by J. D. Weston
"Yes, yes," he burst, "she was mature, she was just young."
“I understand, Mr Brayethwait. She was still petite and small. Did it make you feel like a big man? Is that it?”
“I didn't hurt her, I wasn’t violent with her.”
“Okay, so you treated her well? Did you stroke her hair? Did you caress her skin? Did you wish that she could be yours? Tell me, Brayethwait, what was her name?”
Barnaby spoke softly as if he was remembering it all, "Her name was Anastasia. She was lovely. Perfect in every way."
“How many times, Mr Brayethwait?”
He looked up. His eyes begged for understanding and empathy. "A few."
“I have one more question for you, and then all of this will be over.”
Barnaby knew it was coming and broke once more. But when the words came, they hit him as hard as ever.
“Is Anastasia still alive?”
Barnaby wrenched at the belt. “Let me go, get me out of here, you can’t do this.”
“Tell me, Barnaby.”
“No, no she’s not. I did it. I killed her. Is that what you want to hear?””
“How?”
Barnaby settled, defeated. "Gently," he said softly.
“Gently?”
Barnaby looked up at Harvey, and stared him in the eyes. "I smothered her face, I suffocated her."
“While you were raping her?”
Barnaby nodded.
“Say it, Barnaby.”
Barnaby hesitated then gave a deep sigh. “I suffocated her, while I was raping her.”
“Thank you, Mr Brayethwait.”
Barnaby kept his head down, his face was a mess of snot and tears.
“Mr Brayethwait?”
He looked up.
"Tell me where I can find Mr Cartwright."
"The farm," he snivelled.
“Thank you. And what is his role in all of this?”
"He brings the girls in from Eastern Europe. He has contacts. I paid for the farm, he brings the girls and-"
“And?”
“Jamie brings the clients.”
“Like Oscar Shaw?”
Barnaby nodded.
“Jamie?”
“Jamie Creasey.”
“Where does he find these clients?”
“She.”
Harvey didn’t reply.
“Jamie is a she,” said Barnaby.
Melody was sat in the passenger seat of the VW Transporter, Denver Cox was driving, and Reg Tenant was in the back manning the surveillance equipment. He had LUCY up on one of the screens and monitored Harvey's chips.
They were parked on the side of the road and had just watched Harvey follow the BMW into the car park on foot.
Reg watched as the chip on the motorcycle and the three on Harvey’s person split.
"Harvey Stone down to three chips," he confirmed.
Two minutes later, the blue BMW pulled out of the car park and drove past them into the oncoming traffic.
“No point hiding, let’s go,” said Melody.
Denver pulled into the traffic then turned into the entrance to the car park. He reversed back onto the road, eliciting angry blasts of commuters’ horns. Denver ignored them and joined the traffic. They could just make out the bright blue BMW in the distance.
"Be my eyes, Reg," said Denver.
"On it."
The morning traffic made for a slow chase, and by the time they pulled into the car park in the forest, the BMW was parked up and locked. Harvey and Barnaby Brayethwait were nowhere to be seen.
“According to LUCY, they’re on foot moving fast through the trees in that direction,” Reg indicated west and returned his attention back to the screens.
"Okay, you two stay here, I'll go alone," said Melody. She checked the clip in her Sig and holstered it.
“You wearing a vest?” asked Denver.
"Of course, but Harvey won't shoot me. If you see him, get me on the comms. Reg, I'm walking west, guide me when I need it. Otherwise let's keep radio silent, I don't want chatter while I'm listening for them."
She stepped out of the van and shut the door behind her, pulling her short jacket over her weapon.
"Okay, you're looking at about a mile. He's stopped moving. Keep in that general direction, I'll steer you in," said Reg over the radio. She clicked twice on the ear-piece and ran through the forest as fast as she could. The track veered off south-west by an old oak tree. There was a wooden bench seat, presumably for walkers to rest. The trees were spread out at first, a mixture of beech and oak and some birch trees. But before long, the density of the trees thickened and the clumps of bushes between the tree trunks grew wilder and denser, which made travelling difficult.
