by Zoe Sharp
Any trace of humour disappeared from the policeman’s face. “Yes, well we’re looking for one of your employees—Kelly Jacks. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why sir. If she’s here you’d do well to say so now.”
McCarron kept his expression flat. Not difficult when the majority of his face was too stiff and too tender to display much emotion anyway. “Why on earth would you think she’d be here?
“That, sir.” The policeman stepped sideways and pointed. McCarron glanced over the man’s shoulder and saw at once Kelly’s old Mini parked on the other side of the road. It was surrounded by crime-scene tape and being guarded by two more uniforms while a flutter of neighbours gathered to gawk at the show.
Bloody busybodies.
And just as that thought struck, another followed along almost instantly.
Where’s my car?
90
“OK—got it thanks,” DC Dempsey said and dropped the phone back on its cradle. He glanced across at O’Neill. “Looks like Jacks might have lifted her boss’s car—a Vauxhall Omega estate. McCarron’s just given one of the uniforms some cock and bull story about it being at his office but it’s bloody convenient that Jacks’s car turns up outside his house and his wheels are nowhere to be seen.”
“Check it out,” O’Neill said. “We’ve also—”
“Detective Inspector O’Neill!” The voice from the doorway was loud enough to make the DC jump, the tone chopping through what O’Neill had been about to say like a chisel. Heads snapped round and froze as if hoping to avoid the baleful glare now sweeping the room.
“My office,” Chief Superintendent Quinlan ground out. “Now.”
He didn’t wait to see if the order was obeyed, just spun and stalked out. From back view his anger was all the more apparent in the bulging compression of his neck.
O’Neill rose with a sinking feeling, marshalled his expression into one of neutral unconcern and followed at a more relaxed pace.
“Good luck,” Dempsey muttered as he passed. “If you don’t come back can I have first dibs on your swivel chair?”
O’Neill forced a smile. “If I don’t come back you can probably have first dibs on my job.”
That caused a few answering grins. O’Neill held onto his until he was in the corridor and making for the stairs. Quinlan had disappeared. Christ, how does someone his age move so fast?
O’Neill lengthened his stride. The door to Quinlan’s office was still open when he reached it. O’Neill knocked as he stepped through.
“You wanted to see me sir?”
The chief super hadn’t quite reached his chair and he completed the manoeuvre before glancing up. O’Neill forestalled his next move by coming fully into the office and closing the door behind him. He did not make the mistake of taking a seat.
Something hovered around the corner of Quinlan’s mouth. He sat upright, leaning his arms on the desk and linking his fingers together very precisely in front of his computer keyboard.
“The boys you put on former Detective Chief Inspector Allardice,” he began with surprising mildness, “still wet behind the ears were they? Still in short trousers with the mittens their mummies knitted for them on strings down their sleeves?”
“It was my understanding they’re experienced lads sir.”
“Are they really? So how is it that a man who is now a glorified bartender was able not only to spot these covert surveillance experts but photograph the pair of them inside the first day?”
It was phrased as a question and O’Neill foolishly thought he was expected to answer. “Well sir—”
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m giving you a bollocking.”
“Sorry sir,” O’Neill said.
Quinlan regarded him bleakly for a moment. To the right-hand corner of the desk was a flatscreen monitor mounted on a swivelling bracket. The chief super leaned forwards and nudged it round to face O’Neill. Two jpeg files were open on screen, both taken at a distance and not entirely sharp but the faces of the men were still clear enough. The captions “Pinky” and “Perky” had been added to them.
“The arrogant sod emailed them for my attention, courtesy of the Press Office.” Quinlan’s face twisted into a sour smile. “He’s playing with us, Vince,” he said at last. “He was infuriating enough before but now he’s bloody insufferable. And this—” he flicked his fingers towards the screen, “—this is just showing off, rubbing our noses in it.”
O’Neill gave a faint nod. “He knows we can’t touch him,” he agreed. “Or we’d have done it already.”
Quinlan regarded him bleakly for a moment. Then he rose with a sigh, turned his back on the inspector and stepped to the window. O’Neill waited for him to speak. His mind inevitably slid to Kelly Jacks. Had she stolen Ray McCarron’s car or had he willingly given her access?
He didn’t need to ask why. After all, he’d shown her the picture of Brian Stubbs, told her Stubbs had easy access to the drug that had been found in her system and pointed her in the right direction. After that it didn’t take a detective to work out where she was most likely headed.
Still, no reports of any bodies yet.
“I’ve always hated this view,” Quinlan said out of nowhere, catching O’Neill unawares. “I won’t be sorry to leave this office behind.”
That rocked O’Neill. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have in here sir.”
