Fire in the Blood

by George McCartney

  His search yielded several small pieces of duct tape, a torn piece of waxed cloth possibly from a jacket pocket and a paper hanky soaked in fresh blood, which had probably been used by Burke to try and stem the bleeding from his nose wound. But there was nothing else, no obvious clue as to how Burke had managed to catch Annie unawares, and then carry her off to God knows where.

  Jack couldn’t control his emotions any longer and, as his eyes welled up with tears, he dropped to his knees on the wet grass and sobbed out loud in despair, ‘Oh dear God, Annie, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. As soon as Thomas Burke’s name was mentioned, two weeks ago, I should have carried you straight onto a plane, with a single ticket to somewhere far away, while I still had the chance.’

  And then, barely visible under a carpet of fallen leaves, almost within arm’s length, Jack saw a small balled up bundle of paper. Someone had either casually thrown it away, or could it be connected to the struggle and the torn piece of waxed cloth? When Annie was trying to fight off Burke, had she ripped the breast pocket off his jacket, along with its contents? Several tiny spots of what looked like fresh blood indicated that the ball of paper was probably linked to the struggle.

  By now it was too dark to do any more at the crime scene. Jack looked at his watch and calculated that, with the evening rush hour almost over, he could make it back to his office in about fifteen minutes, with any luck. There he could properly examine the scraps of evidence gathered from the crime scene and then call Andy Welch. But he also needed the fifteen minutes driving time to try and work out a plan. Jack … think man, for fuck’s sake. Annie’s life depends on it.

  He hammered the ancient Land Rover through the city streets as fast as it would go, which he reckoned must be forty-five miles an hour tops, and then blew straight through a red light, narrowly missing an oncoming bus, whose driver blasted his horn in anger. Hearing a police siren behind him, he was momentarily dazzled by headlights flashing on and off full beam, in his rear view mirror. Just in case he’d somehow missed the pandemonium behind him, the patrol car’s loudspeaker then sternly commanded, ‘Stop driving immediately and pull over to the kerb.’

  With the chasing police car almost nailed onto the back bumper of the Land Rover, Jack glanced sideways at the blow-up doll bouncing happily around on the passenger seat beside him, before asking, ‘You wouldn’t mind taking one for the team, would you Cheryl? Just nod your head, if you mean “yes”.’ Cheryl, initially seemed wary at Jack’s suggestion, but then started to jiggle around enthusiastically. At the next junction Jack wrenched the steering wheel sharply to the right, turning up a narrow one-way street, which had cars parked on both sides. This opened up a slight gap behind him, as the police car was forced to reverse and take another cut at the corner, in order to make the turn. Jack used the window of opportunity to grab poor Cheryl roughly by the neck and then heaved her unceremoniously out the driver’s door. She bounced along the road behind him and flailed around wildly, before eventually coming to rest in her preferred position, lying on her back with arms pointing skywards and legs spread wide. This welcoming pose placed her directly in the path of the pursuing police car, whose driver was forced to make an emergency stop to prevent running over the naked apparition, which had apparently just risked life and limb to escape from the lunatic driving the Land Rover.

  Despite the desperate circumstances, Jack permitted himself a brief smile as he imagined the occupants of the police car trying to extract a witness statement from blow-up Cheryl. However, his amusement quickly faded when, two streets further on, the same police patrol car was once again back on his tail. Jack suspected that cops in the car probably did not share his amusement and would now willingly pursue him to the ends of the earth, if necessary, in order to snap a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.

  Briefly reflecting that all those late nights spent watching World’s Wildest Car Chases through a drunken haze, had not been entirely wasted, Jack then used his knowledge of the local area and, with the police car once again closing fast, abruptly turned left between two parked cars, then bumped up over a kerb and across the pavement, before crashing through a low hedge and ploughing through an adjacent flower bed. Continuing across a steep grass covered slope, he stopped briefly to look behind and was relieved to see that the chasing police car, which lacked the Land Rover’s crude but effective four-wheel drive system, was now stuck fast back in the middle of the flower bed, with its front wheels spinning impotently in the soft earth.

