The Locker

by Adrian Magson

  “I don’t know. If it wasn’t, the only thing I can think of is it might have been a local drugs intercept team and we happened to pitch across their line of travel.” As he spoke he was on his cell phone calling up the pictures of the grey van and the tall man. He passed it to Ruth and she began flicking through the images.

  She stopped, her mouth open.

  “Who’s this?” She pointed at the screen.

  Vaslik took the phone and checked the image. It showed the van turning into the supermarket, after Gina and Nancy had walked into the car park. The tall man was in the background on the other side, walking away. “That’s the tall guy. He cut away and disappeared. I’m pretty sure it was a hand-off.” He meant that another follower had taken over, to avoid the same face coming up too often.

  “Not him. Her.” She was pointing at a female figure dodging the front bumper of a taxi turning into the car park. The woman was slim, wearing a coat and jeans and a colourful beanie hat jammed down over her head. But no glasses.

  “What about her?”

  “It’s the woman called Clarisse—from the house that’s supposed to be empty.”

  twenty

  The three of them swung into action. The woman might have been the genuine article, going about her business of calling on a neighbour. A friendly gesture from one person to another, commonplace and harmless.

  But their combined instincts and experience said otherwise. Even given the trauma of having her daughter kidnapped, Nancy wouldn’t have made a mistake about knowing such an unusual name or the fact that a house just along the street was supposed to be empty.

  Gina checked that the doors and windows were locked tight and all the camera monitors were in full working order, while Vaslik took a walk out to the rear gate and the lane outside. He came back and shook his head. All clear, with no obvious surveillance on the house. If they were there, they were being very cautious.

  Ruth was standing at the front window, studying the building at No. 38 and hatching a plan of action. She was too far away to see much detail without binoculars, and without investigating closer, couldn’t tell if they were currently under surveillance. But she had to gauge the effects of doing nothing against the risk of running into the mystery woman and her colleagues at the house in question.

  “Do you think they know we’re around?” Gina queried.

  “They know somebody is. But not who. They’ve seen you with Nancy at the shops and seen me here in the house. That doesn’t mean anything. Friends drop by all the time and people put on an act, even under stress. Hopefully they haven’t seen Slik yet.”

  “I vote we go make a house call,” said Vaslik calmly. “If they’re gone they might have got careless and left a trace. It’s better than sitting here wondering.”

  “What if they’re in there?” said Gina.

  Vaslik merely smiled. He looked as if he would enjoy finding out.

  “I agree with Slik.” Ruth looked at Gina. “We go take a look. Can you stay here in case the consultant comes round? We won’t be long.”

  Gina nodded reluctantly. She wanted in on the action.

  Ruth and Vaslik left through the rear gate and circled the block, scanning the area for parked cars with people inside. Nothing doing. Everything looked normal; houses, gardens, cars, voices, a loud burst of rock music from an open garage where a man had his head under the bonnet of a car.

  They entered the road running past the Hardman house and approached No. 38 side by side, two people chatting casually, nothing out of the ordinary.

  Just as they reached it, Vaslik took a deep breath and said softly, “Keep walking and don’t look at it.”

  He’d just realised that this was the house where the real estate agent had been taking photographs.

  “What’s got you all fired up?” Ruth queried when they were fifty yards past the property. “Did you see something?”

  “Maybe nothing.” He explained about the photographer, and they debated abandoning their house call.

  “It could have been a genuine agent,” Ruth countered. “People do sell houses all the time—even empty ones.”

  “Sure,” he agreed. “But why this one right now? It’s spooky.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He chewed it over for another few paces, then said, “Let’s go for it. If they’re in there, at least we’ll know it. If it’s empty, we can tick it off the list.”

  They turned round and walked back.

  The paved area in front of the target house was bare, with dead leaf mould crushed into jagged gaps between the stones and a layer of gritty dust over the top. Twin pot plants held the remains of dead bushes, long dried out and abandoned, their branches decorated with bits of paper debris.

  “No recent traffic,” Vaslik murmured. He sounded very calm but Ruth could feel the tension radiating off him. He aimed for the side gate leading to the rear garden. “Won’t be long.”

  Ruth let him go, eyeing the upper windows which had grey net curtains hanging limply behind dirty glass. The lower windows were impenetrable behind vertical blinds, the original royal blue colour of the fabric faded in places from sunlight and layered in dust. All the frames showed signs of peeling paint and gaps in the pointing.

  Ruth stepped up to the front door and used the knocker. It echoed emptily back at her. She gave it a count of five and tried again. If anybody was in, they must have nerves of steel. If not, it might distract them long enough for Vaslik to take a good look and see what they might be up against. If anyone inside tried slipping out the back, they’d run slap into him. For some reason the thought encouraged her.

  Nothing.

  She followed the route Vaslik had taken down a paved path, past a small garden shed and a greenhouse grimy with moss and ancient cobwebs. Both structures were empty. The path opened out onto a patio surrounded by a foot-high brick wall topped with coping stones.

