by Bill Kitson
‘Not a physical location, but I could identify the owner or user, and if it’s part of an intranet or LAN, I could pick out the individual unit.’
‘I’m so glad you told me that. I’m not quite sure if it’s good news or bad.’
‘Put it this way, if we were talking about this building, I’d be able to tell which of the computer workstations it was at.’
‘Right. Thank you! Will you make those tasks your priority? See if you can tie in a connection to Wilson Macaulay Industries. I feel sure someone working there is involved.’
She gave him a mock salute. ‘Yes, Inspector Nash, sir.’
Patricia was cold. She was unable to see for the blindfold. She had a ferocious headache. Above all, she was terrified. When she recovered consciousness she was unaware of what had happened. Had she been in an accident of some kind? Or had she fainted? It was only when full awareness returned that the truth dawned. She had been knocked out. Then she had been stripped naked and tied up, her wrists and ankles secured to something cold and metallic. Confirmation of her location came via the softness of a mattress under her body: a bedstead. She had been kidnapped. And her position suggested the obvious reason for that.
Any doubt about this vanished when she heard her abductor’s voice. She recognized it immediately, and the fear and loathing it had generated on the train returned, magnified a thousandfold.
‘Pretty lady, I told how we should be together. Now you are here for me. Soon I will make the music to you as a man should. This you will learn to enjoy. Please to scream or cry if you wish it. Only I alone will be hearing this, and it makes encouragement for me. For now I must leave you, but soon I will return, and then, pretty lady, we will begin.’
Patricia struggled against the ropes that were restraining her, but in vain. Twice she opened her mouth to scream, but her tormentor’s warning came to her in time. She must not do anything to further inflame his filthy, diseased mind. Her skin crawled at the thought that he had touched her, undressed her; examined her as she was lying naked and helpless. She bit her lip and swallowed to stem the urge to vomit and to avoid bursting into tears. For all she knew, a woman’s tears might be another of his fetishes.
She was immensely relieved, if only temporarily, to hear his footsteps recede and the door bang closed before she heard the unmistakeable sound of stairs creaking. At least for the time being, she was alone, safe and unharmed. How much longer it would remain that way was something she dare not dwell on. She tried not to think of Julian and what he would be going through as soon as they found out she was missing. Nor did she want to dwell on what would happen to her, either at the hands of her vile captor, or worse still after he had grown weary of her.
A stray memory returned to her, of the bank in Kazakhstan; and of its manager. At that moment she would have given the world to have her hands untied and his machine pistol within reach.
chapter twenty-one
The properties at Bishop’s Cross and Kirk Bolton had yielded no result. As they pulled up a discreet distance from the house at Drover’s Halt, Nash thought that this represented their best bet of finding the missing woman. The holiday home was over half a mile outside the hamlet, at the edge of a large belt of woodland. In a setting such as this, there was little chance of the activities of the kidnappers being seen – or heard. The location also worked in favour of the police, for they were able to park their vehicles where they would not be visible from the property. Nash walked to the edge of the trees. He could see the cottage and yet remain hidden from view behind a small brake of silver birch saplings that were in need of thinning out. From this vantage point, as he brought the house under surveillance with his binoculars, the first thing he saw was a car parked on the small open space beyond the cottage. He waved Mironova forward. ‘Do an ANPR on this registration, will you.’ He read the number out.
‘I will if I can get the machine to work out here. I’m not sure if there’s a strong enough signal, but I’ll give it a try.’
Fleming had also joined Nash and was watching through another set of binoculars. As Clara was obtaining the information, Jackie noticed movement inside the building. ‘There’s someone walking about on the ground floor. Look at the two windows to the right of the front door. It looks as if they’re pacing backwards and forwards. However, we can’t be certain this isn’t someone who rented the property after the computer was last updated.’
Mironova returned in time to hear Fleming’s last remarks. ‘I think you’ll find this is the right house,’ she told them. ‘That car is registered to Helm Hire. I’ve been on the phone with them and they have it out on short-term rental,’ Clara paused, ‘to Mark Tankard.’
