The Flesh is Weak (P&R3)

by Tim Ellis

  ‘Go and get the DVD recording, Richards.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sir?’

  ‘The security recording of me being pushed in front of a speeding train.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘No, I felt somebody push me.’

  ‘Oh God…’ She resembled a statue as the shock of what he was saying, and everything else that had happened, rooted her to the spot.

  ‘Now would be a good time to get the DVD before they record over it.’

  ‘Sorry, Sir. You’ll be all right if I go?’

  ‘Are you still here, Richards?’

  She rushed off, but then came back. ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘Security office.’

  ‘Do you know where it is?’

  A guard, dressed in a black uniform with brass buttons, and gold piping on his peaked hat and the sleeves of his jacket said, ‘Follow me, Miss, I’ll show you where it is.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Parish said. ‘In case you were wondering, we’re police officers.’ He grimaced as he pulled out his warrant card. Maybe he did need some medical treatment. Maybe he had internal injuries that were slowly killing him. Maybe he was dying from the inside out. ‘And hurry up, Richards,’ he shouted after her. ‘We’ve still got a train to catch.’

  ***

  Parish looked down at his hands. Where was his briefcase? He had it before the attempt on his life. There was no sign of it on the platform. The train had moved forward again, and now that the entertainment was over, people were boarding the train and getting on with their lives as if it had never happened.

  The train pulled away. He saw his briefcase on the far side of the track, but as he thought about jumping down to retrieve it he heard another train coming. He moved back and waited. The briefcase wasn’t going anywhere, and he didn’t want to give the killer another opportunity to finish the job. He looked around the platform at the mass of rush hour people, but it could have been anyone. As far as he knew the people that were on the platform at the time had continued on with their journeys. The assassin wasn’t likely to hang around for a second go.

  There was a gap between trains. He jumped on the track and recovered his briefcase. It was black leather with gold-plated clips, corners, and hinges. He had bought it new when he’d been promoted to DI, but now it looked like he’d retrieved it from the waste dump. He felt worn out and sat down on a bench while he waited for Richards to return.

  Remembering the brown envelope and realising he was on his own, he opened the briefcase and took the envelope out. It had the Somerset House coat-of-arms emblazoned on the left, and it was addressed to Mr J Parish Esquire. He grunted – a gentleman at last.

  He carefully pulled the stick-down flap open, and slid the one sheet of cream notepaper out. The letter was surprisingly short.

  Dear Mr Parish,

  Unfortunately, we hold no birth, marriage, or death records for either a George or Enid Parish.

  Yours sincerely

  P.M. Whittaker

  Registrar

  No records! What did that mean? They hadn’t even said that there wasn’t enough information provided. No records! In other words, George and Enid Parish had never existed. There must be some mistake? He was real. He’d had parents, admittedly not for long, but they’d been real as well. Hadn’t they? Why were there no records? Maybe Goffs Oak had confused them. Maybe they came from somewhere in another part of the country. He read the letter again. There was a phone number underneath the address. He’d phone them up if he got a chance today.

  ‘Who’s it from, Sir?’

  He quickly stuffed the envelope and letter back in his briefcase. ‘Stop creeping about, Richards.’

  ‘I wasn’t creeping.’

  ‘Did you get it?’

  She passed the DVD to him. ‘The security man showed me what happened. It was a woman in a beige coat with dark hair.’

  Parish looked at Richards and then at the DVD in his hand. He became conscious that his mouth was open. A train pulled into the station.

  He slipped the DVD into his briefcase and closed the locking clips. Standing up he grabbed Richard by the elbow and said, ‘Let’s get the train before it becomes a wasted day.’

  They wedged themselves into a standing position by the door.

  ‘Maybe we should go home, Sir?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, look at us both, we don’t really look like detectives, do we?’

  ‘What do detectives look like?’

  ‘Not like this. Why would a woman want to kill you, and what was in the brown envelope?’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like Miss Marple, Richards.’

  ‘I could carry your briefcase for you if you want, Sir?’

  ‘Or… I could keep hold of it.’ A woman! Why would a woman want to kill him? That certainly ruled out the misogynist Trevor Naylor, he’d never trust a woman to do something he could easily do himself. That left the killer or killers of the children, or someone else entirely. Surely a woman wouldn’t be involved in killing children? There had been cases though, Myra Hindley for one, but he knew there were many others – females murdering children was not as uncommon as people thought it was. If it was someone else, who could it be? He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d locked a woman up. Unless it was the wife, girlfriend, or daughter of a man he’d locked up? Not likely! So, what did that leave? It left another damn puzzle to solve – that’s what.

  Chapter Twelve

  The train pulled into Pimlico station at quarter past nine and they went with the flow of the crowd towards the exit. After orienting themselves outside they turned right along Rampayne Street, and once they reached Vauxhall Bridge Road turned left towards Westminster Cathedral until they found No.33. The CEOPS Headquarters was an oddly shaped two-storey building with steps leading up to a central glass portico containing the front door. Either side of this was two very different parts of the same building.

