“Two days it’s taken. Two bloody days and then you have the nerve to tell me that I missed an appointment. I can assure you that I had no meeting planned for Friday.” He took out his phone and checked the calendar. Here see, 15:00 today with a DS Graydon. Maybe I can save everyone concerned some time and see her when we’re done here?”
Cyril was totally noncommittal. “So you have no recollection nor notification of a meeting scheduled for last Friday?”
“Look Inspector or Chief Inspector, we’re going round in circles here. My London trip had been planned for a week and I closed my diary at the end of that week until today, Monday. Ask Christina. Christ you can never rely on the railways at the best of times.”
Cyril excused himself for a couple of minutes and consulted Owen. “Sorry, Owen, a minute.”
Owen offered an apology and joined Cyril. “Check who made the appointment with Liz on the Friday. See if Grant was aware of that appointment then pop along and give me the answer.”
***
“Mr Grant. How long has Christina Cameron been in your employ?
Grant was taken aback by the question. “What’s that got to do with a bloody piece of steel breaking my window? Christ it’s like being with the Key Stone Cops!”
Cyril said nothing.
“Six months, maybe a little longer.”
“Before her?”
“I don’t really see…”
“Before her? I’ll not ask again, Mr Grant. Please just answer the questions. The sooner I have the answers, the sooner we can both leave.”
“Paula Baker, left after nine months. Didn’t like the work.”
“We’ll take her details later to confirm all of this.”
“She was pregnant. It was mine but she got rid of it. Cost me the price of a small car. I wasn’t happy, just one of those things; takes two to tango.”
There was a knock and Owen put his head round. “A minute?”
“She made the appointment and believed that she’d added it to his diary on the day before he left for London but she isn’t sure. If there was an error it was on her part. She sends her apologies.” Owen smiled.
***
“Mr Grant, I believe your secretary made the appointment but might have failed to notify you. DS Graydon visited your offices on Friday at three and was informed that you were delayed. That delay was cited as the reason that the appointment couldn’t take place. Now since that appointment, DS Graydon has neither been heard from nor seen and that’s why we’re conducting a thorough search of your premises. We’ll also be searching your home and any other property you may have.
“You can’t…”
Cyril held up his finger and Grant subsided. “Furthermore, we’ll need fingerprints and a DNA sample just so we can distinguish you from others.”
“Bloody hell, man, hundreds of people come through my door. Are you going to take their prints and DNA too?”
“Anyone coming to see you will be in your diary so the answer is simple, yes!”
Grant raised his eyebrows as if asking God for strength. “You must do what you must do. I’ve nothing to hide.”
Cyril noticed the dark sweat marks on his shirt, not only under his arms but also along his chest. “Too warm in here for you, Mr Grant?”
Grant didn’t answer. He just folded his arms.
“Once we’ve done the prints and DNA you may leave.”
Chapter Fourteen
Charles watched as Dan’s naked body was loaded onto a flat-bed farm trailer next to that of Karen Johnson and covered with a tarpaulin. Shit happens! he thought. Some girls seem to mix with the wrong type of man. The tractor pulled away, making the trailer start with a jolt. A limp arm fell from under the cover and seemed to wave as the wheels bounced on the cobbles. Her death had not been pleasant; he had allowed the farm lads free reign for the morning before finishing the deed with his own hands there in the studio under the bright lights. Charles loved theatre.
It never ceased to amaze him that he could loathe the thought of sex with a woman but when he had his hands around a female neck, he experienced an erection. Even at the point of her dying, he was pondering the reason. It had happened before. Maybe it was the audience. He had caught a glimpse of Carla by one of the cameras; for a woman who filmed the most bestial of acts she looked so sensitive, maybe it was that. It was of little consequence. On reflection he remembered that he had experienced no sexual buzz during Valerie’s ordeal. Maybe it was a hands on phenomenon; the wrapping of the neck, the squeezing, or simply the fact that there was an audience. He dismissed the thought.
Charles had been too engrossed in his own theatre to notice that Carla had filmed the whole performance, from the multiple rapes to the final denouement. It would be her secret and she would tell no one. It would be her security blanket if things turned sour. She had been in this game long enough to appreciate the fickle nature of those in charge.
As the initial idea of transporting the bodies to the coast was a little too risky, they were to be buried in a far corner of one of the fields.
Charles returned to the table, the stain made by Dan’s blood was still dark on the light oak. He traced the edge with his finger. How he would have loved to witness Bennett’s face when he saw Valerie and then his own officer, exposed, vulnerable and abused, all within the same film. The dead and the living together or would Bennett now believe that Graydon was also with the angels? It’s like playing God, he thought to himself and he smiled.
***
Mrs Atkins was surprised to receive a call from James, her son, but all the same, she felt a fusion of relief and excitement that carried in her voice. He, however, showed no emotion, he simply requested a contact number for John Cooper.
