The Ring - An Alex Dorring Thriller

by Vince Vogel

  She nodded towards the computer monitor. He gazed at the email she had open. Scanned the list of names. There was Carter. His prints and hair had been found in the room. There were the names of four of the staff. They had good reason to have been in the room and would be quickly struck off the list of potentials. But then there was the last name on the list.

  Jessica Rawly.

  Bob was struck with a bolt of lightning and suddenly he was ten years younger, driving down a country lane surrounded by sunbaked rolling hills and vales. He was driving through villages of stone houses. Past churches with tall, pointy spires. Ancient village pubs. Cricket greens. The village passed and he was driving up a dirt track to a small, one story cottage. He was sitting down with two distraught parents. He was seeing the beginnings of a broken family.

  “It can’t be,” he said.

  “It is,” Harriet replied. “Cold Case have been on the phone too. We’ll have to liaise with them. They’re going to restart the old case.”

  “I thought she was dead,” Barker muttered half to himself.

  “She’d be what? Fourteen now?”

  “She turned fifteen three months ago.”

  “Of course. You were on the original case, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. Me and my old partner.”

  “The one who’s dying?”

  “Yes,” he said in an irritable tone. “The one with cancer.”

  “Must be pretty weird that it’s all come around full turn for you.”

  “Yes,” he muttered blankly. He wasn’t really listening. “What about the hair sample?”

  “It’s on the email, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t be bothered to read the whole bloody thing,” he snapped. “Just tell me.”

  “The long, blonde hairs found on the bed and the bathroom are hers.”

  “Were her prints on the murder weapon?”

  “No. No prints were found on it. She probably wiped them off.”

  Barker turned to her from the monitor. His eyebrows were inverted. She knew the look well and had gotten to know it quite well since she’d transferred over to CID four years ago. Most of the detectives there didn’t pay any mind to his moods. Just put it down to the old man’s grumpy nature. Too long on the job, they called it. Apparently not for much longer, Harriet had heard. A few months by some estimates.

  “Are you saying she’s the killer?” Barker asked her.

  “I don’t see any reason not to think that, Sarge,” Harriet replied. “The prints of a missing girl are found at a murder scene. It could have been Carter keeping her all this time.”

  “Someone else could have been in that room. What have you found out about Carter’s business associates?”

  “Everything was smooth. Everyone that ever knew him says what a great guy he was. As far as his business goes, the bloke was squeaky. Inland Revenue said he always paid his taxes on time and fairly. Used to pay employees above the minimum wage. Has no offshore accounts and donates to charity while waiving the tax benefits. Although, we haven’t spoken to his wife yet. Someone went to see her, but she was too unwell to speak.”

  “Then I better head to her at some point. What time is the lot from Cold Case turning up?”

  “This afternoon. Didn’t say a time.”

  “Okay. I need to make a call first, so…” He widened his eyes at her. “Time for you to bugger off.”

  With a shrug of the shoulders, Harriet Green left him alone at his desk. Barker sat down, pulled out his mobile and placed his glasses on. Holding the thing out and squinting at it, he eventually found the number he was looking for and pressed dial.

  Within seconds, the husky voice of a man answered.

  “Bob? What’s up?” it said.

  “Are you sitting down, John?” Barker asked.

  “Why?”

  “Because the past is about to come raining down on top of you like a ton of bricks.”

  11

  Otis took the next three days off sick and the old man spent it in bed. He reminded Dorring of an old dog that after a particularly bad fight goes to sulk underneath a house for several days, licking its wounds. Otis was no different.

  Coming home from work one day, the sun beneath the tops of the trees and the camp drenched in twilight, Dorring found Otis sitting at the back of the caravan with a sickly looking man the same color as the faded table. His bedraggled face was sunken around the cheeks and hanging limp and black around the eyes. As to those eyes, they were mustard colored around the brown irises and resembled piss holes in the snow. Though it was a hot day, he sat wrapped up in a coat with a peaked cap on top of his head. A skinny wrist came out the end of a coat arm and gripped a glass of whiskey with spindly fingers. He was possibly middle-aged, but the disease he had made him look much older. For all Dorring could tell, the man could be a hundred or he could be fifty.