  Vaslik was standing by a set of wood-framed French doors, peering through the glass at the inside. He was holding a lethal looking folding knife in his hand, the point inserted in the crack near the lock. He gave a sharp twist and the door sprang open.

  Seconds later he was inside.

  “Care to show me how you did that?” Ruth asked, following him in and closing the door behind her.

  “Session three from the DHS Basic Investigation Techniques manual,” he said, snapping the knife shut. “Somebody’s been camping out in here. Smell it?”

  She did. The air smelled musty and damp, of abandonment. And something else.

  Takeaway food.

  They checked the rooms quickly, not knowing how long they had got before Clarisse returned. The house had been emptied of all furnishings, and each sound echoed back at them. Slik ran upstairs while Ruth did the downstairs. Kitchen, utility, small breakfast room, toilet and living room. All empty.

  She checked the sink. Water lay pooled in the bottom. She dipped her finger in it and sniffed. It smelled fresh. She gave the tap a shake. There was a gurgle and a spiral of residual water trickled out into her hand. She tasted it.

  A faint chemical residue, but also fresh.

  She went back to check the toilet. Whoever had used it last had forgotten to flush. She wasn’t about to take the same taste test but she was willing to bet that the contents were not more than a few hours old.

  She stepped through to the front window and teased open a slat in the blinds. From here she had a clear view of the Hardman’s front door. She looked down at the floor, which was wood-block. Then she got down on her knees and checked closer. The blocks were covered in a layer of dust … except for the area right in front of the window. She felt a kick of excitement.

  This had been an O.P.—an observation point.

  She had no problem imagining the woman named Clarisse on her knees here; even though the house was empty, it would have been essential
to remain still this close to the window, to avoid catching the eye of a casual observer or a neighbour with too much time on their hands.

  Vaslik entered the room and saw what she was doing. “They watched from upstairs, too. There’s a flattened area in the carpet. Great O.P.”

  “Did you check the bathroom?”

  “Used but not flushed. The water’s on but they wouldn’t have wanted to alert the neighbours.”

  They left the empty house and walked back the way they had come. Neither spoke; the situation didn’t need it. It was patently obvious that the Hardmans had been under observation before and after the kidnap, and the woman in the beanie hat had come over to check what was happening before they made a move on Nancy.

  It meant the other side was getting impatient.

  twenty-one

  As they stepped back inside the Hardman house, Ruth’s phone rang.

  It was Richard Aston.

  “I pulled in a couple of favours and had the management run a check on the CCTV at the leisure centre,” he said. “We were lucky: it’s kept on a secure system so nobody but the centre manager gets to handle it. I’m sending you a link to download the relevant footage. I think you’ll find it interesting. The manager’s name is Robert Curlow. If he plays up, tell him Godfrey Leander sent you.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Ruth. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. There’s something else we need to discuss first: the bank account in Kensington. I’ve got Margie here with me. If you turn on your laptop we can talk over the possibilities. I’ll wait for you to call.”

  Ruth agreed and disconnected, then took her laptop through to the study and switched it on.

  “Where’s Nancy?” she asked Gina.

  “Upstairs in the bath. The doc came while you two were having all the fun. He prescribed some pills. I told her to have a soak before she took them. It might help her relax. He asked me to monitor her intake.”

  “Are you OK with that?”

  “Sure. I’ve done it before.” She rolled her eyes. “Some people just need protecting from themselves.”

  “Your call. What did he say about her?”

  “Not much to me. But I think he’s concerned about her mental state. He rattled off some jargon about secondary trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the families of kidnap victims. To be honest I wasn’t really listening; that’s his job to sort out.”

  “But he’s not going to hospitalise her?” She thought Gina was oddly cool about another person’s suffering, and guessed the former protection officer was making subconscious comparisons to her own way of handling the trauma following her shooting.

  “I don’t think so. I got the impression he won’t discount it, but he thinks the best place for her is here. It’s familiar and all her daughter’s stuff is here. It’s all she knows.”

  “Makes sense. And she’ll want to be here in case the kidnappers get in touch.”

  The three of them gathered in the study, Ruth and Vaslik by the laptop, Gina hovering by the door, one eye out in case Nancy finished her bath and came downstairs.

  The conference link went through and showed Richard Aston, jacket off and relaxed in the Safeguard room with the researchers’ story boards in the background. Margie the accounts supervisor was sitting alongside him, looking less comfortable out of her comfort zone.

  “Let’s keep this brief,” said Aston. “Following your request, we approached the bank in Kensington for further details on the Hardman account. They declined to provide them.” He glanced at Margie for corroboration.

  “As expected,” said Margie. “They’re under no legal obligation to do anything unless there’s suspected criminal activity. Even then we’d have to get a court order, which could take days.”

  “An order we will not get.” Aston’s tone was firm, the tone slightly acid. “We’ve had cause to try this before. Our industry background works against us. Because we’re a security and investigative company, they think we’re all tied in with News Corp and hacking.”

