Stolen

by Paul Finch

  Shallicker initially jumped on hearing the voice, but then realised that Wild Bill was at the other end of a phone somewhere.

  ‘Don’t tell me you were involved in that, Michael?’ the Chairman said, in the kind of disappointed tone that indicated he already knew the answer.

  ‘Look, Bill …’ Shallicker held his hands up as though the guy was there in front of him. ‘I’ve already said … I just do what I’m told.’

  ‘In that case do what you’re told now,’ Pentecost retorted. ‘Give us the skinny. What’s going on and where’s Frank? It may be that he had a perfectly good reason to wipe out the Ripsaw Man. I mean, it’s a shame such a talented associate is gone. But if it had to happen, it had to happen. The point is … I’d like to know why.’

  ‘I don’t know why exactly …’ Shallicker stiffened as a muzzle jabbed the back of his left shoulder. ‘But I think Frank was unimpressed by a job he did for us recently. Caused some collateral damage, left a paper trail for the cops to follow.’

  ‘And that’s the reason he’s gone into hiding?’ The voice sounded unconvinced.

  ‘He’s not gone into hiding.’

  ‘So it’s just a coincidence that he’s done a runner from hospital, that he’s not answering his mobile and that his minder is packing his bags for him?’

  ‘Frank’s aware that he’s breached protocol, Bill.’

  ‘If that’s all it is, he’s not the man of steel he once was. So, where is he?’

  With a click, Benny B cocked the pistol.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Shallicker said hurriedly. ‘He’s got a safehouse. Down in Delamere Forest.’

  There was a brief silence before Pentecost spoke again. ‘Benny, you know what to do.’

  Then he cut the call.

  Benny B dug his pistol into Shallicker’s back again. ‘You know what to do too, Mick.’

  Shallicker nodded and started issuing directions. The Audi pulled off the estate and headed south towards the motorway. The second Audi and McCracken’s Bentley, now with one of Benny’s goons at the wheel, fell into line behind it.

  From the M60, they joined the M56, heading west. Gradually the South Manchester conurbation melted away behind them, replaced by the occasional woods and flat, quilt-work fields of rural Cheshire. About forty minutes later, night had fallen completely, and they’d pulled off the main road network and were following rutted back-lanes between deep, dark hedgerows. They finally drew up against the verge at an unmarked crossroads. There were no streetlights now, their headlamp beams illuminating a white-painted fingerpost offering arrows to destinations like Winsford, Weaverham and Cuddington, which remained mostly unknown to Benny B and his crew. What was most noticeable was the mileages involved. They were all in double-figures, which meant that Frank McCracken had chosen this particular safehouse carefully; it was a long way out.

  ‘It’s that one.’ Shallicker nodded to the lane on their left. It didn’t promise much, disappearing beneath a canopy of trees into complete blackness. ‘Why don’t you let me go in alone, Ben? I can talk to him first. Then there’ll be no hassle.’

  ‘There’ll be no hassle anyway,’ Benny replied. ‘How far down there is it?’

  ‘Hundred or so yards. There’s a layby about thirty yards along, where we can leave the cars. They’ll be okay there. No one else ever uses it.’

  Benny instructed the driver to go left. A short distance along, they pulled into the layby and went the remaining way on foot, the big minder at the front, still being prodded in the back with a pistol. The road, which was so narrow that even a tractor would have trouble negotiating it, curved sharply and an opening appeared on their left. Shallicker went through, the others following silently, now with deep bushes on either side. These only ended another fifty yards on, when a broken-down farm gate on the right revealed a thatched cottage with several dilapidated outbuildings ranged to the left of it in horseshoe formation. Light streamed out onto a courtyard of beaten earth, but everything else lay in darkness.

  ‘Any motion sensors out here?’ Benny wondered quietly.

  Shallicker shook his head.

  ‘So we’re not going to get bathed in a glorious light-show?’

  Again, Shallicker shook his head. ‘The idea of this place was that it wouldn’t draw attention to itself.’

