Landslide

by David Menon

  Rita smiled enigmatically. ‘Would you like some wine, Jeff? Let me pour you some. It might help you to relax and accept the situation’.

  The sound of Rita’s voice so calm and normal it was making Barton’s blood boil. It felt like he’d walked onto a film set but somebody had forgotten to give him a script. When he left for work this morning everything was how it should be. He’d dropped Toby off at school and watched as walked through the gates to meet his friends. He’d been working hard all day not knowing that another crime scene was being played out in his own house. Where was his precious boy? How and why was Rita involved? Who were these associates she so casually talked about? She was sitting there with one leg folded over the other as calm as a breezeless sea. It was every police officer’s nightmare that a criminal would be able to get at a member of their family. Had this been the plan all along?

  Rita poured him a glass of wine and tried to hand it to him but he wouldn’t accept it.

  ‘I want to know what you’ve done with my son’ said Barton in as calm a voice as he could manage. He stared at her. Her expression was cold. Her eyes were blank. She stared back at him as if everything in the world was down to a simple click of her fingers. She was in total control and she was getting off on the effect that she knew this would be having on Barton. He could hear the clock ticking on the wall. He took his mobile phone out of his pocket. He was going to try and ring Brendan at least.

  ‘Don’t bother trying to ring either Toby or Brendan’ said Rita in that flat, soulless voice once again. ‘We have their phones in our possession so that they wouldn’t be able to raise the alarm and get rescued and you wouldn’t be able to trace them’.

  Barton couldn’t stop himself from giving her the back of his hand right across her face, knocking her head sideways with such force it almost knocked her off her chair. She cried out and for a moment she looked like she was in shock. Then she gathered herself and sat back upright.

  ‘Well, well, well’ she said. ‘You do have a backbone after all. But let me tell you this. If I go back to my associates with anything that suggests you’ve been hurting me then they will take it out on Toby and make Brendan watch whilst they do it. Is that understood?’

  Barton wanted to yell to the heavens with frustration. He was now trapped by some invisible constraint. ‘How do I even know you’re telling me the truth?’

  Rita flipped open her laptop which was on the table. She turned it round so that Barton could see. There was Toby and Brendan who looked like they were in some dark room with bare wooden flooring and each had one of their wrists cuffed to the pipes leading from a radiator that was fixed to the wall. Barton wanted to be sick. He wanted to lash out at her again but given her earlier threat he thought better of it for Toby’s sake.

  ‘Don’t bother saying anything’ said Rita. ‘They can’t hear you’.

  Barton slammed the laptop shut with so much force it made Rita jump.

  ‘And to think’ said Barton through clenched teeth as he leered down towards her. ‘And to think I had feelings for you. Well let me tell you any feelings I had have been wiped out by what you’ve done. Now the idea of you touching me makes my skin crawl’.

  ‘My heart bleeds’.

  ‘It should. It disgusts me to think I could’ve loved you’.

  ‘Oh come off it. You’re in love with a ghost. Lillie Mae isn’t here anymore but she may as well be’.

  ‘Watch your filthy, disgusting mouth’.

  ‘But you know I’m right. I was an ideal player in this game because you clearly have a taste for Chinese girls. You were so easy except when it came to your golden boy and that’s where any woman who gets involved with you Jeff will have to pull out all the stops to make sure she gets enough of your attention’.

  ‘You really are an offensive bitch’.

  ‘Truth hurts? Sorry but it often does’.

  ‘No wonder your own community hates you’.

  Rita laughed. ‘And do you think I care?’

  ‘Well who are you working for? Come on, let’s get down to the facts of the matter and you can tell me why you’re part of some evil scheme that’s resulted in the kidnapping of my son?’

  ‘I work for Paddy Higgins’.

  Barton paused whilst he processed Rita’s admission. Higgins had picked up where Bernie Connelly had left off and was now sitting at the top end of Manchester gangsters. Barton hadn’t really had any direct dealings with him.

  ‘But what does Higgins want that involves the abduction of my son?’

