‘Very good. And the next name?’
‘Gary Westwater. Again, no numbers but probably of the same age.’
Montgomerie folded down the pages of his newspaper and looked across the floor at his chubby, bearded colleague. When King had put down the phone he said ‘Did you say Gary Westwater? And Mary Carberrie?’
‘I did. Why?’
Montgomerie told him.
It was 17.32 hours.
WEDNESDAY
10.00—17.30 hrs
Donoghue slept late. He enjoyed the luxury of a slow start to his day, happy to cower under the duvet while his wife chased Timothy and Louisa out of the house and off to school. He rose leisurely and showered and shaved and relaxed once more in his armchair, sipping coffee and reading the Scotsman. A long lie is something for him which only happens at weekends, and even then he had to contend with Timothy and Louisa’s fights, shouts and tantrums, but to enjoy a long lie without the ‘ankle-biters’ was an unheard-of luxury. To be at home at nine a.m., still not making a move, on a weekday, when he normally starts his car engine to drive to work at seven-thirty…was heaven in his mind, pure heaven. But his wife couldn’t relax. She hurried. She scurried. She didn’t reply when he spoke to her, not in a huff, but more in the manner of being too busy to reply, as if engaged upon a pressing matter, but for the life of him Donoghue could not identify what that matter of urgency might be. Eventually, but only in his own time, on his own terms, he rose from his favourite chair, the one he always occupied, and put on his jacket and grey woollen coat and homburg and left the house. He was afforded his customary peck on the cheek by Mrs Donoghue, but nonetheless still had the sense that he was being bustled out of the house. The door was shut insensitively the instant he had crossed the threshold out of the house, and the lock turned with a loud click. He got into his Rover and turned the key. The engine roared into life and he backed down the driveway of his bungalow in gentle Craiglockhart. As he drove away he glanced at his house, and saw his wife sitting in her housecoat, looking content, in the chair he had occupied just a few seconds earlier. He drove to central Edinburgh. He had always thought his marriage harmonious and successful. He had never before known his wife behave in such a manner and it had distressed him. He decided not to mention it. Unless it happened again. Unless it seemed to be becoming a pattern. Then it would have to become an issue.
He drove to the headquarters of the Lothian and Borders Police in Fettes Avenue. He approached the reception desk and identified himself. He was ushered courteously into the innards of the building and moments later sat in front of the desk of Detective Inspector Stamp.
‘It was,’ said Stamp, ‘a marriage that shouldn’t have worked, everything was against it, but it did. One was Catholic and one a Proddy Dog. I can’t remember who was what but one turned and they had a Catholic marriage. They were both just sixteen when they got hitched and they spent their first year in a damp basement where their child was born. Everything was against them, mixed religion, youth, poverty, early pregnancy, but they came through.’
‘And how, by all accounts.’
‘Yes…no education either, no bits of paper that open doors and make vast differences to anybody’s life.’ Stamp smiled, he was, Donoghue noted, smartly dressed, youthful for his rank. He felt he had much in common with Stamp and warmed to the man, and he felt Stamp warming to him in return. ‘When he was eighteen he bought and sold a car. Sold it for quite a mark-up, he told me. He was on his way. These days if you buy a used car in Scotland it has a one-third chance of being bought from an Oakley garage, anywhere from Inverness to Annan.’
‘Didn’t know he was that big.’
‘Oh yes, never gives that impression because he uses various different names for his used-car outlets, could be called Bridge Street Motors in one town, McHugh’s Motors in another, but really they are all Oakley-owned garages. He said that he thought the punters would be put off if they saw Oakley everywhere, but they’d be more likely to part with their money if they thought they were giving it to a local businessman with only one showroom.’
‘Seemed to pay off.’
‘I’ll say. They own a house on Barnton Avenue. That is where the money is in Edinburgh.’
‘I know. I live in this city.’
‘Do you? Sorry, I thought you came through from Glasgow.’
