Assassin's Web

by Richard T. Burke

  Val gave a slight shake of the head. “Didn’t you tell us it was a burner?”

  “Just because it’s never been used, it doesn’t mean somebody isn’t listening in. Given the circumstances, a bit of paranoia might keep you alive for longer.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  We finished the meal without further argument. After loading the crockery into the dishwasher, we retired to the lounge. Now we’d come to a decision and everybody seemed to have accepted it, the tension eased a little. Nick was still adamant he would leave in the morning. It was clear Val resented his lack of support, but there was nothing we could do about it.

  Nick sat in the armchair while Val and I occupied opposite ends of the sofa.

  “Have you got any other family?” she asked me.

  “Only the one sister,” I replied.

  “And she’s separated from your brother-in-law?”

  “Yeah, she was staying at my mother’s house with her two daughters …”

  A flush rose in Val’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me. I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories. Just ignore my stupid questions.”

  “No, it’s okay. The worst part is knowing her murderer is out there, and the police aren’t even looking for him.”

  “I’m sure they’ll catch the person who did it. After we contact—”

  She stopped talking in mid-sentence. Her words had triggered an intense feeling of déjà vu. She must have noticed a change in my expression because she leant sideways and placed her hand over my own. Her palm felt cool against my skin. Suddenly, the memories came flooding back.

  “Are you alright?” she asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Ah … what you just said. It reminded me of something from my childhood.”

  “Let’s change the subject—unless you want to talk about it.”

  I hesitated for a moment. Other than the investigating police officers, I had never discussed the night of my sister’s abduction with anybody outside my immediate family, and I had only known the other two people in the room for a matter of hours. Nick would not have been my first choice as a confidante, but Val was a sympathetic listener. Given that I might not survive the following day, perhaps it was time to share my story.

  “My mother isn’t the only member of our family to have been murdered.”

  Val’s hand shot to her mouth. Even Nick sat forward in his chair.

  “When I was nine, somebody abducted my sister, Elena. She was six years old. The police kept telling us they’d find her and catch the kidnapper. They failed on both counts. Actually, that may not be strictly true, but it is accurate to say they never prosecuted anybody for her abduction.”

  Val shook her head. “That’s awful. But what do you mean, they didn’t prosecute?”

  “They arrested the man who took her for other offences against children, but they chose not to charge him with my sister’s murder.”

  “Why not?”

  “The main reason is that they considered me an unreliable witness.”

  Chapter 45

  Three years ago:

  Saturday, 20th May, 2017

  Over the course of the year following my sister’s abduction, life gradually returned to something resembling normality. After six months with no significant results, the police scaled back the investigation.

  Every so often, an enthusiastic journalist would resurrect the story, throwing a new hypothesis into the mix. My parents tried to buffer Cathy and me from the rumours that cropped up in the more salacious newspapers although they couldn’t prevent us from overhearing other people discussing those articles.

  For years after the crime, they turned off the television whenever the news came on. On one occasion, I questioned my mother about it. She said we had been through enough pain ourselves without needing to hear about the suffering of others. In those days, the Internet was still in its infancy, so there was little opportunity for the conspiracy theorists to air their views.

  We no longer discussed the events of that night as a family. The subject was taboo at the dinner table. My parents put on a brave face, but beneath the veneer, the loss of their youngest daughter sucked all the joy out of their lives. They argued more, mostly about insignificant issues, and my father’s health began to deteriorate. Soon after, they moved into separate beds. Both drank heavily; it was not unusual to find them in the evening slumped on the sofa asleep, empty glasses resting on the carpet beside them.

  Despite my parents’ reluctance to go over old ground, every year on the anniversary of Elena’s abduction, Cathy would ask me whether I had remembered any more details about the kidnapper. The answer was always no.

  Three years after my sister went missing, my father suffered a massive heart attack and died. The endowment policy paid off the mortgage, and his company’s life assurance scheme added four times his annual salary. In the terms of his will, both Cathy and I became beneficiaries of a trust fund. My mother approached a stockbroker and invested the majority in dot-com stock during the height of the boom in the nineties. After taking further advice, she transferred most into property weeks before the crash of two thousand. By the time I reached the age of twenty-one and gained access, I was fortunate to have sufficient funds in my account to buy a good-sized house in a decent area.

  As we grew older, my surviving sister took a more proactive approach to prevent other families from having to go through the same heartbreak we experienced. At first, she raised money for children’s charities and volunteered her services at weekends. In subsequent years, Cathy donated a large proportion of her income to the same charitable causes.

  The day I finally identified the man who had taken Elena, I popped into a convenience store to buy a pint of milk. On the way to the counter, I passed a newspaper rack. While I waited for the customer in front to pay, my gaze roamed over the headlines. My eye settled on the red top of The Mirror.

  Notorious paedophile released from prison.

