The Chosen Ones

by Howard Linskey

And Helen couldn’t argue with that. ‘Maybe Ian’s having better luck.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Ian wasn’t having better luck. Former Pastor Belasis received him unenthusiastically into his home, a dilapidated caravan at the edge of a yard filled with wrecked cars, opposite a Portakabin office. Then he listened to the detective’s reasons for calling.

  When Bradshaw had finished, Belasis handed Bradshaw a folder. ‘Every registration number I’ve taken in the past six months,’ he said.

  ‘What about before that? What about two years ago?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t keep records that long,’ he said. ‘Why would I? The cars here are old and used for parts. They won’t drive anywhere again. If I bought the one you mentioned, then it would have been for just a little cash so I could strip it down.’

  ‘Ever sell a reg plate?’

  The accusation seemed to sting the man. ‘I’d never do that.’

  ‘Because it wouldn’t be legal?’ It was almost a taunt, but the former pastor didn’t rise to it.

  ‘Because it wouldn’t be right,’ Belasis assured him.

  ‘And how did you get this business in the first place?’

  There was a second’s hesitation. ‘Through a former parishioner.’

  ‘Purchased from the man in question?’ asked Bradshaw. ‘Or did you con him out of it? Did you tell him it was the Lord’s will? Should I ask him, perhaps?’

  ‘You could try asking him,’ he answered, ‘but only through prayer. I’m afraid he passed away some time ago. This was a legacy, bequeathed to me by a man who was grateful for my many visits to his bedside during a long and debilitating illness.’

  ‘While you were still with the church?’ clarified Bradshaw. ‘The one you left under a cloud, shortly after a large amount of its funds went missing?’ He locked eyes with Belasis, and added: ‘Before spending some time in another institution.’

  Bradshaw expected excuses or protestations of innocence but instead Belasis just said, ‘Are you trying to shame me, Officer? I sinned.’ He spread his palms in a gesture of admission. ‘I paid for those sins. Am I to be punished for the rest of my life, or should I now try to make an honest living and a positive contribution to society? What would you have me do?’

  ‘A little bird told me there was a girl involved.’

  The pastor glanced away from Bradshaw then, as if he did not want to talk about that.

  ‘A very young one. The daughter of one of your congregation. I heard she got pregnant. I also heard she disappeared.’

  ‘The rumour of her pregnancy was malicious gossip originating from a jealous member of the congregation …’

  ‘Jealous of her or jealous of you?’

  ‘… and she didn’t disappear. She ran away from home. There’s a difference. Quite a big one.’

  ‘Not been seen or heard of since, though,’ the detective reminded him. ‘Run off to the big city, has she? That’s convenient.’

  ‘She was a wilful girl,’ he said, as if this was sufficient explanation in itself.

  ‘Was?’

  ‘When I knew her,’ clarified Belasis. ‘And very probably still is.’

  ‘That what made you fall for her?’ asked Bradshaw. ‘Even though she was barely fifteen?’

  ‘I was bewitched,’ said the pastor, then he quoted, ‘ “Do not desire her beauty in your heart, nor let her capture you with her eyelids.” ’

  ‘That an admission or some sort of justification?’

  ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you, only to God.’

  ‘That depends on what you’ve been up to lately.’

  ‘Selling parts from old cars, nothing more.’ His tone was wistful then, as if he truly missed sinning. Bradshaw didn’t believe him for a second. Belasis had the air of someone who would always have something crooked on the go.

  ‘Bit of a comedown, though, isn’t it? Not tempted to move away and set up another church somewhere where no one has ever heard of you? I think I would if I was in your shoes.’

  ‘I’m through with all that. I live a simpler life now.’

  ‘Really? Well, if I hear even a whisper that you have anything else to confess, I’ll be right back here, Pastor.’

  ‘You are welcome any time, Officer. We could pray together.’

  As he was leaving Bradshaw glanced over at the Portakabin and a sudden movement from inside it caught his eye.

