by Tim Ellis
He was glad there was a few more vehicles on the road and he tried to keep two between him and the van, but the other vehicles kept turning off the A118.
The van turned right onto the A406 North Circular towards South Woodford where they joined the M11 motorway. After twenty minutes the van slowed down, pulled onto the hard shoulder, and entered a narrow access road. He could neither stop on the hard shoulder nor follow them along the road, because it would have been patently obvious he was following them – he had to keep driving.
Although he thought about stopping on the hard shoulder and following the van on foot, he had no idea where or how far it was going. Also, if he left the car on the hard shoulder it would attract unwanted attention from the police.
He had to keep driving and the farther he drove the more frustrated he became. The only option left to him was to leave the motorway at the next junction, travel back the way he’d come on the opposite side until he reached the beginning of the M11, and then re-trace the journey to reach the access road. It would take him an hour or more, and the motorway was filling up. It was now seven fifteen, and there was a strong possibility he was going to get stuck in the slow-moving rush hour traffic.
After all this time he’d finally found Amy’s killers only to lose them. Some bloody soldier he was. Staff Sergeant! He should be bust down to private.
‘Fuck,’ he shouted out loud and banged the steering wheel with the palms of his hands.
Where did that access road lead? Maybe the road only led to one place. Maybe he’d be lucky and find the van parked outside the first building he came to. He put his foot down on the accelerator. The speedometer needle moved up to ninety miles per hour. He didn’t want to get stopped by the police, but neither did he want to dawdle along while his daughter’s killers made their escape.
He reached the junction and shot up the slip road as if the four horsemen of the apocalypse were following him. There were traffic lights at the roundabout, and he nearly hit the car in front as he braked.
‘Shit!’
The roundabout was clogged up with unmoving traffic trying to move East to West, West to East, and get on to both sides of the motorway. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the other side of the motorway and join the morning traffic jam.
The thought of getting out of the car and waving the Glock about crossed his mind, but it wouldn’t get him what he wanted. He switched the radio on and heard his name mentioned as a person the police would like to question in relation to the murder of Aaron Carter.
‘Shit!’ The morning was going to hell in a handbasket.
***
Alex Knight opened her eyes, but it was completely dark. Her tongue felt as though someone had been rubbing it top and bottom with sandpaper. A throbbing had begun at the base of her skull and she had an itch on her left nipple, but couldn’t scratch it because her hands were tied behind her back.
These things she could live with, but hanging upside down made her feel sick. She thought about shouting out, but decided against it. She tried to wriggle out of the thick strap securing her wrists, but without success. Then she tried swinging forwards and backwards, but stopped because she thought she might puke, and she also didn’t know what she might crash into. She swung gently from side to side, but hit something on both sides that moved and swung back to bump her.
She gave up, but thought that the obstacles on either side of her might be other people hanging upside down like her. She never wore perfume, but she could smell something cloying that lodged in the back of her throat.
‘Hello?’ she whispered, but it was swallowed up by the hollow silence.
Where was she? Who had kidnapped her? And more importantly, what did they have planned for her? Was it the person sent by Sir Charles to shadow her? But she’d been on target, everything had been falling into place. There’d been two people that had grabbed her, and more in the van. They tossed her on the corrugated floor next to an unconscious bald-headed man. No, it wasn’t the shadow, it was someone else, but who? And why the hell was she hanging upside down?
After a while, she decided that there was no escape and no answers so she drifted off to sleep again.
Chapter Nineteen
Bertram Middlemass – of the Leicestershire Middlemasses – walked around the large five-sided dining table adjusting a crystal wineglass here, a crisp white monogrammed serviette there, picking up a silver spoon and polishing off a smudged fingerprint from the Clan symbol with his cotton white gloves.
All twenty-five senior members of the Clan were expected for lunch, seventeen were already there. Well, eighteen, if he counted himself. He was a member, of course, but it was his turn to make the arrangements, prepare the venue, and oversee the preparation of food. All the special guests were also here, and they would wake up soon. Yes, everything was just perfect.
He checked his gold Rolex watch – Eleven-fifty-three. It was time to bring the wine out and let it breathe, just for a short period before the members were seated. He walked through into the kitchen and removed the five bottles of 1787 Chateau Lafite from the fridge and placed one bottle in the centre of each of the five sides of the table. At a cost of £105,000 for each bottle he was extremely careful carrying and placing it. He also made sure that the unique “Th. J.” – which had been etched into the glass – for Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of the most revered of its founding fathers, faced the seated members. Thomas Jefferson had also been a Freemason and a founding father of the Clan of Tubal Cain, and today they had a member of the Clan joining them from America. In fact, the Clan boasted a truly international membership, and they had all travelled from their respective countries to attend the lunch today. There was Senator Judith Abrams, and the billionaire Tony Montgomery from Australia; Deputy Commissioner of Police Michael Loe from New Zealand... The list of notables was long, and they came from Kuwait, Barbados, South Africa, Russia, Macao, Canada, and the largest contingent were from Britain. At a cost of half a million pounds sterling to join the Clan, it was hardly surprising that the membership consisted of the cream of each country’s society.