  The upper half of a man’s face appeared in a grainy photograph above the fold. He wore a dark woollen hat above thick, bushy eyebrows. His nose was long with a slight bump at the bridge. His eyes stared at a point to the left of the camera. The mouth was not visible, but I had seen enough already.

  In my shock, I dropped the milk on the tiled floor. The carton split, splashing the legs of the woman in front. She whipped around. “Hey, watch out.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, snatching up the paper.

  “You’ll have to pay for that,” the shopkeeper chipped in.

  I fumbled the wallet out of my back pocket, withdrew a ten-pound note and slapped it on the counter.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “Keep the change.”

  I hurried out of the shop, oblivious to the stares of the other customers. My car clunked as I jabbed the unlock button on the remote control. The handle slipped in my haste to haul the door open.

  I sank into the seat, the breath wheezing in my throat. I have never suffered from asthma, but at that moment I felt my airways constricting. My heart pounded as if I had just covered a mile rather than the ten yards from the shop entrance. With trembling hands, I unfolded the newspaper.

  I hadn’t seen the face staring from the page for well over twenty years, but the time dropped away in an instant. Memories surged back into my mind as if it was yesterday: standing at the window, the figure looking up at me, my sister lying on the frozen grass.

  I shook my head in a vain attempt to steady my thoughts. My eyes tried to scan the words, but I found them involuntarily returning to the photograph. There was no question; this was the same man I had seen in the garden that night.

  I forced myself to concentrate and read the article. His name was Donald Cox. Prior to his conviction, he worked as a caretaker at a primary school. He had been sent to prison for the rape of two young children.

  It turned out he had recorded his crimes from cameras hidden inside the school’s toilet cubicles. To make matter
s worse, he shared the material with other paedophiles. That was his undoing. An undercover officer infiltrated the group and traced the identity of one of his victims. Following Cox’s arrest, police discovered thousands of incriminating photographs on his computer involving both girls and boys.

  In his summing up, the judge called Cox a dangerous criminal who had coerced innocent children into performing unspeakable acts. The nature of the crime and the fact he shared the images online resulted in a twenty-year sentence.

  The newspaper revealed that Cox had become a free man two months earlier after serving the majority of his term. The article disclosed that the parole board had declined his application several times over the years before eventually deciding he no longer posed a risk to the public.

  A reporter discovered that the notorious paedophile was living under a different name after an eagle-eyed reader recognised him while out jogging. The paper was calling for the ruling to be reversed and for action to be taken against those who had supported the decision to release him. One of the victims, now an adult, had waived anonymity and come forward to back the campaign.

  Why had I not seen the man’s photograph during the trial? The answer came to me quickly. Seventeen years ago, I would have been fourteen-years-old. That was two years after my father died. At the time, we were still turning off the television whenever the news started. My mother banned newspapers from the house too. It was only when I reached my mid-teens that she relented. By then, my sister’s kidnapping was no longer considered newsworthy.

  What was I going to do with the information? The thought of telling my mother and sister overcame me with the familiar, deep sense of guilt. My mother had never given up hope, and I was reluctant to shatter her illusions.

  My concerns over Cathy were different. If I told her, would it change the way she felt about me? Since my mid-twenties, she had finally stopped asking me whether I remembered anything about that night. Even though she no longer asked the question, I still sensed that deep down she held me partially responsible for the failure to apprehend Elena’s abductor. I resolved to keep the news to myself for the time being.

  But should I go to the police? Or perhaps the newspaper? I quickly rejected the latter; it was already hard enough to live with myself for my inability to identify the kidnapper without the additional burden of bringing the whole story and my sorry part in it to light.

  The law had punished Cox for his original offences, but the court never heard evidence of the more serious crime he had committed. I decided that I owed it to myself and my family to report this new information to the authorities. Once I gauged their reaction, I would determine how much to share with my mother and sister.

  Having made up my mind, I turned on the engine and headed for the multi-story carpark in the centre of Basingstoke. Half-an-hour later, I pushed through the entrance to the police station. A bored-looking officer occupied the front desk. He kept me waiting for several seconds, typing away at a computer keyboard, then looked up.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “I have some information about a murder.”

  Any sense of boredom dropped from his face. “Okay. Can I take your name?”

  “Parrott. Alex Parrott. Two Rs and two Ts.”

  “Your address and phone number?”

  I provided him with the details.

  “Have you got any proof of identity?”

  I pulled my driving license from my wallet.

  “And what is this information, Mr Parrott?”

  Up to that point, I had given no thought to exactly what I would say. “Ah … my sister was abducted twenty-two years ago. We never saw her again.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Twenty-two years, you’re saying? Is that what this is about?”

  “Yes. The man who took her—at the time, I was unable to recall his face. Today, I spotted a photograph of him in the newspaper.”

