Fear the Silence (DI Angus Henderson 3)

by Iain Cameron

  The problem for anyone waking up in a hotel room or military barracks after a drunken night out, only to find they now owned a well-used assault rifle with a full clip of ammunition, was how to bring it back to the UK. For a civilian, it would be a chastening experience and the best they could hope for was not being spotted when they consigned it to the nearby skip after taking a vow to limit alcohol consumption in future. A soldier wouldn’t experience any such problems. They were part of a vast military transport machine, designed to move weapons and equipment to any part of the world and any soldier with a good understanding of the checks made by Customs and Military Police, could soon spirit the weapon into their own private arms cache.

  The discharge of an assault rifle in the towns and fields of Afghanistan or Iraq was dangerous, but to do it in West Sussex, in places often appearing uninhabited when it was nothing of the sort, could only be seen as irresponsible and stupid. Unless of course, something out of the ordinary had happened as envisaged by the vivid imagination of DC Sally Graham.

  He tossed around the notion that perhaps a fellow lamper used such a weapon, but the coincidences seemed too great to ignore. Archer was a strong and capable guy and may even have been ex-forces, the shooting incident took place no more than a half-mile from his business, and Amy Sandford disappeared only eleven days before. He put the whisky glass down untouched, grabbed his jacket and headed out to the car.

  When he reached Dyke Road, he called Walters, but after five or six rings was diverted to voicemail. He then remembered she was going out tonight with her mates, the witches coven he called them, as even she, often the calmest and most level-headed member of the team, needed a blow-out now and again. He didn’t think she was ignoring him but more likely sitting around in a noisy pub or jumping around to banging music in a club and couldn’t hear it ring.

  On the point of hanging up, he decided to leave a message. ‘Hi Carol, it’s Angus. I’m on my way to Archer’s place to take a look around. Sally showed me a gunshot discharge report and I think it shows him in a different light. Don’t get too drunk as we’ve got a lot to do tomorrow. If you get into the office early, fat chance I know, I’ll bring you up to date before the team meeting. Bye.’

  By the time he reached the A23, heading north towards Bolney, he became engrossed in a programme on Radio Four about gambling. He didn’t gamble much himself apart from the odd game of poker where his ‘winnings’ were in the red, which he wrote off as the cost of an evening out.

  His father had never gambled in his life, not even to enter a sweepstake for the Grand National, but his father’s brother did, and in common with a couple of the radio interviewees, spent every penny passing through his fingers on the habit and lost all contact with his wife and children as a result. After about ten minutes, it became too depressing and he changed to Radio Sussex for some light relief.

  Few cars passed by as he drove along Adversane Lane, but it was after eleven o’clock and most sensible people would be in bed. He reached the track leading up to Archer’s business, stopped and stared hard at the shadowy forms at the top of the bumpy drive. Archer’s wife had told them her ex-husband spent a lot of his time there but as far as he could see, the buildings were in darkness.

  A quarter of a mile down the road, he pulled into a siding beside a farm gate. He removed a pair of walking shoes and a waterproof jacket from the boot. He looked up and down the road for approaching cars. Satisfied a curious farmer was not monitoring his nocturnal activities, he climbed the gate and began walking across the field.

  The ground was uneven and full of rabbit holes and mole hills and he needed to be careful where he put his feet, as he didn’t fancy a twisted ankle and being forced to explain to his boss his reasons for being there. In his jacket pocket, he found his trusty Maglite and true to form, it still worked. It was a clear, crisp night and he switched it off to save the batteries as he could see fine without it.

  In his mind he tried to visualise the Ordinance Survey map he looked at earlier with Sally and the first of three houses, all within close proximity to the gunshot discharge, was coming up. From research conducted on the web and using Google maps and satellite imagery, he knew the first farmhouse was occupied and so the field he was walking over probably belonged to them, although he couldn’t be accused of causing damage, as nothing much would be planted with winter only a month or so away.

  It consisted of a modest house with a couple of barns. The barns lay a fair distance from the house, giving Henderson the confidence to take a good look around without fear of alerting the occupants or waking a sleeping dog. Both barns were open with no doors or windows and one was filled with two tractors, a large tank of red diesel, and various rusting tractor parts and accessories, while the other contained a huge, lethal-looking threshing machine and dozens of sacks of fertiliser. The buildings were old as broad gaps appeared between the panels of each wall allowing the meagre amount of light available outside to pass through.

  He walked away, giving the farmhouse a wide berth to avoid any PIRs connected to security lights or an alarm, and headed towards Archer’s place. The walking was playing havoc with the joints in his knees and ankles and even though the field appeared flat with only a slight slope moving up to where Archer’s barns were located, the terrain was full of ruts and ridges and his shoes frequently slipping on the damp grass. Twenty minutes later he was close enough to make out the nearest barn, the building Archer used as a storeroom and with no lights or car out front, he was confident Archer wasn’t there.

  He reached the storeroom, the place he and Walters looked inside a few days before, and walked around its perimeter, staring at the timbers, seeing if he could spot a chink of light. If Archer had kidnapped Kelly or Amy, Henderson felt sure he would hide his victim here, but after a few minutes of methodical walking and searching, he felt disappointed not to find anything amiss. He walked across the courtyard to the place Archer used for a workshop and did the same there.

