Stranger Child

by Rachel Abbott

  Tom heard the other phone ring and imagined her grabbing it out of her pocket.

  He could only hear Emma’s part of the conversation.

  ‘No, I’m not in the bloody car, you’re quite right. I’ve just shifted about ten bags of stuff for you – and it wasn’t easy.’

  Tom frowned. That seemed like something of an exaggeration.

  A thought struck him. He had been so focused on listening to Emma as she brought the bags upstairs that he had stopped looking at the screen while she was obviously out of shot.

  ‘Can you play back the video from about three minutes before the time-lock please?’

  The operator obliged.

  Tom had been right. A dark figure had slipped out of the door and around the corner, back into the night.

  So intently was he watching the screen that he almost missed what Emma was saying, her tone of voice alerting him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Emma wailed. ‘I don’t understand. I’ve done everything you asked.’

  And then she started to cry. Deep, wrenching sobs, with one word choked out between each gulp of air. ‘No. No.’

  He didn’t know what was happening, but they couldn’t wait any longer.

  Tom turned to the silver commander.

  ‘Get that baby out of there now. I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re out of time.’

  Tom’s attention was focused on the images being relayed back to the control room from the covert team at Julie McGuinness’s house. They were in.

  He heard sounds of running feet. Becky’s radio was live, and he could hear her breath as she jogged into the house. He heard her shout a question, and then she sounded as if she was running upstairs.

  ‘Come on, Becky,’ Tom said quietly.

  ‘What?’ he heard her say. ‘Are you sure? Shit! Tom – he’s not here,’ she said. ‘Ollie’s not here. And Julie’s out cold.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Tom shouted, slamming the palms of his hands down on the table.

  *

  ‘Tom – are you there?’ Emma was shouting through her tears, using Tom’s name. She wasn’t even attempting to hide who she was speaking to, and that said it all.

  He took his phone off mute. ‘What’s happened, Emma?’

  ‘Have you got Ollie, Tom?’

  Tom closed his eyes.

  ‘Tom,’ she screamed. ‘Have you got him?’

  ‘Emma, I’m so sorry. He wasn’t where we thought he was. We’re trying to find out where he’s been moved to.’

  ‘No!’ Tom felt the agony in that single syllable and he had nothing to give her.

  Suddenly he heard a car door slam, and seconds later the roar of an engine.

  ‘Emma!’ he shouted. There was no answer.

  Through his radio he heard the voice of Nic Havers.

  ‘Sir, she’s driven off – she’s going fast. Really fast. We’re following – what do you want us to do?’

  ‘Stick with her for now. I’ll get back to you Nic.’

  Tom picked up the phone again. ‘Emma!’ he shouted. There was no answer.

  *

  How did they know? Tom said it would be safe. How did they know?

  The noise of her own thoughts battered Emma’s exhausted brain.

  ‘You’ve got our gold, but we’ve got your son,’ the voice had said. ‘We told you no police – you lied to us, Emma. We don’t like that.’

  She had screamed at them down the phone, but it had made no difference.

  Oh, Ollie, I’m so sorry.

  ‘You need to lose the police – and do it now. What have they given you – a wire, a radio? A phone? Drive away and throw it out of the window. We’ll be watching. Get away from them, then we’ll tell you what to do next. Fuck this up, and your son’s as good as dead.’

  Emma didn’t care about the police – whether they caught these men or not. She wanted her baby back, and this time she was going to do exactly as they said. She flattened her foot to the floor.

  Calm down, Emma. She knew that if she drove too quickly she would be stopped by traffic police – and with a boot full of gold that would be the end of everything. But she had to lose her followers.

  The phone, the phone. She wound down the car window and threw her Australian phone out of the window. She glanced in her rear-view mirror. There was a motorbike behind her, driving in the middle of the road so nobody could get past. She speeded up and the motorbike slowed slightly to block any pursuit. She knew who this was – and he was keeping the detectives from following her.

  She waited, hoping and praying for a call on Tasha’s mobile from the man with the rasping voice.

