Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  “See what I can do, boss.”

  Half an hour later, after a summons from Ryan, Dylan, armed with a high-powered rifle and a radio comms unit, left the car to join him. It didn’t take long for Dylan to announce that the rooftop site offered a three-sixty view of the area and a perfect observation point for the eastern side of the former grammar school.

  “Excellent,” Jones responded, “Ryan’s your spotter, you’re in command. Keep your heads down and your eyes open. Jones out.”

  Jones and Giles stayed by the car.

  Giles spent most of the time trying to convince Jones to call off the meet and drag in more backup. He counselled Jones to let the deadline pass, saying that Hollie Jardine was, in all probability, already dead, but Jones dug in his heels.

  After a dozen, “I don’t like this one little bit, you’ll be too exposed,” and similar statements of gloom, Giles gave Jones a refresher course in hostage negotiations and urban military field-craft. Jones listened, humouring his friend.

  “Never disagree with the hostage-taker … always say yes, and try to make him agree with you … make sure you keep your exit routes clear and scout for alternative routes in and out. Keep to one side of a room. Try to keep him between you and a window, I’ll do the rest,” and finally, “If he lets Hollie go, don’t make your move until she’s out of danger. I’ll use the comms unit to let you know when she’s safe.”

  They studied the architect’s blueprints. A former boarding school, the place was a maze of corridors, small classrooms, and dormitories. The most obvious venue for an open meeting, the Assembly Hall, occupied the centre of the ground floor. Accessible via a door in each wall and visible from the east side and front of the building, the hall became the focus of Giles’ hasty plan. He used an American sporting term, ‘Hail Mary’, to describe the operation and Jones understood why.

  The plan was pitiful in its simplicity.

  Jones would head straight for the hall and try to make Jenkins bring Hollie to him. The logic being that Jenkins wanted Jones more than he wanted Hollie. If Jones dug his heels in, maybe Jenkins would agree to his request. As soon as Hollie came under Giles’ protection, things would be different. They could act, if Jenkins didn’t act first.

  Giles walked to the back of the Rover and beckoned Jones to follow him. A large green medical kit took pride of place in the centre of the storage space. Giles grunted as he hefted the box to one side. “Hope we don’t need it, but in case …”

  Moving the med kit exposed a metal weapons locker bolted to the floor pan. Giles dialled a number into the digital lock and snapped open a pair of clasps. He pulled out a small, silver automatic handgun and offered it to Jones who backed away and raised his hands.

  “No chance. Jenkins said no weapons.”

  “Are you sure? He isn’t likely to get close enough to frisk you, and I doubt he’d have had the time to set up a metal detector or an x-ray machine.”

  “I’m certain.” Jones dug his hands into his pockets. “Wouldn’t be able to fire it anyway.”

  “Even if Hollie’s life depended on it?”

  Jones shook his head. “Never could pull the trigger. It’s why I had to leave the army and join the police.” He gave Giles a half-hearted smile. “Not much use for a soldier who can’t shoot, eh?”

  “Gun-shy? You?”

  He shrugged. “It’s the way I am.”

  The stink of gun smoke and the gunpowder residue all over my hands didn’t help.

  After a final, “You sure you want to do this?” from Giles, and a, “Not one little bit,” from Jones, Giles completed the final comms checks.

  “Fifteen minutes to deadline.”

  Giles dropped a hand on Jones’ shoulder. It felt like a lead weight.

  “Dylan and Ryan are in a good position,” Giles said. “They can cover most of the ground floor, east side. I’ll be in front with you. There are a couple of blind spots, but we can’t do anything about that. I’ll be listening”—he tapped the earpiece—“but once you’re inside we’ll go to radio silence. Jenkins has shown he knows his way around electronics so he’ll probably be scanning you for a signal.” He raised the tiny electronic device in his hand. “This is the absolutely latest bit of kit from the US army. Uses narrow-band microwave technology. They claim it can’t be hacked or traced, but Jenkins will probably have ears on you, so don’t speak to us unless you absolutely have to, right?”

