That was usually the point at which he fell asleep, but although he’d managed to relax his body, his mind was still flitting about all over the place. On the one hand he was cross that Tina and Derek seemed to be in cahoots, what with both of them trying to get him interested in Derek’s latest case. But on the other, he couldn’t rid himself of the image of that poor girl. She kept popping up in his mind, just as she was doing now. When he closed his eyes, he saw her; those soft brown eyes that seemed to be looking directly into his, with a steady gaze that wouldn’t be deflected.
Struggling to sit up, he propped himself up on his pillows and thought he would read for a while. He didn’t need to sleep, just rest on top of the bed. Reaching for his book, he saw a copy of the Aldershot News again, this time placed on top of his books. For God’s sake, Tina wasn’t giving up. She must have rescued the paper from the bin and left it there for him before she went to work that morning. He decided it could bloody well stay there and he pulled his book from underneath it.
Opening it he found his place and started to read. But for some reason his favourite topic of military history wasn’t cutting it and his mind kept wandering back to Tina, Anderson and the girl, so in the end he gave in. Thrusting the book to one side he picked up the newspaper, reading once again about the unknown child and the strange marks on her arm.
Throwing the paper down onto the bed he decided a cup of something was in order and made his painful way back to the kitchen, where he brewed a cup of tea. Propped up against the work surface he took a few tentative sips, but the tea was still too hot to drink properly, so he took it through to the lounge with him, wondering if there was any cricket on the television. As he walked through the hall he once more spied Anderson’s carrier bag, which he studiously ignored.
He put his tea down on a side table and turned on the television, flicking through the channels. But as he couldn’t find anything worth watching, he settled for the news. He listened to the sports report about how the cricket had just finished (England were losing as usual), the latest FA Cup news (he was looking forward to watching the Reading v Chelsea match on Friday night) and Indian Wells tennis was due to start that week end (would Andy Murray be able to beat Djokovic this time?). As the local news headlines started he was confronted with the picture of the girl. Yet again. This time her face filled the television screen.
He thought about the newspaper article...
He thought about the file sitting on the hall table that Derek had left…
He guessed it wouldn’t hurt to take a look. Not that he was going to help. Not that he was going to get involved. No way.
11
“You fucking idiot, how could you have lost the bloody girl!”
Clay looked at the boss, who was incandescent with rage. His face was red, his ginger hair standing on end, spittle flew from his lips, his fists were bunched and he took a threatening step towards Clay, who was feeling decidedly nervous. He felt like cringing and curling up into a ball in a dark corner, but decided to try and find some backbone and go on the attack, rather than the defence. He’d read somewhere that that was the best course of action, the one that was least expected.
“Look, it’s alright,” Clay said, raking his fingers through his long hair. “According to the paper she hasn’t said a word. Nothing. Can’t. They say she’s too traumatised to speak.”
“Well you’d better hope she stays that way.”
At last the boss seemed to be calming down, his voice had quietened and his breathing was beginning to return to normal. He no longer looked as though he were going to have a heart attack.
“In the meantime we need another one. Spring equinox is coming up so you’d better have a suitable girl by then. You know what to do. Same procedure as last time.”
“Alright, alright,” Clay jabbered with relief and put out his hands palms up. It appeared he’d got away with it.
“And you don’t want to know what the penance will be if you don’t. So no more fuck ups. Do we understand each other?”
Realising he still wasn’t out of the woods, Clay thought that a bit of grovelling was called for, “Yes, boss, of course, boss,” he said as the man walked off, climbed into a new Lexus and drove away slowly, the car tipping and rolling over the bumpy earth outside the abandoned Nissen huts.
Glad to be dismissed, but grumbling under his breath, Clay walked to his small van. It was alright for some, he thought, driving around in a new car and giving everyone orders. Why couldn’t he have been the successful one? Sometimes life just wasn’t fair. But then thinking about his lifestyle, he realised that a change in his fortunes was never going to happen. He was just too plain lazy and liked a smoke of weed every now and then. Well every night if he was honest. Maybe that’s what was slowing him down. Turning on the ignition, the engine of his van turned over sluggishly, before settling into a noisy tick over. The exhaust was on its last legs, and he was sure the engine wasn’t too clever either, it sounded more like a diesel than a petrol van. But Clay didn’t have any money to fix it. He supposed the exhaust would fall off one of these days, but hopefully not before he’d driven North, found and abducted a suitable girl and made it back to Farnborough.
He trusted he’d get paid for this new girl and not be financially penalised by the boss in a fit of anger. It wasn’t his bloody fault the boss had selected an old, abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, with rotten wood and rusty bolts, for their Satanic meetings. It was no wonder the girl had escaped. He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that said he hadn’t locked the doors behind him that night, when he’d been spooked by her turning on him. He’d hated to see her cry and then when she’d shouted at him to get out, he sort of panicked and ran. He daren’t ever mention that to the boss. He dreaded to think what the repercussions would be.
