by Wonny Lea
He watched Jason throw himself on the grass and could hear him shouting at his mother who had now lost patience with him and was walking away and leaving him behind.
It had to be the moment, and Dan pulled off his hat and dark glasses and with a wink and a smile walked up to Jason. He wanted the boy to be able to see who he was and not to feel frightened by his approach and he needn’t have worried on that score.
‘Hi, Megan’s grampy!’ said Jason. ‘I didn’t know you were on the bus, I only saw Megan and her mother.’
Dan had no time for chit-chat and he quickly sat next to Jason and asked him where his mother had gone.
‘For a fag most likely,’ replied Jason.
Not wanting to waste precious seconds Dan immediately suggested that they play a trick on her and he watched as with a grin from ear to ear Jason snuggled down inside the cricket bag, eagerly drank the apple juice and quite simply allowed himself to be carried away.
From start to finish the plan had taken no more than a minute to execute but it had been the longest minute of Dan’s life and as he carried the now somewhat heavier bag back towards the car park he struggled with the sound of his heart thumping loudly and a considerable degree of nausea.
Jason played his part well although Dan had to tell him to stop giggling especially as they passed members of the school trip. Dan had remembered to put his dark glasses and hat back on and the disguise would probably have been enough but just in case whenever Dan noticed any of the Holly Road school group he kept his head well down and whistled loudly to drown any possible noise from Jason.
Thinking back over the whole thing Dan couldn’t believe that he had actually gone through with it and how easy the actual business of abduction had been. He swallowed hard as he remembered his near miss with the traffic cops but that problem had been averted and from then on things should have been plain sailing.
He certainly hadn’t anticipated ending up with a dead woman and a sick kid and he kicked against a large stone, dislodging it and causing it to fall into a pile of discarded building material. It surprised him to see how the stone disappeared and so did half a bag of sand and several pieces of timber, and he almost lost his footing and disappeared himself.
Taking a good look he saw that several long planks of wood had been placed across what was basically a hole in the ground and into which a lot of rubble and rubbish had been thrown. He remembered the bunch of builders who were involved with this project and was not surprised at their sloppy habits. Dan guessed that they were trying to avoid the cost of transporting waste away from the site and would probably have put a thin layer of top soil over their mess before the house was handed over.
Maybe he had reason to be grateful for their slipshod practices as he realised that the bottom of their little pit was about four feet down and would be an ideal place to dispose of a body. Even as he thought of it he didn’t know if he would be able to do it and racked his brain for another way out. Dan was not normally a violent man. True, he had been involved with a number of pub brawls during his lifetime – but he had never struck a woman and he couldn’t get his mind around the fact that he had now killed one.
Desperately trying to think of what he should do next Dan narrowed down his options. He could bury Susan a few inches away from where he was standing and cover her body very easily with all the stuff that was scattered around. He knew that no one came to the site because he had staked it out over the past few weeks. It had been their plan to bring Jason to the caravan and for Dan to phone Tina giving her the location of the caravan – but only after the money was with them and they had boarded their flight to Mexico.
Could he still get away with that plan? Dan shook his head because of course he couldn’t risk the police coming to the caravan. Other people like the press would invade the place and there would be too great a chance of Susan’s body being found.
He considered handing Jason back to his mother and confessing to the kidnapping. Yes, he would face a jail sentence but he could say he had done it to have some time with his son. That would mean him getting his hands on the letter that he knew was destined to arrive at Tina’s house the next day and there was no way he could do that.
In any event, handing Jason back and him staying to face the music was not an option as the boy had seen Dan strangle Susan. Even at the tender age of seven he would be able to tell the police exactly what he had seen.
Although Dan was thinking through his options it was becoming increasingly obvious that he didn’t really have any. He would have to dump Susan’s body and it would have to be here as he couldn’t risk taking her anywhere else, but that meant he would have to take Jason somewhere too and he didn’t have anywhere in mind.
He persuaded himself to take one step at a time. He returned to the caravan and steeled himself to pick up Susan’s body and carry her to what he hoped would be her final resting place. He remembered the ease with which he had carried Jason but Susan was a different kettle of fish and the term dead weight came to his mind. Once he had geared up the nerve to touch her he became more resolved and by the time he had reached the hole in the ground he had convinced himself that she was responsible for the whole bloody mess and felt no remorse as he heaved her into her makeshift grave.
For the next fifteen minutes Dan picked up every piece of stone, metal, and wood he could lay his hands on hurled them on top of Susan’s body. When he had finished the hole in the ground had been filled and there were several inches of discarded building material standing proud of the surrounding area.
Dan wondered if he should flatten it by jumping on any protruding bits but the idea seemed a bit too much like dancing on someone’s grave and he didn’t have the stomach for that. He turned his attention away from the burial mound he had created and looked at the area beyond the confines of the building site. It was easy to see why the location had been chosen and in the cool clear October air he could see for miles over fields and trees and the parting of two low hills revealed the line of the coast.