  “This is John,” Otis said the moment Dorring came around the caravan.

  “I’m Alex,” Dorring said.

  The half-corpse turned to him and nodded. “A privilege, Alex,” he said in a cockney accent.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Dorring said next.

  “Aye,” Otis said, not turning his eyes from the endless trees that bordered the end of the meadow.

  “Nice to meet you, John,” Dorring added.

  “Likewise,” John replied before lifting his glass with a trembling hand.

  He drank and began coughing immediately. Placing the glass down, he laid a hand on his chest and appeared to be in pain, his jaw clenched and his face grimacing.

  Something to do with the lungs, Dorring noted.

  Dorring went inside the caravan, took his book from the sideboard, sat in his bed and began reading. But he wasn’t paying any attention to the words. The table was only a few feet from that side of the caravan and it was impossible not to listen. Had he wanted to give the two men privacy, Dorring would have left altogether and gone somewhere else. But the truth was that he wanted to hear. Wanted to find out everything he could on the old man. Wanted to know what happened to his daughter. What happened to his wife. What happened to the family he had and what he was preparing himself for. Who he was preparing himself for by fighting himself half to the death every other Friday.

  “You sure you should be doin’ that?” Otis asked John.

  “It’s too late now, no matter what,” the other man replied. “Plus, it may surprise you to know that it’s the only time I don’t cough.”

  Dorring gathered that he was lighting a cigarette. There was a brief pause and only the sounds of the crickets existed for a moment.

  Then Otis asked, “So it’s true what Molly told me then? Your time has come.”

  “It has. One month, the doc says. Tumor’s as big as a fist. I can feel the bastard when I cough. Gettin’ bigger and stronger each day while I go the other way.”

  “You didn’t want to have it operated on?”

  “I lost a lung last time. Can’t lose another one.”

  “What about a transplant?”

  “Not enough time. I’ve got a rare blood type. The average waiting time is two years, they say. Unless I pay for a donor. Which is both illegal and very expensive. So, yes, it’s my end, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sad to hear that, John. Real sad.”

  “It comes to us all, mate.”

  A little more silence.

  “So is that why you’re here?” Otis asked. “To tell me you’re dying.”

  “Not quite, mate. I wouldn’t burden you with such things. Always been more of a go quietly into the night kinda guy. No, it’s not my ebbing mortality that I’ve come to see you about. It’s Jess.”

  Dorring’s ears pricked up.

  “What about her?” Otis asked, his voice sounding very serious.

  “There’s been a development.”

  “Ten years of nothin’ and now there’s been a development?”

  “Yes. Quite a big one, too. That’s why I came straight here when I heard. Old
mate of mine still working in the force called me about it earlier today.”

  “Is she dead?” Otis asked in a trembling voice.

  “They don’t think so.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Hold on. Because this is gonna take some explaining.”

  “Then explain.”

  “There was a murder in London. Not Jess. A bloke named Charles Carter. Millionaire. Some gentleman’s club in west London. Real exclusive place. So they get a call to it and—”

  “What’s this got to do with Jess?”

  “You let me speak and you’ll find out.”

  “Then get on with it,” Otis snapped.

  “So they get a call. A maid has found this bloke in the room with his throat cut. So forensics and everyone turns up there and they dust the room for prints and go looking for fibers, hair and any other evidence. That’s when they found it.”

  “What?” Otis eagerly butted in.

  “Remember back in ’09?”

  “Like yesterday.”

  “Remember we took some things from Jess’ room? Well, we took prints from those things. Hair samples from her hair brush. Stuff like that. For years, they’ve sat on file, growing dust. But not now. Because now they found her prints, Otis. Larger fingers. But her.”

