‘Yes, just to say that the financial investigation on Ricky Swan is in the early stages but going better than we anticipated. I think we’ll get there because he got sloppy and thought he couldn’t be touched. It’s a mountain of work, but we’re pushing hard with it.’
She pulled her glasses off and chewed the ends, which meant she was finished.
‘Excellent. The only other thing I can say is that you will all have guessed that there are other strands of sensitive work going on, but as always it’s need-to-know only. As soon as I can share anything, I will.’
They carried on round the table with the progress on forensics, and information from witnesses was pouring into the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System where it could be stored and analysed. HOLMES, to give it its much more manageable and sexy acronym, was the engine room of modern serious-crime investigation, and dozens of highly trained operators made sure that what came in one end was processed and logged properly. It wasn’t the glamorous side of crime investigation, but in the real world detectives didn’t just stare plaintively into the distance and come up with the answers. It had been created to make sure the mistakes of the seventies and eighties could not be repeated: the Yorkshire Ripper investigation had proved that the old systems of detection just could not cope with the information generated in the media age, and particularly where a serial killer was involved. There was an outpouring over the story developing around Ingrid Richter and the result was that calls from the public were almost overwhelming the team dealing with the investigation.
‘Last thing I have before we close this off is that Pam Fitzgerald has been assisting the team looking for Ingrid Richter. Pam?’
Fitzgerald was clearly nervous, but it was the high-end company that was frazzling her, and once she got into her stride the tension dropped from her voice and she got on with it. It wasn’t positive but no one expected anything else. There was still no trace of Richter – the weather and unusually high tides hadn’t helped, and from what the experts said, she could wash up miles down the coast – if she was found at all.
Macallan saw that this item above all others had everyone’s full and undivided attention.
‘Thanks, Pam, and please keep us informed.’ She wanted to bring the meeting to a close but she needed to add something to the report on Richter. ‘If anything can keep us going when it gets hard it’s what happened to Ingrid and those other girls on the boat. Please remember that until we wrap this investigation up.’
She looked round the faces and saw a room full of people who had been made for crime detection. She’d been lucky and she’d need them over the coming days. When it had all started, Macallan had worried that it might turn out to be one of those investigations that ran on forever with no result, where the team dwindled as they were drawn off to new enquiries and the public forgot what happened once it was no longer front-page news, but it wasn’t going to happen that way – she knew it now, and events were drawing to a conclusion with a life of their own. She just had to stay with it and be ready to make the hard decisions when they were required.
43
Later that evening Christine Swan laughed at the antics of her friends in the pub where they’d met for a final bash before taking off the following day. The place was crammed with students determined to work off the energy of youth and damage their eardrums. Her boyfriend, way over the limit, kissed her wetly on the cheek and asked her (in the way of drunk men) if she was alright. She tried to suppress her giggles, but drunk or sober he knew how to make her laugh. Tall, maybe a bit on the skinny side, he was a looker – the guy every straight girl in college would have died for. They slept together a few nights a week, but he was away with the fairies and she decided she’d leave him to drink the rest of the night away with his mates – there was no way he was getting near her that particular night.
She kissed him back and said goodbye to her protesting friends. They were just getting started, but Christine never had more than two drinks and had to be in the mood to even do that. The memory of all those nights watching her father drink himself unconscious when he got back from the sauna couldn’t be washed away, though sometimes it had been worse than that: like when he brought one of the girls home and Christine had lain in bed with her hands over her ears to blot out the sounds.
In a strange way she felt pity for her father, a weak man who by some quirk had found success in the only place he could. She always saw the desperation in his eyes when they met – how he watched for any sign of the affection that she was incapable of giving him. Some day she’d move away from Scotland, and hopefully in time she’d find a way to make sense of the life he’d given her. It had made her a strong and independent young woman who was determined that the sins of the father would not ruin her life. She was wrong in that respect.
It was a beautiful evening and when the storm had moved north it had dragged up balmy heat behind it from southern Europe. She walked slowly along the quiet streets towards her flat and thought about her upcoming trip to Italy.
Italy – the name itself almost made her tremble; there was so much she’d always wanted to see in Florence, Rome and Venice. She was doing the cities all on her own so that she could look, stare and touch as much as she wanted without worrying about anyone else. Her father was paying for it all, and though she’d tried to argue he’d made sure she was booked into the best hotels so that she would be safe from the dangers that lurked around single female travellers. Her instinct had been to say no, but the temptation of Italy had been just too much for her to refuse. She felt an element of guilt at taking the money from him, but she knew she could rob him blind if she was a different person and that would never happen. As soon as she could exist without his tainted money she would never take another penny – and that included any inheritance.
Most of the flats round about her were rented by other students and there was the feel of a small friendly community where everyone knew everyone else. She started to punch the code into the flat’s entry system but never reached the last number. Maxi Turner came out of the shadows and punched the side of her head then watched the girl’s knees buckle. He grabbed her before she hit the deck and the three men did their work quickly and efficiently. Real pros. A rag was stuffed in her mouth, an old pillowcase rigged up with a drawstring pulled over her head and down over her arms as her hands were bound with a plastic tie. They bundled her into the van in under a minute and the driver pulled away calmly, keeping his eye on the speed limit all the time.