  ‘What’s going on over there?’ he asked.

  Belasis couldn’t hide his discomfort. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Who are you hiding in there, Belasis?’

  ‘No one.’ But he looked worried.

  Bradshaw ignored his protestations and made his way across the yard towards the Portakabin. Belasis followed, struggling to keep up with the other man’s strides.

  ‘There is nothing there that need concern you. I give you my word,’ he said, which only made Bradshaw more determined to get to the bottom of it.

  He reached the Portakabin, yanked open the door and walked in on a small gathering of downtrodden-looking people who sat in rows of chairs facing the opposite wall of the cabin, as if waiting for something to begin. Hearing the door open, they turned as one and looked at the newcomer vacantly. The former pastor smiled benignly at them. ‘There’s no reason for concern. I’m merely helping this gentleman,’ he said, and with that they all turned back and stared straight ahead once more.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Bradshaw as the pastor ushered him outside.

  ‘My flock.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Not much of a church, though, is it, unless you like to pray in a Portakabin?’

  ‘The church is inside us,’ Belasis protested, and he brought a clenched fist up to his heart and tapped it. ‘These are true believers, some from my old congregation, who recognize that I was not entirely lost to sin.’

  ‘You brought these mugs with you, in other words? Fleecing them again, are you? How much is the weekly collection plate worth? Not much, by the look of them.’

  Belasis could not completely hide the look of superiority that briefly flitted across his face before it went blank again and Bradshaw wondered if a lying narcissist like him could ever be truly harmless. He had already caught the man out in one lie about his scrapyard church and he wondered how many more the former pastor had told him. Bradshaw remembered the young girl, then, who had fallen for this supposedly religious man before she abruptly disappeared. He wondered whether he could find her.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  ‘I say we focus on the yard supposedly owned by Mr Draycott to begin with,’ said Bradshaw when they met that evening at Tom’s house to share their findings. ‘And I’m making some inquiries to see if we can trace the girl from Belasis’s flock. Your Miss Keogh sounds more than a little unusual, but I doubt she’s a kidnapper. McCree’s site is the one that’s intriguing me the most, though, since they wouldn’t even let me inside the place, but I won’t be able to get a warrant unless I can provide some evidence that a crime has been committed.’

  ‘Can we at least watch the place for a while?’ asked Tom, ‘without being seen, I mean.’

  ‘Not from the road outside. You’d be spotted immediately and you wouldn’t be able to see into the place in any case from there but …’ Bradshaw stopped to think for a moment. ‘There are some large hills overlooking the yard and they’re quite overgrown. We could probably get a good view from there, but we’d need binoculars and, ideally, some way of recording what we see so I could show the evidence for a warrant.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Leave that to me.’

  It took Tom twenty-four hours to deliver on that promise and the two men were then able to return to the land around the scrapyard. ‘You promised to do what?’ asked Bradshaw as they trudged up the hill together, Tom carrying a large video camera in a padded case.

  ‘Film the raid,’ said Tom, ‘but only if there is one.’ He had called in a favour with a television news producer who had often needed his help, either when
he had no good stories for the evening bulletins or he had them but little of the inside track. Now the reporter was cashing in that debt.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Bradshaw was well aware of how embarrassing that could be. ‘What if the raid does happen and we end up with nowt?’

  ‘Then he gets nothing,’ Tom assured him, ‘and he won’t be able to use it, will he?’

  ‘He’d better not.’

  They climbed further until they were on high ground and could see miles of lush green Northumbrian countryside beneath them. Only the tiny scar of the scrapyard far below disturbed this picture-postcard scene. They sought the shelter of the dense gorse bushes and Tom started taking the camera out of its case.

  ‘Keep your bloody head down,’ hissed Bradshaw, gesturing for Tom to sit.

  ‘No one could possibly see us all the way up here,’ protested Tom, but he joined Bradshaw on the grass, landing heavily on his backside as he tried to keep low.

