by CA Sole
The stress of our deteriorating relationship and Juliet’s attitude to me, Giles’ condition, and now Tina’s brutal death and Juliet’s uncertain fate had amounted to a point where I was beginning to act unreasonably, and if I wasn’t careful I would do something stupid. I realised that I had to face up to this and keep control of myself. Carter has more resources at his disposal and they can call in specialists to deal with a kidnapping, I reasoned. At that moment I didn’t even know where to start other than with Sandra herself, and raging at her would only meet with denial and make the situation worse.
‘It’s Alastair Forbes here, Inspector.’ Carter had answered on the third ring.
I heard him sigh, ‘Yes Mr Forbes? I’m sorry, but we haven’t found Wiggins yet.’
‘I know, he’s just kidnapped my fiancée!’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ I heard my own voice rising, ‘He’s killed my dog and Juliet is missing. There’s a ransom note - one point five million, and a threat to kill her if I speak to you. I’m calling you on a pay-as-you-go phone, because I think my normal one is compromised.’
‘All right. Please stay calm and listen carefully. Let me think a moment ... We need to see the scene as soon as possible. Call me back on my mobile number using your normal phone ...’
‘But I’ve just told you ...’
‘Please listen to me Mr Forbes. I know what you’re saying and I’ll do all I can to get Miss Meredith back safely, and I’ll call for expert help. Now, call me back on my mobile and ask for Knight Security. I’ll play along in case they’re listening, and you’ll ask me to come and look over your house to install a security system. I’ll come out in a white van with a couple of SOCOs and they can go over the place while you and I talk this through, all right?’
I agreed and felt a little calmer; action was being taken.
‘While you’re waiting for me, I suggest you make appropriate calls using your normal phone and make attempts to get that sum together. If they are listening, then it’ll help to reassure them that things are going according to plan.’
Fiancée? What had made me say that? I had not even asked Juliet to marry me, and in her present mood such a prospect was completely out of the question. One’s subconscious never ceases to amaze.
I spent the next few minutes shouting stupidly and futilely at the bank’s computerised answering service. By the time a human being came on the line I was livid. I demanded to see the most senior manager. He wasn’t available until the afternoon. I told the secretary it was an incredibly serious matter that was extremely urgent and demanded some attention. She was unfazed, but eventually relented and gave me a meeting time of three fifteen. I told her that if the manager I was to see was too junior to answer my query, I would take the matter to the very top of the bank and the newspapers as well. Afterwards I felt a bit ashamed of myself. It was no good taking out my rage on a secretary or PA or whatever she was, but her aloofness and the shielding of her boss were infuriating. If she gave me any more of that attitude in the afternoon I was going to remind her that it was my money that was paying her and her boss’s salary.
A white van drew up outside about forty minutes later. It parked so that the front door could not be seen from the lane, and two SOCOs slipped from the van and went inside. Carter, who had dressed as if he had come to fix the drains, and I stood on the driveway for a short while, pretending to examine the outside of the house and pointing to the upper windows and generally putting on a show. It seemed ridiculous. I was impatient to start talking.
‘I must first warn you, Mr Forbes,’ He seemed to be warning me about an awful lot of things recently, ‘that you are still under suspicion for the attempted murder of Mr Collins, and if this is a smoke screen, an attempt to confuse the issue and make you appear innocent, then I’ll ensure that you’re charged not only with the attack, but also perverting the course of justice and wasting police time.’
I didn't expected anything like that, and it only made me more angry. ‘Bloody hell, Inspector, if you think I’m making this up then you can bugger off right now! I’m risking the life of my fiancée in coming directly to you because you’re supposed to solve the situation, not throw accusations at one of the victims.’
‘Calm down, Mr Forbes. I’m sorry, but I had to remind you that, from a police perspective, you are one of the people who could have assaulted Mr Collins. Now, let’s go over this kidnapping. As with all these things, time is of the essence.’ He pulled on a pair of gloves as I offered him the note. He looked at it for a moment then handed it to one of the SOCOs to put in a bag. He looked at poor Tina with an expression of anger and disgust. ‘That was unnecessary,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded genuine.
