by Ellis, Tim
‘Then what did you do?’
‘I panicked. Do you believe that? I was a Lieutenant in the first Gulf War, a Captain in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I panicked. I got dressed and left her there. I’m so ashamed. I knew everybody would think I’d killed her and I thought . . . Christ, I don’t know what the hell I thought.’
‘And you didn’t see or hear anybody else in the flat?’
‘No – nobody. There was just the knife from the kitchen protruding from her chest, and . . . the blood. There was so much blood. I’ve seen blood before. I’ve seen dead bodies before, but this was different . . . We were in love. We were talking about getting married . . .’
‘What production were you performing with the dramatic group?’
‘Strange as it may seem, “An Inspector Calls” by JB Priestley.’
‘And here I am,’ Parish said. ‘What character were you playing?’
‘I was meant to be playing Inspector Goole.’
‘Ironic. Do you know anything about the printed message that was left in Caterina’s mouth: GOD IS WAITING?’
‘Nothing at all. Kefalis mentioned it when he questioned me. I have no idea what it means – apart from the obvious, of course.’
‘Are you a religious man?’
‘Not particularly. When you’ve seen children blown to pieces in the name of religion, it’s difficult to believe that there’s a God in Heaven.’
Parish knew how he felt. ‘Did you touch the knife.’
Durrell turned away. ‘I was going to pull it out in an attempt to save her, but I was too late. When I realised what I’d done, I wiped my prints off the handle. I know it looks for all the world like I did it, but I didn’t.’
‘If you are innocent,’ Parish said, ‘and if you did wipe your own fingerprints off the handle of the knife, then you also obliterated any evidence of the real killer.’
He shook his head. ‘I know. I’m a fool.’
‘Did Miss Makhairas have any ex-boyfriends?’
‘Not that I knew of.’
‘Did you meet any of her friends?’
‘Only those at the drama group.’
‘You have no other ideas about who might have wanted to harm Miss Makhairas?’
‘No. I only saw her when I could get away from the base, which wasn’t much. To be honest, I knew very little about her life.’
‘Is there someone we can contact at the drama group?’
‘Dixie Lang – she’s an ex-pat who lives with her husband Gerald in Paphos. Do you want the address?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Number 11 in Aristo at Coral Bay village.’
Maddie wrote it down.
Inspector Kefalis appeared at the door. ‘It is time to go.’
Parish stood up. ‘Is there anything else you can think of that might help us?’
He looked at the floor. ‘No – nothing. I’ve told you everything I know.’
‘I’m sure we’ll come and see you again.’
‘Thank you, Inspector, and you Sergeant Madison. I hope you find who really killed Caterina.’
Just before they left the police station, he went to the toilet and washed his hands. After being in Major Durrell’s cell he felt dirty and wished he could go back to the hotel for a shower, but they had a lot to do, and not much time to do it.
‘Food,’ he said to Maddie outside. ‘I feel like Robinson Crusoe washed ashore on a desert island.’
‘Italian, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese . . . ?’
‘When in Cyprus, eat what the Cypriots eat.’
‘The Shambolic.’
‘That doesn’t sound very appetizing.’
‘We call it that, but it’s really called the Shiambelos Restaurant – Shambolic sounds much better though, especially when you’re drunk.’
‘I see. You get drunk a lot, do you?’
‘Absolutely not. An RMP isn’t permitted to get drunk. Should we go?’
‘Lead on, Sergeant,’ he said with a smile and followed her to the Land Rover.
***
Brad (Yank) Fulgham stuffed a gum in his mouth, slid the wrapper into the pocket of his winter camouflage smock and examined their route from the DZ on a tablet with a GIS/GPS map of Iceland.
They were half an hour out of Biggin Hill Airport. Flight time to Iceland was just over three hours and they were flying at 15,000 feet over the North Atlantic in a modified GA8 Airvan.
