by Ray Clark
“Could be more difficult than that, sir,” said Cragg. “Bramfield is a market town. We might have to speak to the traders, see if they can shed some light. Trouble is, they’re not always around.”
“That’s assuming whoever did it bought them locally,” offered Williams.
“It’s also possible that it doesn’t belong to our suspect at all,” said Gardener. “Might be from a pair of Alex Wilson’s jeans.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Mr Gardener,” said Williams. “But it’s possible the torn piece hasn’t come from Pollard’s clothes either. He was wearing black trousers.”
“He was when we picked him up, Sergeant, but I suspect Wilson has been down there for some time, a few days, maybe. So it is still possible that Pollard is our man.” Gardener turned to Fenton. “What about prints from the cellar?”
“Only Wilson’s and Armitage’s so far, sir. None that belong to Pollard, or anyone else that we can find, for that matter, but it’s going to take time to go through the entire scene.”
“Have we got Armitage’s prints on file?” asked Gardener, struggling to believe the old man could have any previous.
“I asked if he’d mind,” said Cragg. “Only so as we could eliminate him from the investigation.
Gardener was beginning to like Cragg. He would have been pleased to have him on his team.
“Okay. David,” he turned Sergeant Williams, “can you organize a warrant for the search of Pollard’s premises? I want his clothes, his computer, and anything else connected to the investigation.”
Gardener turned to Fenton. “Wilson’s clothes will be easy enough to gather. They should all be in his flat. What else have we found there?”
“Nothing,” said Fenton.
“What do you mean?”
“According to Thornton and Anderson, Wilson’s flat is empty. Like his phone, everything in his life seems to have been cleared. There are no clothes, no bedding, no towels, or anything personal. No drugs, no cleaning materials. Absolutely nothing. Someone’s done a real job on wiping him out.”
Gardener glanced at Reilly, but said nothing.
Fenton continued. “The only thing in the flat is a computer, which was probably his, but that’s also been cleaned. In fact, the hard drive has been completely removed.”
Gardener stood up and paced the room a little. “What the hell is going on here? Maurice, can you ring Armitage and tell him we’re sending a car round? I’d like him back at the flat as soon as possible.”
Gardener addressed Fenton again. “So, if there was something on his hard drive that linked him to his killer, the killer probably knew about it?”
“Either that, or he was taking no chances,” replied Fenton. “Maybe you should speak to Thornton and Anderson later on, see what they have found out.”
Gardener glanced at the Faraday bags. “Two phones?”
He picked up one of the bags.
“This phone was Alex Wilson’s. Like his computer, memory completely wiped, except for one text message. It’s short and sweet, and threatening: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing – especially in your case.”
“Where did you find that?” asked Gardener.
“In the basement, not far from Wilson’s body.”
Gardener sat down. Whoever they were dealing with had a high level of intelligence and had been very thorough.
“Any idea where the text came from?”
“According to the search we’ve done, Sonia Knight.”
“Her name keeps popping up,” said Gardener.
“Maybe she’s engineering everything,” suggested Reilly.
Cragg shook his head. “If that’s the case, she must be working with someone. I don’t think she has what it takes to arrange what we’ve found so far.”
“Maybe it’s Hobson,” said Reilly. “Maybe she’s been feeding him everything that Pollard’s been up to, and together they’re going to sort things out.”
“But where does Alex Wilson fit in, Sean? Why would Knight and Hobson butcher him, if their target is Pollard?”
“Maybe he knew something about them,” offered Cragg. “Stumbled on something that would implicate them both, which might mean another sentence in Armley. Or at the very least, something he could clue Hobson in on.”
“You could be right, Maurice. Especially as the phone’s been wiped,” said Gardener. “We need to find those two, and pretty fast.”
“It is still the same SIM card, isn’t it?” Reilly asked Fenton.
“According to the records, yes.”
“What about the other phone, the one we found in the shop?”
“Here’s the interesting thing. That’s Lance Hobson’s. The text you got on that one also came from Sonia Knight’s phone.”
“Has the memory on that one been wiped?”
“No. We’ve recovered all sorts of messages and conversations that have been recorded and saved. Most of them between Hobson, Knight, and Wilson, but there are others on there as well.”
“Okay, I want a full report on all those conversations, and all the text messages. Everything you can find on that phone, I want,” said Gardener. “Have you made a list of all contacts?”
“Yes, it’s all in the file. But there’s something else you might find interesting. All contact between Hobson and Knight dried up about a month ago. There have been plenty of missed messages on his phone from other people, but the first contact Knight made with Hobson in a month was this morning. Probably the message you received in Bursley Bridge.”
“Which suggests that either Knight and Hobson are plotting this together…”
“Or someone else is behind it, and he’s taken them both out already,” said Reilly.
“Possibly,” replied Gardener, “but why the message from Knight this morning?”
“To throw us off the scent,” offered Reilly.
“There’s something very strange going on here,” said Gardener. “We have one corpse, the involvement of two people who are nowhere to be found, and only one suspect, and nothing that adds up.
