Closer To Home

by Heleyne Hammersley

  Kate replayed the conversation that she’d had with Rigby in the pub. He’d seemed dissatisfied with his life. He wasn’t happy being back in South Yorkshire and he wasn’t happy in his job. He’d already told Kate that he’d like to be a detective. Was it pure jealousy? Or was it because she’d not allowed him to walk her home. Had he felt rejected and this was his revenge?

  ‘I honestly don’t know. He’s twisted. I wouldn’t let him walk me home from the pub – maybe I bruised his ego. To be honest I don’t give a toss what his motivation is I just want to get my son back before…’

  Her phone rang again.

  ‘Fletcher.’

  ‘DI Fletcher. It’s Conrad James from Sheffield University. I’ve verified your identity and I can now give you the information that you asked for.’

  ‘And?’ Kate prompted, wanting to scream at him to hurry up.

  ‘One of our team has confirmed that a police officer came to the admin building looking for a way to contact your son. He was in uniform, had appropriate ID and she had no reason to doubt him.’

  Kate thanked him and hung up. That’s how he’d done it. He’d used his uniform and his position. He could easily have told Aleah that her mum was in trouble and that she had to go with him to see her. The kid would have trusted him because he was a policeman. And he would have been able to drive around the estate unnoticed before he snatched Callum. The police presence had been stepped up; nobody would have thought twice about a patrol car being parked near the Goodwins house.

  The route back to Doncaster blurred past the car windows as Hollis drove as fast as he dared. They hit the main drag to Warmsworth doing over eighty miles an hour and Kate watched as the roadsides grew increasingly urban as they approached Doncaster.

  Just as they got stuck at their third set of red lights her phone rang again.

  ‘Cooper?’

  ‘We’ve just had a report back from the officer that we sent to Rigby’s house. There’s no sign of him and no vehicle in the driveway. The officer checked doors and windows, says there might be signs of a scuffle in the kitchen, overturned table, smashed crockery that sort of thing.’

  ‘Enough to force entry?’

  ‘He’s not sure. He’s a PC. Needs confirmation from somebody higher up.’

  ‘Okay. Cooper, listen to me. I’m fairly certain that Rigby’s got my son, Ben. If he has taken him then that could be what the scuffle was about. Ben might be in the house. That gives us reasonable cause to enter. Get somebody over there now with the big key and get inside that house. I’m heading over there now.’

  She gave Hollis the address and he did a quick lane change. Ten minutes later they pulled up on a street of well-kept semis a mile away from Doncaster town centre. Two patrol cars were parked outside the address that Kate had been given and a line of police tape was strung across the driveway, flapping lazily in the light breeze. Kate flashed her ID and ran up to the front door where a PCSO was standing guard.

  ‘Round the back, ma’am,’ he said, pointing to a side gate. She ran around to the back door to where Barratt was standing in deep discussion with two uniformed officers.

  ‘Fletcher,’ he said, the relief obvious in his eyes. He’d clearly not wanted to give the order to break into the house. ‘The kitchen’s a bit of a mess but there’s no sign of any other disturbance. He could have just left in a hurry and knocked the table over. I’m not sure we can go in without a warrant.’

  Kate sighed. Barratt was right. She cupped her hands to her eyes and pressed against the window. The table was on its side in the middle of the kitchen floor and a broken plate and cup lay next to the fridge. A mobile phone lay face up next to an expensive-looking stainless steel bin. Why would he go out and leave his phone?

  ‘Hang on,’ Kate said. ‘Barratt, keep your eye on that phone. If it lights up, let me know.’

  She stepped back from the window, leaving Barratt with his face pressed against it and dialled Ben’s number.

  ‘It’s ringing.’

  ‘Okay. Once more to be sure.’

  She rang Ben again.

  ‘Definitely ringing. Whose phone is it?’

  ‘It belongs to my son. I think Rigby’s taken him to get back at me. He could be in the house.’ She looked over to the small huddle next to the back door.

