His gut refused to agree.
He knocked on the door.
It felt eerie, like he’d stepped off the face of the earth and into some strange alien land.
He waited a few moments.
Nothing.
Hmmm… Time to look around?
If the slaughterhouse was abandoned, then no harm could come from having a little poke around… His justifications was cut short.
“Hello?” It was a woman. She had the door open a fraction, only half of her face was visible. From what Terry could see, this woman was in her sixties. Her European features were creased heavily with wrinkles, her green eyes were heavily hooded and coloured with caution. Terry wasn’t sure but it looked like she was wearing a wig. A long brown unnatural looking head of hair sat a little too high up her forehead. It also didn’t match the white eyebrows.
“May I help you?” her accent was Russian.
“Yes, I’m a consultant with the Manchester Police. I was wondering if I could have a minute?”
“Is there something wrong?”
“No, I was just hoping you could help me…?”
“How?”
She hadn’t relinquished a death-grip on the door.
“Have you seen this man?”
He showed her the picture.
“No,” She answered with a brief split-second look. Her reaction was odd, if only for the split second. It was like a mask had slipped and Terry had glimpsed something underneath it but it was over too quick for him to recognise it.
“Anything else?” Her rudeness was a mistake and she tried to remedy it with a smile. The smile was frightening not friendly.
“Thanks Ma’am, that’s all…” Terry concluded.
“Have a nice evening,” and she shut the door.
He was convinced he was at the right place.
Terry suddenly realised he’d just walked up to the house of a potential child killer without a plan. He didn’t even have any back-up. The sudden feeling he was well out of his depth hit him.
He’d got swept up in the moment and now he felt he was standing on very thin ice.
He stepped away from the door.
Time to flee. Adrenaline was telling him to flee.
He took a breath, hoping it might quell the sinking sensation in his gut. He struggled to reign in his desire to run too. If he ran, he could look suspicious. There was no telling if the woman was watching him. He wanted to appear like he’d bought her story and he wasn’t about to go get in his car and ring the police.
He took out his mobile phone, his gut telling him not to delay relaying his location. He was in the lion’s den and he could feel eyes boring into him.
He text Matt, a brief message: “I found him. Come to this address. Urgent.” and he finished it with the address.
The message successfully sent, zooming off into cyberspace.
He felt watched as he reached the gate, he glanced back just to make sure there wasn’t some Russian old lady charging at him with a knife in hand.
There wasn’t an old woman, but there was a figure that caught his attention.
It looked like a child. A child was standing at the furthest corner of the house. The child was dancing over a puddle. He might not have given it so much thought if it hadn’t shimmered in a tell-tale sign it was a spirit.
He hesitated. Should he get in the car and wait for Matt? Or go to the child?
“Shit…” he cursed as he felt himself tearing into two. Action or self-preservation?
He didn’t get the chance to decide. Gunfire alerted him to the dart fired into his leg seconds before he collapsed. Terry fell to the ground in a heap and instantly faded away to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
“How much do the police know?!” The accent was thick, unmistakably Russian. Terry had barely recovered from the bucket of water he’d been on the receiving end of, he was in no way ready to answer the demand. How long had he been out? He had no concept of time. The world was spinning around him as he struggled to make sense of it. He appeared to be in a kitchen, a sparse monochromatic kitchen that looked as abandoned as the rest of the site.
The Russian, Anatoly, was glaring at him with gritted teeth. He looked incandescent with rage. Terry’s first thought was how accurate the composite was. The low brow, the deep-set eyes and mean looking features. The jaw was spot on too. He was the drawing come to three dimensional life.
Anatoly was maybe in his fifties, it was hard to tell. He didn’t look particularly aged. He was bald and his lack of facial hair offered no indication either. His eyebrows were too fine and looked invisible.
He was dressed in a jumper, cargo pants and boots - they were all completely black.
Terry shook his head and blinked several times. The tranquiliser was still in his system, he could feel his senses were muddy. The only light in the room came from a little lamp somewhere off to his right. He shuffled and realised he was tied to a chair.
“How much do the police know?” He roared angrily.
“About what?”
Terry felt perhaps that he’d deserved the punch across the jaw. It had been an unintentionally smart answer.
“How much do they know?”
“They know you’ve taken ten children…”
“Do they now…” The Russian’s reaction was odd, but Terry hadn’t dealt with any psychopaths before. He was in uncharted territories.
“How did you find me?”
“I showed your picture to your competitor, Gary Hobbs…”
“My picture? You mean this?” He turned and came back with the composite.
Terry nodded.
“How did you make it?”
Terry gave him a cold look.
“I left no witnesses. Nobody to identify me… How did you know what I looked like?”
“…You murdered my little girl,”
“I have murdered many little girls, that doesn’t explain how you have my FUCKING PICTURE!” Anatoly roared in his face. A light spraying of saliva across the face accompanied the ringing in Terry’s ears.
“…I communicate with the dead…”
The Russian stood sharply, his features boring for the truth.
“And a dead girl drew you my picture?” He was trying to be mocking.