  Jones nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “Okay David, eleven-forty-eight. Off you go.”

  Jones closed his eyes and stood still for a moment. Birds chirruped, bees droned, and a sudden gust of wind drove the branches of the nearby conifer hedge into a gyrating frenzy. He wiped sweaty hands with a paper towel taken from a roll in the boot of the car and strode along the pavement towards Park Drive.

  “Good luck, mate, see you soon.”

  I hope so, Giles, but don’t hold your breath.

  Apart from Giles Danforth’s, two other sets of eyes, one pair grey, the other blue, and each in a different location, studied Jones’ approach. The owner of the grey eyes smiled; things were moving forward exactly as planned.

  30

  Saturday midday - Detention Centre

  Time since Flynn’s death: twenty-two hours

  Hammer lay under a grey tarpaulin matching the colour and texture of the third storey flat roof. He stared through the 30x50, high-magnification telescopic sight. At this range, less than four hundred yards, he’d make a kill shot ninety-nine times out of a hundred. The sound suppressor screwed into the end of the muzzle would reduce the accuracy by a couple of points, but it wouldn’t affect the result.

  The pane of glass between him and the girl caused him some initial concern. When leaving her in the room he considered opening the window to remove the obstruction, but that presented a whole mess of potential trouble. If she woke from the second sedative, she might take it in her head to scream, and the sound would travel further with the window open. He didn’t gag her because Jenkins didn’t want to risk her suffocating before Jones’ arrival.

  The real problem was visual. An open window in a building supposedly locked and abandoned might arouse interest.

  Decision made.

  He opted for fine crosshair reticles on the scope for accuracy.

  Although more difficult, he chose a head shot for an instant, painless kill. He didn’t want the kid to suffer any more than she already had. After all, Hammer was a professional, not a fucking sadist like Jenkins.

  He didn’t like making war on children, but the money was good and that was all that mattered in the end.

  Hammer adjusted the parallax compensation nut and brought Hollie Jardine’s forehead into sharper focus. He’d bound the girl to a radiator and gaffer-taped her head into position. A fixed target. He really couldn’t miss.

  As for Jones, Hammer had offered a package deal for both hits, but Jenkins declined. He wanted to do the old cop personally, but that was okay by Hammer. He’d made sure the payment arrangements were in place in case the cripple fucked up. Everything was cool. His job ended the moment he killed the girl, and that was fine by him. Plenty more contracts to keep him occupied.

  He inched the rifle five degrees north to check the wind strength. The strip of light plastic tape he’d tied to the guttering four storeys above the girl didn’t as much as flicker. The big mother of a building acted as a great windbreak and took one important variable out of the equation.

  Two hours earlier, Hammer managed to suppress a chuckle when an unmarked police Range Rover arrived and parked on the street fifty metres below his vantage point. The wily old bugger, Jones, had welched on the deal and arrived mob-handed. No matter, Jenkins had predicted as much.

  Everybody knew the deal was bogus. The girl’s death had been preordained the moment they took her from the hospital bed.

  In the end, the Range Rover’s proximity turned into a real advantage and allowed him to hear every word the cops said
once outside the vehicle.

  The big one, Giles Somebody, wasn’t happy and tried his best, but Jones was going to risk his life for the girl and Giles couldn’t persuade him otherwise.

  Hammer smiled. The old guy earned top marks for bravery, but none for street smarts.

  What about the other two?

  The scrawny-looking one with the sloped shoulders, Ryan, and the squat one, Dylan, were five hundred yards away on top of a factory roof looking in the wrong direction. Neither would cause a problem. No, he was sitting, or rather, lying pretty.

  The situation became even better when Giles followed Jones towards the former school, leaving Hammer’s rear exit unguarded. Excellent.

  Not long now.