Besides himself, there was the pilot – Allan Williams – and his team of four: Andreas (Sauerkraut) Weber, Mike (Marley) Davies, Jim (Cherry) Andrews and Eddie (Bulldog) Chambers. Only nicknames were used on missions.
When they had a visual of the Icelandic coastline near Grindavik, they’d drop to 250 feet to squeeze under the radar and, because the T-10D parachutes weren’t reliable enough for the jumper to open under 500 feet, they’d make a static line jump onto the northern edge of the Heidmark forest to the left of Lake Ellithavatn. It was risky, but necessary.
They’d have three seconds for the canopy to open, one second to check the canopy. and three seconds before they landed. Of course, if the canopy wasn’t there after the four-count, they’d have three seconds to deploy the gas-cartridge activated reserve and hope it slowed them down enough to prevent the bones in their legs smashing into their chest cavity as they hit the frozen ground.
Once they were on the ground they’d have to wait until it was completely dark – sunset was 2100 hours – before moving towards their objective. He estimated that the going shouldn’t be too difficult, even though the temperature was hovering around freezing point.
WikiUK was located in a suburb of Reykjavik called Breidholt, in a four-story building opposite a Community College. That’s the best Sir Peter could give them – it would have to do. They’d find it.
The eerie glow from the red light on the bulkhead behind the pilot combined with the camouflage cream on their faces made them all look like monsters straight out of a children’s fairytale. Maybe they were monsters. They didn’t think too much – if at all – about the men and women they were going to kill. It was simply a job like any other – nothing more, nothing less.
He’d served more than his time. At the age of nineteen he joined the US Marines and was quickly shunted into Special Operations and then Delta Force. He’d undertaken operations in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Panama, Liberia, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, Colombia, Mexico, Libya, Lebanon and Afghanistan. He’d killed thousands of people. Some of them were innocent bystanders, others were not. Some he’d killed from far away, but a lot were killed up close and personal with a knife, a garrotte or just his bare hands.
There were no nightmares, no wrestling with his conscience and he didn’t see the faces of the people he’d killed swirling around in his coffee mug. There was no remorse, no regret, no shame. He was a patriot. He’d done what he had to do – no questions asked. He followed orders. People more intelligent than him knew what was right or wrong – he didn’t care. He was making his way through life the best way he knew how.
Sir Peter had been looking for a Black Ops commander and some people he knew in the CIA had recommended him. Now, here he was – doing the same thing he’d been doing for twenty years – killing people.
The Brits were no different from anyone else. If things needed taking care of – sensitive things that no one else wanted to do – then he was the man for the job.
ETA in a couple of hours. He leaned back and closed his eyes – he wouldn’t sleep, but his eyes needed the rest.
***
As they walked out of the hospital Stick said, ‘There’s already more bodies.’
Koll turned to look at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You asked the Doc if there’d be more bodies. If the third foot belongs to a tramp – we have two bodies now instead of one.’
‘Mmmm. I see what you mean, but . . .’
‘Yes, I know you meant more university staff.’
It took them an hour and a half to reach 1
2 Old Ferry Road in Wivenhoe, Colchester – where Mathew Pitt used to live. The building was an old three-bedroom townhouse located on the waterfront. There was a wooden table and two chairs next to the front door where a person could sit and watch the boats on the estuary as the sun dropped into the sea.
Stick had brought the keys with him and opened the door. Inside – on the ground floor – there was a cloakroom, a toilet, a utility room and a large open plan kitchen/dining room. Beyond that, there was a conservatory with a piano and a small well-tended garden bounded by a wooden fence that had been painted green. The second floor contained the living room and one of the bedrooms. On the third floor there were two bedrooms, one of which was the master with en suite where Mathew Pitt appeared to sleep.
Stick wondered why a man who lived alone would want a house with three bedrooms. Until he remembered that until he’d found Jennifer, he had lived alone in a four-bedroom house.
‘It’s very tidy,’ Koll said.
