Harriet looked at him, her gaze steadier now. “I hope she’s enjoying herself. I knew she’d like the exhibition . . . I took them from the doctor. You know, I killed him. You should also know that I did North too, and that monster of a brother-in-law of mine, Gordon Lessing.”
Calladine nodded to Ruth who had a glass of water in her hand. “You’re not well; you might want to wait until you have legal representation.”
“There won’t be time for any of that. I’m dying, and it won’t be long now. My notes are on the sideboard. Over there.”
Ruth passed Calladine the thick medical file — it had the word Terminal written across the cover. He took it and shuddered — how did a person cope with news like that? He flicked through a few sheets and shook his head.
“Cancer, Ruth. Advanced.” He spoke in a whisper. “She was under Doctor Ahmed.”
It came as no surprise.
“The man had no soul,” Harriet complained. “He was so cold, so matter of fact. I walked out of his clinic on my own that day and broke my heart. He had to go. He had to be the first.”
“North?” asked Calladine.
Harriet looked up at the inspector. “He killed my son, Jimmy. He had him beaten and burnt, and all because of a few pounds worth of drugs.”
Ruth bent down and put the glass to her lips. “We should record this, sir,” she suggested.
“I’ll write it down.”
The water and the presence of other people seemed to give Harriet a little strength. The colour was slowly returning to her face and she was able to sit up against an armchair.
“Lessing was married to my sister. He killed her. He left her alone and in pain to die in the cold. She had a broken leg and no way of getting help.” Harriet started to weep and then cried out in pain, clutching her belly. “I need my medication — the morphine. It’s on there by my notes.”
Calladine took the phial of liquid and poured it into the empty glass. Harriet drank it down.
“The ambulance is coming up the street, sir,” said Ruth, at the door. “I’ll go and meet them.”
“Harriet,” Calladine said, supporting her shoulders. “We think Lessing was involved in the kidnapping of two little girls.”
She grabbed his arm. Despite her weakened state she still had quite a grip. “He took them, I’m sure of it. He worked with a rogue called Yuri. If they’re still alive and still in the country then he’ll have put them somewhere.”
“Yuri who? Do you know anything about him?”
“No — but Gordon’s been helping him for years. Gordon has a couple of lorries — Lessing Transport. He can travel all over the place and no one asks any questions.”
“Where’s his place? Where does he work from?”
“The industrial estate, off the bypass. He keeps the lorries there.”
Harriet cried out in pain again and her head slumped forward. Two paramedics walked into the room.
One of them picked up her notes and quickly scanned through them. “We’ll take her to the General,” he told his colleague.
“We should send someone with her,” Ruth told Calladine. “I’ll arrange for a uniform to meet them in the ED and keep an eye on her.”
Calladine doubted that Harriet Finch would try to do a runner, or be up to killing anyone else, but he knew he should follow protocol. She might seem harmless now, but she was still a killer. He and Ruth had a quick look round the house. Everything was neat and tidy. There was no sign of anything untoward.
“You the police?” One of the paramedics came back inside.
Calladine nodded.
“She’s pretty high on morphine but she’s insisting there’s a dead ‘un in the shed.” He grinned. “We hear all sorts so don’t take it too literally.”
“The shed, you say?” Calladine gave Ruth a humourless smile. Harriet was probably telling the truth. “We’d better take a look.”
The two of them walked out through the back door and across the neat garden. Calladine rattled the shed door but it was locked. The structure was soundly built but made entirely of wood. “Pass me that spade.” He nodded at the object lying against the fence. He raised it high and slammed it into the narrow gap between the door and the side of the shed. The door splintered and sprang open — he’d smashed the lock.
They saw the tarpaulin immediately. There was obviously something underneath it. Calladine took hold of a corner and pulled tentatively.
“Jayden North.”
He was lying in a pool of his own blood and there was a nasty wound to his neck. Harriet Finch had killed five people. Yet she was frail, weak and in constant need of medication. What was it that had kept her going?
Ruth put a hand to the uninjured side of his neck and nodded. “No pulse and he’s cold, sir.”
“How did she manage it? So much death caused by someone so fragile.” He shuddered. “I don’t understand how Harriet Finch could get the upper hand physically against someone like him.”
“She’d nothing to lose — that must be it.”
“But why him? With the others she was on a mission, righting wrongs. So why did Jayden North become a victim?”
“He surprised her?” Ruth suggested. “Imogen may have said something when she spoke to him. If he knew stuff, if he thought Harriet was responsible for his uncle’s death then he might have come looking.”
“She wouldn’t have seemed much of a threat either.” Calladine pulled a face. “How wrong he was, and he paid for his mistake with his life.”
“We need to get the doc down here, sir. Uniform have arrived. I’ll get them to seal the place.”
* * *
According to information found by Rocco, Gordon Lessing rented a small office and two large parking spaces on the industrial estate.
“We need to get down there,” Calladine decided.
“You mean before Greco digs out the same information?”
“Look — we’re almost there. The murders are sorted now and given these new facts we shouldn’t waste time trying to contact a DI who could be anywhere. It’s only down the road from us, after all.”