  ‘We want to draw out Bernie Connelly. He has a grudging respect for you and we’re certain he’ll be contacting you in the near future. When he does we want you to hand him over to us. When we get Connelly you’ll get Toby and Brendan back’.

  ‘What? This is absurd. Connelly is wanted for murder. If he comes to me he’s mine’.

  ‘Look Jeff if you don’t agree to the deal then Toby won’t get to see his next birthday. The ball, as you British say, is well and truly in your court’.

  ‘You set me up’.

  ‘It’s taken you a long time to work that one out’.

  ‘You weren’t meeting a friend that night in the pub it was just your cover story’.

  ‘Correct and since then we’ve just been waiting for the right moment to initiate our plan’.

  ‘Do you have a bloody conscience in there or what?’

  ‘Oh save me your Western values! The rest of the world has always had to suffer under the wake of them so don’t bloody start preaching to me. The plates of the world are shifting and they’re going away from the west. You and everyone else in this part of the world would do well to embrace it or it’ll bury you. When it comes to how the world operates now and in the future, I’m afraid the past is where Western so-called morality belongs, Jeff’.

  Barton was having a monumental struggle within himself to fight the urge to grab hold of her and beat the living daylights out of her. All the times they’d shared together these past few weeks, all the times they’d made love. It had all been part of a horrible plan to force him into compromising his position as a police officer by threatening the life of his son.

  ‘If I’d have known just how ugly you really were I wouldn’t have touched you with someone else’s’.

  ‘You weren’t exactly an unwilling victim in that department’.

  ‘That was when I was ignorant of the truth about you’ said Barton. ‘And what is the truth about you? Are you in a relationship with Paddy Higgins?’

  ‘Yes. We’re engaged as a matter of fact’.

  ‘So you’re prepared to marry a man who whores you out to other men?’

  ‘When I’m in bed with Paddy it’s about making love. When I was in bed with you it was about doing my bit to support his business interests’.

  ‘You really mean that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said it otherwise’ said Rita.

  ‘It meant nothing to you?’

  ‘I’ll admit that I did enjoy myself but only in a physical sense. I didn’t have and still don’t have any feelings for you, Jeff’.

  ‘Well I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up’.

  ‘So do I take it you agree to our deal?’

  The scales fell from Barton’s eyes and he saw red. He picked up the glass of wine she’d poured him earlier and smashed it against the table. Rita was startled and in that moment he grabbed a clump of her hair with one hand and pulled her head back. With the other hand he held up the broken glass with its sharp shards up against her neck.

  ‘I told you what would happen if you hurt me’ she whispered.

  ‘Shut up and listen! Now I’ve got no choice but to go along with your evil plan but let’s just make one thing very clear. If anything goes wrong and I don’t get my boy back then I’ll have nothing left to lose. So I’ll come after you and wherever you are in this big, wide world I’ll track you down and I’ll take great pleasure in killing you. Do you understand? Not in a quick, clean way. I’ll make
sure you suffer immeasurably before you take your last breath and then I’ll break out the champagne and dance over your grave’.

  ‘It’s easy to make threats’ said Rita, defiantly. ‘They’re just words’.

  ‘Oh you’re good to hit back at me whilst you’re in this position. But I mean every word of what I say and you’d do well not to underestimate me in terms of what I’m capable of’.

  The next morning Rita couldn’t resist going up to the room where Toby and Brendan were being held. They’d just been consuming tea and toast one-handed and when they heard the key turn in the door lock and Rita walked in they both recoiled. When she’d turned up at the house yesterday with two thugs she’d told them in no uncertain terms that they had to go with them or else her two ‘friends’ would hurt them. Brendan felt bad because he hadn’t been able to ring Jeff and tell him what was happening before his and Toby’s mobile phones had been taken off them.

  ‘What the hell is going on here, Rita?’ Brendan demanded.

  ‘You don’t get to ask the questions, faggot boy and don’t you ever use that angry tone with me again’.