“Okay, Maurice, make the call to Armitage. We’ll pick him up and take him to Wilson’s flat. After that, we’re going out to Hobson’s place to see what we can find there. And somewhere during all that, we need to find time to call on Fitz and get the results of the post-mortem.
“Steve, carry on at the shop and see if you can find anything else. And put together a list of all the missed messages on Hobson’s phone, so we can do a follow-up. Maurice, when you’ve called Armitage, I’d like you and Sergeant Williams to update the ANACAPA chart and start going through the list of contacts from Hobson’s phone. I need to know what’s going on here. The deeper we get, the less information we have.”
Chapter Twenty
Robert Sinclair opened the front door and stepped into the plush-panelled hall, sighing loudly. A long, demanding day had taken its toll, and it was far from over. He had two more appointments for his private afternoon surgery.
The floor beneath his feet was parquet, complimented by pale Persian rugs. His walls were wood veneered to a height of three foot. Most of the expensive wallpaper above the dado rail was hidden by a variety of framed oils. There were two portraits, one his late wife, the rest landscapes. The paintings continued up the sweeping staircase and onto the landing above.
The huge Victorian mansion had been left to him in a will by an eccentric aunt. He’d spent some serious money on renovations, which had allowed him to set up his own private surgery. During the refurbishment, Sinclair had discovered that the house had vaults, one of which was large enough to accommodate a wine cellar, which he’d filled with a good stock of fine wines from around the world. In the basement, he’d had a fully functioning operating theatre installed for emergencies.
His housekeeper entered the hall from the kitchen, and in the background, he heard a voice on the radio. He knew from experience it would be Radio 2; she was an avid listener.
“Oh, Mr Sinclair, how are you? Yo
u’ve had quite a long day today.”
“I’m fine, Miss Bradshaw,” replied Robert, not wishing for any fuss. He simply wanted to finish his timetable, take a shower, and relax in a reclining chair with a glass of Vida Nova.
“Well you don’t look it, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“And I thought I was the doctor. I must be training you too well.”
She smiled. “You know what I mean, Mr Sinclair. You work too hard and too long, and you need to take better care of yourself.”
He knew she meant well, but sometimes she was intolerable. Still, he put his briefcase on the floor and held her shoulders and smiled back. It didn’t hurt to be civil.
“And you fuss too much, Miss Bradshaw.”
“Well, if I don’t, who will? Now, have you had your lunch?”
It was pointless lying because she knew his daily routine to the minute.
“No, but...”
“Mr Sinclair, that’s unforgivable. I’ll prepare you something now.”
“Ah, ah,” he cut her off before she went too far. “It’s too late, Miss Bradshaw. I still have a lot of work to do, and two more patients to see.”
She was about to protest, but he held up a finger. “Please, not another word. My digestive system won’t take it. Afternoon tea with a couple of oat-based biscuits will be fine.”
From her expression, he knew she didn’t like it, but also knew better than to argue. He was pleased to see her retreat to the kitchen.
He picked up his briefcase and went into his study, where he calmly launched it into a chair at the other side of the room, then clenched his fists.
“Shit!” He was absolutely gutted by how fast Christine Close had deteriorated.
He dropped down into the chair behind the desk, and for one split second, could have swept his hands across the top of it and pushed everything to the floor, such was his anger. He hated to lose control of any situation; more importantly, he hated to lose a patient. But you couldn’t have one without the other.
Sinclair placed his elbows on his desk and rested his head in his hands.
Miss Bradshaw knocked and entered the study carrying a tray with herbal tea and oat biscuits, which she placed on the desk.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like anything else, Mr Sinclair?”
“No, thank you, that will be fine. What time are the Bonewells due?”
“Four-thirty.”
He glanced at his watch. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to make them some tea, and explain I’ll be a few minutes late.”
“Of course.”
She turned to leave the study, but he called her back.
“Miss Bradshaw? If I could have my evening meal at seven o’clock precise, please?”
She nodded and left the room.
Sinclair’s thoughts returned to Christine Close. No matter how good a brain surgeon Iain Ross was, he could not save her. When Christine had first come to see Sinclair six months previous, she had been an NHS patient at St. James’s Hospital. Her symptoms had been severe headaches, nausea and vomiting, all for no reason she could think of.
Unhappy with two opinions, she had tried a completely different surgery altogether, and had even sought out herbal remedies and acupuncture, to no avail. Two months later the symptoms became much more severe, resulting in seizures and cranial nerve disorders.
Sinclair’s housekeeper, a close friend of Christine’s, had suggested she seek his professional opinion. He’d consulted with Ross and within twenty-four hours the neurosurgeon had diagnosed a high-grade glioma, for which there was no known cure.
There were many anti-cancer drugs around, none of which were cheap. Ross had suggested bevacizumab, and a cytotoxic drug called irinotecan, to be given intravenously every two weeks for a six-week cycle.
But there they had a problem: each six-week cycle came with a price tag of £5,000.
NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, deemed the treatment not suitable for the NHS because of a lack of evidence for its effectiveness. And because it was too expensive. The local Primary Care Trust’s Exceptional Treatments Committee also made a similar decision, and so too had the hospital.
