The Chosen Ones

by Howard Linskey

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Cause of death was strangulation, obviously,’ he said, ‘but there were other factors that were’ ‒ he searched for the word ‒ ‘noteworthy.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘There was a lot of damage to the internal organs.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘All of them to an extent, but it was particularly noticeable in the liver and kidneys.’

  Just like Sarah Barstow. What had Rennie told him about the stoned girl? She’d buggered up her internal organs with drink.

  ‘Cause?’

  ‘Could be a number of things.’

  Why would these pathologists never nail their bloody colours to the mast? But Bradshaw knew why. It was mainly because they didn’t want to be picked up on it in court if one of their assumptions turned out to be wrong.

  ‘Off the record, what do you think it might be? It would be bloody helpful to get an expert’s opinion, to help me narrow it down a bit.’ Bradshaw had learned that a combination of flattery and a plea for help was often surprisingly effective when dealing with figures of authority.

  ‘It could be alcohol abuse over a sustained period. That would eventually wear out the liver and kidneys.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘And there was one other thing,’ said the pathologist. He dangled this tantalizingly in front of Bradshaw and waited for his response.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘The lady in question had rickets.’ The pathologist looked troubled at the recollection. ‘And I have to say, in all my years of doing this job, that has to be a first.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When they pulled over by the side of the road, thirty or forty yards before they reached the gate at the bottom of their drive, Helen looked questioningly at Tom, sensing danger. He pointed ahead and she saw the reason for his caution. Someone was standing on the street outside their home, evidently waiting for them to return, even though the rain was coming down hard now. She understood Tom’s concern. Their job meant they lived with the permanent prospect of someone seeking revenge, and they knew from the bitterest experience that this wasn’t paranoia on their part.

  The house they shared, which doubled as their office, had every conceivable security measure, from a CCTV camera and alarm system to barred windows and electronic gates that blocked the driveway. Bradshaw joked that they lived in Fort Knox, but at least they could sleep at night.

  ‘I’m going to keep driving to the gate,’ Tom told her. ‘If I don’t like the look of him, we won’t stop.’

  Helen nodded in agreement and Tom eased the car out from the side of the road and began to drive towards their home. Helen kept her eyes locked on the figure, but he had his back to her. She could make out a man in a raincoat but little else. She found herself clenching her fists as they drew closer, a nervous reaction to the tension.

  Then the man turned towards them, hearing the sound of the car. ‘Bloody hell,’ said Tom. It was part relief, part exasperation, and Helen knew why. The mysterious figure was Ian Bradshaw, but why was he standing outside in the rain? The answer lay with the phone he was holding. When he saw the car, he stopped dialling and put it back in his pocket.

  Tom pulled over, Helen wound down the window and the sopping figure took a step towards them. ‘About time,’ he said. ‘Can’t you just leave a key under the mat for me?’

  ‘Ian, what are you doing standing out here in the rain?’ Helen asked him.

  ‘I’ve only been here two minutes. I rang the bell then tried to call you … again. Do you never switch those phones on?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Tom. ‘I turn mine off when I’m driving and Helen always forgets to charge hers.’

  ‘I do not,’ she protested. ‘At least not always.’

  ‘Well, you’re here now,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘But why are you here?’ asked Helen, because they weren’t due to meet up again until the following morning.

  ‘There’s been a development.’

  Once they were inside, Helen offered Bradshaw a cup of tea, but the offer became redundant when Tom came back from the kitchen with a bottle of beer for each of them. The detective took his gratefully. Then he explained why he had felt the need to come here straight from the mortuary.

  ‘Rickets?’ asked Helen. ‘In this day and age?’

  ‘Remind me what rickets is?’ said Tom. ‘It rings a bell, but I thought only poor people got that, you know, back in Dickens’ day, chimney sweeps and the like.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Bradshaw. ‘But not many people get it these days and, yes, it is usually a sign of poverty and malnutrition.’