Bertram eased the corks from the vintage Bordeaux and hoped that after two hundred years, Thomas Jefferson’s wine hadn’t turned to vinegar.
He smiled as he heard a door open.
It was time.
***
It had taken him three hours to get back to the access road and his mood was darker than Satan’s heart. He wanted to kill someone, and he wanted to do it now.
The road led onto Luxborough Lane and was surrounded by sports fields. He took the first right, and it led him across a railway line to a farm and then onto the B170. There was no black Transit van parked at the farm that he could see. If it was hidden then he had no chance of finding Amy’s killers. He turned around and drove back to Luxborough Lane. He carried on along the road until it crossed the railway line again and he reached an aqueduct. There were no buildings. He returned to a crossroads, which was all that was left, and turned right. The road took him between a number of sports fields for rugby, football, athletics and field events. There were numerous buildings and a car park, but no black Transit van. He carried on until he reached a derelict building.
He only had one road left to go down and backtracked to the crossroads, but before he reached it he saw three black limousines – one behind the other – turn into the road and enter a site surrounded by palisade fencing through electronic gates. He pulled into the car park by a sports field and left the car there. Then he crossed the road keeping low. The sign at the main entrance said: Tantalus Industries, which didn’t help him at all. He moved along the palisade fencing until he could see the front of what looked like a huge four-sectioned warehouse. Through the bushes and trees surrounding the site he could also see that there was a large car park, and it didn’t take him long to find the black Transit van.
With all the vehicles arriving he guessed something was happening, and he wondered if i
t related to the three people they’d abducted. He ran back to his car, grabbed the transit case from behind the back seat, fitted the silencer on the Glock, and returned to the fence. He wasn’t really built for climbing over palisade fencing anymore, so he made his way along the perimeter until he found a tree that had conveniently fallen against the fence. He climbed up the trunk, dropped the case into the grass, and then edged his body round until he could swing down, but as he let himself go to dangle by his arms the branch snapped and he fell onto his back knocking the breath out of him.
He lay there struggling to breathe, and promised himself that if there were such a thing as reincarnation he would come back as an extremely skinny Ethiopian long-distance runner. He was about to get up when he heard a dog growl.
‘I’d stay where you are unless you want a fight with Ripper here, mate.’
John craned his neck backward to see a slavering Doberman being held on a chain by a security guard dressed in black and wearing a beret like a soldier in a private army.
Christ, where had Staff Sergeant John Linton gone? This fat slob on the ground wasn’t that man. The whole mission was turning into a bloody disaster.
‘Did you climb over the fence by mistake, mate?’
He didn’t have time or the inclination to explain himself, so he pulled out the Glock and shot the dog first, and then the security guard. Killing dogs was not something he enjoyed doing, but it was certainly a safer option than letting it live. When he checked the guard he found an entry swipe card, an Uzi machine gun with two magazines taped together, a set of knuckle-dusters, and a commando knife. He kept everything except the knuckle-dusters – if he got that close then he was in serious trouble.
Squatting on one knee he tried to control his breathing and pull himself together. Who the hell was he? In his mind he still felt like Staff Sergeant John Linton – the Army sniper, but he was occupying someone else’s body. If he was going to succeed in killing Amy’s murderers then he needed to start thinking like a soldier again. In his Army days he would have thought about security and been prepared. How many guards were there? Did they all have dogs? Why were they armed? Guards in the UK were never armed. What were they guarding? And who were Tantalus Industries?
He moved through the trees parallel with the front of the warehouse, and then down the far right side until he was at the rear of the building, where he found another guard with a dog. After killing them both, he hid the bodies behind a rubbish skip. He eventually found what he was looking for at the far end of the building – a metal access ladder.
What he needed was an observational position that would give him full line of sight to the target. Thankfully, the one thing he wasn’t afraid of was heights, which for a sniper was a necessity. He craned his neck upwards. The ladder was probably a good thirty feet to the flat roof – roughly the height of an Olympic diving platform, and for a man of his size and gross unfitness it would be a difficult climb. Taking it slowly, he began climbing hand over hand. The Uzi and the transit case hung by straps across his chest, and made him look like a French revolutionary soldier.
After half an hour and frequent rests he reached the roof where he lay face down for another ten minutes until the sweating and dizziness had stopped.
Eventually, the focus of his thoughts shifted from his useless body back to his mission. He stood up and checked his watch. After everything he’d been through, it was only ten to twelve, but his body felt as though a week had passed. Looking around, he had a marvellous view of the surrounding countryside, and he guessed the sports fields were funded by Tantalus Industries to give the company legitimacy.