Not without influence, Sinclair was the chairman of the hospital’s Drugs and Therapeutics Committee. He realized that new treatments were usually expensive and had very little evidence behind them, but he also argued that you were in a chicken and egg situation. How can you obtain the evidence if you didn’t try them?
He made the decision to issue the treatment anyway.
That was three months ago, and the first six-week cycle actually saw a distinct improvement for Christine Close. Both mother and son were happy, until Gary had had his accident. The pressure and the love for her son proved too great and, much to the annoyance of Iain Ross, she missed one of the two-week cycles. Which, in his opinion, was why they were in the position they were in today.
He glanced across the desk and saw the picture of his beautiful late wife, Theresa. The photo had been taken before their son, Adam, had been born, nineteen years ago. How young and glamorous and carefree she had been then; a whole life ahead of them, to do what they wanted, when they wanted. No worries, no troubles. He soon grew bitter, as he had come to realize that life couldn’t stay that way, and hadn’t done.
No matter how much he hated losing, he simply had to accept defeat once in a while.
After all, neither he nor Ross had been able to save Theresa.
Chapter Twenty-one
Hobson tried to move, but found it impossible. Something was restricting him, even his head. Irritated and frightened, he studied his surroundings, realizing that the room he was in today was different from the one he was in yesterday. He had no idea if it was even the same building.
He was in a cellar or basement, an underground chamber of sorts, as there were no windows. The floor was concrete, the walls bare and unpainted. In one corner he saw a central heating boiler with pipes running up through the roof. He figured it must work, because he was reasonably warm. And he shouldn’t have been, because he was naked. He tried to move, succeeding only in twisting and hurting his back. He needed to quit worrying and start thinking.
His body was trapped in a huge wooden frame. His hands and legs had been fed through big thick beams that resembled railway sleepers. Above them, sticking out at angles, were a series of levers. Because of his limited vision, he could not see beyond that, nor how his hands and legs were restrained.
He glanced downwards. Underneath him was a large bucket, obviously for waste. In front of him was a computer monitor, which at that moment was not switched on. A tower unit and keyboard sat on a shelf built into the wooden frame. A foot away from his mouth he could see a microphone.
Who had him, why, and what they were doing, was a complete mystery. He hadn’t even seen anyone.
He thought back over the time he had been held captive. To his recollection, it had been approximately four weeks. The last thing he could physically remember was returning to his car at The Harrogate Arms, a beautiful old building on the outskirts of the town, ideally situated to conduct his business. He could not remember leaving, only waking up in a strange and uncomfortable room with a bed, and nothing else. He had been chained to the wall, and had a bucket for a toilet within easy reach. He had also been fed and watered, but not in vast amounts. All of which had been placed in the room while he’d been asleep.
Another thing that had concerned him was his state of health; he had grown progressively weaker in the time he had been imprisoned.
The first seven days had been fine. His problems had started during the second week, where he had suffered serious headaches, and pains in almost all of his joints. For a while he’d thought he’d been forced to take the drugs from which he’d made a prosperous living. He also worried that his food had been contaminated, or that he was coming down with something.
The last week, however, had made him take stock of how serious his condition was. He’d started vo
miting and, yesterday, he’d had to put up with bloody diarrhoea. Seeing where he was now, he doubted very much that drugs or food were responsible. Nor did he think he was coming down with anything natural. To top it off, during the course of the last few days, a constant hammering and banging and drilling had driven him almost to the point of madness, as apparently his captors must have been making the very thing he was trussed up to now. At one point he had heard conversation, indicating there was more than one person involved in his abduction.
Without any warning, he felt as if a red-hot poker had been shoved inside of him. Every nerve end burned as if he’d been connected to the mains. Hobson arched his back, his body pulling as taut as the frame would allow. He screeched, his voice hoarse and raw. As the pain subsided, his stomach started to rumble. He knew all too well what that meant.
He desperately wanted to know who had him, and why. The only connection he could make was drugs. There were enough dealers out there, all wanting a slice of the action, each as nasty as the next.
One thing Lance did know was that if the bastard ever made the mistake of letting him go, he wouldn’t live very long.
Jackie Pollard came to mind. That man had wanted his territory for some time now. And he also craved revenge for what had happened in Armley all those years ago. He’d never trusted Pollard.
But if Pollard had him, how had he done it? Who had he been working with? And did he have Alex and Sonia, or were they working with him?
No, he couldn’t see that. Couldn’t accept it. Neither of those two would ever sell him out, so the only conclusion he could count on was that Pollard had all three of them.
Hobson’s body had been so wracked with pain, he hadn’t realized that something within his environment had changed.
He raised his head a little. It was a small but very significant change.
The computer monitor had come to life.
Chapter Twenty-two
Gardener and Reilly found Fitz sitting at his desk, in an office that was extremely tidy. Folders were neatly stored and labelled and within easy reach. A midi hi-fi sat on a shelf behind him, currently playing something classical, but Gardener had no idea what.