“No. She described you. And the woman who feeds the children too…”
The Russian was spooked. It flashed across his face and caught him off guard. They were details impossible to know. “Impossible…” he whispered in Russian.
“…And the police have my picture?”
Terry nodded.
“FUCK!” He roared, he turned angrily away.
Terry wanted to smile, it was a victory, but he sensed it might be the worst thing to do.
“What is the password on your phone?”
Terry’s face melted in surprised and then confusion. What did he want that for?
“Why?”
“Tell me your combination or I’ll fucking break your fingers…”
“6788,”
Terry’s phone was in the man’s back pocket.
Anatoly entered the code and opened the call log.
“You’ve not rang 999…” the Russian seemed surprised and a little suspicious.
Terry was starting to feel that was a mistake.
“Who is this Matt?”
The Russian had found himself in Terry’s inbox. Under different circumstances he might have felt a little violated by it, but right now Terry was just concentrating on navigating the situation in any means that didn’t involve his death.
“He’s the father of one of the little girls you stole and then killed. He’s the detective on the TV who promised to find you…” Terry couldn’t restrain the anger that suddenly bubbled into his words.
“I remember him… so heroic on the TV…”
“Was it deliberate? Was you flaunting your crimes in our faces?” Terry growled.
“Perhaps…” The Russian smirked. It enraged Terry
that the man had stolen, then murdered Christine just to flaunt his superiority over the police. “So he’s coming is he…”
“He’s already here asshole,”
It all happened before Terry could realise what was going off. He heard the voice but saw the Russian tumble to the ground violently before he could identify it. In the blink of an eye the Russian was toppled, Matt was standing in the doorway with a baseball bat in hand.
In all their years together Terry had never seen Matt so angry, there was an unspeakable rage practically burning off him.
“You, killed, my little girl!” He roared. He crossed the room, he brought the bat up and then brought it swiftly down on the Russian’s side. Anatoly was dazed from the club to the side of his head, the swing into his ribs only made him shout in pain.
Matt swung the bat into his side once more, this time the yelp of pain was accompanied by the sound of something cracking.
Anatoly’s breathing took on a sudden wet rasp.
“MATT! STOP!” Terry shouted loudly.
“What?” He snapped at Terry.
“Stop! You can’t kill him…”
“Why?! He killed our little girl!” He yelled angrily. Tears were welling up in his eyes.
“I know baby, but killing him won’t change that. It’ll just make you exactly like him… A murderer…”
Matt hesitated, visibly torn between vengeance and sensibility.
Terry didn’t know where this voice of reason was coming from. He yearned to be up and swinging the bat himself. Somehow, the greater good was in control!
“Matt, please. Put down the bat… Ring for backup…” Terry pleaded.
It took a moment more and then Matt stepped back.
He didn’t drop the bat but he lowered it. Anatoly wasn’t moving, he was barely conscious and his breathing sounded wet. It never ceased to amaze Terry, the frailty of a villain. They were built so high, transformed by fear into huge unbreakable creatures but they were nonetheless human. They were fallible. They could still be felled. In the blink of an eye their reign could be over.
Matt plucked his phone from his pocket and dialled 999.
Where was the woman? “Matt, where’s the woman?”
Matt shrugged. He hadn’t seen anybody else. He cautiously backed away from the door. He felt a little prone in the doorway.
“Could you untie me?” Terry felt very prone and vulnerable.
As Matt alerted the police to the situation and gave them their location, he undid Terry’s binds. He was sure to pick up the bat straight after and Terry couldn’t blame him. Terry’s legs were a little numb but workable.
He gave Anatoly a wide berth as he looked around the room.
Where was the wife?
He left Matt in the kitchen.
The hallway ran adjacent to the stairs. He searched the two rooms near him, they were utility rooms. As minimal and lifeless as the kitchen.
The lounge was shoddy, an ancient CRT TV in the corner told Terry this house was lost in the recess of time. The sofa was beaten, malformed and tatty. The dirty brown didn’t look out of place with the off-grey walls and dark wood flooring.
Still no wife. The front door was open, wafting gently in the breeze. Matt had probably left it open. Matt was still on the phone as he started to climb the stairs. There was three bedrooms and a bathroom, all of them in equal sorts of disarray and untidiness. This house didn’t feel like a home, it felt like a place where someone merely existed. There was no woman hiding upstairs either.
He came back downstairs. He returned to the kitchen and found Matt standing over Anatoly’s prone form. For a second he thought Matt had finished the job, but he caught the sound of the Russian’s laboured breathing. Terry wanted to tell Matt he was proud of him, it can’t have been easy to walk away from the urge to kill the man who killed his daughter. It was a token of the strength of his character. Ultimately he didn’t, it felt inappropriate.
Terry stepped out the backdoor and out onto the backyard. He was greeted by the sight of a garden long left to ruin. Tall grass stood waist high, wild flowers grew in unlikely bunches. A silver pen caught his attention. He stepped to it. There was a solitary skinny looking pig snoozing. It was unusual to see a thin pig, Terry had never considered they could be anything but portly.
He stepped back. The two barns loomed nearby.
