Gagged & Bound

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘I don’t see what the police could do. There’s still no evidence that Simon Tick was ever involved. He hasn’t admitted it either. Didn’t you notice how carefully he avoided it?’

  Was leaving the phone a private admission of defeat, she wondered, a gesture to show me he accepts that he’s lost? Or a kind of tacit apology for what he did to David? Or a warning that if I don’t keep quiet he could start again? Am I reading much too much into it? Maybe Tick had the phone in his pocket, ready to send me another threatening text message, and it just fell out. How will I ever know?

  ‘But we can’t leave it here,’ Bee said, her voice bursting with energy and loathing. ‘He was the cause of everything those children suffered, and Jeremy, and Jane Marton too. You can’t just let him go.’

  Trish looked at her for a long moment, but all she could see was David’s tear-stained face and frightened eyes. She thought of the damage she’d done by forcing John Crayley’s secrets into the open. How much more trouble might she cause by exposing what she believed was the truth about Simon Tick?

  ‘Where’s the justice in that?’ Bee said.

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  Chapter 27

  Monday 23 April

  A burglar alarm was ringing on and on somewhere in the dark. Caro could feel someone in her team itching to swear at the noise or throw something. Tension was making everyone’s nerves crackle but so far discipline was holding. They all knew how important this was, and they’d been told that timing was crucial, although she and the superintendent had agreed not to explain why.

  She’d had to lie to the super about how she’d come by the information about tonight’s events, presenting him with an anonymous letter she’d faked. It had taken a while to persuade him to sanction the operation, and all the time she’d had to face the possibility that John Crayley had set her up as a punishment for sending Trish to investigate him.

  The armed response unit was in place, and Caro had made sure everyone in her team was wearing all the proper protective clothing. But as she waited for ten o’clock, with Sergeant Walley just behind her, she grew more and more certain that this was a set-up.

  ‘They’re not planning a full-blown bag-and-gag killing,’ John had said. ‘Only to use the preliminaries to scare a new recruit into admitting he’s talked too much, and, as a kind of bonus, to impress on two other younger members of the clan that they’re fully implicated in serious crime. It’s to be a typical piece of Slabb theatre, but it’ll be brutal so don’t leave it too long.’

  Could it be true? Or was this to be a repetition of the way he’d silenced Stephanie Taft?

  Caro had heard all the details of the raid when Stephanie had been shot. And this was so like it: a squad of armed police waiting outside a house owned by one of Jack Slabb’s cousins. Stephanie’s death had come at dawn and this was evening, and there were no television cameras, but those were the only differences.

  As soon as she’d decided to take her gamble, she knew she had to go in first. If there were to be any bullets flying around, she couldn’t have one stopped by any of the team. She tugged at the flap of her Kevlar vest to cover her throat and thought of the letters she’d left in her desk, just in case: one to the superintendent, explaining what she’d done and why; one to Trish; and one to Jess, full of the words she’d never quite managed to say about the way Jess had lit up her life.

  John’s instructions had been precise and very clear. Caro ran through them all to make sure she was ready to take each step in order. It was nearly time.

  The hands on her watch must have caught on something: they weren’t moving. If there really was a bag-and-gag going down, she couldn’t be late and risk another death. But to go in too early would pre-empt it and maybe miss the evidence that would nail the bastards who’d killed Stephanie and Sam. Caro kept her eyes trained on her watch. At last!

  ‘Now!’ she said quietly. She was across the road before she thought about it, feeling the men running behind her, and hearing their hard, heavy breathing.

  The door yielded to the first crash of the battering ram. Inside there was a long, well-lit passage running to the back of the house with two pairs of doors on either side. It would be the first one on the left, John had said. As he’d promised, it was ajar.

  She put her shoulder to it and crashed it back against the wall.

  ‘Shit!’ said a voice from behind her.

