The Shadows of Justice

by Simon Hall

  She tapped at more keys. “Ah, red kites. Wonderful birds of prey, absolutely majestic.”

  “And not what I’m looking for. Any others?”

  The computer screen scrolled. Page followed page. Slowly. Very, very slowly.

  “Cirl buntings!” she exclaimed. “What striking little birds. Such a lovely, vibrant yellow; just like the flowers in my garden.”

  The ramble continued, but Dan wasn’t hearing it. His eyes were set on the screen.

  “That’s it. Cirl buntings.”

  Adam was at his shoulder. “Cirl buntings?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’ve brought us here to look at some scabby little bird. That’s it?”

  With admirable restraint, Dan ignored him. “Brenda, could you get the tape please?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Now.”

  She ambled over to a storeroom. Invisible footsteps paced back and forth and Brenda returned with a grey plastic box. Dan opened it and loaded the video cassette into one of the players.

  “A beta tape?” Katrina queried.

  “It’s one of the great ironies of TV. Back in the ’80s, when there was the format war, VHS won the mass market, but the television industry chose beta. We thought it was better quality and more reliable.”

  Dan skimmed through the stories. There were floods, government cutbacks, health warnings about the dangers of sunbathing, county shows.

  And now a group of small yellow birds in a tree, all singing.

  Sre, sre, sre.

  Dan paused the tape. “That’s it. The noise from the ransom call.”

  Adam stared at the screen. “Well whoopty-doo,” he grunted. “I can’t say how overwhelmed I am at this dramatic breakthrough. A boy scout bird spotter’s badge to us.”

  “Adam, for fuck’s sake, shut up!” Dan snapped. “I’ve had a bellyful of your whining.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me to—”

  “Don’t either of you ever use language like that in here,” Brenda intervened, with surprising steel. “Now look at the report nicely, or you can leave.”

  Katrina reached between the petulant pugilists and set the tape playing. Her shoulder brushed Dan’s. It felt firm and toned. He could smell the freshness of her perfume.

  The screen flickered with a countdown and a familiar voice began a commentary:

  “Once common, cirl buntings are now sadly rare. Loss of their habitat and changes in farming methods are being blamed. But the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has begun a project to try to increase numbers. They’re recruiting landowners to help, by managing areas in a bunting-friendly way. It’s not such a big job as you might think. Cirl buntings are now confined to only a small part of South Devon, around the village of East Prawle.”

  Dan turned, readying a triumphant look from the very summit of his stock of I told you so expressions. Victory in The Battle of the Little Yellow Birds was his and it was time to parade it.

  But Adam was already on his mobile and heading for the door.

  ***

  Once more, the guardian of the gate into Charles Cross stood wide open. Just inside, by the armed response cars, the officers were again checking their guns. But where before it had been routine, a drill – rehearsed a hundred times or more – this was the call to arms.

  It was in the eyes, focused and sharp. It was in the movements, calm, practiced and precise.

  And there was no banter. This was reality, not rehearsal. This was their time.

  Cops jogged from the police station’s back doors. One carried a weight of body armour, his head hidden behind the mass of reinforced plastic. A woman bent low with the burden of a small, metal battering ram. Another snapped open boxes and pulled out snub-nosed taser stun guns. Helmets, gas canisters, a loud hailer joined the armaments.

  A line of police vans stood, their back doors open, waiting.

  A sergeant convulsed back and forth, shouting instructions. A spin of blue lights cascaded around the compound.

  A group of officers were bent over a patrol car, a map spread across its bonnet. From the windows of the police station, faces stared out. A modern day army was readying for battle.

  Claire jogged from the back doors and picked her way over. From the urgency, the impetus of this unflappable investigator, it was clear there would be significance in her words.

  Dan thought of Roger Newman and Annette. Another interview with the businessman, but this time carried out in the past tense. Tears and regrets in place of hope.

  He could see the spectre with Adam and Katrina, too. The way they waited, the fear of what they were about to hear. But instead, silent dread was replaced by relief, like rainfall in the desert.

  “Sir,” Claire told Adam, “I think we’ve got a lead on the kidnappers.”

  Chapter Eleven

  He was still there. Silent and unmoving, but she could sense him.

  A black shape in the tarry darkness of this eternal night.

  Watching her. As he had from the start. And would until the end.

  And that moment was coming. It was in the air, all around her.

  But no easy ending. Just an inescapable agony.

  The smell. So ordinarily everyday, but here and now so fearful, so heavy with fate. In her nose and ears. Her eyes and mouth. Unmistakable, unavoidable, no matter how she turned her head to try to escape.

  Petrol. Volatile, vicious petrol.

  And the sound. The easy innocence of a soft rustling. Like the English countryside on many a summer’s day. From the walks she had taken with Dad, through fields and over stiles, on their weekend outings from the city.

  The dry sound of golden straw.

  And one more noise to reinforce her certainty. To know what surrounded her, and the end which awaited.

  Newspaper. Ripped into strips. And crumpled into balls.

  Rolled, shifted and positioned. With exacting certainty. To encircle her helpless body.

  Ready to feed the flames of the pyre.

