Gradually the groaning sound took on a different tone, and he felt Leo’s shoulders stiffen.
‘Shit,’ he muttered as he recognised the sound of his mobile vibrating on the chest of drawers. ‘Sorry, Leo. I can’t ignore this.’
Tom could feel Leo’s eyes following him as he walked towards the chest of drawers, and he heard a moan of frustration.
‘Come back to bed, Tom. You can’t leave me now.’
He had no choice. It wasn’t a call, though. It was a text.
Tasha’s been living with man called Rory. Drives a big motorbike, not a Harley. Calls her Shelley. Ollie’s not with him.
It’s definitely going to happen tomorrow - today now, I suppose. Natasha asked about dead girl - asked if it was Izzy.
Don’t know any more than that. Emma.
He turned to look at Leo, both palms upwards in a gesture of hopelessness.
‘Who is it?’ Leo asked.
Tom shook his head. ‘Sorry, I can’t say. I have to go, though.’
Leo’s frown lasted no more than a second or two.
‘Go,’ she said, ‘before I jump out of this bed and grab you.’
‘Sorry,’ Tom said again, snatching up a handful of clothes and making for the door.
‘And stop apologising,’ was Leo’s parting shot.
Tom closed the door quietly behind him and made the call.
‘Becky? Sorry about this. My office, half an hour please. Get the rest of the team too, if you can. We need to work quickly.’
33
Day Five
The side of the bed dipped as Emma slowly became aware that sunlight was flooding in through the open curtains. The early-morning torpor seeped away as the horror of yesterday flooded through her veins, and she sat up abruptly, pain ripping through her – undiminished by the passing hours.
Ollie. I miss you, sweetheart.
David was perched on the side of the bed, and she noticed a mug of tea on the bedside table, its mottled surface telling her it was cold.
‘You managed to sleep, then,’ David said.
It was true. She couldn’t believe that after everything that had happened she had actually slept. Maybe knowing that Ollie wasn’t coming home any time soon had lifted the burden of waiting for long enough for her to get a few short hours of restless sleep. But now, he filled her heart and mind again.
Ollie.
Emma’s whole body craved the feel of his soft skin, the sound of his shouting and laughter, his warm milky smell after his last bottle of the day. How could pain that wasn’t inflicted by a physical assault hurt so much? How could emotional distress turn into this agonising emptiness? She could touch the parts of her that ached, but she knew of no analgesic that would relieve the pain.
She didn’t have to say any of this to David. She knew he would be feeling it too, and so much more.
‘I didn’t mean to sleep so long, but I was still awake at four and then I guess exhaustion took over. How are you?’
‘Pretty shitty, as I’m sure you are. I must have woken up as you went to sleep. It was your feet that woke me. They were like blocks of ice – you must have had them outside the covers or something. But I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, and I thought I’d disturb you with my tossing and turning, so I went downstairs.’
Emma could remember coming to bed, still shivering, her whole body reacting not only to the cold, but also to Natasha’s grim warning. She desperately wanted to tell David what had happened, what she had learned and how she had sneaked into Ollie’s room to text Tom before she got into bed, but suddenly she remembered what Tom had told her. There was a bug in their bedroom, and anything she said would be heard by somebody, somewhere.
Emma pushed back the covers.
‘I’m going to have a bath – I need to clear my head. Come and talk to me?’
‘I’ll go and make you a fresh mug of tea and bring it with me.’
He leaned towards her and they wrapped their arms round each other in a tight hug. A fraction of the pain seeped out of Emma’s limbs, only to return the minute they let each other go.
*
The bath water was scalding hot, but Emma welcomed the stinging sensation on her flesh. She thought about those deeply religious people who engaged in self-flagellation – something she had always thought of as indescribably stupid. She could almost appreciate it now – maybe the physical pain helped to relieve some inner emotional pain that nobody else could understand.
The door nudged open.
‘Christ, it’s like a Turkish bath in here. Can I open the window, Em? I can’t actually see you through the steam.’
