by Max Hardy
‘Harry, what are you doing here?’ I ask lamely, flabbergasted by his presence in the apartment.
‘All three of us need to talk and we need to talk now. Rebecca!’ he says, his voice taking on an Irish lilt as he calls out the name, walking towards me, still smiling.
Why am I in Edinburgh? I am here because of pictures of Jessica and I boarding a train. Pictures that Harry showed me. Why did we search this area? Partly because of Rebecca, but also because the CCTV footage Harry discovered showed Jess heading in this direction. Why am I in this apartment? Because Harry told me that he saw Jessica enter a shop and Tait leave the same shop shortly afterward. He led me to believe they could be one in the same person. Why am I standing here right now, utterly surprised that Harry is in front of me: because he wanted me to be.
‘Adam, or Ben, or Rob or the ‘Unknown Caller’ I take it.’ I say as Rebecca comes running out of the bedroom, bewildered and confused.
‘Doc?’ she questions, looking from me to Harry, confounded when she doesn’t see who she is expecting to see.
‘Answers to both those questions in a moment, but follow me please. We don’t have a lot of time and I have a lot to tell you.’ Harry answers, walking past me and towards Rebecca who is still looking confused.
‘Good to see you filling out a bit again, you were a rake a few weeks ago.’ he says in his Irish accent, passing Rebecca and stroking her arm as he walks into the bedroom. I follow behind Rebecca who slipstreams his authoritative strides.
Harry walks straight to the back of the room, which is decorated in tongue and groove panelling painted duck egg blue, and presses the palm of his hand forcefully against the end of one of the grooves. There is a click and with a slight whoosh, a door opens up into the bedroom, revealing a very short dividing walkway. Harry enters it, takes a key out of his pocket, and opens another door at the other side.
‘Come on through. This adjoins the house next door. John, pull the door closed behind you please.’ Harry instructs, in his Harry accent, upper-class and precise.
We are in another bedroom, very much like the one we have just left, but this one without a bed in. Harry walks toward the back wall of this room, which is also tongue and grooved in the same colour, and presses his palm firmly against a spot about halfway up a groove that looks no different to all the rest. There is a low whirr of an electrical motor and the whole wall of panelling starts to move sideways, exposing row upon row and column upon column of monitors. Eighty in total, all with different images on them. Some have images of rooms, some of people, some of maps with flashing red dots. Some are full of notes and pictures. It is like an electronic version of an incident wall.
Harry quickly glances at the screens, his gaze pausing on one with a map, a still dot and the name ‘Eve’ above it, before turning to face us both. Rebecca is at my side and her hand snakes into mine, squeezing it nervously.
‘I have a lot to tell you and I know you will have a million questions so I want to start by saying we don’t have time to answer them all right now. Either you live with that, or you leave now. It is entirely your choice. What do you say?’ Harry asks.
I squeeze Rebecca’s hand once, and she speaks. ‘We can live with it. We just want to know why Doc. Why are we here?’
‘Right at this moment, you are here because we need your help. Eve has been abducted and we do not know where she is. We need your help to try and find her.’ Harry asks, openly and with sincerity.
‘Hold on.’ I say, just a tad sternly. ‘Is it Eve who was disguised as Annie Tait?’
‘Yes, Eve is Annie.’
‘Well, you already know that Annie, sorry Eve is missing, you broadcast that on your latest video. I’m confused?’
‘Yes, we did broadcast that. That was our plan. But the plan wasn’t that Eve would really be abducted. The plan was to make it look like she had been abducted. It was meant to apply pressure on Bentley and give the police some more ammunition to use against him. It was also to allow Eve time to focus on breaking him down. But Eve genuinely went missing last night and our Plan A is currently in the balance. I am hoping you will agree to be our Plan B. Look, I am answering things out of turn here. I need to tell you what is going on so at least you have the right information to make an informed decision. Let’s start with who I am.’ Harry finishes, raising his hands to his face, and rubbing his fingers over his cheeks, eyes and brow, harder and harder. Skin breaks, or at least that’s what it looks like, but I quickly realise it is painted latex from the mask he is wearing as he pulls it off his face.
