The Dossier (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 1)

by David N Robinson

  92

  Near Maidstone

  The car the Kent police sent to pick up Saul Zeltinger was a black Seat driven by a female uniformed sergeant called Beck. They were making good progress along the M20 in the direction of Folkestone and the Kent coast when Zeltinger’s phone vibrated once again. It was Meilin, this time sounding more upbeat.

  “I think I may have found something, sir.”

  “Go on then,” Zeltinger said, listening hard.

  “Four years ago, Ben Lewis married a young woman named Lisa Williams. During their honeymoon in Cornwall, there was a drowning accident and his wife died. Now, it happens that Lisa had a sister, Holly. She’s a nurse and currently based at Canterbury Hospital in Kent. Guess what? Lewis and Holly have been trading phone calls with each other this last twenty-four hours.”

  “Brilliant. Do you have her address?”

  Meilin read it out to Zeltinger, who wrote it carefully in his black notebook.

  “One more thing,” Zeltinger said once he’d finished writing, “and I’d understand completely if you felt unable to do this. It would be helpful if we could delay telling Cheng, when he calls you in the next few minutes, anything about Holly Williams, certainly for the next hour. That way, it gives us a head start in trying to locate this woman. Could you manage to do that?”

  “I’ll try,” Meilin said weakly.

  “Excellent work, Meilin. You’d better go, Cheng must be due to ring shortly.” He ended the call and spoke to the driver.

  “How well do you know Canterbury?”

  “My parents moved there about five years ago, sir.”

  “Well, there’s been a change of plan. I need you to take me to this address.” He read out what he had written down in his notebook. “Do you know where that is?”

  “Absolutely. It’s around the corner from where my parents are.”

  “How long will it take us to get there, Beck?”

  “From where we are now, probably no more than about twenty minutes.”

  “Can you do it any faster?”

  “If you’d like me to give it a go, sir?”

  “That would be most helpful, yes please.”

  93

  Eurotunnel Terminal, Folkestone

  Theirs is the first car to board. The train has only recently arrived from Calais since, as Holly steers the Ford inside the open side door at the rear of the train, they see the last remaining vehicle disembarking the train at the front in the far distance. They drive slowly through the empty carriages, the fire doors ahead of them closing. A member of the train crew beckons their car to a halt a short distance from the end of the front carriage.

  “There was a white Mercedes van, several lanes away from us to the right and behind. Did you see it?”

  Holly shakes her head. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I’d recognise Panich anywhere. The good news is that their van will be too big for this section of the train. They’ll have to sit out the crossing in a completely different part reserved for commercial vehicles only. It’s entirely separate, they’ll be unable to pay us any surprise visits – or vice versa.” He rakes his seat back and closes his eyes, his mind spinning with exhaustion.

  “Are you sure you still want to get mixed up in all this, Holly?” he says after a while, his eyes closed as he speaks. “It was me who chose to help this Leyla Zamani woman, not you. I could easily drop you in Calais. You could then disappear from sight for a few days. It would be much safer.”

  “No way, Ben,” she says, biting her lower lip. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on you.” He opens his right eye and squints across at her to see if she is smiling. She is, causing him to shake his head and close his eye once more.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. We should probably get some rest. The rocking motion usually sends me to sleep anyway.”

  They sit in silence, listening to security announcements over the public address system, each lost in their own thoughts.

  “What will you do about work?” he asks once the announcements have finished.

  “I’ll call in sick. It’s what normally happens. It’ll do me good to have a couple of days off. What about you?”

  “I didn’t have anything in particular planned other than drifting around, looking for work, that sort of thing.”

  Holly hesitates, gathering courage to ask another question.

  “You’ve found it tough, these last four years, haven’t you Ben? I’d have never had you down as a drifter. When I first met you, I was in my late-teens. I thought you were perfect. Perfect for Lisa, perfect for me as well. I was insanely jealous for a while, as only sisters can be. You had it all. You were her rock: tough, caring, always wanting the right thing to be done. Nothing could phase or defeat you. You were top of your year group; everyone knew you were going places. And then, like smoke in the wind, it all vaporised, the moment Lisa died.” She reaches across and touches his arm. “You have to stop blaming yourself, Ben. You’re so much better than simply being a drifter.”

  He opens both eyes and stares at the ceiling, conscious her hand is still on his arm, not wishing to move or to break the spell. They are in the zone with this conversation, a place he has not been to with anyone else in years.

  “One of the things I try not to do, Holly, is let people down when I make a promise. It’s a personal thing, a sort of inner driving force. My mother all her life never went into debt. For her it was a driving force too, shaping the way she lived, cutting back when times got tough, never breaking her rule. I think during her lifetime that if she had ever opened her bank statement and had seen herself overdrawn, she would have had a heart attack and died on the spot. For me, it’s similar. I am as good as my promises, they are what shape me and I don’t let people down. I have no desire to be über-wealthy, I am content to try and help others improve their lives. I don’t like seeing people get hurt. Yes I was trained to fight, and I have skills and talents that others will never have. So I put them to good use from time to time. But several years ago when your father was dying I made him a promise that I would look after his daughter. For the last four years I have been feeling ashamed that I didn’t fulfil that promise.”

