by Lee Weeks
Two and a half hours later she was collecting her bag and making her way through the ‘nothing to declare’ tunnel in Krakow John Paul II International Airport. On the other side of the doors, behind the barrier, a crowd of people looked her way hopefully.
She stopped wheeling her new case for a moment and looked for her name.
Stefan had been told exactly what to look out for.
He waved at her.
Tina wished she’d worn something smarter. He was not bad-looking, bit old, but worth a few hours of her holiday.
‘Tina?’
‘That’s me.’
‘Please follow me. I am your guide.’
He took the handle of her pull-along case and marched off towards the door. ‘Follow, please. You have a coat? Very cold here in Poland. Minus twenty.’
‘Jesus!’ Tina caught the blast of arctic air as they neared the doors. It took her breath away.
‘Here . . . please . . .’ Stefan gave her a spare coat he was carrying for the purpose. He turned round to smile at her. ‘Very lucky, huh?’
She smiled at him. She would have felt luckier if she had been about to walk out to heat and tropical paradise instead of minus twenty. Once they were in the car, it was not long before Stefan pulled up outside the hospital. He took her case out of the boot.
‘Please . . .’ He indicated the steps towards the hospital entrance and the reception just inside. Stefan went ahead and spoke to the receptionist.
Christ, what was it with these receptionists? Dark lipstick, severe pulled-back hair. Great body. The kind that Tina wanted. Tina looked around. The smell of the hospital hit her. It looked smart, but she was expecting to be shown to a luxury hotel first. She was hoping for a couple of nights’ fun before any cutting began.
‘Am I going to a hotel first?’ she asked Stefan.
The receptionist answered for him: ‘Hello, Tina, welcome. There has been a small change of plan and we think it is better you are prepared for your procedures today. When it is over you will have a long time to rest.’
Chapter 55
Digger had retired upstairs to his apartment above the club for the evening. He was in a reflective mood. He sat in his old tapestry cloth armchair with his miniature dachshund on his lap. His apartment had not been decorated since the Seventies. Brown swirls went from the carpet to the walls. Above Digger’s head hung a frosted-glass chandelier on spidery black fittings. At the other end of the phone he could hear the sound of breathing and in the background a woman was singing. Digger stroked the dog as he talked on the phone.
‘It seems like just the other day when Maria died. Thirteen years go by in a flash.’ He could feel the resentment coming down the phone but at least the line was still live. At least the person at the other end was still there.
‘I have known you many years and I count you as a friend but you are a hard man to love. You kill everything that shows weakness. You demand submission and you kill those that kneel. You are a Praying Mantis. Ha-ha . . . You are a Black Widow spider. Ha-ha . . . you weave your web and you eat your prey and then you wonder why you’re alone.’ He listened in hope of an answer, but he got silence. He could no longer hear the woman singing.
‘Listen to me, old friend, let bygones be bygones. You cannot help who you love. Maria was everything to me.’ Digger listened. He heard an exhalation of breath. He heard the sound of someone’s lips move as if to speak, but no words came.
‘I know what you are going to say: she wasn’t mine to love, but I could not help it. She was nothing to you. In the end we both lost her to madness.
‘I know you didn’t want me to see Nikki but I couldn’t resist it, knowing that she is back in this country and she is the nearest thing I have to kin.’ He heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone. ‘But things are moving beyond my control. You must save Nikki. Get her away, take the boy, start a new life. The police are watching me and so is he. I am being squeezed. I will do my best to give you time to get away and I suggest you run far and fast. They will be watching all the airfields, all the hospitals now. They are on your tail, old friend. The police and the devil are coming for you.’
Martingale sat in the dark of his drawing room. He closed his eyes and tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair and turned the music back up. A child prodigy was singing Nessun Dorma. Her voice was so rich, so powerful, yet so delicate and beautiful. People marvelled at the little girl’s lungs. Martingale didn’t.