  ‘We’re going in.’

  Ten minutes later Kate was sitting on the back step with her head in her hands. She’d been so hopeful when she’d seen the phone but the house was clearly empty. There was no sign that Ben had been kept there apart from the phone. Barratt had called the SOCOs and they’d do a full DNA search but the result would take a few days and she wasn’t sure that her son had that long. Rigby had killed Aleah and Callum almost as soon as he’d taken them. Why would he have kept Ben alive? Except that Ben wasn’t a child, he was practically a grown man and to subdue him and kill him would have taken more force and planning than strangling a kid. She still couldn’t understand why Rigby had taken him. It made no sense to her that she could have had anything to do with Rigby’s messed-up childhood. She hadn’t known the family and she had no memory of him as a boy.

  ‘Empty,’ Barratt said from behind her. ‘And there’s nothing to tell us where he’s gone.’

  Kate struggled to her feet. She’d been trying to treat this like any other case, to dissociate herself from the victim, who just happened to be her son, but it wasn’t working. Her phone rang and her heart jumped with the hope that it would be good news, or any news. At least knowing what had happened would be better than this awful uncertainty. She glanced at the screen. Raymond.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Fletcher, I want you back here asap. You’ve just been removed from this case. You can’t be involved now that your son is a victim, you know that. Get yourself back to HQ and let the others do their jobs. I’ve got every able body on duty looking for Rigby. We’ll find him.’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘Fletcher, Kate, that’s not a request or a suggestion, it’s an order. You know it’s for your own good.’

  She almost smiled at his uncomfortable use of her first name. He was right. She shouldn’t be here, it could compromise any investigation into Ben’s kidnap.

  She nodded to Hollis and they made their way back to the car.

  26

  2015

  Garry rang again just as they were trying to find a space in the police HQ car park and Kate almost dropped the phone in her rush to answer.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘I was about to ask you that, you’re the police officer. Nobody’s telling me anything.’

  She gave him a brief account of their findings at Rigby’s house and promised to ring back if she heard anything but she was unable to keep the panic out of her voice.

  ‘Kate, I’m coming over there. I know there’s nothing I can do but at least we’ll be able to support each other. Are you at the police station?’

  ‘For now,’ Kate admitted. ‘I think my DCI might send me home though.’

  ‘Well, I’ll come with you if that happens. I want to know about this bastard that’s taken Ben but I don’t think we should talk over the phone. I’ll get a train and see you later.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she admitted to Hollis as she stuffed the phone back into her jacket pocket. ‘I can’t sit around and wait but I’ve no idea what Rigby’s thinking. Where could he have taken him?’

  ‘Okay,’ Hollis said. ‘If we’re going to do this let’s be logical.’

  He pulled into a parking space and turned to face her.

  ‘He left Aleah where his sister had died. He left Callum where his father killed himself. Both these places were important to him, symbolic. He’ll have taken Ben somewhere equally symbolic.’

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘But where? We don’t know of any other deaths in his family, and anything could have happened to him in his childhood that we know nothing about.’

  She looked out of the window at the row o
f liveried cars in front of them. She couldn’t make sense of any of this. She’d never done anything to Drew Rigby so why did he feel the need to punish her?

  ‘I can’t go back in there,’ she said, glancing up at the windows of their office. ‘I can’t just sit at my desk and wait.’

  ‘Shall I take you home?’ Hollis offered.

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘What did he say to you, Rigby, when you met him for a drink? Did he give you any clues at all?’

  ‘We talked a bit about the case and he gave me a couple of names that were probably fake. We reminisced a bit about school days and some of the teachers that we remembered. He asked about my sister. That’s about it. Shit! I wish I’d known. I felt that there was something a bit off about him but I just thought he might fancy me. Stupid really.’

  ‘There’s no way you could have known who he really was,’ Hollis said. ‘He’s obviously been planning this for ages and he wouldn’t have taken any risks with you. I’m going to ring upstairs and see if they’ve found anything.’