Quinlan glanced back at him. “Better the devil you know, hmm?”
O’Neill allowed the barest hint of a smile to lurk around his mouth. “Something like that sir, yes.”
“I’ve been trying not to slacken off and watch the clock tick down to the inevitable ‘surprise’ retirement party and the gold clock,” he said, “but the closer it gets the more on tenterhooks I find myself. I don’t kid myself that I’ll go out in a blaze of glory but I’ve no desire to go out in a shower of shit either.”
“Sir?”
“That’s exactly what Frank Allardice could dump on us if we don’t handle this very carefully indeed, Vince. As you so rightly say—he knows where the bodies are buried,” Quinlan said. “Frank put a lot of people away who thoroughly deserved to be locked up,” he went on, “but sometimes his methods left something to be desired—as I’m sure you know better than most.”
“I was his DC for a while when I came up out of uniform sir, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well then you’ll know that Allardice was a great believer in the so-called Ways & Means Act—if he didn’t get them for something they actually did, he’d get them for something they might have done instead. Net result was the same.”
“Given the way half the little toerags bleat on about being under arrest as a ‘violation of their human rights’ sir, there are some of us who’d still agree with that today.”
“And to hell with the law, Vince?”
O’Neill coloured at the dry tone. “We have to be given some room to manoeuvre sir, or you may as well do away with all the real coppers and employ a bunch of trained chimpanzees.”
Quinlan gave a snort and ducked his head towards the two images on the flatscreen. “Sometimes I think we already do that.”
“I warned them he was canny.” O’Neill paused, chose his words carefully. “In some ways I can’t help hoping I was right.”
“Oh?”
“Well if it comes out that Frank Allardice is mixed up in anything dodgy we’ll have a wave of miscarriage of justice claims to contend with.” He wondered if he’d gone too far but Quinlan was way ahead of him.
“And if it all comes out just as I’m leaving then nobody will believe my retirement is voluntary.” He returned to the desk, slumped into his seat and leaned back a little. “You certainly know how to put a blight on a man’s day, Vince.”
“Sorry sir,” O’Neill said cheerfully. “Do you want me to recall Pinky and Perky—put some fresh faces onto him?”
“No, you may as well leave them in place. A visible deterrent might encourage him to keep hi
s nose clean while he’s over here I suppose, although I’m not holding my breath on that one.”
O’Neill nodded, was about to turn away when he felt compelled to ask, “What about Kelly Jacks sir?”
Quinlan’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “What about her?”
“Do you think she was a victim of the Ways & Means Act too?”
The sudden stillness told O’Neill he had overstepped the mark. “Certainly not,” Quinlan said. “I was there, don’t forget. I remember how she was found—the state she was in. That’s one conviction I’d stand by with no qualms at all.”
O’Neill nodded. “Good to know,” he said.
91
Kelly came round to the smell of the sawmill and the violent clatter of iron on wood.
She was face down on a scratchy surface that gave slightly under her when she floundered up to hands and knees. That was as far as she got for a while, blinking as she tried to clear her head.
And all the time a voice in the back of her mind was wailing, Not again!
She forced herself to focus past the dull nauseating thump inside her head. Her jaw felt like she’d bounced off a truck and gone back for a rematch. She flexed it from side to side, brought a hand up. Her chin was tender and she’d possibly loosened a couple of teeth but the joint itself still seemed to be in one piece.
A miracle in itself.
She focused on the ground under her. Not soft earth or grass but wood shavings which accounted for the smell she’d recognised. She’d had an uncle out near Enfield—long dead now—who used to potter in his garden shed making furniture. During visits as a child Kelly had been fascinated by the pale curls of wafer-thin wood that fell like snowflakes with each steady pass of the plane.
The sound that had woken her came again, a sharply demanding scrape and thunderous bang. Like someone kicking a heavy wooden door with steel-toecap boots. It took her a moment longer to realise that’s exactly what it was.
Only the someone was actually a something instead.
A horse.
Kelly sat upright and scrambled backwards expecting to see some huge animal rearing over her but she was alone.
She was, however, in a stable—a loose-box about fifteen feet square with a bed of wood shavings spread across the floor six inches deep and banked up around the edges.
After another five minutes or so, when her heart rate had settled, Kelly was able to get to her feet and explore the parameters of her prison.
The stable was blockwork construction, lined to about four feet with vertical timber planks. There was a door and a window in one wall. The window had bars every three inches—narrow enough, presumably, to stop a horse getting its nose through.
When Kelly peered out cautiously through the grimy cobwebbed glass she could see a row of similar stables opposite, across a swept concrete yard. Behind the other stables was the roof of a substantial stone house. If she craned into the corner she could just see the back door. It was closed. There were no people about.
