Kathy felt drained. Behind her Alfarsi was saying how lucky the brothers had been. ‘Anyone could have driven into that car park and seen them,’ he insisted. ‘Or standing at the back of Pettigrew’s house, or in the corridor of Walcott’s hotel. They were just bloody lucky.’
But also clever, Kathy thought. She imagined how long it would have taken to work it all out, to arrange all the other details that hadn’t been recorded—the grooming of Uzma and Elena, the stalking of Andrea and Caroline and Walcott, the baiting of Pettigrew and Brock, the hacking of computers, the forging of the manuscript. And she imagined the long nights in prison cells when Jarrod had thought the whole elaborate plan through.
‘Scene of crime will have to study these,’ she said. ‘See where we should have caught them out. There are lots of lessons here.’
Then she got to her feet. ‘Let’s get Jarrod.’
21
Brock was packing his few belongings into a plastic bag when Danny returned to their cell. Danny said, ‘You going to lunch, mate?’
‘Yes,’ Brock said. ‘I think I’ll have half-a-dozen oysters followed by beer-battered fish and triple-fried chips, washed down by a bottle of red or maybe just a couple of pints of best. Maybe finish off with a helping of tiramisu. Very partial to tiramisu. Accompanied by a glass or two of muscat.’
‘Yeah, that’ll be the day.’
‘It is the day.’ Brock held up his bag. ‘I’m leaving you, Danny.’
‘What?’
‘They finally worked out that I’m innocent, just like I told you.’
‘Blimey.’
Brock held out his hand and shook Danny’s. ‘Good luck, old son.’
He found Charlie Pettigrew down in the reception suite, gathering up the things that had been taken from him when he arrived, three months before.
‘Didn’t I tell you, Brock?’ Charlie beamed. ‘Things can only get better.’ He pointed at the door. ‘A new life awaits.’
‘So where are you going to celebrate?’
‘Oh, ideally the Strand Hotel, Rangoon, but failing that I’ll just go home and open a bottle of 1949 Cheval Blanc my father set aside. It was the driest vintage since 1893. Lay a few ghosts to rest. Want to join me?’
‘I’d love to, but I think my friends have plans.’
‘Ah, I’ll drink a toast to you. God bless.’
Brock watched him walk out the door and into the big wide world.
Kathy was waiting for him outside. He was astonished to see a hint of tears in her eyes as she hugged him and opened the car door for him, as if he were an invalid.
‘I only went to jail,’ he protested. ‘I didn’t have a triple bypass or anything.’
She shook her head, and he suddenly realised how hard she must have worked to make this possible.
They drove to Kathy’s flat, where Suzanne, Stewart and Miranda had gathered. She parked in her basement slot and they took the lift smoothly up to the twelfth floor, and Brock entered her flat to a hero’s welcome, Suzanne weeping, and the two youngsters hanging back in a kind of awe, as if expecting him to be covered in scars and bruises. Champagne was opened, everyone given a glass, a toast proposed and cries of ‘Speech, speech!’
‘I have no words,’ Brock said, ‘to express my joy at being here, and especially with my two wonderful grandchildren—if you will allow me to call you that—Stewart and Miranda.’
They stared at him for a moment, then, as one, they moved forward and he wrapped them in his arms.
Later, as everyone relaxed, Kathy phoned John to tell him the good news. He was overjoyed, and congratulated Kathy on pulling it off. Then he told her that he also had news. Just that morning he’d heard an item of breaking news from New York. One of the big five publishing houses, PDB, had announced that, after an intense bidding war, they had purchased the rights to publish George Orwell’s previously unknown final novel, The Promised Land, for a seven-figure sum. At a press conference a representative of PDB introduced the world Orwell expert, Sir Mortimer Hartley, who had authenticated the manuscript. He said that this brilliant last work formed the third part of a ‘dystopian trilogy’, comprising Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four and now The Promised Land, and showed Orwell at the height of his literary powers in the final year of his life. A first print run of two million hardback copies had been ordered.