  Kate shut her eyes, reliving the conversation with Rigby as Hollis had a hushed conversation with somebody on their team. It wasn’t Raymond, she could tell by the tone, but she wasn’t quite sure who Hollis had contacted.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That was Cooper. I’ve told her to tell Raymond that you’ve decided to go home and I’m driving you.’

  ‘I don’t want to go home though.’

  ‘I know, I was just trying to buy us some time. Sam says that she’s been trawling CCTV for Rigby’s van. She’s been using the traffic cameras tracing forwards from his house. He was on Thorne Road at five o’clock this morning, then she picked him up near Balby fifteen minutes later. Warmsworth after, that but she hasn’t got any further yet. O’Connor’s helping and they’re working as fast as they can.’

  ‘He’s going back to Thorpe.’ As soon as she said it Kate knew that she was right. Everything bad that had happened to Rigby had happened in Thorpe. Where else would he go?

  ‘Did she say if they could see a passenger in the van?’

  Hollis shook his head.

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything though. He could have Ben tied up in the back.’

  ‘Where else is there? The quarry, the pit and where? He could be anywhere; a park where somebody called him a name, his mum’s old house. He could be anywhere Hollis!’ She heard the tremble in her voice but she was powerless to control her panic; she was used to being in charge, in control, but she needed somebody else to take charge. As though he could read her mind Hollis kept pushing.

  ‘I know. Think. What did he tell you? He’s arrogant. He thinks he’s going to get away with this. He might have made an off-the-cuff remark that was, actually, a hint but he would never have expected you to work it out. He thinks he’s cleverer than you. Where is he?’

  Kate ran through the conversation again. Wine, Karen, Ben, school, Thatcher.

  ‘Pisspants,’ she said, realisation dawning. ‘That’s where he is. They called him Pisspants and he blames me somehow. But I wasn’t even there. We’d moved.’

  Hollis just looked at her.

  ‘He got locked in the old boiler house at the school and wet himself. Some of the other kids started calling him Pisspants.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with you?’

  ‘Not a clue. But it’s all I’ve got. It’s worth a try. We need to go to Thorpe Comp.’

  ‘Okay but it’s the holidays. It’ll be closed.’

  ‘We don’t need to get into the buildings; the boiler house is off to one side. Rigby told me that it wasn’t knocked down when they rebuilt the school. All we need to do is get onto the site.’

  Hollis started the car.

  ‘I hope you’re right about this because we could get into some deep shit with Raymond.’

  ‘I don’t care. I just want my son back. I’ll let Garry know that there’s been a change of plan. If I tell him where the boiler house is he might be able to meet us there.’

  Hollis nodded and pulled out of the car park.

  The school had changed dramatically. Kate remembered an open gate and a huge car park with a path down one side leading to the front entrance of the school. Now it was much smaller. Part of the Tarmac that she remembered had been buried under a two-storey building that had a huge sign over the door proclaiming it the ‘Warren Horsley Building’. She had no idea who he was but doubted that an ex-pupil would have ever wanted to donate money for school buildings. The Victorian main school building had been replaced by a modern and, no doubt, state-of-the art construction of pale brick and red painted steel. This was all that Kate could see through the bars of the locked gate but it reminded her of an open prison.

  ‘Plan B?’ Hollis asked.

  Kate led him away from the gate, back along the main approach road to the school. The corner shop was exactly where she remembered it but it was now a cheap off licence – probably still frequented by pupils during their lunch break – and the road down the side of the school was as quiet as she’d hoped. A yellow van was parked on the corner.

  ‘It’s his,’ she said to Hollis, pointing at the number plate. He peered through the side window and shook his head.

  ‘Looks like I might be right,’ Kate said.

  After the first house, a gap led to a back alley which ran down the side of the school site. It had high walls on one side where the tiny yards of the terraced houses ended and, on the school side, was a low brick wall topped with a fence of red metal bars. They were much too close together to squeeze through but Kate hadn’t given up. In her day, the fence had been green but that was the only difference. If the students of 2015 were like those of thirty years ago they wouldn’t let a fence keep them from a shortcut.