  “But that’s not right, Ben. How can a freak accident like that be something you have to blame yourself for? It could have happened to anyone.”

  “I’ve been naïve, I guess is the answer – or arrogant. I believed that I was invincible. I’d had all this training where I had been conditioned to succeed at everything. Then, following Lisa’s death, my world fell apart. I simply had no frame of reference for dealing with it. I couldn’t work out how or why I hadn’t managed to save her. In hindsight, perhaps four years of walkabout has been excessive, a bit self-indulgent.” Momentarily he looks across at Holly and smiles. “It all sort of clicked into place yesterday, for some reason. There I was, another young woman dying in my arms, also trying to extract a personal commitment from me. I could have agreed but simply not done it. But then it dawned on me that making false promises was such an alien concept that I couldn’t possibly. So I made the promise and it was a wake-up call. I never could have prevented Lisa from dying, I realise that now. It’s taken me four years to get there, but there we are.”

  “What will you do once all this has blown over? Now that you’ve had this wake-up call, so to speak.”

  “One day at a time, Holly. We’re not out of the woods yet. Come on. Let’s get some shut-eye. The train has started moving.” He looks at his watch. The time is exactly twenty past five in the afternoon. “When we get to Calais, it’s my turn to drive and I need some rest.” He removes the baseball cap from his head and runs his fingers through his hair, tossing the hat into the back seat behind them.

  “If you insist.” She rolls over onto her side and looks across at him. Without warning, and with his e
yes still shut, he reaches across and holds her hand, drawing it across to his lips.

  “Thank you, Holly. Thank you for everything,” he says kissing her, his eyes open once more and looking across at her. “Now that you’ve stubbornly refused to let me come on this trip on my own, I suppose I should promise to do my best to look after you. That, for the record, has to be another of those promises that I shall feel honour bound to keep.”

  94

  Savile Row Police Station

  “What news?” was all the man said. The voice sounded cold, terse and irritable.

  “I want to speak to my mother. Please let me.”

  “It’s not possible. She and your daughter are fine. Where’s Lewis at the moment?”

  “We don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “There must be something. Is he still in Kent? Has he left the country?”

  “We are still searching. We think he’s in Kent. Canterbury was his last known sighting. There is nothing else. Please let me talk to my mother.”

  “You’re not trying hard enough. Perhaps I need to teach you a lesson. If you have nothing more by six o’clock, you will hear me breaking your mother’s fingers, one by one, do you understand? If nothing by seven, the baby dies.”

  Then the line went dead.

  95

  Canterbury

  The police driver, Beck, completed the journey in sixteen minutes exactly, a level of precision that Saul Zeltinger took pride in knowing about. He rang the doorbell to Holly Williams’ house three times. Each ring was long and loud, the sound shrill and resonant. There was no answer, nor any sound from inside the house. He tried the doorknocker next. When that produced no better outcome, he peered through the letterbox and called out her name. About to give up, he rapped twice on the living room window. A short time later an elderly woman raised the sash window of the property next door.

  “You aren’t half making a racket. Who do you think you are?”

  Zeltinger straightened his tie and introduced himself.

  “Detective Inspector you say? Well, I knew there was something fishy going on. There’s been a constant stream of people banging on that door over the last couple of hours.” Zeltinger looked surprised and she felt obliged to help him.

  “She’s not here. She left about an hour ago. Went off with a nice young man. I haven’t seen him before but he looked the boyfriend type.”

  “Were they on a motorbike?” Zeltinger asked.

  “No, she doesn’t own a bike. They drove off in her car, of course.”

  “Who was driving?”

  “She was, it was her car after all.”

  “Who else has been knocking on her door?”

  “A rough-looking type, smoked like a chimney. I thought he was bad from the moment he arrived. He came back again over an hour ago. I was minded to give your lot a call, we don’t like people like that around here, I can tell you.” Zeltinger was almost smiling.

  “Can you describe her car? What make and colour was it? I don’t suppose you’d remember the registration would you?” he asked.

  She looked at him bemusedly.

  “Not all pensioners have pickled brains or been on the sherry since lunchtime, you know. Some of us have quite good memories, as it happens. Now let me see, I think it was a fairly new car, red definitely. And French, goodness knows why she chose one of their cars. Now, the number plate, I wonder if I can remember it.” She goes silent for a moment, hand on chin, trying to recall. “No, I’m sorry,” she says eventually, “it’s gone. I thought it might be up there somewhere,” she said tapping her head, “but it’s not. Hang on a moment. I’ve just remembered something. Holly car’s in the garage being repaired and they lent her something different to get about in. Why didn’t I think about that before? Silly of me. It was a nice little runabout they gave her, white it was, it looked brand new. They were obviously off somewhere. She had a bag with her. She is not in trouble, is she? She such a nice person, always popping in to have a cup of tea with me.”