“John’s having a bad time of it, James, he’s on medication. We’ve no idea when the Coroner will release our Val’s body and the police appear not to have a clue as to who killed her. You’d think in this day and age with all this technology and the like it’d be easy. Your Dad’s not well, knocked him well and truly for six. He’s gone back on the bottle, four years on the wagon and now look at him! He’s not eating and not shaving. Anyway, how are you?”
“I received a parcel, came two days after Val’s death.”
“Who’s it from? What is it?”
“I just need John’s number.”
His mother gave him the number and he read it back.
“Let me know if they release the body. Look after dad, he’s all you have.” He hung up.
She suddenly felt old and alone; all her children were gone and her husband was useless. She sat down and wept. She allowed the phone to fall onto the carpet.
***
Even though it was approaching eleven, John was still in bed when the phone rang. Another batch of tablets and a bottle of wine had ensured a full and deep sleep. At first, the ringing seemed to be part of his dream, but then as he surfaced reality struck and he raised himself onto one elbow before grabbing the phone. He listened.
“John Cooper?”
“Who is it?”
***
The police car dropped Christina Cameron at her flat before taking Grant home. She had shown no objection to her DNA and prints being taken, in fact, she had been more co-operative than Grant. However, she still felt as though she had traversed the deepest of crevasses on the thinnest of ropes. She needed a strong coffee and she needed to contact Charles.
Grant was still confused as to why he was being taken to task for someone disappearing immediately after arriving at an appointment that he knew nothing about. He managed a smile, they had so far been lucky. He wasn’t so naïve though as to realise that the sharks were getting a little too close to the boat. Without Valerie Atkins’s laptop, an opportunity well and truly lost, it was clearly time to draw in. If they had managed just one more week, then the project would have been finished, out of their hands and ready for the public domain. The revelations would have been explosive and with the shock would come fame, not onl
y for Valerie Atkins, but also for the Stray Agency and with that, for Grant himself. This time, there would have been no conflicting responses from the viewing public. She would only have received praise for blowing the whistle and for exposing the trafficking of people, drugs, prostitution and pornography taking place under everyone’s noses.
Grant reached for the phone, at least he’d had the foresight to remove it from his drawer before being asked to leave his office. He dialled the one number that was stored on the SIM. It was dead.
***
Cyril and Owen sat facing each other in the dedicated Incident Room, comparing notes on Grant and Cameron. They were in agreement that she would not remain in Grant’s employment after the treatment that she had received. They had both heard Grant grumbling as he left.
Shakti entered with Nixon.
“Sir, you’re the very man!”She sat next to Owen. “Grab a couple of coffees Nix and I’ll go through our findings. SOCO team has confirmed no break in, no damage. Everything seems to be in order. Her coat and weekend bag were in the hall, keys and mobile on the hall table and she’d even collected the day’s mail. It was unopened. The photographs should be through.”
She stood and logged onto one of the computers, her fingers danced across the keyboard. She waited, tapping the table with impatience. “Come on for Christ sake!” She then started typing again before waving them over.
“All looks neat and orderly,” Nixon added as he placed Shakti’s coffee next to the Mickey Mouse, mouse mat.
Cyril slipped on his glasses.
“Bit like the Marie Celeste, no disturbance. Why would the keys be there? Had she locked herself out?” Owen said as confused as the others.
“Perfect really, you kidnap someone, confiscate their belongings which you then deposit back in their home and leave it as if everything’s dandy. You check their phone for appointments or unanswered texts or calls. You even send a text message, or get them to send a text to cancel any appointments they might have for the next few days, so giving yourself time before the person is reported missing. It’s really that simple. The difficulty is in not being seen or setting off an alarm. They will, however, have left traces on things they’ve touched, DNA transference. The only thing is it takes time to locate and assess and the one thing we don’t have is time! The last place she was seen was the Agency and the last person we know who saw her was Christina Cameron.” Cyril stood before Shakti interrupted.
“But she spoke with me after she left the Agency. Owen was with me. She was excited, there was nothing wrong, said she was going home. Unless someone was waiting for her?”
“There would’ve been blood and snot all over the show had someone tried to do a snatch. Christ, Shakti, she might be bloody small but she’s as mean as a honey badger when she’s cornered! No, I can’t see that.” Owen knew her too well.
Shakti skipped onto the next image. “Then there’s this, found in her post box.” Shakti enlarged it.
Cyril immediately felt a shiver run down his back. As his mother used to say,as if someone was walking on my grave.
“The CSM looked up the meaning. Nixon jotted it down. He reported that the note was attached to part of a bicycle spoke.”
“And I’ll bet you a fiver, Harry Nixon, that it’s part of the one that was fired through the eye of God,” Owen added.
Nodding, Nixon opened his note pad. “He said it was an Anansi story from Sierra Leone. That sentence means roughly, ‘If you perceive yourself to be clever, and smart, there will be someone waiting to outsmart you.’ It’s written in a Krio language, the language of Sierra Leone.”
Cyril neither appreciated the quote nor the link with Sierra Leone. Without speaking he left the room.
“Was it something I said?” Nixon enquired with genuine concern.