They’d worked on the van and she was dropped into a space under the floor then sealed in. By the time they stopped, a few miles away, the boiler suits plus Christine’s shoes had already been stuffed into plastic shopping bags with the remnants of a couple of Chinese meals and the lot was tossed into a skip. The discarded food was usually enough to put off any skip rakers from investigating further.
Two of the men left the van and sauntered off casually to pick up their car, which was parked about two minutes’ walk away, while Turner got in behind the wheel and wondered if they would pull it off. They’d switched the plates already but it only took a couple of bored traffic cops to pull him over, examine the old van for faults and find themselves with the case of their lives.
Handyside had arranged to rent an old shooting lodge no more than forty minutes’ drive from Pitlochry and well into the wilds. There was nothing else near them for miles and on one side a small loch added to the privacy he wanted. It was perfect and they had an unrestricted view of the surrounding area if any nosey bastard started looking around. He was there on his own when he heard the van crackling the stone chips on the path leading into the grounds. He picked up a ski mask and went out to meet them.
‘How did it go there?’
‘Not a hitch and never saw a soul in the area. We were in and out before she knew what hit her.’ Turner lit up a cigarette and tilted his head back as he eased off the knots in his neck muscles. ‘What now then?’ Turner knew the drill by heart and had already stopped using n
ames.
‘Let’s get her inside and we’ll go over it again before I make the call.’
As Handyside finished speaking the car with the rest of his crew turned up and they kept quiet, waiting for orders. They knew the girl was conscious and her senses would be on extreme alert. Abductions of young women got you a lifer and no one was going to break the rules with Pete Handyside leading the effort.
Christine Swan, still conscious but with a sore head, started to suck in more of the stale air under the floor of the van. She felt as if her lungs were burning with the effort to breathe through the filthy rag stuffed in her mouth. The engine had been switched off and she was aware of the muffled voices near to the van. They were just loud enough for her to hear that the accents weren’t Scottish. English and perhaps North-east? The initial confusion mixed with extreme fear had shorted her senses for a few minutes after she’d been dropped below the floor of the van, but she’d tried to work out what she could do. Only the week before, her boyfriend had forced her to sit and watch two Liam Neeson films where his family had been abducted, and of course he’d saved them, and she’d tried to do what big Liam had done in one of them when he was taken. It had seemed so easy on screen: pick up sounds, remember when the van turned right and left or stopped at junctions. None of it had worked though, far more difficult in real life, and when she gave up trying, she’d tried to work out why on earth anyone would want to take her. It had to be about her father, but if not . . . the other option made her gag. If it was some sort of sex attack then she was probably going to die.
Swan was an intelligent young woman though and forced herself to think of the more rational options. Her father ran saunas and escort services and he was loaded. He probably mixed with all kinds, and if it was a kidnap for ransom then she might have a chance of surviving if he paid up. She was sure he would pay and all she’d have to do was cooperate.
She heard the sound of the van door being pulled open and lost control of her breathing again, her heart pounding like a clenched fist against the inside of her ribcage. The men lifted her out more gently than they’d put her in and she was pulled upright till she felt her bare feet on stone chips. She bent over involuntarily in an instinctive reaction to the fear that they might hurt her.
‘Stay calm and no one will harm you. Nod if you understand.’
She did what she was told and tried to straighten her back. The words came through voice distortion equipment and if she needed confirmation that they were professionals then she had her evidence. There was a hand on each of her arms and she felt someone put what felt like slippers onto her feet. She was guided into some kind of building where she was pressed down onto a hard-backed chair. The pillowcase was pulled from her head and she blinked at the sight of the two men, both wearing balaclavas, who stood in front of her. One of them squeezed her cheeks with one hand, pulled the rag from her mouth and dropped it into a cellophane packet that he stuffed into his side pocket. The room was small, made of wood, and apart from a bed and large bucket with a toilet roll sitting next to it, there was nothing to see. Heavy blinds had been put over the windows so the room was in semi-darkness, the only glow coming from a night light that cast monstrous shadows behind the two men.
‘What do you want?’ She felt as if her throat was closing and she fought to get the words out.
The distorted voice that came through a speaker rigged up next to the door startled her.
‘The men with you are there to help you if needs be. You’re in no danger and our business is with your father. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘When that business is done you’ll go back to your life. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll be kept in this room and we’ll bring you food and anything you need. You’ll be given privacy when you need it. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s very important that you understand that if you do anything stupid then we’ll hurt you. Not kill you, but hurt you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ She managed to get the word out but couldn’t contain her fear and she started sobbing uncontrollably.
‘We may want you to speak to your father, and if we do, you can only say what we’ve told you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded and wondered what the fuck they expected her to say.