‘I wonder if someone will write the manuscript’s story,’ Kathy said. ‘I’ll bet it’s more exciting than the novel.’
In his study in Hampstead, by the light of his old desk lamp, Charlie Pettigrew slowly drew the cork out of the Château Cheval Blanc 1949, Saint-Émilion, red bordeaux which had been laid down by his grandfather on the day of Orwell’s death. Its current value was around fifteen hundred pounds, he knew, and he poured it carefully into his grandfather’s favourite decanter, a gift from Evelyn Waugh. When everything was as it should be, he poured a glass, sniffed it appreciatively and raised it in a toast to the ghosts of the house. In response, he heard a creak outside in the hall and he smiled, wondering which particular ghost had stirred—his grandfather, perhaps, or father, or maybe Orwell himself. Then the study door swung open and he saw a pale shape standing there. And it was only when the apparition moved forward into the room that he saw the hammer held in its raised hand.
22
The next day Kathy hadn’t been at work long before she got a frantic call from Zack on the far side of the floor.
‘Boss, you’ve got to see this. Dean Causley wants to talk to you.’
She hurried to his desk and was confronted by the magnified image on the big screen of Dean’s face, which was pressed close up to the camera, colourless in a harsh electric light.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he snarled.
‘Hello, Dean. I’m glad you’ve called. I want to talk to you.’
‘No, you want to listen!’
He moved suddenly out of shot to reveal the scene behind him, of a figure sitting slumped on a chair, bound with rope. With a scrape and a wobble of the light the camera moved closer, then Dean stepped into view again and lifted the figure’s bowed head. Kathy recognised Charlie Pettigrew, the left side of his head grossly bruised and swollen.
She took a deep breath. ‘Charlie, can you hear me?’ She saw the lips move, but heard nothing.
Dean’s voice snarled, ‘Come on, Charlie.’ He gave Pettigrew’s face a vicious slap. ‘Talk to the lady!’
Charlie raised his head and looked directly at the camera with his one good eye. He whispered, voice hoarse, ‘Yes … can hear you … no idea where we are.’
Dean stuck his face in front of the lens again. ‘Now listen. You release my brother Jarrod and put him in a taxi and when he’s far away and absolutely sure he’s not been followed he’ll call me and then I’ll let Charlie go. And if Jarrod doesn’t call me by midday, I’ll bash Charlie’s head in a bit more with this hammer. Fair enough?’
Behind the computer Zack was holding up a piece of paper with a message scribbled on it for Kathy to see: CAN’T TRACE HIM.
‘Yes, I see,’ Kathy said. ‘But I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that, Dean. Look, I can arrange for you to talk to Jarrod. Would you like that?’
‘Don’t waste my time, bitch!’ Dean screamed. ‘Tell you what, I’ll be generous. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to make the arrangements. I’ll call you back at eight forty-two exactly. You be there.’ The screen went blank.
Kathy turned to Zack. ‘What do you mean you can’t trace him?’
‘He’s hiding his computer’s IP address by going through a VPN, a virtual private network. We can’t locate him, boss. He could be anywhere.’
She stared back at the screen. ‘What can we do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, find someone who does. Phil? We need a negotiator in here. Ten minutes.’
The action manager jumped to his feet. ‘Yes, boss.’
Kathy was trying to sort through the blizzard of thoughts going through her head. ‘Peter, get
a local patrol car to Pettigrew’s house, try to find out what happened. See if they can get any idea of when Dean grabbed him. The rest of you, I need ideas.’
She turned to her phone and put an urgent call through to Commander Torrens’s number. He promised her priority assistance. A team of controllers would be made available immediately to coordinate searches across the capital once they had any indication of Dean Causley’s whereabouts. ‘Sir,’ Kathy said, ‘if he snatched Pettigrew last night he could be in Glasgow by now.’ Torrens then said he would authorise a request for assistance from the National Cyber Security Centre to help locate Dean Causley’s transmissions. ‘Keep him talking, Kathy. Play for time.’
