Tom Douglas Box Set 2

by Rachel Abbott

  She guessed she was in some kind of old mill, judging by the size, shape and regularity of the tall windows. There weren’t many derelict buildings like this left in Manchester; they had almost all been converted into apartments. She knew they were in Manchester because they hadn’t travelled far, and she was sure she was at the back of the building because just as nobody could hear her, she couldn’t hear anything either. The silence was oppressive, dead. The days were bad enough, but the nights were hell, and her wounds were sore.

  Leo couldn’t believe how stupid she had been. She remembered the rain streaming down her windows and how miserable she had felt. When she had heard the doorbell, she had been sure it would be Julian, come to forgive her for being such an idiot. She hadn’t even checked the peephole, and when she opened her front door and saw an arrangement of flowers so vast she couldn’t even see the face of the delivery man, she had been stunned by what she assumed was Julian’s generosity, especially as she was in no doubt that the argument the night before had been down to her.

  The delivery man had muttered that it might be easier if he put the flowers down somewhere in her apartment, so she had let him in. That’s when she had seen his face, and the second man. And the masks. Those horrible shiny plastic faces with their fixed grins.

  She had been pushed backwards. She hadn’t known there was a chair behind her, and for a moment it felt like one of those dreams in which you are falling forever. Just as a dreamer wakes with a jolt, Leo had crashed down onto the chair, its softness not lessening the sick lurch to her stomach as she landed.

  Once she had been bound and gagged one of the men left. She had seen his face reflected in the mirror – only a glance, but it was enough. She would know that face anywhere if she saw it again.

  And then the wait had begun.

  ‘Sit. Keep quiet. We’ll go when your neighbours are asleep.’ She had tried moaning loudly, but he had thumped her in the stomach.

  ‘Got to keep that pretty face looking perfect,’ he had whispered against her ear. His skin was smooth and carefully shaven. He didn’t sound like a Manchester thug and there was a slight hint of garlic about him. Not strong, just reminiscent of a good meal. But no cigarettes or beer.

  She had tried to keep cool. There was nothing she hated more than showing weakness. And she could cope with the punches – she had taken enough as a child, although that was a long time ago now.

  She heard him in the kitchen, opening the fridge and then emptying something liquid down the sink. She heard a few soft thumps and guessed items were going into a bin liner. She knew what he was doing: he was ridding her house of perishable food – not that there was much. People would eventually come looking for her, and if the alarm wasn’t to be raised they would have to believe she had left from choice. Nobody leaves milk to sour in their fridge when they go away.

  It was in the silent hours of early morning as the world slept when the second man returned and they ushered her downstairs and into a car that smelled of good leather. The driver had left the car and disappeared for about five minutes. Leo heard the passenger door open and a rustling noise. Then she caught the smell of roses and lavender and knew the man had been back to collect the evidence – the flowers and the rubbish.

  Why had she been targeted? She tried hard to keep calm, to quash the rising panic in her chest, to work out what to do, but there didn’t seem to be any logic to it. And now here she was, trapped and hardly able to move, in the same place she had been for days. They didn’t come often, and when they did, they wore their masks. Both men were tall – well over six feet – and both appeared to be well dressed even when they came in jeans. Her gag and blindfold had been removed, although that did little good. With one ankle and one wrist firmly secured, she only had the use of one hand to eat and drink.

  She had been certain she would be able to escape. The chain holding her leg was firm, but she’d thought that if she could free her arm she might be able to find something that she could prise one of the links open with. A cable tie around her wrist was attached to a second chain, wrapped around a different pillar, and she had yanked on the plastic tie as hard as possible in the hope that it would snap. The men had been clever in their positioning, though. Her arm was attached behind her, the leg in front, so it was hard to exert any real force.

  When she heard them coming, she had tried to cover her sore, bruised arm with her sleeve, but one of the men had walked over and pulled the sleeve back. Without a word he had left her to the first man, the slightly shorter of the two, and disappeared. She didn’t know why – not a word had been spoken – but she sensed that this was not good news for her.

  And that’s when it had happened. That’s when she knew that she wasn’t going to be able to escape – not now, not ever.

  The taller man had come back into the room, clutching a plastic bag from which he had withdrawn a number of items. Leo could see what looked like a pair of scissors but with extra-long handles, and a pair of fine tweezers. The man laid them both down on the upturned box where her water was usually left. Then he opened a small packet and withdrew a thin curved piece of metal that seemed to have some thread attached. Using the tweezers, he grabbed a chunk of the flesh of her arm and gripped it tightly.

  She knew what was coming. She recognised the thin, hooked metal for what it was. A suture needle.

  With practised skill the man inserted it into her arm, over and over again, suturing the plastic tie around her wrist firmly in place, the agonising piercing of muscle and flesh ensuring that any movement she made would tear her arm to shreds.

  39

  A second phone call from the police informed Maggie that Mr Douglas had been delayed but would be with her in about fifteen minutes. Maggie didn’t know whether to be pleased or frustrated. She couldn’t understand why they needed to see her. She had told Bill Shaw everything she intended to say, so what they hoped to gain from visiting her, she had no idea.

