George, Emma and Whittaker stood around the chief inspector’s desk. No one spoke. There was a brief rap at the door and Emily Ryker bustled in without waiting.
George thought Ryker looked just as shocked as everyone else. He looked from person to person. This was a room full of people not easily rattled under normal circumstances, but this had caught them all on the back foot.
‘Hey. The boss said you wanted me here,’ Ryker said quietly to Whittaker.
‘We need everyone we can get with a sane and rational mind right now,’ he said.
There was a shrill tone, and Ryker snatched her phone up to her ear.
George looked through the partition window, across the Major Crime floor. It was starting to fill up. Any detective doing anything other than this job had been called back in. They would be asking for help from other counties, too — anyone able-bodied with a warrant card if George had his way. It didn’t matter how Roberts had escaped, not right now, just that he had. George didn’t dare think what his next move would be.
Ryker finished her phone conversation quickly. She was flustered.
‘Everything okay, Ryker?’ George said.
She ignored him and spoke to Whittaker directly. ‘Sir, do you have a radio?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Whittaker gestured at the handset in a charging cradle on his desk. Emily snatched it up.
‘Traffic are behind a van. They got an ANPR hit from their onboard camera. White van, same reg. It deviated when they got behind it.’
‘Where?’ George said.
‘M20 — London bound. It’s pulled off the motorway. They haven’t made any attempts to stop it yet. It’s Maidstone rural.’ Emily fidgeted with the radio. It suddenly erupted with excited voices. They announced that that they were going to attempt to stop it. George guessed that traffic had followed it until the armed backup could arrive. Everyone in Whittaker’s office was utterly silent as they exchanged looks. The radio hissed back into life. ‘Vehicle is stop, stop!’ Sirens were clear in the background. The radio fell silent again.
Chapter 28
The two armed officers approached the van from the rear, their side-arms clutched firmly in both hands, lowered but ready. The two unarmed traffic officers tucked in tightly behind them. The armed officers split. One made for the driver’s door, the second strode beyond to get a view through the windscreen where he saw the driver. He gestured at him to show his hands. Both officers had a view of him but from different angles. The driver didn’t respond immediately and they both bawled at him to comply. The engine was still ticking over. The officer closest to the driver’s door wrenched it open. He barked at the seated man not to move then reached in and grabbed the keys. The man was bundled out of the van and put face down. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
Attention turned to the rear of the van. An officer reached out for the handle to the rear door. He rested a hand on it. He waited for a jerked nod from his colleague who was a step further back.
His gun was levelled. The door swung open.
* * *
Annie squinted and blinked in the sudden flood of light. She tried to lift her head, but her neck was stiff and shot with pain. Her wrists were sore. They were bound tight with coarse rope that further hindered her movements. She turned her head away from the light and saw the girl lying next to her. She had been making noises in the darkness, in reaction to the thuds and movements of the van. Just moans, nothing discernible. Annie had given up trying to talk to her.
She tried to look back up at the doors. The whole of the back of the van was a fiery white. The sun was at the perfect angle to beat down into her eyes. A figure stepped across, casting enough shadow for her to make out some detail. It was someone new. She didn’t recognise him. He was taller than her captor. Taller and broader. A full beard dominated his face. His hair was long too. It fell round piercing, dark eyes that stared straight at her. The younger man appeared next to him. This one she did recognise. He was beaming, delighted.
‘What do you think?’ he said.
‘Perfection.’ The man’s beard shook as he spoke. His voice was deep, almost a growl. His eyes were still fixed on her and he licked his lips.
‘I told you, Henry, didn’t I? I said she would be perfect!’
‘You did.’
Suddenly the daylight was gone. The slamming of the door made her jump. The female lying next to her moaned. She almost formed words this time, then sighed heavily. Annie heard two more thuds. The engine started back up and the van started moving again.
* * *
Ryker was listening intently to her phone. The radio had been silent too long and Whittaker had instructed her to call for an update. After a few seconds she shook her head, her eyes dropped to the floor and she exhaled loudly. George turned away. He walked a few paces to a shelving unit and brought his fist down hard. Something bounced off, he heard it hit the floor but didn’t see it. His eyes were tightly shut.
‘Okay. Thanks for letting me know.’ Ryker ended her call.
George suddenly felt unsteady. He pulled a chair towards him and slumped into it.
‘It’s not our van,’ Ryker said. ‘Nothing in the back. The driver checks out. It’s a Highways van and he’s a Highways worker. It’s likely they’ve had contact with it, though — the suspect plates have been stuck over the existing ones. Not very well either by all accounts. The driver just didn’t notice.’
‘Do we know where he’s been, where’s he stopped? Anything?’ Whittaker sounded desperate. George felt it too.
‘He’s being spoken to now by the officers. He’s not long dropped off a couple of other lads but I’ve got no more than that. It’ll all be covered.’
‘They’ll have been careful,’ George said, miserably.