  Dorring heard a shuffling of chairs.

  “You alright?” John asked.

  “I can’t… I can’t…” He was struggling for breath. Dorring felt the need to part the curtain on the window and glance out. Otis was rocking back and forth in his chair, grasping his chest. The sickly face of John wore a worried expression. He reached a bony hand across and touched Otis on the shoulder. The old man flinched away from the touch as though it had come from a burning set of pincers. “I’ll be good… in a minute…” Otis wheezed.

  He picked up his whiskey with trembling fingers and placed it to his cut lips. Throwing the contents of the glass down his throat, he closed his eyes tight and steadied his breathing. Within a minute, he had calmed and Dorring let the curtain fall back.

  “How?” Otis asked.

  “I’m not sure. They found a hair sample, too. It confirmed her presence in the room. However, my mate in Scotland Yard isn’t sure if it was at the same time. She might of been in that room days before. A print can last that long.”

  “What about cameras?” Otis asked. “Surely they see her go in.”

  Dorring would have asked the same question.

  “Afraid not. This place don’t have no cameras. Honestly. It’s covered in security, but no cameras.”

  “Sounds like they’re gettin’ up to no good at this place.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Otis asked.

  “I don’t know that for sure.”

  This didn’t appear to appease the old man.

  “Oh, God,” he wept. “I knew… all these years, I knew she were alive… an’ all these years I knew… she were in pain… I felt her inside… Always hurtin’…”

  “Look, Otis, we don’t know everything at the moment. Could be other explanations. We don’t know Jess was there for that—”

  “What else was she there for?” Otis stormed.

  “I don’t know.”

  More silence, and then Otis asked, “Where’s this place?”

  “And what’re you gonna do, huh? Gonna go down there and fight every man till someone tells you somethin’?”

  “If I have to!”

  Otis had risen out of his chair. Dorring was again holding the curtain to one side.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, let me explain exactly how that will go down,” John said. “You’ll get to the front door, some big, burly bloke pumped up on steroids and always ready for a fight will ask you for your name. He’ll spot the minute you walk across the street that you don’t belong there. He’ll ask and you’ll try something. Maybe you’ll attack him with a knife. You’ll have to kill him. He’s probably trained and won’t take lightly to being taken hostage. Then there’s his mate inside the place. You know they have diplomatic guests there? Obviously not. Well, because they do, they’ve got a high security license. You know what that means?”

  “Get on with it.”

  “It means they’re allowed to carry guns inside the building. His mate inside the lobby is armed. As are the rest of his mates further inside. They’re armed and fully trained to use those guns. By the time you threaten the first bloke you come to, they’ll have pumped you full of bullets. So I’m tellin’ you now, let the police do their thing. Don’t get in the way. In a couple of days, someone will come here. They’ll want to involve you. Probably get you and Molly to go on telly, so you can—”

  “You seen Molly lately?” Otis interrupted.

  “Obviously.”

  “You think she can get outta her bed, let alone do an interview? Woman hasn’t seen outside in ten years. You’re mad, man, if you think you’ll get her to make an appeal.”

  “Well, we have to. Have to see if Jess or someone who can help is watching. Because the one thing you’ve got to take from this, Otis, is the fact that your little girl is alive. She’s alive and she’s out there somewhere.”

  There was more silence. Dorring watched through the window. A look was taking over Otis’ bruised countenance. A dark look like a foreboding black cloud quickly covering everything in shadow.

  “What’s the name of the place?” he asked again.

  “Now I told you. It’d be stupid to go there.”

  “I won’t ask you again.”

  Dorring observed that Otis’ hand was sliding down his leg to his boot. Dorring knew what was in that boot. Strapped to his ankle. He dropped the book and left the caravan.

  By the time Dorring had reached around the back to the table, the hunting knife was already in the old man’s hand. He leaped across the table and had it against the sick man’s yellow throat. John merely sat perfectly still, not a muscle in his wasted body moving a single millimeter.