He looked up as she walked down the stairs.
‘Please . . .’ Martingale stood and beckoned her forward as he held out his arms to her. She turned her head from him but she didn’t move away. ‘Come, my little one . . .’ She allowed him closer. ‘That’s it . . .’ He took her in his arms and kissed her head and smoothed his hand down her back, over her hair that was like silk to his touch. He breathed her smell and closed his eyes as he hummed Brahms’ lullaby. He didn’t need to pull back to know that she had closed her eyes and was smiling. ‘It won’t be long now for you and then we’ll be free of all this forever.’ When he lifted his hand from her hair, whole strands of loose hair were stuck to it.
As she felt the warmth of her father, Nikki remembered the last time she had been this close to someone, felt the heartbeat of another. Hart was on her mind. He filled her every sense. He was inside her. She had never felt so close to another and never felt so vulnerable.
Chapter 56
Carmichael watched on the screen and saw the man approach the entrance to the Velvet Lagoon. He looked at the corner of the screen, where Micky was looking at the same screen image at the other end of the video link. The man looked up and into the webcam.
Carmichael logged into instant messenger and typed, You got it?
Yes, no problem. Identification beginning.
The camera zoomed into Justin’s face as the PC searched for feature recognition. Just like the finger-print-identifying program, it was comparing images, taking reference points and aligning them with other images to find a match.
Justin de Lange. Age 46. Managing director of the Mansfield Group of private clinics . . . head of the Mansfield research and development programme. On the board of the Chrissie Newton Foundation.
Carmichael typed in a question:
Was he in the UK thirteen years ago?
Yes he was.
Justin looked at the vacant lots either side. Carmichael knew what he’d be thinking . . . I’m screwed if this goes wrong. He also knew that Justin must want to talk to him very badly. He hadn’t checked Carmichael out thoroughly. He hadn’t met first at a neutral place before coming to see the girls on Carmichael’s home turf. He must want something very bad. Justin pressed the intercom to his left. He heard the door unlock. It opened just enough to let him through.
‘Hey, Hart? You about? Digger gave me your address, said you had something for me. I don’t have a lot of time. Hart?’
Carmichael was playing Green Day over the speakers. It boomed around the empty club; bounced off the walls. He was sitting in his usual place at the bar, his laptop open. He didn’t answer.
Justin stepped further into the club, past the cashier’s box on the left and the cloakrooms. The door swung shut and closed behind him. Inside was completely dark except for a light above the dance floor that circled and zapped randomly from space to space until it settled just in front of Justin’s feet and stayed there. Carmichael closed his laptop and walked across to stand in the dark corner beyond the dance floor, in the DJ’s box.
‘Over here. Follow the light. I’m over here, come across the dance floor,’ Carmichael shouted over the music.
Justin took a look around him. As his eyes got used to the dark he made out the bar, the booths, the blacked-out windows. He walked towards the beam of light now dancing in circles on the floor. He still couldn’t see Carmichael.
‘Yeah . . . you know what . . . not wanting to disturb your work but I’m a busy man. I need to see the girls now. Can we get on with i
t, Hart? Hart?’
‘I’m here.’ Carmichael stepped up in front of him and punched him in the throat. As he doubled up onto the dance floor Carmichael calmly walked around him and hogtied his hands and feet. He picked him up and hooked his feet onto the chain hanging from the ceiling. He hoisted him upside down high above the dance floor.
‘You fucking maniac . . .’ Justin rasped as he spun in the darkness, the lights dancing over him. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘I’m seeking answers. I want to see how good your memory is. I want to see if you remember me.’
‘I don’t know you!’ Justin screamed as the chain dropped six feet. ‘Never heard of you.’
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you the rules.’ Carmichael tied off the rope and then sat down on the edge of the dance floor in darkness as Justin hung upside down. Carmichael picked up his rifle and aimed at Justin. The bullet grazed his arm as it passed.
