by Ed James
‘Don’t you?’
He didn’t have anything for that.
‘You heard what David Crossley said. The cages in that bunker. Assuming it’s still there, assuming they’re still there, that sounds exactly like where he’s been keeping them. And if Terry Beane isn’t there, then investigating the scene of his isolation will help me with the profile.’
‘Is there anything else we can do?’
‘We could get them all together. Nathan, Sally, Melissa, David. One of them might know something about Terry, some additional information that four old friends talking can bring out into the open.’
Corcoran swung out to overtake a parked bus swallowing up a queue of passengers. ‘They’ve got, what, thirty-three, thirty-four years of history built up around them. We need to break that down.’ He glanced at her. ‘Sounds a lot like a job for you.’
‘It’ll take time to get them together. I don’t think there’s much more I can get out of David just now. You saw the state of him.’
‘But I also saw how well you worked him.’
‘I want to wait until DI Thompson has brought Sally Norton over.’
‘Fine.’
‘What do you expect us to find there?’
In truth, he didn’t know. He hoped they could descend into the villain’s lair and save Dawn.
Forty-three
[Palmer, 19:31]
Corcoran’s police radio buzzed on the dashboard. ‘Sergeant Broadribb to DS Corcoran, over.’
Palmer answered it for him, holding it up to his lips as he drove.
‘Receiving.’ He glanced over at Palmer with a smile and a wink. ‘Safe to talk.’
‘Aidan, we’re en route to this scrapyard. Two minutes away.’
‘Okay. Did you seriously track down the owner?’
But she was gone.
Corcoran parked a few hundred metres away, hugging the shadows. ‘We’ll wait for backup, okay?’
‘Fine by me.’ Palmer took in the site.
The dark scrapyard was surrounded by a chainlink fence, three or four metres high, with nasty-looking wire spiralling at the top. Next to impossible to climb. Probably easier to snip away a section. The huge wrought-iron gates were maybe a better bet, assuming you could get them open. All she could make out from the road was piles of rusting cars, stacked five or six high. A crane caught the light further in, but there was no sign of any building work taking place.
A car swooshed past in the rain and lit up the billboards advertising a forthcoming property development. Artist’s impressions of happy families enjoying their fictional life in beige boxes yet to be built. In stark contrast to the torment Terry Beane suffered in there, trapped underground as he faced his greatest fear.
What doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger.
Or it can break you, smash your brittle psyche into a million pieces.
Palmer let out a slow breath. ‘An episode like that is exactly the kind of thing that could motivate someone to . . . to do this.’
‘But?’
She looked round at him, frowning, doubt itching her scalp like an ant crawling over her skin. ‘But the problem is, what little we know of Terry, he doesn’t fit my profile. It’s . . .’ She tried to get her thoughts in a row. Felt next to impossible without the crutch of a spread-out notebook, two virgin pages to scrawl over, all the items joined with cold, hard logic. ‘All the evidence suggests we’re dealing with a supremely organised individual, someone who has meticulously planned this entire operation. He’s tortured three people and is doing God knows what to Dawn now.’
‘But?’
‘Well. You heard the state Terry was in when David and Nathan rescued him. Dehydrated, starved, exhausted, freezing cold from lying in the wet. Those matched with what he’s done to their children.’ She tried to swallow her doubts, but they caught in her throat. ‘The trauma seemed to drive him to alcoholism. Drinking with Hell’s Angels, lugging bottles of super-strength cider around. Does our profile sound like a middle-aged alcoholic?’
Corcoran looked away. ‘People change.’
‘They tend to get worse over time, less organised.’
‘Second law of thermodynamics, yeah?’ He looked back at her, eyebrows raised. ‘The total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. Meaning everything slides into chaos.’
‘Is mansplaining another of your hidden shallows?’
A shrug, but hiding a grin. ‘I dropped out of a physics degree. That’s pretty much all I remember except how much I hated it.’ His nostrils flared, another hidden torment revealing itself.