I’m Glaswegian by birth and belonging, but speaking of mixed marriages, my wife is Edinbrovian and will not leave this town. As with the Oakleys, one of us had to turn, and it was me that turned.’
‘Very accommodating of you.’ Stamp smiled approvingly.
‘I was in love. Still am. And as you know, it’s a one-hour journey by road or rail. It’s not impossible to commute, thousands do so. But I know the Barntons, yes, as you say…’
They moved there when still in their thirties, all the brashness of new money, American cars…didn’t go down too well with their more reserved neighbours but they had it so they flaunted it. I never knew “Annie”…I got to know them after the kidnap, got to know them well, which is how I know about their backgrounds…but “Annie” gave me the impression of being an overindulged wee brat, just between you and me, just within these four walls. It’s the old story of two people who came from poverty and were determined to compensate by giving their only daughter everything.’
‘No other children, despite being Catholic?’
‘Puzzled me and I don’t know the full reason but they did tell me that they discussed the possibility of more children and decided to ask “Annie” whether she wanted to grow up alone or whether she wanted a wee brother or sister. “Annie” apparently thought about it for a day or two and then told them that she wanted to grow up alone and so on that basis, the Oakleys had no more children. “Annie” was about five at the time.’
‘Good Lord.’
‘You see what I mean by indulged.’
‘Certainly do.’
‘I don’t know how they got round the birth-control business, being Catholic, but they did. I didn’t get that close to them. Shall we have some coffee?’
Sipping coffee, Donoghue remarked on the unfortunate choice of Christian name for young Miss Oakley.
‘Was rather, but she didn’t seem to mind. Once came across a Mr and Mrs Monroe who had a daughter.’
‘They didn’t?’
‘Oh yes, they did…so,’ Stamp said, grinning, at his own anecdote, ‘the kidnap and disappearance of “Annie” Oakley has come to the attention of the Strathclyde Police?’
‘Possibly. The murder victim on Monday morning—you may have read of it?’
‘Brains blown out.’
‘That’s the one. We searched his room at his mother’s home and found newspaper cuttings about the kidnap and a building circled on an Ordnance Survey map of the Kilsyth area.’
‘Did you now?’
‘We did now.’ Donoghue put his mug on Stamp’s desk. ‘I sent one of my team to look at the building, get an impression from the road but not to approach it. I don’t know what he found, I’ve yet to speak to him. I left for home before he had returned. That was yesterday.’
‘I see.’
‘Of course, it may mean nothing, the building may be totally unconnected with the kidnap but equally, it may be a stone worth turning over.’
‘It would be a stone that has to be turned over, sounds like. How can I help you, Fabian?’
‘Putting me in the picture about the kidnap, especially anything that wasn’t released to the press.’
‘I’ll let you read the file, I’ll draw it from the void for you but I can remember it clearly. It annoys me still that they got away with it, but they were successful kidnappers because, like all successful kidnappers, they’d worked out a way of having the ransom dropped with no possibility of surveillance. There’s ways of doing it and they had found one. Essentially they used portable telephones. It’s not an original idea. There was a well-publicized case in the States in the nineteen-forties when the kidnappe
rs used ex-military walkie-talkies to communicate with the police. They must have pinched that idea.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well, the Oakleys…him…Hugh Oakley, he wasn’t, isn’t, the hard-headed realist that you might think. He has a certain flair and instinct and a willingness to take a risk, which is necessary in business, but he has also enjoyed an element of luck. He’s ridden from wave crest to wave crest and made a future dealing in used tin. But he retained a certain credulity, a naivety almost. When I first visited them after the kidnap they, he and Mrs Oakley, were full of, “Who’d do this to us? We haven’t harmed anybody, we’ve paid our taxes, why us?” And they didn’t let that go. I thought it was a panic reaction but weeks later they still could not believe that they would be victims of crime because they had not committed serious offences. The Almighty wouldn’t strike at them.’
Donoghue groaned.
