Evidence of Things Not Seen: (Parish & Richards 18)

by Tim Ellis

  This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.’

  ‘Very helpful, I’m sure,’ Parish said. ‘But I think we’ll just keep the beast’s telephone number between the three of us for now.’

  ‘If I was asked to speculate,’ Doc Riley continued. ‘I would say that the paedophiles didn’t take Adam’s body. I think the people who put the barcode under his lip took him.’

  Richards screwed up her face. ‘Which would suggest that we’re not only looking for murdering paedophiles, but also the people who tattooed the barcode under Adam’s lip.’

  ‘No, Richards,’ Parish said. ‘What it means is that our job has just become twice as hard.’

  ‘Now that we’ve dealt with the barcode, let me tell you what else I found.’

  ‘My cup overfloweth.’

  ‘Up until his death, Adam Weeks was perfectly healthy. He was well-nourished and it was evident he did a lot of exercise. He was abducted on Friday evening, and the time of death was the early hours of Sunday morning – an hour either side of two o’clock. During the missing twenty-four hours that he was still alive he was restrained by the wrists, ankles and neck, and repeatedly raped by at least three men . . .’

  ‘Bastards,’ Richards said.

  Parish’s forehead wrinkled up. ‘We’ve done that already, Richards.’

  ‘I can do it again if I want to.’

  ‘Carry on, Doc.’

  ‘. . . There was significant damage to the boy’s anus, and heavy bruises on his shoulders and upper arms. I also found one DNA match . . .’

  Parish stopped eating. ‘A match?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t get your hopes up.’

  ‘My hopes are a lot higher than that, Doc.’

  ‘The records have been sealed. The screen simply blacks out when I try to access the records. I can’t even get a name from the system. In other words . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know what sealed records signify.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Richards said.

  ‘More than likely “Witness Protection”, which is authorised by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 for “those persons who have provided crucial evidence and against whom there is a substantial threat”.’

  Richards screwed up her face. ‘Yes, but it’s not called “Criminal Protection” is it? If the person is a paedophile and he’s killed a ten year-old boy, then he has to be brought to justice, doesn’t he?’

  ‘I wish things were that simple, Richards.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  What the hell was he doing? He had two Glock-19 pistols with full magazines – one in his hand and the other tucked in his belt at the small of his back. He felt like a gunslinger from the wild west for Christ’s sake.

  Yes, he was firearm-trained, but he hadn’t actually shot anyone. He’d shot static and moving targets, but he hadn’t shot flesh and blood people. Was this the day that would change?

  What a difference a week had made. As a police detective he’d been shackled, hobbled and fettered. Laws, rules, procedures, oversight, reporting, paperwork . . . the list of constraints went on ad infinitum. It had reached the point where the criminals had more rights than their victims. Justice was no simple matter these days. It came with far too many strings attached. Whatever happened to an eye-for-an-eye?

  Well, he’d managed to wriggle out of the straightjacket that had confined him – he was now a free agent. Yes, there were still laws, regulations and procedures, but it was up to him whether he followed them or not. There was no one looking over his shoulder, breathing down his neck, or examining him through a magnifying glass as he battled the denizens of evil. He had his own moral compass to guide him through the darkness.

  He edged along the unlit corridor with a Glock in his right hand and a torch in his left towards a door requiring the swipe of a security card, which he’d taken from one of the two men. What would he find? What was this case all about? There was a missing man – Linus Frost – who’d been missing for six months, and worked for AutoMove that was a front for something else, but they had no idea what; there was a left-luggage locker key, but they had no idea where the left-luggage locker was located; there was a journal filled with numbers, but they had no idea what those numbers related to, or even if they were connected to the case.

  And now they were in a building, or was it a building? He hadn’t seen any windows, which suggested that it was an underground complex. What did they do here? He still had no idea whether he was battling the government or a private enterprise.

  When he reached the door he found he didn’t need to use the swipe card – the door was open. He realised that without power the doors must default to “open” for safety reasons. Beyond the door was another corridor. He stepped through the opening and continued with his search to find Bronwyn.

  Eventually, he came to another open security door. He edged through, and this time he appeared to have reached the facility proper, or at least a part of it. The doors to each room had signs with numbers stuck on them. The first room on the left was “501: Cold Room”. He shone his torch through the small window in the door, but there was no one inside. On the right, it simply stated a number: 502. Again, he could see through the viewing window that the room was empty.

  He kept moving along the corridor past odd-numbered rooms on his left: 503, 505: Storage, 507, 509; and even-numbered rooms on his right. Between rooms 503 and 505 there was another corridor with an access door, which he ignored for the time being. The rooms after 504 had been replaced by a bank of eighteen movable file storage units. The plastic signs on the end of the units had numbers on them, which indicated that they increased in increments of a thousand: 00001 – 01001, 02001 – 03001 and so on up to 17001 – 18001, but what the numbers referred to he had no idea.