  ‘But Toby has been sobbing his heart out all night’.

  Rita bent down and put on a faux sympathetic voice. ‘Aw, is poor little Toby missing his Daddy? Well Aunty Rita thinks that Toby’s Daddy is far too indulgent of his precious golden boy. But then again it’s so sad that precious little Toby can’t go crying to his Mummy. And why is that? Because she’s dead’.

  Brendan shouted. ‘You rotten bitch!’ And then he threw the remains of his tea in her face.

  Rita closed her eyes and paused for a moment before saying ‘You are so going to regret that’.

  Brendan tried to shield himself from the thumps and blows that Rita was raining down on him and then she stood up and started kicking him all over his body. Toby was almost screaming with fear when the door burst open and through the rest of the noise and mayhem Brendan was shocked to hear his lover Jaime’s voice.

  Jaime grabbed hold of Rita and pulled her off Brendan before pushing her towards the door. He then pointed straight into her face. ‘We agreed there would be no unnecessary violence’.

  ‘Your faggot boy threw tea in my bloody face!’

  ‘Well knowing you I expect you deserved it’.

  ‘You won’t be able to talk to me like that when I’m married to your father’.

  ‘Oh don’t forget, Rita. Blood is thicker than water’.

  Jaime then turned back into the room where a look of total astonishment was covering Brendan’s face. ‘I’ll clean you up’ said Jaime. ‘Then I’ll come back later and explain everything’.

  Louisa Pilkington, the team’s civilian support officer, thought she might be on to something. Barton had told her that there was something in the MO of the two murdered girls who’d now been formally identified as sisters through DNA, that had rang a bell somewhere in the recesses of his memory and after an extensive search through the system, Louisa had finally managed to notice a pattern in some previous cases she’d unearthed that remained unsolved. She took her findings to the morning briefing.

  Four teenage black girls had been found murdered in four different locations across Northern England over the last five years.

  Roberta Henson – found in parkland next to Leeds/Bradford airport in December 2012.

  Cindy Bright - found at the back of a council skip in Bolton, November 2013.

  Clementine Harrison – found in a derelict house in Bury, April 2015.

  Joy Latimer – found in the same derelict house in Bury, six months later in October 2015.

  ‘So what joins up all the dots here, Louisa?’ asked Barton who was already on his third cup of coffee. He hadn’t slept a wink. All he could think about was Toby and the distress he must be going through. He was glad in a way that they were keeping Toby and Brendan together because at least it meant that neither of them were having to face this on their own. He still couldn’t get over the change in Rita. When they were together she’d been so loving and sensuous. He couldn’t get over the fact that it had all been a great big fucking charade. And he was also grappling with the fact that he couldn’t risk telling Brendan’s parents what was going on. It wasn’t fair – they had every right to know. But he just couldn’t risk it. Rita had made it very clear that he must not tell anyone about the plan and if he did then both Toby and Brendan would be killed. Just thinking about it was like a knife slicing through his insides. He was a father who couldn’t get to his son who was in desperate trouble.

  ‘Pastor Gabriel of the Church of John the Baptist’

  ‘Do we have the results of the DNA test on Pastor Gabriel?’

  ‘Yes, sir’ said Louisa.

  ‘And do they match anything?’

  ‘Yes, sir’.

  ‘Elaborate?’

  ‘Sir, I read a magazine article that said that many of these new style evangelical pastors don’t stay in one parish for very long. The hierarchy of the church likes to move them around to spread the message to as many lost souls as possible blah, blah, blah. I looked at the record of Pastor Gabriel and he was at churches in all of those towns at the time each of the girls disappeared and he was subsequently moved on shortly afterwards’.

  ‘Do we think deliberately? I mean that’s what the Catholic Church has been doing for decades. Allegations of paedophilia are made against them and the church just moves them on to another parish instead of making sure the vile creatures face justice’.

  ‘Well it was always before the bodies had been discovered that he was moved on, sir’ said Louisa. ‘So it could be that knowledge of what was going on went wider than just the actual murderer’.

