by Tim Ellis
'I don't know. What about you?'
'No, I'm not giving up.'
'Nor me.'
'Remember, I used to be a police officer, and the man I live with is a Detective Inspector in a murder team. If Mr and Mrs Adams were killed by the owner of those notebooks, then we need to find out why and report it to the police. It's also possible that the notebooks, and what they contain, might have nothing to do with Estelle's disappearance.'
'Yes, I was thinking that.'
'It would be a bit of a coincidence though.'
'I was thinking that as well.'
'If you've finished upstairs we'll swap'
'I've finished.'
She slipped the diary into her bag. 'We need to find out where that address is and who lives there.'
'He could have had his appointments' diary with him in the van. Did you find a list of personal effects that was returned to Mrs Adams?'
She shook her head. 'No, but then I haven't been looking for something like that.'
'Don't worry, I'll look down here.'
***
He drove into the station car park and beeped his horn. He had no idea whether Rummage would respond to a horn beeping, but if she did it would save him having to go into the station and get her. If she didn't, then maybe he'd have to train her like Pavlov trained his dogs. Every time he beeped his horn, Rummage would salivate, run to his car, climb in and he'd reward her by buying her lunch. What could be fairer than that? He immediately envisaged a problem in that, if she heard a beeping horn and it wasn't his horn – what would happen then? Where would she run to? Who would feed her?
She didn't appear to be very responsive to horn beeping, because he couldn't see her running across the car park salivating. He looked up at the back windows of the station – it resembled an advent calendar. In one window the Chief's scowling face was staring at him; in another there were a number of female officers and civilians peering out to see what was going on, and laughing and pointing; in the window he thought was in his office, Mandy had pulled up her top and was shaking her melons at him; and in various other windows a few of the male officers were making obscene gestures with their hands. He had no idea what that was about – jealousy he guessed.
Rummage at last appeared through the station's rear door, hurried across the car park and climbed into the passenger seat shivering and blowing on her hands. 'It's freezing out there.'
It had begun snowing. But not with any serious intent, just a smattering of flakes to prove that it could.
'Did you get lost?' he said.
'Do you think I'm a dog that responds to car horns?'
'Nothing could be further from the truth, Rummage. So, how did the interviews go?'
'Waste of time.'
'Nothing we do is a waste of time. They had to be done, if only for elimination purposes. Right! Ready to . . .?'
'I hope you're not going to say "rumble"?'
'As if I would.'
He pulled out of the car park and drove the short distance to the mortuary at Hammersmith Hospital. As soon as he stepped out of the car he was breathing heavily, sweating and his hands began shaking.
'You should look for another job, Sir.'
'Tired of me already, Rummage?'
'Somebody with necrophobia shouldn't be a murder detective.'
'We all have our crosses to bear. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have a few of those wooden things weighing you down as well?'
'I've learnt to live with mine.'
'Me too.'
The mortuary was like an electronics shop full of bargain hunters on cyber Monday. 'Where's Doctor Solberg?' he called as the swing doors closed behind him like the gates to Hell.
'Over here,' she yelled.
'Over where?'
'Over here.'
He could just about see a hand waving across the mortuary, but as Doctor Solberg was only a few wafers over five feet five, he couldn't be sure it was actually her hand. 'Follow me, Rummage,' he threw over his shoulder. 'I think I saw a waving hand. Stay close and don't let go of the guide rope. One slip, and you could be lost forever in here.'
Threading his way through the living and dead bodies, he found Ingrid Solberg leaning over a corpse. The cadaver was lying on a stainless steel mortuary table with its chest and abdomen splayed wide open like the Abyss of Trebiciano.
'Inspector Quigg. I am glad you could make it.'
'What's going on in here, Doctor?' he said, trying to muster some light-hearted banter in an effort to conquer his panic. 'Are you throwing a leaving party? I hope there's some fruit punch left.'
She made a noise with her vibrating lips. 'This is your fault.'
'The fourteen bodies, you mean?'
'Yes.'
'I'd like you to explain in triplicate how it's my fault, Doctor. If it's anyone's fault, it's Rummage's. She was the one who suggested there might be more bodies in the waxworks. As for me, I'd have let embalmed corpses lie. Isn't that right, Rummage?'
'It was the least I could do.'
'Straight from the suspect's mouth. I rest my case.'
It was his worst nightmare. He was surrounded by corpses. They were everywhere – on the tables, the trolleys, and hanging out of the shelves in the freezers. It was like a hypnagogic scene from one of Salvador Dali's surrealist paintings. They were all staring at him; reaching for him; begging him to join them. He was struggling to breathe; he felt sick; his heart was racing like a bolting horse; he felt faint; beads of sweat ran down his face; the pains in his chest made him think he was having a heart attack; and then he felt himself falling . . .
He opened his eyes.
Rummage and Doctor Solberg were standing over him.
He was lying on the hard cold floor in the corridor outside the mortuary.
'Why am I lying on the floor, Rummage?'
'You had a panic attack and fainted.'
He looked down at his chest. 'I was sure I was having a heart attack. You haven't performed open-heart surgery on me, have you, Doctor?'
