The Maggie Bainbridge Box Set

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The Maggie Bainbridge Box Set Page 38

by Rob Wyllie


  'Yes Frank, we're not normally great fans of Germans here in Holland but it is my opinion that Herr Klopp is a genius.'

  'Yes, I think the fans would agree with you there Marco. Not the Manchester United ones though.'

  A loud cackle blasted down the line. 'Ha ha, that's true. Anyway, I have an update for you on our van Duren investigation. It is a very big deal over here as you can imagine because the professor is quite famous here in the Netherlands.'

  'Aye, so I've heard.'

  'Yes, but now it is his wife who is the subject of all the attention. I think it is true to say that she is now the most famous woman in Holland. And not in a good way also.'

  Frank knew someone else who had suffered that fate and he didn't envy Mrs van Duren one bit.

  'So Marco, I guess you're expecting the ransom demand any time soon, am I right?'

  'We have it already. That is just one reason why I'm calling you. And not only because the demand is in English. Because you see, we think the kidnappers might be from the United Kingdom also.'

  'Why do you think that Marco?'

  'There was CCTV footage from outside the convenience store. And we saw the driver at first went to the wrong side of the car.'

  'Ah,' Frank nodded knowingly, 'we Brits do that automatically. But I guess you will have found the car by now?'

  'Yes and as you would expect it has been burnt out to destroy any evidence. About twenty kilometres from where the boy was taken.'

  Frank let out an audible sigh of disappointment. 'That's a shame Marco but I can't say I'm surprised. We didn't find anything in our Jamie Grant case either. The hoods running this thing are obviously very careful. But you say you've had a ransom demand?'

  'Yes that's right Frank. It was sent to the family by post and arrived this morning. We have checked the note of course for DNA and fingerprints but we have nothing. They received also a text and of course we have been unable to trace the owner of that number.'

  'And the note. Where was it posted?'

  'Here in Holland, in Leiden.'

  That wasn't a surprise to Frank. The kidnappers would have been holed up in the city for quite a few days, allowing them to observe Mrs van Duren's routine. A routine that include leaving her son in an unlocked car with the engine running.

  'And how much are they looking for?'

  'A million Euros Frank. A lot of money.'

  Frank gave a sharp intake of breath. 'Aye, that is a lot. You know there were ransom demands in the Jamie Grant and the Kitty Lawrence cases?'

  'Yes, I know that Frank. And I know the kidnappers did not return the children. It is a very worrying situation. Here the van Duren family is very anxious for the ransom to be paid but we are advising them that they must not.'

  Worrying situation? Marco was right, although Frank wasn't sure if his choice of words spoke for the difficulty the police faced. An impossible situation might describe it better, because no matter how you looked at it, there was no win-win scenario. If you didn't pay the ransom, you'd never see the kid again. If you did pay the ransom, you'd never see the kid again. Same difference. They only way there was going to be a happy outcome was if they caught the bastards who were doing this. And that wasn't going to be easy.

  'Marco mate,' Frank said, more in hope than expectation, 'have you got anything? Anything at all?'

  'Almost nothing Frank.'

  Almost. So perhaps there was a sliver of hope after all.

  'It is a very long shot I'm afraid, but we have a detective sergeant on our team who was born in the UK. And she said that the wording of the ransom note was slightly unusual. Of course we Dutch would not have noticed this because we are not native speakers of the language.'

  Which made Frank laugh to himself because he'd yet to meet a Dutch person who didn't speak perfect English. Apart of course from that random also thing they peppered throughout their sentences. He'd need to watch he didn't start doing it himself. Also.

  'What does it say?'

  'I have it here Frank. It says "Make no mistake about it, I'm not joking you when I says it. A million Euros or the kid dies". Our sergeant says that is quite an unusual construction.'

  'Is that all?' Frank said, failing to hide his disappointment. 'I assume you're talking about I'm not joking you when I says it? It is a bit unusual but I have heard it before. Plenty of times.'

