Hunted on the Fens

by Joy Ellis

  ‘That would be a bit extreme,’ said Yvonne flatly. ‘If it were true, which it isn’t.’

  ‘You were here then?’

  ‘I was, and I know for a fact that it was the other way around. The officer in question soon realised that the sparkling young beauty was not what she seemed. He soon saw a dark side to Ruth and immediately ditched her. I forget the full details but I know it was Ruth who threw her teddy in the corner and stirred up trouble, not the police officer.’

  ‘But Windsor Morton took up a crusade?’ asked Jim Hunter.

  ‘With passionate enthusiasm. He involved the media, a host of do-gooders, and enough protesters to frighten the horses.’ Nikki recalled it vividly. ‘Then when he realised it was all going nowhere, it turned nasty. There were personal threats to some of our officers, cars were torched, houses daubed in filthy graffiti, the works.’ She pulled a face. ‘Then suddenly he gave up, and that was really spooky. We were all waiting for the hammer to fall, but it never did.’

  ‘Bit like now,’ said Dave grimly, ‘waiting for Snipe’s next move.’

  Nikki nodded. ‘Precisely. But we now know that he had moved to the Yorkshire Moors, where he lived as a recluse. And I mean a recluse. Dave and I visited his cottage and it was like a prison.’ She passed Yvonne a picture of the isolated cottage surrounded by heather-covered moorland and watched as she attached it to the board.

  Dave murmured in agreement. ‘And the bastard killed his dogs before he did a runner. Yorkshire Police are looking for him, but so far no luck.’

  Nikki went on. ‘Regarding family, his parents are dead, he has no friends, and his only brother, Matthew Morton, disowned him around the time of the trial and moved to the West Country. Dave rang him and he swears he has not seen him for years.’

  ‘Where are the Engles serving their time?’ asked Niall.

  ‘Ruth is in HM Prison Foston Hall in Derbyshire, and Brandon in HMP Lincoln.’ Nikki glanced down at a file on the table beside her. ‘We have contacted both prisons and according to them, neither prisoner is suspected of any kind of conspiracy. They send out few visiting orders, and they have been vetted carefully. Both seem to be keeping their heads down. Ruth is in some accredited offending behaviour programme, and Brandon is doing an Open University degree in computer studies.’

  ‘Bully for them,’ growled Dave, pulling a face. ‘How very commendable.’

  Nikki turned and looked again at the photograph of Windsor Morton. ‘I find it very worrying that we do not know where he is, and I have to stress that at the time of his daughter’s incarceration, he truly hated us.’ Nikki took a sip of water. ‘Now we’ll move on to Jeremy Bow.’ She placed the beaker back on the desk and looked across to the second whiteboard. ‘This man has bugged us for years. Although I have to say that recently he has been more a slight irritation than a major thorn in our side.’ She nodded to Travis Taylor. ‘Have you spoken to Cat this morning regarding her computer search on Bow?’

  Travis stood up. ‘Yes, DI Galena, got all the info from her, and earlier we worked on linked computers so I have copies of her findings.’

  ‘Good. And I spoke to Bow yesterday, so I’ll fill you in on that, then you can bring us up to speed on what Cat has unearthed.’ She pointed to the picture of the scruffy, stick-thin man. ‘Bow seemed to me to be psychologically disturbed in a big way. He’s still hanging on to his conviction that we hounded his son into crashing his car.’ Nikki sighed. ‘I did not feel that he was mentally together enough to be Snipe, but PC Matthew Boyd was observing him and believes that some of his unhinged behaviour could be a cover. He also has very good computer skills, confirmed by his old college.’ She looked toward Travis. ‘Have you or Cat anything to add?’

  The young man stared at his notes, then said, ‘Cat has dug up a multitude of blog and chatroom entries, but they are all small stuff. Mainly just gripes and grumbles. We have found nothing really sinister in his present activities, although there are a lot of them. Cat said she doesn’t believe he is involved in something this big.’ He looked directly at Nikki. ‘He seems to do most of his socialising online now, unlike his old habit of taking to the streets with a banner. He does occasionally use a local pub called the Snow Goose, but according to a regular who uses Facebook, he’s become the grumpy old man that everyone avoids.’ He laid the papers down. ‘Cat reckons that he’s a one-way street and there’s little use going down it.’

