by David Hodges
He was on edge for the rest of the journey and he couldn’t have been more relieved when he finally pulled into his yard in Highbridge and jumped out to close the gates behind him. Safe at last – but then his mobile rang and it wasn’t good news as far as he was concerned.
‘You cut me off,’ his co-conspirator accused. ‘Been trying to get you ever since. Where are you?’
‘Just pulled in at home,’ he replied, returning to the van and pausing with one hand on the handle of the rear doors.
There was a heavy sigh of relief. ‘So you did as I said? Thank heavens for that anyway. Have you heard the news?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Duval’s dead.’
‘What?’ He stiffened and snatched his hand from the door as if the handle was hot. ‘How did that happen?’
‘Seems he snatched Kate Hamblin from the street. Police ARV cornered him in some disused pumping station on the Levels and put a couple of bullets in him.’
‘Bloody hell.’
A chuckle this time. ‘Don’t sound so shocked. It couldn’t be better news for us. We should now be in the clear. Duval was the murder team’s number one suspect and with him dead and nothing else to go on, they’re bound to lay all your hits at his door. I’ve a feeling it’s going to be case closed very soon.’
He felt sick. ‘I doubt it.’
A tense silence, then slowly, harshly, ‘Why, what the hell have you done now?’
‘What I said I had to do. I’ve got Hamblin’s boyfriend wrapped up in the back of my van. Just going to dump him indoors.’
The voice erupted from the mobile with an explosive hiss. ‘You stupid bastard. I told you to leave it.’
His eyes were cold and hard. ‘And I told you I do things my way.’
‘I’m coming over.’
‘Best not to.’
‘I said I’m coming over – don’t do anything.’
Twister didn’t answer, but abruptly ended the call. Then, opening the back doors of his van, he directed a small torch on to Lewis’s sweating face. ‘I thought we’d have a proper little talk now,’ he said. ‘And I know you’ll give me some answers this time.’
chapter 22
KATE PAID OFF the taxi directly outside Lewis’s cottage, relieved to see that his Jaguar was parked in the sideway, which suggested he was at home. She was surprised that the cottage was in darkness, though. If Hayden was the person she imagined, he should have been slumped in an armchair after finishing his tour of duty, a large glass of brandy in one hand and the stereo on, playing something from Wagner. That would at least have explained why he hadn’t heard her ring him from Highbridge police station. But there was no sound of music as she approached the front door and after repeated knocking produced no result, her misgivings mounted. If his car was there, where the hell was Hayden? It wasn’t that he could just stroll round to the supermarket if he had run out of milk or bread. Burtle was way out in the sticks and, as far as she knew, the village pub was about all it had. No, something was wrong – she could feel it in her water – and she made her way down the sideway towards the back of the house with more than a little trepidation.
She found the half-open French doors immediately and stopped dead. Rustlings in the undergrowth at the end of the small garden drew her attention for a second, but she relaxed when a large bird erupted from a bush and flapped away across the moor with an unnerving cackle of alarm.
Pulling the right-hand door fully open, she stepped cautiously into the blacked-out living room, feeling for the main light switch which she knew was on the wall beside her somewhere. Seconds later she found it and the chandelier flickered into life. She stood for a moment, studying the room with narrowed suspicious eyes. Nothing. No body, bloodstained walls or a man in long coat and baseball cap; just an empty room with a softly ticking grandfather clock and a long expired open fire. She laughed at herself for even thinking such things.
She went to the bottom of the stairs and peered up into the gloom. ‘Hayden?’ she called. ‘You there?’
More rustlings – this time, she fancied, in the thatched roof – but no answering shout. Frowning, she turned back into the room, dumping the padded envelope she had brought with her on to the coffee table.
Perhaps Hayden had simply gone down the pub for a drink or popped to see a friend in the village? Well, surely he had taken his mobile with him wherever he had gone? He was on call, for heaven’s sake, and he would never have been irresponsible enough to leave his phone behind. Yes, but he had been stupid enough to leave his French doors open, hadn’t he? She gave a rueful smile. Maybe he had lived in Burtle too long and the relaxed country ways were getting to him.
Crossing the room to the pseudo Victorian telephone (typical Hayden) on its half-moon table beside the front door, she dialled his mobile number again. But, although the phone rang and rang, there was no response until the answer service kicked in and she was advised to leave a message – just like before. This time she did.
‘Where the devil are you?’ she shouted into the phone. ‘It’s Kate and I’m at your place. Call me back.’
Tiny feet pattered across the floor upstairs and she jumped, staring at the black maw of the staircase and half-expecting something to scamper out into the light. It didn’t.
‘Damn it, Hayden,’ she said, slamming the telephone down on its cradle, ‘where the hell are you?’
She sighed heavily. Well, wherever he was, there was nothing she could do until he chose to ring her or put in an appearance, so she had no option but to wait for him to make the move. Slumping into a corner of the settee, she leaned her head against the high cushioned back and closed her eyes for a moment. She hadn’t intended going to sleep, just to rest her sore eyes, but she would certainly have drifted off anyway had the sudden sharp crack of a timber a few minutes later not made her jump. She shot up in her seat and listened intently. Another crack. She relaxed. Just the house settling, you silly girl. She smiled ruefully. Maybe it was, but she couldn’t afford to nod off completely, could she?