I always question myself when I look in the mirror. Ironically, I think it makes you reflective when you are looking at your own physicality. It makes you question who you really are. You see the wrinkles starting to show around the eyes from too many late shifts. You see your lips frowning from not enough smiles and far too much pain. You look into eyes that wear the weight of the world.
Rebecca gasps, looking quickly back and forth between the two of us, mouth agape.
But when you see your own face, and there are no wrinkles, and the lips are smiling with no frown lines, and the eyes are alive with possibility, it really brings home how much we wear our experiences on the outside, for all to see. It shows how two people who are otherwise identical, who must be twins, can look so different. I see me, but I don’t see my soul.
‘Are you my brother, my twin brother?’ I ask, the question coming out broken, from a dry throat.
‘Unfortunately, that’s not for me to say. It is for you to discover, and right at the moment, it is not why we are here. What I can say is that I am Adam and I am the father of the ‘Fallen Angels’. I was born Robert Caldwell and over the years I have had many names. You have known me as a few of them.’
He can’t tell me! He is standing right in front of me, a man that is my fucking double, must be my fucking twin, must know where I fucking come from and who my fucking parents are and he can’t tell me! He sees the fury in my eyes and his own fill with empathy as he approaches me and holds my arms.
‘John, I am sorry for being so brutal. I know you want answers and while it is a simple question, believe me, the answer is far from simple. We don’t have time and I have to be honest, and yes, brutal, you aren’t ready to have that question answered, not yet. Now I need to tell you what is going on. I need to ask for your help. Can we focus on that please?’
‘Better do as the Doc says John. He knows what he is doing. He saved my life and led me on the road to redemption.’ Rebecca adds, squeezing my hand tighter, winking at me.
The fury is still bubbling in my stomach, but I can see that he isn’t going to tell me anything. I can see that clearly in his eyes. ‘Okay, so this all has to do with Fenny Bentley, does it?’
‘This part does. Our bigger plan is about exposing the hypocrisy of religion, about exposing the monsters out there that use faith as a weapon and about asking people to question their fears. This last part is about the Bentley family. Eve has been living a life as Annie Tait for just over eighteen months now, from shortly after you were convicted of murdering Michael.’ he says, looking over to Rebecca.
‘Something went wrong in our plans Rebecca. Michael was never meant to die and we certainly didn’t know that Ennis was going to mutilate him in the way he did.’
‘So I was part of a plan, even back then, just a pawn in your sick game?’ Rebecca asks. I feel her hand tensing and shaking and I can understand why. She is feeling like me, a pawn again.
‘That’s not important right now. Eve is important and she is in grave danger. She may already be dead. Now, I know this is hard but we have to focus.’ Adam answers, seeing the anger bubbling in Rebecca.
‘We knew that Bentley had carried out an atrociously bad investigation into Michael’s death and we wanted to know why. Eve became Annie and started to investigate. What she found out was that his investigation into Michael’s death was non-existent. He took the professional medical advice of Ennis and the detailed fore
nsic evidence and didn’t question one single bit of it. What she did find out, when digging into case histories, was that over a number of years women who were the victims of domestic abuse have been going missing, never to be found. She discovered that Fenny Bentley was involved in a number of those investigations. She also found out that Bentley’s father and sister had met every one of those missing women at victim support groups shortly before they disappeared. Eve recently found out that Bentley’s mother was beaten by his father and that she went missing too.’
‘So you think that Bentley is involved in these disappearances. Do you think he has been murdering them, similar to the other religious leaders that you are exposing?’ I ask, the information stirring my interest.
‘He is definitely involved, and we do think the women are all dead. But it’s his father that is the killer. We are sure of that. What we don’t know, is if Bentley knows that, and we definitely don’t know how they are killing them. We think Bentley may genuinely believe that he is helping victims of domestic abuse escape their abusers, and is helping them escape to a life in another country. Eve found that Bentley has been getting false passports made for a number of years, all for women. All provided shortly after a victim went missing. Today she was going to confront Bentley with that theory and show him that not a single one of those women ever made it out of the country. She was going to show him a photograph of his father with this man.’ Adam points to a picture on a screen, the same one Eve put up on my Evidence wall last night.