  Boegenkamp seemed unfazed. 'Well perhaps Frank, but you see here in the University of Leiden we have some of the greatest cyber-crime experts in Europe, maybe even the world. That's what they tell me and I have no reason to doubt them.'

  'That sounds great mate. But how does that help us?' He didn't mean it to sound as churlish as it came out, but if Boegenkamp was offended, he didn't reveal it. The more he got to know this guy, the more he was getting to like him.

  'One of our team has worked in the past with a very clever young lady called Hanneke Jansen. I am told that Doctor Jansen has developed a web-crawler technology that can search the entire world-wide-web with next-generation phrase matching algorithmic processing.'

  Frank could hear him convulse into laughter at the other end of the phone.

  'I'm sorry Frank but I'm sure you can tell that I don't really know what I'm talking about.'

  Frank didn't understand much of it either but he did catch on to one phrase. A phrase that he remembered from his chat with Eleanor Campbell just a few days earlier.

  'Web-crawler did you say?

  'Yes. You know of this technology?'

  'Not got the faintest clue mate. But I know a woman who does.'

  'Ah that is interesting,' Boegenkamp said. 'So maybe you have an expert in this technology also?'

  'Aye we do.' He didn't like to mention that Eleanor and her pal Zak-with-no-surname had been working on their wee da Vinci problem for nearly a fortnight, apparently without success.

  'So perhaps we could get our two experts together to work on this case. I'm certain she would get on really well with our Doctor Jansen and we have a saying which I think you have also that two heads are better than one.'

  There was no chance that Eleanor would get on with any woman she perceived as a rival, and in Eleanor's eyes, all women were rivals. Frank was not to know it, but Inspector Marco Boegenkamp was thinking exactly the same thing. But for both of them, the needs of the investigation trumped the fragile egos of any geeky forensic officer.

  Frank tried not to sound too doubting. 'Well the thing is, our Eleanor isn't exactly a team player.'

  Boegenkamp laughed. 'Well maybe Frank we will get some big fireworks when we put these two together, but I think it will be worth a try. When do you think your colleague can be here in Leiden?'

  That left a slight problem to overcome. True, he had failed with DCI Smart the last time he'd tried for the case number, but surely now with this new development, she couldn't refuse. A couple of hundred quid on a cheap flight and two or three nights in a budget hotel, that wasn't going to break the bank. Hell, if it came to it, he would pay for it himself.

  'Marco, I think we can get her out to you in the next couple of days, depending on what she's working on at the moment.' Fingers crossed.

  'Tomorrow would be better Frank. You know we do not have much time. I will of course arrange for one of my team to pick her up at Schipol and take her to her accommodation. Let's hope these two clever women can work their magic, eh?'

  Frank grinned. 'Aye, if they don't kill each other first. I'll get it arranged as fast as I can and let you know. Anyway, it was nice to make your acquaintance Marco and maybe we can meet up in person sometime.'

  'You too Frank. And now I have to go and see the parents, to tell them that they should not pay the ransom.'

  Not that it would make any difference to the outcome.

  ◆◆◆

  As Frank had predicted, this time he had little trouble convincing Jill Smart to release a case number into his care. Although to be fair, she had raised an eyebrow when he told her the first task would involve the exp
ense of sending Eleanor Campbell to the Netherlands for a few days and that he himself would need to fly over, with only one overnight stay involved, for a review with Inspector Boegenkamp. Sensibly, he had waited until the case number was in his possession before revealing this latter information.

  Speaking of Miss Campbell, he had been unsure of the reaction he would get when he told her of her urgent overseas mission, but in the event, he needn't have worried. By good fortune she was in the midst of one of her semi-permanent relationship dramas with her sort-of boyfriend Lloyd, and so jumped at the chance of an enforced separation.

  'It'll like show the pig what he would be missing if we ever broke up,' she had said, with, in Frank's opinion, greatly misplaced optimism. He liked Eleanor but he was under no illusions that she would be anything other than a nightmare to live with. There was every chance that Lloyd would indeed see what he was missing and, concluding that it wasn't very much at all, resolve to make the separation permanent. Nonetheless, he knew that blind encouragement was the way to secure the result he was looking for.