  Benny jabbed him with the gun again, marching him forward towards the main structure. The other seven followed, fanning out, firearms drawn. One scampered ahead, flattening himself against the cottage’s front wall and sidling along it until he reached the window, at which point he risked a quick peek.

  ‘He’s in there,’ he whispered, chuckling.

  ‘Alone?’ Benny asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  Another chuckle. ‘Watching telly.’

  Benny shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Overconfidence was always your gaffer’s weak spot,’ he told Shallicker. ‘Was always going to lead to a bad end one day. Sorry, Mick –’ and he nodded at the others, one of whom produced a sledgehammer and advanced on the cottage door ‘– but this fall from grace is well overdue.’

  Chapter 43

  ‘You didn’t need to threaten me, you know,’ Sister Cassie said, as they drove. She still sounded mildly offended; she was also shaky and sweaty, strongly in need of her ‘medicine’. ‘I’d have helped you. I always help if I can.’

  ‘If you can … that’s the thing,’ Lucy replied, slowing as they approached a red light, though there were few other vehicles on the road. It was now after nine, and they were on the southernmost outskirts of Crowley. ‘Sometimes, you’re just a bit too addled. Like when you didn’t mention that you’d actually witnessed Fred Holborn’s abduction until nearly two weeks after.’

  The ex-nun harrumphed, as if that was a small and rather silly point.

  ‘At this moment, Sister, I have a burning need to take two very bad people off the street. So I need focus and concentration, not garbled silliness from a head that’s been ruined by drugs.’

  ‘And are you sure you’ve got that now?’ Sister Cassie said. ‘It’s the next left, by the way.’

  ‘You’re certain, this time?’

  ‘Yes. I think so, at least.’

  ‘I hope I’ve got it.’ Lucy turned down a country lane, with small clutches of new housing built on either side of it.

  ‘Because even if we find this old orphanage …’ the ex-nun said.

  ‘Which we have to,’ Lucy asserted, ‘because you said you knew where it was!’

  ‘Even if we find it, I’m not at all certain that it will be relevant to your investigation. As I say, it’s empty. A ruin.’

  ‘We won’t know unless we look.’

  ‘It’s a big place too. It’ll take the two of us all night to search it.’

  ‘There is no two of us. It’ll just be me.’

  The ex-nun was surprised. ‘You alone?’

  ‘You’re a civilian. You’ll have to stay in the car.’

  ‘Surely you can call other police officers?’

  Lucy sighed. ‘Not at present.’

  ‘Then you have a task ahead of you which is well-nigh impossible.’

  ‘Tell me about it …’

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, Lucy doing her best to keep a lid on her vexation. All her fears and frustrations of earlier had been amplified in the last two hours by Sister Cassie’s confusing and contradictory directions. Given that the Santa Magdalena care home, though on the edge of the borough, was officially within Crowley, they ought to have located it some time ago, but they’d constantly gone the wrong way and needed to turn back. Several times they’d had to wing it because the ex-nun simply didn’t know where they were. Even Lucy’s sat-nav was useless as they didn’t have an address and, since the care home hadn’t existed for well over a decade, it didn’t figure in the list of local landmarks. Lucy didn’t know where it was herself, because it had closed before she’d started as a cop, and
she couldn’t just Google it or ring someone to ask because she had no phone with her. On reflection, she ought to have gone home and looked it up on her laptop on first hearing about it, but Sister Cassie had seemed to know where it was and, at the time, letting her direct had seemed like the quickest option.

  Lucy now realised that she ought to have known better.

  ‘There’s been so much building work since I was last here,’ the ex-nun complained. ‘I don’t recognise half of these housing estates.’

  This was true, and much of the extensive redevelopment was still under way. At one point, they’d found themselves meshed in a web of roadworks, their route ahead blocked by a succession of dirt-carrying dumper trucks moving into and out of a fenced-off hardhat area, a bored-looking workman leaning on his ‘Stop’ sign as if it was the only thing keeping him awake. So irritated had Lucy become that she’d activated the blues and twos for a couple of minutes to clear themselves a passage.

