Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time

by M. P. Wright

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Dedicated to Jen, Enya and Neve

  with all my heartfelt love and thanks

  PROLOGUE

  No one’s as dear, as baby to me

  wee little fingers, eyes wide and bright

  now sound asleep, until morning light . . .

  The muscular man who stank of three-day-old sweat and stale booze led her by the hand, blindfolded and barefoot, down the twelve cold, flaking sandstone steps, which she slowly counted in her head one by one until she reached solid ground again. Her head felt light, her limbs weak, and she struggled to remain upright, fighting the overpowering drowsiness that had enveloped her body. It was only when she felt the man’s large thumb lift her chin ever so slightly that she was brought back from the drug-induced limbo that had subdued her. His touch had reawakened her: back to the fear, a return to the terror.

  It was earlier that evening when her introduction to the heavyset white man had been made while she stood in the crowded room amongst the many drunken party revellers. Shortly afterwards she had been escorted outside and into the back seat of a large, expensive-looking silver car. The man had got in beside her and caressed the side of her cheek with his pale, thick knuckles before tying a crimson silk scarf across her eyes. This was when the fear had taken hold of her, deep into the pit of her stomach. She had panicked and pushed herself forward, her right hand reaching out towards the car door handle, but her futile attempt to escape was suppressed by the man’s strength as his forearm slammed her back and a seatbelt was drawn tightly across her chest. This had been the point that mind, body and spirit had given way to the narcotic flowing through her body.

  The car had pulled away slowly and she had begun to feel a strange, serene sense of calmness enter her being; the drug that had been slipped into her drink earlier that evening was now beginning to take the edge off of the unknown horror she had become immersed in and it had begun to dampen her ability to think coherently. Slumped back and cushioned by the plush leather upholstery, the man had rested her hand in the flat of his palm and he rhythmically stroked the back of it with icy fingers, which had increased the calmness inside her and her need to sleep. As the effects of the drug took a greater hold upon her, she had calmed, no longer able to resist, with no wish to fight.

  It was then that the nightmare had receded from her subconscious and a gentle feeling of being rocked to sleep had falsely offered her the solace of safety and comfort as she dreamt of gently swaying to and fro in her mother’s arms, just as she had done in the hospital after she had contracted rubella as a child. The high fever and inflammation around her brain had burnt through her tiny body and had ultimately taken her hearing from her. But it was her subsequent muteness, which developed during the months of distressing recovery, that had caused her the greatest agony: unable to speak, to laugh, to . . .

  A violent slap from her captor across her left cheek had brought her from the warm, protective embrace of her mother back into the land of the living again. Her brain felt as if it was being knocked from side to side in her skull as bright red, blue and green spots flashed and jumped in front of her eyes behind the blindfold. Her knees began to buckle, but the muscular man gripped at her upper arm. The pressure of the tight hold he had applied to stop her falling to the floor sent a shockwave of pain throughout her upper body and reaffirmed the harsh reality of her situation.

  A musty, damp odour clung to the insides of her nostrils as the man took her firmly by the wrist and guided her across the chilly floor before bringing her to a sudden halt, spinning her around on her heels and then slowly pushing her backwards until the cold burn of stone seeped through her cotton dress and chilled the skin across her buttocks. The man pushed her back, down onto a thick marble slab. He tied her wrists firmly on either side with thick rope through a pair of iron loops that had been fixed into the top of each corner of the stone plinth. The drug flowing through her bloodstream continued to subdue her natural instinct to struggle free from her enforced bondage, and she returned briefly to the heavy-eyed dream state that had previously cushioned her from the ongoing nightmarish reality that cruelly kept dragging her back to consciousness.

  She wanted to call out, to scream for help . . . the unfairness of her muteness prevented that. She felt the buttons on the front of her dress fly from their stitching as the fabric was torn open, exposing her young, soft ebony skin. Her bra was cut at its straps and pulled away from her breasts. Then the man’s cool hands ran up each of her outer thighs until he reached her stomach. He looped both his thumbs behind the elasticated hem at the top of her panties, drew his hands apart slightly so that they were in line with her hips and in a single vicious downward motion dragged her underwear down her legs to her ankles before yanking them off her feet.

  Petrified, she lashed out with her legs into the darkness, connecting with nothing. Now alone and unable to see, hear or cry for help, she withdrew to a place deep within herself where she hoped she would be safe, protected from what was about to happen. Her tears flowed and were absorbed into the silk scarf that was still tied around her eyes and in her head she sang to herself. The same song that her mother had sung to her as a toddler all those years before, when she was frightened, when she needed to feel safe . . .

  “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop; when the wind blows, the cradle will rock; when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall; and down will come baby, cradle and all.”