  ‘But in this case it could have been caused by long-term imprisonment?’ asked Helen.

  ‘If we accept the theory that she was abducted eighteen years ago and has been kept a prisoner ever since ‒ a staggering thought ‒ then it could.’ Bradshaw looked at his notebook. ‘There was also a noticeable degradation of the teeth and muscles, as well as the bones.’ He raised his eyes. ‘Rickets is caused by a lack of vitamin D. It weakens the bones and makes them go soft.’

  ‘How do you get vitamin D?’ asked Tom.

  ‘It’s in fresh foods like tuna and cheese, so her diet must have been lacking in those.’

  ‘Sunlight,’ said Helen abruptly.

  Tom smiled. ‘You can’t eat sunlight.’

  ‘No, but you also get vitamin D from the sun.’

  ‘How does that work?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Just by walking around,’ she said. ‘I’m not making this up: we need sunshine to touch our skin to generate vitamin D.’

  ‘I thought sunbathing was bad for you,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘Too much sun is,’ she agreed. ‘You can get melanomas. You don’t have to lie on a beach all day to get enough vitamin D, though. You just have to go for a walk every now and then and your skin will soak up the sun’s rays.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Helen?’ asked Bradshaw.

  ‘She went to a posh school down south, remember,’ teased Tom. ‘Not like the crumbling shit-tip you and I attended.’

  ‘The same way you know things,’ Helen told Bradshaw. ‘I read.’ She turned to Tom. ‘And I did not go to a posh school. It was a state school.’

  ‘When I saw her in the woods,’ said Bradshaw, ‘her skin was unnaturally pale. I’ve seen a few bodies in my time, but she was ghostly white.’

  ‘No sunlight,’ said Helen.

  ‘Because she’d been kept prisoner all this time?’ Tom speculated.

  ‘And the other woman from years before, Sarah Barstow ‒ the stoned girl. Her internal organs had been damaged, just like Cora Harrison’s.’

  ‘Did she have rickets, too?’ asked Tom.

  ‘No, but Sarah claimed she was held prisoner by a man for more than a year and there were other women there too,’ Bradshaw told them. ‘And here’s the thing: she said he kept her underground.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tom. ‘But how could he possibly do that?’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  1972

  By his own admission, John Dent was only interested in two things: beer and fanny. He told Samuel he couldn’t wait for the shift change so he could get away from this bloody bunker and into town, where he could openly pursue both these obsessions. For now, though, he seemed content merely to prolong his ongoing campaign of harassment against his fellow aircraftman, calling Samuel a stroppy bastard and asking if his idea of a good time was ‘a mug of Ovaltine and a night in with the Bible’.

  Dent had not been getting the usual rise out of his fellow hostage to the Cold War that day. Samuel had learned to turn the other cheek, for now. He’d been a fool to fall for Dent’s goading before. It wasn’t going to happen twice.

  When they had first been assigned to the two-man listening post in the bunker at ROC Observation Post Bamburgh, Dent had conned Samuel into believing he had an interest in learning more about the good book. They were alone and deep in the heart of
the Northumbrian countryside, just a few hundred yards from the famous castle which dominated the horizon, but they were underground and unable to enjoy the view. Nothing much ever seemed to happen for them to report back on either, so having each other for company mattered. For Samuel, the hours would go much faster if he was able to discuss his deep commitment to the Scriptures, which wasn’t something he normally felt comfortable talking about in the RAF.

  When Dent had explained to his fellow airman that he really wanted to change because, deep down, he was unhappy with the way he was leading his life, he was telling Samuel something he really wanted to hear. ‘Repentance is the first act on the path to redemption,’ Samuel had assured him solemnly, and Dent seemed to be listening.

  He had managed to keep the act going for around ten minutes while Samuel counselled him earnestly, before he asked, ‘But I still get to drink, smoke and screw, right?’ Then he collapsed into laughter and got a murderous look from Samuel, who warned him not to mock God again.