‘But you see my point, Aidan. People get more chaotic as they get older. Everything slides into abject chaos, leaving a mess for their kids to stuff into bin bags when they go.’
‘Sounds like something you need to talk about.’
‘It just rankles with me, that’s all.’
‘You heard David’s story. He was the ringleader, the one who locked the door on Terry. The others could’ve been trials leading up to this final act.’
Before she could dive into a response, a police car pulled up outside the heavy gates with a flash of headlights.
‘Stay here.’ Corcoran got out first, pounding along the road as fast as his hip would allow.
Palmer ignored his advice and got out, and followed him at a distance.
Up ahead, Steph went round the car to open the passenger-side back door and helped an old man out.
A saggy mess in a red-and-blue tracksuit, long greasy hair and a nicotine-stained beard almost down to his sagging belly. He wore a patch over his left eye. David Crossley’s yokel, reduced to this state in his old age.
Broadribb helped him stay standing and nodded at them. ‘This is Carl Taylor, the owner.’
‘Thanks for tracking him down, Sergeant.’ Corcoran gave a smile to the old man. ‘Some place you’ve got here.’
Taylor snorted at him. ‘She’s saying some bastard’s been using my land?’
‘That’s possible, sir. How long have you owned the place?’
‘Since the sixties, son. My father, God rest his soul, passed away in his sleep. I were but a lad. He showed me the ropes, still, showed me how to work the crusher when I was knee-high to a bastard. All my life’s gone into turning other people’s cars into lumps of metal that I can get a pitiful income from.’ Taylor snarled, like he didn’t square his life with success. ‘Sold up, not that my bastard kids will appreciate the money. Just more for them to squander on bastard iPads and those fancy bastard headphones.’ He shuffled to the gate. The keys jangled as he stuck the first one in the lock. ‘Lucky first time. Not lost my mojo, I tell you.’
Corcoran helped Steph open the right-side gate, making it squeal like a banshee.
Palmer caught up with them and linked in with Taylor’s right arm, feeling his weight press on her as he limped through the scrapyard. Every ten metres, another security light flicked on. Either they were alone in there, or someone else hadn’t moved for a while.
Taylor looked round, spitting whisky breath over Palmer’s face. ‘Why are you so interested in this old building, my sweet?’
‘It’s a scene of interest in a case. That’s all.’
‘Had some archaeologists come out a few years back to look over it, from that TV show with that bloke. You know the one?’
She nodded like she had the foggiest idea what he was on about.
‘They was interested in the war stuff. Used to house Germans here. Prisoners of war. Bastards. Not many of them at a time, either.’ Taylor chuckled. ‘The bastards got what was coming to them.’ He pulled up short, sucking in deep breaths, then set off again. ‘When I sold it to the developers, those bastards in the local trust made them preserve it as a museum. Why anyone would want to visit a place where some bastard Germans had electrodes shoved up their—’ His eyes bulged as Steph tripped the next set of lights. ‘What the hell is that?’
A van sat outside a brick building. Exactly the same mod
el and colour as the CCTV feed. Stolen from Buckingham, used to abduct Dawn, and left here.
Corcoran got in Taylor’s face. ‘Is that your van?’
‘Don’t recognise it, son.’ He shuffled towards the door.
Corcoran snatched the keys off him and nodded at Steph. ‘Keep him here.’ He stepped over to the door, his gaze darting around for threats, his free hand dampening the jangle of the keys. He stopped to listen.
‘What’s the bastard doing?’
Steph motioned for her constable. ‘Ed, can you take him?’
The constable took over babysitting Taylor, leading him back towards the car.
Corcoran gave Steph a nod as she snapped out her baton, then tried the other key in the padlock. ‘Bloody thing doesn’t even fit.’
‘The builder must’ve changed the locks.’ Steph looked round. ‘Back in a sec.’ She jogged back to her car and stomped back, lugging a pair of heavy-duty bolt-cutters. She eased past Corcoran and cut into the padlock, gritting her teeth and pushing and pushing. The metal landed on the ground, tinkling as it rolled away.