  ‘You sure you know how to use that thing?’

  ‘You’d better hope so’ ‒ Tom had been given a brief lesson with the camera, but he was certainly no expert ‒ ‘or this will be one monumental waste of time.’ He placed the camera on his shoulder and aimed it at the yard down below.

  ‘Looks pretty light to me, for a TV camera. Isn’t technology amazing? It’s only about the size of a ghetto-blaster.’

  ‘Got a bloody good zoom, too.’ Tom smiled, ‘I can see right into the compound.’

  ‘And?’

  Tom scanned the scrapyard for a while. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not a thing, or even a person. If the place really is bent, then this could take a while.’

  ‘Great,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘Cheer up, Ian. Ten more minutes and it will be your turn to hold the bloody camera.’

  ‘You have a think about it and let me know,’ he had told Jenna, but how could she do that when she had no way of contacting him? He left her to stew until he got in touch with her again.

  It happened early one morning, just like before. She came down to the shop and saw him through the window, leaning on that same wall.

  ‘You made up your mind, love?’ he asked when she joined him outside, and once he was sure she was alone and not wearing a wire. His hands had lingered on her as he checked and she was glad there was no one else around at this hour.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Not here, not now. I hope you’re listening, because here’s how we are going to do this. ‘When you come to meet me, don’t bring anyone else. If I see anyone, the deal is off. I’ll walk and you won’t get another opportunity to keep your past hidden.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Don’t go calling the police, because I’ll know. If you involve them, it’ll be the word of a prozzie against mine, so who are they going to believe, eh? Think about that if you get scared, because I don’t want you panicking and doing anything stupid. When we meet, if you’re wearing a wire or have any kind of recording device or camera on you, I will leave without a word. Don’t try and rig anything up there, because I’ll find it. I want small bills, nothing over a fifty, and I want them in an unsealed envelope so I can see it’s only the money that’s in there. When you give me the cash I’ll leave and you’ll wait for ten minutes before going back to your car. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I bloody hope you do, because I’m not playing games, Jenna. If you mess this up – if I even think you’ve broken any of my rules – then I’m gone, and the very next day letters start to arrive here. Not everyone will get one, just the landlord, the headteacher at the school, the vicar, the head of the parish council ‒ the people who’ll be shocked to hear about the woman with the dirty little secret who lives here among them. That’ll be the end of you and your little village shop. Now, do we understand each other?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Any questions?’

  ‘Just one,’ she said. ‘Where do we meet?’

  They had been taking turns pointing the camera’s zoom lens at the scrapyard for more than four hours and had talked about giving up more than once. They were only still there at all because both of them were reluctant to concede that their whole afternoon had been a complete waste of time. Bradshaw was on the verge of finally accepting the inevitable when Tom’s phone rang. The journalist picked it up and said, ‘Jenna?’ then listened for a while and asked, ‘What did he say to you?’

  Tom listened again and when he received a questioning look from the detective he held up one finger and mouthed, One minute, at him. A moment later Tom asked, ‘So where’s the meet?’ and when he received his answer he said, ‘Yeah, I know it, and it’s not going to be easy, but leave it with me, Jenna. I’ll think of something.’

  When the call was over, Bradshaw asked, ‘A problem?’

  ‘To add to all the others,’ was all he received as an answer. He took the camera from Bradshaw and began to train it back on to the scrapyard once more. Bradshaw lay down in the grass, the back of his head resting in the palms of his hands and closed his eyes for a while. Just when he felt he could almost have dozed off, Tom jabbed him in the ribs and said, ‘A woman.’ Bradshaw sat up and Tom pointed towards the scrapyard. ‘And a man.’

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Bradshaw, who could only make out the tiniest of shapes far below them.

