Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  Finally the man on my left, who seemed to be in charge, turned to me and shouted over the radio in a London accent, “We’ve got one question for you, mate. Where are they?”

  The driver turned the radio down a few notches, and I said, “Where are what?” It came out as a strangled croak, so I cleared my throat and repeated it.

  It was clearly not the kind of response they wanted. The other man abruptly reached out, grabbed a handful of my hair from behind and yanked my head sharply back. “Christ! Christ almighty!” The surprising and almost childlike assault was astoundingly painful. He grinned malevolently.

  “Don’t fuck about,” the first man said, and I turned quickly back to him. “Where are they? All you have to do us tell us.”

  “What, for god’s sake?” My eyes were watering from the sudden assault, and perhaps also in a reflection of my rising sense of indignation. What was the point of speaking to me in this childish code? Did they want an excuse to hurt me? Speaking as rapidly as I could, I said, “I can’t tell you anything if I don’t know what you mean. Where are what?”

  Calmly he said, “You know perfectly well. The location. We just want the location. It’s a simple question.”

  Location? I’d already assumed that these must be emissaries of Janni Noble, still trying to track down those photographs, but the word “location” was a strange choice.

  I didn’t know how to answer, or what the outcome of a correct reply would be. Would they let me go, or would I be putting myself in line for some much more sinister fate? The whole situation was terrifyingly unreal.

  The man on my right lunged towards me again, threatening a repeat of the hair trick. “They’re dispersed!” I gasped quickly. It sounded appropriate, and might give me moments more to think. “They’re in various places. No single location.”

  “OK, where?”

  I drew breath to offer some improvised answer, but at that point this strange episode took an even stranger turn. A police car shot up alongside us from behind, siren briefly whooping and blue light flashing. We all watched as it passed our car and pulled in ahead of the car in front of us. The traffic queue, already moving at a slow crawl, came to a standstill. I glanced out at the surroundings. We were heading up Streatham High Road, a busy suburban centre lined with small shops set in tall Victorian terraces.

  The police car wasn’t here for us; that was immediately evident. It was probably just stopping someone for a traffic offence. Nevertheless, it had disturbed my captors’ rhythm, and the two men who were holding me spontaneously relaxed their grip.

  Seizing the opportunity, I launched myself forward between the front seats and lunged with my right arm for the middle of the steering wheel. I managed to sound a prolonged blast on the horn before the driver swiped me aside and the man to my right pulled me back.

  I had no idea if the police were paying the slightest attention to this, but the men in my car evidently weren’t in the mood to risk it. The driver reversed our car a foot or two, then seemed to realise there was no escape; several more cars were queuing immediately behind us, and there was now solid traffic to our right. “Fuck this,” he muttered, and he started to open his door. There was a fractional pause as others flashed their mutual assent, then all three climbed out and calmly walked away, leaving the doors wide open.

  I could scarcely believe my luck. From being threatened with who knew what further violence, I was suddenly and quite unexpectedly free. I simply sat there for a moment, aware for the first time that I was trembling from head to toe.

  I was too slow. A voice in my head told me I needed to make myself scarce too, before the police noticed me. If I got caught up here, I would never make the lunch with Ashley. I slid cautiously over to the nearside door and climbed out of the car, but I was out of luck. One of the two officers from the police car happened to turn my way at that point, and looked me squarely in the face.

  Cursing inwardly, I did the only thing that seemed plausible. I walked towards him, and as I approached him I said, “I’ve just been kidnapped.”

  * * *

  I was made to wait while the police summoned a second patrol car, then I was asked to explain how come I’d just been spotted walking away from a stolen vehicle.

  My explanation – that I had been abducted – seemed to strike them as mildly interesting, but they gave no indication of whether they gave any credence to it. They weren’t hostile, but they weren’t especially sympathetic either, which I felt I deserved.

  I had to wait around for what seemed an age, still trembling inside if not outwardly, while they conferred with each other and with someone on the radio. The blue light on their car kept on flashing, and the minutes ticked away steadily.

  Finally I was driven to a police station, where I had to give my account all over again to two different sets of officers. What did the men in the car look like? (Dark clothes, headgear partly covering their faces.) Ethnicity? (White.) Did I know who they were? (No.) What did they want? (I wasn’t sure.)

  I kept checking my watch. One o’clock came and went, then one thirty. I asked if I could make a call. They kept saying in a minute, but the minute gradually turned into an hour. Finally I was pointed to a public phone on a wall, but there were two people queuing for it, and the man currently using it was clearly in no mood to hurry.

  The police still seemed bemused by my story. On one hand they seemed inclined to treat me as a car thief who has been caught red-handed, but on the other they clearly weren’t ready to dismiss the idea that I was a genuine kidnap victim.

  For a while I kept my Dave Matthews trump card in reserve, but finally I suggested that if they telephoned his police station he would vouch for me. To my surprise, one of the officers did. Dave wasn’t there, but the person who answered the call knew my name, and whatever was said, it worked for me. At half past two I was finally allowed to leave. Ashley would already be on a train out of Paddington.