  The big man turned and watched as a semicircle of men walked silently out of the shadows of the cellar, all dressed in crisp black dinner suits, their faces covered by Venetian masquerade half-masks, their presence in the semi-darkness picked out by the large cream church altar candles that were housed in the small dug-out recesses of the white alabaster walls. They began to move closer towards her semi-naked body, some with arms already outstretched, their fingers eager to explore her exotically coloured flesh.

  The woman’s captor backed away into the shadows, returning up the sandstone steps, leaving her to an unknown fate. He tried not to think about her again, and when he got to the top, he loosened his tie and took in a deep breath of the icy night air to try to clear his head as he stood at the entrance of the cellar. He reached for the huge brass handle of the old oak door and closed it quietly, resting his forehead against one of the panels as he did so. He turned around and looked up at the clear, star-filled sky, then pulled a ha
lf-bottle of Scotch from his jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap and knocked back a hefty swig of the burning spirit before making his way across the snowy lawn towards his car, the bottle hanging from his shaking hand, which slapped against the side of his leg as he walked. An unexpected, piercing scream from the depths of the underground vault followed him and echoed out into the bitter chill of the winter night.

  1

  There’s only so much staring through the bottom of an empty glass a man can do when he’s got less than one and ten in his back pocket. Not enough to get me another pint, that was for damn sure. I tipped out the remaining copper coins from my battered brown leather wallet on to the copy of the Bristol Evening Post that I had spent the last hour trawling through in a desperate attempt at finding myself a job. I’d bottomed out on that and was now looking to get drunk.

  I was sat in the Star and Garter pub on the corner of Brook Road, in the St Pauls area of Bristol. I’d been in the bar for the better part of three hours nursing my drink and was in need of a refill. I’d rented myself a place nearby shortly after arriving in Britain and the Star had become my local, but I was hardly a regular and the chances of me putting anything on the slate weren’t happening. I was outta work and broke.

  Outside, the snow was three inches deep on the pavement. It was my first experience of an English winter and my fascination with the stuff had soon worn off. I’d no interest in trudging back to my pokey terraced digs to sit and freeze my ass off in front of a two-bar electric fire that I couldn’t afford to put on.

  I had nothing in to eat, apart from three tins of Libby’s canned fruit in the larder and a half-bottle of milk that was stinking my kitchen out. The place was as bare and unwelcoming as when I’d first moved in there.

  In the March of 1964 I’d sailed from Bridgetown, Barbados. It was a ten-day journey across the Atlantic to Southampton with the promise of work at Wills’ tobacco company at the end of it. My uncle Gabe had worked there for over a decade and had pulled a few strings to help me out. I’d stuck it out for ten months before buss-mout’in’ the foreman, Teddy Meeks, in the face after he’d accused me of thieving cigarettes. I didn’t like him and I’m pretty sure he hated me. The allegations that I was a thief were untrue. I’d sucked up all his bullshit and jibes since I’d first been introduced to him by Walter Keats, the general manager, but it was the “nicking nigger” remark that had got me mean and he’d paid for it with a broken jaw.

  Why, I don’t know, but I’d gotten away with the assault without any criminal charges. The fact that I had known that Teddy had been loading up boxes of two hundred cartons of Strand cigarettes onto the backs of delivery vans that would then find themselves in the social clubs and pubs all over Bristol city at knock-down prices with a nice little cut going to Meeks may have had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was because he’d heard a little of my past and my time with the police back home.

  Whatever his reasons, Meeks’ own illegal activities would continue and he’d still no doubt be picking on some poor bastard back at the factory while I was scratching for the price of another pint.

  Now, when I could afford to, I’d drink to forget the likes of men like Meeks, and a past that I had run from, a past that still had a grip on my soul and kept me awake at nights. I didn’t hold out much hope for lady luck to change things and I wasn’t the praying kind.

  My mama had once told me, “Child, don’t you be praying too hard fo’ someting God don’t want you to have.”

  But tonight God was about to perversely answer an unspoken prayer and my late mama’s words would come back to haunt me from across the ocean in a way I’d never have thought possible.

  “Buy you another one of those, son?”

  Alderman Earl Linney stood over me, his hulking frame blocking out the glare of the gas lamp on the opposite wall. I’d seen Linney around giving the locals his warm-handshake routine and knew of his reputation as a successful businessman. It was rumoured that he had his fingers in just about every rich man’s pocket in the city, and if he was just about to stick them into his own to get me another drink, hell, I wasn’t about to say no.

  “I’ll take a pint o’ Dragon Stout, thanks, man.”

  Linney, silent for a moment, stared down at my paper, his eyes quickly scanning the contents of the opened pages before returning his gaze towards me.

  “Dragon it is then. I’ll join you, if you don’t mind?”

  “Makes no difference to me, brother, but you’ll find me pretty poor company.”

