At least there was one car. Thank fuck for that. She didn’t know the make but it was quite an old vehicle, a bit square and clunky, like something you’d see on TV in an old cop show when there was a car chase, but she didn’t care. Kelly didn’t need a limo, just a cheap ride home.
She walked right up to it, but the bloke had his window wound up, even though it wasn’t cold, and the glass was dirty so she couldn’t make him out too well. Plus, he had dark glasses on and an old man’s cap, but that didn’t freak her out. Her uncle wore dark-lens prescription glasses because he had scars around his eyes from the time he went through a windscreen when he’d been drink-driving.
She thought she’d better check he wasn’t just waiting for someone, so she ducked down and peered in then gave him a thumbs-up to see how he’d react. He couldn’t have misunderstood her intention because he jabbed a finger towards the back seat. She got into the car gratefully.
Maybe he was a proper cab-driver, after all, because he had one of those heavy-duty plastic screens between the front and back seats and it fitted so neatly it filled every inch of the space between them.
‘Can you tack uz to Benwell?’ Kelly sounded slurry even to her own ears. ‘They usually dae it for a fiver.’
He just nodded, and she took the movement of the back of his head to be a binding agreement on both the fare and the destination.
Kelly settled back to enjoy the ride.
It only took a second for the doubts to form. She realized something was wrong even before he turned the key in the ignition. It was the sound that did it. It wasn’t like the noise of a normal car, particularly one without its engine running. There was a tiny hissing sound.
The car wouldn’t start at first. The engine turned over hopelessly so the driver switched off the engine and gave it another go. The fear Kelly felt was purely instinctive, but then she saw the little plastic pipe jutting out on the floor beneath her feet and knew straight away that the hissing she could hear was linked to it.
‘I’ve changed me mind,’ she told him, and sat bolt upright.
He ignored her and turned the key in the ignition once more.
‘It’s all right, I don’t want to go,’ she told him sharply, but the engine had started this time and the car began to move forwards. ‘I’ve got no money!’ she called out, but even that did not deter him.
She banged on the screen. ‘Did you hear me? Stop the car! I want to get out!’
He couldn’t have failed to hear that but he wasn’t going to stop, and what normal man would drive off with a woman knowing she didn’t want to go with him and had no money for the fare?
Kelly panicked, and that panic rose when the car picked up speed. Soon it would be out of the underpass and on to the main road, where he could drive off at full pelt and there’d be nothing she could do about it. And the cab’s rear-seat windows were tinted, so no one would see her or hear her. The car would soon be moving too fast to do anything. She knew this was her only chance. Kelly opened the door and flung her whole weight against it.
She shot out of the car and hit the concrete with a sickening impact and, as her body rolled, her head bounced against the hard ground. The pain was intense. It seemed to sting every part of her body from her head to her knees. The wind was knocked out of her and she felt physically sick from the blow to her head. The last thing she recalled was watching the back of the car as it carried on, it’s open rear door colliding with the side of the narrow underpass. As she tried to avoid drifting into a shocked unconsciousness, Kelly tried very hard to remember one extremely important thing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Ian Bradshaw knew he shouldn’t do it. It was at best irregular and possibly a sackable offence, or one that could get him into even more serious trouble … but he did it anyway. Tom Carney seemed very keen to get the address of a man who had been released early from a prison sentence for living off immoral earnings. Since he was on parole, the man had to register his current address with the police. It turned out he was living at his sister’s flat in Tynemouth.
Bradshaw wrote the address on a slip of paper then phoned Tom to pass it on, and add a note of caution: ‘You didn’t get this from me.’
‘Of course.’
Then Bradshaw lowered his voice to almost a whisper so nobody at HQ could hear him. ‘I won’t ask why you’re going to knock on the door of a pimp, because I don’t want to know, but please don’t end up brawling with him in the street or causing any kind of incident that might lead people to wonder how you found out where he lived.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ said Tom dryly. ‘All I want is a quiet word.’
‘A quiet word?’
‘Cross my heart.’
Bradshaw had been off the phone for less than a minute when DC Malone called his name shrilly across the room. When Bradshaw turned to look at the source of the sound, she said, ‘There’s a woman you might want to talk to about a cab-driver who tried to pick her up.’ She seemed to have just taken the call and was still holding the phone.
Malone was always crap at explaining herself, and this was no exception. ‘That’s what they usually do, isn’t it?’ he called back.
She failed to hide her exasperation. ‘But this guy wasn’t a real cabbie and she got wind of it somehow, so she got out of the car.’
‘Right.’
‘While it was bloody moving.’
‘Christ,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Where is she now?’
‘At home watching Cold Feet?’
‘Eh?’
‘In the bloody hospital, man. Where do you think she is?’
‘Who’s on the line?’ he snapped.
‘Northumbria,’ she told him, meaning the police force.
He almost wrestled the phone from her and when he put it to his ear he was greeted by a familiar voice. ‘The next time that bloody woman screams across the room at you,’ DC Argyle told him, ‘tell her to take the phone away from her mouth first. She almost deafened me.’
