by Mark Roberts
‘Captain Cyclone doesn’t like liars. In fact, Captain Cyclone hates liars and can’t stand lies. Where did you go with Edgar when you left the abattoir with him?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’
With the front entrance of Trinity Road police station metres away, Neil Wren slowed down and stopped.
‘Why have you stopped by the police station?’
Neil turned the engine off, took the key from the ignition and unfastened his safety belt.
‘Why, Dad? Why have you stopped here?’
‘Edgar’s not the only one who can go on a message. I’m going on a message. I’m going on a message into the police station and you’re coming with me, Wren!’
‘But only police officers and dirty low-life scumbags go into police stations. I am neither of those things, so why? Why should I go into a police station?’
A constable stepped on to the pavement from the police station and looked up and down the street.
‘Get out of the car!’ Neil Wren opened the driver’s door and got out of the car.
‘You’re acting weird, Dad. I don’t like this game.’
Neil slammed his door shut and walked around the front of the car to the passenger door.
Wren lifted his feet from the floor, folded his arms tightly around himself and made himself into a human ball on the passenger seat.
‘But I haven’t done anything wrong, Dad…’
‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you, son? Get out of the car and come with me.’
Neil opened the passenger door and, raising his arm, called, ‘Excuse me, officer!’
The constable walked directly to the car.
‘Take me home, Dad.’
‘You either get out of the car on your own, which makes it look like you’ve got nothing to hide, or the policeman will make you get out and that way you don’t look so good.’
Wren unfolded his arms, shut his eyes tightly and stuck his index fingers in his ears.
‘Is something wrong?’ asked the constable.
Neil pointed in the direction of his son and there was a silence that seemed to stretch all the way to the sky and right back down again.
‘His name’s Robin Wren. He’s my son, and he’s on the autistic spectrum.’
Wren opened his eyes and saw the constable standing right in front of him in the place where his dad had been, looking like he’d just won the lottery.
‘What on earth is all this about?’ asked Wren.
‘Out of the car, Robin,’ said the constable.
Wren undid his safety belt and, getting out of the car, walked to the pavement.
‘You’re coming with me, Robin,’ said the constable.
‘I am?’
Wren burst into a sprint but, moments later, found himself face down on the pavement, rugby-tackled from behind. Pain flooded through his senses from his forehead where he’d landed on the ground. His hands were behind his back and the metal cuffs placed on his wrists pinched his flesh.
‘Ow! Owwwwww, you’re hurting me.’
Somehow or other, Wren found himself back on his feet, the constable holding his right arm.
‘Don’t even think about trying to run away from me, Robin,’ said the constable.
As he marched towards the front door of the police station, Wren looked over at his father and wondered why he was crying.
Wren spoke to his father and he replied, ‘I didn’t catch that, son. What did you say?’
His father’s footsteps followed him into the police station.
‘I want my mum, I want my mum, I want my mum.’
83
7.25 pm
In her mind, Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay processed a string of macabre thoughts.
I am like Annie Boyd, and Amanda Winton, and Francesca Christie. I have come to meet a man I have never met before in my life. Through Riley, he told me his name is Geoff Campbell. This is a lie in a network of untruths that he has been peddling. If he succeeds in abducting me, if the operation goes horribly wrong, the next time I’m seen by another human being I will be dead, scalped, my face missing.
The twisted bottom line hit her with colossal force.
Clay looked at her watch as she walked along the shoulder of the River Mersey in the direction of the Albert Dock and the padlocked railings.
Hendricks walked towards her but looked directly ahead and she recognised another officer, whose name she didn’t know, lighting a cigarette as she leaned against the railings and laughed as the officer beside her cracked a joke.
A group of half-drunk young people dressed in Santa hats and costumes blocked her path as they headed for the Albert Dock, singing along with the Christmas music that blasted out from a loudspeaker inside a nearby pub.
As she came closer to the padlocked railings, Clay watched the coloured lights linking the lamp posts, swaying in the wind.
In her bag, her iPhone rang out. She found herself a pocket of space away from other people, opened her bag and took out the iPhone sitting next to the loaded Glock handgun.
Connecting, she identified herself with, ‘Sally speaking.’
‘Hi, Sally. It’s Barney. Do you have time to speak briefly?’
‘I’m early. I’ve got time.’
‘The TV appeal worked a treat. I don’t want to distract you, but we’ve got the kid in the white van in custody. His name’s Robin Wren and his father walked him in here. We’ve had a lot of calls identifying him as Robin Wren.’
‘Is he talking?’
‘No, but his father is. The kid’s denying it’s him in the van. If that’s the truth, he must have a doppelganger.’
‘Has the father any idea who the driver was?’
‘His name’s Edgar McKee. They work together in the Stanley Abattoir on East Prescot Road in Old Swan.’
‘Have we got a home address for McKee?’
‘Flat 6, 199 Moscow Drive. Winters is on his way over there right now with a search warrant and a couple of shooters for backup.’
‘What’s the kid like?’