‘Fucking maniac . . .’
‘Possibly. I’m going to ask you questions. How you answer me will dictate how close I get to killing you. Let’s start. You killed the woman from Digger’s club. You butchered her and sold her organs. You alone?’
‘Yes. So what? What do you want from me? I’m a businessman. I set out to make money. If this is all about money, I will make you a deal. Fucking cut me down now and I’ll pay up.’
‘Wrong answer.’
Carmichael fired again and nicked Justin on the other arm; Justin swung screaming in the air.
Justin’s voice went high. ‘So what . . .? She was sold to me for that purpose. What do you care about her? Why does it matter how she died? I did it on my own, for profit. Okay?’
‘The bodies at Blackdown Barn.’ Carmichael could hear him listening, trying to think of what he was going to be asked next.
‘What about them?’
‘Who is Chichester?’
‘Just a name.’
‘Is it yours?’
‘No.’
‘How many people did you kill there?’
‘I don’t know.’ Justin twisted on the rope.
Carmichael waited for him to calm down. Then he fired at him again. This time it just touched his thigh.
‘Shit . . . stop fucking with me. The pregnant woman and the girl from the home. That’s the truth.’ He swung in the darkness. The soft patter of the first drop of blood landed on the dance floor. ‘Let me see you.’
‘In time. You forgot the baby. You killed the infant.’
‘What? Yes. Okay. She was pregnant. What do you want from me?’ Justin bellowed through the empty club. The chain creaked with his weight as he swung in the darkness. ‘I don’t even know you.’
‘Maybe you do.’
Justin hung still. He listened.
‘How?’
‘Someone from Blackdown Barn knows me. Maybe that’s Chichester and maybe that’s you. Someone who was in Blackdown Barn knows me from thirteen years ago.’
‘You’re mixing me up with someone else.’
‘No. I don’t think so. You have a sideline going where you carve up people and sell them as spare parts. That’s what you came here for now, to buy a girl and harvest her.’
‘Yes. Okay. So what?’
‘My wife was Louise Carmichael. She was killed along with my four-year-old daughter Sophie.’
‘You’re the policeman?’
‘I was. Now I’m the man who will decide whether you live or die.’
Chapter 57
It was nearly six when Ebony knocked on the door. It was opened by a woman.
‘Mrs Smyth?’
‘Yes?’
Aaron’s mum Julia Tompson-Smyth was talking on the phone. Ebony had heard her laughter in the hallway as she approached the front door.
She held the phone away from her ear and looked at Ebony.
‘Yes?’
Ebony showed her warrant card.
‘A word?’
‘I’ll have to call you back,’ she said into the mouthpiece. Julia was an elegant-looking woman, expensive clothes, ex-model type: still immaculately turned out and pencil thin. She was about to go out: lipstick, cloud of perfume. She walked quickly away from the door and turned to talk to Ebony over her shoulder. The house immediately opened into a family room, with a full view onto lit up, manicured back gardens that looked like no child had ever played in them. ‘How can I help?’ She stood hand on hip, her keys resting on a work surface, her bag beside them.
‘It’s about the Alex Tapp case. Can I ask you if you’ve ever seen this woman?’
Julia Smyth took the picture from Ebony and studied it.
‘No, sorry. God . . . poor family. Aaron still hasn’t got over it. It’s been four weeks now and still you haven’t found him. He must be dead by now, lying in some frozen ditch somewhere. At first I thought that must be him the other day when they found that woman . . . be better if it was really. It’s the not knowing, isn’t it? A nightmare!’
‘We are still hoping to find Alex alive.’
‘Of course. Of course, well you have to say that, don’t you?’
‘Actually we have new leads and I wanted to clarify a couple of things with you.’
‘Absolutely. Whatever I am doing can wait. I’m only going to meet my friends for drinks anyway. Please ask away.’
‘Alex and Aaron? Are they best mates?’
