by Adam Carter
“Of course I’m armed. Now give me the girl.”
“Why didn’t you use it during the robbery?”
“You’re asking stupid questions again, Mark.” He reached over the counter and grabbed Sam by an arm. She shuddered, releasing a startled yelp, and Langley reached out instinctively for Stringer’s arm, but he pulled back, releasing Sam in the process.
Langley could see anger and confusion in the other man’s eyes. “This has gone too far,” Langley said. “We need to give ourselves up.”
“Are you out of your mind? We can get out of this. We can take the loot and the girl.”
“And then what? If they don’t know who we are, they’ll figure it out eventually. I’m trying to save my house, Rob. I can’t do that if I have to go on the run.”
“Better on the run than in prison. We have enough here to put us away for a long time. Who’s going to look after your daughters then, eh?”
Langley had not thought much of this through, but then he had not wanted to because he knew he would have only talked himself out of it. He wished now that he had thought more, because then Stringer would have been here alone. But Stringer alone with Sam … That was an even worse situation. Langley felt at least he was around to help the girl. He could not honestly see he had any way out of this mess, but at least he could protect Sam against anything worse.
“We’re giving ourselves up,” Langley decided.
“Are we now?”
Langley rose, stepping between Stringer and the girl. “We’re going out there together, Rob. Sam’s going first, then the two of us.” He spoke slowly, for he was terrified of doing this and terrified of not doing it.
For several moments Stringer seemed amused, but then he likely sensed Langley was serious. He raised the gun. “You’re not going anywhere, Mark. Now sit down.”
Langley clenched sweating fists at his side and fought for the response he wanted to give. “No,” he finally managed.
“Really?”
“You can’t shoot me, Rob. Why would you shoot me? Besides, if you start shooting, the police would bust through that door.”
“That’s true. All right, go then. I don’t need you. Just tell the cops that I have the girl and that I’m armed.”
“You do what you want, but Sam’s coming with me.”
Stringer laughed. “You’re a desperate man, Mark. That’s why I picked you. You’re not a hero, so don’t start fooling yourself.”
Langley wanted to say something brave, something courageous. But he said nothing at all, for his body was still trembling and his brain was telling him he was going to prison.
Stringer opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly there was something in the room. The lights exploded as a form detached from the ceiling, hurtling towards them. Langley watched as a dark hand closed upon the gun in Stringer’s grip, crushing the weapon as though it was tin. Langley heard the groan of twisting metal and the snap of yielding bone, and Stringer was screaming.
Langley took a step back, his eyes wide in horror as he saw the shadow move with the speed of lightning. An elbow shattered Stringer’s nose, and the shadow dropped, spinning, its foot tripping Stringer to crash audibly upon the floor. Before he had even registered the attack, Stringer was consumed by the shadow creature, his body wrenched into the air to hurtle across the room, slamming into the wall and sinking to the floor an inert mess.
Taking another step back, Langley felt himself collide with Sam, who shivered in terror at the sight.
The shadow straightened and Langley could see now it was a man. He was tall, thin, with a deceptively powerful frame. He wore a long, expensive coat and walked with a straight cane topped with a dull jewel. The man gazed at Langley with hard, cold eyes set into an arrogant face. His hair was short and receding, while a thin, tidy moustache and beard framed his lips without touching his cheeks.
Langley could not imagine what he had been thinking, seeing the man as nothing more than a shadow.
“I’m here for the girl,” the stranger said. “I would advise handing her over.”
But Langley felt something within him stir. He had spent the past few minutes convincing himself he was no hero, yet the stranger emanated such a sense of wrongness that Langley would have preferred handing the girl over to Stringer than he would this man.
“You’re not having her,” Langley said.
“I’m not?” The man seemed to find such a statement amusing. “And what do you intend to do to stop me?”
Without thinking, Langley threw himself at the well-dressed man. The stranger caught his flailing fist with ease and Langley felt the sheer strength behind the grip. The stranger smiled but said nothing. Then he twisted sharply and Langley tumbled through the air, slamming his back upon the floor. Pain shot through him, but as he looked up he could see the stranger was no longer considering him. He was moving towards the girl. Langley did not know how, but he knew the situation was something he had to stop.
Light flooded the room and Langley turned his eyes briefly to the door, where police officers were piling inside. He could see two officers stopping beside where Stringer had been tossed, uncertainly creasing their features. Further officers came to Langley and hauled him to his feet. His body was writhing with pain, but he could feel no broken bones.
A plain clothes officer stopped before him, his jaw set firm, confusion flittering across his eyes.
“Where’s the girl?” he demanded.
“Where? She’s …” And then Langley realised Sam was no longer in the room. In the second it had taken for the officers to storm the shop, the girl and the well-dressed stranger had vanished. “That’s impossible,” Langley said even as someone was cuffing his hands behind his back. “She was right there. I saw him walking towards her and ... She was right there.”
“Saw who walking towards her?”