  *

  ‘Sir, we’re losing her.’ It was Nic Havers again. ‘There’s a motorbike in the middle of the road, going slowly but we can’t get past unless we switch the siren on. He must be one of theirs.’

  Rory Slater, thought Tom.

  ‘And sir – she’s thrown something out of the window. Looks like a phone.’

  Bugger. Somehow they had known that the police were involved. How was that possible?

  ‘I’m going to call David Joseph,’ Tom said to Paul Green. ‘Maybe Natasha felt she’d made a mistake in helping us and decided to contact them. I can’t see how else they could have known. I’ll speak to David and see what he can get out of her.’

  He asked an operator to get through on the Josephs’ home number. There was no reply.

  ‘Try the radio,’ he said. He really needed to speak to David.

  There was no response.

  ‘Send the team into the Josephs’ house,’ he instructed. ‘The gang knows we’re onto them, so there’s nothing to lose. I don’t like this silence.’

  ‘Tom,’ Paul Green had walked over to stand beside him. ‘According to my CHIS, everything’s going ahead as planned. They may be aware that we know about Ollie and the robbery, but Emma was never told where the handover point was, so as long as she’s not followed they’ve got no reason to change it. As far as the CHIS is aware, the handover point is the same. If it changes, he’ll let us know.’

  Tom nodded his thanks and picked up his radio again. ‘Nic – you need to look as if you’re trying to get past the bike – but don’t try too hard. Make it look as if you’re trying to tail her, but lose her. We believe we know where she’s going. If they know you’re still following her, they’ll change to a different handover location, and she’ll be very vulnerable.’

  Tom’s attention was back on the cameras – to the place where he hoped and prayed the exchange was still going to take place. The cemetery was dark, deserted. There was nothing to see.

  A call came through on his radio.

  ‘Mr Douglas, we’re at the Josephs’ place now. The back door’s been kicked in. We found David Joseph on the kitchen floor. He’s in a bad way, sir. We’ve called an ambulance, but he’s been given a real going over.’

  Shit. This was going from bad to worse.

  ‘What about Natasha? Is she okay?’

  ‘Just a moment, sir.’ Tom heard the policeman speak to somebody else. ‘We’ve searched the house and the gardens thoroughly, sir. There’s no sign of the girl. They’ve got her.’

  60

  The McGuinness’ house was stiflingly hot. Becky wiped her face with a scrunched-up tissue. How could they have got it so wrong? The entrance to the property had gone entirely to plan. They’d waited as long as the command team had believed sensible before going in. And now they had nothing. Bugger all.

  Julie McGuinness was lying on her back in the centre of the bed, fully dressed. She was out cold. On the bedside table were a plastic bottle of Temazepam and a blue litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Becky spat the word in frustration into her radio. ‘She’s taken sleeping pills. I’ve no idea how many – there’s a prescription bottle half empty, but she’s been drinking gin with them. Doesn’t look like a suicide attempt – there’s still plenty left in the bottle. At a guess, she hadn’t coped well with a baby screami
ng for his mum. We need to get a medic – see if we can bring her round.’

  From the control room, she heard agreement and knew it would be in hand.

  She looked at the body lying on the bed. What must it be like to be married to a thug like Finn McGuinness? Julie herself was no angel, of course, and was running her own part of the business from a separate property – seemingly involving girls as young as thirteen. Had Julie been like this when she met McGuinness, Becky wondered. Or is that what happened when you got involved with a man like him?

  The woman on the bed had shoulder-length hair, too dark to be natural, and her skin had the orange tinge of a fake tan. In repose, her mouth turned down sourly at the edges, and her heavy dark eye makeup was smudged, running into the creases at the corners of her eyes. Becky imagined that when Julie McGuinness was looking her best she would be quite stunning with her slim body and large chest. But it was all artifice. There was something depressing about her – as if this body on the bed was the real, sad person behind the glamour and riches that her chosen life had brought her.