‘He’s as bright as a button but he’s extremely autistic. His father says that when he gets something locked in his head, he’s almost impossible to break.’
‘Where is Wren junior at the moment?’
‘He’s in the cells.’
‘Keep me posted up until eight but after that communicate any developments to Bill Hendricks.’
Clay walked on along the back of the Echo Arena and watched people pouring in to see an American stadium rock band.
She took in the city skyline, the two cathedrals illuminated by powerful uplighters, the Albert Dock close to her left and mirrored in the surface of the water at its base.
She recalled the footage of Annie Boyd walking away from the padlocked railings, her head down, and imagined what must have been running through her mind.
I’ve been stood up by a man I’ve never met before because I am worthless and unattractive, and nothing can change that.
Behind her, Clay heard footsteps and sensed the presence of someone following her. She stopped and let the stranger past, a bald man in his thirties who said, ‘Excuse me.’
‘I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that,’ she checked.
He looked back over his shoulder and said, ‘I said, excuse me.’
He didn’t sound anything like the man who called himself Geoff Campbell.
She looked towards the padlocked railings and saw that there was a group of older men and women there but no police officers, an observation that unsettled her for a moment. The group was approached by Riley and Clay’s unease was dissipated.
She checked the time – 7.31.
Clay called her husband on her iPhone and, three rings in, she heard his voice.
‘Eve? Where are you?’
‘I’m at the Albert Dock. It’s freezing.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Heaving with work Christm
as dos, and crawling with armed coppers. As we speak, Gina Riley’s four metres away from me. No one’s looking at me, no one can hear me. I’m blending in perfectly.’
‘How are you feeling, Eve?’
‘A little nervous. I’d have to be a fool not to be. But I’m surrounded by bodies. Nothing can harm me here. You? Are you OK?’
‘No.’ His voice dipped in volume. ‘It’s like I’ve got pins sticking into the soles of my feet.’
‘I’m really sorry, Thomas. How’s Philip?’
Her hair blew up at the sides of her face and, for a moment, she didn’t recognise it as her own hair, felt in that one disconcerting moment that she was residing in another woman’s body.
‘He’s fine. He’s in his bedroom writing a wish list for Christmas. He asked me to send you his love if you called. He wanted to call you but I said we couldn’t. You were in a very important meeting. He accepted it.’
She noticed a black firearms unit van parked up and saw there was no one in the cab, just like there would be no one in the back. Covert rifles were already in place from the Albert Dock to Mariner’s Wharf, to the Coburg Marina Club and beyond.
‘What are you going to do tonight?’
‘There’s a Championship League game on TV. It starts at eight. I’ve promised Philip he can stay up and watch it.’
She imagined herself on the sofa in their front room, herself on one side of Philip and Thomas on the other side of their son, watching second tier footballers slogging it out against each other in the wind and the rain.
Another missed evening with her husband and son twisted the conflicted knife in her core. She heard the sound of a whistle carried on the wind and imagined picking up her sleepy son as the match ended, carrying him upstairs and laying him down to sleep in his bed. The soft blue light from the bedside lamp picked out his features as he drifted into sleep. She brushed his hair to one side and whispered in his ear, ‘Sweet dreams, sweetheart…’
‘Eve, are you still there?’
‘I am. God, I wish I was at home with you.’
‘So do we, we wish it very, very much. But I understand. There’s a monster out there. It’s got to stop, love.’
In the background she heard Philip shout, ‘Dad!’
‘I love you both.’
‘And we love you back just as much. Call me as soon as you can, Eve.’
‘Dad, how do you spell reindeer? Is it with an a or an e?’
‘Of course I will.’
She disconnected the call and, placing her iPhone back in her bag, checked again that she had a loaded gun at her disposal.
As Gina Riley walked away from the padlocked railings, Clay walked towards them.
‘We’ve got the kid in Trinity Road and we’ve got a name for The Ghoul. Edgar McKee.’
Riley nodded and carried on as if she’d heard nothing.
Clay stood with her back turned to the padlocked railings. The people walked away, as if they’d been magically alerted to leave on cue with her arrival.
On the promenade to her right, the wind pushed something metal against a street light, an irregular clanging of metals like a defective bell summoning mourners to a funeral by the river.
Clay stopped and waited as the cold wind bit down on her and pinched her face, just as it had done to Annie Boyd, Amanda Winton and Francesca Christie.
84
7.31 pm
In 199 Moscow Drive, there were six flats spread out over three floors. Winters stepped over the threshold with five armed officers at his back, past the man who had opened the front door of the tall building.
He showed the man his warrant card and said, ‘You’re to stay in your flat. Keep the door closed and don’t come out until we’ve left.’
Winters turned to his colleagues. ‘I’ll have one man on each floor to keep the neighbours indoors. One, two, come with me.’
On the landing of the top floor, he pressed in the timed light and identified the door of Flat 6. With one hand he knocked on the door three times, each time a little louder, and in the other hand felt the weight of the ram.
‘Open up, Mr McKee. It’s the police. I’ve going to give you a count of five. If you haven’t opened the door on five, we’ll ram your door.’
