Three Weeks Dead

by Rebecca Bradley

  ‘We also need to make contact with the bank and talk to their security department. They need to make some decisions and put whatever safeguarding measures in place that they can.’

  Aaron picked up another phone.

  Now she felt as though she was in the vortex of a tornado, lifted off the ground and buffeted out of control. Nothing to grasp hold of.

  The DI looked at Sally. Her chest tightened. She opened her mouth. Not to speak, but to claw for air.

  ‘Sally, I’m going to speak to the Digital Investigation Unit and I want you to keep trying to phone Wells back. You connected with him in some way. It was you he talked to in the interview yesterday and you he called up just now. For some reason, he feels that if there’s any police officer he can trust, it’s you. And I’m going with that.’

  She couldn’t get any words out.

  ‘If you get hold of him, do what you’ve done so far, you’ll be fine. Talk to him. Be you. We want to help him. He knows this is all wrong, otherwise he wouldn’t have made the call in the first place. Try and get through to him.’ DI Robbins smiled. A respite from the stress that had been playing across her face. ‘You can do this.’

  Sally held on to the back of her chair for a moment. Steadied herself. The room was alive around her. Urgent voices, pens scribbling in notebooks. Jagged movements. Sharp and crystal clear. This was it. Her moment in the Major Incident Room. This was what she had joined for, to be a part of. She was here and it was live. Happening in real time. An incident that needed quick thinking and rapid actions. She dropped into her chair and dialled the number back.

  In her ear, the dial tone was dead.

  19

  Jason

  * * *

  They’d told him to take the SIM card out of the police-issued phone, cut it up with scissors and wash it down the sink. He watched as the water pushed the two halves of the card down the kitchen sink, the contact with Sally sliding out of sight down the pipe.

  He wanted them to come to his rescue, but this wasn’t a film. He couldn’t think fast enough. He wasn’t a hero, he didn’t know how to outwit this person, these people. He didn’t know how to leave clues for the police. He had to do what he was told to do, and hope that he could get Lisa returned to him, and hope that any time in prison he would have to serve would be in a minimum-security place. And hope that Lewis – he looked across at Lisa’s dog who had followed him into the kitchen but kept his distance and now lay in the doorway watching him, eyebrows lowered as though understanding something was wrong – he hoped that Lewis would go to a good home. Maybe his mum would take him. Or Lisa’s mum. His mum hated pet hair. She’d do it for him, as she had been round to feed and walk him yesterday, but she kept an immaculate house and the hair would cause her anxiety, which would rub off on Lewis, so he’d ask Lisa’s mum, Audrey, to have him. It would at least give her a part of her daughter to love and care for.

  As if by some psychic link, the phone that had been delivered this morning started ringing in his pocket.

  ‘Yes?’ He was weary. Resigned.

  ‘Have you done it?’

  ‘Yes. It’s gone.’

  A moment of silence. Some background noise.

  ‘Okay then. Get the SHIRO software, walk out of your house, leave the car there, and avoiding all CCTV make your way left and we’ll send you a text with directions to where we want you to go. Once we’re happy you haven’t tipped anyone off and you’re not being followed, we’ll let you know your final destination. Now get walking.’

  The call ended. The phone felt like a burning coal in his hand. He wanted to drop it and run as far away from it as he could; but there was an invisible tether.

  Her name was Lisa.

  20

  The day was clear, dry and quite mild. The seasons had started to meld into each other. Jason grabbed his coat from the back of the kitchen chair, where he’d slung it last, too tired to care. Lewis had padded behind him, and Jason wondered if he would ever see the spaniel again.

  He bent down in front of the animal that Lisa had adored. His pale brown eyes looked rueful, as though he knew what lay ahead for his master. Jason rubbed the dog’s head and behind his ear, and whispered how much he loved him.

  21

  Jason’s steps were leaden as he walked down Eltham road, his limbs as heavy as the sky overhead. Turning onto the narrower Oxford Road, with its wide semis and bay windows, he tried to think, his brain scrambling, fighting, thoughts scattering away before he could make sense of them.

  As he turned right onto Abbey Circus, his stomach lurched. His body was in complete revolt against what he was trying to do.

  Walking towards him was a male, late fifties, with a dog on a lead, a paper in his other hand. Jason stopped dead in his tracks, his breath stalling his chest. Tightening. The man continued to walk, one slow step at a time. Or so it seemed. He then started to whistle. He looked relaxed, at ease. Jason clenched his fists in his pockets; a bead of sweat slid from his hairline to his ear.

  Was this it? In the middle of the street?

  His chest was burning.

  The man was in front of him. The dog’s tail wagging, nose to the floor.

  ‘Morning. Nice one we’re having.’ He smiled. His steps continued.

  Jason released the air he’d been clinging on to, letting it explode out of him with force; then he bent over, grabbing hold of his knees for balance. ‘Yes.’ He coughed as he tried to get the word out. ‘Yes.’ Again. At the relief.