‘Not best mates, if I’m honest. Aaron was um-ing and ah-ing whether to go with him to the Arsenal match. I wish he’d said no now. In fact I had to insist he went, he said Alex was being weird. Or he said Alex had been going through a weird patch.’
‘Weird?’
‘He’d dropped out of the squash club; he was spending a lot of his time on his own, Aaron couldn’t get hold of him, that kind of thing. He didn’t answer Aaron’s calls – moody, teenage stuff. Fourteen is a bad age for boys. I’ve got three. They start getting hormonal, throwing their weight about, flexing their muscles.’
‘What kind of a child is Alex?’
‘Sensitive. Like his mum. The dad, Michael . . . different altogether; pushy dad, one of those that screams on the sideline at matches, always wanting Alex to do better. He’s a bully to Helen. She always looks so harassed, never has time or money to enjoy life. Since my divorce my life has taken off. The kids are happier without the constant rowing; the house has a happier atmosphere. But I’m lucky – it was always my money, my house. Helen is not so lucky.’
‘So you think there are problems in the marriage?’
‘God, I feel for Helen. I hope you find Alex soon. As I said, I really wish I’d never allowed Aaron to go to the Arsenal match that day. I wouldn’t have let him if I’d known that Michael had no intention of going with them.’
‘You thought he was going to watch the game?’
‘He said he was. He’d bought a ticket.’
Chapter 58
Robbo brought up the surveillance pictures from opposite Cain’s. Ebony and Carter were looking over his shoulder.
‘Here we see Tanya getting into the car. Here . . .’ he blew up the image, ‘is a man’s arm. He’s in the centre of the taxi. He has blocked out the window with his back but, there’s more.’ Robbo pulled his chair close and glanced across at Pam proudly. She beamed back.
‘Pam and I have been looking through CCTV footage for hours.’ Robbo moved the screen on to another image. ‘This is taken from the corner of Brewer Street by the CCTV there.’
Carter leant in to get a better look.
‘What’s that?’ Carter followed Tanya’s eye line as she was talking to someone who sat across from her. Carter pointed to a light area in the frame.
‘That’s what I wanted to know. So I blew it up and here . . .’ Robbo clicked on an enlarged grainy section of the photo.
‘It’s his blond hair,’ said Ebony.
‘It’s Hakuna bloody Matata,’ said Carter. ‘Justin de Lange, got to be. Any more shots of him?’
Robbo shook his head. ‘Still looking. The taxi cab d
isappears.’
‘What about tracing it to the Mansfield?’ asked Ebony.
‘I tried. No sign of it.’
‘We could ring the receptionist and ask her if she was working then? She’s friendly.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Carter picked up the phone and dialled the number Robbo handed to him.
After a ten minute chat with Ivy he looked very pleased with himself as an officer came into the Major Incident room to speak to him.
‘Sergeant Carter? Chief Superintendent Davidson wants a word.’
‘Who gave you permission to interview Mr James Martingale? Not content with visiting him at his work . . . you went to his house; invaded his privacy. I’ve just had him on the phone complaining.’
Carter stood in front of Davidson’s desk.
‘Part of the revisit into the Carmichael case, sir. With respect, sir, now we have the knowledge that the victims were all harvested we need to investigate every person capable and around when Chrissie Newton was murdered and when the victims were killed at Blackdown Barn.’
‘He wasn’t here. Martingale was in Poland.’
‘We only have his word for that, sir. Both him and Justin de Lange could have been here. Martingale has a small airline company which transports medical supplies via Germany and onto the rest of Europe. He could have come here without being seen. I have a list of Martingale’s financial concerns—’
‘You asked him for details about his finances . . . his accounts?’
‘Just an overview of which companies he’s involved in, sir.’
‘Don’t waste your time in trying to unravel Martingale’s financial dealings. It would take an army of lawyers to read all that small print. Don’t get distracted, Carter. Focus on the victims.’