‘No, please don’t. Sorry – if it’s too hot for you, take your jumper off or something.’ Emma didn’t know if their voices would carry through an open window but she wasn’t prepared to risk it.
‘I’ll leave the door open, then.’
‘No, shut it please, David. In case Tasha comes in and hears us.’
She was certain that wouldn’t happen, but their voices might reach the bug in the bedroom.
In her mind, Emma had a hundred things to discuss with David. But she wasn’t sure that he would be able to handle the fact that she had involved the police. It wasn’t worth the risk of telling him.
‘Listen, David, I know how much you want to protect Tasha. She’s your little girl and you love her. I totally understand that. Whatever she does, your love for her is unconditional and undiminished. But I noticed yesterday that when I talked about how Ollie loves her – when I put the pressure on – she wobbled. Only a bit, but she wobbled. I’m going to work on her from that angle.’
‘Work on her? Jesus, Emma, somehow that sounds so callous. You make her sound like a seasoned criminal.’
Emma resisted the temptation to mention drug mules or abducted babies.
‘We both want the same thing,’ she said in a calm voice that belied her inner turmoil. ‘She told us yesterday that whatever they want it’s going to be today. I need to lower Tasha’s defences somehow and I don’t want you to react.’
‘Are you sure that’s the right strategy? We don’t know what they want, yet, and if we upset Tasha too much isn’t there a chance that this will all go horribly wrong?’
Emma frowned. ‘What do you mean? Surely they just want money from us?’
‘I doubt it. I’m not sure that makes sense,’ David said. ‘Why take our child? We’re not rich or famous – there must be better options around than us.’
‘So what the hell is it?’ Emma sank lower in the bath, suddenly cold at the thought that Tom’s wealth might not be the solution she had been hoping for. She watched David’s face and couldn’t push away the thought that he was hiding something from her
‘Maybe they want to coerce us into doing something for them – something criminal.’
What? What could he possibly mean? What if they wanted David to plant a bomb that would kill three thousand people, or walk into a bank and shoot innocent women and children – men too, come to that? Would he be able to do it? Would he hold a gun to a child’s head if they asked him to, to save Ollie?
Emma burst into tears and David leaned over and grabbed her – pulling her close, oblivious to the hot water soaking through his shirt.
‘It’s okay, Em. I can do it. I know I can. But if you feel better trying to get Tasha onside, I’ll support you.’
Emma held on to David tightly. She needed to feel his arms round her. She didn’t want to let go of everything they’d always had together, but, close as his body was to hers, Emma could sense a wall growing between them. It felt as if David knew what these people were going to ask, and she was more convinced than ever that there was something he wasn’t telling her.
34
The early hours of the morning had reaped unexpected results for Tom’s team. By 4 a.m. everybody had been briefed and a plan had been agreed.
The name Rory had been the clue, particularly when coupled with the motorbike. Desperate as Tom was
to scan the police database to see if anybody by that name had a criminal record, he was wary of doing anything on a computer. If somebody inside HQ was working for this bunch, a search for the name Rory might be flagged. He couldn’t risk it.
He and Becky had realised they needed somebody from the organised crime team – somebody with experience of drugs and their dealers. Natasha’s behaviour on the train and the suspicion of her involvement in the distribution of drugs was the only tenuous link they had to a criminal gang, so Philippa had recommended a colleague of hers from her inspector days – DS Andy Hughes. He had been working under cover for a couple of years and was just getting back into a slightly less dangerous role as a regular detective. Beard gone, hair shorn to quarter of an inch all over, body toned from hours in the gym, he was unrecognisable. At least, that’s what he obviously hoped. Only the depths of his dark-brown eyes gave any hint of the strain of the job he had done for all that time.
His involvement on the team paid off immediately as Tom described the person Emma had seen with Natasha.