‘And minimalistic,’ Stick added.
‘Like a show house.’
‘I think he was like that, you know – tidy and minimalistic. He lived alone, and had no friends to speak of.’
‘A waste of a life, if you ask me,’ Koll observed.
‘Yes.’
They systematically rifled through Mathew Pitt’s drawers and cupboards, but all they found was a photograph album of places he’d visited. There were no pictures of him, and none of friends or relatives.
‘Have we seen enough, Sarge?’
He nodded. ‘It doesn’t look as though we’re going to uncover the reason why he was killed here.’
‘Unless he was killed for being boring.’
‘I don’t think that’s justification for killing someone.’
On the way towards the front door, Stick stepped to one side to let Koll go ahead of him and stood on a Persian rug – a floorboard creaked. Out of curiosity – and not expecting to find anything of interest – he lifted one corner of the rug and peered underneath.
There was a brass ring-pull inset into the wood.
‘What is it?’ Koll said.
He didn’t bother answering. Instead, he slid the rug out of the way, put his finger through the study brass ring and lifted the trapdoor.
They both peered into the hole, but it was as black as a raven’s heart.
‘Is there a light?’ Koll enquired.
Stick knelt down and felt around the opening. Eventually, his fingers stumbled across a switch.
He turned it on.
There was a metal ladder that led downwards.
Stick looked at Koll. ‘Maybe . . .’
‘Do you want me to go first?’ she asked.
Half-smiling, he sat on the edge of the opening and dangled his legs into the darkness.
Extending his leg, he found the first rung of the ladder and began to climb down.
A single bulb inside a metal and glass cover didn’t give off much light, but it was enough to see by once he was fully in the hole.
The ceiling wasn’t high enough for him to stand up straight. He had to stoop and bend slightly at the knees.
‘Well?’ Koll whispered.
‘Why are you whispering?’
‘I don’t know.’
He looked around. It was a bare concrete cellar that could have been used for storage, but Pitt obviously hadn’t used it as such because it was empty.
‘There’s nothing down here.’
He was about to start climbing out of the cellar when he heard a scraping noise, and hoped it wasn’t rats.
‘What?’ Koll asked.
‘Rats, I think.’ But he wasn’t sure. As far as he could see, the cellar was a sealed room.
‘Ugh!’
The noise was coming from the far corner. He moved towards the sound, so that he could see more clearly.
‘There’s a kind of door here,’ he said.
He heard Koll climbing down to join him.
‘What’s a “kind of door” when it’s at home?’ she asked as she reached the bottom of the ladder.
‘It’s flush with the wall. There’s no obvious hinges or handle, and you have to be really close to see it.’ The door was about two foot wide by three feet high – just large enough for a man to climb through. He pushed the door inwards and heard a click. The door sprang open an inch.
He pulled it open.
‘You should have let me go first,’ Koll said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t stand not knowing. What’s in there?’
He reached inside.
Something touched the back of his hand and he jerked it out again.
‘What?’
‘Shush.’
He put his hand back inside the hole and found a dangling cord, which he pulled.
‘Oh God!’
‘For Christ’s sake.’ Koll shouldered him out of the way. ‘Jesus,’ she said and threw herself backwards.
‘Go outside,’ Stick said to her. ‘Call an ambulance . . . maybe two ambulances . . . Call the police . . .’
‘We are the police.’
‘Someone who deals with missing children.’
He scrambled through the hole.
There were six cages, which reminded him of an animal research laboratory. Three of the cages were empty, but the other three contained a boy and two girls aged around five or six. All three children were blond-haired haired and wore boy’s pyjamas.
Two of the children stared at him and began crying silently, but one of the girls wasn’t moving.
He tried to open the cage, but it had a sturdy lock on it that resisted his brute force efforts.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said to the other two children. He scrambled out through the door, up the ladder and began opening drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. Eventually, he found a knife sharpener with a steel handle that had a matching carving knife set. He took the sharpener back down to the cellar and prised open the locks, then he lifted out the unmoving girl – she had a pulse.
