The Sister

by China, Max

  The headline struck him.

  Boy Missing - Police Appeal . . .

  A five-year-old kid on his way to school that morning never arrived. Five years old!

  What is it with people these days? He sipped the hot coffee. It scalded the oversensitive scar on his top lip. Gritting his teeth in anger, he blamed first the surgeons who hadn't knitted the wound together properly, and then the headline for distracting him.

  He blew across the surface of the steaming liquid and continued to read.

  He'd noticed over the years on his travels that someone was kidnapping little boys; he'd stumble on the odd headline, hundreds of miles apart. They always started the same. Boy Missing…

  None of the boys were ever found. He hoped this kid would turn up safe and sound, but he had his doubts. If police suspected a serial killer of children was at large, they were keeping quiet about it. He clenched his fists so hard that the knuckles popped.

  Criss-crossing the same old roads, he noticed things and he'd look at people more closely. He was more wary of familiar faces than the unfamiliar ones. He developed an expertise in body language, another of the few skills he'd picked up from his father and learned to sense if someone was watching or masking an interest in him. You feel that, boy, those people over there are talking about us.

  The same feeling came over him in the café. It was a type of radar, and the two men hunched over on the table in the far corner, blipped onto it. He'd seen them around before. His memory for faces was without equal. Glancing back at the front page, other headlines covering years, flashed in his mind's eye.

  The two were always there. Unable to believe he'd never made the connection before, he'd always thought they were just travellers on the lookout for places to rob. He'd known from the look of them they were up to no good, but now he knew exactly what they were.

  They were staring back at him; their own radar had kicked in. Something in the way he looked at them gave him away. They exchanged looks, trying to act as if nothing was happening. They talked urgently, occasionally shooting a look in his direction.

  What he saw in them, they saw in him. The cold eyes, the sense of detachment and something else, too. The stranger was utterly without fear.

  He checked the heat of the coffee, and took another sip, openly watching them.

  They were talking about him.

  He'd learned to read lips as a boy due to his mother's speech impediment and pieced together what they were saying.

  A further quick exchange passed between them so close across the tabletop their faces almost touched. They whispered urgently.

  "We can't wait any longer . . . it's too risky."

  "Are you sure that isn't him?"

  "Don't be fucking stupid! He's not one of us."

  "Let's just go. That guy over there . . . he's making me nervous."

  They stood up and left.

  He drained the last of his coffee. It made him want to piss, but he daren't go for fear of losing the two men.

  Outside they entered a large, dirty white van. He followed at a distance for miles. Eventually, they turned off the main road, driving in the darkness down ever narrowing roads, until they reached a farm track.

  Five minutes later, they pulled up outside a run down house surrounded by old shipping containers.

  The stranger had switched his lights off as soon as he'd turned onto the track, navigating by moonlight alone. He pulled up two hundred yards away and observed from his car.

  One of the men retrieved a small figure from the back wrapped in a blanket. The other looked around furtively as he slammed the back doors of the van shut. The two men hurried inside with the boy. Dogs barked excitedly. He could tell from the depth and resonance of the barking that they were big and at least two of them.

  Sprinting as fast as he dared in the darkness, he got to within a few yards, and then walked the remaining distance on the sides of his feet. He pressed his back against the wall outside the house, next to the door they'd entered.

  The low growling informed him that the animals had sensed his presence.

  Damn dogs! He hadn't fully recovered from the bite he'd received before Christmas. That one had come out of nowhere. Its owner had trained it to go for the nuts. He winced at the painful memory. One day he'd go back for the owner, for what he did to him.

  Damned perverts probably think the animals are excited about having a child in the house. No time to lose.

  He kicked in the door. Rottweiler's! The first leapt at him. He buried his knife to the hilt into its head, killing it instantly. He snatched at the knife, pulling up on it hard to retrieve it. The dead dog's head and shoulders rose from the floor. The knife wouldn't come out. It was stuck in deep, right through the bone. No time! The second one was on him; hot breath and saliva sprayed his face as he grabbed a front leg. Side stepping away, he pulled and lifted, swinging hard, he smashed it against the wall. He felt its leg break or dislocate; it didn't matter which. He stamped hard on its neck.

  Face down on a table, trussed up and crying; the sound muffled by a gag; the boy was trying to turn round to see what was happening.

  "Look away kid!" The stranger commanded.

  At first, the men were slow, caught by the shock of how quickly their first line of defence had failed, but now they closed in on the intruder. He stood stock still, ready. They rushed in from both sides as if they'd rehearsed the move, but they could never have anticipated violence on the scale about to be unleashed upon them. The two of them were used to dealing with no more than a child's resistance, and the stranger annihilated them easily with a short series of heavy blows. His gloved fists hooked and hammered away, like a butcher tenderising steaks.

  The boy was frozen, stunned into silence . . . unsure what would become of him.

  "Don't turn round, kid."

  He retrieved the baseball bat that he'd left outside by the door. When he'd first stolen it, he knew it would come in handy one day. Not quite the use he had in mind for it, but it still fitted in with his overall plans.

  One of the men cried out for an end to his misery. The other one was already dead.