  Before exiting the park, Jack stopped to remove the worst of the foliage and flowers, which had been caught up on the exterior of the Land Rover’s bodywork, and was relieved to find that both the front and rear number plates on the vehicle were obscured by a thick, encrusted layer of mud and cow shit, transported from the back roads of Dumfries and Galloway.

  Continuing his journey in a more restrained manner through the city streets, he did not encounter any further police cars and, near his office, he parked the Land Rover safely out of sight behind a derelict Portakabin unit, which was located on a gap site between two tenement blocks. He then hurried back to his office building, where he climbed the stairs and unlocked the entrance door to JD Investigations.

  Chapter 46

  As Annie slowly regained consciousness, the full horror of her predicament dawned, and cold fingers of panic gripped at her heart. This was no lurid dream. She really was rolling around in the pitch black boot of Thomas Burke’s car, tightly wrapped up in duct tape, with a rag stuck in her mouth. Attempting to assess the extent of her injuries was difficult because of her restraints, but she was acutely aware of a dull splitting headache caused by a combination of the initial punch to the side of her head and a throbbing ache in the side of her jaw, the result of the final knockout blow delivered by Burke, after she had head butted him. As far as she could tell, she had no other injuries, but it was impossible to be sure. She gradually forced herself to suppress a rising tide of panic and was surprised that the underlying emotion she felt was not fear, but anger … anger that she had allowed herself to be jumped by Burke. She tried to use that anger, wriggling and straining with every ounce of strength she possessed, in an attempt to loosen the duct tape constraining her feet and hands. But after ten minutes of sweat and strain, the bindings frustratingly still held fast. As she turned her head slightly to one side, a faint dull glow from the car’s rear number plate light came into view. However, any initial relief that at least her eyes had not been covered, which would have made being trapped in the boot even more claustrophobic and unbearable, quickly faded when she realised that this wasn’t simply a mistake by Burke. The chilling truth was that he hadn’t made any mistakes, so far, and he actually didn’t care if she did see his face, because his immediate plans for her did not include release or survival.

  Her brain then flicked into a high-speed loop of unsettling, disconnected thoughts. How good did a safe, mind numbing call centre job sound right now? Will I ever see my family and friends again? How shit is this … I’m probably going to die a horrible death at the hands of this raving lunatic, just when I’ve started the first job I’ve ever loved. How could it have happened? Why hadn’t she listened to Jack, who had strongly argued against letting her act as lookout, back in the park? They had joked with each other as she got out of the Land Rover. And that was it, maybe her last conversation with Jack, or anyone else.

  On the drive from the city centre out to the park, there had been a heated argument between them about the wisdom of splitting up for the stakeout. In the beginning Jack was adamant that it was too dangerous for Annie to leave his side, if Burke was following the GPS tracker. But oh no, as usual, big mouth Annie had fought her corner, insisting that her fitness and street smarts would keep her safe and that this was a simple job she was more than capable of doing. In the end she wore Jack down and he had relented, but insisted that she follow his instructions to the letter. And that was what really bugged her. She had been super careful, choosing a spot hidden
in the tree line, near enough to the car park entrance to be able to clearly see the faces of all incoming drivers, but still with a good line of sight back to Jack sitting in the Land Rover. In addition, the ground around her was covered with fallen branches and leaves, ensuring that moving in any direction without making a noise was almost impossible.

