Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation

by Nigel McCrery

  ‘What’s the background here?’ she went on when it was clear that Lapslie wasn’t going to rise to the bait. ‘What does this bloke do for a living?’

  ‘Mark Baillie is an investment banker,’ Lapslie replied, remembering the scant facts on the sheet of paper that the constable had brought in to him. ‘Works in Canary Wharf for one of the big Japanese clearing houses. Probably brings home in excess of a million pounds a year, when you factor in bonuses.’

  ‘So could this kidnapping have a financial motive?’ Emma asked.

  Lapslie shook his head. The thought had occurred to him already, but he’d dismissed it. ‘If a ransom had been demanded they’d have taken the wife or the daughter and left the husband. Taking him means there’s nobody to organise getting the money to pay the ransom.’

  ‘There’s his company,’ Emma pointed out.

  ‘But who do you phone if you’ve taken one of the employees captive and want a ransom? There’s no hotline for that. You could try the managing director, but there’s scant chance he’ll take the call, and all the while you’re wasting time telling more and more people what you’ve done. No, I maintain that a ransom attempt is based on leaving the person who has the money and taking the most precious thing in his world, not the other way around.’

  The door opened as Lapslie ran up the front steps. A constable stepped back to let him and Emma in. ‘DCI Lapslie?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Who’s in charge here?’

  ‘Er, you are, Sir.’

  Lapslie glared at the man. This wasn’t the time for anybody to be funny. ‘Who was in charge fifteen seconds ago?’

  ‘Inspector Barnes, Sir.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Conservatory, last time I looked, Sir.’

  Lapslie led the way through the house towards the back, where he guessed the conservatory would be. There was a smell hanging in the air: a sweetish, slightly medicinal odour. He filed that away for later consideration. The paintings on the walls were originals: mainly vibrant abstracts in reds and oranges that looked, from the corner of the eye, like landscapes but which, on closer inspection, were just collections of horizontal and vertical lines. The thick white carpet covering the floor would, Lapslie estimated, have to be vacuumed twice a day to keep it from going grey. The furniture was Swedish in its simplicity, but it certainly wasn’t from Ikea.

  ‘Inspector Barnes?’

  There were five or six people in the conservatory, but the man who turned around was the smallest. His eyes were set deep on either side of a sharp nose, giving his face a rodentlike appearance. His blond hair was brushed straight back from his forehead.

  ‘DCI Lapslie? Glad to have you here.’

  ‘What have you got?’ Lapslie asked.

  Barnes indicated the conservatory window behind him. It had a large hole cut in the centre, about the right size for a man to put his arm through. ‘All the windows and glass doors in the house are protected with metal foil around the frames. There’s a current runs through the foil. If the glass is broken, the electrical current is disrupted and the alarm goes off. Problem is, if you cut a hole in the centre of the glass big enough to get a hand through, like chummy did here with what I reckon was a carborundum-tipped cutter, the electrical current remains undisturbed.’

  ‘Surely that’s not the only alarm system?’ Lapslie questioned. ‘The man was loaded.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Barnes said, nodding eagerly. ‘There’s also sensors on the frames.’ He indicated two small boxes on the window: one attached to the window itself and the other, just above it, to the frame. The box attached to the frame had thin wires leading away from it, along the line of the wood. ‘The magnet in one of those boxes pulls a contact away from a circuit in the other. If the boxes are separated the contact closes again and the resulting signal sets the alarm off. Except that in this case chummy reached in through the hole he’d cut with the aforementioned carborundum-tipped cutter and introduced a thin magnetic strip between the two boxes. When he then opened the window from the inside the strip stayed attached to the upper box and kept the contact from closing.’

  Lapslie sighed. They were dealing with a professional, that much was for sure. Not your bog-standard breaking and entering merchant. ‘And I’m guessing the locks I can see on the window catches were bypassed with equal ease?’

  ‘There’s only so many designs of window catch,’ Barnes said, shrugging. ‘If you have enough keys, you can usually find one that fits. Even more likely if you’ve cased the joint beforehand and sussed out the type of locks you’re dealing with.’

  ‘Any other invalid security precautions?’ Lapslie growled.

  Barnes pointed towards a corner of the conservatory, where Lapslie noticed a small white box had been attached to the wall. ‘Each room is apparently protected by a passive infra-red sensor which detects body heat. I say “apparently” because a prospective burglar can see the sensors and should be scared off, but in this case the sensors were turned off because the dog had the run of the house. The family only turn the sensors on when they’re all on holiday and the dog’s either with them or in kennels.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Lapslie sighed.

  ‘Just in case he’d set anything off without realising it, the burglar went straight to the main alarm box and injected it full of liquid nitrogen, freezing all the circuits. He knew he’d have about thirty seconds before an alarm went off, if he had tripped one, because that’s how long the alarm company usually allow householders to type in their key code, get it wrong and type it again when they get in the house at night.’

  ‘So, what do we learn from that?’ Lapslie asked, looking at Emma. She’d been cheeky enough earlier that he wanted to bring her back down to Earth for a while.

  ‘That we’re dealing with someone who is methodical and cautious, someone who conducts a detailed reconnaissance before making a move.’

  ‘What leads you to that conclusion?’

  ‘Whoever it was couldn’t know about the metal foil in the window frames, because it’s not visible after the frame’s put together, so he assumed the worst and planned for it. He also came prepared with a glass cutter and a thin magnetic strip, and had worked out that the presence of the dog meant that the passive infra-red sensors would be switched off. Oh, and he must have known exactly where the main alarm box was, because he got to it and neutralised it within thirty seconds. That probably means he’s been in the house before, or at least spent time prowling around the outside and looking through the windows. Does that cover it?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ he conceded. Turning to Barnes again, he asked; ‘What about the family? How did he manage to subdue them?’