  He smiled at me again, paying little attention to the remark I had just made. He took off his expensive camel-hair coat and laid it across the back of the chair next to me and sat his brown leather briefcase at the foot of it before walking to the bar.

  Earl Linney’s rise within the city’s business community had been as meteoric as it was successful. After being demobbed from the Royal Air Force at the end of the Second World War, he’d come over from Spanish Town, Jamaica, and settled in Britain, where he then moved to Bristol. After working in a number of engineering factories he had set up in business, manufacturing aircraft parts for the Bristol Aeroplane Company at Filton. It had made him rich. He’d not rested on his laurels, and had carved himself a place in local politics and formed the West Indian Community Council. Speaking out against discrimination and with strong ties to the unions, he was known as a man of integrity and sat with the great and the good of the city, the washed and unwashed alike. He was an honorary Bristolian, made good from the colonies, so what the hell had dragged the alderman out on a freezing-cold Sunday night and why did he feel the need to be buying a stranger a drink? He’d picked on the wrong guy to engage in a bout of deep, meaningful conversation with, and for a moment I wondered if I looked that desperate for cash that the elderly Jamaican thought I was a batty boy and up for selling my body. If that was the case, then the old boy was soon gonna be losing some of his teeth and I’d probably be spending the night in a cold police cell.

  Linney returned with the two pints of stout and sat opposite me on a short backless bar stool, sliding the glass of beer across the table, nodding towards the newspaper as he did so.

  “Any luck?”

  “Oh yeah, man, I’m just full of luck at the minute.”

  I reached for the pint glass and sank half of it in three solid swigs; the strong, rich, treacly ale took the edge off my thirst and started warming my insides. It reminded me of home, sitting outside Barrington’s bar on the quayside at Carlisle Bay, where I would drink after coming off of duty. I started to relax, but only a little.

  “You put your hand to anything?” Linney asked me dryly.

  I felt that creepy politician patter coming on. I let him carry on with it. There might be another drink to be had out of him later.

  “I sure do need to. My damn landlord’s about to kick me outta my place on Friday, so I’m not in a position to be choosey. Bristol Bus ain’t hiring either,” I said, with some sarcasm and a little irony thrown in for good measure.

  Back in the summer of 1963 the Bristol Omnibus Company, which had a policy that coloured workers should not be employed as drivers or bus crew, had not expected a twenty-six-year-old black man, Paul Stephenson, to challenge them on a decision that had been upheld since 1951. Stevenson had changed all that after instigating a sixty-day boycott of the buses. He’d been joined by many supporters, finally seeing the overturning of the policy in the August of that same year.

  It had been a gallant stand, but their victory was fleeting and I felt little had changed for men like me. It wasn’t uncommon to find signs taped to the windows and doors of public houses – “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs” – to remind us how unwelcome we were. Britain wasn’t the land of milk and honey, I was damn sure of that, but at least we got top billing on their list of undesirables.

  Earl Linney now sitting opposite me was the exception to their rules. He was a man of colour made good. He glanced back down again at my newspaper and spoke without raising his
head from the page.

  “I may be able to offer you something, Mr Ellington.”

  My surname tripped off the tip of his tongue as if he’d known me from birth.

  “How the hell you know my name?” I asked the alderman suspiciously.

  “A man in my position is advised to know certain people; let’s just say I’ve been asking around and I’m aware of you and your background.”

  “What’d you know ’bout me and my background?”

  “You’ve been in the country for just over ten months and you were involved in an altercation with a colleague at your previous employers, which now finds you looking through the situations vacant. Clearly a tobacco warehouse wasn’t your chosen profession. Let’s just say your name came up in quiet conversation. It’s your previous line of work that I’m interested in, and how you may be able to assist me.”

  “I ain’t following you; there’s only a handful of people knew I was with the police force before I came over here, most of them would cross the street to avoid me, so whoever you’ve been talking to, they sent you to the wrong guy.”

  “I’d be correct in thinking discretion was a quality much sought after in a police officer? It’s discretion I’m looking for, Mr Ellington, discretion and the ability to ask questions in our own community without arousing the suspicions of the people you’re asking.”

  I could see why Linney made a good politician: he smiled in all the right places and when you asked him a difficult question he gave you the answer you wanted to hear. Whether he was speaking the truth was another matter, but hell, that could’ve been said of all politicians, in my opinion.

  “A man in my position needs people he can trust; those kinds of people are few and far between, so naturally I value my trusted staff greatly. It is a member of my personal staff who I have concerns over. Her name is Stella Hopkins. She’s missing. We have not seen her at work nor has she returned home for the last ten days.”

  “Well, I’m truly sorry ’bout that, Mr Linney, but I don’t see how I can help you or why you’re telling me any of this. But hey man, I’m grateful fo’ the beer; I sure as hell don’t have the money to buy you one back.”