She rang off, wondering how she was supposed to do that. She went over to Zack and told him about possible NCSC assistance. ‘We need to delay things, Zack, slow things down so we can have time to organise and react. Can you interfere with his signal?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Make it look as if it’s a bad signal, or his computer’s playing up or something, so we can cut the conversation before he gives us another deadline. But it mustn’t look as if we’re responsible.’
‘Blimey, that’s dangerous, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, well, any other bright ideas?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll get on to it.’
Over on the other side of the room Judy Birch and Peter Sidonis were staring at still images taken from the recording of the conversation with Dean.
‘We’re getting these enhanced,’ Judy said. ‘But we think that the pattern in the background is brickwork, yes?’
Kathy stared. Maybe it was, but what help was that? She said something encouraging and moved on.
The minutes ticked by. At eight forty a police negotiator burst into the room, out of breath. Kathy sat him down at Zack’s desk and began to give him a rapid briefing while Zack fiddled with the cables on the back of his computer.
At eight forty-two precisely the screen came alive with Dean Causley’s face. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Hello, Dean. My name is Bill Wallace. I’m a police negotiator and I’m here—’
‘Go away. Put Kolla on.’
‘I have the authority to talk to you, Dean, and hopefully resolve our problem. The first thing we need to establish—’
Dean pressed his face close to the camera so that his mouth filled the screen. ‘GO AWAY!’ he screamed.
The negotiator turned to Kathy, who nodded and took his place. ‘Hello, Dean. You’d really be better talking to Bill. He has the authority—’
‘HAVE YOU RELEASED JARROD? YES OR NO?’
‘It’s not quite as easy as that. A car is on its way to Belmarsh right now to pick him up, but there’s a problem. The prison is in lockdown this morning. There’s been a fire.’
‘BOLLOCKS!’
‘It’s true. If you turn on the BBC news, you’ll probably pick up the report. Listen, I …’ Kathy made a hidden hand signal to Zack and immediately a crackle of static flared across the screen. ‘Hello? Dean? Are you there?’ The screen returned to normal. Dean had stepped back, looking puzzled. Kathy said, ‘Can you see me all right? I lost you there for a moment.’
‘I’m here,’ he said impatiently.
‘Okay, good, so what we’re planning …’ She signalled for another burst of static. ‘Hello? Lost you again.’ She made a cutting motion with her hand and Zac broke the connection altogether. Kathy took a deep breath.
Bill the negotiator was looking confused. ‘You didn’t mention the fire to me.’
‘I just made it up, Bill.’
‘And the interference?’
Kathy pointed at Zack.
‘Oh.’ He was looking worried. ‘This isn’t how we like to do it. We need to engage with him.’
‘You’re the expert, Bill, but my orders are to play for time until we can get ourselves organised. When he comes back on, you go ahead and engage with him.’
Phil ran over with a message from Hampstead, where police had found the back door of Pettigrew’s house standing open. Inside they discovered signs of a struggle, a glass decanter in one room lying smashed on the floor in a puddle of wine and a side table upset. An antique carriage clock had fallen off the table and lay nearby, its hands stopped at seven twenty-three. There were bloodstains on the hall floor. Kathy ordered a scene of crime team to the house and an urgent search of CCTV cameras in the area.
‘If that was seven twenty-three last night,’ she said, ‘he’s had over twelve hours to get ahead of us. He could be anywhere.’
They reconnected Zack’s computer after ten minutes and almost immediately Dean appeared. ‘What are you playing at?’
‘I don’t know what’s going on, Dean. The trouble seems to be at your end. Are you in a basement or something?’
‘Ha ha.’
‘Here’s Bill again, Dean. He’s got something important to tell you.’
‘Yes, hello, Dean. In a situation like this we need to—’
‘Fuck off. Tell you what, we’ll ask Charlie what he thinks. Come on, Charlie, tell her—tell Kolla what I’ll do to you if she mucks me around.’