  Nikki privately thought that Cat was right, thanked Travis, and moved on. ‘I don’t need to tell any of you about Stephen Cox but, for the record, he’s the lowest of the low. He has a history of violence and drug dealing. He is a psychopath, totally without compassion, and not one of the officers in this station would piss on him if he was on fire. He’s in Greenborough right now, reportedly has a lot of money with him, and he hates us.’ She stared at the photo and felt her own hatred for the man begin to reheat. ‘We have been told that he has had plastic surgery on his face, but I suggest that the injury was so great that he would still be scarred. Whatever, I’m thinking that every man jack here would still recognise him. He was my number one until I saw Windsor Morton’s compound. Now I’m divided.’

  She turned to the last whiteboard. ‘And here we have something of an anomaly. Two dead men, James and William French.’ She turned to Joseph. ‘I’m going to hand this one over to you and Yvonne.’

  Together the two officers outlined what had happened to James French whilst on the witness protection scheme. ‘If any of these men had reasonable cause to want compensation, it would have been William French, James’s son.’ Joseph looked solemnly at his colleagues. ‘It was a disaster, a complete shambles, and according to all our reports we never discovered who leaked the location of the safe house.’

  Yvonne nodded. ‘And to be honest, it was no surprise that William took to drink and finally died. According to his family, he was devastated by what happened. They said that it was William who convinced his father to give evidence against the drug dealers. He was eaten up with guilt after his father’s murder, and no one could console him.’

  ‘Later, that guilt became anger and he found a powerful brief and went after the police with a vengeance.’ Joseph glanced at his notes. ‘He was awarded a massive figure as compensation, but he didn’t want it. It had never been about money.’

  ‘He accepted it, then, thinking it would get up our noses, went out on the streets dishing out wads of money to every street kid, drop-out, vagrant and druggie that he could find.’

  ‘He admitted afterwards that he didn’t think it through too well, as most of it filtered its way straight back to the drug dealers that his father was trying to stop.’ Joseph shook his head sadly. ‘He was well screwed up by that time, and his family, although they loved him dearly, went through hell with him. When he died, their grief was directed once again at us. Considering what a lovely boy he was prior to all that, the reports make tough reading.’

  Yvonne pointed to the board. ‘And that leads us to the remaining family members. The sarge and I had the pleasure of meeting them yesterday. We spoke to William’s wife, Eileen, who still lives in Greenborough, with their two children, a boy, Christopher, and a girl, Madeleine. We also met a sister, Anna, who William was very close to, a cousin and several uncles and aunts.’

  ‘The whole family are very supportive of each other.’ Joseph gave a grunt. ‘Even though they did agree to speak to us, they were tight, if you understand what I mean, close-knit, and a long, long way from happy. But even so, no one came across as vindictive enough to kill.’ He looked back to Nikki. ‘That’s all we have at present.’

  Nikki decided it was enough. ‘Thank you all for your input. I’m going to suggest that we prioritise Windsor Morton and Stephen Cox for our investigations, but don’t lose sight of Jeremy Bow or the French family.’ She turned to DI Jim Hunter. ‘Jim? Maybe you’d like to allocate who does what?’

  ‘My pleasure.’ He turned to the room. ‘Okay. listen up. Here’s your duties fo
r this morning, and don’t forget, keep either DI Galena or myself updated on everything you find.’

  Nikki stretched and walked back to her office, leaving Jim Hunter organising mini-teams and dishing out their relevant tasks. It felt good to finally have some answers about the mysterious death of Magda Hellekamp, and she was more than relieved to be able to hand the closure of Operation Windmill over to their Dutch colleagues, but somehow it made the threat from Snipe all the more real.

  She sank down at her desk. The worst thing was, they were still completely at his mercy. For all their work and the increased man-power, they were no closer to knowing who Snipe was or what ‘compensation’ meant, than they had been on the day that Danny Wilshire died.