  About ten yards down she found what she was looking for. Two of the bars were slightly off perpendicular. She pushed one and it slumped to one side.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Some things don’t change.’

  She pushed through the gap and held the bars apart to allow Hollis to follow her, wondering how Rigby could have got Ben through the gap without anybody seeing. Cooper had said that it was early when he left home. He could already have been here for hours. If Ben was drugged or tied up Rigby could have forced him through onto the school grounds without much fuss. Or, if he was dead… Kate shook her head. She wouldn’t allow herself to go there.

  ‘Where’s the boiler house?’ Hollis asked. Kate pointed to a low brick building with a squat chimney at one corner.

  ‘The door’s round the other side.’

  ‘We need to call this in. We can’t do this on our own.’ He started to dig in his pocket for his phone.

  ‘No,’ Kate said. ‘If we have a load of cars up here with blues and twos he might panic and lose control. If Ben’s still alive,’ she paused, choking back tears, ‘If Ben’s still alive then we don’t want Rigby scared into doing something stupid. Let’s have a look.’

  She skirted the side of the building, treading gently on the gravel in the hope that her footsteps wouldn’t be audible inside. The door was on the side that faced the main part of the school. It was made of steel with a huge bolt across the middle and a hasp for a padlock about two thirds of the way up. The padlock lay at her feet, the shank cut in half and the bolt was undone. She pointed them out to Hollis before pressing one ear to the door to see if she could hear anything inside. Nothing.

  Hand trembling, she pushed the door open an inch. The room beyond was in darkness. Kate stepped inside, wincing as her shoes crunched on broken glass. If Rigby was in here he knew she was coming.

  ‘Rigby. It’s Kate Fletcher. I know you’re in there.’

  ‘So, come in then,’ a voice said. ‘Let’s see you.’

  She pushed the door again and stepped inside leaving it open to allow as much light as possible to illuminate the interior. The inside of the boiler house was a single low room with benches along one side and a huge iron construction at one end that Kate assumed was the bo
iler. Long disused, it was rusting and the pipe that led up to the chimney had come loose from the wall and hung at an awkward angle. Two windows had been boarded up, the small gaps around the sides of the wood allowing tiny cracks of light through.

  ‘Where’s Ben?’ she asked.

  Rigby reached down and dragged a body from under the bench.

  ‘Here he is. Nice lad. Shame I’ve had to knock him about a bit.’

  Kate studied her son in the light from the open door. His hands were secured behind his back and his head hung down on his chest. Rigby was holding him half upright by his collar and, from his limp posture, it was clear that he couldn’t stand. His eyes were closed and his dark fringe was matted above one eye. That side of his face was black with dried blood. Kate couldn’t tell if he was alive.

  ‘Invite the other one in,’ Rigby said.

  Kate looked at him, making her expression blank.

  ‘You wouldn’t come here on your own, and anyway I watched you come through the fence.’

  He suddenly grabbed a knife and held it next to Ben’s neck.

  ‘Get him in here. Now!’

  Hollis had obviously been listening as he stepped into the rectangle of light, his shadow momentarily obscuring Kate’s view of her son. The knife told her one thing. Ben was alive. Rigby was using him like a bargaining chip and he couldn’t do that if he’d already killed him. As if in response to Kate’s thoughts Ben moaned and moved his head, but he was too weak to do much more than try hopelessly to drag his feet underneath him in a pathetic attempt to stand up.

  Rigby shifted position, grabbing Ben round the neck with one arm from behind, keeping the knife at his neck and his eyes on Kate.

  ‘Phone,’ he barked. ‘On the floor. You too, pretty boy.’

  Hollis took his phone out of his pocket and placed it carefully in front of Rigby. Kate copied his movements.

  ‘Right. How long have we got?’