by Alex Gray
Max watched as the fire caught hold, imagining the screams of the men and women inside, trapped by the smoke, unable to move.
He knew exactly what that was like, didn’t he? One of the lucky ones, they had called him afterwards, the pain searing like molten metal through his entire body. One of the lucky ones? Raynor had pulled him out and over the years Max had shown his gratitude, but Raynor had become a liability and no debt lasted for ever.
He began to laugh as a sudden whoosh caught the side of the house, engulfing it in flames that shot upwards. The women would be frantic now, yelling their heads off, battling against smoke and flames, maybe even begging their captors to save them.
Max remembered her cries as the flames had licked his flesh, her arms holding him down, keeping him from the half-open doorway. He could have been whole, free, not this sad excuse for a man burned almost to death, if she’d let him go.
Well, she was dead and her bones left to rot beneath the charred sticks of that hell-hole and now her daughter was learning what it was like to suffer the same fate. He lifted his phone and looked through the viewfinder, snapping image after image . . . memories that would last a lifetime.
The smoke drifted towards him, stinging his eyes so that he rolled up the window and looked around. The place was obscured by trees and acres of shrubbery climbing up to the hills but he knew that eventually the smoke would rise higher and someone would make a call that would bring others here to find what had happened.
Max Warnock gave a great sigh and turned the steering wheel, letting the car head away from the roaring flames, away from the scene of his triumph.
What the hell was happening down there? Molly could no longer see for the smoke and Juliana had begun to cough as it rolled up towards them.
‘We need to get away,’ Molly urged. ‘Climb, now, as high as we can. Come on!’
No longer afraid of being spotted, she pulled the girl by the hand and crashed through the shrubbery, the sounds of their flight impossible to hear against the noise of falling timbers as the fire took hold.
At last they were high above the old farmhouse and only wisps of smoke drifted past as they flung themselves down on a grassy plateau. Molly took long breaths of the clean, sweet-scented air before turning onto her knees and gazing around, wondering where on earth they were. The sun was high in the sky so it was possibly just after the middle of the day with plenty of daylight left. That could be to their advantage, so long as they were no longer being hunted.
She looked at the Slovakian girl who was sprawled on the ground beside her, her shoulders shaking as she wept.
‘It’s okay, Juliana, we’re safe now,’ Molly whispered.
But the girl continued to sob, muttering something that Molly could not understand.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ she asked, putting a comforting arm around the girl’s shoulders.
‘My mother . . . ’ the girl sobbed, then shook her head and would say no more.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The team had worked tirelessly through the night following the attack at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the discovery of Cynthia Drollinger’s body. The search of the woman’s flat had resulted in detailed scrutiny of her phone records – both landline and the mobile Lorimer had found in that designer handbag. Someone had called her for about two seconds just before Guilford had left his ward, their identity still a mystery.
He had added several notes on the whiteboard at the end of the room with lines that now intersected Cynthia Drollinger’s name and those of Max Warnock, Guilford and the mysterious Símon.
Further searches had pinned down the location of that Slovakian telephone number to a residential property in the heart of a small village near the place where the Ferenc family lived. Gypsy town, he remembered the interpreter at Barlinnie calling it, though its real name was Streda nad Bodrogom.
Calling the number had resulted only in hearing the phone ringing out, the conclusion being that nobody was at home. Further investigation with the Slovakian police was ongoing and the members of the MIT were hopeful that a name and address might soon be emailed to the Glasgow office.
Lorimer rubbed his eyes and wondered if he would manage to last through the day without falling asleep. The telephone on his desk rang out and he lifted it automatically.
‘Lorimer,’ he said shortly, then sat up a little straighter as a heavily accented voice spoke at the other end.
The detective superintendent listened, one hand scribbling furiously on his notepad, the other clutching the handset as though it were a lifeline to a drowning man.
At last he responded to the Slovakian policeman’s message.
‘I can’t tell you how grateful we are. That intelligence is going to make a great deal of difference to us. Thank you.’
‘Just get him for us, okay?’ the Slovakian officer demanded.
Lorimer grinned as he nodded. ‘We will do our best, I promise,’ he told him, crossing his fingers. There was no way he was about to divulge the fact that Peter Guilford, a man wanted for questioning by the Slovakian police, was at this moment hanging between life and death.
After the call ended, he sat still for a moment, reading the notes in front of him.
There was a big house in the village of Drobný-Bodrogom, a village of many big houses, the Slovakian police officer had said, his voice implying that there was something less than healthy about the place. Its owner was a Scottish person, Peter Guilford, a man who owned several of the houses in this small village. Most of them were empty all year round but sometimes there would be parties in the summer months, men and women descending in droves, all intent on having a good time. They came in buses, straight from the airport, then left several days later, only the housekeepers staying on to clear up the mess.
One of his officers had been dispatched to the house in question, the telephone number for which had appeared in Cynthia Drollinger’s diary. Nobody was at home, Lorimer was told, but a big transit van with the sign Guilford Vehicle Hire was parked to one side.
‘And no mention of Max Warnock,’ he said to himself once the call was ended and he was alone again in his room. ‘Where do you come into all of this, Max?’