  Jack had stressed to her how easy it was on stakeouts, when nothing much appears to be happening, to relax and allow the mind to wander. And, of course, that’s when mistakes usually happen. He explained that the best way to avoid this was to get into a routine, which becomes almost a natural reflex, of constantly checking everything in sequence, the Land Rover, the car park entrance and the woods around her, for absolutely anything that looked suspicious or even just slightly out of place. She was to keep in touch with Jack by alerting him every time a car turned into the access road and, regardless of anything else, by also texting him every ten minutes. And in the event of Burke actually driving into the car park, she would immediately give Jack a heads up phone call and then contact the police for back up. And despite all of that, Burke had still been able to blind side her, catching her completely off guard. He hadn’t driven into the car park, she was sure of that. But she had neither seen nor heard his approach through the trees and, when she did eventually sense rather than hear a slight movement behind her, it was too late to deflect Burke’s solid punch to the side of her head, which had partially stunned her and meant that a subsequent valiant attempt to fight off the psychopath was doomed to failure.

  Chapter 47

  Jack felt really strange being back in his old office again, after an absence of two weeks, that seemed more like a lifetime with everything that had happened since he first advertised for an intern. The acrid smell of smoke, from the arson attack, still lingered in the room but otherwise everything inside appeared to be just as Jack and Annie had left it. Except, of course, that Annie was no longer with him, maybe no longer alive, solely due to his pig headed insistence to get back to the big city because he selfishly missed the sights, the sounds and the buzz.

  He muttered savagely to himself, ‘Well are things buzzing enough for you now, dickhead?’

  Jack’s full strength guilt trip was not mollified in any way as he emptied his pockets of the items recovered from the location where Annie was abducted. He laid the few pathetic scraps of evidence, which were his only possible link to Annie’s whereabouts, out on his desk. Unpromising hardly covered his initial reaction as he took a closer look at the torn breast pocket from a waxed Barbour jacket, several scraps of duct tape, a blood stained paper hanky and a small balled up bundle of paper scraps.

  ‘Oh God, these are slim pickings, Jack. Where’s fucking Sherlock Holmes when you really need him? He would look at this stuff for a couple of minutes, just long enough to get a good fug going with his pipe, before declaring that the perpetrator has bright red hair, a mole under his left arm, wears women’s clothes at weekends and speaks French with an Irish accent. But me? I don’t see anything.’

  He berated himself, ‘Come on man you can do this. You have to do this for Annie’s sake. Think, you bloody idiot, there has to be something here. Okay then, you know how this works, don’t force it … this is what you used to do. Just give what’s left of your cop’s brain a chance to calm down and start to process logically what’s happened. Do it just like the criminal profilers and put all normal human sensibilities to one side. Try to get inside his head and think just like Thomas Burke. Okay, that’s not easy because the man’s completely barking mad, but in his own crazy way he does still make logical decisions to achieve his objectives.’

  Jack took the little cassette player from his inside jacket pocket, switched it to ‘play’ and placed it down on the desk. As Hank Snow started to sing “Born to Lose” Jack prayed that the song title was not prophetic and then closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, smiling briefly as he imagined Annie sitting in her usual seat on the opposite side of the desk, reacting to the playing of the old country classic with one of her trademark withering looks.

  Okay then, let’s try and do baby steps. What do I know? Firstly, Burke has snatched Annie to get at me. He somehow surprised and subdued her, then tied her up because he wants her alive. That’s good. So he must have had a vehicle and he’s taken her somewhere, probably fairly near to the city centre, where he’s going to hold her captive until … Okay, don’t dwell on the until bit for now, that won’t do anybody any good.

  He paused to light a cigarette, inhaling deeply, before reaching into a desk drawer to pull out a bottle of Talisker whisky and a glass. After pouring himself a large one he sat back in his chair, holding the glass against his forehead for a few seconds, before downing the contents in one greedy gulp. Then instinctively reaching for the bottle to pour a quick follow-up shot, he hesitated before firmly screwing the cap back on and putting the bottle back in the drawer.

  ‘Okay, drinking might make me feel better, but it won’t help Annie and feeling sorry for myself doesn’t help her either. So get a fucking grip.’

  He stood up, stretched and began walking slow circuits around the desk, first one way then the other, staring at the scraps of evidence recovered from the abduction site. He examined in turn the scraps of duct tape, the blood stained paper hanky and the torn material from a Barbour jacket pocket, all of which might have some evidential value further down the line, if Burke was ever caught and brought to trial.