‘Painful, isn’t it? Anyway, this is all by means of explanation for the reason that they’d left their home wide open, certainly to burglary but also, it transpired, to kidnap. They had two huge stone gateposts at the entrance to their drive but no gates. After the gateposts the drive turned to the left and proceeded for about a hundred yards through thick shrubs and trees, and I mean rhododendrons, twenty feet high, either side of the road and possibly thirty feet deep. And they had to drive through that entering and leaving the house.’
‘So once you turned into the driveway you were out of sight from both the road and the house?’
Tor about a hundred yards, yes. I mean, you could hide a company of infantry in that lot.’
‘No dogs?’
‘No. No burglar alarm either.’
‘Unbelievable.’
‘Well, they paid a terrible price because that’s where “Annie” was snatched. Mr Oakley came home and found “Annie’s” white off-the-road number blocking the drive. Doors open, engine still idling but no “Annie”. Even then he didn’t raise the alarm for half an hour or so, spent some time crashing about in the bushes and looking round his house. Then he went back to the car, just to move it, and only then did he see a note trapped under the windscreen-wiper blade: We’ve got your daughter, or words to that effect. The note’s in the file.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Well, he’d probably damaged a lot of trace evidence by crashing about like he did, but there were skid marks where she’d stopped her car. We presume somebody leapt out in her path. Anybody with presence of mind wouldn’t have stopped, but she was eighteen years old, bad things only happen to other people, her reaction would have been to do an emergency stop. She was probably pulled out and bundled into another car which had followed her into the driveway. She wasn’t a big girl, five feet and a few inches, so far as I can recall. Couldn’t have put up much of a struggle. We looked at the ground for spoor and reckoned only about two men, male shoes, anyway, boots, you know, plus whoever else was in the getaway vehicle which left no tracks of any kind. Nothing so convenient as a witness either.’
‘Not a lot to go on.’
‘Nothing at all, really. The kidnappers didn’t leave a trace of themselves in the bushes either, no cigarette stubs, no chocolate wrapping paper, half-eaten fruit. It seemed they were waiting for her only a few moments.’
‘Luck or good judgement?’ Donoghue ached to smoke his pipe but Stamp, to Donoghue’s dismay, had a ‘thank you for not smoking’ sign on his wall.
‘Good judgement, I’d say. They’d done their homework. She was returning from an aerobics session in the gym. Every Tuesday afternoon, always returned home at about the same time.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Then it gets frustrating. Just at the time we would expect to be learning about the kidnappers because of their demands, letters they write, paper they use, voice that can be recorded and identified…but no, we really lucked out there. They used her Vodaphone and she made the calls. We never heard the voice of one of the kidnappers, nor did we get a description. They allowed her to phone daily, at midday each day for four days, just to say that she was alive. That’s all. Nothing else. We weren’t given a thing that we could infer anything from…you see, when victims are allowed to speak they often give something away like, “they’ve got me,”—or, “he’s got me,” so the police would know they’re looking for a single man or a gang, or, “it’s cold and dark in here,” in which case the victim may be being held underground.’
‘Elimination points.’ Donoghue nodded.
‘But all we got was, “Hello, Mum, it’s ‘Annie’, I’m still alive…” Then the phone was cut off, as if it was taken from her and switched off. Being a Vodaphone, of course she could have been calling from…well, anywhere in the world. By this time we were consulting a lady you probably know, Dr Peta Reid, forensic psychologist at the University of Glasgow.’
‘Dr Reid, yes, we’ve picked her brains before. She’s on the ball.’
‘I think she was on this occasion. She pointed out that the skill of observing rules is knowing when you’ve got to break them. In some circumstances the rule book does not apply.’
‘Meaning in this case…?’
‘Well, the drill with kidnap is to keep the channel of communication open with whoever you can. But in this case there was no communication and we were not able even to pin down the source of the call to a geographical area. So we took the decision to contact Vodaphone and ask them to shut down “Annie” Oakley’s unit. They can do that, you know—in the event of theft they can be shut down and taken out of the network.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘So we asked them to do it.’