Thinking about it, perhaps he should have kept her drugged more, but it didn’t seem right, pumping her full of shit, and he’d been afraid that she might overdose and die. And that would have been on him. No way was he killing anyone. He might do a few dodgy deals and be a muscle for hire, but he drew the line at killing. Especially killing kids.
Swinging the van onto the main road, Clay settled in for a long journey. But then as he checked his rear-view mirror he glimpsed himself in it. He saw his hair was unruly and curling over his shoulders. He had the start of a straggly beard. His clothes looked as greasy and grimy as his hair and when he sniffed his arm pits, he wished he hadn’t.
Nah, he thought, best go home first and clean up, as otherwise he’d have no luck with the kids. They’d all be too frightened of him.
12
Anderson pushed through the people blocking the automatic glass doors at the entrance to Frimley Park Hospital. At eleven in the morning, the hospital was chock full of in-patients, out-patients, visitors and their families and he felt like a rugby scrum-half running the gauntlet of the opposing team as he tried to score a vital touch-down. He tripped over a pram wheel and would have fallen to the floor if a pair of strong arms hadn’t caught him.
“You alright, Derek?” a familiar voice asked.
Anderson looked up to see that his saviour was none other than Tom Crane. After retrieving Crane’s stick from the floor and handing it over, Derek said, “Thanks for that. What are you doing here?”
“Just finished physiotherapy,” Crane said and rubbed at his hip. “Bloody bloke will be the death of me. I’m just going to have a coffee and a bit of a rest before I go back home.”
“Excellent idea,” said Anderson. “I’ll join you.”
Anderson carried their purchases on a tray over to an empty table overlooking a garden area, which was nothing more than a bit of scrub grass and a sad looking willow tree. Not the enticing peaceful place it should have been for those wishing to get away from the humdrum of the hospital and perhaps reflect on a particular problem, Anderson thought. And a Weeping Willow wasn’t the smartest of choices for a centre-piece tree, especially for the newly bereaved
. He brushed aside his thoughts of the garden and placed the tray on the table.
“Thanks,” said Crane sitting down and swallowing a pain killer with a swig from a bottle of water. “What are you doing here anyway?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m just about to see that child. You know, my mystery girl.”
“She’s still in hospital then?”
“Yeah. To be honest we don’t know what else to do with her. The last thing I want to do is to hand her over to social services in case she becomes even more traumatised by being moved and sent to a children’s home or foster parents.” Anderson paused to take a bite from his sugar coated doughnut. “Mm,” he grimaced. “It’s a bit stale,” and he was forced to take a gulp of coffee to make the cake go down.
“How is she?”
Anderson thought he saw a sliver of interest in Crane’s eyes. Wiping sugar off his hands with a napkin, he said, “Still not talking. To be honest I don’t know what to do. I could really do with another take on the case, but I can’t find anyone interested enough to help me.”
He paused and raised his eyebrows at Crane, wondering if his friend would comment on the fact that he had left the file at his house. As Crane didn’t bite, he continued, “You would have thought the fact that it’s a child involved would melt even the hardest of hearts, but well….”
“It does seem a strange case,” Crane said, gulping down the dregs of his coffee and collecting his belongings.
Disappointed at the lack of an offer of help from Crane, Anderson said, “Anyway I better be off as well,” throwing his scrunched up napkin into his empty cup in frustration.
At the doors of the café, Anderson went to turn left towards the wards. He raised his hand in a gesture of good-bye, but hesitated when Crane didn’t turn away from him.
“I, um, could do with trying to loosen this hip up a bit,” said Crane. “Maybe I could walk up to the ward with you? The exercise would do me good.”
Crane and Anderson stood by the door of the child’s room, looking in through the glass panels. As if sensing their presence, the girl turned her head and stared directly at them. Her large eyes seemed even more mesmerising in the flesh than in the newspaper photograph and Crane had trouble tearing his gaze away. The poor kid. He wondered what on earth she had been through to end up in this state? Why was no one looking for her? He couldn’t help draw a parallel between her and his son Daniel; a child who lived in a happy home, full of love.
As the girl looked away, Crane noticed a young woman sat by the side of the child’s bed. “Who’s she?” Crane asked.
“A young policewoman, a Family Liaison Officer. I particularly requested she not be in uniform as I thought that might be too frightening for the girl. She sits and holds her hand, reads to her, plays songs; anything to try and get a reaction, but so far nothing.”
Not wishing to go in and upset the child, Crane waited outside while Anderson entered the room and talked to the young FLO. The child’s arms were outside the bed covers and Crane looked at the strange symbols painted on them. It was difficult to see the individual ones from that distance, but he wondered at the mental torture of seeing something painted on your arms that you didn’t want, and didn’t understand what they were or why they were there.
Anderson interrupted Crane’s introspection as he left the room and joined him. “Are they tattooed on?” Crane asked, pointing at the girl’s arms.
“No, they’re henna apparently, so they will fade with time, thank God. She doesn’t need to have a permanent reminder of whatever the hell they did with her.”
Crane nodded in agreement.