  Maggie needed time to think, and fifteen minutes wasn’t enough. On the other hand, if the police arrived right now, at this very minute, they would know something was up. She could feel how flushed her face was, and as she looked in the mirror, she could see the distress and confusion in her own eyes. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and scrubbed the remains of her lipstick off. With her pink cheeks, she looked like a china doll.

  Since Suzy had shown her the photo, Maggie’s head had been all over the place. Her heart was pumping – was this finally a clue to who Duncan was? But how would it help her to find him? If the photo of the boy with the bike was Duncan, Patricia Rowe must know something about him. Perhaps she knew his mother. Perhaps they had lived near Mrs Rowe and he had been a friend of some of her children.

  Maggie looked hastily at her watch. She had to get in touch with this woman – she wanted to know who Duncan really was.

  She went back to the Facebook post that contained the images of the children and saw there were a few comments. Most were from people praising Patricia Rowe for the work she had done with children, but one was from a Stacey Meagan. It simply said ‘Happy days’. Could that mean she was one of the children in the picture? All the girls seemed quite a bit younger than Duncan.

  Maggie clicked on Stacey’s name and didn’t learn much as her privacy settings hid her posts from people she didn’t know. Maggie browsed and found a few photos that matched Stacey’s profile picture. If she had to guess, she would have said that Stacey Meagan was in her mid-twenties, but it was hard to know for sure. She returned to Patricia Rowe’s page and saved a copy of the photo of the children with the bikes, returned to Stacey’s page and opened a message. She had never heard back from Patricia, and given the lack of activity on her page, maybe she had given up on Facebook. But Stacey Meagan was another option.

  She thought through the words carefully, but she had only minutes left until Tom Douglas arrived. When Maggie set up her Facebook account she had done it using her middle name and her maiden name. She had never posted a
nything and found the whole idea a bit spooky, but had wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Now she thanked some divine entity that she didn’t believe in for the fact that she had made that decision.

  My name is Grace Peters. I wonder if you could help me, please? I see you’ve commented on this picture, and I would like to know a little about the boy with the multicoloured bike.

  Maggie added the saved image to the message.

  I would be grateful if you could give me some information about him.

  She stopped to think. Would she give out somebody’s details to an unknown person on Facebook? Of course not.

  I am a solicitor. If this boy is now the man I am trying to trace, I believe getting in touch will be to his benefit.

  Whether the woman would believe her, Maggie didn’t know. But people seemed prepared to expose their most intimate secrets on Facebook for the world to see, so she probably wouldn’t bother trying to check ‘Grace’s’ credentials.

  She sent the message and jumped up from her chair, pacing the room. They would be here any minute.

  The house phone rang. Maggie hoped and prayed it would be the police, saying there had been a mistake and Tom Douglas wouldn’t be coming after all.

  ‘Maggie Taylor,’ she answered, hearing the quiver in her voice. Phone calls didn’t seem to bring good news any more.

  There was no sound from the other end of the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ she said quietly, certain that it was going to be the man threatening her again.

  ‘Maggie?’

  She felt a leap in her chest. Thank God. Her eyes filled with hot tears.

  ‘Duncan!’ She whispered his name fiercely into the phone, hoping the police weren’t right now standing on her doorstep, listening to her. ‘Where are you? What’s happening? Please, Dunc, tell me what’s going on – I’m terrified.’

  Her voice broke. She wanted him here, holding her, telling her it was all going to be okay.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I never wanted to hurt you. I didn’t know what else to do.’ Duncan spoke quietly, as if the words were difficult to say. He had always hated apologising – being found to be in the wrong.

  Maggie felt as if all the questions that had been piling up inside her were fighting their way out, scrambling to get over one another in their rush.

  ‘But why did you go? Where are you? When are you coming back? Why did you have a picture of a dead girl on your phone?’

  She heard a gasp from the other end of the phone.

  ‘How do you know about that? Christ! Don’t tell anybody else. Please Maggie, nobody must know. Promise me, Maggie.’

  But Maggie had no time to answer. The doorbell rang.

  ‘Shit! Somebody’s at the door.’ Maggie knew full well who it was and that she had no option but to open it. ‘Give me your number, Dunc, please. Hang on a second.’

  Holding the phone in one hand, she turned the latch on the front door and pulled it open.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Taylor. I believe you’re expecting us. May we come in? But please do finish your call.’

  The woman who opened the door to Tom and Becky came as a surprise. Tom had been expecting her to look just like Leo and Hayley Walker, but this woman looked worn out with black circles under her eyes, pale skin and flushed cheeks. She wore no make-up, and her hair was tied back. She was a similar build to the other women, and he imagined that when her hair was loose and she was wearing the bright red lipstick that he understood she favoured, there would be a striking resemblance. But just at this moment they couldn’t have been more different.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clare. I have to go,’ Maggie Taylor said into the phone, her whole body turned away from Tom and Becky. ‘Do you want to leave your number so I can call you back?’

  She didn’t pull pen and paper towards her from the hall table, so Tom could only assume that whoever she was speaking to had chosen not to leave their details. Tom was certain it wasn’t somebody called Clare. Maggie’s hesitation before the name had been slight but enough for Tom.