The roofs of the other three warehouse sections were made up of curved corrugated metal. The roof he was standing on was the only flat roof, which he guessed was for maintenance purposes. Along the join – between the curved and the flat roof – windows had been inserted. He checked them all, but they were sealed. Using the commando knife, he was able to remove the seal and the glass from one window. He stuck his head through the opening. Besides it being a seriously long way down, he could make out a large table with about thirty people sitting down. It looked as though they were about to eat lunch. The realisation made him feel hungry, but he took a drink of water from the water bottle slung on his belt instead, but wished he’d brought a Mars Bar for its energy value.
Beneath the window were a maintenance platform and a framework of walkways and ladders, which would enable him to get closer. He needed to hear what was being said, to find out what it was all about.
He lowered himself onto the walkway and began his descent. It was certainly a lot easier going down than it was climbing up. At last, he found the ideal position, which enabled him to hear what was being said; gave him the maximum field of fire and observation of the target area; and concealed him from enemy observation. There was nothing he could do about his route of escape, but then – did he really want to escape? He wanted to be with Amy, that had always been his plan. If he left this warehouse, only the shame of a long drawn-out murder trail and a life in prison awaited him. No, this was John Linton’s final mission.
***
Parish woke in complete darkness with a grunt. His whole head throbbed. Where the hell was he? And why was he hanging upside down? Then he remembered...
‘Richards?’
‘Is that you, Parish?’
‘I was wondering where you’d got to, Doc?’
‘I’ve been hanging around, you know.’
‘Very droll.’
‘Do you know what happened to Libby?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No, they’d drugged me before they got to her.’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘She’s dead?’
‘We’ll all be dead soon if what I think is going to happen does happen.’
‘Any chance of being rescued?’
‘None at all. Richards and I were jumped when we reached my car. Holmes and Watson think we’ve gone home and then to the station, everyone at the station thinks we’re at the hospital, Angie hasn’t a clue where we are. It’ll be some time before anyone even thinks about looking for us.’
‘Sirrrr?’
‘Hello, Richards.’
‘Oh God, what’s happening?’
‘I’m sure you can guess what’s happening, Richards.’
‘Hello Constable, do you think this is a local hang out?’
‘Doc Michelin! We were wondering where you’d got to.’
‘I’m sorry you had to find out, Constable.’
‘Is there anyone else here, or it just us three?’ Parish said.
‘I’m here, Mr Parish,’ a child’s voice came out of the blackness.
‘Gabe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Chief Powers was right, Sir,’ Richards said.
‘So it would seem.’
‘Sorry about the Chief, Parish,’ Doc Michelin said.
‘Thanks Doc, but it looks like we’ll all be joining him soon enough.’
‘What’s happening, Mr Parish?’
He wasn’t going to tell Kowalski’s eldest son that he would probably be drugged, his head severed with a bone saw, and his blood drained into a container – that was not something you told a ten year-old boy. ‘I wish I knew, Gabe, but you’re not alone, there are three more of us with you here.’
‘Four,’ said a woman’s voice.
‘Oh! Who are you?’
‘Alex Knight.’
‘Is she a friend of yours, Doc?’
‘As much as I’d like to say yes, I have no idea who she is.’
‘I’m with MI6.’
‘So the security services have been onto these people?’ Doc Michelin said.
‘Which people?’ Alex Knight said.
‘The people who snatched us?’
‘No. Who are they?’
Parish was concerned that someone might say something to alert Gabe to his fate. ‘Let’s just say that you don’t want to know. Remember there�
�s a child here with us.’
‘Is it bad?’ Alex said.
‘Not knowing is probably the best option.’
‘Oh!’
‘Anyone going to miss you?’ the Doc asked her.
‘Maybe.’
‘What does that mean?’ Richards chipped in.
‘I was told someone had been sent to shadow me, but I never saw anyone. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t anybody, just that I didn’t see them. So, if there was someone, then they might come looking for me, but they probably won’t.’
‘Are you taught to speak in riddles?’ Parish asked.
Alex sighed. ‘No, no one’s going to miss me.’
‘If you’re not here about the people who abducted us,’ Richards said. ‘Why are you here?’
There was a long pause.
‘I suppose it won’t make any difference now whether I tell you or not.’
‘Tell us what?’ Richards persisted.
‘I was sent to kill Inspector Parish.’
‘What?’ Parish said.
‘I’m the woman from Pimlico station, and I came here to finish the job.’
‘Why?’ Parish asked.
‘I have no idea, except it’s something to do with your parents.’
‘Do you want to fill us in, Parish?’ Doc Michelin said. ‘I don’t mind being in the dark, but I’d like to follow the conversation.’
‘I thought it was time I found out something about my parents. All I know is that their first names were George and Enid, they lived in a village called Goffs Oak, and they died in a car crash two years after I was born. I applied to Somerset House for birth, marriage and death certificates, and received a reply back saying that they had no records of a George and Enid Parish.’
‘The brown envelope?’