There was stunned silence for a few moments, before Fleming spoke. ‘OK, so we’ve confirmed we’re at the right place. The only problem now is how do we get inside without alarming them? For all we know there could be another of the gang with the victim, holding a knife or a gun to her head. We can’t force entry without risking Mrs Wain’s life. Nor can we walk up to the front door and knock.’
Nash was looking at Fleming as she spoke. She was dressed in a neat business suit comprising a tailored jacket and skirt, perfect for the idea he had come up with. ‘Actually,’ he told her, ‘walking up to the door and knocking was exactly what I had in mind.’
He explained his plan to the others. Fleming thought it over for a few minutes. ‘Before I agree, I want to consult our gunslingers.’
She summoned the leader of the armed officers. ‘Do you think you can get a couple of your men alongside the front door without anyone inside the cottage seeing them? I don’t want them to force entry, simply to be there as backup.’
‘It would be tricky, but for that car being handily parked alongside,’ he replied. ‘That gives excellent cover for the distance between the end of the treeline and the corner of the house. Once there, my men can duck down below the windows until they’re at the door.’
‘OK, Mike, what do we need?’
Ivan was awaiting the phone call to give him the word to carry on. He was impatient, but knew better than to risk everything by letting his desire take control. He wandered to and fro across the lounge floor. He had switched the laptop on as instructed, to find that it was password protected. He’d sent a text to that effect, only to be told to leave it as it was. Now he awaited their orders. More than once, he was tempted to go ahead regardless. The thought of the woman upstairs, her naked body ready for his pleasure, made the pain of waiting almost unbearable, but still his fear held him back. He wasn’t prepared to risk everything by letting his desire overtake common sense. Not over a woman, that was for sure.
His mobile rang and he leapt across the room to answer it. The message was short and to the point, no more than a short sentence. ‘Switch off the laptop and go ahead.’ It was all the encouragement he needed. A vision of the woman’s naked body came into his mind. The computer could wait. He hurried upstairs and opened the bedroom door, his excitement mounting as he looked at the woman on the bed. His arousal was painful. He stepped forward, but at that moment he heard a knock at the front door. Ivan frowned: he wasn’t expecting visitors. Surely they hadn’t decided to attend in person? That wasn’t the way they worked. He’d never met or seen them, only heard a voice on the phone. That didn’t mean anything. For all he knew they might have wanted to ensure he carried their orders out properly. Better to be sure. He closed the bedroom door and walked slowly downstairs.
He unlocked the door and opened it. A man and woman were standing on the threshold. Both were wearing suits. The man was carrying a briefcase, whilst the woman was clutching a sheaf of papers in one hand. The man smiled at him.
‘Good morning, brother. Are you prepared for the Kingdom of the Lord? Have you heard the word of God? May we take a few moments of your time and possibly interest you in a copy of The Watchtower?’
As the man spoke, his colleague thrust a sheet of paper towards Ivan. His reflex action to take the proffered documen
t was his undoing. As he reached forward to accept it he felt something cold touch his wrist. At the same moment the man grasped Ivan’s other hand and before he could defend himself, he was secured in handcuffs. Ivan looked down at his pinioned wrists in dismay. He heard the woman speak, but even then the sense of what she said didn’t strike home.
‘One suspect secure. Clear to enter the building.’ As she was speaking, her male colleague dragged Ivan to one side to allow men wearing uniforms and flak jackets to charge past them. It was only when he saw them, and the automatic weapons they were carrying, that Ivan realized that it was all over.
Fleming and Mironova accompanied three of the ARU team as they searched the building. The women detectives found the victim and motioned to the ARU men to keep out of the room. They untied Patricia and helped her to dress. Fleming’s assurance that her ordeal was over, that they were police officers and that she was safe had to be repeated several times before Patricia took it in. So too did Fleming’s question as to whether she had been assaulted.