The three turned to watch Cyril go and then exchanged glances, each pulling a face suggesting confusion.
“Had a thought yesterday when the live feed was showing. It might have nothing to do with anything, but was there any record of porn sites on Coulson’s computer?” Owen voiced.
“Not that I remember, Stuart Park sorted that. I’ll check.”
Cyril sat in his office and cupped his face. In his mind’s eye he could see a shower of rough diamonds spread across a small table, myriad colours looking more like chunks of broken glass than valuable gems. He reached for the phone. The Chief Constable’s Secretary answered.
“Just give me a minute, Cyril, he’s searching through a pile of paper for a smaller pile, but first has to shift a half hundredweight of ballast.” She giggled. “I’ll put you on hold, back in a tick.”
Handel’s Water Music played, more twang than flow; the thought of running water made Cyril want to pee.
“He’s found it, the secret of life. Thankfully the world will continue on its usual orbit and life will remain as we know it, Cyril, but that’s our little secret! I’ll put you through.” Her voice was droll and flat.
“What can I do for you, Cyril?”
Cyril began to explain. One thing was sure, he was never happy with coincidences.
Smirthwaite popped his head round the door. “Grant’s story corroborates. His train arrived in Harrogate 15:40, it was delayed. Station CCTV shows him leaving the building and grabbing a cab. Taxi firm has confirmed that he was dropped at home at 16:12. Even gave a generous tip!”
***
John Cooper replaced the phone into the cradle. If the persistent ringing had not brought him to life, then the revelation certainly had. He withdrew a mobile from the bedside cabinet before crossing the room. He extracted a small card wallet from his jeans and from that a SIM card. He popped the card into the phone, switched it on and waited. He could feel his heart beating in his chest. For the first time since Val’s death, he felt alert. He noticed that the phone was lit and ready. He dialled.
“Grant it’s Cooper. I know where Val’s computer is.”
There was silence for a moment. Cooper could almost hear the relief on the other end of the phone. “Do I guess or are you goin…”
“She’d posted it to James, her brother. He received it a couple of days after she died. She obviously knew that they were aware that she’d been collecting evidence. As she often said when she came home a total mess, that when you play with fire there will come a time when….”
Grant interrupted. “Your fingers get burnt?”
“No, nothing that simple, she always said, If you play with fire there’ll come a time when he’ll roast you in the flames of hell.”
“Please God tell me it was protected with a password?”
“She’d sent that also, a separate letter arrived a day after the computer. James has seen most of what it contains, he knows everything apart from data stored on a partitioned section of the hard drive; that has a separate, unknown password. He’s considering taking it to the local police, sending it anonymously. He doesn’t want to get involved. He went on and on about how I’d corrupted her like I’d done to my career and his by all my cheating and lies. Sadly he was right. He knew me too well!”
“Give me his number, now.”
***
“You must follow your instincts, Cyril, that’s what good police work is, a cocktail of scientific fact, experience and gut feeling. You know that you always have my full support. Is there anything else?”
The conversation neither made Cyril feel more confident nor more sure of his suspicions. He thought back to the doctor. He reflected on the fact that the doctor had disappeared and that his body had never been found. It gnawed at him. He also knew that the man was but a puppet for others and then it struck him. He recalled the name, even though he had never seen nor met the man, but he knew his name, Charles. He closed his eyes before standing and dashing towards the Incident Room.
“I know the murderer’s name!" he announced with neither pleasure nor pride. “I’ve no idea what he looks like, but I know something of his character.” He picked up a pen and added the name in blo
ck capitals to one of the white boards. “A few years ago we disrupted a major people-smuggling ring, a ring that had its roots in France during the Second World War. The discovery was a coincidence as we were investigating a doctor from Richmond. This brought to light a close- knit people-smuggling ring that had, and this is why I had to leave earlier, its evil tentacles in Sierra Leone.”
Cyril explained, emphasising the fact that their enquiries had caused a major impact. They had made some ripples, how large and how far those ripples had affected the group they would never know. He outlined the case. Only one arrest had been made and he must have been released probably last year or earlier this. Some were never traced.
“One was the doctor, from Richmond. No body was ever found, only DNA traces. His housekeeper did very well out of his death, very well indeed. We believe that the operation continued but obviously not on the same scale.
“So the recently freed guy isn’t your mysterious Charles, I take it?” Harry Nixon asked.
“No, as I said, it goes back to a previous complex case, one of those where you open one door and three more present themselves. The person in question was a Phillip Jarvis, a student at Ripon Teacher Training College in the seventies. Two bodies of very young babies were discovered buried in the college grounds many years later, during some building works, bringing Jarvis into the spotlight. He was by then working in France. One thing led to another and Jarvis was implicated. He’d developed a profitable sex trade in Ripon, using students during his time there. Two had become pregnant and had refused to have the recommended termination. After a while they decided that they couldn’t carry on so they tried to commit suicide by gassing themselves and their babies in a car belonging to the college doctor. Turns out he was having a relationship with Jarvis too. Are you all still with me because you couldn’t make this stuff up.”
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