  ‘I think that would make sense, sir’ said DCI Ollie Wright. ‘These are crimes that have clearly been planned with the assistance of others’.

  ‘And to think that Pastor Gabriel had the fucking audacity to throw God and Jesus at us’ said Barton between clenched teeth. ‘He’s beyond being just a hypocrite. I mean, just how many more lives has he ruined by throwing different kinds of crap at them in the name of religion? Murder was probably saved for the chosen few. I presume the girls did attend his church services?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir, they all did’.

  ‘That’s way too much of a coincidence for my liking’ said Barton. ‘But tell me, was there DNA on those other victims that can’t be identified in our system? Just like there is on both of our recent victims?’

  ‘Yes, sir’ said Louisa. Her face dropped.

  ‘What’s the matter, Louisa?’

  ‘The trouble is sir is that it doesn’t match Pastor Gabriel’s DNA. I checked after we got the results of his DNA testing back’.

  Barton sighed heavily. ‘So where the hell is this taking us now? Look, Pastor Gabriel has to be involved in this somewhere so we’ll bring him in for questioning. And look on the bright side, folks. We could be on the verge of finding ourselves a serial killer which will mean justice for potentially at least six victims’.

  ‘That could go up to seven, sir’ said DS Adrian Bradshaw who then went on to tell the team about Muriel Adams turning up on his doorstep last night. ‘I’ve now recorded her daughter Sonia officially as a missing person. The difference here though of course is that she’s white. All the other victims were black. I don’t know what that means or how significant it is’.

  ‘And Muriel Adams has absolutely no idea where her daughter was taken?’ Barton questioned. ‘She asserts that even though she was closely involved with the church along with her husband?’

  ‘But sir, that’s the point. She was never as enthusiastic a believer as her husband Tim. She didn’t stay at the church as long as he did when they went there every Sunday with their kids. But her husband insisted that it was the right path for their family and dismissed her suspicions entirely. She always thought that he resented having got married and having kids so young and then when his first business went bankrupt he seemed to fall easily under the influence of this Pastor G
abriel’ He decided not to add the little matter of Tim’s bisexuality that he knew was leading the fight of the demons within Tim, although it was clear from Bradshaw’s talk last night with Muriel that she didn’t know anything about that. ‘But all she knows now is that her daughter Sonia went away in Pastor Gabriel’s car on the morning of 7th of this month and she hasn’t seen or heard from her since. And she’s out of her mind with worry’.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, how fucking stupid are these people?’ Barton charged. ‘I sometimes wonder if criminals get away with murder because the people around them had barely managed to get themselves through the fucking birth canal’. He looked around the room that had gone silent. They weren’t used to him kicking off like that. He was usually Mr. Cool, calm, and collected but that was when his son hadn’t been kidnapped as part of a grandstanding between Manchester gangsters. That was before his lover had stabbed him in the back in the most evil way. He needed to stay in control no matter how fucking hard it was because if he lost it he’d risk everything. ‘I’m sorry everyone. I haven’t slept much’.

  ‘You’re right in what you say though, sir’ said DC Joe Alexander.

  ‘I think we can all agree with you on that one, sir’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘Okay, but what we should also do is get our colleagues in these other cities to search the premises of the Church of John the Baptist to see if they can find anything that might help us. In the meantime, let’s tie up everything else we’ve got starting with our four women who were in the Rosebud street house at the time of the murder of little Manal’.

  ‘They either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us anything, sir’ said DC Joe Alexander. ‘They could just be scared’.

  ‘Which I think is probably the case unless their morals are as twisted as everyone else who walks through the gates of this case’ said Barton.

  ‘Well they’re remanded on bail and we’ve taken their passports, sir’ Alexander went on. ‘It’ll maintain the pressure’.

  ‘And what about Wayne Carpenter?’

  ‘There’s been no sign of him anywhere, sir’ said Wright. ‘But we’re also maintaining surveillance on his home’.