  Behind the workshop, he came across a small awning with a wheelbarrow, pieces of off-cut timber, fence panels, and various other bits, but in common with his perimeter tour of the storeroom, he found nothing strange.

  Returning here, it reminded him once again what an ideal place it was to hide a kidnap victim and with the fields and woods nearby, hundreds of remote places to bury a body. He couldn’t see any lights to indicate the presence of a kidnapped woman and his half hope that Archer had left something incriminating lying around in the mistaken belief that the remoteness of the site exempted him from scrutiny, were dashed like a wooden boat on sharp rocks.

  If he could find something to punch without breaking his hand, he would do so and if he could scream without waking every dog in the neighbourhood, he would do that as well. This was it, the card all his money was riding on but it came up a dud.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Henderson walked to the car, out of luck and out of ideas. The third property, close to the place where the lamper heard the gunshot, turned out to be a smartly presented barn and quite unlike the derelict bundle of rotten wood it looked to be on the web. He wasn’t really surprised, as satellite pictures were often several years old and every farmer with an eye on the bottom line and who was fed up looking at the eye-sore from his kitchen window, was soon converting old barns and selling them for high profits as up-market housing.

  His search there also drew a blank. It was a big place, clean, and recently renovated, as if about to be put up for sale, evident from close-fitting wood panels, new windows and doors, and a high level of landscaping outside. Looking inside, which he could do through the big picture window in the lounge with the torch, it was devoid of furniture, curtains, pictures on the wall, and carpets on the floor, and more important from his point of view, no kidnap victim.

  He walked up a slope, keeping well away from Archer’s place, shoulders slumped, heading back to a large glass of whisky and to plan his next move, if there was one to plan although he didn’t know what i
t might be at this precise moment.

  It was a lovely clear night, the stars visible in all their glory. He didn’t know many galaxies but recognised Orion, The Plough, and the Seven Sisters. In his youth, he’d spent many nights like this, lying on the grass on the outskirts of Fort William, scanning the crisp night sky for shooting stars, planets, satellites, and trying to see as far into the universe as he could, often with his best friend and a couple of cans of strong beer by their side.

  A few minutes later, and with his astronomy knowledge exhausted, he carried on walking. The flight of an owl caught his eye: large, silent and utterly majestic. He followed it over the trees until it disappeared into a wood on the far side of the third property, its wings beating casually as it searched the ground for prey. There, high up on the roof of the renovated barn, he could see a light.

  He looked again; yes it was a light, he wasn’t seeing things or had the starlight of Sirius imprinted on the back of his eye. He walked back to the barn. With the moon at his back, he peered inside but the place was as empty as it had been ten minutes before. He stared hard at the back wall, below the point where he saw the light, but spotted nothing. He walked away and once again, looked up at the roof. It was a steep, sloping roof with a single Velux-style window half-way up, and no, his mind wasn’t playing tricks, it was bathed in the glow of artificial light.

  He walked back to the building, perplexed. Every school kid who had once endured endless hours in a boring physics lab, knew about light and its amazing capacity for escaping through the tiniest of spaces, and with pitch darkness all around, he should see something. He often caught criminals holed up in empty, deserted properties who were given away by the light of their mobile phone as they tried to call their mates or the flashing of a Bluetooth headset, still attached to their ear.

  He was a rational man and the only logical explanation he could think of, there had to be a secret room or compartment behind the wall. The design of such a place required the skills of an excellent carpenter and was it too much of a coincidence to find one such individual lived next door, albeit four hundred yards away?

  He tried the windows but they were sealed double-glazed units and securely locked. The door was wooden and protected by two deadlocks, so much for people in the country being more trusting. He banged the door and windows for several minutes but received no reply. He sighed, there was nothing else for it.

  He walked to the back of the barn and bent down to examine a ladder he’d spotted earlier. It was long, probably long enough to reach the roof and most likely used by the owner to make repairs and clean out leaves from the gutters during the autumn. It was tied to a fixed metal pole to stop it moving around in the wind rather than to deter burglars, as they would come prepared with a sharp lock knife, but as a man with skills at tying and untying all manner of wet ropes in the worst possible weather conditions aboard ‘Mingary’, undoing it was a doddle.

  The back of the barn looked a better place to erect the ladder as it could be propped up against a small ridge which would stop the base slipping, but it would put him on the wrong side of the roof and no way did he fancy climbing over the top, thirty feet above the ground with nothing to prevent him sliding down the other side.

  The only place it could be anchored was a shallow recess over a drain in the courtyard and while it would position him a touch to the left of where he wanted to be, it was better than giving the base no support at all. As quietly as possible, not wishing to wake sharp-eared dogs and have them howling, he laid the ladder on the ground, extended all the sections and locked them in place. With a heave, he hauled it upright, positioned the base over the drain and slowly let it drop until it rested against the barn roof. After a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, he took a deep breath and put his weight on the first rung.