On five, Winters opened the door with one swift blow.
The flat was in complete darkness. Instinct told him that it was empty. There was a concoction of competing odours, musk and sweat at the heart of it, thinly masked by body sprays that did nothing to eradicate the ingrained stench.
Winters stepped inside and turned the light on in the narrow hall. After the armed officers had checked the rooms either side of the corridor, Winters knew that his instinct had been right. McKee wasn’t home.
He turned on all the lights in the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living room and took in how clean and tidy it all was, despite the stale smells.
Stepping into McKee’s bedroom, he saw that the sheet was folded over at the top of the single bed. Fastidious bachelor, thought Winters, opening the wardrobe where shirts, jackets and trousers were lined up in neat rows, the hooks of the hangers all pointing in the same direction.
There was a wooden box at the bottom of the bed. Winters lifted the lid and saw heavy dumbbells of different sizes, imagined what it would be like to get into a fight with a fastidious bodybuilder.
He stepped across the corridor to the kitchen and saw a picture of a cow, labelled to identify each cut of meat on its body. Winters was drawn to the drawers of a sparklingly clean but old-fashioned unit. He opened the drawers at once and saw cutlery lined up in neat sections in one of them and, in the other, a range of professional carving knives that went from an extremely small blade through a rising range of lethal sharps and ending with a plastic-handled cleaver.
Winters pictured the images he’d seen of Annie Boyd and Amanda Winton, post-mortem, their faces and heads flayed, and he shivered at the gleaming metal in the drawer, wondering if these sharp objects had been used to skin them.
A voice came from the living room. ‘DC Winters, can you come in here, please?’
The armed officer stood in front of a tall bookshelf full of DVDs. Winters read the titles on the spines, took one from the shelf and looked at the writhing bodies on the cover. He turned it over to read the blurb and slipped it back on the shelf.
Apart from the bookcase, the room was dominated by three objects. A widescreen television that looked like it had cost at least four figures, a DVD player and a solitary armchair facing it.
Winters let out a heavy sigh and looked up and down the shelves at the titles of the DVDs in Edgar McKee’s living room.
‘He’s got quite a collection of hard-core pornography here,’ said Winters, feeling the urge to run the hand that had touched the DVD under boiling hot water.
He looked around the bare walls.
‘He’s got a state-of-the-art Technogym running machine in the bathroom,’ said the second officer. ‘What do you want us to do, DS Winters?’
‘Ask the guys on the floors beneath us to find out all they can about McKee from the neighbours. Then wait here for Scientific Support to arrive. They’ll pull this place apart.’
85
8.38 pm
Walking back to her car, Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay took out her iPhone and called Stone.
‘Eve, I can see you heading back to your car. He didn’t show!’
‘Are you surprised?’
‘No.’
‘This is a quick one. I want to keep my line clear. I need everyone on their toes. They’re looking out for me but they’re also looking for any lone males in the vicinity. I want those lone males followed and confronted.’
She disconnected the call and remembered the automated message she’d listened to when she called Geoff Campbell’s mobile phone and his answer machine kicked in.
Clay glanced over her shoulder at Detective Constable Emma Simpson from Admiral Street police station, who had been assigned to follow her
back to her vehicle. Simpson’s presence did nothing to stop the tightening in her stomach as she came closer to her car.
As she walked in the footsteps of the dead and abducted, she smiled bleakly at the irony of John and Yoko’s Happy Xmas War Is Over carried on the bitter wind from the Marina Clubhouse.
She caught sight of Detective Sergeant Gina Riley approaching her on the edge of her vision but turned her head so that she didn’t make direct eye contact with her.
There was an incoming message to her iPhone.
Geoff
She opened the message.
Dear Sally I am so very sorry to have let you down. I am also extremely sorry to have to tell you the reason why I couldn’t make our date tonight. My mother died suddenly at 6.30 in the evening. She was crossing a road near where she lives and was hit by a drunk driver and was pronounced dead on the spot by medics. I am currently in the family room of the mortuary at the Royal Liverpool Hospital. I apologise profusely for not turning up for our date and hope you will understand my sad predicament. Love Geoff xxx ps I will make it up to you if you are good enough to give me a second chance. pps I know I should have called you direct but I am unable to speak due to the depths of my grief and I just keep on breaking down.
She stopped at the back of her car and forwarded The Ghoul’s message to everyone on the team.
At the driver’s door of her car, she looked around, turned a whole circle, but the only person she could see was Simpson with one hand on the gun in her coat pocket and the other holding her mobile phone to the side of her face.
Despite the absence of immediate danger, as Clay opened the car door she expected to be attacked from nowhere. Nothing happened.
She turned on the overhead light inside her car and checked the back seat, wondering if Annie, Amanda or Francesca had experienced any sense of imminent danger as they slumped away in defeat at being stood up.
Clay closed the door as she sat behind the wheel and felt her heart pumping, adrenaline flowing through her, and a mixture of emotions; relief that she was physically unharmed and profound disappointment because she didn’t get the chance to face him down and stick him in custody.
