Sky Garden

by Jenny Schwartz

  “Nick!”

  He glanced, annoyed, over his shoulder.

  Marshall, the pigeon fancier from the adjacent rooftop, stood at the very edge of his, leaning forward, supporting himself on the rail. “Nick?” He beckoned.

  Suppressing a sigh, Nick obeyed the imperative summons.

  “Is Lanie not there?” Marshall asked urgently. “Is she answering her phone?”

  “No.” Nick really didn’t want the old man meddling in his romance, or lecturing him on his failures. He’d been a rubbish boyfriend, selfish and self-centered, but Lanie was better than him. She wouldn’t leave him hanging for his mistakes.

  “Was she expecting you?” Marshall pulled a phone out of his pocket.

  “No. Look, I have to—”

  “Better to be safe than sorry.” Marshall stabbed at the phone buttons, then put it to his ear.

  The odd response penetrated Nick’s impatience. Better safe than sorry? “Marshall, what the hell is happening?”

  But the ex-detective-inspector held up a hand, indicating Nick wait. “Ann, we’ve lost Lanie. It could be nothing, but her boyfriend’s here at her empty flat, and she’s not answering her phone. Yes, yes I do think you should check CCTV footage. And track her phone.”

  Cold dread clutched Nick’s guts. He stared at Marshall as the old man disconnected the call. “What’s happened?”

  “Did Lanie tell you the secret Purvis spilled to her?”

  Nick shook his head. “Purvis is dead.” The only threat Nick had thought she faced was the media, not a dead serial killer.

  “Some secrets outlive their confessor.”

  “For hell’s sake, tell me!”

  Marshall pulled a wooden chair over to the edge of the roof and sat. “Bad knees.” He rubbed his left one. “We, the police, kept some of the details of Purvis’s crimes secret.”

  “He murdered his wife and three other women, all redheads,” Nick said, keen to hurry Marshall.

  “And his sister.”

  Nick stared. “The media never…”

  “They had enough scandal that none of them bothered digging further. Purvis wasn’t his birth name. He was born Scott Clarke and he had a twin sister. When he was thirteen, his sister was killed. A random act of violence, the police thought then. It destroyed Clarke’s family. His mum committed suicide—an overdose of painkillers—and his dad changed their name from Clarke to Purvis, moved from Leeds to Darby, and there, quietly drank himself to death.”

  The cooing of the pigeons provided a bizarre counterpoint to the stark retelling of tragedy.

  Impatience pulsed through Nick. “Who is left in his family? Who would want vengeance for Purvis?”

  “Not vengeance.” Marshall shook his head. “The bastard wants to protect himself. Purvis told Lanie that a ‘friend’ encouraged him to kill his sister and his next victim. Then the game changed as his friend became too important to be there and watch the killings. So Purvis filmed the deaths and sent them to his friend. His important friend at Westminster.”

  Ice cold fury gripped Nick. “Who?”

  “We don’t know. Lanie waited, watched, wondered when or if the bastard would try and find her. He couldn’t know if Purvis had told her anything.”

  “She never told me…she never said. I saw she followed political news, but lots of people do. My dad…No.” Horror filled Nick. “That’s what changed. The bastard ignored her until the media shouted her connection to me, to the Tawes fortune and power.”

  Marshall’s dry voice held a hint of compassion. “You wouldn’t need evidence enough to convict him or hang him out to dry in the newspapers. You could destroy him on a hint from Lanie.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “She didn’t know who he was.”

  But that wasn’t the complete answer. Hadn’t she trusted him?

  He spun away, paced, found the roof too short, its garden confining him. Too crowded. “Her family! She loves them, but they were never here. I should have questioned it, should have realized it was more than trauma and a need to be alone. She was protecting them. She didn’t want them to be targets for this guy.”

  Marshall’s phone rang. He pulled it out. “Ann.” A bark of command and question.

  “Put it on speaker,” Nick demanded.

  “Nick, her boyfriend, is with me,” Marshall said into the phone. A pause. “Putting you on speaker, or the lad will.” He passed the phone to Nick, who stretched across the railing to take it.