  “Otis!” Dorring cried out as he reached them.

  The old man didn’t look up. His black eyes were fixed to John.

  “What’s the name?” hissed from his snarling lips.

  “Otis, get off him,” Dorring said.

  “It’s okay, son,” John said, his eyes swiveling Dorring’s way.

  “What’s the name?”

  “You want it?” the sick man asked Otis.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re willing to speed my death up if you don’t get it?”

  Otis jerked the knife forward. Dorring spotted the blood trickle down the neck.

  “I am,” Otis said.

  “Then do it.”

  The few teeth he had remaining gritted together inside Otis’ mouth. His whole body was rigid and Dorring felt utterly helpless. He was at least three yards from them. He’d never get to them in time to stop the sick man’s death. Otis continued to stare at John with terrifying hatred. He looked ready to push through. To kill the man. But something softened Otis. Whispered into his ear and stayed the knife. It was the last piece of his humanity. What had been left to him. Its invisible hand was holding his and its soundless voice was whispering to let go.

  In the end, he did. The knife dropped from the throat and Otis sat back in his chair, a look of defeat all over his face. For the next minute, he sat staring into the trees and sobbing like a child.

  When he had finished, Dorring was sitting with the men. John sat calmly. It appeared that a knife to the throat was nothing to worry about for a dying man. He merely used a handkerchief to wipe away the blood and then took a sip of his whiskey.

  “They’ll want you to go in front of the cameras,” John said.

  “I can’t,” Otis insisted.

  “If she’s out there watching, she has to see her father. Maybe she’s forgotten home. Needs to see you in order for things to come back to her.”

  “How could she forget her home? It were on
e of the happiest places I ever seen. What about Bess here?” The dog was lying under the table at their feet. “That’s her pup. Got her for Christmas when she weren’t even one yet. Her and that dog went everywhere together.”

  “She may have been drugged or she may have forgotten because of trauma.”

  “What kinda trauma?” Otis snapped.

  “Come on, Otis. You know as well as I do what happens to little girls taken from their parents.”

  Otis glanced over at Dorring and it was like it was the first time he was seeing him. They made eye contact and then the old man looked away. Back to the trees that disappeared into darkness.

  “The gentlemen’s club,” Dorring said, making John turn to him from Otis, “it’s the Belgravia, isn’t it?”

  The sallow, bone white skin twitched beneath the right eye as John stared at him.

  “I can’t say,” he finally said. But it was clear that Dorring was right.

  Otis turned to Dorring and the latter shook his head at him. The old man took the cue and kept his mouth shut. This seemed to unsettle the sick man.

  “Now I’m tellin’ you, Otis,” the ex-detective said sternly. “Don’t go doin’ anything. I mean it. They’ll send someone in the next day or two. If they don’t find no one here, I shall tell them to put a warrant out for you in London. You’ll have every cop in the Met looking for you.”

  “So he’s right then—Dorrin’,” Otis said. “It’s this place. The Belgravia.”

  “I’m warnin’ you,” John said, poking a bony finger at Otis. “Don’t go gettin’ involved. Let the police do their job.”

  “Like they did ten years ago?”

  “We did everything we could back then. I told you, it was random. If these types of thing aren’t solved quick, they usually aren’t solved at all. Jess was randomly picked up by a white van. We spoke to everyone who had that type of van in the area at that time and found nothing.”

  “You didn’t look hard enough.”

  “We looked everywhere!” John exclaimed. It was his turn to get cross. A red hue had added some color to the pale skin.

  No one said anything for a moment. In the silence, Dorring felt the burning eyes of the ex-detective on the side of his face. His own eyes were on Otis. The old man’s face was twitching away as though a hundred wrathful thoughts were playing out behind his eyes. Dorring felt exceptionally sad for the old man. Now that he knew everything, his sympathy was almost all consuming. But, still, he felt the need to qualm the old man’s worse tendencies.