'Open brain surgery more like, Quigg,' she said. 'Necrophobia will kill you one day.'
He scrambled up. 'I'm just glad it isn't today, Doctor. So, what's the news?'
'Behind the Reception there is a cafe. I will meet you there in ten minutes. Order me a lemon tea, Quigg.'
'Are you charging for post-mortem reports now?'
'Do you want to know what I have discovered?'
'Of course.'
'Then it will cost you a lemon tea and a croissant.'
'A croissant! Where did that come from?'
'France,' she said, going back into the mortuary.
The swing doors wafted the stench of death in his face. He steadied himself and headed towards the stairs. 'Isn't it your turn to pay, Rummage?'
'No.'
'Just checking.'
Chapter Seventeen
'I shouldn't be telling you this,' Ruth said to him over the phone. 'But we have a problem.'
'Didn't I tell you that?'
'This is a different problem. Unknown to us, a cyber unit in the French National Gendarmerie, together with our very own National Crime Agency, and the Dutch Police have been running a covert operation over the past six months called Emma95, and they have cracked the EncroChat communication network that the enterprise and other European criminals were using on Android-encrypted phones to run their businesses. The cyber unit modified EncroChat's servers, and with the NCA's data-analysis technology, they were able to infiltrate the network, analyse millions of messages and images, and identify and locate individuals.'
'I don't mean to rain on your parade, but how is this nugget going to help me get Lucy back?'
'It is not, Jack. That is the problem. We cannot trace Lucy. There was a UK-wide operation in the early hours of this morning called Venetic and over seven hundred individuals were arrested, which includes the majority of the enterprise and the Board of Directors. They also intercepted two tonnes of drugs with a street val
ue of one hundred million pounds, seized fifty-four million pounds in cash and a massive array of weapons and ammunition. And because they shared the information with Europol, operations were run in other countries and the European Investors have been arrested also. Of course, as we are all too well aware, their arrests are no guarantee they will be convicted, because the NCA broke the law to obtain the evidence, which means a judge might rule that it is inadmissible.'
'Another example of how the justice system is broken.'
'Yes.'
'What about the Chairman and the Shadow Board?'
'Because we don't know who they are, we don't know if they have been arrested.'
'And why can't you trace Lucy?'
'There are ten thousand EncroChat users in the UK and sixty thousand in Europe. Yesterday, the company found an anomaly on their network and immediately issued a security notice to all users:
Today we had our domains seized illegally by government entities. They repurposed our domain to launch an attack to compromise our carbon units. With control of our domain they managed to launch a malware campaign against the carbon to weaken its security. Due to the level of sophistication of the attack and the malware code, we can no longer guarantee the security of your device. We took immediate action on our network by disabling connectivity to combat the attack. You are advised to power off and physically dispose of your device immediately.
'Apparently, there has been a lot of panic and confusion both by the police and the criminals over the past twenty-four hours. As a consequence, a number of individuals acted on the security notice by disabling and disposing of their phones. It will take some time now to match the people with the data. Li thought she could trace Lucy through the phones the enterprise were using, because even though the camera, microphone, GPS transponder and USB port had been removed from them they had dual operating systems, but she can't do that now.'
'What about the GPS signal?'
'Let me pass you onto Li, she will explain.'
'Okay.'
'Hello, Jack,' Li said when she came on the phone.
'Hi, Li.'
'If we're going to find Lucy, I need you to take the laptop and GPS signal repeater you removed from the warehouse to a location where you can access public wi-fi. That way, when you put the battery back and switch it on, they will not find your base.'
'Understood. And you'll be able to locate Lucy?'
There was a long silence and then Ruth came back on the line. 'If Lucy is still alive, Jack. All of this might be for nothing. When the arrests started, they might have thought that keeping Lucy alive did not matter anymore and disposed of the problem.'
'All right. I'll call you when I have wi-fi access.'
Within the space of a couple of hours everything had changed. The plan was no longer to take down the Board of Directors and the European Investors, but to save his daughter – if she was still alive. He was all too aware of how plans changed and was well versed in thinking on his feet.
'Corporal Zepp! You're with me.'
'Yes, Sir.'
'You're in charge, Sergeant,' he said to Birdwhistle.
'Sir.'
He addressed all of them. 'Plans have changed slightly. Make yourselves aware of what happened on the EncroChat operation this morning. Corporal Zepp and I will be back soon.'
'I'm assuming you can break into a Windows laptop?' he said to Corporal Zepp as they walked to the van.
'No problem, Sir.'
'Good.'
He drove to a local cafe called Gerry's Cafe that boasted public wi-fi and genuine English food.
While Zepp found a table and opened up the laptop, he stopped at the counter on the way in and ordered two mugs of coffee and two full breakfasts. It would be a shame to waste the opportunity, he thought.
He took the coffees, but the breakfasts would be ten minutes.
'How's it going?' he asked Zepp when he sat down opposite her.
