.
‘Where do we find your CCTV monitoring section?’ Grace asked.
‘That’s on the first floor. I’ll page Mr Addenberry and he can take you along.’
Glenn pointed at the door to the stairs. ‘First floor.’
‘Yes, you turn right. Keep going down the corridor, into the accounts department and then the call-handling and you’ll come to it.’
Both detectives loped up the stairs. Just as they reached the end of a corridor, with offices on either side, a short, nervous-looking and balding man in his early forties, in a grey suit with a row of pens in the top pocket, scuttled up to them.
‘Hello, gentlemen. How can I help you? I’m John Addenberry, the Gener
al Manager.’ He had a slightly smarmy voice.
When Grace explained who they were and about the search warrant, Addenberry started to look as if he was standing on a live electrical wire.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. Of course. We do a lot of work for Sussex Police. CID HQ are important customers. Very.’
He led the way through into the CCTV control room. Seated at a chair in front of a bank of twenty television monitors was a enormously overweight character, dressed in an ill-fitting uniform and greasy hair, and looking far too old to be sporting bum-fluff on his lip, Grace thought. A large Coca-Cola and a giant-size packet of Doritos sat on a table in front of him, next to a microphone and a small control panel, and a computer keyboard.
‘This is Dunstan Christmas,’ Addenberry said. ‘He’s the duty controller.’
But Grace had turned his attention away to the bank of monitors. And he frowned as he stared at one in particular. The front of a smart, ultra-modern house. Then he pointed. ‘No. 7 – is that 76 The Droveway, the home of Mr and Mrs Pearce?’
‘Yep,’ Christmas said. ‘She was raped, wasn’t she?’
‘I didn’t see any cameras when I was there.’
Christmas chewed a nail as he spoke. ‘No, you wouldn’t. I think in that house they’re all hidden.’
‘Why’s no one told me? There might be evidence on this from her attack,’ Grace said angrily.
Christmas shook his head. ‘No, wasn’t working that night. It was down from mid-afternoon. Didn’t go back up until the next morning.’
Grace stared at him hard and saw Branson doing the same thing. Was he hiding something? Or guileless? Then he stared back at the screen. The image had changed to the rear garden.