  * * *

  Cat sat stiffly on her bed. Her private investigations on the Internet had been abruptly halted by the arrival of her surgeon, and now it was crunch time. The dressings on her face had been removed and she suddenly felt vulnerable. No, more than that, she felt very small and very frightened. Every time she slept, whether at night or just a few moments drifting away because of the pain-killers, she saw the mirror and the terrible reflection that was burnt and tortured and was the face of Stephen Cox.

  ‘Are you ready, Caitlin?’

  No one ever calls me that, she thought absentmindedly.

  Angie, her personal nurse, smiled encouragingly at her and held out a pink plastic-backed hand-mirror. ‘Hey! Where’s that rebel who slunk off to the toilets to sneak a peek?’

  Cat wasn’t sure, but she certainly wasn’t present right now.

  Her face felt cold and bare, unprotected and exposed. For a moment she wanted to ask them to put the dressing back on. She would have liked to stick her damaged head in the sand and forget about what had happened to her. Her arm felt heavy, as if unable to take the weight of the mirror, but somehow she found her courage and slowly lifted it up.

  Cat closed her eyes, saw again Stephen Cox’s mutilated and tethered skin, then snapped them open. Nothing could be as bad as what she was imagining.

  She stared for an age, turning her head gently one way and the other. The doctor was speaking but it seemed to come from a very long way away. Words, distorted and garbled, drifted in to her consciousness but meant nothing. And then she was back, and giving the man a watery smile. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

  There was still dark congealed blood around the black stitches and the skin was drawn and bruised into a myriad of colours, but even at this stage, Cat could see that the surgeon had done a brilliant job. She couldn’t take her eyes off the face that looked back at her, because she saw Cat, not Stephen Cox. Just Cat Cullen.

  ‘As I said, we need the initial trauma to heal, then we’ll consider a way forward.’ His smile was genuine. ‘You were very lucky, my friend. The slightest difference in position, depth and angle, and you would have needed the expertise of several of my colleagues, not just me.’ He pointed to the side of her face, just a little further back from her laceration. ‘This is the route of a major artery and close to it, vital veins and nerves that affect all sorts of functions, like tear formation, facial expression, swallowing, and eye movement.’ He moved his finger to a spot beneath her ear and her lower jaw, millimetres from the scar. ‘And this is the where the parotid gland is located, and the salivary ducts. Again, so close.’ He patted her shoulder gently, his smile fading. ‘Although I have to tell you that there was some nerve damage. It will take a little time to mend, but hopefully it will be minimal. You will, as I originally told you, have a scar, although I will do my best to make it as invisible as it can be. And apart from that, a slight one-sided weakness maybe, but to be honest, and if I were a betting man, I’d put money on full recovery of all your facial functions.’

  Cat had almost stopped listening. She felt totally elated. If she turned the mirror just a little further, all she saw was the face that she had been born with. She let out a sigh of relief. She’d always believed that it was the unknown that caused the problems. The imagination was a powerful tool, but until now she had no idea just how powerful it was. Now, seeing the reality, Cat knew that she would cope.

  ‘And the leg is starting to respond to the antibiotics, so basically, it’s good news all round, I’d say.’ Angie beamed at her.

  Cat opened her mouth to speak but the nurse stopped her. ‘I know exactly what you are going to say, and the answer is two days, probably, and that’s only as long as the leg wound continues to improve.’ She held up her hand, as if she were stopping traffic. ‘And absolutely no arguments.’

  ‘I can live with that.’ She would have preferred one day but, heck, life was looking better by the minute.

  Five minutes later she was alone. She had asked Angie to leave the mirror behind, just in case she fell asleep and dreamed again about Stephen Cox.

  But right now she was buzzing, and as there was little else to do in the quiet room, she reached across and retrieved the laptop. The first thing she did was to check her emails, and found one from Travis. She smiled as she read it.

  Hello, old bag. Can’t get in to see you today. Your boss has commandeered Stuart and me into the hunt for Snipe. Looks like we could be chained here for the duration. She says to ditch Jeremy Bow and look at one of the others instead. Use the back alleys that I told you about and see what you can find. T.