  Annette tried to gulp, but the gag allowed no respite. She could see nothing and say nothing. She would die blind, mute and immobile.

  Able only to wait for the fire. And helpless, feel her skin bubble, blister and burn.

  She had expected the end so many times. In the van, when she was sick. When the cloth was pulled from her mouth. She was ready for the knotted knuckles of a flying fist.

  A lesson. A beating. A punishment. Blood flowing and teeth breaking. The blows growing more frenzied, the pain whitening until the grateful release.

  Never to come around.

  But there was only the thrust of a rag. The sickness wiped away. And the sudden shock of a cold cascade of water.

  How she gulped it down. Chewed it from the air, each sluice, every drop.

  Until the binding gag was restored.

  Then once more readying for the end. When the rumbling slowed and quietened, and the doors opened.

  The breeze on her face, the hands pulling her, the arms lifting her, carrying her through sightless space. The sound of seagulls in the sky.

  She had expected to fly. Soar from the clifftop, at last unbound, until the killing impact. Twisted and broken, her forsaken body claimed by the gentle undertaker of the creeping tide.

  No headstone here. No loving memorial to young Annette Newman. No forever remembered and always missed. No last resting place recorded, no black-clad mourners to lament her passing.

  But she had found only cold, hard floor. And distant noises.

  The creak of a stair. Whispers in the darkness. Perhaps a plane flying by. Maybe a bird’s cheerful song.

  A secluded door closing. The muted burble of a quiet radio.

  And always the sound of time passing. The blasting silence of the indistinct, immeasurable, hours.

  She was cold now. Shivered, twitched to shift her weight. Her flank was numbed, lying on this slab of a floor. But she was trussed too tight to move.

  A trickle of blood ran down her
ankle.

  Dust was starting to settle in her nose, mixing with the petrol, forming the paste of the coming death.

  She would smell herself burn.

  Annette tried to imagine. To find a refuge in her mind.

  James, that night on the beach.

  Anywhere. Any escape. Anything.

  But the darkness was too filled with the dancing terrors of her taunting thoughts.

  Chapter Twelve

  They ran for the back door. Dan had been expecting a rapid clambering up to the MIR, but Adam headed downwards, towards the basement.

  These corridors of the police station were much less trodden than others. There was no banter, none of the continual sound of feet which characterised other floors. It was quieter, darker, had the air of a lair.

  The catacombs of Charles Cross, Dan thought, with a reporter’s whim.

  In the car park, Adam had cornered the sergeant who was attempting to organise the melee. “How long?”

  “Five minutes, maybe ten.”

  The detective didn’t reply, instead turned and set off, Claire, Katrina and Dan following.

  “What’re we doing?” Dan asked. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Adam passed the entrance to the control room. They turned a corner. Now they were approaching the end of the corridor. Ahead was a fire exit and next to it another door, a little smaller. It was plain and bore no sign to betray its purpose, but was strong and well-secured.

  Only one of the strip lights was working, and it grumbled with a low buzz. Daylight was a stranger to this part of the station. The corridor was tainted with dust and smelt musty. Many of the floor tiles were cracked and chipped. The gossamer patterns of a spider’s web stretched from the top of the door.

  “What’s going on?” Dan asked. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”

  “Quite,” Adam replied.

  He fumbled in his pocket, found a fob of keys and picked one out. It was fatter than the rest, shinier and looked little-used.

  With a begrudging clunk, the door opened.

  ***

  Around the walls were propped signs, an unofficial history of concerns long-forgotten. Several appealed for witnesses to road crashes,

  others muggings and one a robbery. Most carried the everyday warnings of the business of policing: the risks of ice, pickpockets operating in the area and the ever-present danger of leaving valuables in your car.

  In the corner was a ramshackle stack of old desks and chairs. There were a few abandoned computers too, some which harked back to the days of the ZX Spectrum. Dan reached out to touch one. It was like laying a finger on his past.

  The teenage Dan had bought an early model, second hand, with the money he’d saved from a Saturday job picking tomatoes on a fruit farm. The lasting memory was of more crashes than a banger racing weekend, and a keyboard which resembled long-dead flesh.

  A couple of stacks of traffic cones teetered by the door, their hoops smeared with dirt. Guarding them was the incongruity of a line of gnomes. A note attached to the hat of the tallest read, Nicked by students, owner to collect next week. It was dated nine years ago.

  At the far end of the room was a metal filing cabinet, and it was to here that Adam stepped his careful way.

  Dan found Claire by his side. “The twilight files,” she whispered.

  Adam was delving hard into the cabinet. Wisps of dust took to the air. Katrina began coughing.

  Claire’s radio crackled.

  Two minutes to the off.

  Adam was still bent double. It was as if the cabinet was making an attempt to swallow him.

  The click, click, click of turning metal filled the little room.

  Finally, the detective stood up. He was holding a stained manila folder.

  “Got it,” he said.

  ***

  Katrina took the wheel, but in a manner that was both unexpected and a little alarming. She worked the gears like a racing driver who’s trailing the pack. The car hugged corners and cut a straight line across bends. They had to wait a couple of times for the rest of the convoy to catch up.