  Afterwards, he calmly took a mobile phone from one of his victims and dialled 999.

  "Stay here kid. The police are coming to get you out of here, okay?" The boy nodded quickly, obediently not looking at him.

  On the way out, he retrieved his knife from the dog's skull. Stuck so tight, he had to use his boot to hold the head in place as he used both hands to twist and wrench the blade free.

  He surveyed the carnage. A voice was in his head. You risked everything to save a kid!

  "It isn't just one kid though, is it? It's for all the other kids those deviants have kidnapped, and for every kid they would have . . ." he said quietly. He shook his head to clear the voice.

  You're going soft.

  Chapter 103

  West Lothian Police HQ, Scotland

  Detective Michael Brady entered DCI Caulson's office with a report. The DCI didn't turn to look at him. He stood with his hands folded behind his back looking out of the window onto the car park below. Brady was the new, boy, the bright young thing transferred just a few weeks ago from London. Brady sensed the DCI hadn't been particularly impressed with him so far. This could be his chance to shine.

  "I have the pathologist's initial findings, sir."

  "Good, leave it on my desk. Shut the door behind you."

  Brady raised his eyebrows, and with a shrug, did as he was told. He could tell from the brusque manner of his dismissal that the chief was in a foul mood. He dropped the report into the in-tray. As he reached for the door handle, Caulson spoke again.

  "Read it for me, Brady, and not the whole bloody thing. Just pick out the relevant points for me." The DCI continued looking out of the window.

  Brady turned away from the door and approached the desk to retrieve the document. Reaching for it, he realised that Caulson could see his every move reflected in the glass against the darkness
outside.

  "You've read it already, I take it, Brady?"

  "Yes, sir, I have."

  "Then don't just read it, tell me what it says."

  Brady cleared his throat. "Well, sir, it confirms the two men were basically beaten to death and violated with a large blunt instrument. We recovered a baseball bat from the scene. In fact, it was protruding . . ." The chief turned away from the window; he was a pinch-faced man with a stern expression and abrasive manner. Tall and thin, he looked ten years older than his sixty years. He wasn't popular, and Brady was finding out why.

  "Sit down, Brady, I know all that already. What else do we have that is relevant to finding this character?"

  "Well, there's evidence that he actually finished the second man off with the bat, by forcing it so far into him that it ruptured everything in its path . . ."

  "You think that's relevant?"

  "I do, sir, it tells us that we are dealing with someone who isn't afraid to inflict—"

  The DCI did not let him finish. "So what sort of person are we looking at: The father of a previous victim, looking for revenge; a butcher or a psychopathic baseball fan? Tell me about the bat."

  Brady had suddenly become very hot under the spotlight of Caulson's glare. The man wouldn't let him settle, kept catching him off guard. He realised that gaining Caulson's respect was going to be nigh on impossible. If he wanted to impress him at all, he'd have to come up with something smart. And quickly.

  "The baseball bat has letters carved in just above the handle, spaced out with each one exactly one third of the way round, so the shaft, if rotated, says variously FKJ, KJF or JFK. It's extremely unlikely that the initials belong to the assailant. It's also extremely unlikely - given its low value - that it's been reported lost or stolen."

  "Anything else?"

  "The bat wasn't used to beat the men. Strangely enough, it seems he preferred to do that with his fists. He wore gloves. Apart from tiny pieces of leather that scuffed off them and some footprints, we don't have anything else at all."

  "We got nothing from the kid I take it?"

  "The man ordered him not to look, but he did see him. He told us there was only one man, and that was about it. He's a wee bit traumatised as you can imagine at only seven years old, so I don't—"

  "Then don't," he withered Brady with a harsh glare; he didn't like how the Sassenach tried to ingratiate himself with the use of a Scot's term. "Any wee ideas on how he tracked them down?"

  "Not at this stage. He could have been watching them for weeks. We're checking out the computers we found and mobile telephone records. We also found recording equipment, DVD's and so on. Early indications are that they were part of a paedophile ring."

  "Sounds like this vigilante did us all a favour . . ." He lifted a cigarette from the inside pocket of his jacket and put it between his lips. He didn't light it, but he drew through the tobacco deeply. He caught the look Brady had given him. "Trying to give it up, it's not easy in this job," he exhales with a sigh. "So, in a nutshell, at the moment we don't know if it was revenge, a hate crime, or what the motive was. All we have on him, is he's likely got bruised knuckles." He drew hard on the cigarette. "Getting back to those initials . . ."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "I want them run through the database, all burglaries where the owners have those combined initials."

  Brady groaned.

  "You got a problem with that, Brady?" The chief scowled at him.

  "No, sir—"

  Caulson cut him off again. "If we can tie it to a burglary, he might have left some forensic," he explained, a sudden weariness in his tone.

  "How far back are we going with this?"

  "Start digging your way backwards, I have a feeling in my water, it won't be too far back."

  "He probably got it from a boot sale."

  Caulson was uncharacteristically patient. "Maybe . . . he might have taken it out of a skip, but if this turns nothing up, you'll follow that line of enquiry afterwards."

  "We could just go public?"