Patricia shook her head, wincing slightly at the pain this caused. ‘I think he knocked me out. My head feels sore. He said he was going to … he told me what he was going to do….’ Her sentence petered out as she burst into tears.
‘It’s all right, it’s all over now. You’re quite safe. There are armed officers outside the door to protect you, and the man who was holding you captive is in handcuffs. We need to get you to hospital and have that bump on the head examined. I’ll see your husband knows that you’re safe.’
Fleming looked at Mironova, who gave a slight nod. Once they were out of earshot of the victim, Clara asked, ‘Do you want me to take her to the rape suite, just in case? We can’t be sure he didn’t do anything to her whilst she was unconscious.’
‘I think that would be sensible. Purely as a precaution, although there don’t seem to be any signs of a sexual assault.’
Downstairs, Nash had left two officers to guard the prisoner. ‘Come with me,’ he instructed a third man. ‘I want to have a look around outside, and I’d rather have one of you with me.’
Unlike the cottage at Gorton, there was no garage attached to this building, but Nash saw a small shed towards the rear of the garden. He walked over to it, with the ARU man keeping constant watch alongside him. The shed door was open, but they found nothing more sinister inside than a collection of gardening implements. On closing the door, however, Nash saw the handle of another tool sticking out from behind the shed. He took a couple of paces to his right and saw it was a spade that had been left on top of a freshly-dug mound of earth. Beyond it was a deep hole, measuring approximately six feet by four. Nash stared down into the hole, knowing that this was the grave that had been prepared for Patricia Wain. His sense of relief changed suddenly to one of horrified disbelief. He turned to the ARU man. ‘Fetch Superintendent Fleming. Tell her it’s urgent.’
Fleming arrived and reported that Patricia seemed relatively unharmed. ‘That wouldn’t have been the case for much longer,’ Nash replied, pointing to the open grave. ‘I guess this was intended to be her last resting place. She had a lucky escape, I think. Unlike the current occupant.’
Fleming looked at him, then into the hole. Towards the far end she saw a small semicircle of grey-white substance. It was the size and shape of an eye socket. The grave had been used before.
‘Good God!’
‘Exactly. Unless I’m very much mistaken, I think we might have found the mysterious Mark Tankard.’
‘I’d better summon Mexican Pete and a SOCO team. I’ll ask for the one that worked at Gorton. They’re getting to be experienced gravediggers.’
‘If Clara takes Mrs Wain to hospital, will you see to the prisoner? The ARU men will take him, but I want Jack to make sure the arrest and everything that’s happened here is kept under wraps. I’ll stay here until Mexican Pete arrives. He’ll feel lonely at a crime scene if I’m not about. Once I’ve turned the place over to him I’ll join you back at the station.’
The leader of the ARU team joined them. Fleming gave him instructions, ending with an order to remain at the cottage as protection for Nash. ‘OK, ma’am, but there’s a laptop in the cottage. Mrs Wain says it belongs to her, but it’s switched on. What do you want me to do with it?’
‘Leave it as it is. It could be rigged,’ Nash interrupted. ‘I’ll ask our expert’s advice before we do anything.’ He turned to Fleming when the ARU man moved away. ‘There must be a reason that bloke switched it on.’
There was a strange irony in ringing his own direct number, knowing that Tina was seated at his desk. He explained the situation. ‘What should I do with the laptop?’
‘Bring it back with you, but leave it switched on and don’t close the lid. Is the mains lead plugged in?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Let’s hope the battery doesn’t fail before you return. If someone is in the middle of accessing the information on it, it’s important that they don’t get interrupted. That would be a giveaway that they’ve been rumbled.’
‘The reason that Mrs Wain is unharmed is probably that they were waiting to see how much she knew. I suppose if they didn’t get anything positive from the laptop, the hired muscle we’ve arrested might have been ordered to torture her. But what else might they have wanted to know?’
‘Who she shared the knowledge with, for one thing.’
‘Crawshaw, for example?’