Shaking her head quickly to disperse the inner cobwebs, she wandered into the kitchen, snapping on the strip-light and pouring herself glass of water. It was as she was returning to the living room, sipping from the glass at the same time, that her gaze fell on the padded envelope and she remembered the SOCO’s words: ‘You’re mates with Hayden Lewis, aren’t you? Asked me to do a rush job for him on the quiet like … Just want shot of the bloody thing….’
She weighed the envelope in her hand and felt something bulky slide from top to bottom inside. The thing was clearly addressed to Hayden and had nothing to do with her, but her curiosity was aroused and, making a snap decision, she carried it out to the kitchen and slit open the flap with a carving knife from one of the drawers.
Feeling guilty, but convincing herself that she was fully justified after Hayden had kept her waiting for so long, she emptied the contents out on to the kitchen work surface – then simply stared at the bundle of papers and the familiar electronic tracker with a sense of shock. Hayden had promised to try and get the device checked out and it seemed he had done just that. ‘You little star,’ she breathed, as she flicked through the fingerprint forms, photographs of the tracking device and its batteries taken from different angles and, most important of all, the attached report and computerized copy of a criminal record file.
The words in the report jumped out at her: No fingerprints found on external body of tracker or inside device … Part print discovered on one of batteries … Not conclusive result, but search suggests probable match with attached….
As she turned to the criminal record file, she froze. The photograph was of a bearded man in his late thirties, wearing a dark jacket and white open-necked shirt, who had apparently been convicted of fraud some years before. He didn’t look like a murderer, but she would have recognized that bearded face anywhere; it was indelibly imprinted on her memory from the night he had run her off the road.
‘Larry Wadman,
’ she breathed, leafing through the papers and speed-reading, as she had done for Terry Duval not long before: Thirty-seven years old … Nickname Twister … Ex SAS … Dishonourably discharged … One time gangland enforcer and night club bouncer … Targeted unsuccessfully by Regional Crime Squad … Convicted of benefit fraud and tax evasion while working as night club bouncer … Eighteen months imprisonment….
Scouring the file, she found a number of different addresses for him – in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham – but, like the file itself, all were several years old. Frowning, she leaned back against a tall cupboard. So now what? She had her ‘face’, but no idea where he lived. It was torture.
She returned to the file and laboriously went through it again. At first still nothing and then, as an afterthought, she turned back to the envelope. There was a note from the SOCO inside that she had missed: Thought you might like to know, your man currently living in Highbridge. Has an undertaker’s business, Wadman & Son. I know because he buried my father two months ago.
Wadman’s Undertakers? She had passed that place often enough in the course of her duties, though she had never actually been inside. She stared at the note again in disbelief. A killer who was the local undertaker? Why on earth would an undertaker want to murder a police surveillance team? He was supposed to deal with people after they were dead, not actually initiate the process – unless, of course, he was a bit short on clients and needed to create a few more. But then why go to the trouble of killing police officers? It just didn’t compute. After all, there had to be enough sick old people around to fit the bill.
She shook her head quickly to expunge the thought, ashamed of herself for allowing her mind to come up with something like that. It was gross. But then she saw something else that was even more gross – spots of what looked like dried blood down the door of one of the cupboards and, lying in the corner, a tiny piece of red-soaked tissue. Fears crowded her mind. Maybe Hayden had cut himself badly on something and had been rushed to hospital? And here she was wasting time reading a damned crime file.
She rang Taunton Hospital first and, drawing a blank, tried Weston-Super-Mare. No trace of any person being admitted by the name of Hayden Lewis. Bristol’s BRI was the only other likely casualty unit worth trying, but again, she met a brick wall.
So where had the blood come from? There were no signs of a struggle in the living room, suggesting Hayden had disturbed an intruder, and, as his car was still here, she was at a loss to know where he could have gone.
It was then that she noticed the rug Twister had laid over the stain and bent down to look at it. That certainly hadn’t been in the living room when she had last been to the cottage and it didn’t go with the carpet either. Curious without really knowing why – perhaps female intuition – she lifted a corner and pulled it back. The blood had soaked right through the pile, but the ragged brown mark was still visible. She gave a sharp intake of breath and froze for a second, her gaze fastening on the French doors – the fact that they had been left half-open now assuming a new significance.
Straightening up, she walked slowly towards them, knowing deep down what she would find, but hoping she would be proved wrong because of what that would mean. The doors were old and the frames of both in poor condition. Nevertheless, when she bent down to examine the lock, she could see at a glance that it had been forced, slivers of rotten wood lying on the carpet in the gap. Her stomach churned. The killer had been here, maybe hiding in a corner waiting for Hayden to come home. He must have overpowered the detective and taken him away with him; it was the only plausible explanation. But for Kate, the principal worry was where the blood had come from – whether it was Hayden’s or the killer’s – and she knew there was only one place she could find that out. Grabbing a set of car keys with a Jaguar fob from a hook beside the stairs, she headed for the front door.