  Room number 511 had flickers of light coming from within. He peered through the viewing panel. It looked as though it was a medical laboratory. There was a short bald-headed man with a paunch and an attractive woman in her early thirties with long apricot-coloured hair and bright-red lipstick moving about inside. Both of them wore white laboratory coats. Bronwyn was lying fully-clothed and motionless on a stainless steel table. She didn’t appear to be restrained, which suggested that they’d drugged her. He pulled a face. An unconscious Bronwyn was going to be a problem during their escape.

  He opened the door, eased himself inside, and closed and locked it behind him – he was far too old for surprises. There didn’t appear to be anyone else in the room other than the two people he’d already identified. Two battery-powered lights – one at either end of the laboratory – provided enough light for them to work by.

  ‘Stop what you’re doing,’ he said.

  They turned to stare open-mouthed at him.

  He waved the Glock at the woman, indicating that she should move next to the man into the open space where he could see her. Each had a name embroidered on their white coat. The man was called Goldstein, and the woman Deacon. ‘Kneel and put your hands behind your head.’

  Both did as they were instructed.

  ‘What have you done to her?’ he said, jerking his head towards Bronwyn.

  Neither responded.

  ‘I don’t want to start shooting out knee and elbow joints, so it’d be a lot less painful if you simply answered my questions.’

  Still no response.

  He put the barrel of the gun against Deacon’s elbow and said, ‘I’m waiting?’

  Goldstein answered, ‘All right. Don’t hurt her. I’ll tell you. We injected your friend with a drug called Sodium Thiopental. She’ll be fully conscious again in about thirty minutes.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  The two looked at each other.

  ‘To find out what she knows – what you both know.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About us.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We haven’t questioned her yet.’
>
  He saw Bronwyn’s rucksack with its contents spread out on a worktop behind Goldstein; together with the items taken from him – the key, journal, his wallet, keys and other bits and pieces. He helped the woman to stand. ‘Put all that stuff back in the rucksack, including the key and the journal.’

  She did as he said and passed it to him.

  He took it, slung it over his shoulder and then held out his hand. ‘Hand it over.’

  She put the key in his hand.

  He’d seen her palm it like an amateur magician when she’d been packing the rucksack. He slipped it into his pocket.

  There were noises outside in the corridor.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘People come and go all the time here,’ Goldstein said.

  He wasn’t in the business of hitting women, but he had little choice. There was no time to tie Deacon up, and if he simply left her in the room she’d raise the alarm before he’d made it through the first security door.

  Bronwyn moaned.

  She gave him an idea.

  ‘You have a choice,’ he said to Deacon. ‘I can shoot you in the head; knock you unconscious, which will be a bit hit or miss; or Goldstein can give you a dose of the drug you injected into my friend. What’s it to be?’

  ‘The sodium thiopental.’

  He pointed the gun at Goldstein. ‘Do it, and hurry up.’

  Deacon lay on the floor while the man drew up the required dosage in a syringe. He then injected the drug intravenously into the vein in the crook of her arm. She went limp within fifteen seconds.

  ‘Okay,’ he said to Goldstein. ‘Help my friend off the table and carry her out. You’re coming with us.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘You’ll do more than try if you want to keep breathing.’

  He would liked to have questioned Goldstein and found out what this place was, what they did here, who the people were . . . all the questions bouncing around inside his head, but he knew he had very little time to do any of that. His priority now was to get Bronwyn to safety.

  While Goldstein was helping Bronwyn off the table he had a quick look around the laboratory. There were large and small machines; microscopes; an array of laboratory equipment; bottles filled with different coloured liquids; two computer terminals; a whiteboard with an array of numbers on it that were different from the numbers contained in the journal . . . He found his phone in the rucksack and took a photograph of what was written on the whiteboard. He had no idea what the numbers meant, but Bronwyn might know. There were shelves full of drugs, powders and gels; and a shelf containing books and manuals, which also had a handful of papers at one end. He grabbed the papers and stuffed them into the rucksack – there might be something useful there.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Goldstein, prodding him in the back with the pistol.

  He unlocked and opened the door, and peered out – the corridor was empty.

  ‘Go.’

  Bronwyn kept moaning and mumbling, but apart from putting tape over her mouth, which he imagined she wouldn’t appreciate, there was little he could do about it.

  They made it along both corridors, opened the Coke machine from the inside and stepped into AutoMove.

  There were people wandering about, but they kept their distance when he waved the Glock around like a madman.

  He had no idea what he planned to do outside. In the back of his mind he was hoping that Bronwyn would wake up and they’d hail a taxi to make their escape, but it looked as though she was a good fifteen to twenty minutes from full consciousness. She was rambling on about a mother and sister, and if he’d had the time to concentrate he might have listened to her confession, but there was no time.

  They burst out into the grey morning drizzle on Southwood Lane in Highgate. He looked both ways for any sign of a taxi, but there were none to be seen. Plan B was to walk to the tube station, which was hardly the getaway he’d envisaged.

  An old-style red Mini with white go-faster stripes on the bonnet and roof juddered to a stop in front of them.