We sat down at the dining room table. I naturally took the seat at the head, and Carter took one that left a chair between us. ‘I can see you’re very upset and I’m sure you’re keen for some action, Mr Forbes,’ he began, ‘but I’m asking you to try and stay calm and do nothing that might jeopardise the result. I want you to do exactly as the kidnapper says. He or they have the whip hand and until we know where Miss Meredith is being held and who they are, we have to let them believe they’re in control. If they feel they’re losing that control they may harm her, and we may never find them.’
‘I understand, but it’s difficult, I’m not one for doing nothing.’
‘I can see that, which is why I’m warning you to resist your natural instinct to do something that might endanger your fiancée. Now, give me your phone, the one they know you have. I’m going to put an app on it that will enable us to monitor your voice calls. May I use your wifi, please? It will only take a few minutes.’
I gave him the password and he set to work with his laptop. ‘This app is completely undetectable and not visible on the phone,’ he was talking as he manoeuvred around his screen, ‘and if your claim that they’re monitoring your phone is correct, then this or a similar one may be on there already. Has this phone ever been in anyone else’s hands? They would have had to have access to the instrument itself for a few minutes.’
I thought for a moment while he was tapping away at his keyboard, ‘Yes,’ and recalled the first night with Sandra. She had left the bed for a short while, and she had gone, not to the toilet, but to the lounge where her computer was.
He finished the installation and gave the phone back to me. ‘You’re confident you can get that amount of money?’
‘One way or another, yes,’ I replied. ‘I wasn’t able to make an appointment with the right person at the bank earlier on, but I’ll go in this afternoon. Have you heard how Giles is? They asked me not to call, so you get the question.’
‘As of yesterday, he remains in a coma. There’s no change, he’s in a critical condition, but is stable. I get the impression that unless there’s some dramatic reversal for some reason, then he will recover. No one has actually said that, mind.
‘On another subject, Mr Forbes: how did you know that Wiggins was going to be in Trident Park?’
I knew that was coming at some point, but had not decided how to answer it. In the end I stuck to the maxim that the truth was least likely to cause any harm and it could always be defended; one lie begets another. ‘Is it possible for me to tell you something off the record?’
‘I can’t answer that truthfully, it depends on what you tell me.’
‘Well, I’m not sure if I’ve broken the law or not. You see, I don’t just suspect that Wiggins was responsible for that assault, I know it, and I had to prove it.’ I went on to tell Carter how I devised the letter, how I delivered it and about the plan to observe the result. I left Juliet out of the story entirely. ‘You see, Inspector, Wiggins is impulsive and violent and he’ll react quickly without thinking things through. I reckoned that by prodding him with a sharp stick, he’d make a mistake and prove that he was the guilty party, which effectively he has done by responding to the threat. Wiggins' aim was to identify ‘Alice’ and then to silence her, i
t wasn’t to buy her off.’
‘Blackmail is a serious offence,’ Carter said, staring at me impassively, ‘even if it is done against a criminal.’
‘I’m putting myself at your mercy, Chief Inspector. You can’t deny that it had the desired effect, even if it was wrong. After all, it was no different to a police ‘sting’ operation in principle.’
‘We only do that sort of thing with authorisation from above.’ He paused, thinking. ‘All right, I’ll put this information on a back shelf in my mind. But, and you must understand that I won’t have any option on this, if it comes up in the investigation you must be prepared to face the consequences. On the plus side, Wiggins might claim you sent the letter, but he won’t be able to prove it, and the court may not press the issue given the magnitude of the greater crime.
‘However, and this is another word of caution, although you think your actions have had the desired effect, it probably led to him kidnapping Miss Meredith as an act of revenge. So maybe it wasn’t a wise move, after all. My point being that you should not do anything other than what they tell you to do. If you do have to do something as a result of an instruction or you see an opportunity where you have to take immediate action, you must let me know so we can back you up. And lastly, if and when he phones, keep him on the line as long as possible.’