  Caulson shook his head. "At the moment I want it kept quiet, but yes if nothing else turns up . . ." Caulson was already imagining the spate of copycat nutcases claiming to be the killer.

  The chief stood up, signalling the end of their meeting.

  "Brady, I want answers. Get your teams working on it, right now. We'll reconvene in the morning."

  "Yes, sir," he said, faking enthusiasm.

  Brady returned to his own office. He wondered if Cooper was still around; he could have just walked around the corner to see, but his encounter with Caulson had left him drained. He didn't even bother trying to raise him on the internal phone; he dialled him on his mobile.

  Cooper was another ex-Metropolitan man, albeit he'd been in Scotland for ten years.

  "You still around? Good. Can you come to my office . . . Yeah, five minutes?"

  Cooper dropped into the chair opposite. "How was he?" he flicked his eyes in the direction of Caulson's office.

  "Is he always that personable?" Brady said.

  Cooper laughed, "He's getting worse. Coming up for retirement, he was already getting a bit flaky - I think he was hoping to get out before anything too drastic presented itself. Go out with a whimper and not a bang. Looks like he's out of luck; the last time something like this happened was twenty years ago, I think he sees it getting out of hand, and you are the new boy . . ."

  Brady shrugged, "He wants these initials checked out," he pushed a photograph of the handle towards Cooper.

  Cooper frowned, "J.F.K . . ."

  "It's one of three possibilities," he conceded.

  "It's the only one," said Cooper. "Look, there's a stop after the J. and the F. There isn't one after the K—"

  "Let me see that!" Brady interrupted, grabbing the photos back, irritated he'd missed that detail himself. Cooper was right; there are faint stops after only those letters. "J.F.K - well that narrows the field. I think we can safely say it's not the former American president's bat."

  Cooper grinned at him, "That's just narrowed it some more!"

  Brady took a swipe at him with the photo. "Seriously, we need to run a check on lost property - a long shot I know - All victims of burglaries with those initials, find out if they had a bat stolen. If we can find one and tie it in with forensics, that would be great. He doesn't want to go public, so we're stuck with doing it this way."

  "Not a problem," Cooper said, "but I'd be surprised if we turn up a single lead . . ."

  "Well, he said to start local and then fan out. Let's get onto it."

  Chapter 104

  3rd April 2007, late evening.

  Paedophile Killings! Police Seek Vigilante Suspect.

  The headlines were on billboards and newspapers everywhere. The story spread like wildfire. Aside from regurgitating the original story, the press was unable to do anything to satisfy public demand for the truth. Whoever he was, he'd captured the imagination of people all across the country. From up-market hairdressers to backstreet barbers, bistros, bars and restaurants - everyone was talking. The story quickly topped the list of the most searched news articles on the internet.

  If he were to step out of the shadows, he'd become an instant celebrity.

  For once, the press was not to blame for the reaction of the public. The stranger couldn't quite believe the things he heard people saying.

  "He deserves a medal for what he done . . ."

  "I've heard the police aren't looking for him too hard . . ."

  "I heard they had him, but let him go . . ."

  "It's part of a secret crackdown by the government, costs too much to keep 'em in prison, so they're wasting 'em using ex soldiers . . ."

  "He's ex SAS; he has to be . . ."

  In a pub, in North Wales, a stranger sat quiet and unnoticed, nursing a pint of dark ale at a small table, tucked away under the rake of the stairs. There was no room on the other side for another chair. Smoke curled from his cigarette joining the thin grey fug
that collected above his head.

  He had a way of watching from beneath his eyebrows that wasn't obvious to the casual observer. The object of his attention was a tall, oddly balanced, curly haired man with a high voice, who held court among a small crowd at the end of the bar a few feet away. Delivering a punch line he half-twisted and bowed with a burst of laughter, turning to reveal, an empty sleeve pinned to his chest at elbow level. The remaining arm had compensated for the loss and developed to almost the size of his thigh. Those who had known him before his loss would probably have said he'd also developed a bigger personality, and that it had helped him to erase the bitterness he felt. Losing an arm was bad enough at any age, but in one so young… It also made him fiercely competitive, always out to prove himself. He was regaling a group of men around him in a loud drunken voice, with a version of how he thought the vigilante had pulled off the killings.

  "They'd have sent the dogs out first . . ." He bowled his one arm forward, re-enacting the releasing of the dogs, the thickly braided sinews of his forearm rippled as his hand opened.

  "Oh, no . . . come on, Bryn, you can't know that!"

  He shook a huge fist at the interrupter. "Yes, I can. Shut your mouth while I'm telling it to you, will you. What would be the point of the dogs, if you wouldn't send them out first?"

  Someone else agreed with him. "Oh, he's right about that, what would be the point?"

  "And then, when he comes right in - after he's done away with the dogs - they know they're in trouble, right?"

  While the group of men drunkenly thought it through, Bryn repeated himself. "They know they're in trouble all right!" An unintelligible murmur of agreement rose from the group. All nodded eagerly, waiting for the next dramatisation.

  "One of them grabs a baseball bat . . ." The men hung on his every word. "And he grabs it off him, uses their own baseball bat against them, before shoving it up their arses!"