“Eleven o’clock, Mills.”
She tapped twice on the ear-piece and adjusted.
"You're two hundred yards out, Mills," said Reg quietly. "Hold on, Stone is on the move. Repeat, Stone is on the move. He's heading in a south-east direction, coming underneath you back to the car park, he must have seen us. His phone chip hasn't moved. He's left his phone behind."
"Reg, Denver, are you carrying?"
"We’re both carrying," said Reg.
"Good, don't let him get away."
"You want us to shoot him?" asked Denver incredulously.
"Not if you can help it, but if you must."
"That's like poking a sleeping lion, Mills."
"Just don't let him leave. Okay, I have visual on Barnaby."
Melody walked into the copse of trees and found Barnaby tied to a tree. He'd soiled himself and looked up pleadingly at Melody.
Melody kept her weapon aimed at him.
She saw Harvey's phone on the floor and bent to pick it up. It was unlocked and had the audio recorder app open. She pressed play. Barnaby hung his head in deep shame. She zip-tied his wrists and released the belt, then walked him out barefoot without saying a word.
There was some commotion on the radio.
“Come in, boys. What’s happening out there?”
"Erm, we have Stone. Hurry back, Mills." She picked up the pace and forced Barnaby Brayethwait to walk painfully across the forest floor through nettles and thorns. His comments on the discomfort were met with zero compassion.
"Okay, update, so we don't have Stone. Come on, Mills, he's getting away," called Reg over the radio. In the distance, she heard the BMW start and its engine rev loudly. Then she heard the whine of car's reverse gear and the crunch of tires skidding on loose gravel. She burst through the trees in time to see Harvey pull a J-turn around Denver who had tried trying to block his escape in the van. The BMW narrowly ducked around it with just inches to spare.
Reg saw Melody approach with Brayethwait and opened the back door ready to pull him in. She shoved Brayethwait into the van and dove in after shouting to Denver, "Go, go, go."
Denver didn't need telling twice, he found first and slammed the accelerator down. The rear-wheel-drive van reacted instantly, and they shot forwards. He over-steered onto the main road with a long screech then straightened up and homed in on Harvey in the BMW ahead. Melody reached up and closed the rear door, and zip tied Brayethwait's ankles before climbing over into the front passenger seat.
6
The Farm
Harvey hit stop on the recording on the audio app and placed the phone on the ground away from Barnaby in a clear patch of dirt so that Melody would find it easily.
He checked Barnaby’s restraint and turned to face him.
“Six months ago, you’d be a dead man. Consider yourself very lucky.”
He turned and ran south, then cut east back to the car park from a different direction. He burst out of the trees and used the key fob to unlock the BMW. The indicators flashed once, and he heard the door locks pop open.
Fifty yards down from the BMW was the VW Transporter. Reg had the side window open, and his Sig hung out in the open air, pointed directly at Harvey.
"Don't move, Harvey. I'm really sorry, but I ca
n't let you go."
Harvey froze and lifted his hands. He turned to face the van, he was expecting some sort of effort to stop him.
"Nice try, Reg.” He lowered his hands and opened the car door.
“I mean it, Stone. Don't make me do this,” he called from the window.
"Do it, Reg. You couldn't hit a double-decker bus from that distance." Harvey climbed into the car and fired up the engine. He heard the gunshot and, as predicted, Reg fired high.
Harvey selected reverse and gunned the throttle, spinning the wheel to drive backwards out of the car park. If he drove forwards, Reg might have a better chance of getting lucky and hitting him through the windscreen, but the odds were slim.
He wound the engine up and reversed towards the rear of the van, just as Denver reversed to block his attempt at getting past. Harvey was expecting that too. Denver was a far better driver than Reg was a marksman. Harvey span the wheel, braked, and slid the stick into first gear, performing a textbook J-turn and narrowly missing the rear of the van. He straightened up and kept the throttle down as he joined the road. The rear end of the car slid out nicely as the BMW's computer system controlled the power to the wheels. He shifted into second, third, then fourth and settled in for the drive.