We had kicked the hornets’ nest, and now we were suffering the result. I wasn’t proud of it. Then something else occurred to me, ‘Isn’t it curious that the ransom amount is about the same as the worth of this farm? Sandra’s the one who’s done all the planning, not Wiggins. She’s vengeful and has to be in control. She’s saying, “I’m going to take you down, your fiancée, your house, everything. I’ll teach you to mess with me!”
Carter raised his eyebrows, shrugged and contorted his lips into a gesture of ‘possibly’. He consulted his notebook. ‘You have this John Knott working here in a rented barn?’
‘Yes, and now there’s another man called Harry Burbage, who’s rented the smaller barn. I don’t see either of them being involved, though. Neither are the type, even though Harry couldn’t take his eyes off Juliet when he met her. He’s more of a gentle giant, and I’m sure John Knott wouldn’t hurt a flea.’ That said, the lingering doubt about my conclusions over Sandra and Wiggins surfaced once again.
As soon as the police had left, I phoned Mary on my pay-as-you-go. She had a right to know what had happened to her sister, and she would never jeopardise Juliet’s safety by telling anyone. It was a traumatic conversation, but I promised to keep her updated with any news.
On Monday afternoon, I had a difficult time at the bank. The stuffy secretary who had tried to rebuff me on the phone was a middle aged battle-axe who, I decided, wore Harris Tweed underwear. While waiting for the appointed time, she glared at me and I glared back. I was seated in a green leather upright chair directly opposite the woman. If I had been her, I would have moved that chair so that the occupant did not have to look directly at me every time he raised his eyes, but she probably felt she could outstare anyone who posed a threat to her dominant position as the manager’s PA. When three fifteen had come and gone by a minute on the wall clock, I confirmed with my watch and said, ‘It’s past time.’
‘Mr Smythe is a very busy man and appointments can be delayed. Anyway, I don’t see why you could not have asked to see one of the other managers. You would have been able to do that this morning.’
Furious, I snapped, ‘It’s not your business to know the whys and wherefores of my affairs, and it’s not my practice to deal with under managers.’ I don’t think anyone had ever put her in her place before, because she went red and returned to study her screen again.
‘Please remind Mr Smythe that I’m waiting.’
She pursed her lips in irritation, but did so. A moment later, he came out uttering empty apologies. I pulled myself together and tried to shed my anger which was threatening to scupper my attempts at a loan - Be pleasant, idiot!
Uninvited, I sat down in a comfortable chair at his expansive desk. There was a picture frame with its back to me, a polished wooden pen holder with a matching box full of business cards and another with a pad of notes. A computer monitor sat on the right side with a keyboard beneath, otherwise his desk was bare. Smythe himself was essentially a very sedentary man, flabby with three wobbling chins and a spider’s web of fine veins that gave an unnatural flushed appearance to his pale skin. He would probably be panting from entering a lift, let alone climbing a flight of stairs.
‘I need a loan of one and a half million pounds,’ I began, and his eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘I can provide my property, house and farm buildings as collateral and they’ll be worth about one point five. I can sell some investments for the balance if necessary, but obviously I would rather not. The matter is extremely urgent and has to be concluded by Thursday. I stress that this is highly confidential.’ I didn’t want to say anything about life or death in case he guessed what the reason was. It was going to be bad enough when I asked for the money in cash; he was bound to be suspicious then.
He swivelled his chair towards the computer and tapped away at his keyboard. ‘Mr Forbes,’ he answered as he glanced through what was most likely my record, ‘You’re going to have to tell me the reason for such a large sum. The bank cannot put itself at risk through, er, shall we say, possibly suspicious dealings.’
‘Mr Smythe, let’s avoid wasting our time. Are you able to loan me one and a half million or not?’