‘Okay, you’ll be restrained by light chains, so you have some restricted movement. Is all that understood?’
‘Yes.’ Swan surprised herself and calmed down. They weren’t going to hurt her – at least not right away. It was a small thing, but she was human and that was all she needed to keep her hopes alive.
One of the masked men stood behind her chair and the other one pulled out a small camera and took two photographs. It was just as well for her sanity that she couldn’t see the man behind her quietly pull out a hunting knife and hold it at a forty-five-degree angle across his abdomen.
They left the room and the metallic voice crackled through the loudspeaker again.
‘There’s a pair of ski pants and a sweater lying on the bed. Strip completely, put them on, leave your clothes on the floor and sit down when it’s done. My men are outside the door and window so please do as I say now.’
She knew the best thing she could do was comply. She pulled on the fresh clothes and sat down. The door clicked open at the same time and she realised there had to be a camera somewhere, but there was nothing obvious that she could see in the half-light. They didn’t speak and shackled her left ankle to a length of chain running to a huge metal weight at the side of the bed. When it was done they left, closing the door behind them, and the voice came back on through the loudspeaker.
‘You’ll have food shortly and we’ll make you as comfortable as possible while you’re here. Now is there anything you want to know?’
She shook her head and stared at the floor.
‘Very well. Every couple of hours I’ll ask you if you need anything. Try and relax and this will soon be over.’
They were taking pains to hide their identity and for some reason that reassured her. If she’d known who’d abducted her and what they’d done in the past it would have had the opposite effect.
Turner pulled off his mask and sat down opposite Handyside. ‘She seems okay. Don’t think we’ll have any problem with this one.’ He lit up another smoke and promised himself when he fucked off to the Med that he’d try to quit.
‘Make sure the boys are disciplined with the girl. If anyone lays a finger on her I’ll cut their hands off. As long as she can’t identify anyone then there’s no need to harm her.’
Turner puzzled again that a man who could give the order to kill without a moment’s hesitation could care so much about Ricky Swan’s daughter. He’d never been able to work that one out. He’d seen so many in the business who just enjoyed violence, but Handyside never hurt anyone if there wasn’t a commercial case for it. Turner himself had handed out some serious damage in his time and put a few men in hell, and if they were deserving cases he would feel the high in the power of life and death just before he put them away. He was getting tired of it though; the pain he’d inflicted on other people had started to haunt him and he was no longer sure what it had all meant. He promised himself again that this would be his last match – he just wanted to feel the sun on his face and sleep easily at night. ‘No need to worry,’ he told Handyside. ‘I’ve warned them and they know the score. They’re our best men and they’ve been with us a long time now. They don’t fuck about.’
That was when Handyside gave Turner his next order. ‘I want you to get a hold of Tony Harrison and make sure he’s on the end of a line if we need his expert advice at any time. No excuses unless he’s dead.’
Turner rarely questioned his friend, as he tended to be right, but bringing bent filth into this game bothered him. He just never trusted dirty cops; they had no standards. He wondered if he was starting to suffer from pre-retirement nerves. Everything
seemed to carry a portent of failure. He thought again about what they’d done to those girls on the Brighter Dawn. He’d been brought up in a Catholic home and though the priest had spent more time abusing the children of his flock than saving souls, Turner had never quite turned his back on his god – and he’d committed so many sins in his life that part of him still worried that the big man was up there in the sky, waiting to kick the shit out of him when the time came.
‘Sorry, why do we need that rat involved?’ he asked. ‘Never trusted the bastard and he makes me choke.’
‘Why do I trust a man like that?’ Handyside had already seen the question in Turner’s eyes. ‘He is what he is, and apart from the corruption he’s a top detective by all accounts. The best, and that’s why we pay him so much for doing so little. When you think about it, we ask him the odd question, he gets the answer off his criminal intelligence system and we pay him a small fortune, all tax-free. The thing is, my friend, that despite all we’ve done over the years – and we’ve lifted plenty of men to have a little chat with them – we haven’t done this sort of potentially high-profile thing before. The police are good at this game and are all high-tech now. If they get involved and we don’t know it then we’re in trouble. I want him on call so he can tell us if we’re walking into a bear trap. It’s about time he earned his wages.’
Handyside put his hand round Turner’s shoulder, trying to reassure the man who’d stood with him all the way; he could see Turner was burning out and needed a break away from the game.
‘When this is over I want you to go and have your time in the sun. You’ve earned it and I’ve put away a retirement bonus for you over the years. It’s going to be all yours. Bad job if Tony Harrison can do it and you can’t. What do you say?’
Turner was taken by surprise; he had been worried about how he’d break away from Handyside, but here was the man giving him the green light and bonus money included. The weight dropped from his shoulders as he realised the man had it right again and bringing in Harrison was no more than insurance. It made perfect sense. His dream apartment overlooking the Med began to look like a real possibility; perhaps they might just make it and be forgiven for the Brighter Dawn.
Shores of Death Page 31