Where was she?
Had she fled in the action? With any luck the police would pick her up on route.
The sound of a car caught his attention. It parked up somewhere around the side of the house. As Terry rounded the corner it struck him that it didn’t sound like the police, there was too many cars too few. He wasn’t surprised it wasn’t the police, instead it was a white van. A white van with a logo on the side. It read “PORKY’S”.
The name rang a bell but he couldn’t put a finger on it.
A young lad trudged from around the van, he jumped in surprise.
He was tall, skinny and marked heavily with acne.
“Can I help you?”
“Wh-who-who are you?” The young male stammered. He was wearing a green uniform and he nearly dropped his clipboard.
“I’m Terry, a consultant with the Manchester Police… Who are you?”
“I’m Joey, I’m here for the pickup. Is everything okay?” He suddenly went white. You could see he was suddenly worried that he’d done something wrong.
“Pick up? Of what?”
“The pies…” Joey answered unsure if it was a trick question. He was beginning to sweat. Had he been inadvertently caught up in a drug smuggling ring? Suddenly he had no idea what he would do.
“Pies? The slaughterhouse is shut down isn’t it?”
“I don’t know…” he stammered, “I just come and collect the pies…”
Terry eyed him for a moment. He felt he was looking at a puzzle and only had a few pieces in hand. This kid certainly didn’t look like a criminal and judging by his slow freak out he certainly wasn’t part of Anatoly’s schemes.
“Who’s this?” It was Matt. He’d finally stopped guarding the Russian.
“He’s Joey. He’s come to collect pies…”
“Okay…” Matt answered. He didn’t yet know the slaughterhouse was supposed to be shutdown. All he saw was unfortunate timing.
“Wait here…” Terry began to trudge to the barns. As he approached, he saw there was two different doors. The barn to his left had a larger door with a sort of fenced tunnel. The right looked like a more traditional loading door.
He went to the right, slipping through an open door he’d not spotted. He was struck by the silence, he’d expected animal screams. This was a loading bay, he travelled further in. Thankfully the building had automated lights that still worked. In the next area he found a large industrial kitchen. Several trays of cured pie bottoms sat on a counter. He found a crate, inside it was a dozen pies in a box. The crate appeared capable of holding at least five of these boxes. So 60 pies in total.
In one of the many sinks sat a colossal amount of potatoes submerged in water. The next sink was full of peelings. Then Terry found several pans of other vegetables.
They were making pies?
Shutting down an abattoir to start making pies? It was a different kind of front for very perverse criminal activities…
He travelled on, the next area seemed empty. Completely unused. He noticed there was still hooks suspended from rails. Was this the curing room? For the meat?
He backed up, returning to the kitchen.
He glanced at the shelves, all the boxes and bottles of ingredients were in Russian. He popped his head in the walk-in freezer. It was sparsely filled, a few odd bits scattered amongst the shelves. Under a shelf he found a large black bucket, when he popped the lid off he found it was frozen minced meat.
He returned to the house. Matt was interrogating an increasingly anxious Joey.
“Find anything?” He asked not taking his eyes off Joey.
“Where are th
e children?” Terry posed aloud.
It was the ultimate question that had not occurred to him till now. Christine had spoke of a basement, where was it? Had she been wrong? No, he distinctly remembered Christine talking of an upstairs. The kids were taken upstairs after a “funny drink”…
He stepped back into the house.
“I swear Sir, I don’t know what’s going off…I’m just to here to collect the delivery,” he overheard Joey passionately protest.
Anatoly was where they’d left him. He’d not moved. It was probably watching too many thrillers that made Terry anticipate he would have fled. A miraculous recovery and a high-action pursuit was the stuff of a James Bond film not a psychic‘s far simpler life.
He glanced around the floor. No trapdoor.
He checked the two utility rooms. Again nothing.
He checked the front room. Nothing.
“Hmm…” He stopped at the doorway about to leave.
He returned and tugged the sofa out of the way.
“Bingo!”
“You found something?” Matt called.
“Jesus Christ! Is that guy dead?” Joey was heard exclaiming.
The sirens announced the arrival of the police.
“Wait here!” Matt commanded. He quickly went to Terry.
Terry had hoisted the trapdoor up and was greeted with a set of stairs down into darkness.
“You found-” he stopped mid-question.
“Pass me your phone…” Terry commanded. He took it, turned on the flashlight and began to descend. The wooden steps creaked and groaned.
He heard scattering, heard rustling but he saw nothing. The darkness was aphotic, completely consuming in its blackness.
“Hello?” He whispered.
The rustling echoed around him in all directions. He reached the bottom and aimed the flashlight. He gasped.
He was greeted by twenty faces, twenty dirty little faces wincing at the bright light. Movement caught his attention and he swept the light to the right. Twenty more faces greeted him.
“What the fu-” he gasped.
Something rustled to his left. He swung the light. He saw even more faces, all huddled together against the wall. Terry couldn’t believe his eyes. All the children looked frightened, they were cowering in the corner. Trying to make themselves invisible amongst each other.
Ten Missing Children Page 14