  I’m ahead of you there, thought Cat. William French and I are already getting well acquainted. With one last glance into the mirror, she sighed with relief and typed French’s name into the search engine. ‘Let’s see what else you can tell me, shall we?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Joseph exhaled, wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead, and finally decided that the tie had to go. The evening had brought with it a stupefying humid airlessness, and all around him he saw that sleeves were rolled up and shirt collars were now open to try to cope with the failed air-conditioning.

  Yvonne’s boards were now covered with information and photographs, but Snipe had remained silent. No more calls and no nasty occurrences, and that fact alone made everyone jumpy.

  At around nine thirty there was a loud exclamation from Travis Taylor, and all faces looked in his direction. ‘Bloody hell!’ He beckoned to Joseph. ‘Come and look at this, Sergeant Easter.’

  Joseph saved the search he was working on and pressed print, then stood up and stretched his aching back. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Something really weird!’ Travis tapped a series of keys on his computer. ‘I was taking a break from searching archive stuff, and thought I’d check out the day when DI Galena’s car had that bloody message scrawled in the boot.’ He pointed to the monitor. ‘I was just trying to clear my head — all those names and dates were kind of mind-boggling. This is more my line.’

  Joseph stared at the screen and saw it was the CCTV footage of the station car park, in particular the L-shaped area where Nikki parked her 4x4.

  ‘If we hadn’t spent time working on the security system at Waterside Quay for Operation Windmill, I’d never have thought of this but, hey! It’s exactly the same thing! Someone froze the cameras! There’s a two-minute gap!’

  Joseph asked Travis to rerun the footage, and saw for himself the tiny flicker in the digital display of the time and date. ‘Jesus!’ he whispered. ‘So Snipe was right here in the station grounds.’

  ‘And I know how he got in and out,’ said Travis excitedly. ‘When we checked the system on the day it happened, we noticed that one of the cameras was not aligned properly. It focussed on the personnel gate close to the main building. But that alone didn’t mean much, as the cameras on the inspector’s vehicle were working fine and we could all see that no one went near it. But someone did go near it! In the two minutes when the system was frozen.’

  Joseph tensed. ‘Snipe entered in a blind spot, the system went down, somehow he accessed the vehicle, painted the message, then when the system kicked back in, slipped out through the same dead area that he used to enter.’ He took a long intak
e of breath. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Spot on, Sarge.’ Travis looked reverently at the monitor. ‘Genius!’

  ‘Evil genius, more like,’ muttered Joseph. ‘Excellent work, Travis. Now I’d better go find the boss. Tell her that you’ve solved another seemingly unfathomable mystery.’ He clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘Great stuff.’

  Travis dropped his head, embarrassed by the praise. ‘Thanks, but this guy we are up against is the one with all the great stuff.’ He looked up and his face darkened. ‘He’s one scarily brilliant son of a bitch.’

  Joseph silently agreed and turned towards Nikki’s office. As he did so, he caught sight of Stuart Broad, Travis’s techie sidekick. The look on Stuart’s face was anything but pleased. Everyone else was crowding round Travis’s desk, applauding his achievement and clapping him on the back, but not his closest friend.

  Joseph paused mid-stride. The look was gone now, but what had it said exactly? He wasn’t sure, but there was an element of surprise there, and anger, and something else. Had there been suspicion on his face?

  He continued on his way to find Nikki, but that strange look bothered him and he wondered if he had hit upon some deep professional rivalry, or something else, something more personal.

  * * *

  Nikki listened in silence to what Travis had discovered. Thoughts crowded in on her. She pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down, Joseph, but close the door first.’

  They sat close to each other, just the corner of her desk between them. She leaned forward and breathed. ‘What the hell are the odds on that?’

  ‘What? The same security scam being used on two totally different jobs? Heaven knows!’

  Nikki exhaled. As she breathed in again she could smell Cool Water, and realised that she had become very accustomed to the fresh aromatic fragrance that Joseph wore. Sometimes she tried to identify the distinctive blend — mint, lavender, sandalwood and cedar and the other familiar scents that could have been jasmine or maybe orange blossom? Right now, its various notes meant nothing. All it did was make her dangerous world feel a little bit safer.