‘You have pictures of him with every one of the religious leaders that you have exposed, who is he?’
‘That’s another conversation for later. The conversation for now is that she can’t do that anymore because while she was searching for more evidence at Bentley’s house last night, we believe his father abducted her.’ Adam says, pointing to a still red dot on the screen with Eve’s name above it, the map showing the North Queensferry peninsula.
I look at the screen above it, a screen with my name on, a map of Edinburgh and a red beating dot over this house. There is a screen for Rebecca and one for Adam and another dozen or so with different names above them. I look down at my arm. Have they always known exactly where I am?
‘So what’s your Plan B Doc? Can we stop pussyfooting around and can you tell us exactly what is it you want us to do? If Eve is in danger, we should get cracking.’ Rebecca interrupts, stepping forward and looking at the images on the screens. Eve has taught her well. She is a leader.
‘We want you to interview Bentley. We want you to find out where his father is keeping Eve. We want you to find out if he is involved.’
‘Okay, one of the many problems there as I see it, is that he is currently sitting in a police cell. I don’t think Police Scotland are going to let an escaped murderer and a Detective who has already been warned off the case three times anywhere near him.’ Rebecca’s voice is loaded with sarcasm as she stops in front of an image of a police cell, Fenny Bentley sitting on the floor of it.
‘How the hell have you got a CCTV stream from his cell?’ I ask as I scan the other moving images, seeing a few that look familiar. There is one of the kitchen in the apartment next door. There is one of the hotel room next to mine. There is one of my hotel room. They have cameras in the pictures! That’s why there are so many Cezanne’s, they are using the pictures as cameras. Why Cezanne though?
‘We have walked this earth a long time John and there are a great number of us, in every walk of life. It is not hard to open a locked door when you either have the key, or know the person who does. We were never going to carry out Bentley’s final interrogation at the station. We were always going to do that here.’
Chapter 34
‘Ma’am, you need to come down to the cells, quickly.’ Calvey said over the phone, Cruickshank rising from her seat the second she heard the frantic tone in the Sergeant’s voice.
‘What is it Fred?’ she questioned as she rounded the table, still holding the phone to her ear.
‘It’s Bentley Ma’am, Le Fenwick thinks he is having a heart attack.’
‘Shit.’ Cruickshank cursed, throwing the receiver onto the table, not even trying to hit the phone cradle as she turned and headed for the door at pace, striding down the corridor. She barged past people in her way unceremoniously, her whole manner brusque, not offering any apologies and then sprinted through the Duty reception towards the holding cells, towards a small crowd of people listening intently to the sound of a commotion.
‘Come on people, let me through!’ she barked, pushing the milling officers out of the way, the sound of Le Fenwick’s voice rising above the general chatter.
‘Come on Fenny, stay with me and breathe slowly, in and out.’
Cruikshank arrived at the open cell door and stepped through to see Bentley splayed out on the cell floor, his whole body tense and jerking. Coffee was pooling around him, coming from a broken Celtic mug next to his quivering head. Le Fenwick was leaning over his torso, still undoing Bentley’s top shirt buttons and trying unsuccessfully to remove his Mac.
‘What’s happened Dick?’ Cruickshank questioned, crouching down next to Le Fenwick.
‘He keeled over Ma’am. I’d just given him a coffee and was about to assess him to see if he was fit for questioning. Can you help me get his Mac off? We need to make the clothing around his chest as loose as possible.’
Cruickshank leant over and pulled the Mac off one of Bentley’s twitching arms, watching as his eyes rolled in his head, spittle dribbling from his shaking lips. ‘He’s losing consciousness Le Fenwick. Have we called an ambulance?’
‘I can see that Ma’am. Yes, I called one about five minutes ago.’ Le Fenwick answered, pulling Bentley’s other arm out of the Mac and yanking the dirty stinking garment from underneath his body. He rolled it into a pillow shaped bundle, raising Bentley’s head slightly and putting it underneath.