Bradshaw frowned at Malone. ‘You should try working with her every day,’ he said, and she slunk away to the coffee machine with a scowl on her face.
‘So, tell me about this woman.’
‘Well, it’s an odd one,’ said his Geordie counterpart, ‘and I thought it could be linked to your missing girls. She was found lying on the pavement. That, in itself, is not so strange on a night in Newcastle, but she had multiple injuries and was only barely conscious. As the ambulance drove her away, she told them she threw herself out of a cab because the driver was trying to abduct her. The place is a known pick-up point for fake cab-drivers but they’re usually only in it for the undeclared income. This sounds very different – I thought you might like to talk to her.’
‘I would,’ said Bradshaw. ‘I definitely would.’
Francis Walker looked like a man who had been defeated by life but still had a long way to go before he could formally surrender. In his early forties, he had no job nor any prospect of one. Neither did he have a home, and when Tom knocked on the door of the apartment in Tynemouth he shared with his sister, he found a man who acted as if he was expecting the Grim Reaper and wouldn’t have minded all that much if his time had been up.
Tom explained why he was there. ‘One of your girls has been experiencing some trouble and we thought you might know something about it.’
‘Why would I know anything?’ he protested. ‘I haven’t seen anyone since the day you arrested me.’ He clearly thought Tom was from the police. Tom knew it was unethical not to reveal who he was, but he wanted to see if Francis would let something slip so he played along.
‘You’ve had no contact with any of them since you got out of prison?’
Francis almost flinched at the word ‘prison’ and Tom surmised he’d had a hard time in jail. He looked like a classic white-collar criminal and they always struggled.
‘I’ve not seen any of them. Why would I? I hardly had any contact with them when they worked for me, so why should I see them n
ow that it’s all over?’
Tom gave a little shrug. ‘Blackmail.’
‘Blackmail?’ Francis looked genuinely confused. ‘How could anybody blackmail anyone? We were all arrested together.’ He was trying to keep his voice low, to avoid being overheard by a neighbour, perhaps, but this apartment block was like all the others: virtually empty during the day, while everyone was at work.
‘They were arrested,’ Tom conceded, ‘but you were the only one who was sent down. That must have made you bitter?’
‘I’ve had a bad time lately,’ he conceded, ‘but it doesn’t mean I want a bunch of lasses I hardly knew to have a shit time, too. It was a business arrangement, and none of us deserved jail.’
‘I heard you got sent down because you had rivals in the city who didn’t like what you were doing. They knew powerful people and they whispered in the right ears so you got a stretch.’
‘Look, I did the crime and I did the time. Am I happy about it? No. But what am I going to do?’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Tom. ‘Now, I mean.’
The question flummoxed Francis. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘I have no idea.’
‘You could use some cash, presumably, to start again. Some people think you might be trying to get that money by threatening your former employees with exposure. They didn’t get the attention you got in the newspapers so they can get on with their lives, but you can’t. Perhaps you deserve a little slice of what they’ve got. Is that it?’
Francis was starting to become unnerved now. ‘Sorry, who was it that sent you? I’ve never seen you before. Are you even with the Northumbria force? Do I look like I’m back doing what I was doing? I’m skint.’
‘Did I inadvertently give you the impression I was a police officer?’
‘Who are you, then?’ Francis looked scared. Maybe it was Tom’s mention of a business rival. Perhaps he feared he was about to be put out of business permanently. ‘I’ll slam this bloody door in your face,’ he said, but he didn’t do it. Maybe he was worried Tom would turn violent. Francis looked as if he’d seen more than his fair share of that lately.
‘Relax, Francis. I’m an investigative reporter and I work with the police on a number of cases.’ That part was, of course, true, even if it was misleading. Tom didn’t want to admit he was here on his own bit of private enterprise. ‘I’ve taken an interest in your girls because one of them is being blackmailed.’
‘Well, if she is, it has nowt to do with me, and I don’t want to talk about this any more.’ He put his hand on the door to close it.
‘Then I will naturally assume you have something to hide and that will simply increase my interest in you.’
Francis hesitated at that.
‘Or you could try helping me out, and maybe you’ll convince me you had nothing to do with it. Your call.’
Francis looked like he was weighing up these unattractive options. Tom could tell he was conflicted. Above all, though, it was weariness that he saw in the man. He didn’t have the energy to fight. ‘I’ll talk to you,’ he said, ‘though it will be a waste of your time and mine. Not that I’ve got much else on right now.’ And with that he retreated into the apartment. ‘Not here, though. It’s my sister’s flat and I’m just crashing for a while.’
Tom waited outside. The TV was silenced and he heard the scraping sound of keys being picked up from a wooden table. Francis returned and said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Tell tale tit
Your tongue shall be slit
And all the doggies of the town
Shall have a little bit.