  He breathed in. Filling his lungs. He was losing his mind. He had to calm down or this would never work out. But these streets didn’t have CCTV. He’d jumped to conclusions. He had no idea where he was going or what to expect, but he straightened himself up and moved forward again. The strange mobile phone, heavy in his pocket. The next turn was Cambridge Road, and as he made it the phone came to life. This time, a text, with instructions to use the Uber app to request a driver. The destination had been preloaded. There was also a reminder that he wasn’t in need of: that any attempts to warn the police of his actions would result in a very healthy dinner for the dogs he’d heard previously.

  He didn’t have to wait on the corner long before the driver slid up beside him.

  Jason looked around him, at the familiarity of home, then he climbed into the back seat, hoping this was an exchange or a drop off and not a matter of being driven to his death.

  22

  Sally

  * * *

  The dead tone from the earpiece of the phone was mirrored in her nerve endings as she felt them hum throughout her body in response to the sound entering her brain like a dentist’s drill. How many times could she redial a number she knew was disconnected? How long could she sit here and pretend to be a part of a team while feeling as disconnected as the phone number she was trying to get through to? She had to do something else. She was more than this, she knew that.

  With a gentleness she didn’t know she had in her, she placed the receiver back in the cradle and looked up at the rest of the incident room, the room she’d avoided looking at for the last twenty minutes.

  As she did so she caught Gordon’s eye; he was working at his desk, looking at his computer monitor and making notes by hand, but as he saw her he smirked as though he could see failure written all over her. Sally dragged her eyes away. She wouldn’t be pulled into his games.

  She sought the DI out, and saw she was in her office. A small room partitioned off within the larger incident room. Open blinds around the large windows, and an open door. Standing in front of DI Robbins was a uniformed officer. She was small, petite, with blonde hair scraped away from her face and tied in an unruly knot at the back of her head. DI Robbins nodded and they both walked out of what was known as the goldfish bowl. The uniformed officer continued to walk, leaving the incident room as DI Robbins called for everyone’s attention.

  ‘He’s gone. Jason isn’t at home and his car is still on his drive, so using ANPR is a bust.’ She sighed.

>   A murmur went around the room. ‘This means he’s on foot, on public transport or using a taxi; so, let’s get hold of CCTV, see if we can see him in West Bridgford, and contact all the local taxi firms to see if they’ve had any pick-ups in the time period between Sally seeing him this morning and twenty minutes ago. For all we know, he could have called us after he left the house, not before.’

  Sally felt the blood rush up to her face as her name was mentioned, as though, somehow, her going to Jason’s address this morning had made her personally responsible for what had now occurred. Though her brain told her this was ridiculous, her body was telling her otherwise. She touched her cheeks, felt the heat, and wondered if she could go back to the department she had left. She had known her role there. She was comfortable. Happy.

  ‘Let’s get to work, see if we can find him.’

  Martin walked over to her, a look of concern on his face. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. Why?’ Her hands went back up to her cheeks. ‘It’s warm in here.’

  He nodded. ‘Look, if I make a start on the CCTV stuff, will you go through the local taxi companies?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Yes.’ She wanted to hug him.

  ‘Great. Thanks.’ He sat at his desk opposite and started working.

  ‘The new girl needs help, does she? You should have asked.’ The voice cut into her from behind. Words like flint. Sally clenched her teeth.

  ‘I’m good. Thanks for the offer though.’ She didn’t turn around.

  Once she saw him in her eye-line walking away, she dared to move again. To breathe again. Why was he like this with her, why make everything so difficult? She had one thing to do before she made the calls to the taxi companies. She picked up her mobile and strode out of the incident room to look for a place to make a quiet call.

  This time there was no dead tone. This time the phone rang and was picked up straightaway.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Tom.’ She let out a long breath into the phone. ‘I miss you.’

  23

  Jason

  * * *

  The man driving the Uber vehicle tried to talk to Jason. Something about the weather being great for the time of year, although he didn’t mind autumn anyway, being wrapped up warm at home when it was cold and wet outside, which of course was at odds with him driving for a living. He’d laughed at that. Talked some more about driving conditions on the roads and how many people didn’t take the weather into account when they made decisions about speed and overtaking manoeuvres.

  Jason had decided to sit behind the driver so as to not have to talk to him, but this hadn’t stopped him, and Jason stared at the back of the driver’s head, through the bars of the headrest, as he chattered on, oblivious to the fact that his passenger wasn’t engaged in the ‘conversation’. He obviously hoped for a higher rating on the app for providing a personable ride.

  Little did he know, his passenger was practically a hostage and he was involved in a crime.

  Jason watched the houses slide past. People living lives inside them, oblivious to the car driving by with a man heading to an unknown destiny. He stared at the children’s playpark on his right, before the Loughborough Road roundabout, empty and still.

  Jason felt as though he hadn’t eaten in days; his stomach felt small, shrivelled, which made him feel hollowed out and sick. He cramped with nerves, and as the man in front of him continued his monologue he tightened his fists in an effort to bring his body under control. The forebodings of the morning had tested him to his limit.