Corcoran snapped out his police baton and nodded for Steph to go first. She opened the door, took a look around, then stepped inside with her torch sweeping the interior.
Corcoran entered and a strip light flickered on inside, dull and faint, but getting brighter with each passing second.
‘Clear!’
Palmer swallowed hard and followed Corcoran in.
A bare room, the walls daubed with graffiti. Slogans and initials, mostly crude drawings. But there was power. A brand-new circuitboard hung on the wall just inside the door, humming away.
Steph opened a door, revealing a ramp leading down. Where the cells were.
Palmer followed Corcoran down into a low-ceilinged room. Three doors to jail cells in rusting metal. Two were open. The one on the right was mostly filled by a giant steel contraption.
The middle one was closed and marked ‘DAWN’.
Corcoran sucked in a deep breath and raised his baton, then opened it.
Forty-four
[Corcoran, 19:38]
Empty.
Empty?
‘He should be here.’ Corcoran collapsed back against the brick wall and let out a deep sigh. ‘She was here, wasn’t she?’
‘We’re too late, Aidan.’ Palmer was next to him, cradling her arms around herself. ‘He’s taken her elsewhere. We’re too late.’
He kicked the door, made it bounce off the wall and snap back shut.
‘DAWN’. Her label, etched into polished wood with a chisel. Some level of artistry to it. Care taken, even though it’s only for his use. Why the hell would he do that? To remind himself there was a human being in there? Or was she just a step on the path, another milestone on the journey?
‘What the hell was he doing to her down here?’ Palmer bit her bottom lip. ‘She’s going to die, isn’t she? A diabetic coma and she’ll . . .’ Her thoughts were running away. ‘With Sarah, he let her go before she died. What if he’s . . .’
‘Hey, hey.’ Corcoran grabbed her shoulders, held her steady and stared deep into her eyes. ‘We’re on to him, okay?’
‘You know the risks of diabetes, Aidan. And it’s bad enough what he did to the others when he had complete control, but he’s under pressure now.’
‘Marie, we’re chasing him. We know who he is. Sortwell has an APB out on him.’
Palmer looked around her surroundings and seemed to shiver. ‘But he’ll feel like a rat in a cage.’
Corcoran found Steph crouching in the left-hand cell. Speakers were mounted into the ceiling, explaining the cables running down in the main room. Where Howard was tortured. Thicker walls than the other two, to insulate the noise terror from the others. He cleared his throat, made her look up. ‘Can you get forensics in here? Comb the building and that van. If this Terry guy’s on the system, I want us to place him here.’
‘Will do.’ Steph got up and talked into her radio.
Corcoran walked back to Palmer, standing outside the other room. A hose hung from the ceiling, filling directly into the giant sensory deprivation tank where Matt’s sanity had been stolen away from him.
‘This is . . .’ Palmer exhaled slowly. ‘It’s barbaric. How can someone do this to people? No matter what their parents did to him, this is . . . How? How, Aidan?’
‘You’re the expert, Marie.’
‘Are you being facetious?’
‘Sorry to butt in.’ Steph ran her tongue over her teeth. ‘Just got word that the van upstairs matches the one on the CCTV of Dawn’s abduction. The stuff they’ve sprayed on the plates . . . Blocks the cameras from reading it. I know places in Germany where you can get it.’
‘Germany?’
‘It’s highly illegal, but round here we get boy racers treating the M40 as an autobahn and getting away with it because they’ve masked their plates. So we’re checking for it using speed cameras. Spot one and we despatch a pair of BMWs at full speed, catch them.’
Palmer frowned. ‘Meaning he’d get pulled over?’
‘He’d have to go past one of our stops, but yeah.’
Palmer looked at Corcoran. ‘That means he hasn’t driven the van very often.’
‘Right.’ Steph took one last look around the place. ‘This place gives me the creeps. I’ll see you upstairs.’
Corcoran knew the feeling. He put his hands in his pockets. ‘So he burnt the Tiguan, then stole that van and masked the plates to give a double bluff. That fit your profile?’