He closed his eyes for a moment, drifting between waking and sleeping, tempted to doze. They had all assumed up until now that Warnock was the gangmaster, trafficking women from a base in Slovakia to Scotland, but now the information suggested that all along it had been Peter Guilford who had been pulling the strings. Or had he simply been bankrolling the entire operation? Was that what it was all about after all? Greed for money: one of the oldest motives in the book. With both Dorothy and Peter out of the way, had Max Warnock seen himself as the legal heir to what now looked like the Guilford empire? True, Dorothy had kept ownership of both the house and the Scottish side of the business but it was now obvious that Guilford had invested heavily in property in this tiny village near Gypsy Town.
With this latest information Lorimer could now see a shape to the tangled mess that had given him a headache for weeks. It was like a spider’s web with Max Warnock at its centre, weaving his strands of evil.
He opened his eyes and sighed, feeling his shoulders and neck rigid with tension.
Somewhere out there Juliana Ferenc and Molly Newton were at the mercy of a very dangerous man and Lorimer was determined to hunt him down.
*
Molly stopped and listened to the sound of a tractor somewhere quite close. A tractor meant a farmer and a possible farmhouse nearby.
She took Juliana by the hand and pulled her along, keeping to the shade of a copse of trees for cover. The sun had shifted and Molly estimated that they had been walking for around three hours, her bare feet now cut and scratched with thorns.
The girl had not spoken a word since they had left the burning building where they had been kept imprisoned.
Molly glanced at her from time to time, recognising the shock on the girl’s face. My mother, she’d cried out. H
ad that been a natural cry for help? Or was there something more to the Slovakian girl’s pale face and refusal to meet Molly’s questioning gaze? Trauma could result from the what-might-have-been moment when Juliana had pictured them both burning in that building together, something that figure watching in his car had intended.
She’d recognised him, hadn’t she? Molly glanced again at the closed face, a curtain of dark hair obscuring her features. There were questions to be asked, but right now it was more important that they find a place of safety.
The sound of lambs baaing made her look down the slope as they crested the hilly plateau. There beneath them was a field full of sheep, lambs now rushing to be with their mothers as these two unknown humans stumbled into their territory.
She clasped Juliana’s arm and pointed. ‘Look!’ she said, and grinned. A little further on she could see a red-tiled roof beyond a stand of conifers. ‘Must be a farmhouse.’ She urged the girl forward. ‘We can ask them for help.’
But Juliana remained rooted to the spot, terror in her eyes.
‘What if . . . ’ she began.
Molly flung an arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she soothed. ‘Farmers are decent folk. Besides, we need to phone my colleagues and they’ll come and take us back home.’
Juliana looked at her quizzically for a moment and Molly cursed herself. Where was this young woman’s home? And, once they were back in the city, where would she be taken? Some detention centre perhaps? Or could she make a case for keeping the girl with her until she was properly repatriated to her own country?
‘Come on,’ she coaxed. ‘Stay with me and everything will be all right. I promise.’
Mrs Sunter had never imagined playing hostess to a pair of barefoot strangers who had lost their way, especially when one of them turned out to be a police officer. She had sat them both down at her kitchen table, letting the taller one use the telephone whilst piling a plate full of freshly made pancakes and switching on the kettle. Tea, the universal panacea for all ills, all situations, though in truth this pair had looked as though they needed more than that.
Later, the farmer’s wife had watched the squad car taking them away, that young foreign lass and the one who seemed to be known to the plain-clothes policemen who had greeted her like a long-lost friend. Detective Constable Newton, they had called her. Who’d have guessed it? And what on earth was the story behind their bedraggled appearance?
‘We’ll be in touch, ma’am,’ one of them had told the bemused woman as he had turned to leave. ‘Most grateful for all your help,’ he had added, though Mrs Sunter had not the least idea what he meant. She had gathered up the empty plates, nodding with satisfaction that every one of her pancakes had been eaten.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lorimer looked up as the door opened to admit a familiar bearded man.
‘Solly?’ He rose to his feet as the psychologist came forward and clasped his hands.
‘I’ve found out about Max Warnock,’ he began. ‘You are not going to believe this, Lorimer,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s Shirley Finnegan’s son.’
‘What?’ Lorimer sank back into his chair, mouth slightly open as the news hit him. ‘When did you find this out?’
Solly explained about his visit to the retired GP. ‘I was curious about the child, Shirley’s baby.’ He shrugged. ‘Families can bond together at the birth of a child but sometimes . . . well, in Shirley’s case it split the family asunder, made her a pariah in their eyes.’
‘So Max Warnock began his days only a few miles away from here,’ Lorimer said, whistling under his breath.
‘Grew up in Glasgow then left to join the army.’
‘Where he met Michael Raynor,’ Lorimer continued.
‘Yes, strange, though, don’t you think? An officer and a private?’
‘Raynor was the one to save him from that burning building,’ Lorimer reminded him.
‘So, you would think that Warnock would be in the man’s debt ever after, yes?’