Calvey came running into the cell. ‘Here you go Dick, two aspirins and some water.’ he said, leaning down and passing the tablets and drink to Le Fenwick.
‘Come on Fenny, we need to get these inside you.’ Le Fenwick said anxiously, popping a pill into Bentley’s mouth and dribbling a stream of water after it, before holding it closed, feeling the swallow, then repeating. ‘That might help. Fred, go outside and when the ambulance arrives, tell them to get their defibrillator ready, he could go under at any point.’
Calvey nodded and backed out of the cell. Le Fenwick started rubbing Bentley’s chest lightly with one hand, holding Bentley’s shaking arm with the other.
‘I think the stress of everything has gotten to him Ma’am. He’s not in the best shape as it is and layering the stress on top of that has sent him over the edge.’
‘Let’s just try and keep him alive for now and worry about the whys and wherefores afterwards.’ Cruickshank answered with concern.
‘Through here guys.’ called the voice of Calvey from the corridor as he led two paramedics carrying a stretcher into the cell.
‘Gents, I’m Dr Le Fenwick. I was with the patient when he started to convulse. Symptoms are difficulty breathing, abnormal chest pains, dizziness and shaking, anxiety, palpitations and cold sweats. He is flowing in and out of consciousness. He is having a heart attack. His pulse rate is very low so I suggest we get him straight onto a stretcher and off to hospital.’ Le Fenwick instructed.
‘No problem Doc. I’m Ernie and this is Val. Have you administered any drugs?’ one of the paramedics responded as they both laid the stretcher down beside Bentley and carefully lifted his heavy frame onto it. They strapped his legs and waist, keeping the chest free.
‘I’ve just given him aspirin Ernie.’ Le Fenwick answered, grabbing Bentley’s Mac from the floor as he stood.
‘Le Fenwick, you go with them to the hospital and take Calvey with you. He is still a suspect and needs to be under police guard.’ Cruickshank ordered as she and Le Fenwick followed the paramedics and stretcher out of the cell and into a crowded corrid
or. ‘Will you vulture’s piss off back to your jobs right now!’ Cruickshank shouted, the onlookers dispersing immediately.
The paramedics loaded the stretcher into the ambulance, Le Fenwick and Calvey jumping in the back alongside the still shaking Bentley. Val slammed the back doors shut and ran around to the driver’s cabin, jumped in and pulled out of the headquarters car park, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
‘Has his heart stopped at all Doc.’ Ernie asked as he unpacked the defibrillator just above Bentley’s stretcher.
‘No Ernie, but his pulse is very weak. Have you got adrenaline shots ready just in case?’ asked Le Fenwick.
‘To the left in the fridge Doc. I don’t mind you prepping one while I get the defrib charged.’ Ernie answered.
‘Is he going to be alright Dick?’ Calvey asked, his voice worried, his features drawn.
‘Well, his heart hasn’t stopped, which is promising, but he is in a bad way. Can you hold his arm, just keep feeling for a pulse while I prep this syringe?’ Le Fenwick asked, standing and moving to one side, allowing Calvey to move up closer to Bentley.
Ernie knelt back down next to Calvey, loosening a few more buttons on Bentley’s shirt before he looked up to Le Fenwick. ‘Is the syringe prepped Doc?’
Le Fenwick was standing above Calvey, drawing liquid from a small phial into the syringe in his hand. He looked down towards Ernie with a focused, determined expression.
‘I’m ready Ernie. Are you?’ Le Fenwick asked.
Ernie nodded imperceptibly. Le Fenwick lowered the syringe and quickly thrust it into Calvey’s neck, injecting the contents into his body. Calvey sat up in surprise and tried to turn to see what Le Fenwick was doing. Ernie grabbed his arms as he was turning and pushed him backwards off the small seat, onto the floor of the ambulance. Ernie jumped over his torso as Calvey tried to wriggle free of his hands.
‘Don’t fight Fred. We don’t want to hurt you. In a minute the GHB will kick in and you will go to sleep, so don’t struggle, you will only hurt yourself unnecessarily.’