The Ring - An Alex Dorring Thriller

by Vince Vogel

“We didn’t find anything, John,” Barker said. “Cases go like that. It’s part of the job. Some investigations have nothing but dead ends. It was a random act by a random person who took the girl straight out of the county. By the time we were on the scene, there was nothing left. No trail.”

  “But was it random?” John asked. “I always got a feeling back then that those country bumpkins knew something but were too afraid to talk. You know, like they were keeping some secret about what happened.”

  “You shouldn’t beat yourself up over it. We tried our best. There was no physical evidence. We had to rely on people. People didn’t talk. That’s all.”

  “But I do beat myself up about it. Especially now at the end when everything is condensed and under a microscope: my whole life. I honestly think we let Jess Rawly down back then.”

  “Stop that!” Barker snapped.

  “Stop what!? We were supposed to—”

  John stopped sharp and lurched forward, grabbing his chest as a rasping cough reverberated through the whole of his wasted body. The cough got worse and he appeared caught in a spasm. Barker glanced sideways at him, a look of concern on his face—then a look of horror. Because John had let out a terrible, rasping cough that spat blood all over the windscreen.

  “I’m… sorry,” he tried to say in between his coughs.

  Barker, absolutely horrified, pulled the car onto the side of the road, much to the annoyance of the cars he cut off to do so, their horns honking wildly.

  Barker got out and came around the passenger side. He opened the door. John had his eyes closed and his hand on his chest. The coughs were easing. Only small spasms as he rocked in the seat. Barker couldn’t help fixing his eyes on the blood that dribbled down the windscreen.

  “Shall I get you to hospital?” he asked.

  John waved him away. “No. It’ll ease off. I’ll be good.”

  Barker sat on his hams on the pavement beside the open door, gazing up at his friend with a terribly distraught look. He’d known this man as a twenty-something year old in Hendon academy. He’d been a boxer. A footballer. He’d been an impeccable example of man. Now he was almost a corpse. Gray, atrophied and almost dead. Shriveled up, like the skin of a rotten vegetable. It made Barker terribly sad to see mortality so naked. And in such a person as he saw it in now. A man who had shown great vitality only ten years before. He had to admit; the cancer had eaten him away.

  The coughing stopped. Barker wiped the windscreen down and got back into the driver’s side. Then he pulled back onto the road and they continued into the city. It was then that Bob Barker’s phone went.

  Answering it on speaker phone, he said, “Harriet, what have you got?”

  “I’ve just sent out the details on Otis Rawly. They’ll be briefing units all night and tomorrow morning. So that’ll mean a search being underway.”

  “What about the Dorring guy?”

  “I spoke with his employer. The details he gave them were fake. He was working under the name of James Dorring. The national insurance and tax reference were fake. Because he was English, they didn’t really check him out. Paid him in cash as a subcontractor. It’s how it’s usually done.”

  “Did you get the description of him?”

  Barker had had John give him a detailed description and sent it over.

  “Yeah,” Harriet Green said. “Not much to go on. Six four. Heavy build. Blue-gray eyes. Blond hair. I had them make a photofit. It’s gone out with Otis Rawly’s details.”

  “Good. I’ll be at the station in half an hour.”

  25

  The moment the sun disappeared and night fell, storm clouds enveloped London, closing over the city and trapping it in darkness before sending a deluge down onto the bricks and concrete. The storm gave the impression that it wished to wash the whole dirty place away.

  The security guard stood at the front of the building underneath a porch, gazing at the road beyond the gate through a thick veil of rain that dripped down in beads in front of him. He was smoking a cigarette and absently watching the rain-blurred darkness when headlights flashed in the distance and he narrowed his eyes.

  “What the…?” he muttered to himself.