‘Yes, George! It’s a long shot, but we have to give it a go!’ Emma interjected. ‘We have to hope that they made a mistake somewhere. Stop being so fucking negative!’ She leant on the wall, her hand to her nose as if she was fighting back tears. ‘I’m sorry, George, okay? I didn’t mean to have a go.’
‘Don’t be,’ George said. ‘We need a next move ourselves, here. We never really expected to get this bloke with a traffic stop, did we? We need to dust ourselves off. Ryker, where are we with the financial checks?’
Ryker still looked deflated. ‘I er . . . I spoke to my contact over the phone. Right from the start she wanted a signed superintendent’s authority to be snooping around in someone’s accounts. It’s highly regulated. I convinced her to at least make a start. I told her I’d be able to get the authority. Without it she can’t give me anything we can use evidentially. She found some activity that she could only tell me about off the record.’
‘Activity?’
‘Yeah. Large amounts of money going in and out of that business account. Amounts that wouldn’t make sense for a café. What stood out were four transactions in four days, all were for fifty thousand pounds each. They were all moving from that account to the same place.’
‘To where?’
‘It looks like a trust of some sort. A charity, she thought.’
George scowled. It wasn’t uncommon for criminals to use trusts to wash their money.
‘What trust?’
‘I don’t know the exact details. It was a Christian fund. The address was a church back up in Emma’s area. It was a funny word, I wrote it down somewhere, it’ll be back at my desk.’
‘St Dubricius’s?’ George said.
‘That’s it!’ Emily said.
‘That’s Roberts’s church,’ Emma said.
‘It is. Where I upset your vicar, remember?’
‘You did. So what’s the link there? I guess it might make sense for him to give his money away to the church. It’s all he cared about.’
‘It would if he was staying in prison. But he always intended on coming out. And why now? Ryker, when were the transactions?’
‘She went back twenty-eight days. She needs to go further really, considering he’
s been in prison for a couple of years. But without those authorities we’re getting nothing more. Those transactions were a couple of weeks old.’
‘I was there just a couple of days ago. We need to go and see him, Emma. That’s good work, Ryker. Was there anything more?’
‘Not without the right authority. I spoke to the boss, here. We’re being warned off doing much round this — am I right, sir?’
‘Absolutely,’ Whittaker said. ‘There’s a big hoo-ha, as you can imagine. They don’t want us anywhere near it right now. The brass from headquarters have set up their own resources to run an investigation into how Roberts was able to walk away from a secure unit in the first place. I would rather they didn’t know that we were looking at finances. Everything we do needs to be under the radar, please.’
‘Don’t worry, Major,’ George said. ‘You know me and the radar. I’m barely a blip. Emma, I think we need to go and see your vicar friend.’
Emma looked pensive. ‘He doesn’t like me, George. He told me he doesn’t like you either. What if he complains? He did before. That’s hardly staying off the radar, is it?’
‘It’s fine. We’ll be a couple of hundred miles away from here so nobody else will have got to him yet. We need to be swift, though. And we need to make sure we get everything first time. Do you have his home address?’
‘There’ll be one on file. He gave statements.’
George turned to Whittaker. ‘Major, we need to get back up the line. I can’t do much here at the moment. If we’re about to come under a lot of scrutiny, that can only hinder us.’
‘Well, you are far more likely to be left alone in Symonds Yat. I’ll do my best to attract the heat for the time being. I don’t think it will be long though before people realise that you were the main police contact with Roberts.’
‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘Well, whatever. If you’re not here, you can’t be asked about it. Go and take the holiday you had booked. There’s no reason not to.’
‘Holiday, Major?’
‘The cottage up in Symonds Yat. It’s still booked out for another couple of days. I suggest you use it.’
George couldn’t help but grin. ‘I’d forgotten all about that place.’ He checked his watch then looked at Emma. ‘If we leave now we might be able to get to catch our vicar today.’
‘We might.’ Emma looked unsure. ‘I don’t see him giving us any information, George. We shouldn’t put all our hopes on that conversation. Roberts was a devoted parishioner. On the surface, him doing what he could to make a donation could be plausible.’
‘I agree, on the surface. But John Lawrence made a mistake. He gave me a little glimpse under the surface.’
‘How so?’
‘He asked me for money.’
Chapter 29
The monotone roar of rubber on tarmac was the only sound accompanying their journey up the M4. George was in a hurry. Emma looked through reports and logs for the first forty minutes of the journey and said nothing. George had expected questions, criticisms maybe, frustrations definitely. He got silence. When she put her paperwork back in the bag tucked between her feet, she turned towards the window and that was where her attention stayed. The silence was becoming awkward. He was hunting for something to say — the right thing to say. It was Emma who spoke first.
‘Do you think she’s dead already?’ She was still facing the window and her voice was low.
‘No, I don’t think she is.’
‘He likes to savour it, doesn’t he? The whole thing. From start to finish. He probably enjoys this bit as much as the act. The build-up, I mean. He definitely enjoys the fear. And she will be scared, George. Can you imagine how terrified she must be right now? Assuming she’s still alive.’