It was so quiet, so deathly quiet.
A call of nature hit Dan and he satisfied it by relieving himself over one of the front wheels of the caravan and watching the warm stream of urine settle into a pool before it too disappeared into the ground. He was surprised to find that he was hungry and wondered if the boy could stomach something.
He hadn’t looked in Jason’s direction when he had carried Susan’s body out and he didn’t even know if the boy had seen him. Dan was afraid now as he returned inside. He was worried that the boy was even more sick than he had first thought, but it was something he had to face and he summoned up the courage to look at his young captive.
Dan’s heart almost stopped beating at the sight of a motionless child who was no longer the florid colour he had been an hour ago. Jason’s face was now bereft of any vestige of colour. His ginger hair accentuated the pallor of his cheeks and his breathing was no longer audible but was extremely shallow and rapid.
This wasn’t part of the plan either. Dan realised that the kid was sick but he didn’t have any idea what had caused this sudden onset of symptoms. Jason had seemed fine when they had spoken at St Fagans and surely his mother wouldn’t have taken him on a school trip if he had been unwell.
Kids did pick things up very quickly and in Dan’s limited experience they also got over things much faster than adults. He convinced himself that Jason was sleeping off some sort of bug and was supported in his hopes by the fact that the boy was not as hot as he had been.
Dan boiled the kettle and used the first lot of hot water to wash his face and scrub his hands until they felt like they had been scoured to the bone. He was ritualistically washing himself clean of recent events and by the time he sat down to eat a plate of beans on toast he felt able to think more clearly than he had done for hours.
It had always been the plan to follow the unfolding story of Jason’s disappearance on the radio and television, and Dan turned on the small portable television
set that he had brought from home. The radio had been Susan’s, and he couldn’t bring himself to touch that, so he concentrated on the TV, switching from channel to channel searching for news programmes.
He marvelled at the clarity of the picture and sound, remembering that one of the things Susan had complained about was that they may only get a limited reception for the television coverage.
He actually jumped when Jason’s face filled the whole of the small screen. How the hell had they got a photograph of the boy wearing exactly the same clothes that he was wearing now? The image stayed in place for the whole time that the presenter told the public about the school trip to St Fagans and Jason’s disappearance.
The cameras then followed Tina going into the press conference and Dan listened as someone called DCI Phelps appealed to the public for help. He couldn’t quite work out what had happened to Tina halfway through the session. She had obviously said something but her words had been spoken over by the newsreader. Dan could just make out the words, ‘I just want Jase back. If whoever has him wants my money he can have it … I just want my Jase back.’
This encouraged Dan, who would be more than happy to return the boy in exchange for a chunk of her fortune. It sounded as if she would hand it over willingly and maybe that part of the plan would go off without a hitch and his hopes were raised. A few seconds later they were dashed again as he listened in amazement to the facts that already seemed to be at the fingertips of this young detective.
Dan remembered the group of people the DCI was asking to come forward and he knew that one of the girls on a pink scooter would be likely to recall him as she had run over his foot and the bag carrying Jason had lurched forward. That had been when Jason started giggling but Dan didn’t believe the girl could have heard that.
He put his own thoughts on hold and listened intently to the rest of the appeal. Dan had also seen the elderly couple whose photograph was being shown but he had no worries about them. They hadn’t noticed him he was sure because they were far too busy expressing their disgust that a little boy was being encouraged to balance a can of cider on his head.
The final words of DCI Phelps’ appeal caused a renewed bout of nausea as Dan was shocked to hear that the police were looking for a man dressed in a white jumper or jacket and had already figured out that Jason had been taken from the museum in some sort of bag. In other words, they were looking for him!
That meant that they would be looking at the CCTV cameras around the car park and could pick him up putting the bag into Susan’s sister’s car. Panic set in and he was in danger of seeing the immediate return of his beans on toast as he fought the feeling of sickness that was getting the better of him.
He walked back outside but the first thing he saw was a recently established pile of debris. To most people that is all it would have looked like but in Dan’s eyes it was so obviously a grave that he could easily envisage a cross and some floral tributes adorning the top of the pile.
His brain was racing and he could not make it stop long enough in one place to allow any rational thinking, but he would have to attempt to put the brakes on his over active imagination. In his mind’s eye he could already see the blue flashing lights taking the coastal road up towards the caravan. He sat down on the grass and rubbed his face and the side of his head and it seemed to have the desired result of erasing some of the demons and bringing common sense to the surface.
Even if the police did pick him up putting a bag into the boot it was Diane’s car, not his, that would be identified. They wouldn’t recognise him, as he was certain that he had never looked up and the best image the police could get would be of an averagely built man dressed in a white sweater and trousers. That wouldn’t lead them to him. Diane didn’t even know her car had been ‘borrowed’ and would have a rude awakening when the police rang her doorbell.