  There was a muddled movement of white-clad figures and between them she saw someone sitting on a chair with his head hanging down. There were ties pinning his arms together behind the chair; others clamped his legs to it. He turned his head towards them.

  Caro gagged as she saw a stick clamped between his teeth. Two large translucent plastic bags lay on the floor. She felt the horror of it in a familiar twisting pain between her legs.

  ‘Backs against the wall,’ she shouted, as the armed response unit officers fanned out behind her, guns at the ready.

  The man in the chair had pissed himself. She dropped on her knees beside his chair while the team began to cuff the men in white and caution them. She had to get the photographer in to record the evidence, but she couldn’t leave this man with that gag on any longer than was absolutely necessary. The first flash allowed her to pull on a pair of fine latex gloves and begin to untwist the wire from behind his head.

  As she took the stick from his mouth, he coughed convulsively. The complete gag went straight into an evidence bag taken from her pocket.

  ‘I …’ he said as tears leaked out of his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen. ‘I …’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Caro said. ‘There’s no need to talk. We’ll get a doctor to you as soon as we can. But now I need to get the photographer to make a full record of what they’ve done to you. Can you hang on a little bit longer?’

  He nodded. As soon as the whole range of shots had been taken and the photographer had left them alone, Caro freed his arms from the chair and prepared to kneel down again to deal with his legs. He leaned sideways so he could rest his bruised and mucus-covered face against her shoulder. She wanted to hold his head with hands gentle enough to prove to him that there was still kindness in the world. Whatever he’d done, he was suffering now. But she couldn’t touch him; there might be evidence on his clothes and hair.

  The possible significance of the whiteness of the other men’s clothes struck her and she looked up to check. Fred Walley was still formally cautioning the last of them, which was hardly necessary given that none of them had said a word. They were all wearing standard-issue scene suits with integral hoods and overshoes, specifically designed to prevent their wearers leaving any hair or fibre evidence at a crime scene. If these were the men who’d tortured and suffocated Sam Lock, it was no wonder there’d been no trace of them on her body.

  She hated to think what the victim would feel as he was offered a scene suit himself, but it would have to happen when they removed his clothes to check for evidence. It would take time to send someone to wherever he lived for a fresh set.

  They’d use the rape suite for him, she decided, so long as there weren’t any rape cases brought in tonight. He’d need the quietness and low lights and specially trained officers, who would know how to get a precise and accurate statement out of him without adding too much to the horror of what had already happened.

  It was essential for the case that they found out exactly what the other men thought he’d done to betray them. More trickily, they’d also have to find out what he himself had done to other people while he was still working for them.

  It was going to be a long night.

  She moved to Fred’s side. He’d made the men pull down their masks and push back their hoods. Knowing that her loathing would be obvious, she walked slowly up the line, like a general reviewing his troops, until she reached John Crayley.

  Chapter 28

  Thursday and Friday 26 and 27 April

  Jack Slabb was standing on the steps outside the Magistrate
s’ Court between his sons. They both towered over him, so he couldn’t see the wary, challenging glances they were exchanging over his grey head. The lawyers had had no trouble getting them bail. All three were free – for the time being at any rate. At least one would probably have to go down before this was over. Jack straightened his cuffs and his shoulders, making plans.

  ‘That didn’t take long,’ Johnnie said. ‘What now?’

  ‘We wait,’ said John Crayley, sounding far more posh, ‘while the police and CPS get their evidence together and we sort out our defence. Then we go to committal.’

  ‘Which is when?’

  ‘Could be months.’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ Jack said. ‘The briefs will see to all that. We have family to deal with. You can be seen to be one of us now, John. Come on.’

  He waved an imperious hand and a sleek black BMW slid towards the kerb. John Crayley looked from his father to his half-brother and back again.

  ‘Not yet, Jack. I’ve got things to sort out first. And I must see Gillian.’

  ‘Much good that’ll do you.’ Jack laughed. ‘But I’d give anything to see her face when you try.’