‘Yes.’ Lorimer frowned. ‘But Raynor seems to have been the one to do the dirty work. Attacking Guilford in prison and, if we’re correct, murdering that unknown man whose body is still lying the mortuary.’
‘What if he’s not unknown to the Slovakians?’ Solly murmured. ‘Any chance of showing a post-mortem photograph to them?’
Lorimer raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s worth a try,’ he began. ‘You think he was part of the gang? A falling out amongst the ones under Max’s control?’ That number in Cynthia Drollinger’s diary might begin to make some sense now.
Solly remained silent. It was an unanswerable question, after all; one that would remain a puzzle until they discovered the whereabouts of the main leaders in this affair.
‘Good work, Solly.’ Lorimer grinned faintly. ‘You see things that other people sometimes don’t and that’s brought us a lot closer to finding out what’s going on here.’ He rose from his chair, his mind turning to the undercover officer and the Slovakian girl. The relief that they had been found alive was immense. They were even now on their way back here and soon Lorimer and the other officers at the MIT would find out exactly what had happened to them both. Meanwhile, the team were working all the hours that God sent them, the attack on the hospital complicating matters and deploying officers more thinly than he would have liked. Still, every new piece of information had its value and this one from the professor was pure gold.
‘Think it’s time we had a little chat with Shirley Finnegan, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but first I’d like to share my thoughts about that lady, if I may.’
Lorimer listened as the psychologist formulated his theory: a story about envy, loss and the bitterness that could have swollen into a torrent of hatred across the years.
The debriefing was to take place shortly but Molly had insisted that Juliana be kept with her meantime. ‘She’s still in shock,’ she’d told Lorimer. ‘And I think she’ll tell us a lot more if I’m there beside her.’
Their reception at Helen Street had been nothing short of a celebration, hugs given to them both, much to the surprise of Juliana who had gazed wide-eyed at the men and women who had crowded around and cheered at the sight of them.
The feel of warm water coursing over Molly’s tired body had been bliss, the aches on her shoulders throbbing, though the cuts and scratches on her legs and feet stung under the shower’s spray. Now what she craved more than anything was to sleep for as long as she wanted. But first there had to be a period of sitting and talking to the detective superintendent and the rest of the team.
When she emerged from the shower cubicle, Juliana was already dressed in the clothes that one of her fellow officers had conjured up from somewhere.
A fresh summer dress and a pair of open-toed sandals made all the difference, Molly realised, watching as the Slovakian girl twisted her wet hair into a knot. She had to make do with someone’s spare uniform, but that was okay, though she left off the boots, preferring to wear just the pair of socks that had been laid out on the bench for her.
‘You are a police . . . ’ Juliana asked, a frown on her face.
‘Yes,’ Molly admitted. ‘I was sent to find you and make sure that you were safe.’ Then she shook her head. ‘Didn’t make a very good job of that, did I?’
Juliana came forwards and touched her arm. ‘You saved me,’ she said simply. Then, stepping forward, she flung herself into Molly’s arms and wept at last.
Lorimer looked up as the two figures entered the room. The Ferenc girl was wearing a white cotton frock with blue polka dots, looking for all the world like an overawed schoolgirl who had come for a tour of the police station. She was accompanied by the tall woman in uniform who met his eyes with a smile; Molly Newton, whose disappearance had caused him several sleepless nights. He rose to his feet and came around the table to greet them.
‘Miss Ferenc,’ he said, giving a nod to the dark-haired girl. ‘We are so pleased to have you here safe an
d sound.’ He took her hand and shook it. ‘Your uncle and brother have been informed of your arrival and you’ll see them later,’ he told her.
‘Uncle Pavol?’ The girl’s eyes lit up.
‘Yes, I’ve met him,’ Lorimer told her. ‘He has been helping us,’ he added as though to assure this young woman that she was now on the side of law and order.
‘DC Newton,’ he turned to Molly, ‘we have lots of questions for you so please bear with us for a while longer.’
The pair sat down side by side at the big table, several of the team taking their places quietly, Solly looking at the women with an expression of pity in his dark eyes.
‘Max Warnock,’ Lorimer began. ‘We know rather more about him than we did before your disappearance. He was in the army, a major no less, and stationed in Slovakia.’
He saw the Ferenc girl’s head rise. Was it the mention of Slovakia or did the name Max Warnock mean something to her?
‘Moreover, it has been established that he was Dorothy Guilford’s nephew, her sister Shirley’s son by a local boy.’
He saw Molly Newton’s expression of amazement but mentally commended her for keeping quiet as he continued. ‘So far as we can ascertain he was in some sort of arrangement with Peter Guilford who has property in a place called Drobný-Bodrogom.’
He heard Juliana’s gasp and turned to give her a smile. ‘That is close to your own home, is it not?’
She nodded, eyes wide, but said nothing, gazing up at him.
‘Now, we have to find this man, Max. Can you help us with that, Miss Ferenc?’
Juliana nodded and glanced at Molly as though for reassurance.
‘Go on, tell us whatever you know,’ the policewoman urged.
‘It was Max who—’ She broke off, biting her lip.
‘Yes?’ Lorimer asked gently.
Juliana looked away from him and turned to Molly instead as she answered.