  That only left the small balled up bundle of paper, which had probably been inside the breast pocket of Burke’s jacket. As he carefully unpicked the crumpled ball, and smoothed out twelve individual scraps of paper, Jack discovered that they were all receipts for recent purchases made within the Glasgow area. Thomas Burke was obviously a careful man, at least when it came to shopping, and apparently held on to all of his receipts just in case they were required at a later date.

  Six of the receipts were for the purchase of takeaway food, all made at various franchised outlets in the city, including McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Express. Clearly, after eighteen years of existing on prison canteen food, Burke was making up for lost time by working his way through the many heart-stopping delights on offer at Glasgow’s fast food joints. However, a further three receipts, which had much more sinister health implications, were for purchases of small quantities of petrol, each costing five pounds, which had all been made at different petrol stations. Burke had obviously not changed his MO and was clearly stocking up on cans of petrol, with the intention of setting more fires. A receipt from the House of Fraser store in Buchanan Street, for a Barbour jacket costing two hundred and twenty pounds, confirmed that the man appeared to have ample funds at his disposal and also had reasonable taste in clothes.

  Jack then had a surreal vision of an irate Thomas Burke striding up to the customer services desk in the department store, carrying a can of petrol and a lighter, in order to kick up hell about the poor quality of stitching on the breast pocket of his brand new Barbour jacket, which had been unable to withstand fair wear and tear on its first outing to the park.

  By a process of elimination he eventually focussed on the final two receipts, both partially torn and incomplete, which were for the purchase of 13kg Calor Gas bottles costing £25.50 each. These had been bought on separate dates, almost two weeks apart, with the most recent purchase made only the previous day. Crucially, the receipts did not record where the purchases had been made, or a VAT number, that information was presumably on the missing portions of the receipts.

  Jack reasoned that Burke must have bought the gas refill bottles for cooking, or to fuel a gas fire, which could mean that to ensure the privacy and anonymity he needed, he was probably staying in a rented caravan, or possibly even a motorhome. This did make sense to Jack, because most hotels and even modest guest houses usually have some kind of CCTV security system, which Burke would obviously want to avoid. Even in Glasgow, it’s not easy to wander nonchalantly past the reception desk, with a woman wrapped in duct tape
over your shoulder.

  So it’s probably somewhere with a transient population, a place where awkward questions are rarely asked and accurate record keeping is definitely not a top priority. A place where illegal immigrants, or people without work permits might end up. Or anyone else, who needs to live below the radar for a while. The kind of place where a guy on his own, who minds his own business, doesn’t cause any trouble and always pays his rent in cash, up front, will be viewed as pretty much the perfect tenant.

  For the first time since Annie had been snatched, Jack allowed himself a fleeting moment of optimism and muttered, ‘Okay then, we’re maybe on a roll here.’

  He had with him Annie’s backpack, containing her precious MacBook and internet dongle, which she had left behind in the Land Rover. He fired up both devices, did a Google search for caravan sites around Glasgow, and was surprised to find that there are only four licensed sites listed within a twelve mile radius of the city centre.

  He paused and experienced a moment of extreme self-doubt, acknowledging that his working hypothesis, which was based on nothing more than a handful of receipts and a load of assumptions, had more holes in it than an old string vest. Of course, even if Burke was renting a caravan, it could be located on an unlicensed site, or on a farm somewhere, or maybe even in the garden of a private home. But still, the torn gas bottle receipt did suggest a more formal site, one which kept stocks of replacement gas containers for caravan occupiers. His theory did somehow feel right and he decided to go with his policeman’s gut instinct, because he had nothing else and time was running out for poor Annie. The first priority was to get all of the sites checked out as quickly as possible and to do that he needed the help of the police. He dialled Andy Welch’s mobile number and, just as the call was about to go to voice mail, Andy picked up.