  ‘It’s got to be done. Give me forty-eight hours to wind up the old life and I’ll be with you.’ John kept all pleading and weakness out of his voice to make sure his father wouldn’t read a question into what he intended as an instruction. He saw Johnnie’s eyebrows rise and an admiring little smile make his lips twitch. But Jack made him wait.

  ‘OK,’ he said at last, gripping John’s upper arm more tightly than was comfortable. ‘Sat’day morning it is. Come round then and we’ll kill the fucking fatted calf for you.’

  ‘You stupid, stupid bugger.’

  John had slept for fourteen hours the previous night without moving, but he didn’t feel rested, only foggy-headed and nauseated. His controller’s fury wasn’t helping.

  ‘Caro Lyalt and her officers have now got a chance to gather enough evidence to send Jack and Johnnie Slabb – and three of their nastiest helpers – down for a very long time,’ he said, ‘and they may well pick up more. You might thank me for that.’

  ‘Why? The information you’ve got over the years working with us and him has allowed us to quash more villainy than you’ll ever know. It was going like a dream and you had to screw it up. Besides which, now that you’ve had to be arrested and bailed with the rest, it’s going to be a hell of a job to sort you out. You may have to do some time, John.’

  ‘It couldn’t go on.’

  ‘Why not? Maguire was no threat. And we could have neutralised Lyalt. We could even have given her a job if we’d had to.’

  ‘I couldn’t go on, Martin.’

  ‘I know you were getting pissed off. You were definitely due a rest. I told you that. All you needed was to hang on a little longer, so—’

  ‘So that you could have me put in cold storage for a while?’

  ‘Precisely, John. To give you time to get back your perspective – and your bottle. If it hadn’t worked, and you’d still wanted to leave us after a cooling-off period, we’d have found a way to ease you out in safety. As it is, you’ll be a target for the rest of your life, unless your trial and sentence convince the Slabbs. And you’re out of the police for good, whatever happens.’

  John shrugged.

  ‘What on earth will you do when you get out of prison? You don’t know anything but us and the police,’ Martin Wight said, not unkindly. ‘You’ve got no friends except us. Your marriage isn’t likely to survive, from what I hear. We’re your family, old boy. Us and the Slabbs, and I can’t see you making a life with them.’

  John looked out over the dustbins and the pigeons and the rats. Everything he’d heard was true. Because he’d spent all his adult years squeezed between this man and Jack Slabb, he had no life. Everything he could have given to work or to a proper marriage, with children even, had been spent on this pretence. Some crimes had been stopped before they could do too much damage, some victims had been protected, a few villains banged up. But was any of that enough to justify what it had cost?

  Stephanie was dead. His mother would probably never recover from what he’d been made to do to her. Even poor Lulu had suffered before she walked out on him last week, screaming that she wasn’t surprised Stephanie had given him such a hard time and how she wished she’d had the sense to keep her distance. And as for himself? He’d never known what it was to be whole.

  ‘I want …’ What was the point? No one could give him back any of the things they’d taken.

  ‘You want the lost childhood, the Garden of Eden, the enchanted forest. We all do, in our different ways. Can’t be done, old boy. You have to make do with the satisfaction of a bloody hard job done bloody well. You’ve saved a lot of lives.’

  John turned his back on the dustbins and contemplated the man who had owned him for the past twenty years. Maybe he should try to say what he really meant about the cost of those lives. But he couldn’t. Since he’d begun to let himself feel again, the sensations had been like the rumblings of an earthquake. Sometimes he even looked down to check whether the ground was lurching and splitting between his feet. At the moment, more violent than anything else was the rage bursting out of the clamps that had held it down so hard he hadn’t even known it was there. He felt as though his face was brick red and pouring with sweat, but when he put up a hand all he could feel was warm dry skin. He wanted to shout and kick his heels like a desperate baby. They’d taken everything and given him nothing back except this sterile satisfaction of having done what they wanted, pleased them.

