by Adam Carter
“It’s been a year, Sue. Not even a phone call?”
She looked genuinely sorry. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Police work.”
“I’ve been busy doing police work as well, but I still find time for my friends. We used to be friends once, Sue, you remember that?”
“We are.”
“So what’s his name?”
She looked away again. “My DCI wouldn’t like me telling you.”
“Why? Afraid I’m going to steal his collar? Whoever this guy is, we’re bringing him in and putting him away. But I get the feeling there’s more than a simple kidnapping involved here.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think so, but ... I don’t know.”
Now Hope really was confused. “Sue, what are you doing here?”
“Eating?”
“Cute.”
She inhaled deeply and looked at him, really looked at him. He could see her struggling with what she wanted to say and what she was allowed to. Hope knew how difficult things could become if your DCI told you to lie to people, but there were things more important than your DCI.
“We used to be able to tell each other anything, Sue. What’s changed?”
“Too much. The things I’ve seen, Jon, the things I’ve done. I ...” She toyed with the fork in her cheese. “His name’s Jeremiah.”
“Jeremiah what?”
“I ... don’t know actually.”
“Well it’s a start. What does he want?”
“I don’t know that either. I thought ... He disappeared last week. My DCI was going spare, wanted every officer looking for him. When I heard about the jewellery shop I knew it was him and figured he’d taken the girl and killed her. But she’s alive, and I don’t get it.”
“Why would he kill a twelve-year-old girl?”
“He wouldn’t. But the DCI thinks he would.”
“Why would your DCI think he would?”
“He’s a strange man. A little paranoid, I don’t know.”
Hope knew she was referring to her DCI, and also that she had not much more of an idea what was happening than any of them did. “If you know this Jeremiah you’re our most valuable resource at the moment. We need a profile on him if we’re going to find him.”
“Finding him isn’t an option. We need to figure out what he wants and get there ahead of him.”
“But we don’t know what he wants.”
“No. We don’t.” A little of her former self returned to her face then as she smiled in a sign of dejection. “Never said it was going to be easy, boss.”
“At least I have my old Sue Lin back.” He started on his bacon. “What’s say we don’t have any more secrets between us now?”
“Sure. Jon, I’m sorry for being distant. When we realised Jeremiah was on your patch my DCI sent me in.”
“It’s a good call. Just a little obvious when you’ve disappeared for a year.”
“That’s my fault.”
“Well it’s not mine.”
She looked at him with a wry expression. It made Hope glad for the first time since she had walked back into his life.
“We need to concentrate on Yale,” Lin said, back to business already. “Jeremiah beat him up for a reason. I think we should take a look at Yale’s known associates and try to figure out why Jeremiah did it.”
“You know best.”
“And put an officer at the hospital.”
“You think Jeremiah’s going to try to finish what he started?”
“No. If Jeremiah wanted Yale dead he would be dead already. I just don’t want Yale disappearing on us.”
It made no sense to Hope, but he had already decided to trust her so could not now deny such a reasonable request. “Finish your potato and we’ll get back to work then. You sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me, Sue?”
“Nothing else I can, boss.”
It was an honest response, and one Hope knew he would have to respect, even if he didn’t like it.
CHAPTER FOUR
The known associates of Bill Yale were short, but there was a connection to them; they had all disappeared. There were three people in whom Hope was especially interested, and none of them could be found anywhere. What had begun as a standard jewellery shop robbery was escalating into something Hope no longer understood. So far as he could determine, neither Yale nor his associates had anything to do with jewellery heists. They all had arrests for various violent crimes, and the most serious was premeditated assault. Hope supposed they could have moved up to armed robbery, but, even if he could believe that, there was no evidence they were in any way connected with the one the previous day. Hope even spoke with Langley again, but he knew nothing about the various people and Hope believed him. Besides, even if they were involved, it did not explain where they had all gone. It was possible Jeremiah had already attacked them all, but there was no trace of such a thing. It was as though the men had simply got up in the morning and vanished.
He asked Lin for her thoughts and she replied that she could never overestimate Jeremiah’s abilities. She said she would make some calls and Hope knew she was phoning her office. It irked him that she was still working for them when she should have been working for him. When he had first seen her walk back into his station after so long he had wondered whether there was any chance he could get her to come back to work for him. The more time passed, however, the more he was coming to understand he had lost her the day she walked out that door a year ago.
While she was on the phone, some of Hope’s other officers, Lin’s former colleagues, had asked him about her. He wished he had something to tell them, but all he could say was that Lin was still one of the good guys and that he trusted her with his life. The latter was without doubt true, and he hoped she would not let him down with the former.
“Might have something,” she said as she rejoined him. She seemed entirely oblivious of her former colleagues’ curiosity, even the animosity from some of them, but she would have been a poor detective indeed not to have picked up on it. “One of my guys spotted Tom, Dick and Harry having a party. I think we should go gatecrash.”
Hope raised his eyebrows. “And in English?”
“Huey, Dewey and Louie?”