  At the eight or ninth step it creaked and shifted in its rest, causing him to look down, a big mistake as he was in the shadow of the barn and couldn’t see a thing, but almost at once his head started to swim and he felt dizzy. He turned around and gripped the sides of the ladder with both hands until his breathing and woozy head returned to normal.

  Near the top of the climb, he was pleased to see the ladder rested on a thick, metal gutter, as the more common alternative, UPVC, would bend and flex, making everything move, and depending on the weight placed upon it, might even crack or snap, a sound to wake up even the heaviest sleeper. The heavy gutter offered the added advantage of offering something to hold while he made those final, crucial steps.

  He was closer to the window than he thought he would be, which saved some awkward clambering and at this stage of proceedings, any small mercies were gratefully received. Gripping the ladder in his left hand, he leaned over the roof and craned his neck to look inside the window.

  It looked to be a narrow room, as long as the width of the barn and secreted behind the end wall. The room was brightly lit and contained a wardrobe, toilet, sink and a chair but not much else, causing his spirits to drop. He was glad he hadn’t found a spare room full of dustsheets and overalls, but instead it was probably the temporary living quarters of the owner while he redecorated.

  He took a further step up, a point beyond his comfort zone, and now with nothing in front of him now except the roof. He could see slightly more of the room and was shocked to see someone was in there. He ducked back. It could be the owner, who might well be James Archer, as Henderson had crossed no fences to get there, or a granny flat for a grizzly, elderly relative. Either way, the sensible course of action was to get the hell out of there, pronto, but curiosity coursed through his veins like a drug and he needed to know more.

  He leaned forward and looked again. He could only see a pair of legs, crossed, encased in jeans and ending with bare feet. The jeans were tight and on shapely legs with slender feet, and they sure didn’t belong to a man or an old woman.

  Using the window for grip, he eased further up the glass. The woman’s legs were no longer crossed but spaced apart and he could now see they were slim and long with small feet and toenails painted in a bright purple colour. He rapped his knuckles on the glass. His knock sounded flat and dead, the glass thick and double or triple-glazed, with reinforcing wire between the panes. He waited but it made no impression on the woman inside, she didn’t move a muscle.

  He repositioned and started hammering on the glass with the heel of his hand. Now he got a reaction. The legs suddenly moved and planted themselves on the floor and the shocked face of a young woman stared back at him. She looked tall and slim with short dark hair. In an instant, her face changed from one of surprise to one of shock and moments later, she started screaming.

  He couldn’t hear her at all, suggesting the room might be soundproofed but he got the message. He’d experienced similar situations in the past, mainly with jumpers and illegal aliens and often the production of the police ID was enough to assure the person he was part of the solution and not an extension of the problem. He reached into his jacket to retrieve it.

  The sudden, jerky movement caused his right foot to slip from the rung. For a second, he recovered his balance but the ladder started to move towards him and he lost his grip of the window and began sliding down the rungs. He tried to slow down by gripping the sides but he was falling too fast and the friction between his hands and the cold metal burned his skin.

  When ten feet off the ground, the ladder slid from the roof and with nothing else for it, he jumped. For several moments, time seemed to stand still and in an instant he could see his surroundings: the ladder falling beside him, a bird rising from a tree, a car moving on the road below, and the ground rushing up to meet him. He thumped into the courtyard, his legs folding under him. He heard a loud crack.

  An involuntary scream escaped from his mouth as intense pain coursed through his body with the stabbing sensation of a dozen kitchen knives. Out of the corner of his eye, the ladder clattered into the ground in an awful cacophony of clanking and crashing, the noise of a metal m
onster emerging from a crypt in a horror film.

  He lay there for ten or fifteen minutes, half-dreaming, half-sleeping and despite the chill of the night, his brow felt hot and sodden with sweat. He tried to stand but couldn’t as the burns on his hand wouldn’t allow him to apply enough pressure to lever his body up.

  He reached into his jacket for his phone, but it didn’t look good when he finally managed to pull it out as the screen was smashed and the case cracked in various places with small bits of plastic falling off in his hand. It was on and working before the fall, but the screen was now blank and when he tried to switch it back on, his fears were realised when it refused to respond.

  The sharp pain in his left leg was gradually subsiding to be replaced by a deep throb, as rhythmic as the bass player of a rock band, and endurable until he tried to move, when the sharp pain returned a hundred times more intense.

  Only then did he realise his leg was broken.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The note on the bed informing Elaine Chivers she was a kidnap victim did little to calm her. What Steve Egan, or whatever the hell his name was, didn’t realise, was that she was a highly trained security expert with expertise in handling weapons, unarmed combat and survival.

  She and her colleagues at Gatwick Airport were instructed never to reveal the true nature of their role to even their closest family members and not to any of the millions of passengers who passed through the place every year. She could be one of the most annoying people at the airport, rummaging through personal belongings when the X-ray machine operator became suspicious of what she saw inside someone’s bag, making the owners feel as guilty as hell for being singled out. To them, she was a low-paid bag-searcher, but to Gatwick Security, she was one of their key front-line troops in a daily battle against terrorism and illegal smuggling.