  “Where did you learn all this?” Dan asked, in a voice which he hoped disguised his qualms.

  “Advanced driver training. If you need to speed it pays to know how.”

  “Is that how you got down to Devon so fast?”

  “Not entirely. I caught the train. It’s better for thinking through a case. Besides, it’s only about three hours from London to Plymouth.” She glanced over, her face unreadable. “Very easy to pop back and forth.”

  Dan thought he heard Claire make a kind of strangled noise, but it might have been the percussion of another of Katrina’s gear changes.

  She’d insisted on driving. It made sense, she told Adam. He was the officer in charge of the case. He needed to be free to make phone calls. He could also read out the contents of the file, tell them about the two people who were suspected of kidnapping Annette.

  As his deputy Claire should sit alongside. Which left Dan in the front, next to her.

  The logic was incontestable. Yet Claire appeared unimpressed, her face flinty. It was most unlike her, a woman with a natural warmth for the world, even on the most difficult of days. Dan wondered if she wasn’t feeling well. She was wearing more make-up than usual. Perhaps it was to cover for the effects of some bug.

  The convoy left the police station, crossed the bridge over the River Plym and headed into the open countryside of the South Hams. Adam was about to start reading the file when Dan saw his moment and interrupted.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Why does that make me worry?” Adam replied.

  “Call it a way to make up for my stupid clumsiness.”

  As they jogged out of the police station to rejoin the convoy, Dan spotted an officer carrying a video camera. In the blindness of his preoccupation with the case, he collided with the man, knocking the camera to the floor. Bumped off balance, Dan had also trodden on it, breaking the lens. It was all down to the rush; he apologised repeatedly and perhaps over-effusively. Wessex Tonight would pay for the repair, or a replacement.

  “That’s not the bloody point,” the officer remonstrated. “It’s the only one we’ve got.”

  Adam was eyeing Dan with his special detective’s look. It was loaded with all the suspicion of more than twenty years as a policeman, a generation’s experience of deception.

  “Get on with it,” he said. “You’re not fooling anyone.”

  “It’s just – video can be such powerful evidence.”

  “Really? Thanks, I’d never have thought of that. It is why we bring a camera along – or try to, anyway,” he added, pointedly. “What are you up to?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all. Only that – maybe I can help.”

  “Let me guess. By getting Nigel along to film?”

  “Oh! What a brilliant idea. Just to help you out, of course. To make up for my little accident.”

  “In return for which, you get exclusive pictures?”

  “Well, I never imagined it like that. My only thought was for the interests of justice. But since you come to mention it…”

  Adam clicked his tongue. “What do you think, Katrina?”

  She accelerated the car around a bend, generating g-forces akin to a roller-coaster. “Dan is right, a recording could be useful.”

  “All right,” Adam said, when the offending reporter had finished his performance. “Now, if you’re quite done with your devious little manoeuvers, would you like to hear who we’re up against?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A cinema of the mind formed within the car, as the detective narrator began chronicling a criminal CV.

  “The story of Brian and Martha Edwards,” Adam recounted. “An extraordinary and I suppose sad one, too – if it wasn’t for the way it turned out.”

  Even the drive through the marvels of the Devon springtime didn’t distract from the story. The trees were
lit with candle buds and rained blossom. In the fields, cows and horses watched the wailing convoy pass with that magnificent detachment of the animal world. The meadows and pastures were full of the colours of the warming land, prompted from hibernation by days once more blessed with light.

  The Edwards were born in Plymouth and remained in the city for their growing years. Both were educated – if that wasn’t too optimistic a word – at Eddystone Comprehensive, the same school Roger Newman attended.

  “Interesting,” Katrina noted.

  Their criminal careers began modestly. It was clear from the notes that, initially, they were considered relatively small time. They were assessed as not violent, nor a significant danger to the public.

  One remark from the first of the cases, written by a junior detective, said, All this was about was taking the piss.

  “Hang on,” Dan objected. “What’s that kind of comment doing on an investigation report?”

  “Because,” Adam replied emphatically, “none of this exists. Our little storage room is there for a reason. It’s off computers, off the books and beyond the reach of Freedom of Information and Data Protection laws. And particularly journalists. Ok?”

  “Well, I—”

  “That’s only if you want to hear more. I could just stop.”

  “Ok,” Dan submitted, a little peevishly.

  “In which case, do you want to know the remarkable thing about the Edwards?”

  “What?”

  “We think they’ve committed plenty of crimes,” Claire replied. “But guess how many convictions we’ve managed to get?”

  “How many?”

  “It’s a round number,” Adam said. “Very round, in fact.”

  “That bad?”

  “Yep.”

  “How come?”

  “If you let me finish the briefing, you’ll find out.”

  Puerile as it may be, sometimes the infantile pleasure of the sticking out of the tongue is hard to resist. Dan contented himself with a shake of the head, but deigned to be silent.

  Martha was 22 years old and had just completed a three-year course in Forensic Science and Computing. She graduated with a third class degree.

  “Not exactly a criminal mastermind,” Katrina observed.