  Dent had agreed to this condition, but only ‘as long as I am allowed to mock you instead, you God-bothering idiot. Christ, could I not have been put in this bloody hole with someone else?’ he pleaded. ‘Anybody else?’

  Samuel had made a point of not saying a single word to the man for the rest of the shift, because he knew Dent didn’t want to sit in silence for hours, whereas Samuel was disciplined enough to take it.

  ‘Sulking, are you?’ taunted Dent. ‘Is that it?’ but Samuel could sense the irritation of the other man and derived some slim comfort from it.

  Samuel wasn’t sulking. Sitting in silence was the only way he could contain the murderous fury he felt at being mocked for his religion. He was so angry at Dent, for the rest of their shift he had fantasized about killing the man.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They ordered Chinese food and tucked into it at the kitchen table. ‘I’m starving,’ Tom said, spooning a helping of Kung Pao chicken on to his plate before passing the foil tray to Helen.

  ‘You’re always starving,’ Helen said, taking it from him.

  ‘Well, I burn off a lot of calories.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Do you two spend all day bickering?’ asked Bradshaw, putting some egg-fried rice and crispy beef on his plate.

  ‘Not all day,’ said Tom, his mouth half full, ‘but Helen likes to tell me where I’m going wrong.’

  ‘If I did that, we’d never have time to get anything else done,’ retorted Helen. ‘Can we get back on track?’ They settled down to eat while they reviewed the case, helping themselves to more food when they wanted it. ‘We have two investigations here, eighteen years apart. They could be linked,’ Helen admitted, ‘but what if they aren’t? It does seem pretty incredible that someone could abduct a number of women in a relatively short period of time, stop offending entirely then start up again nearly two decades later.’ She looked at Tom for confirmation. ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does,’ he agreed, ‘but it is possible.’

  ‘Under what circumstances?’

  Tom thought for a while before answering. ‘Suppose the perpetrator had had his fill of killing, or whatever it is he does with these women? Suppose he decided to turn his back on it all and try to fit in with society ‒ perhaps he married, had a family, buried his true nature and lived a lie. He might have been able to do that for a while.’

  ‘He might,’ concurred Bradshaw. ‘It has been known.’

  ‘For nearly twenty years?’ asked Helen. ‘And why suddenly start again now?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘Wife left him, or died? His family grew up and went away? He grew tired of living like that, or he just felt the urge again. We simply don’t know, do we?’

  ‘What about a copycat?’

  ‘Anything is possible,’ said Bradshaw, ‘but it’s not like it’s a famous case. The earlier disappearances weren’t ever linked in the newspapers, so how would a copycat know anything about them?’

  ‘What if the man was caught for something else and jailed?’ asked Helen. ‘That might explain the gap.’

  ‘It could,’ admitted Bradshaw. He and Hugh Rennie had had the same thought.

  ‘And the copycat theory could work that way, too. Maybe he told someone in his cell what he’d been up to.’

  ‘Confessed to crimes he wasn’t even doing time for?’ said Tom. ‘If he did that, wouldn’t the person he was telling be more likely to report his cell mate and gain some privileges? No honour among thieves, remember?’

  ‘That’s more likely, I admit, but perhaps we’re dealing with two disturbed individuals … I don’t know. I’m just fishing here.’

  ‘We all are, but we have to start somewhere. A copycat is the less likely scenario, but a killer stopping because he was imprisoned for something else is a possibility and I think we should check it out.’

  ‘It’s certainly a line of inquiry,’ conceded Bradshaw, ‘and worth pursuing.’

  They finished their food and Bradshaw suggested they went to the pub. It had been a day of surprises but none of them was more shocking to the detective than Tom’s answer.

  ‘I can’t, sorry.’

  ‘Did you just turn down a pint?’ asked Bradshaw in disbelief.

  ‘I did, much as it pains me, but I already have plans.’

  ‘Do you hear that?’ Bradshaw asked Helen. ‘That is the sound of the world spinning on its axis.’