  ‘They just got out of a minibus that pulled in to the yard and now they are walking. She’s in front of him and he’s following. He just pushed her.’ When Bradshaw sounded agitated he said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m filming.’ Tom kept up a steady stream of commentary on the woman’s movements. ‘He just shoved her again but I can’t tell if it’s a domestic of some kind or he’s trying to get her to go somewhere. Either way, it doesn’t look good.’

  A moment later Tom said, ‘Oh Christ, he just knocked her to the ground and I think he may have aimed a kick at her.’

  ‘Jesus, is she all right?’

  ‘She’s back on her feet and walking again, stumbling along. This is definitely something dodgy. She’s being herded towards something. Oh my god.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Tom didn’t answer immediately. He was too absorbed watching the man, who was steering the woman towards a large metal cover to one side, by the edge of a steel-roofed barn. The metal sheet was pulled away to reveal an entrance underneath and, with one last shove, the woman was sent into it and down she went.

  ‘It’s a staircase of some kind. It goes down.’ He watched until the woman disappeared and the man slid the metal cover back in place.

  ‘That’s your underground prison,’ he told Bradshaw. ‘Right there.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  The flowers caught Helen off guard and on a bad day. Maybe if she had been feeling less vulnerable she would not have welcomed them, but the words on the card attached to the bouquet were kind and the accompanying letter which landed on the doormat that same morning was long and thoughtful. It seemed to have been written by a very different man to the one she had argued so fiercely with when they broke up. Perhaps people can change. Maybe Peter had done some growing up.

  Although Peter’s letter was an obvious attempt to re-engage with Helen, more importantly it was also an admission that he was at least partly responsible for the death of their relationship. He conceded he had been dismissive of her career and too wrapped up in his own job, managing the carpet stores his father owned, to fully consider her needs. He should have been more tolerant of the strains placed on them both due to the long-distance nature of their relationship. He finished by urging her to remember the good times – and there had been some, she had to concede that ‒ when they first met at college and during the early years of their relationship, when she had genuinely considered he might be the one she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

  What the hell am I doing, getting sentimental about an old relationship that’s well past its sell-by date? Then she countered that thought with anoth
er one. What am I doing here, miles from home, living in a friend’s spare room, obsessing about missing girls? Where will it lead me? Her mother’s lecture had annoyed her, perhaps because it had struck a chord. You did have to keep one eye on the future. She folded the letter and put it in her bag so she didn’t have to tell Tom about it and she took the flowers up to her bedroom. Then Helen came back down and surprised herself by dialling Peter’s number.

  They debated attempting to hit the place there and then, but Bradshaw pointed out the obvious: he couldn’t even get through the gate. And as well as that physical barrier, he had no warrant. What if they tried to force their way into the scrapyard and they couldn’t find the woman or she was whisked away before they reached her? What if they found her but she denied everything, as she might under duress, and they were forced to leave her there? Despite her fairly rough treatment, she didn’t appear to be in imminent serious danger, so they reluctantly agreed to wait.

  It was the footage that did it. As soon as the magistrate learned about it, along with Bradshaw’s ongoing inquiry into the missing girls, he granted the warrant to raid the premises. Bradshaw knew he was taking a risk and that his reputation hinged on whether they found any of the missing girls in the scrapyard and not simply the downtrodden girlfriend or partner of a thug.

  They decided to go in early. Bradshaw was far from the senior man but he was expected to take the lead when the team went in, since the raid was his responsibility. More than twenty officers had been summoned, some armed, and Bradshaw felt under huge pressure.

  At dawn, the locks and chains on the gate were cut by police and they went in hard, catching the half-dozen men who ran the place unawares and dragging them from buildings across the site, then lining them up against a wall for questioning while the place was thoroughly searched. Bradshaw took some satisfaction from the presence against that wall of the man who had told him to fuck off.

  Tom watched it all unfolding from the same spot on the hill where he had witnessed the mini-bus pull in to the scrapyard. He recorded everything on the camera so he could repay his debt to the TV news producer. He could clearly see the officers scatter round the compound while they searched for the girl.