  “What will it prove, anyway—even if we could get it?” Margie asked. She clearly hadn’t been fully briefed by Aston on why Ruth needed access to the account details.

  “Go ahead, Ruth.” Aston waved a hand at the screen.

  “If the account has been closed since he took out the Safeguard contract,” explained Ruth, who was thinking on her feet, “then that’s it. We’re no further forward. If it’s still active, it proves Hardman has a separate account; one he’s forgotten to tell his wife about. Through it we might be able to track his movements and maybe find out where he is now.”

  Margie looked cynical. “Lots of husbands have separate accounts, in my experience. Doesn’t prove anything, though, unless you get to audit his spending. But I don’t know how you’d go about that—” She stopped. “Forget I said that.”

  “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having the account,” Ruth said. “But it might lead us to a whole new set of details, addresses, telephone numbers. That would give us something to go at, to try and find this bozo and let him know his daughter’s life is in danger.”

  “Quite.” Aston sounded doubtful. “I’m not sure his wife would share your view but I see your thinking. However, it doesn’t alter the fact that we don’t have access, in which case I’m not sure where we go from here.”

  Ruth felt frustrated. She could feel this thing slipping away from her. There had to be a way of contacting the elusive and mysterious Michael Hardman, but the twin shadows of bureaucracy and the Data Protection Act were getting in the way.

  “I’m bloody certain they’d give up my account details in a heartbeat if a government department asked them,” she muttered. She looked at Vaslik for inspiration, but he shook his head, unable to help.

  “Maybe there is a way,” ventured Margie. She was staring above the screen camera, forehead creased in thought. “All you want to do is check that the account’s still active, right?”

  “Yes,” said Ruth.

  “Then what?”

  “Then we might have reason to get a court order with Nancy’s cooperation as a last resort. It might not work but it’s worth a try. Anything’s worth a try,” she added heavily.

  “Go on,” urged Aston, looking at Margie. He sounded intrigued. “What’s your idea and is it legal?”

  “Perfectly. I’ll have to make a phone call first. You’ll have to promise not to laugh, though. There’s a routine I have to go through to hook the fish.”

  Aston looked puzzled by what she meant, but picked up the phone in the centre of the table and handed it to her. “Do it.”

  Margie dialled a number, and seconds later asked to be put through to someone named George. “Hello, handsome,” she trilled, with a sheepish look at Aston. “How’s the best looking man in London?” She pressed a button and George’s voice floated out into the room, gravelly and assured.

  “Hi, beautiful,” he replied. “What do you want and how much will it cost me?”

  “Oh, you! It won’t cost you a thing, I promise. But it might cost me a drinkie or two later this week, if you’re around.” She looked pointedly at Aston, who waved a hand in assent and smiled.

  “Go on, then.”

  “Well, we need to make a refund to a client account in your Kensington branch, only we think it might be dormant. Is there any way you could … you know, give them a call and ask if it’s worth sending the payment or not? I really don’t want to go through a lot of hassle if it’s dead; I’m on my own here and really, really busy. What do you think?”

  “I think maybe I should come round and keep you company.” George’s voice was loaded with meaning, and they all witnessed Margie blushing. Even so, it didn’t stop her winking at the camera.

  “Oh, you,” she said coyly. But the look said it all: fish hooked. She read out the account details.

>   “All right. Leave it with me, babe. I’ll do it now.” His voice dropped. “Stay by the phone, you—”

  Margie’s hand shot out and hit the mute button, cutting off whatever he was about to say. She replaced the handset and studied her fingernails, while beside her, Aston was having trouble keeping a straight face.

  Two minutes later the phone rang and she listened to the call, then thanked him and cut the connection.

  “It’s live and active,” she announced with a smug air.

  “How active, did he say?” asked Vaslik.

  “Nothing specific, but it sounded live enough to be recent.”

  “Good.” Aston clapped his hands together. “Great work, Margie.” He looked into the camera, a quizzical frown on his face. “Tell me, Ruth, what are you really looking for here?”

  Ruth took a deep breath. She’d been afraid he might ask this question. This was bordering on something else altogether, and she was relieved Martyn Claas wasn’t part of the conversation; as little as she knew of him, she was certain he would have closed it down by now. “If this works,” she said slowly, “this payment might not be the only one made from that account. We can start digging further.”

  Aston said nothing, and she realised from his expression that it was deliberate. He’d doubtless been at the forefront of similar lines of investigation before, and was probably working out the ramifications for the company if things went too far. His silence meant that for now he was willing to let Ruth run with it.

  “We have to do something,” she said at last, aware that all eyes were on her. She lowered her voice. “So much about this makes no sense. An apparent child abduction seemingly focussed on the father—who’s out in the wind and untraceable; his only legal footprint is a single bank account his wife is unaware of; a charity office that doesn’t exist … and now a team of followers who might or might not be part of the kidnap team.”