“There was this guy. I ... He was here.”
The officer in charge sent people off to check out the back, but somehow Langley already knew what they would find. Whoever the well-dressed man was, he was good. And he was gone. And Mark Langley was going to prison.
CHAPTER TWO
Nothing made sense. Detective Inspector Jonathan Hope liked for his cases to have clear-cut answers. He was not averse to a bit of investigation, but usually there were enough clues so he could know where to begin looking. Crime, victim, suspect. They were the three main parts to any investigation, and each could be broken down into their own separate segments. They had a crime: attempted armed robbery and hostage-taking. They had a victim: Samantha Dickson. They even had suspects: Mark Langley and Robert Stringer. The only problem was that they no longer knew where the victim was, and neither of the suspects seemed to have had anything to do with her disappearance.
Hope had questioned Langley on the scene, but he hadn’t heard anything that made any sense. Nor could his officers find any trace of the girl anywhere. It was as though she had simply disappeared.
There were two possibilities, so far as Hope could see things. One: the men had killed the girl and hidden her body somewhere in the building. Then they had beaten themselves up. Two: the girl had beaten up the two men herself and was now hiding. There was no way Sam could have got out of the building, yet she had been there when the police had arrived, for the sales assistant could vouch for her presence. He had had dogs sweep the entire building and they had turned up nothing.
Then there was this mysterious man Langley had raved on about. At first he had believed the story, but there was no trace of the man, and once Langley started going on about shadows detaching themselves from the ceiling Hope had realised it was all fabricated.
It was a mystery, and not one he felt he could solve.
At that moment, Hope was sitting behind his desk. The station was a busy place, and busy places always helped him think. Familiarity was good for his imagination, and imagination was the key to solving every mystery. He could never have imagined, however, that this would have brought back the w
oman presently walking through the door. She was another piece to a different puzzle and Hope was not sure whether it was a good thing, or whether it made everything even more confusing.
The woman was short, smartly dressed, flashing a smile as she approached his desk. She had a hard face for such a pleasant woman, and Hope had never had a bad word to say about her. He had lost contact with her some time ago, but knew her parents still lived in London’s Chinatown and had meant to look them up in an effort to find her. He knew it was far from a coincidence that she was walking back into his life during such a confusing case.
“So you remembered your old DI at last then,” Hope smirked.
Detective Sue Lin returned his smile, although there was something guarded to it, as though she was afraid to reveal too much before her old friend. Once upon a time, Lin had been the brightest young detective in Hope’s team. Then she had transferred, pretty much overnight, and he had never seen her again.
“Sorry I haven’t been in touch, boss,” Lin said. “You know how it is.”
“Your new DCI’s keeping you busy, I understand that all right. You never got around to telling me where you transferred to.”
“Nowhere special, boss. Doing the same job, just in a different department.”
Hope did not raise the obvious question, mainly because he knew he would not receive an honest answer. Lin had left so suddenly there had to have been a reason for it. Even if that reason was because she had received a better offer, she still would have continued working for Hope long enough for him to find an adequate replacement. As it was, she had barely taken the time to say goodbye. It had been a great loss for Hope, but he didn’t want her lying to his face about it.
Instead he said, “Why do I get the impression you’re here on business?”
“You know me too well, boss.”
“Your case or mine?”
“A little of both.”
Hope nodded slowly, then pushed his notes towards her across the desk. “Jewellery heist. Two men in custody, one of those in the hospital. Man we have isn’t talking much sense, and when the other wakes up I’m not sure we’re going to get much out of him either.”
Lin made a show of looking over the notes, but he could tell she already knew everything she needed to about this case. “Notes say there’s a missing girl,” she said as though she didn’t already know that.
“Samantha Dickson. Vanished without a trace.”
“And this other man your collar mentions?”
She was good, Hope had to admit. If she was talking to anyone else she would have fooled them by now. “There was no one else in the building, Lin. First Langley’s talking about moving shadows, then a dapper gentleman with a cane. It’s nonsense, of course.” While he spoke, he eyed Lin carefully, but she betrayed no sign that she disagreed with him.
Finally she looked up at him. “I’d like to help. If you can use me.”
“I can always use you, Lin, you know that. But I have resources of my own. Is your DCI going to mind you tagging along with me on this one?”
“He’ll understand.”
“Maybe I should call him.” Hope reached for the receiver. “What’s his number?”
Lin offered him a smile; half coy, half asking him not to treat her like an idiot. “You know I was sent here, Jon. Can we just agree not to ask me about it?”
Hope did not reply for several moments. He appreciated the honesty, especially from someone he had always regarded as a friend, yet it was still a lot to ask of him. “This is my operation, Lin. If something goes wrong, the blame falls on me. And we have a missing minor to consider. I’m going to need a little more than that to go on.”
Lin considered his words, then said, “This man from the shadows. I’m after him.”
“Why? He doesn’t exist.”
“Oh, he exists all right. But he shouldn’t be out here, and he shouldn’t be interfering in your case.”