‘I think I know who this is, sir,’ Andy said. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s Rory Slater – from out Cadishead way. Lives in a big, run-down Victorian house with his wife – Donna, she’s called – and a massive brood of kids. He’s small fry – just distribution. He wasn’t one of my targets, but I knew who he was. Rory was clearly shit-scared of whoever was pulling his strings. This gang’s the real deal, I’m sorry to say.’
‘How do you think he ended up with Natasha, then?’ Becky asked.
Andy shook his head. ‘I don’t know. My best guess is that some lowlife found her and thought she might be useful. Perhaps he thought there’d be a price on her head, or something, and he’d be able to cash in. When there wasn’t, he was landed with her. Unless you’re a complete numpty you don’t go trying to extort money from the dad when he’s surrounded by police, as David Joseph would have been at that time. And there are so many kids in Rory’s house that one more wouldn’t be noticed – half of them don’t seem to bother with anything as mundane as school. I’m sure he finds other uses for them.’
It had felt like a major breakthrough, but it was disappointing – if unsurprising – to find that Rory Slater was at the bottom of the food chain when it came to this group.
According to Emma, Rory claimed he didn’t have Ollie. Tom was desperate to get into that house, though. He had to be absolutely certain that Ollie wasn’t there but at the same time, he couldn’t risk alerting the gang by ordering a full-scale raid. A more subtle approach was required.
They were going to put the Slaters under surveillance and Becky started to set the wheels in motion.
‘Any chance Slater would recognise you, Andy, if you went in as a detective looking into something involving one of his kids?’ Tom asked.
‘Nope – even my own mum didn’t recognise me when I was under cover. I wore contacts to change my eye colour, so it would take somebody a tad brighter than Rory Slater, who’s never actually met me, to recognise me as the same pisshead who was in the pub a couple of times when he was there. And he never heard me speak.’
‘Okay, we’ll set up the surveillance, but I’d like to get a feel for what goes on in that house, and we need to know if Ollie’s there. That would certainly make things easier. We’ll wire you up, Andy, so we can listen in. You okay with this?’
Andy gave a nonchalant shrug and Tom knew that an assignment like this was nothing to him.
The surveillance team had identified a row of shops opposite the Slater home with vans coming and going all day, so their vehicle wasn’t going to stand out at all, and everything was in place by ten o’clock in the morning. Already the wide, toy-strewn front garden of Rory Slater’s house in Cadishead was full of kids.
From the van, Tom watched as Andy pushed open a wooden gate that was hanging off its hinges. A couple of the children looked at him enquiringly, but the other three ignored him.
‘Is your mum in, son?’ Andy asked one of the boys. Tom could hear him clearly.
The boy grunted a noncommittal response.
‘Your dad?’
‘Nah – he’ll be down the bookie’s. We won’t see him till dinner.’ This sounded like a younger voice, and Tom could see Andy crouching down to the level of one of the children. Andy fished a picture out of his inside pocket. It was a photo of the boy from the train.
‘Is this one of your brothers?’ he asked, keeping his voice level and friendly.
‘Never seen him before,’ came the reply. Even from the van, Tom could see that the boy hadn’t even glanced at the picture. These kids were trained from an early age, it seemed.
A girl of about nine strode up to them and stopped dead, hands on hips.
‘Whoever you are, piss off.’
Andy spoke calmly to her.
‘Be a good girl and go and tell your mum that I want to see her, will you?’
‘No. She don’t like bad news. Who are you, any road?’
‘I’m DC Hughes.’ They’d agreed that he would play down his rank. It was unlikely they would check his warrant card.
‘DC short for Dick, is it,’ she muttered with a laugh at what she thought was an original joke. She turned and went back into the house, and Andy followed. They could no longer see him, but they could hear every word.
‘Nice banner, kids. Welcome home, Shell.’
There was a clatter in the background.
‘Steady on, son – we don’t want you falling off that ladder.’
There was a grunt in the background and what sounded like ‘fuck off’ but Tom couldn’t be sure.
‘That’s a nice welcome message for somebody,’ Andy said. ‘Who’s Shell?’