‘I can’t tell. I mean, this place has obvious significance for Terry Beane. He’s making their children suffer for what happened to him. I get why he’s done it, but why not pick on the parents? Or their spouses? Why choose their children?’
Corcoran shrugged. ‘Remember that we’re dealing with a complete nutter here.’
‘You shouldn’t trivialise him as a “nutter”, Aidan. He’s been subjected to a severely traumatic incident.’
He could only shrug. ‘It just has to be logical to him, is all I’m saying.’
She went back to her notebook, scribbling away and updating her theories and whatever else.
‘I’ll see you upstairs.’ Corcoran walked up the concrete ramp and outside into the cold air. The moon was out, lighting up their surroundings, and the rain had stopped. Rotting metal piled high, husks of vehicles left to decay. A crane sat a distance away.
Steph was helping Carl Taylor in to her car.
Corcoran walked over and caught his attention. ‘Have you seen anyone here recently?’
‘Not been here for months.’
Corcoran nodded. ‘Matt Gladwin was held down there for over five months.’
‘What?’
‘Terry Beane abducted him from a street in east London.’ Corcoran stepped closer, fists clenched. ‘He transported him here, and made him stand up. He was here for months, under your nose.’
‘Son, I’m in a home.’ Taylor’s lips twitched. ‘I can’t even look after my bastard self. Tonight’s the first time I’ve been here since I signed the contract with those bastard developers.’
‘They own the place?’
‘Changes hands when the bastards get round to paying me. Don’t get to dig into the ground until then, though they had cranes and God knows what else here. Bastards. Don’t get to start until I get my money. My son, he’s a good lad, he’s on top of them.’
‘You sure you don’t know a Terry Beane?’
‘Should I?’
Corcoran had to give up. ‘When were you last here?’
‘Six months ago. Middle of September, it was. Son was in Majorca with his family. Had to let this engineer in, said he was strengthening the place ahead of the development.’
Palmer appeared, frowning. ‘An engineer? How old was he?’
‘Can’t remember. My eyes aren’t so good these days.’
‘Was he old? Young?’
‘Not sure. One of those fellas could be anything from thirt
y to sixty, you know?’
Palmer snorted. ‘His motive is enacting revenge against the children of the people who trapped him down there back in 1986.’
‘What?’
‘Come on.’ Corcoran grabbed Palmer’s arm and led her away. ‘He doesn’t remember anything, Marie. He’s an old man.’
‘He . . .’ She shut her eyes. ‘You’re right.’
She’s losing it, thought Corcoran. All this time, she’s talked about pressure and I’ve let it build up a head of steam, using it to my advantage, but now she’s crumbling under the weight of it all.
Corcoran’s phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket. ‘Sorry, it’s the boss.’ He put it to his ear. ‘Alana, what’s up?’
‘Aidan, uniform have picked up Sarah’s mother and they’re five minutes away from Dawn’s father’s house. Get yourself over there now.’
Forty-five
[Palmer, 19:55]
Corcoran held up his warrant card for the shivering uniformed officer at the roadblock. ‘Cheers.’ He stuffed it away as the window slid back up and he drove off. ‘You know, I was expecting to rush into that bunker, catch the bad guy and save Dawn.’
‘I know.’
‘What do you mean, you know?’
‘You wanted to carry her out in your arms and bask in the glory to make up for what happened with Murray Ross.’
‘Quit psychoanalysing me, Marie.’
‘You don’t think this impacts your ability to do your job?’
‘No. I don’t. And it doesn’t.’ Corcoran pulled up at a roundabout and scanned the other exits, drumming his fingers on the wheel. ‘I’m not one of your patients.’
‘You’re not that different, Aidan.’
Corcoran laughed. ‘Marie, you shouldn’t have come down there with me. I warned you.’ He stared at her again, softer this time, like he was on the edge. Of what, she didn’t know. He set off across the roundabout and cut onto a dual carriageway heading south.
She let him have the victory. ‘Sorry.’
‘Good.’
[20:02]
Palmer stopped on the threshold into the living room and took stock of the scene.