by David Hodges
‘Well, sir, by rights we shouldn’t be holding him on just an ABH charge anyway and the custody sergeant says the charge sheet has an endorsement on it, saying he cannot be released – er – without the expressed authority of yourself.’
‘Quite right and that still stands. Is that all?’
Holland fidgeted for a moment. ‘Point is, sir, he’s been a bloody nuisance ever since he was nicked apparently – ringing the buzzer, denying he hit Kate Hamblin and saying his arrest and detention was all a put-up job—’
Ansell cut in like a whiplash. ‘He said what?’
Holland gave a nervous laugh. ‘’Course, we know that’s crap, sir – he’s obviously lost the plot somehow – but with Phil Sharp winding him up from the next cell, it’s bedlam down there.’
Ansell leaned back against the wall for a moment and studied him narrowly. ‘Exactly what has he said?’
Holland took a deep breath. ‘Well, I haven’t seen him myself, sir, but both the night turn and early turn custody sergeants have said he’s been going on about DC Hamblin being in some sort of danger and demanding to see you before it’s too late. We reckon Sharp said something to him that set all this off. Now the late turn skipper wants rid of him before he drives everyone crackers.’
Ansell came off the wall, his face ashen. ‘I see,’ he said curtly. ‘Leave it with me.’ And before Holland could say anything more, he was heading back to the stairs.
Roscoe was already in the main incident-room, talking to one of the operators when he strode through the door and he indicated to the DI with a nod of his head to join him in the SIO’s office.
‘Lewis has been spilling the beans all night,’ he grated, shutting the door carefully behind him. ‘Wound up by that prick, Sharp, apparently. This could wreck everything if it gets to the ears of the press.’
Roscoe nodded grimly. ‘With respect, Guv,’ he said, ‘we’ve got a lot more to worry about than the press.’
For the first time Ansell read the anxiety in his eyes.
‘Meaning?’
Roscoe shrugged unhappily. ‘Kate Hamblin’s disappeared.’
‘What?’
‘Sergeant Mills on the firearms team has just rung in. He says he’s been trying to contact Kate for an hour, on both her home line and her mobile, to touch base with her before deploying his team and he hasn’t been able to get an answer. So he took a chance and checked the house. She’s not there – and, worse still, the wire she’s wearing is dead.’
Ansell felt a sharp stabbing pain in his chest and carefully sat down on the edge of the desk as the room swayed briefly around him. ‘Shit!’ he said slowly and distinctly. ‘Has Mr Willoughby been told about this?’
Roscoe shook his head. ‘Not in yet,’ he said. ‘Probably still in bed.’
‘That’s one saving grace anyway,’ Ansell murmured uncharitably. ‘You’d better get over to the house. Tear it apart if you have to. Yes, and get Lewis out of the cells and take him with you.’
‘You know that will blow the whole operation, Guv?’ Roscoe warned.
Ansell emitted a cracked laugh. ‘With Lewis shouting his mouth off and our key player missing, I think it is already blown, don’t you, Ted? And if anything has happened to Kate Hamblin, our careers will be blown with it.’
Detective Superintendent Willoughby strolled into the incident-room at four o’clock to find the place in sombre mood and Ansell talking in an agitated manner to a detective sergeant on one of the workstations.
‘Problems?’ he queried, sensing the atmosphere around him.
‘You could say that,’ Ansell retorted, and had the satisfaction of seeing his boss quail when he told him the news. ‘I’ve just had a full circulation put out on her,’ the DCI went on, ‘and I’ve asked for flight operations assistance.’
‘The helicopter?’ Willoughby’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard. ‘But that will let the whole force know we’ve cocked up. The Chief will—’
‘Can’t be helped,’ Ansell cut in. ‘This is an officer’s life we’re talking about,’ and he broke off as someone shouted his name.
Turning, he saw one of his operators on the other side of the room holding up a telephone receiver.
‘Toby Pomeroy, Somerset Levels Avian Society, Guv,’ the call-handler shouted.
‘So?’ Ansell threw back at him.
The operator shrugged. ‘Wanted to speak to Kate Hamblin, but I said she wasn’t here. Tried to speak to her this morning apparently without success and he’s not very happy about being given the run around.’