“Who is he?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“But you’ve had dealings with him before?”
“Oh yes.”
“Why’d he nab the girl?”
Lin’s face fell and she looked away. Hope’s heart caught in his throat and he suddenly regretted having asked so many questions of her. When she looked back to him she had regained some of her composure, although there was a fear to her eyes which he did not like at all. “I don’t know,” she replied. “My DCI thinks one thing, but I don’t happen to agree with him. I’d like to find them both before I realise I’m really, really wrong.”
Hope knew better than to ask further questions. Rising from the desk, he gathered his papers and said, “Then you’re back on the team, Lin. You and me chasing the bad guys, like always.”
She did not smile, and it was then that Hope knew something was terribly wrong. Whoever this man of the shadows was, he was certainly far worse than anything Detective Inspector Hope could ever dream.
His phone rang shrilly on his desk and as he picked up the receiver he noticed Lin’s eyes narrow slightly, as though she was half afraid of what he was about to hear. She had secrets from him, and none of them were good, but he forced all of that from his mind and he listened to the voice on the other end. He made the appropriate responses before hanging up and looking into Lin’s face. He did not know what he was searching for, or why he was stringing her along and making her afraid that he had discovered something. But he had a missing girl to find, and if Lin wanted to keep her secrets she was more than welcome to, so long as they did not interfere in the investigation.
“Uniform’s found something,” he told her. “Seems like our mystery man’s out beating people up again. Not such a shadow after all, eh?”
Lin did not react and Hope wondered just what had happened to make her change so much.
CHAPTER THREE
There were officers taking statements from various shoppers, but DI Hope had heard all he needed to. He and Lin had arrived at the scene too late to do much, although from what Hope had heard the man that had been sighted had indeed been the same one from the jewellery shop. Hope wandered back to where Lin was waiting by the car. There had been a minor fight in the street, and one man had been hospitalised with a broken leg and a possible fractured skull.
“Your man was here,” Hope told her, seeing she had bought them both coffee. “You didn’t hang around to talk to the witnesses.”
Lin shrugged. “He’s not here now, and if we’re chasing him we’re not going to catch him.”
“If you know anything we can do about getting one step ahead, fill me in.”
Lin said nothing.
“He had the girl with him,” Hope said, taking a sip of his coffee and watching her intently over the rim. He did not know whether to be pleased when he saw her start.
“Then she’s still alive,” Lin said.
“Witnesses say she was with him willingly.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“That she didn’t make any move to run when he was laying into the guy. Then he grabbed her by the arm and they made a run for it, so maybe she was being coerced after all.” He wanted to throw as many theories in the air as possible, just to see what kind of reaction he got from her. He felt if he dealt with the pure facts Lin would never reveal anything. It was bad enough trying to solve this case without Lin working against him.
“What do we know about the man who was attacked?” Lin asked.
“Not much. His ID says his name’s Bill Yale.”
“We need to see if he has a record.”
“So our victim is now a suspect?”
“Everyone’s a suspect, Jon.”
“Why do I get the feeling the results are going to show the guy has form?”
“Let’s just see what turns up first.”
Hope looked at her calmly before opening the door to the car. “Let’s get back to the station then and I’ll phone through the name. Maybe we should drop by the hospital so we can fingerprint t
he guy in case he wakes up from his coma and does a runner.”
She said nothing. A couple of years ago she would have berated him for being facetious. It was as though she was a different person now.
They did not talk as they drove back to the station and by the time they arrived there was a file waiting on Hope’s desk. He flicked through it quickly before passing it to Lin. “Good instincts.”
Lin studied the folder carefully and Hope leaned against the desk, watching her. Yale had form for GBH and burglary. He was hardly criminal of the century, but certainly not a nice man. Why a distinguished-looking gentleman would kidnap a girl and batter three criminals was not something Hope could understand at all.
“Care to share?” he asked.
“Share what?” She handed back the folder.
Hope looked at her in silence for several moments, then said, “I think we should get some lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“My treat.”
They left the station and went to a small café Hope knew well enough to own shares in. It was quiet, secluded and the staff there knew to mind their own business. Hope always used it if he needed quiet moments with people, and knew Lin would pick up on this within moments of their walking through the door. He ordered a fried breakfast simply because he knew it was bad for him, while Lin asked for a salad. They did not do salad so she ended up with a jacket potato and cheese.
Since sitting at the table, they had spoken of nothing more important than the menu, and as Hope tucked into his second of three sausages he felt it was more than time enough to bring up the reason for his wanting to talk to her away from the office.
“What’s his name?”
Lin sipped her coffee. “Whose name?”
“You’re such a kidder. The gentleman.”
“What makes you ...?”
“Let’s not insult each other, Sue,” he said without looking up from his food. “You don’t just drop into my lap after so long without so much as a phone call. You want something, or you wouldn’t be talking to me at all.”
“Jon, you really think I’d only talk to you if I wanted something?”