  When they’d gone out, they left no more than a hazy stain on his eyes. He was unable to see anything other than darkness where they had been. Then they flashed again. Darkness once more. He strained his eyes to see the vehicle they’d come from, but alas, nothing except rain and darkness. He waited some time. A minute passed. Then they flashed again. This time they appeared closer than before. With rain beating heavily on the ground, he’d been unable to hear an engine. He left the sanctuary of the sheltered porch and approached the gate, squinting his eyes to see through the greasy black air. There, he stood right up to it, glaring out of a gap.

  There was another flash. But this one localized to a small explosion in the air. Higher than the headlights and only a single light. There had been a bang too, clearly heard over the rain.

  The security guard dropped to the ground, a bullet hole in his forehead, the back of his head an open cavity. Two men emerged from the darkness where the headlights had been, one of them shouldering a rifle, the rain striking off their heads. They walked up to the security guard’s fallen body as it leaned against the gate. One of them reached to him through a gap and unclipped the keys on his belt. He then used them to unlock the gate and both men went through.

  There was a door underneath the porch the guard had been smoking under. It was unlocked. Dorring and Otis entered a long corridor with shuddering strip lighting. Dorring tried the first door they came to. It was locked. The bunch of keys they’d taken from the guard was too vast to waste time trying them until one fitted. They needed to be careful. Placing an ear to the door, Dorring heard the light murmur of female voices on the other side.

  They moved on along the corridor, trying the doors as they came to them. All locked. They heard the sounds of televisions inside the rooms. They heard more female voices. They sounded young. Some sounded like children.

  “Jess!” Otis suddenly cried out.

  “Shh!” Dorring snapped at him.

  “She must be here,” Otis pleaded desperately.

  Dorring was about to say something, but a man’s cry stopped him.

  “Oi!” it shouted.

  Dorring turned sharply to the end of the corridor. A large man, not Crosby, stood there.

  “Who the hell’re you?” he asked, coming towards them.

  Dorring raised the rifle. The man’s eyes grew larger and then the corridor exploded with sound. The bullet caught him in the knee, ripping through the joint and sending him to the ground. Dorring clicked the bolt back. The casing spat out. Sliding it back in, he passed another bullet into the chamber and held the rifle on the fallen man.

  “Heck, you’re a good shot,” Otis remarked.

  “Question him,” Dorring said.

  Otis ran up to the man as he sprawled on his side, holding his leg. It was practically held together at the shattered joint by no more than a thin thread of flesh. Otis kicked the man in the head, then jumped down on top of him, grabbing him by the scruff. The guy was completely pale. He must have been in terrible pain.

  “Where is she?” Otis snarled at him.

  “Hey!”

  Otis looked up. Another man was running around the corner of the corridor. Dorring fired and he was hit in the gut. He fell back against a wall and slid down it, holding the wound.

  Otis turned his attention back to the man he held. His face was bone white and his eyes were rolling.

  “Where’s Jess?”

  “I… don’t,” he gurgled and then suddenly stopped. The eyes closed over and he became a dead weight in Otis’ hands. He’d passed out.

  Meanwhile, Dorring was crouching in front of the other man, the rifle over his shoulder, the man now sitting against the wall, breathing heavily.

  “Is there a girl called Jess here? Blonde hair? Fifteen?”

  The guy didn�
��t answer straight away, so Dorring lurched forward and jabbed his fingers into the man’s torn stomach.

  He screamed and Dorring waited for him to get over it.

  “Yeah,” he muttered breathlessly when he had. “I think so.”

  “Which room?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know if she’s here now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Crosby?”

  “He’s not here.”

  Dorring jabbed the guts again. He screamed some more. Dorring waited some more.

  “We saw him come in, so don’t lie,” he said as he poked his fingers into the warm flesh of the hole. “Where is he?”

  “In one of the other rooms.”

  “Which one?”

  “At the end of the next corridor. There’s a room. He’s in there.”

  Dorring stood up from him, took the rifle off his shoulder and swung the butt at the guy’s head, knocking him unconscious.