‒ Traditional nursery rhyme
In the fall from the car Kelly had broken her collarbone, her wrist and two ribs and she’d fractured her skull. Bradshaw found her conscious, lucid but adversarial and got the impression she might just be like that all the time.
‘I’ve already been through this once. The other fella just left. He wore a uniform.’
He wondered if she had been more impressed by his predecessor’s appearance. ‘I’m following up on another case, which might be linked to yours,’ he explained, ‘so I’d be grateful if you could take a few moments to answer some of my questions.’
‘Go on, then,’ she told him impatiently, as if there was somewhere she had to be, instead of lying in her hospital bed recovering.
‘So you went down to the underpass to get a cab?’ asked Bradshaw.
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you use the normal rank outside the railway station?’
‘Have you ever tried that on a Saturday night?’ she snapped. ‘It’s like queueing for free money. I’d’ve been there ages. I’ve got more sense, man.’
‘You’ve got more sense than to queue up at the rank, so instead you went to a dark underpass and climbed into a strange man’s car and he tried to abduct you?’
‘Yeah, well, when you put it like that it sounds stupid but …’ She reacted to his questioning look: ‘All right, maybe it was stupid, but I’m not the only one who does it. There are never enough cabs at the weekend at kicking-out time. It’s usually just unemployed guys who can’t get by on the social, so they do a bit of driving on the side to make some money, or it’s people with shit jobs who aren’t earning enough to survive. The proper cab-drivers don’t like it, but it’s not as if anyone is robbing business from them. They can’t cope with demand as it is. Look, it’s no secret that it goes on. Your lot must know all about it. Where’s the harm?’
‘There is no harm,’ he told her. ‘Apart from the rapes and the robberies. We haven’t had a murder yet, but it’s only a matter of time. You could have been our first.’ Her face fell. ‘We do know about it, yes, mainly because we get reports of people being driven from city centres and, instead of being taken home, they’re taken to rough estates full of high-rises, where they’re robbed of everything they have and left to walk home. The lucky ones aren’t badly beaten up as well. Women sometimes get raped by these bogus drivers. That’s the harm in it.’
‘Then why don’t you warn people?’
‘We try to. We put posters up in libraries and community centres and place stickers in genuine cabs warning people not to get into strangers’ cars, but they still do it. Explain that one to me.’
The fire seemed to go out of her. ‘Okay, all right, it was stupid. I was drunk and I didn’t think.’
‘You’re not the first,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid you won’t be the last.’
‘But you reckon I was one of the lucky ones, don’t you?’
‘Well, we don’t know this man’s intentions, but only because you were brave enough to throw yourself out of a moving car.’
‘I said I’d changed my mind. I told him to let me out but he just ignored me and the car started to move. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘So you opened the door and jumped.’
‘I did open the door, then I sort of … fell, I think.’
‘What made you do it?’
‘I just said …’
‘I meant, what made you suspicious of this guy in the first place?’
‘Well, a couple of things. First, it was the way he was.’
‘And what was that?’
‘He was … strange … odd.’
‘In what way?’
‘He didn’t speak.’
‘Not at all?’
‘No. I got to the underpass and he was there and he must have realized I wanted a ride home. I stopped right by him and he indicated I should get in the back, so I opened the door and got in.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I don’t know. The front window was filthy and he was wearing dark glasses and an old man’s cap.’
‘An old man’s cap?’
‘You know, not a baseball cap, a flat one with a tartan pattern on it.’
‘Any idea how old he was?’
‘Impossible to tell.’ She seemed to reconsider. ‘Though
I don’t think he was all that old.’
‘What makes you say that, if you didn’t get a good look at him?’
‘His face,’ she said. ‘From what I could see of it, it didn’t look old.’
‘Fair enough. What did you say to him?’
‘Not much. I just asked him to take me home and said it was usually a fiver.’
‘And what did he say to you?’
‘I told you, he didn’t say anything. He just nodded his head, so I assumed he was okay with it. Then I noticed it on the floor.’
‘Noticed what?’
‘I’ve already told your mate,’ she said wearily.
‘Which mate?’
‘The one in uniform,’ she said. ‘And he didn’t believe a bloody word I told him, I could tell. You won’t either.’
‘Try me,’ he said, and when she didn’t respond he added: ‘I don’t know who you spoke to, but he wasn’t my mate. He’s with Northumbria Police and he probably thinks you’re just a daft girl who had too much to drink …’
‘Oh, thanks very much.’
‘… but I’m with the Durham force, and I’m investigating the disappearance of a number of women. I think you can help me. So, the question is, can you?’
She regarded him for a moment and realized he was serious. ‘Someone’s taking women?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I just happened to look down and I noticed this bit of plastic piping sticking out from under the passenger seat. It was black and there was a mat covering it, like it wasn’t meant to be seen.’
‘What do you think it was?’
‘I don’t know, but it didn’t look right,’ she said. ‘That, and the screen.’
‘The windscreen?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘The car had one of those big, hard plastic screens that keep the driver separate from the passenger. It was all sealed off.’
The Chosen Ones Page 13