Charlie slowly raised his head again, blinking one eye at the light, and said, ‘Please, Kathy …’ He hesitated for a moment, then went on, every word a painful effort. ‘Take no notice … of this little prick … he’s barely capable of stringing a cogent sentence …’
He was interrupted by a roar from Dean, who launched himself at the seated man and sent him crashing backwards, the wooden chair shattering beneath him as Dean laid into him with blows and savage kicks. Kathy watched, helpless, as the beating continued. Finally Dean straightened and came back to the camera, gasping from the exertion, and pressed close to the lens. ‘Tell me you’ll free Jarrod, or I’ll finish him off right now.’
‘All right, all right,’ Kathy said. ‘We’ll do it.’
‘Fuckin’ right you will.’
Dean’s face slid away, leaving the image of Charlie’s body curled on the floor among the broken pieces of the chair.
Kathy stared at the screen and whispered, ‘What the hell can we do?’
She noticed a small movement, and bent closer to check. There it was again, Charlie’s right arm. He was trying to untangle himself from the rope, no longer binding him to the broken chair. The others clustered around, watching. Charlie was trying to raise himself up. He collapsed, then tried again, agonisingly slowly, pushing himself into a crawling position. He scrabbled among the broken frame of the chair, then heaved himself upright and lurched towards the camera and passed out of view.
‘What was that in his hand?’ Zack murmured.
Kathy thought it was a piece of chair leg.
The silence was broken by a howl, a groan, and then silence once again.
‘Blimey,’ Zack whispered. ‘The bastard’s killed him.’
More staff arrived, including several tech people to help Zack. Minutes passed—fifteen, thirty, an hour—and the scene on the computer monitor remained silent and unchanging. Probably Dean has fled, Kathy reasoned. She imagined Charlie lying on the cold concrete floor, broken and bleeding, his life seeping away while they fumbled for clues.
A report came in of three vehicles identified from CCTV near Pettigrew’s house as possible subjects; they were being tracked from cameras on a wider and wider perimeter across the city. Then one trail faded, and another, and finally the third was lost. Their numbers were urgently circulated. One of them, a white van, was reported stolen.
Zack called Kathy over to another monitor, where he had been working with Judy Birch. He showed Kathy detailed images of the background to Dean’s transmissions that he had enhanced.
‘I was right,’ Judy said. ‘It is brickwork.’
‘Okay.’ Kathy tried to sound enthusiastic.
‘You see the colour?’ Zack said.
‘Ye-es. Sort of yellow.’
‘Exactly!’ Judy almost shouted. ‘London stock bricks!’
‘Ah.’ Kathy got it. Most of the buildings in London up to the end of the nineteenth century used London stock bricks made from the distinctive local yellow clay. ‘Can we trust the colour?’
Zack explained how he’d made adjustments to arrive at what he believed was a faithful hue.
‘So they’re most likely still in London.’
‘Yes. And something else …’ Zack changed to another image. ‘There, the pattern of the brickwork changes towards the top, do you see? It’s curved, like a vault. And it looks old.’
‘So, a basement? A cellar? In an old building in the London area.’ Kathy nodded and called Sidonis over. He would circulate the information to the borough operational commands who would organise searches in their areas. But Kathy knew how slim the chances of success would be. Most of the cellars and basements would be unknown to the local police. What they were looking for might be beneath a house, a row of old shops, a warehouse, anywhere. ‘Tell them to concentrate on disused buildings, old ones, Peter—Victorian.’
She turned back to Zack and asked him to run the recordings through again from the beginning. When they reached the end of the third clip, with the howl when Pettigrew staggered out of view, Zack made to halt the recording, but Kathy stopped him.
‘There’s nothing more,’ he said.
‘What about sound? Is there any background noise?’
She leaned closer to the computer as he turned up the sound. They had been so focused on Dean and Pettigrew’s voices that everything else had been filtered out, but now, in the silence, they agreed that there was a faint background rumble.
‘A truck?’ Zack suggested.
‘No,’ Judy said, ‘it’s going on too long. Machinery, maybe.’
The sound gradually faded away. They held their breaths, and then it began again, a distant rumble, rising and then fading away after about twenty seconds. They waited, then, after a longer interval, it happened again.
The Promised Land Page 23