The Ring - An Alex Dorring Thriller

by Vince Vogel

  “Yes. That’s why I’m calling yours now.”

  “And he’s not answering?”

  “Obviously not. Do you know where Mr. James might be?”

  “Well, he had a visitor earlier on at eight this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “A gentlemen. I never noticed him enter, but I heard their voices. Then I saw him leave an hour later, but only for a view of his back.”

  “Did he leave with Mr. James?”

  “No. Alone.”

  “So Mr. James is still up there?”

  “I haven’t seen him leave, so I’d presume so.”

  “Can you open the door for us?”

  “Of course.”

  The lock clicked and they entered a long strip of hallway. A door to their right opened and a short man, wearing glasses and with a bald head, came out.

  “May I see your badges?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  Barker got his out. John obviously didn’t.

  “And your partner’s?” the man asked.

  “Left it in the car,” John said.

  The neighbor frowned a little and then turned his eyes to Barker.

  “Is Mr. James’ flat up these stairs?” the detective asked.

  At the end of the hallway was a straight set of steps with a door at the top.

  “Yes,” the neighbor said.

  Barker went upstairs and placed his ear to the door. No sound emitted from the place. Standing back a little, he rapped his fist on it and called out.

  “Mr. James? This is DS Barker. I’d like to speak with you about Rigsby Road.”

  He waited and nothing came back.

  “Who has access to this property?” he asked the neighbor, who stood at the base of the stairs watching them.

  “Carlton. And I’d assume the landlord,” the neighbor said.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Well, I have a key. We leave a set in each other’s apartments in case we lock ourselves out. These doors have deadbolts, so they lock when you close them. If you’ve left your keys inside, you’re doomed.”

  “Can I have them?”

  “Do you think something has happened to Carlton?”

  “I don’t know. We need to get in and find out.”

  The neighbor quickly hurried off to his apartment and returned a few seconds later, holding a set of keys. Climbing up to where John stood, he handed them over and John handed them up to Barker.

  They gained access to the flat. It was eerily quiet. The kitchen was straight ahead. As Barker and John went inside, the neighbor went to follow.

  “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to stay there, sir,” Barker told him and the neighbor remained on the top step of the threshold.

  The two men entered the kitchen. A cup with a tea bag and some sugar stood beside a kettle. The water was lukewarm. They entered a lounge. The curtains were open at a far window and a wedge of sunlight covered the center of the floor.

  “You smell that?” John asked.

  Barker snuffed the air.

  “Nah,” he said when none of the smells meant anything.

  “You don’t smell that aroma like burnt sugar?”

  Barker snuffed some more. There was a faint whiff hanging in the air, but not enough for him to guess it as burned sugar.

  “Maybe,” he said. “What’re you saying, anyway? That he made himself a creme brûlée this morning?”

  “No. It’s not sugar. I said it smelled like sugar. But it’s nitroglycerin. A gun was fired in this room recently.”

  Barker’s eyes widened. “Let’s check the bedroom.”

  Along the hallway, several items of furniture lay on their sides; a coat rack looking like a fallen soldier and a small table that had spilled a lamp onto the floor. Both men couldn’t help wondering if someone hadn’t been dragged through the hallway. Then they spotted a little blood on the hardwood floor. A small drip that had been spread.

  The door of the bedroom was ajar. Something didn’t feel right. Both men felt it. A shudder moved through them.

  “He’s in there,” John whispered.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  Using a pair of rubber gloves, Barker pushed the door open and it let out a whining creak as it swung on its hinges. The room was revealed to them. The bed was straight ahead. He was lying on his back with his legs hanging off the end and touching the floor. His right knee had a hole in it. They came into the room and stood over him. His blank eyes stared up at the ceiling. His mouth was screwed into a terrible grimace. The skin was pale and he looked like a ghost. The sheets were covered in blood. It was why he was so pale. Across his throat was a long cut that stood partially open like a smiling mouth or the coin slot of a piggy bank. Blood poured from it and had congealed so that it resembled a frozen, red waterfall.

  “Christ’s sake,” Barker grumbled.

  36

  They pulled into a motorway services on the edge of the city. Dorring drove the car across the forecourt and right up to a brick block of shabby toilets that stood in a corner. A sign on the outside advertised showers.

  “Tina,” Dorring said when they stopped, “I need you to come into the showers with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask. Just come with me. We don’t have much time.”

  “O-k-a-y then,” she breathed slowly.

  Tina opened the back door and got out of the car. Dorring got out next, before turning around and leaning his head back in the window.

  “Stay here,” he said to Otis. “You see anyone coming, you honk the horn. You got your pistol?”

  Otis lifted his jumper and revealed the handle sticking out the waistband of his trousers. He’d taken it from the man shot in the throat.

  “Use it if you have to,” Dorring said.

  He then walked away from the car to Tina and took her by the arm.

  “We need to go in here,” he said as he guided her into the shower block.

  It was empty. Dorring took Tina across the damp, filthy tiles and into a cubicle. Shoving the girl to the back wall and then locking the door behind him, he said, “Get undressed.”