  Lungs full, he held his breath for the count of five, and exhaled slowly. He repeated the mantra his instructor drummed into him week after week at sniper school.

  “Relax. Slow your heart rate. Fire at the bottom of the exhale. Squeeze, don’t pull the trigger.”

  He rolled his shoulders to ease a stiffening neck, and rested his index finger on the trigger guard. The scope’s cross hairs lined up with the centre of Hollie Jardine’s forehead.

  This would be the easiest seventy-five grand he’d ever earned.

  The hot sun beat down hard on the top of Jones’ head. The clean, fresh feel the airport shower had given him disappeared as sweat bled through every pore on his body. He thought about removing the light summer jacket, but if he was about to die, he’d go as he lived—neat, tidy, professional.

  His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and he found it difficult to swallow. Dark thoughts raced through his mind, tumbling over themselves in a jumble of broken images and half-finished questions. Foremost amongst them were of Hollie.

  Had he worked out the clues correctly and guessed the right location? Was she here and alive?

  Nothing in the training manual or regulations allowed him to risk his life like this, to take this ridiculous gamble, but he had no choice. It was his life for Hollie’s.

  Is it worth it?

  As he headed towards his fate, Jones ran through a scant checklist. He’d reached the ripe old age of fifty-seven. What did he have to show for his life?

  No family left alive, few friends outside work, and a dilapidated ruin in the country he would never finish, not now.

  That was it. “Lived alone, died alone.” Not much of an epitaph for a life spent trying to make a difference.

  What about professionally? What did he leave as a legacy? A desk piled high, although neatly, with unclosed case files. A half-decent career as a thief-taker. The SCU wouldn’t continue without him, not with Phil out of commission. Neither Ryan nor Alex would stay in a unit led by a promoted Charlie Pelham, or by someone else drafted in from outside.

  He had three years until retirement and then what? A couple of decades spent trying to eke out a living on a Civil Servant’s pension? The occasional reunion bash where he and a cabal of other has-beens would get together to remember the good old days, the days when they were still valued? In three years, he’d have nothing to look forward to but a long slow decline into a lonely oblivion.

  Oh, Jesus. Remember you’re doing this for a young girl who said, ‘Thank you, David’. And for the memory of a girl you loved and the boy who never had a chance to grow up.

  Jones gritted his teeth and paced on, resigned to the fact that this was likely to be his last hoorah. He had one slim chance.

  Giles Danforth.

  Jones had every faith in Giles, but he’d given his friend a near-impossible task. Protect Hollie first, and if possible, Jones second. Protect them from an unknown threat, in an unknown environment, and without the necessary resources.

  He chewed his lower lip and bunched his hands into fists. He’d done it again, hadn’t he? Called in old favours and endangered the lives and careers of his few remaining friends. Julie Harris’ face popped into his head. Poor Alex. She’d jumped to help and look what happened to her life partner, her wife.

  Jones wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sharp whiskers scraped the sun-tender skin of his wrist. He’d have awful sunburn in the morning, but that wasn’t likely to be an issue.

  C’mon, Jones. Concentrate. Check your surroundings. At least pretend to go through the routine.

  A prickling in the middle of his back told him someone other than Giles watched him.

  He made the right turn onto Park Lane and strode out, his footsteps muffled by the accumulated dust and dirt on the pavement.

  Jones tried to take a deep breath, but it caught in his throat.

  The time on his Seiko read: 11:54.

  Get a move on, man.

  He marched on.

  Three hundred metres.

  Two hundred metres.

  Close up, the conifer hedge was more ragged than he’d imagined. Three of the trees, brown and dead, teetered dangerously close to falling. It didn’t take long for places to corrupt and die. Jones’ cottage would do the same thing after his death.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to … Stop it man!

  Two hundred ….

  There it was. The entrance.