  They moved onwards. The room the man told them about was locked. On the other side was music. It was loud, so they wouldn’t have heard the gunshots. Dorring tried every key on the rung. Twenty keys in, he found the one he was after. The lock clicked and he slowly opened the door.

  It was a room no larger than a cell. The block walls were painted pink. A small cabinet with a stereo stood in one corner. Next to this was a bed. This was what they watched from the doorway. A naked ass was busy going up and down. Two legs hung out on either side. A back covered in blackheads and moles arched up, then sank again. The legs hanging from it looked dead and merely shuddered to the movement of the hips. He was lying on top of her. Her impassive hands were splayed out on either side and looked dead on top of the mattress.

  Dorring handed Otis the rifle. Then he lurched forward, grabbed Crosby by the back of the neck and hauled him off. He threw him into a corner like a rag doll. Otis was in shock. He stood at the door, holding the gun and gazing at the bed. The girl wasn’t dead. She’d merely been as motionless as a corpse while he’d done what he did. When he was off her, she turned onto her side and began crying. She was no older than thirteen.

  “Where’s Jess?” Dorring shouted down at Crosby, who cowered in the corner, his trousers and underwear wrapped around his ankles like shackles. “The girl from the Belgravia. Where is she?”

  Crosby looked up at him with wide eyes. Otis, meanwhile, walked up to the bed. The girl noticed. She flipped onto her back and recoiled backwards up the mattress, terror written all over her.

  “It’s okay,” the old man said. There was a blanket on the floor beside the bed. He grabbed it. Turned the music off. Then he came to her and offered the blanket. She snatched it off him and threw it over herself, covering her head. She became a trembling lump in it.

  “Who sent you?” Crosby said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dorring said back. Then he swung a kick that caught Crosby in the chin. He let out a cry as his head flipped back and a tooth flew from his mouth into the air. “Where is she?” Dorring stormed down at him.

  Crosby had ahold of his mouth. He started shaking his head. Then he looked up at Dorring. Pointed behind him.

  “You see that?” he said in a rasping voice.

  Dorring had already seen it. It was one of the few features of the room. A security camera stood in a corner watching everything. He’d noticed them in the corridor too.

  “They’re watching,” Crosby said.

  “Who?”

  “Oh no,” the pervert said, shaking his head. “They’ll be here soon. You won’t have a chance.”

  Dorring lurched forward and kicked Crosby so hard in the head that he was knocked unconscious. Turning to Otis, he said, “We need to get him out of here. Do this somewhere else.”

  “But we get Jess first?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dorring walked up to the girl on the bed. He pulled the blanket from her head. She recoiled from him as though he were the devil himself.

  “Do you know a girl called Jess?”

  She nodded.

  “Where?”

  She shook her head.

  Dorring turned away from her, shoved Crosby over his shoulder and carried him out of the room.

  “What about her?” Otis asked him.

  “Get her out of here,” Dorring replied. “Get them all out of here.”

  Dorring dumped Crosby on the floor by the entrance. Then he and Otis went from door to door, kicking them in. They were thick and well locked. But they were large, furious men. They rained the whole of their fury onto those doors and broke through to the shivering girls on the other side.

  Every time he got to a fresh door, Otis would frantically call his daughter’s name as he beat his way through. It was like some cruel game show where you have a series of boxes and one may or may not have a prize in it. Except this was the man’s daughter. This box had his whole life in it. But each time Otis broke through, he was left deeply disappointed when it wasn’t his little girl on the other side.

  “Where’s Jess?” he would ask.

  Each would shake their head at him.

  Meanwhile, Dorring was being followed by one of the girls he’d freed.

  “What’d you want Jess for?” she asked as he went to the next door.

  “Just get out of here,” Dorring said to her. “Go on. Join your friends outside in the road.”

  She was as skinny as a rake. Must have been no older than fourteen. She had medium length jet black hair. It was perfectly straight with a square fringe. She wore a pair of denim hot pants and a vest top several sizes too large, so that it hung on her like wet laundry on a line.