  ‘You got a minute, ma’am? You might want to look at this.’

  Becky turned at the voice from the doorway. A young policeman, chunky in his ballistic vest, a semi-automatic disarmed and held safely across his body, was indicating a room across the landing and Becky followed him into a large bathroom with a Jacuzzi corner bath and huge walk-in shower. In the middle of the floor there was a plastic changing mat, and a pack of nappies with a picture of a toddler on the front. The policeman picked up one of the nappies and handed it to Becky.

  ‘Don’t know how much you know about nappies, ma’am, but we’ve got a new baby at home and these would go round her twice.’

  Becky nodded and walked over to the bathroom bin. Inside were several nappy bags. Ollie had been here.

  So where the hell was he now?

  61

  Stupid, stupid woman. Why did she always have to think that she knew best? Why hadn’t she just gone along with everything like David had wanted?

  The thought of David brought it all back to her. How could he have done that to Caroline and Tasha? And now – all because of his reckless actions six years ago, she had lost her baby. She lifted both hands and banged them on the steering wheel.

  Where’s Ollie? Why hadn’t Tom found him?

  ‘Ollie, darling, I’m coming for you I promise,’ she shouted out loud, hoping that some telepathic channel of communication, as yet undiscovered, was working between her and her baby boy.

  Emma tried not to think about what had happened in the vault. She parcelled up the thoughts, the questions, and pushed them to the back of her mind. There would be time to unpick everything later. For now, there was only Ollie.

  The man had called her again on Tasha’s phone and she had followed his directions. The exit from the motorway was ahead.

  She had no idea what was going to happen. Was she about to meet the men who had taken her son? The men that had taken and kept Natasha for all these years? The men who thought it was acceptable to send a kid shoplifting, stealing, ferrying drugs and so much more? With all her heart she wished she had an automatic rifle so she could rattle off a stream of bullets and shoot the whole lot of them down. It felt for a moment that a lifetime in prison would be worth it to rid the world of scum like these men.

  She took the third exit from the roundabout and drove on. There was no light, the darkness settling like black velvet around her, the yellow beam of her headlights cutting through it, the rear lights leaving a red stain on the wet surface in her wake.

  *

  The control room fell quiet as the images on the screen showed something happening in the empty cemetery. It had begun as a low hum, getting louder as the vehicle came into view. Three men got out of a van, balaclavas rolled up, their faces revealed.

  ‘Thank God,’ Paul Green said softly. ‘He’s here. The main man.’

  Tom felt a moment’s sympathy for Paul. This should have been the moment they prepared to move in and take Guy Bentley – everything they had been working towards. But with Ollie still missing, it was a risk they couldn’t take.

  Tom looked at the screen, and although it was more than twenty years since he had last seen him, he would have recognised Ethan Bentley anywhere. Maturity had improved his looks, and what had appeared a haughty face on a skinny seventeen-year-old had filled out to become distinguished. His hooked nose and thick lips gave him the appearance of a wealthy playboy, and even on a night vision camera it was easy to see the confidence with which he held himself.

  Finn McGuinness was carrying a gun. His mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were watchful. He turned a full 360 degrees around, his gaze seeming to penetrate the surrounding shrubbery.

  The third man was somebody Tom didn’t recognise. He had been half expecting Rory Slater, but this was probably way above his pay grade. The man had a similar demeanour to McGuinness, but he was much bigger, with the shoulders and upper body of a wrestler.

  They hadn’t spoken, but McGuinness looked at his watch.

  ‘Five minutes,’ was all he said, his voice being picked up by the equipment planted by the Titan team.

  Paul Green spoke into his radio, quietly keeping his team informed. But there was still no sign of Ollie Joseph. Arrest Bentley now, and Ollie might never be seen again. These weren’t men to cave in under interrogation.

  Tom knew that Emma was coming before the audio kit in the cemetery picked up the sound of her car.

  He knew, because three hands went up and pulled balaclavas down over faces.

  *

  Emma rounded the final bend.