The van emerged from the car park in Harvey’s rearview mirror. He knew that Reg would have LUCY open and they’d find him regardless of how fast he drove, so he took it easy on the winding lanes, maintaining his distance and keeping the van in view.
He felt along the seams of his jacket as drove and reached deep inside the pockets. Finally, he found a small lump in the stitching by the zip. He reached around and pulled his knife from its sheave on his belt, then cut through the thick leather with the sharp blade. He tossed the small chip out the window, then put his foot down.
Harvey took the turn into Pudding Lane in less than thirty minutes and began a slow crawl to the entrance of the driveway. A game plan was formulating in his head, but there were so many variables and unknowns, it was too early to execute. He had always been able to run scenarios through his head, possible outcomes, pros and cons; it was one of Julios' influences. Sometimes though, the old Harvey shone through, and he went with his gut.
He was four hundred yards from the farm entrance when a silver BMW X5 nosed out of the driveway. He flashed his lights to let the car out. A female hand waved a thanks through the passenger window, and Harvey could just make out long, curly hair through the rear window.
He slowed and let the car pull out, then hung back to allow the women to get out of sight, then pulled into the farm. He drove up the bumpy track and stopped outside the old wooden barn.
The small area where drivers obviously parked outside the old, run-down barn was still devoid of cars. Barnaby had reverse parked his car outside the Epping Labour Party office, so Harvey reverse parked too. People generally notice small breaks in habits, thought Harvey. The parking area was around thirty metres by thirty metres with a faint track that led off behind the buildings.
Harvey climbed out of the car. The buildings were in an L-shape. The front building was small and derelict with two floors, and the second building was more of a barn come warehouse. It had a small door on the right and two large sliding doors to the left for farm machinery and trucks to reverse up to.
Walking to the smaller door, he studied the keys on Barnaby's bunch and selected the correct key first time. He pushed the door open with a gentle squeak and stepped into the dim light.
He noticed the smell first of all. It was an air freshener, sandalwood. Harvey thought it odd that somebody would choose to freshen the smell of what was essentially an old barn. He quietly closed the door behind him and let his eyes adjust to the shadowed room. Throughout the old building, jagged light infiltrated the many gaps in the structure's joints. The barn's contents were clear, but the details were vague in the semi-darkness.
He stood still and listened, but heard nothing. There was a small flashlight in his jacket pocket, a two-cell torch that was small and light, and he barely even noticed it was there. Harvey flashed the light around.
Sitting just inside the large sliding doors was a small digger. It was a rental and had the number of the rental firm on the side of the boom fixed to the bucket.
Along the back wall was a series of old stables. The low stable doors had been replaced with much newer and larger ones that offered no view into the six pens. Each was locked with a padlocked hasp and staple, and a deadbolt into the floor.
A long steel beam ran through the centre of the building from end to end. It looked like it may have been used to shift hay, or even cattle or horse feed, from one end of the room to the other using the small rope block and tackle that hung from a trolley fixed to the beam.
In the space beside the sliding doors, there was a pile of blue plastic sheets. They weren't the cheap plastic type sold in hardware stores, they were thick and heavy. Beside them, on the floor, a hose was curled up and fixed to the single tap on the wall.
To Harvey's right was a spacious area with some old couches. Somebody had made an effort with the arrangement, but the couches had deteriorated in the old barn.
A door to the left of the couches was left open. Inside, Harvey found a kitchen. Its cleanliness in such a building was impressive. It was like somebody had recently put a lot of effort into making it presentable, perhaps somebody who was charging clients a lot of money for the services they rendered there. Harvey thought of Donny and his fine taste. He wondered if, while the barn was not spic and span and likely never would be, he had some sort of say in the cleaning of the kitchen.