‘So why would he want me instead?’
‘Says he has some information for us and insists on speaking to a supervisor – something about a flask.’
Ansell felt his heartbeat quicken and he threw Willoughby a quick sideways glance. ‘A flask, you say? Better put him through.’
The voice at the other end of the extension phone sounded irritable when Ansell announced himself. Then, as the DCI listened to what the caller had to say, his jaw dropped and he threw another glance at Willoughby. ‘You’re sure about this, Mr Pomeroy?’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you got an address?’
Ansell snapped his fingers and a uniformed officer sitting at the workstation beside him handed him a pen. For a second he scribbled furiously on the back of a used message form, then nodded quickly. ‘Got all that,’ he said. ‘Right, thank you for ringing, sir.’
Setting the phone down, he held on to the receiver in its cradle for a few seconds, staring at Willoughby with a look of disbelief. ‘Remember the flask Hamblin found in the hide?’ he said.
‘Of course, I do. So we have an owner at last, do we?’
‘You could say that. The man I’ve just spoken to is president of some bird-watching group or other Kate Hamblin went to see and he reckons he knows who the flask belongs to.’
‘Well, that’s good news at least. We could have an ID for our stiff then?’
Ansell nodded. ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that,’ he said. ‘Pomeroy has apparently seen the flask several times before and he reckons that the initials RCJN engraved on the thing stand for Richard Clement John Norton.’
Willoughby gaped. ‘What? There must be some mistake?’
‘Maybe,’ Ansell said grimly, ‘but if Pomeroy’s right, I would very much like to know how our Doctor Norton’s flask came to be left in the hide and why he didn’t tell us about it.’
‘So let’s get him in here and ask him.’
Ansell’s eyes gleamed. ‘Which is what I intend doing right now,’ he replied, nodding to the policeman sitting beside him. ‘And while my man here is fixing that up for me, I think we should have another word with Master Philip Sharp – and this time there will be no more games.’
chapter 34
HAYDEN LEWIS WAS shivering and he wasn’t in the least bit cold. Released from his cell to be told that Kate had disappeared, he was still in a state of shock and his empty cottage, once so warm and cosy, had seemed like an alien place, greeting him with a bleak indifferent shrug.
‘Well, she’s not here anyway,’ Roscoe said, stating the obvious and scowling as he looked around him.
‘She never got back here in the first place,’ Lewis retorted as he returned to the room from the kitchen. ‘The fire’s not cleared out and there are dirty dishes on the draining-board from last night. She would never have left the place like this if she’d come back first.’ He clenched his fists in a sudden spasm. ‘She must have been snatched en route, that’s the only explanation.’
As he spoke, the control-room’s observation message regarding Kate’s disappearance blasted from Roscoe’s radio and at the same time they heard the thud of rotor blades approaching. Dashing out of the cottage, they saw the police helicopter almost skimming the tops of the hedgerows as it sped towards them, like some giant flying bug. Seconds later it was hovering over them.
‘I’ve got to get up in that,’ Lewis exclaimed.
Roscoe shook his head. ‘No way headquarters
ops will allow it,’ he said. ‘They’ll have their own trained observer on board.’
Lewis took a deep breath. ‘Listen,’ he said earnestly, ‘I know Kate’s car. I’d recognize it straightaway – even without the number. I’ve got to do something, for goodness sake!’
Roscoe studied him for a moment, chewing furiously, then moved away to speak into his radio. As he’d expected, he received an immediate refusal to the request, but the next instant Ansell’s hard clinical voice cut through the radio traffic, overturning the decision. The formidable DCI had no intention of allowing anything to interfere with the search for Kate Hamblin and no one was prepared to argue with him.
Fixing a rendezvous in a nearby field, Lewis found himself airborne within half an hour of the argument, and as the machine banked sharply towards Glastonbury Tor’s phallic-like spire and the vast expanse of the Levels spread out far below, it suddenly dawned on him just how much the odds were stacked against them. It would be dark before long and he knew instinctively that if they didn’t find Kate before then, they were likely to be doomed to failure – and the consequences of that didn’t even bear thinking about.