  Joe threw open the door and climbed out of the passenger seat. ‘Get in, Mr K,’ he said.

  ‘A Mini! Is that the best you could get?’

  ‘It was either this, or a Vespa scooter . . .’

  Goldstein pushed Bronwyn at Kowalski and started running down the road.

  ‘You want me to go after him, Mr K?’ Joe said.

  ‘No. Let’s get out of here before someone who knows me sees me getting into a Mini.’ He bundled Bronwyn into the back seat and scrambled in after her. Mini’s weren’t designed or built for people like him. ‘When you’re ready, gentlemen.’

  ***

  It was quarter to nine by the time they reached the start point indicated by the killer on the River Blackwell.

  Sergeant Harry Murdoch and four uniformed officers in plain clothes, were waiting for them. They could both see by the look on his face that he wasn’t happy they were fifteen minutes late. He was close to retirement, had a pointed bald head, bushy eyebrows and a full beard.

  ‘Morning, Ma’am.’

  ‘Hello, Sergeant Murdoch.’

  ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘The plan is for DS Gilbert to pull his finger out and tell you what the plan is.’

  ‘Hi, Harry.’

  ‘Hi, Rowley.’

  ‘Can we leave the male bonding for later and get on with it?’

  Stick half-smiled. ‘Of course. Well, it seems logical that you take two of the officers over to the other side of the river,’ he said to Sergeant Murdoch. ‘And I’ll keep two on this side . . .’

  Murdoch’s forehead wrinkled up. ‘And what are we looking for exactly?’

  ‘A dead body,’ Xena said.

  ‘That seems straightforward enough. Okay,’ he said, addressing the four men. ‘Ormrod and Scammell come with me. Wells and Stanton stay here under the orders of Sergeant Gilbert. He led his two officers across the bridge to the other side of the river.

  Along the section of river they were searching there were trees and bushes on both sides, and it varied in width of between fifteen and twenty feet. There were a dozen or more curious swans, mallards and coots; and three people passed by in canoes. In the summer the river wasn’t so swollen, but the weather had been atrocious over the previous three months and in some places – further towards Maldon – it had burst its banks.

  The searchers on both sides of the river tried to keep abreast of each other, but it wasn’t easy in some places due to the undergrowth and sodden conditions. After fifty minutes they reached the point at which the killer had indicated they should stop.

  ‘Well?’ Xena said to Stick.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘I haven’t got anything to say for myself.’

  ‘I thought you were in charge.’

  ‘Me? I’m only a Sergeant. I believe you’re the person in charge.’

  ‘So, you’re saying it’s all my fault that you’ve come up empty-handed?’

  ‘I wasn’t saying that at all.’

  ‘You didn’t have to say anything with your mouth. You have a way of standing there with a stupid look on your face, which intimates that very meaning.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t.’

  ‘You’re calling me a liar?’

  ‘I never would.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we’d better go back and find some other useless activity to occupy our time.’

  ‘What’s the plan now, Rowley?’ Sergeant Murdoch shouted across the river.

  ‘We’ll swap sides and carry out a second search going back the way we came. If we find nothing again we’ll call it off.’

  ‘Roger.’

  They swapped sides.

  Even though she’d swapped her flat shoes for a pair of wellies out of Stick’s boot, Xena stayed on the footpath and directed operations by leaving it to Stick.

  Twenty minutes into the return journey there was a commoti
on on the other side of the river.

  ‘What?’ she shouted.

  ‘I think we’ve found what we’re looking for,’ Stick shouted back.

  ‘Think?’

  ‘There’s a sign with binary code printed on it nailed to a tree. I’m not going to start trampling over the area in case . . .’

  ‘Okay. Now we need forensics just like I said we would. Has Hefferbitch got back to you yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has anybody called from forensics?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ll call them, shall I?’

  ‘You’re a genius in the making. While you do that, my team will walk back to the bridge, and come and join you.’

  ‘See you soon.’

  ‘You’re a numpty. Well, are you calling forensics?’

  ‘Nearly.’

  ‘Okay, Sergeant Murdoch. Let’s get ourselves over to the other side of the river.’

  ‘Now that you’ve found what you were looking for, do you need me and my men anymore, Ma’am?’

  ‘Nice try, Sergeant. But contrary to canteen gossip, I’m more than just a pretty face. Who do you think is going to wait for forensics to arrive and maintain the integrity of the crime scene?’

  ‘I suppose that would be us?’

  ‘The very people I had in mind for those important tasks. Let’s go.’

  It was a lot quicker walking without the need to search the ground and worry the undergrowth, and they reached Stick’s position on the other side of the river in fifteen minutes.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Terrible news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘They don’t have a forensic team to send us? If you’d have listened to me when . . .’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  ‘Well, get on with it then.’

  ‘After breaking the front door down, they found Di Heffernan in her house.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She’d hanged herself from a wooden beam in the loft.’

  ‘Hanged herself?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As in a suicide?’

  ‘Yes.’