  “What the hell?” she cried gently, a frightened look taking over her face.

  “How’d they find us?” Dorring said.

  “I don’t know. Like Otis said, they just turned up.”

  “Do you ever remember them putting something in you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a tracking bug. Something small that they would have inserted underneath the skin.”

  The girl thought about it and then her face flashed with realization.

  “They put something in our arms,” she said. “Said it was for contraception. Even though we all take the pill.”

  “Roll your sleeve up.”

  She was wearing one of Otis’ jumpers, the thing covered in holes, but enough to cover the girl. She slid the left arm up. Dorring took her hand and began feeling the arm. When he reached the upper part, his fingers felt a small lump the size of grain of rice in the tricep. He pulled the scalpel out of his back pocket and she pulled the arm away.

  Recoiling to the far end of the cubicle, she once more shone frightened eyes at him.

  “What’re you gonna do?” she asked.

  “Remove it,” he said as he took a cigarette lighter and burned the end of the blade to sterilize it. “It won’t hurt much. A small incision. It’s how they found us. They’re tracking you. They’ll be here soon. So we either leave you here or I cut that thing out.”

  The thought of being left behind scared the girl even more than the scalpel. She offered her arm again and he took it roughly. There was no beating around the bush. He went straight for it. She closed her eyes tight and groaned as he cut into it. Then he pressed his thumb to the cut and worked the device out until it popped into his hand.

  Dorring threw it into the plughole of the shower and then ran the water. It swirled around and dis
appeared.

  “Okay,” Dorring said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What? No plaster or nothin’?”

  “There’s some in the glovebox in the car.”

  They got back in the car and drove out of the forecourt. Dorring was busy thinking. Otis glanced into the back of the car at Tina and noticed the blood dripping down the girl’s arm as she applied the bandaid that Dorring had tossed her.

  “What was all that about?” Otis asked Dorring as he turned back to the front.

  “She had a tracking bug in her arm.”

  Dorring didn’t say any more. It was Otis’ turn to sit thinking. Then it came to him. His eyes widened and he turned sharply to Dorring.

  “Does that mean Jess has one too?” he said.

  “I’m guessing it does. So we need to get to Carlton James as soon as possible.”

  37

  John and Barker stood in the middle of an empty building with an employee of Thompson and Thompson Property Management. It was Dave. He was a tall man of bulky build with round spectacles and gelled back hair. His shirt was blue with a white collar. He resembled some high flying stockbroker from the 1980s. Something along the lines of Gordon Gekko and Patrick Bateman.

  The air smelled of perfume. The type young girls wear. Barker’s daughter had worn it when she’d been a teenager. Charlie it was called. Stank heavily of vanilla. It was all over this place.

  It was an old warehouse surrounded by closed down buildings. Hidden away. Just like Rigsby Road. The windows were covered over with frosted plastic, so no one could see in or out. It had been one open space originally. But later on, it had been split up into small, cell-like rooms with interlocking wooden partition walls.

  “Another empty building,” Dave said as they stood gazing into one of the rooms. “Third one. I told you, it says on the computer that they’re all empty. We only run the security on them.”

  “So why’s there not a guard here?” Hudson asked.

  “They’re patrolled by a separate company. They drive by twice a night sometimes. See if it’s okay. Other than that, there’s an alarm. We don’t necessarily have people on site. Especially when there’s nothing valuable here. I mean, there’s only the building. Who’d nick that?”

  “And Carlton James was the only person in the company that dealt with these properties?” Barker inquired.

  “Yeah. There weren’t much doing on them. I guess he came by once or twice a year.”

  “What about those?”

  John was pointing off to a corner. There were wires sticking out of a hole in the ceiling. It looked like something had been attached to it. As a matter of fact, there were wires sticking out of holes everywhere. In places ideal for cameras.

  “I don’t know,” Dave said, looking up at the exposed cables. “Probably had cameras here before. When it was a business. Took it all with them when they left. Some of those security systems are worth tens of thousands.”

  “They were here,” Barker said, gazing about the place.

  “Aye to that,” John said.

  Barker was about to say something more when his phone went.

  “Hey, Harry,” he said upon answering. “How’s the search going?”

  “No sign of her yet,” DC Harriet Green replied. “No one’s had eyes. We’ve been to most of the local homeless shelters. See if she turned up at one. We’re at Tent City by the Thames at the minute. Seein’ if any of the homeless here have spotted her at some point. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “So why are you calling?”

  “I just got a call through. A man’s been found shot dead in a hotel in Silvertown.”

  “What’s that to do with me?”

  “The description the hotel manager gave of the two blokes that had the room. Looks like Rawly and this guy Dorring.”

  “Send me the address,” Barker said. “I’ll head there now.”

  “Oh, no. That’s not all. There’s detectives already on the scene, so that’s covered. Just thought you’d like to know about it. What I really got for you is the DCI called. You know the bloke that got run over in the Westfield shopping center carpark?”

  “Yeah, it was on the radio. Big gang fight or something.”