  “Let me get this straight. You witnessed your sister being taken, but you couldn’t remember what the person looked like?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What was your sister’s name?”

  “Elena.”

  “And how old was she?”

  “She was six, and I was nine.”

  “Elena Parrott. Now you mention it, that does ring a bell. It must have been in the nineties. I vaguely recollect hearing about the case although it was before my time. So, all of a sudden, you have a burst of memory?”

  “That’s right. I saw the man’s photograph in the newspaper.” I placed the paper on the counter. “He’s the one who kidnapped my sister.”

  “Oh, the delightful Norman Cox. So why are you only now remembering what your sister’s kidnapper looked like?”

  I had been expecting the question, but I still didn’t have a good answer. “Um … at the time, they thought it was some sort of amnesia brought about by stress. When I saw his picture today, it jogged the memories loose.”

  The policeman tugged at his earlobe and inspected me without speaking. Finally, he broke the silence. “You’re telling me that for more than twenty years you can’t remember a thing, and suddenly, out of the blue, you recognise the man who took your sister? If that’s true, why didn’t your memory return during the court case? That photograph—or ones like it—would have been all over the press back then.”

  I tried to explain how my parents banned television news programmes and papers from the house after the abduction, but my explanation sounded lame even to me.

  “Are you sure this isn’t about trying to punish a person who committed other crimes against children?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Eventually, a strangled “no” escaped.

  “Okay, Mr Parrott, here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll pass this information on to my superiors. Somebody will contact you in the next few days to inform you how we decide to proceed. How does that sound?”

  I didn’t know how to reply. “Alright, I suppose.”

  “Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’ll be in touch.”

  I left the police station in a daze. I hadn’t known what to expect, but the officer’s reaction surprised me. However, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. How could they trust a statement from somebody who claimed to have recovered a lost memory from twenty-two years earlier? If I was being honest with myself, I would have been just as sceptical.

  It didn’t come as a great shock when two days later a policeman visited me and told me there was insufficient new evidence for them to take the case any further.

  Chapter 46

  I stopped talking. Nick and Val stayed locked in position as if I had pulled the pin from a grenade.

  “What did you do after that?” Val asked, breaking the silence. She and Nick had sat through the whole story without commenting until this moment.

  “What could I do?” I replied. “I didn’t tell my mother or sister for the reasons I mentioned earlier.”

  She drew her legs up onto the sofa. “Isn’t there somebody you can complain to?”

  “What would be the point? After more than twenty years, there won’t be any evidence. And like I said, given my inability to describe him at the time, a court of law would hardly consider my testimony reliable.”

  Nick cracked his knuckles. “This bastard abducted your sister, then in all probability killed her, and nobody wants to do anything about it?”

  Blood rushed to my face. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”

  “What would you do if you could get hold of him and do whatever you liked, just assuming there would be no comeback?”

  “I’d kill him.” The words were out of my mouth before I had time to engage my thought processes. The question had set loose all the feelings of guilt and anger I struggled so hard over the years to suppress. Would I really do it? Was I capable of ending the life of another human being?

  “There’s been enough talk of killing,” Val said, shaking me from my internal debate. “
Let’s change the subject.”

  “What about you, Val?” Nick persisted. “What would you do?”

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “Alright then, a different close family member. If somebody murdered your parents, for example, would you just let it go?”

  Val shuddered. “I would want that person to be punished, but I’d leave it to the law.”

  “But what if the police weren’t interested? That’s what happened to Alex. He knows the identity of his sister’s kidnapper with one hundred per cent certainty, but the authorities won’t do anything about it. Assuming you could kill the murderer without being caught, would you do it? Or would you let them get away with it?”

  “If we went around killing criminals, society would regress back to the dark ages. I mean, where would it end? What about rape, for example? Should we execute rapists?”

  Nick met her gaze full on. “Yes.”

  “And what about people framed for a crime they didn’t commit, or when the police arrest the wrong suspect? You can’t exonerate them once they’ve been executed.”

  “Acceptable collateral damage to coin a phrase from my army days.”

  Val shook her head. “That’s why you and I could never be together. You’ve become accustomed to killing. You think it’s the solution to every problem.”

  “In that case, why did you marry a soldier?” Nick said, raising his voice. “Do you seriously believe Eddie never killed anybody? I saw him kill several men with my own eyes.”

  Val’s face drained of colour. “Don’t bring my husband into this.”

  I glanced at my watch: a quarter to midnight. The room simmered with tension. I tried to change the subject. “About tomorrow; assuming the newspaper are happy to talk to me, how do we meet without anybody else seeing me?”

  Val and Nick continued to glare at each other in silence.

  Eventually, Nick levered himself out of the armchair. “I’m going to pack my bag.”

  Val’s eyes followed him to the doorway. “God, that man drives me nuts. Whenever he leaves, I keep forgetting how annoying he can be. Sorry, Alex, what did you say?”