A smaller door led off the kitchen. Harvey pushed it wide open. The room was pitch dark inside. His torchlight fell onto screens that had been fixed to the wall. Each one had a glowing LED. indicating the on button, and the hum of a computer indicating that it was running.
He reached up and turned the first screen on, the red light turned to green, and the display lit up. It showed a dreary, monochrome image of the BMW out front. He turned the second screen on. A small room with what looked to be an iron-framed bed in the centre of the space. At the edge of the room was a bucket and a plastic container, presumably for water. On the opposite wall, Harvey saw a bench with items hanging on the wall. The camera angle was poor so he couldn't see exactly what they were, but he guessed there would be rope and chains plus various sharp implements and other sick devices.
The third screen was the same. The fourth screen was a little different. It showed the monochrome image of a similar small room with a similar bed in the centre. This room had two buckets by the wall, no bench with torture devices and three girls sitting and lying on the bed.
One girl sat with knees drawn up underneath her. Another laid with her back to the camera, and the third stood up and began pacing the room. Harvey turned all the screens on. Of the six stables, only two had girls in; stables three and four had three girls in each. Three of the stables looked as if they had been made ready for guests. The last looked the same as the ones that had the girls in, but was for the time being, devoid of life. Harvey guessed why.
He turned the screens off and walked back to the main barn. He touched one of the six locked doors with the flat of his palm. There was life behind the solid wooden panel. But that particular life was not Harvey's concern. Donny was Harvey's concern. Once he'd dealt with Donny, then he could help free the girls. If he tried to free them now, he risked losing Donny for good.
As he walked to the small door, Harvey heard a car arriving; its tyres crunched on the dirt. The BMW X5 had just pulled into the entrance and was slowly making its way up the track. Harvey looked around the room, then up. He ran and jumped, grabbed hold of the steel beam that ran along the ceiling and pulled himself up. He balanced on it and walked to the end, where it met the wooden truss of the roof. Making his way across the network of joists, he stopped above the kitchen in the darkness of the ceiling space.
He heard a heavy car door close outside, and the d
oor to the barn swung open. The person wasn't hiding their arrival. The sound of heels on the poured concrete floor stopped.
“Barney?”
There was no answer.
Harvey watched as the woman stepped slowly over to stables three and four and pulled firmly on the padlocks to make sure they were locked. She was tall for a woman, and the heels made her taller. Her thick mass of loose curly hair bounced as she walked. She wore a two-piece suit with a frilly blouse that protruded from the collar of her jacket. Her skirt was shorter than knee length, and she looked to be in good shape. Harvey judged her to be late thirties.
“Barney?” she called again, like she was calling her dog.
Again, there was no answer.
She stepped into the kitchen out of sight. Harvey tracked her footsteps through the gypsum ceiling, he imagined her walking to the control room. She wouldn't start with screen one and work across. Instead, she would start with screens four and five to check the girls were there and alone. Then she would turn on the others; nothing, no sign of him. She wouldn’t find Barnaby Brayethwait anywhere.
Harvey tracked her as she walked back out of the kitchen and stood in the centre of the open barn. She pulled her phone from her handbag and dialled a number. Harvey noticed that there were just three clicks; phone app, recent calls and then the number. It was too far for him to see if it display a name.
“Hey, is Barney with you?” Harvey heard the one-sided conversation. “No, his car is outside but he’s nowhere to be seen. I thought he’d be having his way with one of them, but the girls are all in three and four, and the other stables are empty.” She moved to the doorway and stood looking out at Barnaby’s BMW. “No, I’m going to feed them, then get back to work. What time will you be here?” There was a pause while the other person talked, then, “Okay, and Bruno? I’m not doing the buckets again.” Another pause. “Okay, I’ll lock up, maybe he’s just left his car here. I’ll be back tonight around seven-ish, can you ask Bruno to muck the stables out and hose the girls down? I have a client coming at eight and I want them clean. When are the new girls arriving? Tomorrow? What time? Okay, I’ll make their room up. I’ll see you tonight.”