He stared at her some more, glanced behind her to where two of his officers were trying not to make it obvious they were watching her. “Sue,” Hope said quietly, “why are you acting like you’re on TV?”
“Just having a joke.”
“I have a twelve-year-old girl missing. I don’t have time to joke.”
“Sorry, boss. I guess I’ve learned to laugh at anything lately.”
He could see there was a reason she was saying this, but could not imagine her job was too much different now to what it had always been. Yet she was acting as though she had the most depressing job ever assigned. He could accept she would be acting like this if she was tasked with spending every day telling parents their children had just been killed, but since there was no department which specialised in such a thing it was a ridiculous notion. Still, he had a vague idea of the work she did do, and could not fathom what depressed her so much about it.
“Do we have a location?” he asked.
Lin handed him a scribbled address. It was only a mile away and Hope knew even with a little planning involved he could get officers surrounding the building within the hour. “Does this guy carry a piece?” he asked.
“Jeremiah’s hands are weapons enough, but no, he doesn’t carry a gun.”
Hope did not press for information he knew she would not provide. He had seen the evidence at the jewellers of Jeremiah’s proficiency in hand-to-hand combat. He had likely been trained, was possibly army, and it was certainly enough of a logical explanation for Hope to work on.
Hope took Lin in his own car, arranging for backup to meet them at their destination. The address Lin had provided had at one time been a gymnasium, but it had closed down a year earlie
r and nothing had been done with it since. Hope recalled there had been a problem one time with squatters, but it had not been difficult to clear them out. Now it seemed as though some real villains had had the same idea. Aside from breaking and entering, however, there was nothing with which Hope could charge them. Suspicious gathering was not a crime either, although sometimes he wished it was. Still, he was confident by the end of this Lin would have helped him nab this Jeremiah, and he would at least have a body to put in a cell.
Having stopped off to collect the keys from the owner of the building, by the time Hope and Lin parked at the gymnasium he could see his officers were already moving into position to block the exits. Hope unlocked the door, careful to make no sound, and motioned for Lin and the rest of his officers to be ready. Lin’s contacts had not told her precisely where in the building these men would be, or why they were even there, and to search the entire place would take time.
As soon as they stepped inside, however, they could hear the screaming.
“Move,” Hope ordered, running towards the sound of the noise. Although the gym was closed down, much of the reception area remained intact, and he was forced to vault the pass-key operated metal barriers. He could hear sounds of a scuffle before him by this point and charged through the double door leading to one of the main gymnasia.
The room was large, able to contain at least twenty individuals working out at any given time. Some of the equipment was still lying around, although most had long since been removed. There were several people in the gym and Hope froze at the scene. A girl of around twelve sat tensely upon a bench, watching the scene unfold before her, while between her and the police four men brawled. Or at least Hope would have loosely called it brawling. One man was upon the floor, his nose split, bleeding onto a safety mat. Another stood nearby, terror flooding his eyes as he held onto some form of short metal pole which had likely been left over from the equipment. The third man was being held in the air by his throat by a tall, well-dressed gentleman.
Jeremiah turned a ferocious scowl upon Hope, his teeth bared as though he was a wolf. His eyes registered shock as he noticed Lin with him, and the man with the metal pole seized upon the momentary indecision and charged. But Jeremiah was swifter, dropping his burden and catching the metal pole even as it swung for his head. He twisted it from the grip of his assailant and tossed it to the side in one savage motion, slamming his palm into the man’s forehead and sending him reeling.
“Hold it,” Hope said, his officers pouring in and surrounding Jeremiah. “Place your hands on your head, Jeremiah.”
“What?” Jeremiah asked, looking directly at Lin. “You told them my name?”
“I didn’t have a choice.” Lin sounded genuinely regretful, yet Hope could not deal with that right at that moment.
“This is Sanders isn’t it?” Jeremiah sneered. “The old fool’s finally given me up.”
“Give yourself up,” Hope told him. “You’re not getting out of here.”
“Who’s this idiot?”
“Detective Inspector Hope,” Lin said. “Your arresting officer. Come quietly, Jeremiah. The girl’s all right, we can still work this out.”
“Sam?” Jeremiah asked. “Of course she’s all right.” His expression hardened somewhat then and his eyes narrowed. “So that’s it. I’m out killing children am I?”
“No one’s killing anyone,” Hope said. “Now put your hands on your head and get down on the floor.”
Jeremiah snarled once more, and several officers took involuntary steps back. “You have no idea what’s going on, Detective Inspector Hope. These men are just the beginning. Yale was a tool for bringing them together. And together they came, to discuss what had happened. But this is more than just a warning, it’s a message. I need to get the message out, Hope. You’d do well to allow me to continue.”
Hope felt something strange in the back of his mind. He understood something of what this man was saying, even though none of it made sense. He was on the verge of actually telling his people to back away when he suddenly remembered where he was and what he was doing there.
“On the floor,” he said again.
“If only it were night,” Jeremiah said, glancing back to the girl. “I’ll come back for you. Say nothing if you want to live; I’ll break you free when I can.”
