And then, as casually as he could, he pulled out the mobile phone and texted the kidnappers:
On the train from Waterloo to Reading line. I’ll be twenty minutes.
Mayberry clutched the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white. For ten long minutes, nothing happened. Then, as the train sped towards Virginia Water, the phone began to vibrate.
What are you wearing?
Mayberry looked at the glass in the window and studied his appearance. Blue shirt, black slacks. There was nothing distinctive about him. He texted them back with a description of his clothes and then waited.
He arrived at Virginia Water without any further contact. When he stepped onto the platform, another text arrived.
Get on the next train to Weybridge.
He looked around for any sign he was being watched. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ayala sitting nonchalantly on a bench next to a vending machine. He appeared totally engrossed with something on his mobile phone. Mayberry ignored him and walked towards a nearby guard.
‘Ex-excuse me? W-which platform for Weybridge?’ he said loudly enough for Ayala to overhear.
‘Can’t you read? That one.’ The guard pointed Mayberry in the right direction and then stomped off muttering to himself. ‘Pillock.’
It did the trick. As Mayberry boarded the train for Weybridge, he saw Ayala head for the exit.
Mayberry pulled out the cloned mobile and pecked out another text message. I’m on the way.
Just over four minutes later, as the train began to slow down, the phone vibrated again.
This stop.
Mayberry squinted out into the darkness, trying to work out where the next stop would be.
A mechanical voice came over the loudspeaker system. ‘The next stop is Chertsey.’
Mayberry stepped off the train and into a large crowd of tourists, most of them carrying bags from the nearby theme park’s gift shop.
This time, there was no familiar face to encourage him. As he wove through the crowds towards the exit, Mayberry suddenly felt alone.
***
Rafferty had been waiting outside Virginia Water with the motor running when Ayala got the nod from Mayberry to head for Weybridge.
His own car was abandoned at Virginia Water, so they jumped in Rafferty’s car and floored it for Weybridge Station.
It was only on arrival that they realised they had gone too far. It took Ayala a few minutes searching the internet for train timetables to realise that the This Stop text which Mayberry had received meant Chertsey, three miles back.
Thank God Zane had had enough time to clone Niall Stapleton’s phone. Only one clone would be able to take calls, but texts and voicemails would go through to all of them in real time.
‘What do you reckon is in the box, Bertie boy?’ Rafferty said as she drove.
‘The box has to have something valuable in it. And stop calling me Bertie!’
‘Gee, you think? Someone planned an elaborate heist to steal something that might be valuable? Wonder what it could be. Hmm. Nope. I’ve no idea what someone might steal from the jewellery district. If only we had a clue.’
Rafferty swerved sharply left onto the Eastworth Road as she spoke, and Ayala felt himself being dragged sideways by the momentum.
‘Jesus, woman, where’d you learn to drive? Ease up on that pedal.’
Rafferty smirked. ‘No chance. Not until we’ve got eyes on Mayberry.’
‘Don’t get too close. We can’t afford to spook the kidnappers and lose the girl.’
‘Quit your jibber-jabbering and calm down, Bertie boy.’
Ayala ground his teeth. ‘Stop calling me that!’
Chapter 18: A Diversion
Thursday April 9th 18:20
Mayberry’s phone rumbled as he made his way out of the front exit of Chertsey Station.
Walk down Guildford Road.
Mayberry set off at a brisk pace heading right out of the station, away from the crowds. Guildford Road looped gently around the back of the station as if heading out towards Chertsey Recreation Ground. The rain poured down, soaking him through. He shivered miserably, desperately looking out for a familiar face. It was getting darker, and with the weather turning on them, visibility would soon be poor. It didn’t feel much like summer.
The phone rumbled again.
Turn right. Go down Bell Bridge Road.
Mayberry turned as directed and found himself creeping slowly uphill. The railway by which he’d arrived stretched out underneath Bell Bridge, and Mayberry wondered why he was walking such a circuitous route.
Then the phone rang.