  Nick switched it to speaker and held the phone between them. “Can you hear us?”

  “Yes.” The female voice wasted no time. “We have CCTV footage of Lanie getting into a van a block from here, around the corner, three hours ago. A man, average height, baseball cap, sunglasses, no distinguishing features, accosted her. We surmise a gun, since she got into the van without protest. She then appears to collapse in the passenger seat. The van drove off.”

  “Could you track it?” Marshall beat Nick to the question.

  “Doing that now. We’ve also opened Lanie’s phone records. She received a text from you, Nick, just before she was kidnapped.”

  “No.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I didn’t send a text.”

  “But you just flew in from Morocco.”

  “Yes. I intended to surprise her.” He bit off his other words, his explanation that he’d been a self-absorbed jerk. Hell, his selfishness had its punishment now. “Please, don’t tell me the bastard cloned my phone.”

  Marshall gave him a long look of sympathy.

  “We think he cloned your phone. We suspect he’d hacked Lanie’s and knew that a text such as he sent her, purportedly from you, would have her rushing out of the museum.” The woman’s voice slowed fractionally. “He texted as you, that you were flying in and for her to meet you at Heathrow. He gave a time that would make her rush rather than double check flights or even return your text. It was a very smart gamble. This one knows how to manipulate people.”

  Grief, panic, rage and most of all, fear for Lanie, silenced Nick. If he started swearing, he’d never stop.

  It was Marshall who responded. “He might know how to manipulate people, but Lanie did it for a living. It was her theatre act, her whole life’s training. And it saved her once before. We need to hurry, but we have a chance. She’ll win us that.”

  “We’ve just spotted the van.” Even through the phone, the woman’s controlled triumph sounded clear. “We’re viewing the footage. He headed north.” She broke off. “SCO19 is ready to go.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow at Marshall.

  “Special Firearms Control. A SWAT team.”

  Nick snatched the phone back to his mouth. “I want to be there.”

  “Mr. Tawes.”

  “You know who I am,” Nick said, as tightly controlled as she. But he let blatant threat invade his voice. “You know who my father is. I want to be there when you rescue Lanie.”

  “If you jeopardize the rescue…”

  “I won’t. I’ll stay in the car. Whatever. But I will be there, or I can and will make your life and your superiors’ lives hell.” For years, for his whole life, he’d avoided using the power of his family name and wealth. Now, he couldn’t give a flying monkey. He would be there for Lanie.

  “Are you at the museum, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve sent a car to collect you.” She disconnected.

  Nick looked at Marshall. “Sent a car, not sending.”

  The old man reached out and recovered his phone. “No magic. She guessed how you’d react.”

  Nick inhaled deeply, exhaled.

  “Good luck.” Marshall stood straight and alone.

  How many times had he been in this situation?

  “Thanks.” Nick nodded at him, then loped away. He stepped into the outside staircase. He leaned his weight into the rail and took the stairs fast. It was less a walk-down than a controlled, careening descent. He’d left the door at the bot
tom unlocked when he’d ascended, searching for Lanie. And now, he was grateful as the open door to it gave when he pushed. He secured the padlock and strode out to wait in front of the museum.

  He glared at the street. There were still people on it, walking and chatting. Three hours ago, how could Lanie have been kidnapped amid all the crowds?

  “Any news?” he demanded when the police car stopped for him.

  The two uniformed officers were men his age. “We’re to take you to Shoreditch.”

  “Have they found Lanie?” He couldn’t ask, didn’t dare think, that they might have found her dead.

  “We don’t know, sir.”

  “Nick,” he said, impatient.

  The driver turned his head as they stopped at traffic lights. A degree of human sympathy broke through his professional mask. “She’ll be all right. They wouldn’t have us drive you to—” He stopped, refocused on the road.

  His partner shifted the conversation away from that painful, possible outcome. “They must have tracked his van to Shoreditch. CCTV coverage isn’t as comprehensive as people think—things breaks—but it’s pretty good. They’ll have an idea of the street he’s in.”