  “Well, they traced the bloke that hit him back to a car he arrived in. Uniform went and checked it out. Turns out they heard something in the boot.”

  “What?”

  “A guy by the name of Kenneth Anderson. He’s general manager of the Belgravia.”

  “What the bloody hell?”

  “I know. Apparently, he’s had all his teeth pulled out. They’ve got him in hospital now. Left a constable with him. The DCI wants you to interview him ASAP.”

  “Alright, I’ll get right on it. Send me the details of the hospital.”

  “Will do.”

  38

  Dorring’s contact at the phone company got him the address of Carlton James through the number from Crosby’s phone. But when Dorring pulled into the road, the police were all over it. About fifty yards along was a squad car parked across the street. It was about ten yards in front of Carlton James’ place. Dorring immediately swerved left down another street and kept going.

  “Was that the house?” Otis asked.

  “Yes. We need to find out what’s happened.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “I haven’t got a clue.”

  Dorring continued to drive through the suburbs, through a blurred avenue of neat terrace houses with bay windows, large front doors and perfectly trimmed hedges. They were all bunched together in perfect square blocks. Dorring turned right at the end of the next road not because he had somewhere to go, but because it led further away from the address of Carlton James.

  Fifty yards in that direction, along another avenue of nice houses, the road diverged into a crossroads. As Dorring casually drove towards it, a black Range Rover came skidding across his path. He slammed on the brakes so that he wouldn’t hit it and quickly grabbed his gun. Otis took his own out and then turned into the back.

  “Tina, get down,” he cried at the girl.

  She took the dog and maneuvered herself low into the footwell.

  “Stay calm,” Dorring said to Otis. “Don’t shoot until I do.”

  The windows of the Range Rover were tinted black. It was impossible to see inside it. Dorring slowly opened his door and stepped out of the car, using it as a shield. The back window of the Range Rover unwound and a familiar face glared out at them.

  “Get in,” Philip Foster said.

  39

  Detective Constable Harriet Green was at a place called Tent City. It stood along the banks of the Thames River about half a mile from Dawes Road, where Jess Rawly had escaped Darren Crosby. It was in the direction she’d run and was full of homeless.

  It had once been a dock where consumer goods from all over the Empire were unloaded from barges and then fed into the West End shops. But the Empire and the use of the canals that once covered London was no more. The docks shrank away from central London and as they retreated to the eastern part of the Thames, they left behind their shell. Most of the warehouses and shipyards had been turned into expensive flats. But some of it remained unkempt and dilapidated. These boneyards of former commerce now housed other things less precious. The bodies of the displaced.

  The local do-gooders had donated tents to the people living amongst the waste. These stood shoulder to shoulder on the cracked asphalt. The residents had erected their own constructions too. Tarpaulin coverings. A rusty container that now housed a whole group of people.

  As the police officers came in holding up the digitally aged pictures of Jess Rawly, the residents skulked back into their tents, most of them shaking their heads and refusing to speak.

  Harriet Green crouched before the opening of a small, triangular, one man tent. It was blue, covered in holes and tears, and fluttered in the breeze flowing off the river.

  “Please,” the detective was saying to a frig
htened woman who sat at the back of it. “Have you seen this girl?”

  She was holding out the aged picture of Jess Rawly. The stench wafting out of the tent was almost unbearable. Mixture of acrid sweat and urine. The woman looked middle-aged, but she could have been younger. Her hair was thick with dirt and grease, the strands fixed together into a wad of lumpy fur. Her wide-eyed face was covered in filth, which had gathered in the creases so that it looked like the traced lines of a sketch artist. She was dressed in clothing that was coated in a layer of crud, which made it look cracked like leather.

  The woman shook her head, but she hadn’t even looked at the picture yet.

  “Can you look at the picture, madam?” Green insisted.

  Instead, the woman looked down at the space of ground between them. Harriet Green shook her head and stood up. Looking about, she saw more scared people. Many of them had left the camp altogether when they’d arrived. Simply gathered their things and moved off. Creeping out of there the same way they’d crept in, through gaps in fences, over fences, through holes dug underneath. They were the wild alley cats of the city and they hated all forms of authority.

  “It’s no good askin’ her,” a rasping voice said in Green’s ear.

  She turned that way and saw a tall, skinny man in a child-sized t-shirt that gripped his waif frame, finishing short above his belly button. On his legs, he wore a pair of filthy corduroys held to his waist by a piece of string that looped through the belt rungs. On his feet, nothing. Just like the Amazonian Indians in their jungle. His face was toothless and gaunt. The dirt had worked itself into something akin to a tan and what was left of his hair came out the sides in withered gray strands.

  “Have you seen this girl?” Green asked.

  “She in some kind of trouble?” he asked back.

  “Can you look at the photo, please, sir?”

  “I don’t have to. Is she in trouble?”

  “Not from us. We need to find her before she gets into trouble.”

  “Well, you ain’t the first person to come by lookin’ for her.”

  “Two men?”

  “No. One man.”