Hope had heard enough. “Take him.”
The next few moments were a fiasco, and afterwards Hope spent many hours reflecting over just what had happened, for he knew it could not have been real. His officers lunged for Jeremiah, but the man leaped vertically, slamming his feet down upon two officers as they reached him and used them as a springboard to leap over the heads of the others. Hope shouted something, he did not afterwards remember what, and watched as Jeremiah landed with the grace of a medal-winning ballerina, launching himself in that same instant towards the exit. He collided with two officers, not even seeming to notice they were there, and before Hope could react at all he was out the door.
Shouting for his people to get up, Hope rushed to the door and kicked it open. The long corridor outside ended at the metal turnstiles, but there was no sign at all of Jeremiah.
It wasn’t natural. No one could have done what Jeremiah had just done, no matter how long he spent in the gym. Yet it had happened, because Hope had seen it happen. It was the jewellery shop all over again, only this time he did not have to rely on the testimony of two villains.
Returning to the gym, he marched directly up to Lin and saw she was tending to the girl, who thankfully this time had not disappeared along with Jeremiah. He could see Lin was genuinely relieved to see the girl safe, but also that she was studiously evading Hope’s eyes, knowing he would be coming to her for answers.
“She’s safe, Jon,” Lin said before he could say anything, “and that’s the only thing which counts.”
Hope did not agree with that statement, but he would not cause a scene before the frightened girl. Instead he cast his gaze about the room and tried to take in the scene of displaced police officers. No one seemed to have suffered any actual injuries, but the same could not be said for the three men Jeremiah had cornered here.
Then he noticed something on the ground and bent to retrieve it. It was a metal pipe, and he knew it was the one with which the hoodlum had attempted to strike Jeremiah. He recognised it now as a bar onto which would be attached weights for lifting. Due to its purpose, the metal bar had to be as strong as it could possibly be, else the weightlifter would suffer terrible injuries. The bar was now bent almost into a U shape.
And all because Jeremiah had caught the bar mid-swing and twisted it from his assailant’s grasp.
Hope looked once more to Lin, who had draped her coat over the girl and was leading her away. There were so many questions now, but they would have to wait until they returned to the station. He had expected this to all be cleared up once he met Jeremiah face-to-face, but he found himself instead left with more questions; and he had a feeling Detective Lin knew the answers to them all.
CHAPTER FIVE
The securest place for Samantha Dickson would have been in one of the cells, but Hope did not like the idea of confining the girl too much. What he wanted most of all, however, were answers, and being nice about things was not getting him anywhere. Presently Lin had taken Sam to the station cafeteria. It was not a secure location and Hope still played with thoughts of the cell. If Jeremiah returned for her, he could only imagine the carnage the man would wreak before he got to the girl.
Having called the girl’s parents, Hope knew he had a small window to talk to her before they took her away. Hope had advised them against such an action, for Jeremiah had said he would be back for her, and if he took her once more they would start the chase all over again.
Hope walked into the cafeteria and was pleased to see there was an officer with Lin. He trusted her, but he also knew if she spent too much time alone with the girl she would gain information she would not share. Lin had her own agenda, an
d Hope did not want this to all end without him having a clue what had happened.
He nodded to the officer, who departed as Hope sat beside Lin. She knew Hope’s game but said nothing of it. They could not argue with Sam sitting in front of them. He could see Lin had bought her something to eat. It wasn’t much, but then the officers had been complaining about their canteen for years and nothing had ever been done about it. The girl was demolishing her food as though she expected a famine, and Hope assessed her momentarily. She wasn’t quite as afraid as she had been, although he could see by the tension in her body that she was wary.
“I called your parents,” he said. “They won’t be long.”
“Did you catch Jeremiah?”
“No.”
“He’s too quick for you.”
Hope had to admit she was right, but he said, “Did he hurt you?”
Sam’s face clouded then and he realised it had been a bad question.
“I know he threatened you,” Hope pressed, “but you’re safe here.”
“I’m not safe anywhere.”
Hope frowned. A crash sounded behind him and he knew someone had dropped a tray. Sam all but bolted, and likely would have if her feet had not become entangled with the table legs. He could see now just how afraid she was, and wished he could protect her.
“It’s all right,” Hope said. “We can protect you. You couldn’t be in a safer place than a police station.”
“I was safe with Jeremiah.”
It was the fear talking, and Sam’s expression instantly changed as she realised she had said too much. It was, however, intriguing. Hope glanced to Lin, who was betraying nothing but clearly knew everything.
“Are you telling me,” Hope asked slowly, “he was protecting you?”
Sam said nothing.
He tried to think about the situation, and saw he had been looking at the entire thing from the wrong angle. Langley and Stringer had robbed the shop and Jeremiah had interfered, saving Sam from being held as a hostage. From what the girl had said, Jeremiah could well have taken her from the scene to protect her. But protect her from what? Her captors were arrested. Why would Jeremiah take her along while he went out to beat up random ex-cons?