  31

  Saturday midday - Meeting

  Time since Flynn’s death: twenty-two hours, forty minutes

  Jones stopped. Two large brick columns, three-metres tall, supported a huge pair of wrought iron gates. He stared up at the overarching sign, The Derbishire Detention Centre for Juvenile Offenders.

  What?

  He re-read the words and frowned.

  Derbishire?

  The spelling was wrong. He filed the information away for later—if he had a later, and peered through the gate’s vertical bars.

  Although the entrance gates were closed, the padlock holding the rusted chains together was unclasped. He freed the chain and pushed at one of the gates. It opened with a rusty screech.

  His shoes crunched on a sparsely gravelled drive that wound uphill to the former school. He had to tread with care to avoid the dips and potholes. It wouldn’t do to twist an ankle at this late stage. Former lawns, now weed-covered pastures, spread out on either side. The run-down appearance reminded Jones of his approach to Ellis Flynn’s cottage.

  As he drew closer, Jones studied the crumbling edifice.

  Built in the latter stages of Queen Victoria’s reign, the building with its age-dirtied orange bricks and grey stone window surrounds could have made the main set in any Dickensian novel. A pair of doors—black paint peeling to reveal bare oak panels—stood closed, forbidding. Two dozen small windows dotted the facade, some boarded, some broken, others intact but filthy. He wondered what sort of a hellish life the inmates of this establishment had endured, back in the day.

  This was the place of Ellis Flynn’s rebirth. The place he had changed from nascent child molester into serial-killing monster.

  How many more inmates had turned into an Ellis Flynn?

  The Seiko showed: 11:58

  Atop the three steps to the grand porch and the imposing doors, Jones hesitated. A single static click in his earpiece told him Giles still had line-of-sight. As planned, he’d scaled the wall using the cover of the hedge.

  Jones took another breath and approached the stepped-back doors. A sheet of paper pinned to the one of the panels held a computer printed note:

  “Hello, Jonesie-boy.

  Bang on time, as I knew you would be.

  First door on the left.

  JJ.”

  Relief and fury flooded through Jones. Relief that he’d guessed the correct location, and fury at Jenkins’ taunting welcome.

  Jones ripped the note from the door, slid it into an evidence bag, and placed it in the breast pocket of his jacket. He couldn’t overcome a lifetime spent gathering evidence.

  He twisted the tarnished brass handle. The lock drew back with a loud metallic clunk. He pushed and the hinges creaked in protest.

  Water dripped onto a floor with a splash somewhere off to his right. A cobweb brushed a
gainst his face. The smell of decay attacked his nostrils. The authorities had boarded up the old school and left it to rot.

  Jones left the door wide open to help Giles and crossed the threshold.

  The earpiece clicked twice.

  Giles was blind.

  He took a pace to the left, to keep clear of the open doorway.

  Single click.

  Better.

  The entrance hall must have been twenty degrees colder than the outside. The floor, black and white tiles in a chessboard pattern, many cracked, threw up waves of frigid air. Thick, plastered walls, damp with disuse, hosted spores of black mildew and showed the faded marks where oak half panels had once been. Fancy cornices broken and yellowed with age gave evidence of a once-magnificent building now corrupted and decayed. The walls opened into corridors and dark wooden doors were dotted everywhere. Was Hollie behind one of them?

  “Well done, Jones!”

  Jones jumped. His heart skipped into a double beat.

  Jenkins’ disembodied, electronic voice boomed and echoed through the deserted building. An old-fashioned grey funnel speaker above one of the doors, hastily erected with cables trailing, magnified the sound and made it difficult to understand. A feedback squeal stabbed Jones’ ears. He clamped both hands to the side of his head.

  “I knew you wouldn’t let the bitch down. You understood my message then?” The volume diminished and with it, the screech.

  “Where’s Hollie?” Jones shouted.

  “Turn right. Come into my parlour said the spider …”

  “Where is she?” Jones yelled again, but Jenkins continued uninterrupted.

  “…to the fly. Come on. Hurry up.”