'It's fairly simple cracking a Windows password, Sir. Press F8 at start-up, go into "Safe Mode", click on the default Administrator and change the password – it's that simple. Okay, I'm in.' She looked over at the counter and saw that the password for access to the public wi-fi was CHUTNEY. 'Now what?'
He called Ruth. 'We're in.'
Li came on the line. 'Okay, leave it with me. I will try and locate Lucy by piggybacking the GlobalSat signal back to its source.'
The waitress brought their breakfast.
Jack ate, but wasn't particularly hungry.
Corporal Zepp ate as if it was her last meal. Once she'd cleaned her plate with the toast, she helped herself to the sausage and scraps he'd left on his plate.
'Jack?' Li said.
'Yes?'
'I have a location.'
'Where?'
'St Augustine's Church in Camberwell. It's been standing empty for eighteen months and is on the list of churches to be sold by the Catholic Diocese.'
'Have you got a postcode?'
'SE5 7BG.'
'I'll be in touch.'
'Good luck, Jack.'
'Thanks.'
He ended the call.
'Let's go,' he said to Zepp. 'Remove the laptop battery and throw everything into the waste bin outside.'
'Yes, Sir.'
***
After swapping upstairs with downstairs and vice versa, neither of them found anything the other might have missed, so they went down into the cellar.
There were a number of whitewashed rooms with flaking paint, that were used mainly for storage. One of the rooms was where William Adams had stored the pest control equipment and chemicals he used for his business. There were packets containing coveralls; a backpack pressure sprayer; an electric fogger; rat and mice traps; reels and hoses; steamers; granulators; ant and cockroach baits; face masks; plastic gloves; fipronil; permethrin; hydramethylnon; pyrethrum; boric acid . . . There was also a large sky blue sealed plastic bag with Royal Brompton Hospital across the front and a paper list in a clear plastic envelope stapled to the top.
Harry picked up the bag. 'This is what we're looking for – belongings of William Adams,' he said. 'She probably couldn't bring herself to open it.' He tore off the list, put the bag down and read what it said. 'The property of William Adams.'
Coveralls;
Shirt;
Trousers;
Socks;
Boxer shorts;
Boots;
Watch;
Wedding ring – 9 carat gold;
Wallet containing: driver's licence, credit card, bank debit card, book of first-class stamps, membership card for the British Pest Control Association (BPCA), cash – thirty-five pounds in notes and twenty-seven pence in coins;
Appointments diary.
'Really?' Duffy said.
'That's what it says here.' He squatted down, tore open the bag, found the book and opened it to where October 10 should have been. 'Not here,' he said, examining the pages as if it might have come before or after October 8 and 11. 'Somebody tore it out.'
Duffy held out her hand, so that she could see for herself.
He handed the diary to her.
'Mmmm! You're right,' she said, but as she moved the diary to look closer at the jagged edges of the torn page, she noticed indentations on the blank page of October 11. Let's go upstairs where there's a bit more light. Do you have a pencil on you?'
'A pen.'
'We'll probably find one upstairs.'
They made their way up the cellar steps to the kitchen and after a search of the drawers eventually found a pencil.
Duffy sat down at the kitchen table and gently ran the pencil lead sideways over the indentations until a name and address appeared:
Keller
23 Odger Street, Battersea, SW11
'That's brilliant, Duffy. I would never have thought of that.'
'It might not be the address where Adams stole the notebooks from though.'
'But there's a good chance it is.'
'I supp
ose.'
'Is that where we're going next?'
'Have you got a gun?'
'No.'
'Are you trained in the martial arts?'
'I hate physical violence.'
'Then we really don't want to go knocking on his door, do we?'
'I guess not.'
'Put the kettle on.'
'Good idea.' Harry filled the kettle up and switched it on. 'Tea?'
'Yes, please.' She stared at the address she'd revealed in the diary. 'We need to think seriously about what we're going to do, because it's possible that Mister Keller – if he is the owner of the notebooks – has already killed Estelle and William Adams.'
Harry screwed up his face as he brought the cups of tea over and sat down at the table. 'If Estelle Adams' disappearance isn't down to alien abduction or paranormal activity, and this Mister Keller . . .' He tapped his finger on the name and address in the diary, '. . . did do it. How did he do it? I mean, we haven't spoken about it not being anything other than a ghostly event, have we?'
'No.'
'We've seen the recording. There are seven other people there, including Rita, what about them? And then there's the clock and the missing time. You said you knew someone who could analyse it?'
'I only sent it to him this morning. I'm waiting for him to get back to me.'
'The other thing is, if it's not a paranormal event, why are we still investigating Estelle Adams' disappearance? Maybe we should hand it over to the police? Or simply tell Rita that she needs to contact the police?'
'I can see what you're saying, but we agreed to investigate Estelle Adams' disappearance, didn't we?'
'Yes, but . . .'
'And we still don't know what really happened at that séance, so it could still be a paranormal event.'
'I suppose.'
'All this business about the notebooks could be a red herring as well. I mean, we know she went there to ask her husband where he'd hidden the notebooks, but that might be unrelated to her disappearance.'
'I guess. I wonder what those notebooks contain that made them so scared.'