  There they were. Three of them, each wearing a mask with a gap for the eyes and the mouth. Just like the one she had seen earlier.

  The men were standing in a row at the back of a van, legs apart, the arms of two of them firmly by their sides, the third clutching a gun that looked like some kind of short-barrelled rifle. A new shockwave of fear tore through Emma’s body. Her chest tightened and her breathing speeded up. She felt a moment of dizziness but fought it back.

  Should she get out of the car, or stay there? She didn’t know. Fighting the temptation to put her foot down hard on the accelerator and ram them all, squashing them flat against their van, she pulled up about four metres away. The man signalled her with the barrel of his gun to get out of the car.

  Not entirely sure that her legs would support her, Emma opened the door and got out. The tallest of the men approached her, signalling to one of his sidekicks – a man with huge shoulders – to get into the Range Rover and pull it around closer to their van.

  ‘Mrs Joseph, or may I call you Emma?’ he said in a voice practically free from any trace of an accent. He spoke as if they had just met at a party.

  ‘Call me what you like,’ she answered. ‘I’ve done what you asked. Now give me back my son.’ The last two words came out as a sob.

  ‘Of course. We’re men of our word, Emma. You shouldn’t have told the police, though. We know that was you.’

  Emma didn’t like the sound of that. How could they have known it was her?

  The man with the gun approached and pulled a device that Emma didn’t recognise out of his pocket. He switched it on and read the screen. He held up one hand.

  ‘Where’s the phone?’ he asked, the thick, harsh tones instantly recognisable as belonging to the man she had spoken to on the phone.

  Emma hadn’t thought it possible to be more frightened, but a chill of terror ran through her body.

  ‘What phone?’ she asked. She had thrown the damned thing away – what could they mean?

  ‘Don’t piss me about, lady. Where’s the fucking phone?’

  Emma stood stock still. He lifted the gun so it was pointing upwards, slung the strap over his shoulder and approached Emma, reaching his hands out and sliding them over her body, lingering on her buttocks. She shuddered. He laughed.

  He ran one hand unnecessarily up the inside of her thig
hs, as far as it could go, lingering there, stroking her with his thumb. Emma stood as still as she could, her skin crawling with disgust.

  ‘Stop arsing around, Finn,’ the boss man said without rancour. ‘Save it for later.’

  The hand moved to the outside of her thighs and stopped at a pocket.

  ‘This phone,’ he said, removing Tasha’s mobile. Why hadn’t she realised they meant that one? She was too terrified to think straight.

  ‘You won’t be needing this again,’ he said, sticking it into his own pocket.

  The man by the Range Rover nodded, and Emma assumed he had checked her car for phones or bugs too. He jumped in and drove it closer to the van and opened the rear doors.

  ‘Shit,’ she heard.

  Had she done something wrong? Panic swept through her. What?

  ‘Watch her,’ the boss man said to the man called Finn as he walked over to the Range Rover.

  He peered into the back, where the bags of gold were stacked, and then he looked at her.

  ‘Bring her over here,’ he instructed.

  She didn’t want to be touched by Finn again, so she went of her own accord.

  ‘How the fuck did you get all this up the stairs on your own, little lady?’ the boss man asked, the enquiring note in his voice barely masking his suspicion.

  ‘Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?’ Emma could hear the quiver in her voice.

  ‘Don’t be smart with me, Emma. We thought you’d only get half this. How did you do it?’

  Finn grabbed her ponytail and pulled it down her back so that her throat was exposed. She was going to die if she didn’t give them the right answer.

  ‘Bloody hard work, that’s how,’ she answered. ‘Adrenaline can do miraculous things to the body, you know.’

  The boss indicated with his head that the gold should be moved into the van, and her hair was released.

  She watched as the huge man hurled the bags into the back of the van as if they weighed little more than a sack of potatoes.

  The last one was transferred.

  ‘What about Ollie? Where’s my son?’

  She saw a nod pass between the man who was obviously the boss and Finn – the weasel with the gun.