‘Follow me,’ he said to the other two children as he scooped the girl up in his arms.
Koll was waiting above.
He passed the girl to her, and then helped the two children up the ladder, before climbing out of the cellar himself.
‘The ambulance is on its way,’ Koll said laying the girl down on the kitchen table. ‘And . . . they’re sending Chief Inspector Pine from Shrub End to take charge.’
‘Good.’ He went to the kitchen, found cups in a cupboard, put tap water in them and passed them to the two children. ‘Drink,’ he said.
They gulped the water down.
He then filled a third cup and passed it to Koll. ‘Try giving her that.’
She took the water, lifted the girl up by the shoulders and placed the cup against her lips. The girl coughed slightly, but then began to swallow the water. Her eyes opened. She put her hands up to the cup and began to tip it back.
‘Slowly,’ Koll said to her. ‘You’ll make yourself choke.’
‘You’re all safe now,’ Stick said. ‘We’re the police. An ambulance will be here soon to take you to hospital.’
Koll helped the girl to sit up.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ Koll said to him.
‘What?’
‘They’re sending Chief Inspector Pine from Shrub End to take charge.’
‘Shrub End?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh! You have to get out of here.’
‘I’m a witness.’
‘No. I came here on my own.’ He passed her the keys to the car. ‘Quick. Drive the car back along the road and park up. Wait for me there. Once I’ve finished here, I’ll walk up and find you.’
‘What about the children?’
‘They won’t say anything. Go.’
She hurried out.
The children stared at him.
‘A bad man is after her.’ He guessed they knew all about the bad man. ‘If anyone asks – I’m the only person
you’ve seen here. Okay?’
The three nodded.
While they were waiting for the ambulances and Chief Inspector Pine from Shrub End to arrive, he asked the children about how they’d come to be there, their names, where they lived and what Pitt had done to them. He shouldn’t have done, not without a responsible adult present, but he knew that once Pine got hold of the case it would be difficult to find out anything worthwhile. The children also told him that there had been another two children in the cages, but they had been taken some time ago and never came back.
After a short while, two ambulances screeched to a halt outside. Paramedics jumped out and began examining and treating the children.
Then, Chief Inspector Ezra Pine arrived, and introduced himself and Sergeant Gerry Chalker.
‘DS Rowley Gilbert,’ he said. He didn’t know who at Shrub End was dirty – maybe he should have asked Koll for names, but he took an instant dislike to Pine and Chalker. It was like shaking hands with fish, they were so slimy.
The ambulances took the children to Colchester Hospital and Sergeant Chalker followed them in his car.
Chief Inspector Pine remained behind.
‘So, tell me what happened, DS Gilbert.’.
Stick told Pine about Mathew Pitt, and how he’d come to the victim’s house to see if he could find any clues to his murder.
‘I think you could say those three children were a bit of a clue, Sergeant.’
‘Possibly, Sir, but I’m not sure he was murdered because of them.’
‘Why?’
‘The children were still here.’
‘Anyway, I’ll take the case from here. Very good of you to contact us, Gilbert. These are the type of cases we like at Shrub End – open and shut. Three missing children found alive and well, the perpetrator already serving his time in purgatory and our clear-up rate is improved by a couple of percentage points.’
Stick began walking towards the front door. ‘Glad I could be of assistance, Sir.’ But he wasn’t glad, and he wasn’t happy. There were still a number of unanswered questions, such as: What had been going on here? Where were the other two children? Had other children disappeared without trace besides the five he knew about? Were there other people involved? Had Pitt been a paedophile? Had he stumbled on a paedophile ring, or a child-trafficking business? Was Mathew Pitt on Vice’s radar? If not, why not? He was sure there were a hundred other unanswered questions he could think of given time. He’d speak to the Chief – he would know what to do.