He let it ring for a moment, fleetingly looking around for any sign of Morton or Ayala, and then placed the phone to his ear.
‘Take the pedestrian cut-through on the left a hundred feet ahead. Don’t hang up.’ It was a man’s voice, deep and without any hesitation. To Mayberry’s ear the accent could have been from virtually anywhere south of Milton Keynes. It was a bog standard Received Pronounced accent that gave little away.
‘O-OK,’ Mayberry stammered. For once his aphasia was helping. It made him sound like a nervous schmuck blackmailed into committing robbery rather than a confident undercover policeman.
Still no sign of the others. Ayala had got the message, but had he gone on to Weybridge? And where was Morton?
The only comfort was that they knew he had been on Bell Bridge Road from the last text message.
The alleyway led Mayberry through to a residential area.
‘W-what now?’ he said.
‘Keep going. Walk on until you seen a house with a red door.’
‘R-red door. Got it.’ Mayberry walked along the road. It was a wide-set residential road with cars parked along the pavement. The houses were mostly semi-detached family affairs with the occasional low-rise block of flats.
‘I c-can’t see a h-house with a red d-door.’
‘Just keep walking.’
Mayberry bowed his head against the wind and rain and carried on.
When he was nearing the end of the road, he heard tyres screech behind him and a white van pulled up beside him. The side door slammed open and two men wearing balaclavas jumped out.
Mayberry had just enough time to see a girl tied up and blindfolded inside the van, her mascara streaking down her cheeks underneath the blindfold, before a hood was thrown over his head. They spun him around, yanked his hands behind his back and tied them together with plastic cable ties before shoving him roughly into the back of the van.
Chapter 19: Blind
Thursday April 9th 18:25
Morton knew something was wrong the moment that Niall Stapleton’s phone rang.
The kidnappers were being overly cautious. The route that Mayberry had been texted led around the station in a great loop, and then back towards the main roundabout.
That was where they lost him. Somewhere along Bell Bridge Road, which was gridlocked with traffic, Mayberry had taken the phone call and disappeared.
Rafferty and Ayala were waiting at the intersection of Bell Bridge and Pyrcroft, where they had parked outside an MOT centre with a clear view of the approach.
Morton hit his radio. ‘Still no sign of him, Ayala?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I’m stuck in traffic. Have Rafferty stay in her car, and keep an eye out in case Mayberry surfaces. I need you to head this way on foot and look for anywhere that he might have disappeared.’
‘Got it, boss.’
Morton revved his engine impatiently. He was almost halfway up the bridge, still idling behind a queue of traffic, when Ayala came into view. Morton saw him gesticulate wildly to the side, and then the radio crackled with Ayala’s voice once more.
‘There’s a cut-through here, boss. Mayberry must have turned off. I’m in pursuit.’
The cars ahead of Morton lurched into motion, and he slammed the pedal down. The pavement widened as Morton came over the bridge, and he seized the opportunity to shift the left-han
d side of the car onto the pavement and overtake the car in front of him. He spared a glance to the left, where Ayala had disappeared, and saw a residential road with nobody in sight. The car was never going to fit through the cut-through, so he’d have to loop around from the main road.
Car horns blared as Morton sped around the corner, every bump in the uneven pavement reverberating through the car. He swung onto Pyrcroft Road and caught a wheelie bin on the pavement, sending it flying along the pavement, spewing rubbish all over the place.
The cars ahead pulled to the side as what to them must have looked like a maniac screeched along the pavement. An elderly lady on her walker ducked off the path and into someone’s front garden just in time as Morton continued to accelerate.
At the next left, Morton turned sharply into Lasswade Road and zoomed down towards Barker Road.
Ayala came running into view a few moments later.
Morton pulled his car over next to him and rolled down the window.
‘No sign of him, boss. The cut-through comes out back there’ – Ayala jabbed a thumb over his shoulder back down Barker Road – ‘but there’s nowhere he could have gone on foot. There’s a cul-de-sac back down the road. Do you think he’s inside one of these houses?’