‘Yes, that sounds logical. Whilst you’re on the phone, I’ve got news for you. I’ve taken a look through Shires’ software using the codes the superintendent got for me. The fraud is more extensive than we thought. My next job is to attempt to follow the money trail. I hope to have some news for you by the time you get back.’
‘The fact that Patricia Wain is safe and well is solely down to you, Tina. That’s an immense achievement.’
Nash relayed the information to Fleming along with Tina’s instructions.
‘Tina Silver is proving very useful,’ Jackie agreed as she carefully held the laptop. ‘You seem to have developed a good rapport with our delectable computer expert,’ she added.
Nash restricted his reply to a non-committal statement. ‘I think she considers it to be just another job of work.’
Fleming smiled complacently. Nash was puzzled by her expression. But then he was not aware of the bet she’d made with the chief constable.
chapter twenty-two
It was almost an hour later when the pathologist and the SOCO team arrived. ‘If you keep unearthing corpses at this rate,’ Ramirez told Nash, ‘you’re going to terminally damage the local tourist industry. People will be scared to book a holiday cottage for fear of what they might find in the vegetable patch.’
‘I’m rather hoping this will prove to be the last one.’
Ramirez sniffed. ‘I wish I had your confidence.’
The leader of the SOCO team approached, carrying an evidence bag. ‘I’m sending this for forensic testing, but I thought you’d like to see it first. We recovered it from the lounge. It was in the inside pocket of the bloke’s jacket.’
‘You’re sure it’s his jacket?’
The officer held up a second bag containing a passport. ‘Pretty sure.’ He grinned.
Nash looked at the first bag’s contents. The coil of thin nylon rope was clearly visible through the plastic. ‘That looks like the missing murder weapon,’ he agreed. ‘It might be too much to hope that Linda Wilson’s DNA or that of the person in the grave here will still be on it, but we could get a result from Ormondroyd’s. And with luck, the rope should match the injuries to the victims.’
Having turned the crime scene over to the SOCO men, Nash returned to Helmsdale. Binns greeted him by handing him a sheet of paper. On it were the details of their prisoner. ‘I got a hit from his fingerprints,’ Binns told him. ‘His name is Ivan Korosec. He’s from Slovenia originally, but reading that lot he seems to have become an international celebrity. Several forces across Euro
pe are keen for him to make a starring appearance in their courts.’
Nash scanned the document. ‘They’re going to have to wait a long time, Jack. Before he goes travelling again, he’s going to have to answer charges here for the assault and abduction of Patricia Wain. And if results from the weapon we recovered prove positive, I think we’ll be adding two, possibly three murder charges to the list. The victims being Linda Wilson, Neil Ormondroyd and one other, who we suspect to be Mark Tankard, or whatever the man’s real name is.’
‘I’ve stuck him in a cell for now. Do you want to interview him? At the moment he’s playing the “no speakee English” card.’
‘No, leave him to stew. That way he can’t demand a solicitor, and it’ll give us chance to get closer to the people who are paying him.’
‘OK, Mike. I’ll get him transferred to the cells at HQ for overnight. I think you’re wanted upstairs.’
Nash entered the CID suite to find Fleming and Tina in conversation.
Fleming greeted Nash. ‘Clara’s just phoned from Netherdale General. Patricia Wain is none the worse for her ordeal apart from a possible touch of concussion. There was no sexual assault. They’re keeping her in overnight, purely as a precaution. Her husband is with her and Clara has asked him to drive her to Netherdale tomorrow for Lisa to take her statement. In the meantime, Tina has news for you.’
‘I followed the money trail without springing any bear traps. Thus far I’ve traced it to Wilson Macaulay Industries, and one particular unit on their intranet.’
‘Whose computer is it?’
‘The user name is Diane Carlson.’
Nash was surprised. ‘Really? I have to admit I didn’t have her down as a villain. Ambitious, yes, but not dishonest. Appearances can be deceptive.’ Nash paused, shook his head and sighed, heavily. ‘Of course: appearances!’