  ‘Wonders never cease,’ she said, ‘but he mustn’t keep his fans waiting.’

  ‘Watch it, you,’ warned Tom, as if she were about to betray a secret. Bradshaw could tell that, whatever this was about, Tom wasn’t keen to talk about it.

  ‘Looks like it’s just you and me, then, Helen.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  1972

  The two men had settled into an uneasy truce, possible only because they had orders to obey and a job to do. Samuel and Dent had to cooperate since they were part of the early-warning system that would alert the country to impending nuclear attack from a hostile foreign power, namely the Soviet Union.

  ‘But what’s the point?’ asked Dent, yet again.

  ‘It’s an experiment,’ Samuel told him, ‘to see if professionals would do a better job compiling data than the usual volunteers from the ROC.’ Samuel couldn’t help thinking that Dent wasn’t a particularly good representative of the professional armed forces.

  ‘But what good does it do?’ moaned Dent. ‘Estimated blast radiuses, weather averages, projected fallout zones. I mean, it’s all bleeding pointless, isn’t it? We’re like those blokes on the Titanic who carry on playing their violins while the ship goes down.’

  ‘How about we just obey orders?’

  ‘Oh, I intend to,’ Dent assured Samuel. ‘I don’t want a court martial, which is why I stay in this place and put up with you.’

  Samuel considered Dent to be the worst kind of philistine. Even when they walked across the fields together, as they did at the beginning and end of each of their shifts, the other man seemed to barely notice the imposing castle or the sea stationed behind it. Dent didn’t give a shit about the view, or anything else for that matter, and Samuel had to spend twelve hours at a time with the man in that tiny underground bunker.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Dent chided him as the clock ticked slowly towards the end of their shift. ‘The four “S” ’s, then out on the town?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You know,’ said Dent. ‘Shave, shit, shower and shampoo. Then off for a few pints and chat up some dolly birds down the local ‒ tell them we’re fighter pilots or something and we might even get our end away.’ Samuel ignored him. ‘Oh, I forgot. You don’t do that, do you? You don’t drink and you don’t screw. So, what exactly do you do?’

  No answer.

  ‘Why are you even here? Answer me that. Everyone says your family is loaded, so what are you doing in the forces when there’s no national service any more? Are you m
ad or something? Why would anyone choose to do this if they didn’t have to?’

  ‘Don’t talk about my family.’

  ‘Why not? What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘I’m warning you, Dent.’

  Dent shook his head. ‘God help me if they do drop the big one and I have to stay in here with you for months on end.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘I’ll either kill you or myself, haven’t decided which yet.’

  ‘What do you know about God?’ Samuel’s voice was so low Dent barely heard him.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, “What do you know about God?” ’ He gave Dent such an evil look that the gobby airman even shut up for a second, but he soon recovered.

  ‘You’re strange, you know that?’ Dent told him. ‘The lads all said you was a weirdo. Well, if you believe in God so much, then why do you even care about any of this? He’ll save you, won’t he, and he’ll send non-believers like me to eternal damnation. Isn’t that what your lot think? Even if the Russkies do drop the bloody bomb, it won’t matter. You’re off to heaven anyway.’

  Dent didn’t understand. How could he? He was too stupid and he didn’t believe in anything, except getting his end away.

  ‘This is a bloody waste of time,’ Dent suddenly announced. ‘What we’re doing here is pointless. This whole listening post is obsolete, has been for years. We’re supposed to be the last line of defence, so they can scramble fighter jets to intercept the enemy, right? Well, when did you last hear of the Russkies using big bombers to drop their nukes? Not for years. It’s all missiles now. The first we’ll know about the ICBMs is when they’re heading right down our throats. Two-minute warning is right! That’s about how long we’ll have before they light up the whole country. It’s stupid. The only thing I’ve detected lately is haemorrhoids, and if war ever comes we’ll hear about it only a few precious seconds before anyone else.’