Scrabbling in his pocket, Anderson retrieved his mobile which was ringing and walked off while he took the call. Returning, he said to Crane, “That was the office. Apparently a tattoo artist has come forward. He recognised one of the symbols. So I need to go and see him. Now.” Anderson paused. “Well?” he asked, jangling his keys in his trouser pocket.
Crane let the question hang for a moment. Closing his eyes he saw again the girl’s stare, her dark eyes seemingly pleading with him to help her. Opening his own eyes he said, “Well, I think that as I could do with a lift home, maybe I could come with you to see the tattoo artist and afterwards you could drop me back at my house. What do you think?”
13
Anderson pulled up outside a tattoo shop set in a row of shops on the Totlands Estate, on the outskirts of Farnborough. Crane clambered awkwardly out of the car and stood looking at the outside of the shop. There was a glass door in the middle of two large windows which sported various tattoos mounted on pieces of card. But the photographs were old, fading and curling off their backings. From the outside the whole shop had an air of desolation about it, reflecting the estate it was situated in.
Crane could see a middle-aged man wearing a dark tee-shirt and jeans, stood behind a counter near the front of the shop. His arms appeared completely covered in tattoos, in what Crane thought was called ‘a sleeve’. He guessed you had to be interested in tattoos to become keen enough to train as an artist.
Anderson joined him at the door. “Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” Crane grinned for the first time in many months. He felt a bubble of excitement in the pit of his stomach, worming its way up through his body. Supressing his eagerness, he followed Anderson into the shop. The inside smelled a bit musty, intermingled with an undercurrent of stale sweat, and looked as dilapidated as the outside. But Crane could see empty booths that were spotlessly clean and organised. It seemed the attention to detail didn’t extend to the waiting area of the shop.
Crane stood silently next to the policeman, while Derek showed his credentials and told the man why they were there.
“Do we have to do this now?” the man who had introduced himself as Blake said.
“Yes we do,” Anderson replied.
“It’s just that the customers won’t like it. You know, the police being in here.”
“What customers are those then?” Anderson asked looking around the empty shop.
Outmanoeuvred, Blake had no choice but to answer Anderson’s questions.
“Can you firstly explain what happens when someone comes into the shop for a tattoo?”
Blake told them that he took the customer’s details down; name, address and phone number. Then they talked about what sort of tattoo the customer wanted and where it was to be placed on the body.
“Some know what they want,” Blake said, “Others don’t and need some guidance, hence the books of tattoos,” and Blake pointed to three large ring binders on a low coffee table placed in front of a row of dilapidated chairs. One of which Crane sank gratefully into.
“How come you tattooed this particular symbol?” Anderson asked. “Is it is in one of those books there?”
“No, I checked at the time,” Blake replied. “It wasn’t something that I’d done before. The bloke brought in a piece of paper with the symbol drawn on it and I had to do it freehand.”
“Freehand? What does that mean?”
Blake went on to explain that most tattoo artists used a template and drew over it, like kids in school making a copy on tracing paper and then transferring that onto another piece of paper or into a book.
“That’s what we do, but we transfer it directly onto the customer’s skin, that’s for the ones that we already have designs for. This one was different. I had to draw it on the bloke’s arm freehand and then tattoo over the design. There aren’t many of us that do the freehand stuff and I’ve got a bit of a reputation for it.”
“I’ll need the customer’s details,” Anderson said.
“Well, there’s the problem,” he said. “The missus said that you’d want them and made me look for them. But the truth is that I can’t remember when he came in, so I can’t pinpoint the customer.”
“So you don’t make a note of which customer had which tattoo?”
“Sorry. There’s no need for me to do that. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Crane could see the frustration in Anderson’s face as the lead turned out to be a dead end. As Crane rose with the help of his stick, Anderson said, “If the same man comes back, or anyone else wants this symbol or something similar…”
“Yes, I get it, I’ll call you.”
“Good.” Anderson slid his card over the counter. “In the meantime could you describe the man you tattooed?”
“Well, I do that many, they all run into one another you know? But the thing I remember about this bloke is that he had ginger hair.”
“Anything else? Beard? Other tattoos? Clothes?”
“No, sorry, I just remember ginger hair and fair skin with freckles.”
14
As Anderson drove them back, Crane was particularly quiet, but this time in a good way, not because he was in a bad mood, which was his usual emotional state. Crane was beginning to realise that for the first time in a long time his leg hadn’t hurt for a while. Thinking back, the last time had been when he had come out of the physiotherapy suite earlier that morning. He stretched his leg out as much as he could in the foot-well of the passenger side of Anderson’s Ford Focus, rubbing his hip as he did so. He was wearing a track suit and trainers at the insistence of his personal therapist, or rather his personal sadist, who wanted him to wear comfortable loose clothing and stable footwear for their sessions. The man was worse than any physical training instructor Crane had ever encountered in the army. A brutal task-master, who if he thought that Crane wasn’t trying hard enough, would deliberately let the session run over until he was satisfied that Crane was putting in as much effort as he could.
Rules of the Earth: A dark gripping detective thriller (Crane and Anderson Book 1) Page 4