  Chapter 25

  I telephoned Latimer Logistics as soon as I got home and persuaded them to give me Ashley’s mobile number. Then I tried calling it three times. Each time it was engaged. How many failed attempts did I want showing up in her call log? Three might look keen; six would probably seem borderline obsessive. She was presumably still on the train, so maybe she was catching up with missed work.

  I had no mobile phone now, of course. I’d dropped it when my abductors grabbed me. Warily I opened my front door, scanning the scene for lurking kidnappers. Satisfied there were none, I walked back along the street and round the corner to the point where they had picked me up. Predictably there was no sign of the phone. The thought of dealing with the phone company filled me with depression. Would I need a new phone number? How many more of my electronic devices would I have to replace before this onslaught was done?

  Back at the house I found that my whisky bottle was empty. There was half a bottle of gin but no tonic water, and I was just debating the merits of a neat gin when there was a knock at my front door. Now what? However, through the frosted glass window in the front door I recognised Dave Matthews.

  “I hear you’ve been having an exciting time,” he greeted me from the doorstep.

  “Tell me about it.” I beckoned him into the lounge, reflecting that despite the length of time we’d known each other, this was his first ever visit to my house – and he’d come uninvited, presumably on a mission.

  He looked around curiously and took a seat in my leather armchair – the only piece of furniture I’d bought since Sandy’s departure. I found myself apologising for the drab state of everything else.

  “You haven’t seen my house,” he responded. “And don’t worry, you won’t be getting an invite any time soon.”

  I laughed dryly. “I think I owe you and your colleagues a vote of thanks for digging me out of a hole.”

  “I heard about that. Those people up at Streatham can’t seem to tell a victim from a villain.”

  “I suppose it was a rather strange situation.” />
  “D’you want to go through it for me again now?”

  I recounted the events as I remembered them, throwing in my conjecture about Janni Noble’s possible involvement, and adding the cash hand-over I’d witnessed in Amsterdam. Dave listened without comment, then observed, “The thing is, Janni Noble seems to have broken all ties with his connections down this end, and the people in Manchester say he’s been going straight since his brother was jailed. He’s not really on their radar any more.”

  “So you don’t think he could be behind this?”

  “Well, he could be, but let’s say the evidence is thin. I appreciate that he might be after those pictures we talked about, but if so I don’t know how he’s orchestrating it.”

  “But who else could it be?”

  “Good question.”

  We chatted on for a while, and then I made some tea. The unfamiliar domesticity of it seemed a stark contrast to the more blokeish nature of our past encounters. I asked him about his wife. “Since you ask, she buggered off two years ago,” he said philosophically. “Comes with the territory. So you and I are in the same boat, my friend.”

  As he prepared to leave, Dave said, “I’ve asked for the cops at your local nick to keep a bit of an eye on your house. There’s not much they can do really, but at least they can be aware.” We moved to the front door. “To be fair, they’re already trying to join the dots on your break-ins, but they haven’t got much to go on.”

  He was already on the path when he turned abruptly. “I nearly forgot – you’ll be wanting this.”

  He reached into a pocket and held out my mobile phone.

  “You’re a star!” I took it from him. The glass had a hairline crack in it, presumably from being dropped, but apparently the phone itself still worked.

  “I checked up, and someone was good enough to hand it in.”

  “Thanks, Dave. Appreciated.

  He paused at the gate. “Keep your eyes open for strangers when you’re out and about. OK?”

  * * *

  I still couldn’t decide how to contact Ashley. By the time her train had arrived in Truro it would have been after office hours, so presumably she would have gone straight home. But where was home? With a surprise I realised that I had no conception of her living arrangements. Did she share a place with her fiancé Jack? Did she still live with her parents? Or did she have some pied à terre of her own somewhere?

  I now had her mobile number, but I was reluctant to ring it. She might be with Jack. I wanted her to ring me, but a call from her after hours would be yet another step into the unknown. I wasn’t holding my breath. Seven o’clock passed, then eight o’clock, then nine. By then I’d heated and eaten a cheap frozen meal and was into my fourth neat gin.

  At nine thirty she rang.

  “I was there! Where were you?”

  “Ashley.”

  “That’s me. What happened to you? Was your plane delayed?”

  “No, it all worked fine. I was sodding well abducted in Thornton Heath.”

  “What, spirited away by aliens?”

  “No!” But I couldn’t help laughing. “Very funny. No. I was genuinely abducted. Kidnapped. Bundled into a car by two heavies – the whole nine yards. It was horrendous.”

  “My god!”

  I gave her an abbreviated account of the whole event, and then pitched in a summary of my recent burglaries.

  “My god, you lead a dangerous life up there in the big city.” She chuckled. “I’m not sure I want to be associated with you, Mr Stanhope.”

  “Well, you’re pretty safe in Cornwall, I should think.”

  She said nothing to that, and was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “So do you have any idea who is doing all this to you?”

  “The best I’ve come up with so far is that it could be some people I wrote about in an article a few years ago. They might be after revenge, or they might want to steal some pictures I took of them.”