Morton unlocked his car door and stepped out onto the pavement. Assuming he hadn’t passed the kidnappers while driving, and he was pretty sure that he hadn’t, Mayberry was either in one of the houses on the street or he’d gone farther along towards Vincent Road – and back towards the A320.
‘We split up.’ Morton leant into the car and picked up his radio. ‘Rafferty, we need as many ANPR-enabled squad cars in the area as you can muster. Concentrate on the area between Barker Road and the A320. Got it?’
Rafferty’s voice came back over the radio. ‘On it.’
Morton turned to Ayala. ‘You take the eastern half of the road between here and the alleyway. I’ll head west. Call if you find anything.’
The western end of Barker Road was mostly semi-detached houses, each painted some shade of blue or green. Morton walked briskly towards the closest, which was painted turquoise.
A woman opened the front door before he was halfway down the path.
‘Oi! Can’t you read? No solicitors. And at this time of the evening!’ She waved a hand at a sign by the door.
Morton approached the door. ‘I’m with the Metropolitan Police, ma’am. Did you see a gentleman walking along here this evening? This is what he looks like.’
Morton produced his mobile, opened up a picture of Mayberry from the police staff database, and showed the woman.
‘Shifty-looking fella, innee? Nope, not seen him. I heard tyres screeching loudly just a few minutes ago, though. Ruined my soaps, it did.’ The woman leant against the doorframe.
‘Where did you hear it?’
She looked at him as if he were daft. ‘The road, love. Where else d’ya think I’d hear a car?’
‘No. Which direction?’
‘Oh. That way.’ She pointed towards Vincent Road, away from the cut-through. ‘Can’t have been far. It was bloody loud. That everything? I hear Corrie starting.’
Sure enough, the familiar jingle of the nation’s favourite soap could be heard echoing from behind her, which meant it was now half past seven.
‘That’ll be all, thanks.’ Morton turned and headed off in the direction the woman had indicated. Thirty feet down the road, his stomach churned violently.
There, on the road, were rubber marks. And next to them was a mobile phone, the screen smashed but still recognisable. The clone of Niall Stapleton’s phone.
Mayberry was gone.
Chapter 20: The Search
Thursday April 9th 19:30
Barker Road quickly became a circus as residents shuffled out onto the pavement to take a look at the madmen banging on each door in turn.
None of the locals admitted to seeing Mayberry’s abduction. According to them, Barker Road was a quiet residential street where nothing interesting ever happened – until now.
As Morton walked away from another front door empty-handed, Ayala called him over to the car. The passenger-side door was open, and Ayala was riding shotgun with a laptop open in front of him and a long lead trailing from the side to connect up to the dashboard computer.
‘Boss, I think I’ve got something. The lady over there’ – Ayala pointed towards a house about fifty feet past the abduction point – ‘said she thought she saw a white blur go past. If you were going to abduct someone, what kind of vehicle would you use?’
‘Something with tinted windows, or no windows at all.’ Morton leant against the passenger-side door.
‘Exactly. I’d use a van of some kind. No windows to see through, and a hostage could be dragged inside in a split second, minimising the chances of witnesses. It fits with the tyre treads. The rubber marks suggest a wheel span of four feet and two inches, and some fairly chunky tyres.’
‘Does that give us a brand?’ Morton crossed his fingers that Ayala wasn’t about to say something generic like ‘Ford’.
‘Nope, but I also ran a check on the Taken Without Consent database–’
‘And?’ Morton demanded. There had to be something on the stolen vehicle database. Surely the abductors wouldn’t dare to use their own car.
‘Sorry, boss. Nothing there within a twenty-mile radius, not within the last week.’
‘Which means it’s either not a stolen van, which is unlikely; it wasn’t stolen nearby; or it’s not been reported stolen yet,’ Morton said.
‘But I did get a hit on the Automated Number Plate Recognition database. A camera on the A320 caught a white van going by about ten minutes after Mayberry was taken.’