‘Some risk.’
‘Aye, and not taken easily nor without top-level consultation. I had to get clearance from on high for that. We wanted to provoke them into wrong-footing themselves. The hope was that without a Vodaphone they’d resort to land lines or the Royal Mail. Then we could begin to trace them.’
Donoghue nodded. ‘I can see the logic in that.’
‘In the event it didn’t help us. There was no contact for a day or two, by which time the Cellnet organization was waiting for the call, so was British Telecom, just in case. She called two days later, by which time she’d been held for about six days. The call came from another Vodaphone and Cellnet was able to give us the number. From the number we could get the name and address of the subscriber. We were elated. But the elation was short-lived.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Yes. We discovered the concept of cloned personal phones.’ Stamp raised an eyebrow. ‘You know, as I am now in my forties, I feel that the world has moved on and I haven’t moved with it. I’m just not equipped to deal with hi-tech crime.’
Donoghue said that he knew what he meant, but he had never come across the concept of cloning phones.
‘It’s apparently quite simple. Each personal phone has a number known by its rentee and the company that owns and operates the phone. With relatively simple and high street-obtainable equipment, it is possible to scan the airwaves and obtain the number of a phone as it is being used.’
‘OK.’
There then follows a conventional theft. The sort of crime that is as old as humanity itself. Say a TDA, and in amongst all the goodies in the car is a personal phone. The owner of the car reports his phone as being stolen and its number is cancelled by the Cellnet organization and you may think that it’s a redundant piece of kit. Can’t make calls, can’t receive them.’
‘But not so?’
‘No. The phone is not so much deceased as dormant. The phone in its dormant state is sold in the criminal network for the price of a night in the pub for a couple of pals, its purchaser reprogrammes it with the number of a phone obtained by eavesdropping the airwaves and the reactivated phone is then sold for the price of dinner for two in the best restaurant in town. It has now become a “cloned” phone and all the calls made on it are billed to the rentee of the legitimate phone. If you use the cloned phone of
ten enough and for international calls of long duration, you can easily recover the cost of its purchase. The rentee of the legitimate phone won’t know anything is amiss until he receives his phone bill.’
‘Or until the police chap his door.’
‘Which is what happened to a guy in Glamorgan, South Wales. On our request the Glamorgan police pulled him in connection with the kidnap of “Annie” Oakley. By coincidence, he gave his occupation as second-hand car dealer, but he wasn’t our boy. He could prove he was overseas at the time of the kidnap, some dreadful resort in Spain, I recall. So we knew we had a cloned phone and were no further forward, but it didn’t harm the situation. At least we had that compensation. The experiment didn’t work but it didn’t cost us anything. We learned, if we learned anything, that they have access to an outlet for these cloned devices and upon enquiries being put afoot, we learned that such outlets are many. Everything from a guy in the pub doing a one-off deal to a “specialist” who makes a living out of it.’
‘But at least, as you say, it didn’t cost anything.’
The Glamorgan Police got more than we did, in fact. This guy wasn’t known to them, but when they fondled his collar he began to scream his rights, sweat like a pig and demanded his lawyer be present. He had nothing to do with the kidnap but he’d been up to something. So the Welsh boys began to keep an eye on him.’
‘But you were no further forward?’
‘No, we weren’t, though we did get a couple of minor elimination points from the exercise so it wasn’t really a waste of time. We asked Dr Reid her opinion of the matter and she said that she felt that the cloned Vodaphone had been purchased as such, rather than cloned by the kidnappers because kidnap as a crime is clumsy, high risk, and definitely for the cerebrally challenged. Cloning phones is low risk and requires hi-tech skill. People who clone phones are just not from the same stable as people who kidnap.’
‘I can see that. So if the kidnappers had any track, it was for low-tech, traditional crime?’
The Man with No Face Page 17