He had to think what to do with Jason, but all he could decide was that the rest of the plan would have to stand. Tina would get a letter tomorrow morning telling her that Jason was safe and would not be harmed if she complied with the demands.
Dan was certain that she would do that and that he would have no problem picking up the ransom. The police would not interfere because at that point in time they would not know the whereabouts of Jason and would not risk his safety.
After that the plan would have to change as Dan would no longer be able to give the caravan as the place for Tina to find her son. He would have to think of somewhere else to take the boy and it would have to be somewhere he wouldn’t be discovered until Dan was several thousand feet in the air.
But could he risk Jason being found at all? Things were entirely different now. There had never been any question that having picked up the ransom and been safely boarding the plane to Mexico that Dan would phone Tina and give her directions to find her son safe and well.
But the son she could be picking up now would be able to tell her of a murder he had witnessed and that put an entirely different slant on the prospect of Dan getting away with it. He couldn’t risk that – but what did that mean to Jason’s chances of being found alive?
Chapter Eight
Ransom
It was coming up to 11.30 when Martin pulled up outside the large steel gates of the Royal Mail sorting office. Matt jumped out of the car. There was no need for him to walk very far as the shift manager, Timothy Crowe, was waiting on the pavement and they recognised one another immediately.
‘This is getting to be a habit,’ he smiled briefly as he handed over a white envelope that had been put into a plastic bag. ‘It’s the only piece of mail on the premises addressed to Tina Barnes and it’s taken us a bit longer than we had hoped to find it because there’s no post code and our systems scan that first. We’ve all guessed that this has something to do with the missing school boy and we’ve got our fingers crossed that nothing bad has happened to him.’
Matt remembered the system from the last time he had asked for the help of the sorting office and asked Tim to thank the staff for their cooperation and thoughts. Minutes later Martin had turned the car around and they were heading for Tina’s home.
‘It’s strange the way life throws things up in batches,’ said Martin. ‘I’d never sought the help of the postal system in any case during the whole of my career before last month, and now we’ve used it in two consecutive investigations. Is the address handwritten?’ he asked Matt.
‘Yes, I could see it clearly under the security lights back there. It’s written in blue ink and it looks as if there has been an attempt to disguise the writing, because it’s all over the place.’
‘Of course it may not be a ransom note and could just be a run-of-the-mill letter from someone Tina knows.’ As he spoke Martin put his foot down harder on the accelerator and nothing more was said until he turned the corner into what had previously been Tina’s well-ordered development of expensive houses but now resembled a circus ring. The first figure Martin recognised was that of John Evans coming down the drive of the biggest and most expensive-looking house of the group.
John Evans looked decidedly rattled and Martin pulled up alongside him and asked him what he was doing there.
‘You wouldn’t believe the number of calls we’ve had from these people,’ he said waving his arms around as he spoke to take in all the houses adjacent to the Barnes’ home.
‘Not one of the calls had been an offer to help with the search for a missing child. All of them are just hell bent on complaining to the police that there are people trespassing onto their property. Can you believe it? The man in the house I’ve just come from didn’t even enquire about the boy and when I tried to reason with him he said that the boy and his mother should have stayed on the council estate they came from. He almost spat out his distaste when he suggested that her sort of people are good at piling up flowers and teddy bears to ease their guilt when one of their kids gets killed. He wasn’t even interested when I explained that as far as we know Jason has not been killed and he slammed
the door in my face after bellowing that the sort of media circus that was outside his house had better be moved – or else.’
Martin had witnessed his favourite sergeant express a number of emotions over the years but he had never seen him so angry.
‘If having pots of money turns people into uncaring, self-centred pieces of shit I’ll just be happy to stick with my pension.’
John was calmer now that he had got that off his chest but was also a bit ashamed as he asked Martin if there was any further news of Jason. ‘See what I mean?’ he emphasised. ‘Normally that would have been my first question. They say behaviour breeds behaviour and there was me putting my own moans first before asking about the kid.’
‘We possibly have some news and if you follow us to Tina’s house we may need your help,’ said Martin as he drove on just a few yards before turning into Tina’s drive. It hadn’t escaped his notice that the media had witnessed his conversation with Sergeant Evans and there were flashes lighting up the darkness at an increasing rate as he and Matt left the car and made their way to the front door.
Lessons in how not to annoy the neighbours obviously didn’t feature in the media training manuals and as if to prove the point several reporters shouted questions and spoke loudly into microphones.
‘What are you doing here, DCI Phelps?’
‘Have you found the kid?’
‘Is he alive?’
‘Have you come to tell his mother he’s been murdered?’
‘Must be bad news for you to be here at this time of night – come on, what can you tell us, you must be able to tell us something.’
Martin was inclined to use the two words that annoyed him more than any other two in the English language, but refrained. He was always frustrated when suspects relied on the ‘no comment’ card but on this occasion he would have liked to use it himself. Instead he said quite truthfully that at that moment there was nothing he could tell them but he hoped that position would change very soon.