‘Where is it now?’ Morton ran around to the driver’s side of the car and jumped in.
‘It’s just come off the A318, going into Byfleet. The registered keeper lives less than half a mile from there.’
Morton revved up the engine so quickly that it would have been no surprise to have looked back and seen a second set of tyre marks on the road. Seconds later Morton spared one final glance in the wing mirror before turning onto the A317. As Morton sped away, the residents were still standing there in the road wondering what they had just witnessed.
***
Morton made it to Byfleet in just under fifteen minutes. They’d struggled with rush hour traffic at every turn before finally making it across the water.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ Ayala had asked as they crossed. ‘Who’d have thought you could have an inland island right in the middle of the country?’
Morton had ignored him and headed for Mowbray Lane, where the van’s registered keeper lived.
They spotted the van in seconds. It was parked right in front of the house, taking up half of the narrow road.
‘Does this feel right to you? It seems awfully quiet around here,’ Ayala said once they had parked up. They stood in front of the house and looked at the home of the van owner. The front curtains were open, and Morton could see a family of four sitting around a large dining table with a shoulder of pork resting atop a serving dish in the centre of the table.
‘No, it doesn’t. Let’s check the van,’ Morton said, and then he edged towards the Ford Transit and knocked on the back door. ‘Mayberry! If you’re in there, give us a sign.’
Nothing.
‘Right. If he’s in there, he’s out cold. We’ve got to go in. It looks like there’s a side gate. Cover that in case he runs, and I’ll go for the front door.’
‘Got it, boss,’ Ayala said.
He crouched low, careful to keep below the dining room window, then shuffled towards the gate. Once Ayala was in place, Morton walked straight down the driveway and knocked on the door smartly.
Seconds passed, and Morton felt his pulse quicken. The last time he’d been in pursuit of a suspect he’d had to break the door down, and it wasn’t an experience he was keen on repeating any time soon.
Then the door opened, and
a man wearing jeans and a blue cotton shirt appeared. He looked to be about fifty, with salt and pepper hair, a weatherworn face, and smile lines around his eyes.
‘Mr Petersen?’
The man nodded. ‘I’m Boyd Petersen. Look, it’s not really a good time. The better half has just served dinner, and I don’t like to buy things at the door, so thanks but no thanks.’
‘I’m not selling anything. I’m–’
‘They all say that. Good night.’
Morton shoved his foot inside the door just as it was slammed shut. He swore loudly as pain shot through his foot, and Petersen cracked a grin that showed off perfectly even, pearly-white teeth.
‘I’m a police officer,’ Morton finished through gritted teeth.
Boyd Petersen’s grin disappeared. ‘I’m so sorry, officer. What can I do for you?’
‘Your van was spotted leaving a crime scene earlier this evening,’ Morton said. ‘Could you open it for us, please?’
Petersen looked thunderstruck. ‘You’ve got the wrong van. I was working on a wet room installation until an hour ago, and that van has been on my client’s driveway all day.’
Morton exhaled deeply, and then reached for his belt as if going for his handcuffs. ‘Are you refusing to open the van, sir?’
‘No, no, not at all. Hang on.’ Petersen turned away and called out to his wife. ‘Honey! Can you put my plate in the oven, please?’
A shrewish voice echoed back from the kitchen immediately. ‘Why? Where are you going this time of night? Hours I spent slaving over that dinner for you.’ Her voice grew louder and louder, and then she appeared in the hallway.
Morton gave her a polite nod. ‘Mrs Petersen, I’m afraid I need to borrow your husband for a few minutes. Police enquiries.’
Mrs Petersen shot her husband a dirty glance and then shrugged.
‘Gimme a second. I’ll grab my shoes.’
Petersen disappeared, his bare feet making virtually no sound on the plush carpet. Then he reappeared clad in thick boots, trudged past Morton and pressed a button on his key fob. Out of the corner of his eye, Morton saw Ayala coming towards them.
The DCI Morton Box Set Page 32