The cellar was as dank as the Levels. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling, flickering spasmodically as it stirred in a draught, reminding Lewis of a scene from an old spy thriller he had once seen. The place was full of rubbish. Bicycle frames, tea chests, broken chairs – even a couple of lidless coffins leaning grotesquely against one wall. Hitchcock’s Psycho could have been here or Michael Myers from Michael Carpenter’s Hallowe’en, and he shivered involuntarily, once more straining futilely against the tapes which still held him fast.
Before leaving the cottage, Twister had cut Lewis free of the dining room chair, so that he could get him into the body bag and out to the van, but if the detective had expected that this would present him with an opportunity to overpower his captor or make good his escape, he was sadly disappointed, for the rest of his sticky bonds had been left intact. And now in the cellar, he had been strapped to yet another chair – one that was nowhere near as comfortable as his own either. But at least it meant he was free of the body bag – for the time being anyway.
‘Comfy then?’
Lewis hadn’t heard Twister come down the wooden stairs behind him in his thick-soled suede shoes and he started at the sound of his voice. ‘Better than the lounge at the Ritz,’ he replied over his shoulder, recovering quickly.
The killer came round the chair and stood over him, flexing the fingers of his right hand with his left. ‘So what have you got to tell me, Detective Constable Lewis? A lot, I hope.’
Lewis shrugged. ‘Where would you like me to start, old sport?’ he retorted drily. ‘My police career, my early childhood, or perhaps even my time at public school?’
The blow was sudden and very hard. Lewis suspected that his nose was broken – fractured at the very least. Twister drew up another chair with the back towards him and sat down. There was no animation in his expression; no anger, no glee – not even the semblance of any human emotion – just the cold dead eyes studying the detective with the analytical interest of a biologist about to dissect a frog.
‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ the ex-SAS man said softly. ‘I know you and your girlfriend took the tracking device and I want it back. All I need to know is where I can find it.’
Lewis’s eyes flicked to the large muscular hands now resting on the chair-back as Twister waited for a response. The policeman’s nose spurted blood and there was a terrible pain in his eyes from the blow. He recognized his captor for what he was and he felt a frozen hand clutching at his insides. He wasn’t a coward, but he realized that he wouldn’t be able to defy this excuse for a human being for long; pain is an excellent persuader and he knew without being told that the cold-eyed monster sitting in front of him would have a lot more of it in his armoury.
‘Can I have a tissue?’ he said through gritted teeth.
One was produced as if by sleight of hand and Twister almost tenderly wiped his nose. ‘Well?’ he asked, returning his hands to the back of the chair. ‘Are you ready to stop playing games?’
Lewis nodded, knowing he had to come up with something convincing, but realizing only too well that to reveal that the tracker was with scenes of crime would mean a permanent place in the body bag. Twister had to believe that the device was still in play for him or he would cut his losses and disappear; it was in the nature of the beast.
‘It’s locked in my drawer at the nick,’ he said.
One of the hands started to twitch, but remained on the back of the chair.
‘And why would you put it in there?’
‘To hide it.’
Twister raised an eyebrow. ‘Hide it?’ he echoed, inviting an explanation. ‘In a police station?’
Lewis swallowed some blood and Twister gently wiped his mouth. ‘Kate and I are in the mire with our colleagues,’ he began, then, encouraged by an understanding nod from his captor, continued more confidently, ‘so we couldn’t hand the thing to SOCO to check for prints because it would have raised too many questions as to why it was put on Kate’s car in the first place and it might also have looked like we murdered Ray Jury to get it back.’
‘Go on.’
Lewis’s mind was
racing. ‘We intended getting it checked out ourselves on the quiet through a SOCO contact I know who owes me a favour.’
‘And did you?’
Lewis shook his head, trying to meet the other’s hard gaze. ‘He wasn’t on duty. I was going to see him tomorrow.’
‘So the device is still in your drawer?’
‘Yes.’
Twister considered his story carefully and treated him to a watery smile. Lewis was acutely conscious of the muscular hands flexing on the back of the chair and tensed, ready for the next blow, but it never came. Instead, a mobile telephone suddenly ‘beep-beeped’ an alert from one of Twister’s pockets, indicating he had a message.
With a muttered exclamation, he checked first one pocket and then the other until he found it. Lewis’s eyes widened, recognizing that the telephone was his own and guessing who the call would be from. Twister studied the display, then flicked a button and frowned. ‘You had the damned thing on divert,’ he hissed, and held the phone to his ear, listening to the message.
Lewis could hear Kate’s angry voice even from where he was sitting and smiled faintly in spite of himself.
‘Seems your girlfriend rang you half an hour ago,’ Twister went on, snapping the lid of the phone shut. ‘From the phone at your cottage too. Wanted to know where you were.’ He studied Lewis again through half-closed eyelids. ‘Shall we ring her back and tell her, old sport?’
Lewis watched him while he dialled. ‘Don’t answer, Kate,’ he willed silently and he clenched his teeth so tightly that it sent spear-points of pain up his injured nose into his eyes. But his fears proved groundless, for a few seconds later Twister returned the mobile to his pocket.