“In that case I won’t argue. But if this goes all pear shaped, you’re picking up the flack, right?”
Calladine smiled and grabbed his coat.
Lessing’s office was empty and the unopened mail had gathered behind the door. The windows were so dirty, it looked like nobody had used the place in months.
“Uses it as a front, d’you think?”
“Don’t know, Ruth but it doesn’t look good. If he was keeping the girls here then you’d expect him to visit, carry on as normal. They’d need food and water at the very least.”
“Oh this is normal,” a female voice replied from behind them. “We never see him from one week’s end to the next.”
“Do you work for Mr Lessing?” Calladine asked.
“No — for the engineering firm next door, I’m what passes for admin. The reality is that the owner’s my son.” She smiled.
Calladine got out his warrant card and showed it to the woman. “According to our records Lessing has this office and two parking spaces for his lorries. Are they out at the moment?”
“God no — I don’t think they’ve moved in weeks. How he can call this shambles a business, I don’t know. But then again he must be doing something right. You should see the car he drives. It makes no sense. He must make money doing something, but it’s got nowt to do with haulage.”
“So where are they, the lorries?” Ruth asked. “Shouldn’t they be parked here?”
“They used to be, but they got in everyone’s way — old decrepit things they are. He’s parked them up round the back somewhere — on a piece of spare land. Like I said, they haven’t moved in ages.”
“We should take a look.” Calladine gestured to Ruth. “Give me a minute — I want to get some things from the car.”
He opened the boot and took out a long screwdriver and a bunch of keys. Then they walked off along a path that to
ok them around to the rear of the buildings. Once round the back the path disappeared and they were soon stepping over some very rough ground. Calladine knew the land stretched out for some way, all the way back to the bypass in fact.
“It’s a bit wild in here. Watch your step!” he called to Ruth. “Don’t want you falling, not in your condition.”
“You can stop all that before you even get started.”
“Sorry, but I don’t want to be responsible for any mishaps. The long grass is covering a lot of rubble. There’s all sorts of rubbish lying around. Watch you don’t stand on a broken bottle. Some idiots have been using the land as a tip.”
“That’s the Hobfield.” Ruth nodded towards the tower blocks that stood a few hundred yards away. “But there are notices.”
Calladine shook his head. “Lucky if the little bastards can read. Even if they could, they’d pay no heed.”
“There, sir.” Ruth pointed.
The two lorries were parked up in front of them. The woman had been right — neither of them was going anywhere. One had two tyres missing and grass was growing as high as one of the back doors of the other. It looked like no one had been near them in ages.
“What are we looking for, sir?” Ruth asked.
Calladine felt a shiver travel along his spine. “I don’t like this. It’s too quiet back here and it’s well sheltered by those trees.” He nodded.
“Yeah. You could come and go, do what you like and no one would see.”
Calladine rapped with the screwdriver on the side of one of the lorries while Ruth walked around the other.
“There are greasy fingerprints on the doors here,” she called to him, “and relatively fresh footprints too, in the mud. See, the ground has frozen over leaving a perfect imprint.”
“So someone has been here.” He knocked again.
“We should get Julian down here — he needs to look at this,” Ruth said.
“We don’t know what we’ve got yet,” he replied, taking hold of a backdoor handle and pulling. “Locked.”
“If it wasn’t, half the kids from the estate would be hanging out in there.”
“We need to get both these lorries open and take a look inside.”
“Lessing has been murdered. We know he’s involved in the kidnapping, so call for backup. You can’t do this on your own.”
“I’m not alone — you’re here with me.”
“This is really about Greco, isn’t it? But sooner or later you are going to have to let him in.”
“If you call Julian, then Stephen Greco will be down here in a flash.”
“Possibly not. Remember, Greco is outsourcing forensics to the Duggan Centre. You can imagine how Julian will feel about that!”
Calladine was only half listening to her. He was looking through the bunch of keys he’d brought with him.
“This one.”
He tried the key in the lock on the door handle but it only turned so far. He pulled again but had no luck. Calladine rammed the screwdriver into the gap between both doors trying to lever them apart. The doors were rusty so he might be in with a chance.
After five or so minutes of pushing and banging he was in. The back doors sprang open, filling the cavernous interior with light. The smell hit them first. For a few seconds it made them both feel queasy, mostly at the prospect of finding two small bodies inside. Calladine’s heart was pounding. God knows how Ruth felt. This was the part of the job he hated most of all. There was nothing worse than crimes involving children.
“It’s a chemical smell,” Ruth said at last, surprised.
“Reminds me of caravan holidays when I was a kid,” Calladine said, squinting as he tried to see.
“A chemical toilet, that’s what it is,” Ruth realised. “Look, guv, right at the end, on the floor.”
Calladine climbed in. The lorry wasn’t big enough for him to stand so he crawled across to what looked like a heap of rags on the floor.
“I think it’s them!” he called back.
Reluctantly, because of what he might find he carefully removed an almost threadbare blanket and saw the two girls. They were still in their school uniforms and huddled together for warmth. Neither of them was conscious, but both were breathing.