  “I know Jess,” she said as Dorring kicked his way into another room.

  “So you said,” Dorring replied.

  “She ain’t here.”

  “You said that too.”

  He broke through.

  “Jess!?”

  Another girl. This one no older than ten.

  “The others are outside,” the girl following Dorring said to her.

  The little girl wandered off in the direction the others were going.

  “You should go too,” Dorring said to the girl.

  “Nah. I wanna help you.”

  “Then go outside. It’ll be no good for you if other men come here and lock you back up.”

  “But you won’t let them. Look what you did to Harry, Charlie and Daz. They used to think they was well-hard. Now look at them.”

  Otis came over at that moment, having finished with the last door on his side of the corridor.

  “Where’re your parents?” he asked the girl.

  “Dunno.”

  “Were you taken?”

  “Nah. I was tricked. Most of them here was tricked.”

  “You know my daughter?”

  “Is Jess your daughter?”

  Dorring made it through the final door. Two more girls came bawling out.

  “Told ya she ain’t here,” the girl said.

  She was beginning to get on Dorring’s nerves. Otis, on the other hand, appeared to appreciate the girl’s presence.

  “What’s she like?” he asked her as Dorring hurried the remaining girls out of the building.

  “She’s sweet. Real quiet,” the girl said. “Had a hard time. She talks about you. Her funny old man. She weren’t wrong, was she?”

  Otis never even heard the last words. All he had heard was ‘She talks about you’. The whole world disintegrated around him after that.

  “What does she say about me?” he asked, tears welling in his eyes.

  “She remembers the stories you used to tell her. She tells us sometimes. About a chicken and a fox being mates and the adventures they get up to. Really funny, they are. Did you make them up yourself?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled as he stared blankly through the window of the past. There she was. His little girl. Sitting upon his knee in front of the fire as they toasted pieces of bread on the end of long forks, playing them in the fl
ames. He was telling her about the time Chicken and Fox were poaching turkeys from the farmer.

  “Chickens don’t eat turkeys,” the little girl complained.

  “They don’t. No,” Otis had said. “But you see, Chicken wasn’t eatin’ them. He was selling them at market. Him and Fox had a little stall they set up on a Wednesday durin’ market day. So they break into the farm at the dead of night. Avoid Farmer Smith’s sniff-hounds and get in the shed. Then they goes along and places sedatives in the little trays o’ grain they got at the front’s o’ their cages.”

  “What are sedatives, Daddy?”

  “Sleepin’ tablets.”

  “Otis!”

  The now came racing back. The eyes came back to life.

  “We need to get out of here,” Dorring said.

  He picked Crosby up, placed him on his shoulder, and then he and Otis, along with the girl, left the building. The other girls were all standing around in the road outside the gate. Dorring put Crosby down close by and searched his pockets, having pulled the trousers up the legs. He found the keys to the BMW.

  “Where’s he park his car?” he asked the girl who was still hanging around him and Otis.

  “’Round the back,” she replied.

  Dorring marched around there and found the olive green car. The fuel gauge said it was practically full.

  Good, Dorring said to himself.

  He got in, started the engine and drove it around the front. Otis and the girl were standing at the gate with the prostrate Crosby at their feet. They watched as Dorring drove the BMW straight up to the front of the building, so that it was right against the entrance underneath the porch. Then he got out and took the rifle from Otis.

  Aiming it at the car, he shot the BMW’s fuel tank several times and waited for the petrol to gush out. Once it had formed a large puddle at the side of the car, he shot the fuel and ignited it. The flames quickly spread to the holes in the tank. The car exploded into a fireball. The flaming fuel spread everywhere, leaping onto the roof of the building and catching fire to it.

  At the gate, the girls all gazed at it with wonderment, the light from the flames shimmering off their faces. Dorring picked Crosby back up and then he and Otis walked straight past them towards the Vectra. Otis opened the trunk. The tied up figure of Kenneth Anderson gazed up at them.