  Maggie took a moment before turning back towards them, still grasping the phone, and it was impossible to miss the strain in her eyes. She was biting the corner of her bottom lip, as if to keep it from trembling, and the pinkish tinge to her eyes suggested she had been crying.

  A thought struck Tom. Maggie Taylor was Alf Horton’s solicitor, and Horton had been in the custody cells in the building next to Tom’s office. So there was a good chance that Maggie could have been in the vicinity of police headquarters earlier in the week. As they made their introductions in the entrance hall, Tom glanced to his left. There was a coat rack, and scrunched up, sitting on a shelf above the coats was an emerald-green scarf.

  It had been her, then. He was right. She had looked so different that day. The belief that it had been Leo was the one thing that had been keeping Tom hopeful about his ex-girlfriend. Knowing it wasn’t her felt like a punch in the gut. Every bone in his body was telling him that something had happened to Leo, and his confidence that she was alive and well had been shattered. He had to find her, and his instincts told him it needed to be soon. But he was sure the woman had been thinking about coming into the office. And that woman, it now seemed, had been Maggie Taylor.

  Maggie took them into the living room.

  ‘Could I get you a cup of tea or coffee, or something?’ she asked.

  Both Tom and Becky declined.

  ‘Mrs Taylor,’ Tom began, ‘we understand you have concerns that you’re being stalked, and you provided us with a partial number plate for your stalker. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. I know the evidence is very thin, but coupled with the phone calls I’ve been receiving I thought I should get some advice. I’ve got to know the duty sergeant over the few weeks I’ve been working in Manchester and I thought I should have a word with him. He said he’d passed it on to a colleague.’

  ‘That’s right, he did. But this van might be of interest in another investigation, and your partial number plate was better than you might imagine. It was enough to provide a match, and we think we’ve tracked down the owner. But before we get to that, can you tell me some more about why you think he’s stalking you?’

  Maggie Taylor looked uncomfortable.

  ‘The van had been parked up the street, and then when I took the children out it was round the corner. We went for a cycle ride, and the van appeared part of the way round – as if it had been following us. There were two men in it.’

  ‘Did it not occur to you that this might be a coincidence? Perhaps the driver and his mate had chosen to park somewhere other than on the street while they had lunch, somewhere away from the job they were working on?’ Tom didn’t believe this for one single moment. ‘Why did you feel particularly concerned about this van?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it was because of the phone calls I’d had.’ Maggie shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m being overly cautious. My current client keeps whispering to me that nowhere’s safe and I need to watch myself, and then I get calls from someone saying I need to be careful. They were sinister. It was the tone of voice – the we know where you live – that seemed so menacing.’ Maggie attempted an unconvincing laugh. ‘It all seems a bit of a cliché when I say it out loud.’

  ‘But nevertheless scary,’ Becky said.

  ‘I feel bad bringing you out here. I’m surprised you would think this worthy of your interest, to be honest, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Oh, I like to keep my ear close to the ground. And as I mentioned, the owner of the van could be of interest to us in another case.’

  Tom was well aware that Maggie wasn’t telling the whole truth – if any at all – and he couldn’t work out why. But until he knew, he wasn’t prepared to give her anything either.

  ‘Could we possibly have a word with your husband?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’ The speed and almost fierce tone of her response surprised Tom, but he didn’t react.

  ‘Because he may have seen some similar behaviour. He might
know if the van has been there for longer than you realise, or he might be able to add any number of things to the investigation.’ Tom couldn’t think of any, but he wanted to know what was making this woman so jumpy.

  ‘I’m sorry, but he’s away at the moment. He’s gone back to where we used to live, down south. There were a couple of jobs he hadn’t finished and he’d promised to go back.’

  ‘Okay, well at some point we might need his contact details.’ Tom was watching her closely and couldn’t miss the flinch.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell us, Maggie?’ Becky asked.

  ‘Nothing I can think of, and I do apologise if I’ve been wasting your time.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Tom said. "I’m sure you haven’t.’

  Tom and Becky stood up from the sofa and walked towards the door.

  Tom turned. ‘Just one thing. A couple of days ago – Friday, I think – were you standing outside our offices – the big building next to the custody suite where Alf Horton was being held? I’m fairly certain it was you, and it looked like you were going to come in. Did you want to see somebody from my department?’

  Maggie Taylor shook her head. ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even go to see Alf on Friday afternoon.’

  Tom smiled and thanked her.

  It wasn’t a matter of her not telling him everything. She was telling him nothing. And he had never mentioned the time of day.

  40

  ‘What did you make of that, then?’ Tom asked Becky as they headed back towards the M60.

  ‘I don’t know what she’s playing at. She made a complaint – or at least she registered her concern – but then she couldn’t wait to get us out of the door. She was totally and completely flustered by our presence, and in particular yours. Why would that be?’

  Tom focused on the road for a moment. He was certain Maggie had been standing outside the office a few days ago. And she must have been to the custody suite before, so she couldn’t have been confused about which building she needed to visit. And she had been staring at the door, as if she couldn’t decide whether to go in or not. And all of that had happened before the incident with the van.