  'That'll show him all right,' he had said, with fake but convincing sincerity. 'He'll be grovelling at your feet when you get back, mark my words.'

  'Yes, I like that,' she had said. 'Pig.'

  Having secured her assent to the mission, the problem still remained as to how to ensure the visit was productive. There was a lot in Eleanor that Frank recognised in himself, both of them sharing a preference to work alone, and both having a barely-suppressed inability to suffer fools gladly. The last thing he needed was for her to have a punch-up with the Hanneke woman over at Leiden Uni. So there would need to be a briefing. A brief one.

  'I've heard that this Dr Jansen is pretty good,' he started. 'She's a cyber-crime specialist at the university so she should know her onions. Maybe not with your depth of hands-on experience of course, but she should be able to help you with some of the easier stuff.' He was pleased with how that sounded overall. Except for his stupid schoolboy error, which Eleanor immediately picked up on.

  'Dr Jansen? So she's like a PhD or something?'

  Frank shrugged. 'I think they dish them out like Smarties over there. Honestly, it's nothing to worry about, you'll get on great I'm sure. Anyway, are you clear on what we are trying to do out there?'

  'Yeah, like it's a no-brainer. We're to phrase-match across cyberspace for that weird joking you phrase.'

  'And does that involve web-crawlers?'

  She gave him an amused look. 'Is that your new word of the day?'

  'Two words actually. But I don't know what it means. Can you tell me?' And then wished he hadn't bothered.

  'Like sure. So the tech giants have like catalogued the web into a giant cross-referenced multi-zillion terabyte database to support their search technologies but because of privacy they say, but really to protect their commercial interests, they won't share it with law-enforcement agencies. So governments have built this huge capability to roam all over the net and build their own ad-hoc search indexes using mega supercomputers that run at like mental speed.'

  'Good to know,' Frank said. Normally he would have added a sarcastic quip, but he was painfully aware of the need to tread carefully given that she had already spent a frustrating fortnight trying to crack Charles Grant's da Vinci thing, without success.

  'Aye, and it sounds as if they have some fancy tools over in Leiden that even your mate Zak hasn't got.'

  Her eyes lit up with anticipation. 'Yeah, I've been on their website and they've got like two mega supercomputers. It's two Cray XC40s working in a cluster and they're like the size of a tennis court. And the cluster can generate twenty million database hits a second, which is beyond awesome.'

  Beyond awesome? At last, Frank could relax, because if there was one thing he knew about Eleanor Campbell, it was that she was a sucker for big expensive kit and these Cray thingies sounded as if they were both big and expensive. Brilliant, the trip was going to be a success.

  Then not more than five minutes after he had got back to his desk, Marco rang him again. And before they reached the end of their short conversation, it was arranged. Frank was going to be out there himself, sooner that he expected. Because the van Durens could not be persuaded that the ransom should not be paid, and now Boegenkamp wanted him in Leiden to see if he could do any better.

  All things considered, that had every prospect of being a red-letter day. Or een bijzondere dag, as his new best pal Marco would say.

  Chapter 19

  At about the same time as Eleanor Campbell was meant to be flying out to Schipol, the highly-paid lawyers of the Crown Prosecution Service were filing the paperwork that would charge Darren Venables with the murders of Allegra Ross and Benjamin Fox, the task already having consumed an estimated thirteen hundred and thirty man hours at a cost to the public purse of three hundred and ninety thousand pounds. It was therefore inconvenient to say the least when on that very day another body turned up with the identical MO as the earlier victims.

  It was an early-morning jogger who found it, slumped against the wall of a dark tunnel at the point where the north-bound lines out of St Pancras Station crossed the Regents Canal. At first she thought someone must have dropped a glove, pausing to pick it up with the intention of placing it for safe-keeping on the thin ledge that ran along the brick-lined wall of the tunnel. A second later, she was screaming uncontrollably as she realised with horror what she held. In her panic and shock, and quite understandably, she tossed the severed hand into the middle of the dirty canal, which was to cause the police diving team no little difficulty in the hours following the discovery of the dead man. But eventually it was recovered, and despite it having been submerged for some time, it was still just about possible to make out the message scrawled on the back. Leonardo.