  The lights turned green and they moved on.

  The driver met Nick’s eyes in the rear vision mirror. “They’ll find him. They’ll get your girlfriend out safe. It’s what SCO19 do.”

  Unless it all went wrong.

  Nick stared out the window, at the darkness compounded of night and cloud cover. Restaurant windows and private homes showed lights, people going about their everyday, taken-for-granted lives.

  The police radio crackled.

  Nick made out intermittent words. They were to stop two streets away, walk in, keep an eye on Nick. Hold him if necessary.

  “I won’t be a problem.”

  They nodded. They’d made their own assessment.

  He wouldn’t crack. He’d relive the fear later in nightmares, but for now he was functioning. This was about Lanie.

  They stopped at a police roadblock. The row of shops on the left were closed, dark. The flats above them were lit, people peered out of windows and stood in doorways. The three doors of the police car thunked shut.

  The road hadn’t been gentrified yet, but it was coming. There was new construction across the road, raw with unfinished ambition.

  Despite the apparent unhurriedness of the policemen’s tread, they were moving fast. They passed one street corner and turned into the next.

  The bastard who’d kidnapped Lanie had chosen well. In this self-consciously trendy area, it would take an event as dramatic as the police gathering to jolt its inhabitants into paying attention to anything but themselves. The bastard could slip in, unnoticed.

  Shops gave way to workshops and warehouses—and a huddle of police and emergency response vehicles. Nick sighted the ambulance and had to remind himself to keep his breathing steady, to stay cool and calm and capable of reason. He must not jeopardize Lanie’s rescue.

  A dark haired woman, authority evident in the way others bent their heads to listen to her, glanced at him. She said something to an officer kitted out in helmet and bulletproof vest, and passed him a small-screen computer.

  “Nick Tawes?” She held out her hand. “Detective-Inspector Ann Khan. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Yes.” He held in his demand for information.

  His escort retreated.

  “We think Lanie is in the workshop two down from the corner. It’s not large. Double height, single level with a skylight on the roof. But it has a door wide enough to drive a van in. We sent a helicopter over with heat detection equipment. It recorded two persons and a possibly cooling engine.”

  “Lanie.”

  “Do you have any idea who the man could be?”

  “No.” His frustration sounded in his voice. “Marshall only just told me of the threat to her. Lanie kept it from me. I could have—”

  “Save the might-have-beens.” It wasn’t unkind. “We’ll get her out. This one is unpredictable, but there are no signs he’s had training.” Nick’s incomprehension must have shown. “The team here doesn’t think he has the feel of ex-military.”

  An additional officer joined the group behind her. Radios crackled. Ann looked back at the stir of activity. “Excuse me.”

  He was left to stare at the group, and at the old but respectable street, abandoned at night.

  Whoever had kidnapped Lanie mightn’t have military training, but they weren’t stupid. This wasn’t a bad place to hide, nor too distant from Bloomsbury. Only, the bastard had been overly optimistic thinking that he could evade the CCTV.

  Realization, like a shrieking Arctic blast, hit Nick and he literally shook with the control it took to stop himself punching the brick wall beside him. The bastard hadn’t miscalculated at all. If he, Nick, hadn’t flown home on impulse, hadn’t spoken with Marshall, would this police response have happened?

  No.

  Lanie would have been lost.

  Panic such as he’d never known flooded him.

  The van might have been traced—later. But the man would have escaped on foot, taken some predetermined escape route, and vanished into the London crowds. Lanie would have died.

  “Lanie’s alive,” Detective-inspector Khan said. “We’ve gotten audio in.”

  Nick leaned a hand against the brick wall.

  She noted it and her voice softened. “Lanie’s a clever woman. A survivor. She’s kept him talking, won us time.” A fractional pause. “We’re going in.”

  He could tell. There was an extra element of alertness, that moment of straining, just before the flag went down.

  The man in the helmet and bulletproof vest spoke into a mouthpiece. “Go!”