Phil Sharp was fast losing his bottle – and his bravado with it. Sitting once again in the police interview room, across the table from Ansell and a grim-faced Roscoe, who had only just got back from the negative search of Kate’s house, he continually licked his lips and darted frequent glances at his two ashen-faced interrogators with mounting apprehension.
The news that Kate Hamblin had disappeared – almost certainly snatched by the killer – should have pleased him, but it didn’t, despite his earlier desire to see her written off. He sensed he was in even bigger trouble now than he had been before and he was desperately racking his brains for a way out.
‘I want my solicitor back here,’ he blurted out eventually.
Ansell leaned forward, his eyes like gimlets. ‘Sod your solicitor,’ he grated. ‘I need some answers and you’re going to give me them now.’
‘I don’t have to tell you anything,’ Sharp prevaricated.’
‘Listen to me, you little shit,’ Ansell continued, ‘we’ve got a police officer missing and there’s every chance of her turning up dead if we don’t find her soon. I’ve got enough on you already to have you sent down for three to five and, if she dies, I’ll make damned sure you get life as an accessory.’
Sharp’s jaw dropped. ‘You can’t do that. I’ve had nothing to do with her disappearance,’ he protested. ‘I was in here anyway when she went AWOL.’
‘You could still have planned it with Twister,’ Roscoe cut in. ‘Don’t forget what we said before. Naomi Betjeman snuffed it after a visit from you – maybe you’ve been helping Twister out with Kate, the same as you did with Naomi?’
‘That’s bloody ridiculous.’
‘Is it?’ Ansell resumed. ‘I reckon we’ll have little difficulty convincing a jury of the fact. It all dovetails neatly. Why otherwise would you withhold vital information?’
‘Yeah,’ Roscoe added, ‘and why would any self-respecting copper be driving around late at night carrying a loaded shooter? You were obviously up to no good.’
Sharp shook his head desperately. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I had the gun for protection.’
‘Protection against whom?’
The former DS hesitated, gnawing at his lip. Then abruptly he took a deep breath and blurted, ‘I was going to bring Twister in.’
‘Bring Twister in?’ Roscoe echoed. ‘Don’t make me laugh. You wouldn’t have the guts to bring in a one-legged nun.’
‘It’s the truth,’ Sharp insisted hotly, even beginning to believe the lie himself and conveniently forgetting that it had been his intention to blackmail Twister rather than to arrest him. ‘If I hadn’t been stopped, he would be in the pokey by now.’
Ansell silenced Roscoe’s next disparaging remark with a wave of his hand. ‘We’ve wasted enough time on this already, Sharp,’ he rapped. ‘So, game over; tell us what we need to know right now.’
‘Deal first,’ Sharp said, still sticking to his stubborn line, even though he was now quaking in his shoes.
Ansell shot to his feet so quickly – almost knocking over his chair in the process – that even Roscoe jumped. ‘I’ll tell you what the deal is,’ he hissed, thrusting his face so close to Sharp that the latter drew back from him with a sharp cry. ‘You either open up or when you are sent down, I’ll make sure every con in stir knows you were a copper. Be interesting to see how long it will be before someone sticks something sharp between your shoulder-blades while you’re taking a shower.’
‘All right, all right!’ Sharp almost shrieked, cracking at last. ‘It’s Norton, Doctor bloody Norton – Twister is Norton.’
‘What?’ For a few moments Ansell seemed to freeze where he stood. ‘That’s not possible,’ he breathed and he dropped back heavily into his chair, as if his legs were no longer able to support him. Even Roscoe looked transfixed, his mouth hanging open and the bubble from his gum collapsed over his lip like a deflated parachute.
Sharp’s arrogance surfaced again for a moment. ‘Oh it’s not only possible, it’s fact,’ he sneered. ‘Bloody good detectives you were – the bastard has been running the whole thing from inside the inquiry team itself and you didn’t have a clue.’
Roscoe lunged forward and grabbed Sharp by his shirt collar, hauling him out of his seat and halfway across the table. His closed meat-hook of a fist would have practically taken Sharp’s head off his shoulders if Ansell had not grabbed his wrist.