  ‘I can’t identify this part of town at all.’ Sister Cassie’s voice, progressively more querulous, intruded on her thoughts.

  ‘Look,’ Lucy said. ‘We have to find it soon. This is Lower Green Lane, which means we’re not just on our way out of the N Division, we’re on our way out of the entire Greater Manchester Police area.’

  ‘Wait! Wait … I recognise that!’

  A pub had appeared from the darkness on their left. It was boarded up, but the sign over its door was visible if Lucy slowed down, which she did, revealing that it had formerly been the Plough and Harrow.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ The ex-nun’s confidence grew. ‘It’s a little further ahead on the right.’

  There were now trees on their right, ranked densely behind a low stone wall. It did look as if they were following the boundary to some enclosed area. They passed a bus stop.

  ‘Yes, we’re almost there,’ Sister Cassie confirmed. ‘That’s where visitors to the care home used to get off.’

  ‘So … the next turn?’ Lucy ventured.

  ‘It should be.’

  When the next turn came along, it was on the right and it looked promising. Overgrown trees hemmed it in, while two tall brick gateposts stood one to either side of it, though there was no gate suspended between them. Lucy pulled in and stopped. A sign stood on the left, half hidden by leafage, and faded and flaked to illegibility. The surface of the driveway dwindling away into the darkness ahead of them was broken and weedy.

  ‘Doesn’t look like many people come here,’ she said.

  ‘Why would they?’

  ‘Why indeed?’

  Lucy eased her foot down, and they accelerated forward, following a winding route, no more than a single vehicle wide. Deep undergrowth, still lush and tangled from the summer, grew close on either verge, creating a claustrophobic, tunnel-like atmosphere, which seemed to run on and on.

  ‘Talk about cut off from the world,’ Lucy said. ‘Why did this place close, anyway?’ She glanced sidelong. ‘Your lot getting up to no good again?’

  ‘Not this time,’ Sister Cassie replied. ‘It’s just that foster care and adoption are the preference now. And recent rationalisation of Church expenditure means there are fewer homes of this sort anyway. Of course, there are still legions of unwanted children, many of whom are actually in the care of your lot – the state. Where they’ve always been safe and sound, haven’t they!’

  Lucy didn’t respond, because they rounded a bend, and suddenly a gate was barring their path. Two gates, to be precise, ten feet tall at least, vertically barred, though on closer inspection it looked as if they were standing ajar by a few inches. More interesting than this, there was a car parked to the left-hand side of them.

  Lucy braked, guiding her own vehicle to a halt.

  ‘I thought you said this place wasn’t used any more?’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t think it was.’

  ‘Stay in the car.’ Lucy switched the engine off, released her belt and climbed out.

  Outside, the night was astoundingly quiet. There was no hum of distant traffic, no mutter of breeze amid the unseen woodlands to her left and right. She walked forward feeling worse than vulnerable, feeling as if she was being watched – she hated that term, but it was always so appropriate – until she reached the parked car, at which point she stopped in her tracks.

  Because suddenly she recognised it.

  It was a tan Vauxhall Corsa; two or three years old, carrying several dents and minor rust patches. Lucy was certain that it was one of the pool cars from Crowley CID. If so, it was a kind of relief. She wouldn’t be here alone, plus someone else had come to the same conclusion she had, which was a sort of vindication.

  But the Corsa stood empty and locked.

  She walked around it a couple of times, bewildered, before turning to appraise the gates.

  Whatever colour they had once been was now undetectable as they were so caked in rust, but as she’d seen before, they were open. A single chain, equally rusty, had once been used to bind them closed, but this hung loose. Lucy lifted it and saw that it had been snipped through, literally sliced, as though with a pair of bolt-croppers. She examined it, only to jump and look sharply around at the sound of skittering undergrowth, as if someone or something had just darted away through the foliage. But there was no visible sign of anything, the leaves and branches hanging still in the glare of her headlights.