  Zeltinger assured her that she was not in any trouble.

  “Can you remember anything about this other car, for example what make it was, how big, that sort of thing?”

  “Well it was American, wasn’t it,” she said, rolling her eyes upwards. “A white Ford, can you believe it? We had a joke about it. I said it looked too small to be an American car. She said it went very fast. I’m surprised they didn’t lend her something British though, aren’t you, Detective Inspector?”

  “Quite so. You’ve been most helpful, madam.” He handed her his card. “If there’s anything else you remember, please call me on this number. I’d better be moving along. Thank you for your time.”

  “Not at all. I hope you find what you’re looking for. I’ll leave you to it then, Detective Inspector. Oh, if you’re looking for the young man’s bike by the way, I think I saw him park it down the road there, in that little cul-de-sac. Good luck with whatever you are looking for,” and with that she drew closed the sash window and locked it, pulling her net curtains shut behind her.

  Seconds later and Zeltinger was back in the car, once more being driven at speed, this time in the direction of the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone. Holding on to the grab rail with his left hand, in the other was his mobile phone. A Kent police operator was trying to set up a three-way call involving himself, the chief officer of the Port of Dover police, and the deputy-chief constable of the Kent police constabulary. He looked obliquely at his watch as the call was eventually patched through. The time was just after twenty past five in the afternoon.

  96

  Eurotunnel Terminal, Folkestone

  All vehicles departing from the Eurotunnel terminals are subjected to a number of checks, many of which travellers are unaware of. In addition to surveillance systems that scan vehicles to detect stowaways and random sampling of a selection of cars to check for explosives and other residues, there are television surveillance cameras throughout the terminal. Specifically, each car has to pass through a detailed number plate recognition check. The cameras conducting these checks are positioned next to security humps that ensure that an accurate record of the vehicle, its registration and vehicle licensing history, can be made. Cars that have been reported as wanted, stolen or supposedly declared by their owners as being ‘off-road’ – not taxed and therefore not meant to being driven – can thus be identified.

  The problem facing police looking for anyone trying to escape the UK on the Eurotunnel train at Folkestone is that absent knowledge of the particular vehicle’s registration details, reliance on surveillance cameras alone is unlikely to be successful. Many cars are fitted with tinted glass; sometimes the angle of normal ‘clear’ windscreens is such that the glass can often appear opaque. Both of these factors make a visual inspection of passengers inside a vehicle using TV surveillance equipment a random exercise. Motorcyclists, with their helmets and smoked-glass visors, are a particular problem.

  Based on earlier warnings issued by MI5 and London’s Metropolitan police, all motorcyclists had, that afternoon, been specifically pulled over on both train and ferry crossings to have their passports checked before leaving the UK. Following Saul Zeltinger’s three-way call with the Kent and Port of Dover police chiefs that afternoon, those checks had been halted and a different programme initiated.

  The authorities were now, according to what the German detective had advised them, looking for a man and a woman in their mid to late-twenties travelling in a white Ford passenger car, make and model unknown, thought to be either a 2013 or later registration. The trouble with this scant information was that there were typically forty to fifty cars an hour that might fit that description, sometimes more. It was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, made worse because there was a high possibility, according to what the detective had told them, that the vehicle might a
lready have left the UK.

  What had been agreed, therefore, was to do two things. Firstly and with immediate effect, each and every Ford passenger vehicle regardless of its colour departing from Kent by either train or ferry was to be subjected to additional checks before departure. This would involve all occupants of the vehicle showing their passports and having their photographs recorded by surveillance cameras.

  Secondly, given the possibility that the two individuals were already on board an existing train or ferry en route to France, specialist cameras were to be positioned at the train and ferry disembarkation points in Calais with immediate effect.

  The third possibility, the one that the German detective didn’t want to think about, was that Lewis and the girl might somehow already have reached France and would thus be well and truly off the radar.

  Saul Zeltinger had once again been trying to put himself in Lewis’s shoes. What would he be doing in their place? Take the train or catch a ferry? Considering all the pros and cons, every time he had come back to the train: it was quicker; there were fewer hold-ups and checks; and by taking the train they would, if they were lucky, be able to increase the distance between themselves and their pursuers, if not lose them completely. The strongest counter-argument, namely that the ferry was the least expected option so why not take the ferry, didn’t cut it. Zeltinger had become convinced that Lewis would have headed for the train.

  Lewis and Holly Williams had set off in her car at four-fifteen that afternoon. Holly had been driving, according to the old lady next door: the distance to the Eurotunnel terminal a little over eighteen miles. Even if Holly had been a fast driver, it would have taken them twenty-five to thirty minutes. At the terminal, they would have needed to purchase tickets and pass through the security checkpoints: perhaps that would have added another ten minutes, putting the time at about ten or five minutes before five o’clock. There had been a train at ten minutes to five and the next one was at twenty past. Zeltinger was convinced they wouldn’t have made the earlier train. There simply wouldn’t have been enough time. Which meant that the most likely scenario was that they had caught the twenty past five train. He looked at his watch.