  ‘You look like a tramp, Sir,’ Richards said as they climbed the second set of steps.

  At the glass door Parish held his warrant card up to the camera. The door opened accompanied by a buzzing sound. Inside, a security man squinted at them and ran a hand-held metal detector over their bodies. Parish’s briefcase and Richards’ shoulder bag were put through a x-ray machine. It was like airport security, Parish thought.

  The security man had G4S embroidered on the left of his blue jumper indicating he was from Group 4 Security. Parish wondered why a uniformed copper wasn’t manning the door, but immediately dismissed the idea for a number of reasons. Police were better utilised out on the beat, no doubt there were financial savings to be had using a private security company, and it would have been a waste of a highly trained police officer.

  After checking a clipboard the security man said, ‘Go up to the second floor in the lift.’ He pointed straight ahead. ‘Turn left there’ll be someone to meet you outside Room 27.’

  Parish said, ‘Thanks,’ collected his briefcase and passed Richards her bag. The lift was already on the ground floor and the door opened immediately.

  On the second floor, a thin man with dark curly hair stood outside Room 27 waiting for them. He was slightly shorter than Parish, wore dark trousers, a crumpled blue shirt at least two sizes too big for him around the neck, and a brown striped tie that matched nothing else he wore.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ the man joked. ‘You’re the guy who was pushed under the train?’

  Parish’s lip curled up. ‘What gave it away?’

  The man’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. ‘Really? I was joking.’

  ‘No joke, I’m your man.’

  He turned to Richards. ‘Did they push you under the train as well?’

  Parish squeezed Richards’ arm to stop her responding and said, ‘Is this how you welcome all your guests?’

  The man reddened. ‘Of course, I’m sorry.’ He offered his hand. ‘I’m DS Tony Tyrell, Sir.’

  Parish shook the hand a
nd grimaced. ‘This is Constable Mary Richards.’

  ‘And I’ve passed my Phase Two, and this,’ she said pointing to her face, ‘Is the result of a karate accident, and not being run over by the same train that DI Parish had a fight with.’

  ‘It wasn’t very gallant of me, was it?’

  Richards shook her head. ‘Not really no, but I’m sure I can forgive you if you offer the Inspector a cup of coffee with lots of sugar.’

  ‘That’s unusually kind of you, Richards,’ Parish said.

  ‘I expect you’re probably still suffering from shock, Sir. Do you want me to hold your briefcase?’

  He smiled. ‘I think I can manage, Richards.’

  DS Tyrell spoke to a passing woman and ordered a tray of refreshments. He then ushered them into Room 27.

  Parish and Richards stopped in the doorway and looked at each other when they saw the large centre table in the shape of a pentagon. At four of the five flat edges of the table sat a CEOPS officer working at a computer.

  ‘What?’ Tyrell said.

  Parish told him about how the location of the graves formed a pentagon and possibly a pentagram.

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Well, that depends on how you look at it. From a parent’s perspective it would hardly be classified as interesting.’

  ‘Definitely not, but to a casual observer such as myself with more than a passing interest in child abductions and murders it could fall into that category.’ He pointed to two chairs next to the empty seat at the table. ‘If you two sit there, you’ll be able to see what I’m doing and read what’s on the screen. Anything you want to know, ask me and I’ll find out the answer for you if I can.’

  Around the edge of the room, sat facing the wall, were more CEOPS officers on computers.

  ‘What are they all doing?’ Richards asked swivelling her head left and right.

  ‘I’m sure you were told that we’re running a number of operations here at the moment. Three of them are international in liaison with other police forces and agencies. We’re getting close to cracking an enormous paedophile ring operating out of seventeen different countries that are transferring illegal images of children across international borders. We also have a number of undercover officers posing as children in chat rooms with the intention of ensnaring paedophiles, and we’re monitoring seven pay-per-view webcam sites being run by children.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Richards said.

  ‘Children perform sex acts in their own bedrooms for a paying audience via their webcams.’

  ‘And their parents let them?’

  ‘The parents usually have no idea what their children are up to. Children as young as nine have online bank accounts with thousands of pounds in them.’

  ‘That’s awful.’ She turned to Parish. ‘Isn’t that terrible, Sir?’

  ‘Yes, Richards.’ He was listening, but he felt like he’d been run over by a train. Everywhere hurt, especially his knees, and he wondered if he’d cracked a rib or two. Maybe he should have let that doctor call an ambulance, been taken to hospital and got checked out. He could have caught up with his sleep. His day would have been ruined, but that would have been a small price to pay for the reassurance that he was still in one piece.

  ‘What about organ theft from children?’ Richards asked.

  ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but nothing has come to light in the UK. INTERPOL recently uncovered an operation in Algeria where children were being smuggled into Morocco and sold to Israelis or Americans for the purpose of harvesting their organs. The trouble is, people who need organs go on an organ transplant list, and if they remove themselves from that list it looks suspicious and would be investigated. Also, there are very few organ transplant surgeons, and certainly none that would knowingly operate on someone using a stolen organ. Each organ has paperwork attesting to its authenticity, which can easily be verified. No, I would say that your children were not victims of organ theft. If they had been, we would have heard about it, and there have been no such cases.’

  A woman brought the tray of refreshments, and put it down by the side of DS Tyrell. ‘Help yourself,’ he said.

  Richards did the honours.

  ‘Also, a child has gone missing in Greece,’ DS Tyrell continued. We’re using a face recognition software package called Childbase to scan pictures that might turn up anywhere on the Internet.’

  ‘But…’ Richards interrupted. ‘If a child is taken by someone, won’t they change their appearance to…’

  Tyrell interrupted back. ‘The software can cope with disguises such as hats, glasses, and so forth. Unless there’s major cosmetic surgery, which is unlikely, the software compares eyes, nose and mouth against the original scanned images.’

  ‘So, you’ve checked to see if there are any pictures of Amy Linton on the Internet?’ Parish asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Tyrell said. ‘We found no matches.’

  Parish was quiet for a moment as he pondered the ramifications of this. ‘Okay, let’s work on the basis that these children are not being photographed, or at least any photographs that might have been taken are not being circulated on the web. That means we’re unlikely to find the children using the Internet. What about names?’

  ‘The abductors rarely use a child’s given name, they use codenames.’

  ‘So, how can all your sophisticated hardware and software help us, Sergeant?’ Parish said.

  ‘You’re right, it is sophisticated. We also have a piece of software – developed by Microsoft with the involvement of Bill Gates – called the Child Exploitation Tracking System, CETS for short. It enables us to analyse and make connections between what appear to be disparate pieces of clues and evidence. What we need to do is identify our search parameters – the software is a searchable database after all. So, tell me all about what you’ve got and we’ll identify some key terms to put into the search engine.’

  Parish and Richards spent over an hour describing the events since Monday, and at the end of it all DS Tyrell had a list of key terms relevant to the case. These were: Five children in graves, five-by-five graves, graves in the shape of a pentagon, buried skeletons, boiled bodies, decapitation through sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae, hanging upside down and draining blood. He typed them all into an advanced query form and then said, ‘It’ll take an hour or so, what about lunch?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Parish said grabbing his briefcase from under the chair. ‘But before we do that, can I take a look at this security DVD from the tube station?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tyrell said taking the disc off Parish and putting it in the DVD drawer.

  The angle was above and behind the passengers on the platform. Parish and Richards could be seen standing about two yards to the right of the entrance at the front near the train lines. They watched, as Parish appeared to leap in front of the arriving train and disappear from view.

  It was like a magic trick. Everybody’s eyes were on Parish being swallowed up by the train, and nobody seemed to notice a dark-haired woman detach herself from the crush of people and leave through the exit.

  ‘You were pushed?’ Tyrell said.

  ‘Yes,’ Parish replied.

  ‘They didn’t say you were pushed on the news.’

  ‘I think everybody assumed I’d fallen, and I didn’t dissuade them from that assumption.’

  ‘I could probably get one of our people to generate a decent picture of this woman while we’re at lunch, if you want?’

  Parish nodded. ‘That would be good, thanks.’

  ‘Give me a minute,’ he said taking the DVD out of the drawer.

  ‘Toilet?’ Parish asked.

  ‘Left along the corridor… fourth door on the right.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He needed to look at the damage, and do a repair job.’

  Richards followed him.

  ‘Where are you going, Richards?’

  ‘With you.’

  ‘To the toilet?’

  ‘
To look at your injuries and make sure you’re okay.’

  ‘I don’t think so…’

  ‘We’re partners aren’t we, Sir? I want to make sure you’re okay, or I could call an ambulance if you want?’

  He knew she’d pester him until she got her way, and he could do with some sympathy round about now. ‘I hope there’s no one in there.’

  There were men coming and going as if it was rush hour and giving them strange looks. Parish had his trousers round his ankles and Richards knelt in front of him dabbing at the bloody gashes on his knees with wet paper towels. The skin wasn’t broken on his hands, but they felt bruised. He opened his shirt and looked at his chest in the mirror. A dark bruise was forming on the left side. He pressed it gingerly and grimaced, but he couldn’t feel any deformity or movement.

  ‘You’d better ring mum, just in case there’s…’

  His mobile started playing Angie by the Rolling Stones, and Richards had to retrieve it from his right trouser pocket on the floor.

  ‘I was just going to…’

  ‘I saw you… On the news… What…?’

  ‘Calm down, I’m fine. We’re both fine.’

  ‘How…?’

  ‘I was pushed.’

  ‘Oh God. Who by?’

  ‘I haven’t worked that one out yet. It was a woman.’

  ‘A past lover. Do you know her?’

  ‘Not a past lover, and no I don’t know her. The people here are enhancing her picture from the security DVD.’

  ‘You’re coming home?’