  Nick prayed.

  Lanie ran, knowing that her life depended on it. She couldn’t afford to go for the gun and risk the man grabbing her. Instead, she had her course plotted. She ran as fast as she could for the van and dodged around it. Her legs were heavy with fear or the drug, but they moved. The warehouse was too small to lose herself in. She couldn’t play an endless game of hide and seek. But she could lay the suggestion of a false trail, as if she’d run panicked for the big double doors through which the van had entered.

  She had a wild, desperate plan that counted on the man taking the bait.

  The flaw was, she was the bait.

  She ran through the lighter square where the city’s gray light filtered through the filthy central window.

  A bullet whined, hit the concrete floor and ricocheted.

  She screamed.

  “Police! Put the gun down.” The voice boomed in on a megaphone.

  She abandoned her plan and dropped to the ground in the shadow of a pillar. Beams of light cut the darkness of the warehouse. She risked a look around the pillar and saw her kidnapper standing near the double doors, spotlighted with red target lights dancing on his shirt and forehead.

  He looked at the red dots on his shirt, and fainted. He toppled like a fallen tree, all of one piece.

  “Lanie Briers?” A man in tactical response gear crouched beside her.

  She had no idea how he’d even gotten in. “Yes.”

  “Let’s get you out of here.”

  The double doors were pushed wide open as she forced her shaky legs to straighten. You could say she stood, but mostly the policeman held her up.

  Then Nick was there, standing in the doorway, pausing a moment as he searched for her.

  She forgot her legs, her fear, everything, and ran into his arms.

  The sound of a shot inside the warehouse nearly stopped Nick’s heart. Detective-Inspector Khan had let him stand at the corner, just able to see the front of the dark warehouse and the police ready to storm it. When Lanie screamed, the detective grabbed his arm. Physically, she couldn’t hold him, but her grip reminded him not to react and jeopardize Lanie. He had to trust the trained professionals.

  “All clear!” The shout came twenty painful seconds late
r.

  Nick didn’t know if he ran or flew or translocated from the corner. One instant he was there, and the next, he was at the entrance to the warehouse, desperately searching for Lanie.

  She ran to him, and he met her three quarters of the way.

  “Are you okay? Did he…? Are you okay?” Touching her, holding her, feeling her trying to burrow into him, he couldn’t bring her close enough.

  Her whole body shook, tearing apart with sobs.

  “It’s okay. You’re safe. Safe.” He put aside his own need to know she was unhurt, to provide reassurance. “I promise you, Lanie, you’re safe. Shhh. I’m here.”

  Someone brought in a portable light and the dark, haunted warehouse was transformed. Rubbish and abandoned junk seemed to huddle, shrunken and daunted by the light.

  Kind of like the man the police led out.

  Nick stared, memorizing the face of evil. The police would learn his name and Nick would see to it that he was destroyed. Even if the bastard fought the charges in court, having been caught in the act of kidnapping, he’d go to prison, and when he got out…there would be nothing and no one waiting for him. Nick would see to that.

  “Lanie, you need to let the paramedics check you over. They’ll take you to hospital—”

  “No. They can check me over, but not hospital.”

  “I’ll get her a doctor,” Nick said to Ann.

  “He drugged her. We found the needle in the car.”

  “I wasn’t out long, and I don’t want…I want…”

  “We’ll call you family.”

  “Yes.”

  “And go somewhere safe.”

  She gave a choked laugh, and so she should, for that inanity. “Safe would be good.”

  “How did you play him?” Ann asked.

  Lanie shifted slightly in Nick’s arms and stared at her kidnapper, a hunched silhouette in the back of a police car. “You’d be surprised how many people have unresolved mother issues.”

  Nick’s breath huffed out in a near laugh, ruffling her hair. “You could say I have unresolved father issues.”

  “No.” She sniffed and accepted the box of tissues Ann passed her. Lanie took one and handed the box on to Nick, who dropped it onto the bonnet of the police car. “You and Richard are just stubborn. Too much alike.”