‘Enough!’ the DCI rasped, forcing the DI to release his grip and let the other slump back in his chair. ‘Get on with it, Sharp or by heaven, I’ll leave Roscoe in here with you!’
Sharp was visibly shaking now and he rubbed his neck tenderly where Roscoe’s knuckles had grazed the skin. ‘OK, OK,’ he muttered hastily, ‘I’m telling you, aren’t I?’ He swallowed hard and, scowling at the DI, rubbed some saliva from his lips on to the back of his hand. ‘Before she snuffed it, Betjeman told me she had sussed that Twister and Norton were both the same person. Twister’s bloody awful perfume was the first thing that had given him away apparently, although she hadn’t twigged the connection between the stuff Norton had had on and the scent the man who had attacked her was wearing until later. Twister’s second mistake was to take his glasses off during the interview to clean the lenses, exposing those weird eyes of his.
‘When she did some research on a follow-up story at The Tribune’s archives that night, she saw a mug-shot of Twister in an old newspaper report and not only made the visual connection, but remembered the perfume as well. I … I was able to find out Norton’s address and was on my way there when I was stopped.’
‘We’ve really been had, haven’t we?’ Roscoe commented savagely. ‘The stiff at the reserve was obviously Norton’s work – which explains the abandoned flask – so Twister must have taken on the doctor’s identity completely. He has probably even been holed up in the poor sod’s house ever since.’
Ansell shot to his feet again. ‘Get a team over to Norton’s house pronto,’ he exclaimed, then, glaring at Sharp, he added, ‘And in the meantime, this thing can be stuck back in the cell where it belongs.’
Calling in the uniformed constable who had been left standing outside the door of the interview room, the DCI headed for the stairs at an uncharacteristic trot, but he was only halfway up before he ran straight into a flustered Willoughby coming down.
‘No reply from Doctor Norton’s house,’ Willoughby exclaimed breathlessly, ‘but one of the late turn has just been upstairs in response to the circulation about Kate Hamblin. He says he was on nights last night and, just before he went off, he saw Kate talking to Doctor Norton in the yard. He thinks they must have gone off together in Kate’s Mazda, as they were both gone when he nipped out to his car again and Norton’s Merc was still parked there. What the hell’s going on?’
Ansell pushed past him. ‘That figures,’ he snapped. �
��Tell you about it after I’ve grabbed my car keys.’
Willoughby gaped after him. ‘Your car keys?’ he echoed. ‘So where on earth are we going?’
‘To try to prevent another murder,’ the DCI said, ‘but I think we may already be too late.’
chapter 35
THE POLICE HELICOPTER was running out of options. The mist, which had been clearing steadily for a couple of hours, was once more drifting back in spectral patches, joining with the dusk to blot out large tracts of countryside, and, despite sweep after sweep of the Levels, there had been no sign of Kate’s Mazda.
‘Be zero visibility soon,’ the pilot observed. ‘Might as well pack this in now.’
‘Just one more sweep,’ Lewis pleaded, ‘please, just one more.’
And it was as the helicopter banked sharply to swing back towards Glastonbury Tor’s fading sentinel that they saw the Land Rover – a green canvas topped vehicle – bumping through the mist along a narrow drove in the direction of Burtle.
‘Take us down to check that out,’ Lewis said sharply.
‘Thought you were looking for a Mazda MX5?’ the official observer snapped, obviously still feeling peeved over the detective’s usurpation of his role.
‘Just a hunch,’ Lewis retorted, leaning forward to peer through the nose of the helicopter’s glass cockpit. ‘Maybe Twister has changed vehicles.’
‘Yeah,’ the observer retorted. ‘Then maybe we should also have checked out the couple of dozen buses, rigids and artics we clocked earlier?’
The sarcasm was lost on Lewis. He was too engrossed in his scrutiny of the Land Rover, now just feet below them.
‘Obviously a farm wagon,’ the pilot commented, switching on the helicopter’s powerful Nite Sun searchlight and grinning as the Land Rover swerved slightly under the down-draught of the machine and a hand appeared out of the driver’s window, giving them an obscene sign. ‘But I don’t think we’ve made any new friends by checking him out.’