  Two hours later, in a darkened room somewhere on the top floor of Paddington Green police station, DCI Colin Barker was fighting a desperate rearguard action, pleading with anyone who would listen that nothing had changed, that Darren Venables was clearly responsible for the first two murders and so this one must have been the work of a copy-cat killer. The brass were in full damage-limitation mode, and had issued strict orders that under no circumstances should the MO of this new killing be released to the media, which resulted of course in it being leaked little more than five minutes later. Over at the Chronicle, the young award-winner Yash Patel was already salivating over the award-winning possibilities of a juicy miscarriage of justice story. One that would keep him on the front page for a week at least, with another month's worth of human-interest spin-offs. And that jogger who had found the severed hand, she looked so hot in her little running shorts and tight vest. Her picture alone was guaranteed box-office.

  And for the second time in two years, DCI Jill Smart was being called in to clear up an almighty Barker-generated mess, and where Jill went, DI Frank Stewart went too. In charge of proceedings that morning once again was Chief Superintendent Brian Wilkes, a competent detective of the old school just weeks from retirement. You could tell he was old-school among other things by the way he addressed his charges as ladies and gentlemen and not guys.

  'So ladies and gentlemen,' he began, 'who's going to give me the whole gory details of this monumental screw-up?'

  No-one seemed keen to take the stage except Frank Stewart.

  'Sir, I will do my best, although we're new to this case of course.' By we, he meant Department 12B, the rag-tag bunch of misfits headed up by Jill Smart of which he was part.

  Wilkes smiled. He liked Frank, recognising solid competence when he saw it. 'Getting your excuses in early are you Stewart? Proceed, if you please.'

  'The victim is one Daniel George Black. Forty-seven-year-old male of mixed race and an actor in that soap Bow Road. Don't know if you watch it at all sir?'

  'I am aware of its existence Stewart. Carry on.'

  'Very good sir. Well Mr Black was seemingly on his normal jogging route, which according to a neighbour we spoke to, he does
pretty much every day, leaving around seven-thirty in the morning and returning around one hour later. We can only speculate at this stage, but it appears that his assailant was waiting for him under the railway bridge. He was killed by two severe blows to the back of the head, we assume on the towpath, and then the body was dragged to the piece of waste ground where it was found. Probably that's where the hand was severed and the message written on the back. Leonardo.'

  Wilkes nodded. 'So exactly the same MO as the Ross and Fox killings?'

  Frank shot a cruel smile in the direction of DCI Barker.

  'Exactly sir. The same MO. No difference.'

  The DSI shook his head in disgust. 'This is going to be totally embarrassing if it gets out. Just to reiterate, let's make sure we keep schtum on this, understood?'

  Everybody nodded, although everyone knew it was already too late for that.

  Wilkes sighed in exasperation. 'What a bloody foul-up. So where are we with this now? Any leads, suspects, witnesses?'

  'Aye, sir, well we can assume it wasn't Darren Venables, unless DCI Barker let him out on compassionate leave.'

  Jill Smart shot him an admonishing look.

  'My little joke sir, sorry. No, we don't have any serious leads or suspects at the moment, and as far as we can see there's only one obvious connection.'

  'Ok, so spit it out then.'

  Frank smiled. 'It's that actress Melody Montague, she's also from Bow Road as you probably know. You see, our victim is her present fiancé, and she was also previously married to Benjamin Fox, victim number one.'

  Wilkes was now pacing the room in an effort to focus his thoughts. 'So this Montague woman, did her name come up in the earlier enquiry? It must have, I assume. We always suspect partners and former partners. Ninety percent of the time it's one of them who has done it, isn't that the case?'

  Jill Smart intervened. 'We weren't involved at that stage sir, but I'm sure Colin will be able to help you with that question.'

 

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