‘She’s our sister.’ It sounded like a little girl speaking.
‘Shut up, idiot,’ an older voice growled. ‘And you – piss off. You shouldn’t be in here without a warrant.’
Andy refrained from responding, but Tom could picture his expression of mild disdain. In his experience it was always best when kids tried to rile you to treat them with contempt. Most didn’t have the confidence to continue with their abuse if they thought they were being mocked.
‘Who’s the candle for?’ Andy asked
‘What’s all the bloody noise about?’ The voice came from somewhere further away and was quite faint, growing in volume as the speaker got closer to Andy. Nobody answered.
‘Mrs Slater?’ Andy said. There was the sound of a baby crying and the listeners in the van stiffened for a moment. ‘Cute baby,’ Andy said. ‘What is she, about eight months?’
Clever guy, Tom thought.
‘She’s nine months, not that it’s any of your bleeding business,’ the woman muttered, an aggressive note cutting through the wheezing tones of too many cigarettes.
‘If you’ve come about the kids and school, you can sod off. I do me best, but there are twelve of ’em, and I ain’t got a car. Sometimes we walk, but I’m not too good on me legs – so tell me what I’m supposed to do, will you?’
‘Twelve kids – that’s quite a handful,’ Andy said conversationally. ‘All yours, are they?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing – I wondered if you fostered, that’s all.’
‘A few are me sister’s kids. She doesn’t like ’em much, so they’ve come to live with me.’
Tom made a note to check up on Donna Slater’s sister as soon as Andy was out of the house.
‘So what do you want, then? My Rory’ll be back soon, and he don’t like you lot, so best make it snappy.’
‘We’ve only got one question, Mrs Slater,’ Andy said. ‘Do you know this lad?’ There was a brief pause.
‘Look at the picture, Mrs Slater,’ he said. ‘I mean it – look at it properly.’
‘Don’t recognise him,’ was her only response after all of two seconds, followed by a brief bout of coughing.
There wasn’t a sound from the Slater’s living room. It was as if the children had
left, or maybe each child was holding his or her breath to see what Donna Slater would say. Suddenly it was filled with sound again as if a button had been pressed, and Tom guessed that there had been some silent communication between the woman and the kids.
‘Thanks for your time, Mrs Slater. Hope you have a happy reunion with your daughter when she gets back.’
‘How the fuck do you know about that?’ came the angry response.
‘Call it intuition, Mrs Slater. Or perhaps it could be something to do with that bloody great banner on your wall.’
*
A few minutes later, Tom watched as Andy wrestled with the broken gate and start walking towards them. As he walked he started to talk.
‘They know the lad. No doubt about it. If you’re right and the girl Natasha is known to them as Shelley, they’re definitely expecting her home tonight or tomorrow. At a guess, the lad you’re interested in from the train was in his bedroom. I saw a little kid get a nod from one of the older ones and sneak off upstairs – I would imagine to tell him to hide. Not that I had any right to search anyway. I don’t think the baby was there, though. I think they would have been more frightened by my visit. The kids look scruffy, but not malnourished. Not the healthiest of specimens – you know, a bit grey-looking rather than pink and rosy – but not skinny and I didn’t see any bruises. Mind you, they all had jumpers on because the house is bloody freezing.’
Andy walked straight past the van without slowing down or looking at it.
‘The kids know what they’re about. Not one of them looked at the picture, probably trained that way because they’re too young to be able to disguise emotion. I got the feeling that the kids stick together, but when they heard Donna coming they all busied themselves. A couple made themselves scarce. But no sign of Rory. I’ll call at the bookie’s – see if he’s there. I’ll let you know if he is. One other thing. They had a candle burning and a picture of a girl propped up behind it. Blonde girl, looked about twelve. See you later.’
Tom gave it five minutes and then exited the van, leaving the surveillance team to do their job. He needed to check how many children should be in that house, whether Donna Slater had a sister and, if she did, whether one of her kids was missing.
Stranger Child Page 16