  “Can’t the police do something to stop them?”

  “Well, it’s all a bit vague. There’s no actual evidence.”

  “It must be awful to be persecuted in your own home like this.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I asked tentatively where she lived herself.

  “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve got this flat. Very bijou, but it’s minute. Property around here isn’t cheap.”

  “You live on your own then?”

  “Yes Mr Stanhope, I live on my own.”

  I let that one filter into my brain. “So when do we get the chance for a re-match? I don’t suppose you get to London all that often.”

  “Not really, no. I’ll have to give it some thought.”

  The conversation had reached its natural end, but I wasn’t quite ready to break off. I felt a sudden recklessness, probably prompted by the three neat gins. I said, “Can I just say something?”

  “Go on.”

  I cleared my throat. “Um, I would really like to see you.”

  She waited a second. “Thank you, Mr Stanhope. We’ll need to get back to you on that.”

  1998

  “What the fuck do you mean, it’s been built over?” Hawkins wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and turned up the air conditioning of his pickup. He clamped the phone closer to his ear.

  “It’s what I’m saying. You told me there was a lawn, but there isn’t a lawn, it’s a glasshouse thing. They call it a function suite.”

  “You should have taken a photo.”

  “Well pardon me for living, Terry. I’ll remember next time.”

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t call me Terry. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Stanley. Sorry.” He waited a beat. “But it’s still a function suite.”

  Hawkins swatted away a fly and stared along the broad avenue. Downtown Rockhampton, Queensland looked as it always looked – wide open, brilliant and sunny. This was unbelievable. He wiped the screen of his mobile phone on his shirt.

  “What about a basement?”

  “What, you want me to go and ask for a look at their architectural drawings?”

  “I just meant what did it look like? Would there be any access to a lower level?”

  “Only with a pneumatic drill. It’s based on concrete foundation. Even I could see that.”

  He thought for a minute. “So do you think the builders must have found it? Or could they have just built over it?”

  “Well I never saw the site in the first place, did I? But I would say they must have dug down quite a few feet over the whole area, preparing for piling and laying the substrate and whatnot. Looks as if they knocked down part of the old building as well, to join the new bit on. Your disused cellar will have been filled with concrete and rubble, if you ask me.”

  Hawkins ran his hand over his forehead again. “So we’re saying the builders must have found it? Who were they? You can bet your life they sodding well never went to the police with it.”

  “Well for Christ’s sake, Terry, how would I know? This was ten years ago. More likely they just covered it over.”

  “For the last time, it’s Stanley for god’s sake!” He took a deep breath. “Give me strength.”

  Chapter 26

  “You are cordially invited to the official opening of Vantage Express’s new sortation hub at Rugby. RSVP.”

  I scrutinised the email carefully. Had this been forwarded to me by one of the magazines I wrote for? No, it was addressed to me personally, and had come from the office of Rick Ashton, the chief executive of the company: the man I’d interviewed in that London hotel. It was flattering in a way; it showed that Ashton still thought me influential enough to cultivate. But it meant I had no commission to report on the event. As things stood, I would be going at my own expense.

  I rang Jason Bright at the magazine, but he told me he was attending the event himself. Then I tried Phil Connor, the editor of the handling magazine, but he’d already commissioned one of his regular freelances to go. Fin
ally I persuaded a warehousing magazine to accept a short news report on the event. It wasn’t much, but it gave my visit some legitimacy. Frankly I would happily have ducked out of it altogether, but this was part of my new regime of forcing myself to take a more positive approach to my work.

  Four days later I was on my way. Vantage had arranged to pick up visitors arriving by train at Rugby station, and the journey from south London took me through Euston station. Emerging from the escalator, I found myself scanning the concourse for my mystery woman. The chances of seeing her again must have been infinitesimal, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking. Needless to say, there was no sign of her.

  A small group of us were picked up from the station at Rugby and whisked over to the sortation centre in a hired minibus, then given a guided tour of the sparkling new facility.

  A sortation hub was a central location where parcels were sent from depots all over the country for sorting and onward despatch. At the hub they were offloaded from large trunk vehicles, sorted according to destination, then put on other vehicles and despatched to the appropriate delivery depot.

  Recent sortation hubs like this one were highly automated. At their heart was a vast conveyor or “carousel”, from which parcels were nudged down chutes to the relevant loading bay. It was a big investment, involving a lot of advanced engineering and clever computer management.

  I marvelled at the vast assemblage of chutes and conveyors, unerringly directing packages along the correct route to dozens of waiting trucks. It was a cross between a giant toy train set and a Meccano construction project run riot. We were shown the control room, the computer room, the operations room, the loading bays. Even a cynic could hardly fail to be impressed.

  During a short address in the adjoining offices afterwards, Rick Ashton was forced to explain to journalists how his company could afford this kind of expenditure when they were in the midst of a cash flow crisis. He acquitted himself well, explaining that the funding for this project had already been allocated before the market dipped; but I still felt he left some questions unanswered.