‘If you tell me the reason and answer a few other questions so that we can properly assess the risk, sign documents that will allow the bank to take your property (having had its value assessed, of course) then it’s a possibility. I’ll have to refer the matter to my superior however, as I don’t have authority for sums like that. All this will take time, of course.’
I sighed, it was obvious that I was not going to be able to get around this. ‘It’s a medical emergency. My fiancée is in need of urgent treatment and she’s in Central America. The money is for the flight to the US, which is the closest place for the treatment, and for the treatment itself, of course.’
‘What treatment is that? It’s very expensive.’
‘It’s a specialised form of cancer treatment, it’s new and not available on the NHS.’ As I kept repeating to myself, one lie begets another and the grave I was digging from the inside was getting deeper. ‘She’s dying,’ I added.
The suspicion in his eyes was clear. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, but you must please understand that we will need verification in order to proceed with the loan.’
Could I risk telling him the truth? It would expose the story, and if he or someone in the chain decided to go to the press, then it would be all over for Juliet. Carter had been emphatic about secrecy, not that I needed any reminding.
I stood up. ‘I can see that this is going to take far too long. I told you that it had to be completed by Thursday, but your bureaucracy will not allow that to happen, and I don’t think you can guarantee confidentiality. I have a couple of other options, I’ll have to try them. I thought banks were supposed to help, considering they are operating using their clients’ money.’
He steered clear of an apology, instead made a pointed remark, ‘We have rules, I’m afraid. There is so much fraud these days, we cannot be too careful.’ Then he added, ‘If I just knew the real reason for the urgency then it might be simpler.’
‘I’ll try my other sources.’ I picked up my bag and walked out, seething. I glared at the secretary in passing. She flushed and dropped her eyes. I was now worried as hell. Had I just sealed Juliet’s fate through not telling him the whole truth? There was something impersonal and overpowering about a bank, though. How could they be trusted? How many people in this giant money making machine would be involved in granting such a large loan? What would they want to know in order to do it and, could such a massive institution move quickly enough to produce the cash in time?
To comfort myself, I rea
soned that if I couldn’t find the money by Saturday, then Sandra would extend the deadline. After all, it was the money she wanted, and she must have known that it would be extremely difficult for anyone like me to raise that amount in cash in five days.
The rest of the week passed with an agonising slowness. I didn’t sleep well, disturbed by an awful recurring dream of Wiggins as a massive troll with a knobbly club. He was ten times his normal size and responded blindly and clumsily to orders from an indiscernible image with a sharp and humourless laugh. Juliet was there, though; I could feel her presence but couldn’t see her. I had other visions in the night. She was bound to a chair in a dingy cellar, ankles, hands and head strapped tight, a gag in her mouth, and her eyes wide with fear. She was wearing the same clothes as when she was abducted, jeans, soft shoes, a white shirt and her green jersey. Tina lay dead at her feet, more blood than she could ever have in her body seeping out in an ever expanding pool across the floor.
Then there was the living nightmare of the ransom. There was no way to raise one and a half million pounds without using the farm as collateral. The place might be worth that or more, but I really didn’t know. My investments amounted to about two hundred thousand; easily redeemed, but a pitiful contribution. I would bankrupt myself to find the money, but it was going to be damned difficult to achieve before the end of the week, that was certain. The bank’s reaction had not been encouraging. The thought plagued me all through Monday night. Then at about four thirty in the morning, after the umpteenth time of trolling through a list of acquaintances who might have money to give away, I had a flash of inspiration. The trouble was I couldn’t do anything about it until midday. In the meantime, there was another source closer to home that might willingly help, but I had never met him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At seven thirty on Tuesday I phoned Carter. It sounded as if there was a meeting in progress in the background. ‘Chief Inspector, I’m sorry to call you so early, but you know how pressed I am. Please will you tell me how to contact Parsons, Sandra’s last husband. I don’t know him, but I know you’ve interviewed him. I think he might be sympathetic to my cause and, if he’s suspicious, can I tell him to call you for verification?’