She gave the stable door an experimental rattle but both upper and lower halves were bolted from the outside. A bucket of fresh water and a filled hayrack suggested the box was in use or would be shortly.
So this was a temporary holding cell.
Is that good or bad?
Kelly could not remember being transported here from the woods but could only imagine that here was the trainer’s yard she’d been watching earlier. The buildings she could see looked similar.
And at least she could remember everything that had happened right up to the point she got herself clobbered. She touched a hand to her jaw again and reflected that having to eat soup for a while was a small price to pay.
It could have been worse.
She looked around her. The walls on either side of the loose-box did not go all the way up to the peak. They were flat—level with the eaves—so the row of stables shared a common open roof space. Above the walls were only dust-covered beams and the felt underside of the roof itself. Considering the walls and door were built to keep three-quarter-ton horses from straying, forcing her way out there was a non-starter.
The roof, however, might be a different matter.
Kelly dipped a hand into the bucket and splashed a little water onto her face. It was cold enough to have a wake-up effect. She was thirsty but not enough to try drinking it.
They’d taken her backpack and the keys to the Omega, which had been in a trouser pocket, but they’d left her boots. Not the best outcome but again, not as bad as it could have been.
Kelly stood in the centre of the stable and took stock of her options. Even if she got out of here, she now had no access to her transport. Trying to run might provoke a stronger display of force.
There was always the possibility that they’d locked her up while they waited for the police to arrive but from what she’d learned of Harry Grogan somehow she doubted that was the way he dealt with things.
Noises outside had her darting to the window. Through the dusty glass she saw figures coming out of the door to the house. One was the thin man who’d accosted her with the shotgun. The other was the big guy whose fist she’d run smack bang into. And rarely, she felt, did a description fit so aptly.
Their appearance brought her to a quick decision. She moved to the corner with the hayrack. It was made of plastic-coated metal and clearly secure enough to stand a horse yanking hay from between the narrow bars.
Kelly grabbed it with both hands and swung her feet off the floor, hooking one heel over the top and pulling her body up. By balancing on the top edges of the rack it was an easy job to hoist herself onto the dividing wall.
From there she could see she was in the centre box of a row of five. The next stable along didn’t offer anything. It too stood empty with the doors closed and—she assumed—bolted.
But she could see more light at the end of the row. She carefully clambered along the roof trusses until she reached the next wall. Sure enough the top door was open but the stable itself was occupied by a very large grey horse wearing a hessian-type rug. He reacted with a startled snort when a strange woman appeared looming above him.
“Easy now boy,” Kelly tried in a reassuring murmur. “I’m only passing through. Nothing to worry about.”
Sadly, her voice betrayed her doubt and the horse was tuned into tone not words. As she swung her leg over the wall he skittered away blowing hard through his flared nostrils. His feet scuffed through the wood shavings as he did so and she heard the metallic drag of an iron-shod hoof against the concrete underneath.
The shavings might provide her with a soft landing but that would do her no good at all if the horse kicked her to death out of sheer fright once she got down.
This stable also had a hayrack, and she edged along the top of the wall until she was directly over it. Slithering down into the rack had the grey horse backing into the far corner, white showing all around the iris of his bulging eyes. His ears flicked back and forth sending out semaphore distress signals.
Kelly pulled out a couple of handfuls of hay and held them out to the horse, clicking her tongue encouragingly. He favoured her with a look of absolute disdain.
“Oh sod you then,” Kelly muttered, dropping the hay. She lowered herself over the side of the rack and landed lightly enough on the ground that the animal didn’t have a fit at having a small human suddenly sharing his boudoir. In fact, now she was down at a level he was used to the horse’s curiosity overcame his fear. He took a couple of steps forwards and stretched out his elegant nose towards her, snuffling at her sleeve with a surprisingly muscular upper lip.
The closest Kelly had been before to a real horse was a distant donkey ride on the sands at Margate as a toddler. She found this one much too big and overwhelming by comparison, but when she tried to elbow him away his ears flattened immediately.
“Like to get your own way don’t you Dobbin?”
Further along the row of stables she heard a bolt being shot back then voices risin
g in alarm as they realised she’d gone. The grey horse, ever curious, barged past her and stuck his head outside. By peering through the gap between the top of the door and the underside of his neck Kelly could just see the two men looking round frantically. Their shouts had brought more people out into the yard—stable hands mostly, by the look of them.
She realised that her chances of a successful covert escape had just dropped to nil.
Somebody calmed down enough to start barking instructions for a methodical search. From what she could see, Kelly thought it was the big guy in charge—the one who’d knocked her out. She didn’t recognise his voice but she did recognise his accent.