  Yesterday, when he’d told his mother the truth, she’d gazed at him through reddened eyes sunk in swollen, sodden pouches of skin and told him she’d never again know what to believe. Not about anything. He’d gone on trying, promising her that he was honest. The expression in her distorted eyes had told him he’d failed.

  ‘So what are your plans for when you’re out on parole?’ Martin asked, massaging his temples as though John’s frivolous, unreasonable behaviour had given him a monstrous headache. ‘If you really aren’t going to let us resettle you?’

  ‘What makes you think I’d tell you any more than I’ll tell Jack Slabb?’ John meant to stop there, but he couldn’t. ‘How does it feel to have been trained to use that formidable, classically educated brain to save the world by fighting the Cold War and then end up spying on a bunch of lower-middle-class thugs who barely went to school?’

  Martin stopped rubbing relief into the sides of his forehead and smiled. It was a long, slow, cat-got-the-cream kind of smile.

  ‘Actually, dear boy,’ he said, drawling far more than usual, ‘that’s a pretty fair description of the sort of Russians we had to deal with in the old days.’

  Oh shut up! John wasn’t sure if he’d said it or only thought it.

  ‘We’ve always been in the business of protecting the people of this country against those that threaten them. We still are. I’m happy with that. You should be, too.’

  ‘I envy you,’ John said, adding silently to himself: what a strange word to choose. How could you be happy? How can I? What am I going to do? Where can I go? Who the fuck am I?

  It’s going to take weeks to process all the paperwork, Caro thought as she emerged from a meeting with the Crown Prosecution Service. But at least they’re going for it with everything they’ve got. And with luck, they will take the deal that gets John Crayley publicly sentenced with the others, then quietly removed to a different prison and released in secret so he has a chance of avoiding Slabb retribution.

  There was a marathon to run yet, but she’d taken the first few steps. The only difficulty left was to decide what to do with the lad they’d found tied to the chair. He’d poured out all the information they’d needed to nail Jack Slabb, but it had included the fact that he, himself, had been there when Sam Lock was killed. He’d had a hand on the wire, too. They couldn’t let him off completely.

  Even with that problem still
exercising her, Caro had to take a break and see to her own life. She’d burned the letters she’d written and no one ever needed to know what had been in them.

  But Trish had earned the right to know some of the things that had happened. She ought also to hear the result of Caro’s fruitless interview with John Crayley on the subject of what had happened to David and the threatening text messages that had been sent from his stolen phone.

  John had shown no signs of either anger or shame. He’d simply looked at Caro as though she was talking some long-defunct language and said he knew nothing of any of it. After a few more questions, he’d added that if the Slabbs had had anything to do with the campaign, David and Trish would have been dead long since.

  She’d have to find a reason to get the school caretaker in and sweat him. He must know something about the damage to David’s bike and helmet. Even if he’d done no more than turned a blind eye, he had to be involved somewhere.

  Chapter 29

  Saturday 28 April

  ‘But, Daddy, I don’t understand.’ Camilla was looking at him with eyes that were huge and anxious. ‘Why do you have to keep it confidential, when it was them who libelled you?’

  Simon brushed away the idea with a complicated hand gesture that felt right but looked weird as he gazed down at his own limbs.

  ‘It was the agreement. You always have to give a little to get a lot. They’re pulping the remains of the edition, and they’ve undertaken not to reprint it, or repeat the libel anywhere else, or to discuss any details of the settlement.’ He smiled at her and saw her lips quivering in response. ‘I want them to stick to the deal, so I’d better do my part, hadn’t I? I can’t tell you anything else.’

  She frowned. ‘Dan says he can help you go public. He’s got this fab PR agency. And he’s sure you’ve got to do it to stop the talk. Already people who know he’s my boyfriend are looking at him sideways, he says. And all because of what that bitch Beatrice Bowman wrote about you.’