  She glanced at her own car, and the outline of Sister Cassie behind the windscreen, and then at the chain again. It was difficult to tell whether it had been cut recently, but it was clearly deliberate. The question then was: had whoever’d arrived in the police Corsa done this? If they had, it was drastic action on their part, which made it feel unlikely. Especially as they clearly hadn’t come team-handed – there were no spare bodies mooching about, there was no one standing guard on the vehicle, there was no sign at all that this was part of an organised raid.

  She pushed at the gate on her right, and it swung back easily; there was no creak or groan from its hinges, suggesting that they’d been oiled recently.

  She walked back to the Jimny, opened her driver’s door and, rooting in the glove-box, took out her Maglite.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Sister Cassie asked.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Lucy replied.

  She walked back to the Corsa, switching the light on and shining its beam through the various windows as she circled it again. Almost immediately, she spotted a heap of paperwork spilled across the back seat. The majority of it looked like print-out images.

  Lucy leaned right to the glass, cupping her eyes to see more clearly.

  They were print-out images, black and whites depicting what appeared to be vehicles at road-junctions or speeding along highways.

  Print-outs from traffic camera footage, she realised.

  ‘Oh, crap!’ She strained her eyes to see better. And no ordinary vehicles, by the looks of the few pictures she could actually focus on. Just one vehicle in each case. A dark-coloured van. She backed away, shaking her head. ‘Tessa … what the hell are you playing at?’

  Lucy hurried back to her Jimny and stuck her head through the driver’s door. ‘How far is it from here?’ she asked. ‘The main building?’

  The ex-nun shrugged. ‘We’re almost there. Probably just round the next bend.’

  ‘Okay. In that case, I don’t want to bring the car any closer.’

  ‘You’re actually going in there alone?’ Sister Cassie appeared to have got on top of her DTs. She still looked pale but was steadier now and seemed to be concerned for Lucy rather than herself.

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ Lucy admitted.

  And that was the honest truth. For all her bravado about searching the place solo, she’d only been intending to have a quick poke around the exterior, to see if there was any sign that she was on the right track. The vandalised gate on its own would maybe have sufficed, but all she’d have done then was go looking for a phone to call Priya Nehwal.<
br />
  Unfortunately, there was no time for that now.

  ‘But it seems that someone else has got here ahead of us,’ she said. ‘One of our less experienced officers. Looks like she found the cut chain and decided to have a sniff around. So I’ve got to go in too.’

  ‘Don’t you need a warrant for that? The place is in private ownership.’

  ‘Not if I think there’s someone in danger here.’

  ‘Your officer is in danger?’ If it was possible, the nun paled even more than earlier. ‘You think these two horrible people are here now?’

  ‘I don’t know, okay?’ Lucy said. ‘But I have to check. Now listen … Sister, can you drive?’

  ‘Drive?’ Sister Cassie was taken aback. ‘Well … yes, I used to drive. When I was a teacher, I had access to a car. I haven’t done it for years, mind.’

  ‘I’m sure you won’t have forgotten everything.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Except get away from here quickly, if you need to. Which is why I’m leaving the key in the ignition. Now listen …’ Lucy regarded her intently. ‘I’m trusting that you’re not going to steal my car and go off to try and score some more smack.’

  The ex-nun looked exasperated. ‘My dear child …’

  ‘I mean it, Sister. You do that, and you’ll be stealing a police vehicle, as well as obstructing a murder enquiry. It’ll be the big house, for sure.’

  ‘My child … do you really think I’d maroon you here? I’ve just said that I don’t think you should be going in there alone.’

  ‘And like I’ve said –’ Lucy was already walking ‘– I’ve got no choice now.’

  ‘Those buildings are too big!’ the nun called after her. ‘Plus, they’re old and probably dangerous.’

  But Lucy had already gone, sidling through the gap between the gates, and pressing into the darkness.

  Chapter 44

  Lucy sensed the thinning of the trees and the open space just ahead, and so veered off the drive, forging the last twenty yards through deep and heavy rhododendrons, switching her Maglite off. It was so late now that she couldn’t imagine anyone seeing her emerge from the woods on the drive, but she was determined to do all she could to minimise the chance. As the undergrowth lightened, she slowed, finally stopping with only a thin wall of greenery in front of her.