‘No. I can’t, to be honest. And we shouldn’t be trying to either. We need to focus. Roberts is still weak. He has to be. I know we’ve been deceived about his condition but he’s still barely eaten in months. He’ll take a while to recover. And I think he’ll want to be stronger before he does anything. Like you said, he’ll want to savour it and . . .’ Emma had turned to look at him. ‘And what, George?’
‘I was just going to say . . . it takes strength to do what he does. I’ve thought about it — far too much to be honest. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it. Dragging that bull, and a girl fighting for her life.’
‘It’s possible though. With two of you. Once you find a remote enough spot you can take your time. Rest up,’ Emma said.
‘Plenty of remoteness around Symonds Yat. Do you think he’ll head back there?’
‘I do. It might make sense to go elsewhere if he’s considering the odds of getting caught, but I don’t think he is. He knows the area around there. That remote spot he’s looking for? There are hundreds of them, and I bet he knows just about every one. I don’t think getting caught has crossed his mind. Yes he’s been clever around the van but I think it’s just to get him back to where he wants to be.’
‘So he should be easy to find?’
‘I didn’t say that. We just need to be sure . . .’ This time Emma ran out of steam. George didn’t push her. He reckoned he knew what she was going to say.
She sucked in a deep breath and seemed angrier. ‘We can’t let it happen, George. Not again. The first time around we were chasing shadows, we had no clues at all. Then we got a break and we had him in a cell. He was chained to a fucking bed. Tried and convicted, but for those girls who were already gone . . . we can’t let it happen again. We had him!’
‘I know that, Emma, I know. There’s another reason I don’t think he’s hurt her yet.’
‘What other reason?’
‘Something he said to me when I visited him in prison, after we found both those girls and he told me how they had died together. I wasn’t going to talk to you about it but you guessed anyway. He did make one of those girls watch. And he loved every minute of it. It is about fear with him. Fear, control and power. He feeds off it. And I think he found his sweet spot when he had those two girls together. When he spoke to me, when I looked into his eyes, I knew that if he ever got the chance again he would be sure to have two.’
Both of them fell silent again. Neither needed to speak. They knew what it all amounted to: they were running out of time. And Roberts needed another girl.
They stopped for coffee. George didn’t need the drink as much as a break from the silent car — something else to do or say unconnected with this whole mess, even if it was just ordering a black coffee to go. He sensed Emma’s relief when he suggested it too. She didn’t stay with him in the services. She got a bottled water from a different outlet. George wondered if she used the water as an excuse to go somewhere else, to be apart for a little while. Forty minutes later, she still hadn’t opened the bottle and he knew he was right.
Emma’s office was still and stuffy when they finally got there. She pushed the windows open and woke her computer. There was a stack of box files on a table that was separate from her desk with a couple of seats around it. They all had ‘Op Example’ written on their spines.
‘Op Example?’ George said.
Emma stopped what she was doing. She rested her eyes on the boxes and sighed. ‘The Roberts murders. That’s what the name generator brought up. They’ll be a new Op now, of course, down in Langthorne.’
‘Yep. The force just love giving things titles. Op Bad Example I would suggest.’
Emma managed a smile. Nothing more. She looked tired suddenly. George was feeling it too. She looked beyond him through the partition window to the banks of desks where her detectives sat. George had only seen a couple on his way in. The early shift carried the bulk of the numbers. It was well into the late shift now where it was resourced just for cover from Major Crime.
‘Are you worried about how you’re going to tell them?’ George said.
‘Terrified. Of course I am.’
‘Did you want me to do it? I mean, it’s nothing to do with you, what happened. Th
at way it keeps some separation from you.’
She shook her head. ‘I appreciate the offer, George, but I’m going to have to manage the fallout from all this. It should be me from start to finish.’
‘Just like it was last time?’
‘Yeah, except it isn’t finished, is it?’
‘We will finish this though. Between us all. When are you going to tell them?’
‘Tomorrow. There’s a morning meeting every day. It’s the only time I can guarantee getting everyone together.’
‘What if this gets out before then?’ George said.
‘I thought about that. I spoke to John Whittaker earlier. I called him from the services about that very issue. Your lot are keeping a lid on it for now. It’s been made very clear to him. Apparently they’re concerned they might force Roberts into doing something if they release the information to the press.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Roberts has his own schedule. We won’t prompt him to do anything earlier, we can only hope to delay him.’
‘I agree. I said the same. I also told Whittaker your theory about how he needs some time to recover. He didn’t disagree but, reading between the lines, I think there’s hope that this can be nipped in the bud before anyone has to have a press conference at all.’
‘The one where they admit to letting a Category A serial killer walk away from prison.’
‘It doesn’t seem possible, does it?’
‘It doesn’t. Just a couple of days ago I went to see him at Belmarsh. That place is a fortress. He barely stood a chance of seeing a blue sky again, let alone walking to his freedom. I said from the start that it was where he belonged. When we let him have a little control over his environment he was always going to take more. He played us all. And very well.’
The George Elms Trilogy Box Set Page 70