  The car eventually slowed and the indicator ticked as they turned left between gatehouses and up a long, winding driveway.

  The driver stopped talking as he realised that his chatter may have been inappropriate. ‘Take it easy, yeah?’

  There was no bill to pay, it was all sorted through the app, a bank account attached to the app. Jason gripped the phone hard in his hand. He wasn’t going to let it go. Here was a real link to the bastards.

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’ He got out and slammed the door behind him. The morning air felt a couple of degrees cooler here than it had when he set off. He looked around – it was quiet. A woman walked close by, but he didn’t believe she was involved. She had a pushchair inside which, wrapped up with a bobble hat and mittens, was a child of about two. The woman’s walk was brisk, the child playing with a worn blue teddy, pulling its arms and legs and sucking on one of its arms.

  Jason watched the woman and child and waited until their receding backs were out of sight.

  Standing there. The highest point on the Trent’s south side, overlooking the Trent Valley. Standing in the place he was told to meet for the exchange.

  At the foot of Lisa’s grave.

  24

  Sally

  * * *

  No taxi company had taken a call or been to a pick-up at or near Jason’s home that day. After urgent enquiries to locate him, DI Robbins had decided that the next step was to do a search of his home address, and Sally had been to the magistrate’s court to obtain a search warrant to look for stolen property still on the premises, or items that could help locate Jason or the stolen property. The three sitting magistrates had been in the back room of the court, drinking tea and eating biscuits between cases when she saw them. Two men and a woman. It hadn’t taken long to convince them that the warrant was necessary. The thought of the bank being accessed electronically and all funds swept out made the three of them turn a shade paler than when she’d entered. Biscuits were dropped back onto plates and tea forgotten.

  As she’d talked the case through with the magistrates, the clerk listening intently, Sally’s mind played over the electronic footprint angle of the job, and how they might track Jason or the software. It would be catastrophic for the banks if the software fell into the wrong hands, and who knew what it might do to further demolish the economy and people’s lives. A snippet of a conversation she’d had with Jason entered her head and she couldn’t wait to relay it, and the possibilities it suggested, to DI Robbins.

  The excitement that very information generated was palpable in the incident room, as coats and search equipment were grabbed with some speed.

  ‘This is great,’ DI Robbins said to her as she pulled her arms through her coat sleeves. ‘We already know he hasn’t taken his car, so he’ll be on foot, and if he’s taken the dog with him then we can track him to his location with the dog tracker you told us about.’ She buttoned up the coat. ‘Thank God for caring dog owners.’

  Sally shoved her hands in her pockets for something to do with herself while she waited for everyone else. ‘Thank you, Ma’am. It’s why you wanted me to talk to him, to remember the conversations. That’s all I did.’

  The DI smiled. ‘Come on, let’s get there and find the paperwork for the tracker, and see if he’s left or taken his phone, as we might be able to recover some data from it, and also see what else we can find.’

  25

  Walking into Jason Wells’s home when he wasn’t in, after being there for him as a grieving husband, had the feel of looking for your Christmas presents as a child when your parents were out of the house. Familiar, but sneaky.

  The team walked in and gloved up. Gordon dropped the search bag down in the middle of the room. ‘Nice door, shame we had to damage it that way.’

  ‘It is a shame, Gordon, which is why you’ll be the one to wait for the company to come and make the house secure when we leave,’ replied the DI. Sally couldn’t help but smile to herself.

  Lewis was in the kitchen, barking at the sudden intrusion and scratching at the door. ‘He hasn’t taken the dog,’ DI Robbins commented, with not a little disappointment in her voice.

  ‘I’ve met the dog. I’ll go and see if I can calm him down if you like?’ Sally offered, wanting to get out of the way for five minutes.

  ‘Thanks. We’ll need to go in there to search as well, so I’d rather we calm him down than have to call someone down here to deal with him.’

&nb
sp; Sally left the team to organise themselves for the search and headed towards the incessant noise coming from behind the kitchen door. Lewis wasn’t happy with them, and she hoped he remembered her from that morning and the previous day. Was it really only this morning she had seen him, and last night? It felt like so long ago now and yet it was only 12.45. She snapped on her blue search gloves and hoped they wouldn’t scare Lewis. She wondered if they would offer her any protection, should he decide to protect his and his master’s home. After all, he had been through so much loss, he might savage her the minute she walked in.

  Talking to him as she turned the handle, her hand shook, but the barking subsided. She pushed on the door and was met by a wet tongue and wagging tail.

  ‘Hey, boy, you remember me then?’ Sally wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck in an attempt to both soothe him and control him as he tried to wash her face. She rubbed behind his ear.

  ‘Good boy. Did he leave you? Where’d he go, Lewis? Can you tell me?’

  ‘Talk dog now?’

  Sally gritted her teeth at the familiar jibing voice, and continued to fuss the spaniel, rubbing around his neck, in his soft fur. She stayed still until she heard a huff and footsteps recede.

  ‘Good boy,’ she whispered. It was then she realised something was missing.