“Time to get that help you wanted, and quick!” he called back to Ruth. “They’re here, both of them. They’re cold but breathing. I think they’ve been drugged.”
Ruth was on her phone immediately, calling for the ambulance. Then she rang Julian.
Calladine took off his coat and placed it over the girls. He looked towards Ruth. She was still on the phone. He didn’t need her to say anything; he knew what she was doing. She’d be speaking to Greco.
Within fifteen minutes the rough tract of land was filled with people, all active. The paramedics took the girls away in an ambulance. Julian and his forensics people were crawling all over the place, when Greco arrived.
Calladine groaned inwardly. The young DI had a face like thunder.
“This is my case, Calladine.” He spat the words out. “At the very least you should have told me what you were up to.”
“I had no idea I’d find them here. But I’m not going to apologise for doing so. You should have been more forthcoming with your information. The body on the footpath was a man called Yuri Arcos and apparently Vice at Central knows him. That means your dark net people knew him too but you said nothing.”
“How did you find this place?”
“Harriet Finch told me about it.”
“Who the hell is she?”
“She’s Lessing’s sister-in-law. She’s our bucket-list killer, or tarot-card killer — take your pick.”
“So the cases are linked?”
“Yes. I did say as much, but you didn’t want me involved — remember?”
He felt Ruth give him a discreet kick on the back of the shin. “Sir, we should go and speak to Harriet. Don’t forget how ill she is.”
“Okay. Our job here’s done anyway.”
He gave Greco a self-satisfied smile and walked off after Ruth.
“Big headed prick. What is it with him?”
“Simple, guv — nothing, but you still don’t like him, do you? You’re behaving like a child and it doesn’t suit you.”
“Solved the case though, didn’t we? And with no input from Greco.”
“That was down to Harriet,” she reminded him.
“What time is it?”
“Why, have you got somewhere else to be?” Ruth asked sarcastically.
“Actually I have, and I don’t want to be late.”
“We’ll go to the hospital, check on the girls, look in on Harriet Finch then you can go and do whatever. How does that suit you?”
“I’ll drive,” he said. “And stop getting at me. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“A lot on your mind! That’s rich, given that most of it’s your own doing. Lydia, Eve Walker, and Greco — you bring it on yourself.”
“You know it’s not really my fault . . .” he tried.
“Oh yes it is. You’ve been in a funny mood for a day or two and it’s affecting how you are at work. The women in your life, your new-found family, you can blame any one of them. But you need to sort it out.”
“Perhaps it’s down to the job. Perhaps I came back too soon. I must have got more of a shock than I realised when Fallon shot me and I banged my head.”
“Stop whining and make your peace with Greco. You’re going to have to eventually — you know that, don’t you, sir?”
* * *
They pulled into the hospital car park.
“I suppose I’ll get used to him,” he sighed. “He’s obviously thorough, but he’s a tad slow for my liking. I mean he should be here too, but I don’t see his car.”
“He’ll be bothering Julian, trying to get rid of him or making sure he doesn’t miss anything. What’s happening with him, your one-time cousin? You haven’t mentioned him in a while.”
“He’s banged u
p,” he replied with a smile on his face. “You know, Ruth, that’s so good to say. And this time he hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of getting out.”
* * *
Calladine flashed his warrant card at the receptionist, not that he needed to; she knew very well who he was.
“Where are the girls?” he asked.
“Paediatrics, second floor.” As they walked up the stairs, Ruth had begun to flag. “Bloody pregnancy,” she moaned. “Seems to sap all my energy. Most days I’m dead on my feet by teatime.”
“Me too and I’m not pregnant.” He laughed. “Just getting old, perhaps too bloody old.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?” Ruth asked him. “Do you see Stephen Greco as a threat, a future you don’t feel part of?”
“Don’t be daft, he’s got no experience.”
“He has enough, and he’s into all the new stuff the force is introducing.”
“Nothing wrong with the old stuff — always worked for me.”
The two girls were in adjoining rooms. A female PC had been assigned to monitor conversations between them. It was a way of finding out small details they might be reluctant to talk about.
In the corridor outside their rooms, the doctor greeted Calladine with a nod. “The parents are with them.”
“How are they? Are they hurt in any way?”
Calladine dreaded hearing what the doctor might say in reply. “They’ve been given something, a tranquillizer, I suspect, but nothing more. From what Isla Prideau told her mother, they appear to have slept for most of the time. Someone brought them a little food and water but only twice, she thinks.”
“Have either of them been injured or abused?”
“No, Inspector, they are both okay. They have been examined and we found nothing untoward, and there is no sign of sexual interference. They’re still sleepy but I’m sure that that will have worn off by tomorrow.”
He heard Ruth exhale in relief.
“Their clothes will need to go to forensics,” Calladine told him.
“An officer has already bagged them up, Inspector.”
“They’re safe, Tom. We found them, and got them out,” Ruth said. “And it was down to you.”
“Too close for comfort, though. Any longer and it could have been a different story. They’d have been left there to die.” He shuddered.
Bayliss & Calladine Box Set Page 52