  ‘It’s looking like an anaesthetic gas,’ Barnes replied. ‘Like the stuff that thieves use on French caravan sites to rob tourists: they find a caravan parked up then pump gas in through the window to make sure the people are completely knocked out, then go in with face masks and rob them of their cash and jewellery. Here it looks like chummy pumped something similar through the hole in the window and waited for long enough that he could be sure they were all unconscious.’

  ‘What gave away the fact that it was a gas?’

  ‘You heard about the dog?’

  Lapslie nodded. ‘I heard the dog was found dead.’

  ‘Respiratory failure, it looks like. It just lay down and died. That, and a slightly sweet smell in the air when we arrived, led us to that initial conclusion. We’re awaiting forensic tests on the air in the house and the pathologist’s view on the dog.’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘Had to send one of my constables home earlier. Whatever the stuff is, there was enough of it lingering around to make him feel woozy.’

  ‘And the entire family were taken. How the hell did the kidnapper get them all out?’

  ‘No,’ Barnes said simply.

  Lapslie wasn’t sure he’d heard properly. ‘No what?’

  ‘No, the entire family weren’t taken. One of them was left behind.’

  L
apslie was aghast. ‘Which one?’

  ‘The daughter. Still asleep upstairs when we arrived.’

  ‘Let me get this straight – the husband, wife and two sons were kidnapped, but the daughter was left behind?’

  Barnes nodded. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe he didn’t have time to carry her to the car after taking the other four. Maybe he just didn’t like the look of her. Maybe …’ He trailed off. ‘Actually, I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  ‘Where’s the girl now?’ Emma asked.

  ‘She’s been taken to hospital for a check-up, just to make sure there’s no health problems from breathing in the anaesthetic. Social Services will look after her until we find her parents. If we find her parents.’

  ‘We will,’ Lapslie promised. And he meant it. ‘You’ll be questioning her? See whether she saw anything or heard anything?’

  ‘I’ll make sure she’s interviewed when the doctors say we can. Unless you want to talk to her instead?’

  Lapslie shook his head. Given what was happening with the IPCC, it probably wasn’t a good move for him to question another vulnerable girl just yet. ‘Thanks, but I’ll let you cover that. Forensics here?’

  ‘Yes. And we’re moving the dog’s body to the mortuary. I must admit, I don’t know whether there’s a special pet pathologist, or whether the normal pathologist can handle it.’

  ‘Oh, I think she’ll enjoy the challenge,’ Lapslie murmured.

  He glanced at his watch. Just shy of five o’clock. ‘Can I leave you to liaise?’ he asked Emma. ‘I have somewhere I need to be. It looks like we’re dependent on the CSIs for the time being to process the scene. Do all the usual things: set up a tap on the home phone and so on, but I really don’t expect a ransom demand. Then go and get some sleep.’

  She nodded. ‘Leave it to me. You go and enjoy yourself.’

  He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Sarcastic?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s nice to be able to do something for myself rather than stand behind you and watch you do it.’

  Rather than reply, he just nodded and left.

  It was dark when he got to Charlotte’s flat.

  ‘Don’t take your jacket off,’ she said as she opened the door. ‘We’re going out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘It will all become clear.’ She smiled quizzically at him. ‘For a man who spends his life conducting interrogations, you’re surprisingly slow on the uptake when it comes to assimilating information.’

  ‘We don’t call them “interrogations”,’ he said mildly. ‘We call them “interviews”. “Interrogations” usually implies thumbscrews and pliers, and that’s an image we’re keen not to encourage.’

  ‘Well, tonight there’s not going to be any interrogations or interviews. There’s going to be some conversation and some listening.’

  ‘Don’t I even get a chance to wash my face and change my shirt?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been wearing this one all day, and it’s getting a bit old.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been sneaking flannels and spare shirts into my flat while I haven’t been paying attention?’

  ‘Given the amount of time you spend here compared with the time you spend on the ward, I could sublet the place and you’d hardly even notice.’

  She hit him playfully on the chest. ‘You’re wasting time. Brush your teeth and change your shirt if you need to. You’ve got ten minutes.’

  Ten minutes later they were in her car – a black Lexus that gave Lapslie a slight shiver whenever he saw it, remembering the men from the Home Office who had spent time shadowing him on the Madeleine Poel case – and heading towards London.

  ‘How was your day?’ she asked as she drove.

  ‘Could have been worse,’ he said non-committally

  ‘In medical terms,’ she said, eyes on the road, ‘any medical result other than death could be described that way. Amputations, brain damage, disfigurement – “could have been worse”.’

  ‘In this case, I’ve got a kidnapped family of four and a daughter left abandoned in the house. But none of them is dead so, yes, it could have been worse.’ He paused, thinking. ‘And, if we don’t get a break soon, it still might.’

  The car drove onwards, into the night. As they crossed the M25, Lapslie assumed that they were heading towards Central London. A restaurant? A gala event? What?

  ‘Can I ask a question?’ he said as she drove.

  ‘You just did.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Funny girl.’

  She smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘You’ve got out of the habit of relationships, haven’t you? I sometimes get the impression when we’re talking that it’s a series of questions and answers, rather than a conversation.’

  Lapslie felt a sudden lurching sensation, like vertigo. ‘Is that a problem?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘It’s something we need to work on,’ she said. ‘Over time. So – what was the question?’

  ‘You’re an anaesthetist. What would you use if you were going to knock out an entire family in their home?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Difficult. Calculating the dose is critical to ensuring that you minimise the risk of brain damage or death. I take it you’re not asking me as an anaesthetist, but you want to know what an ordinary member of the public might use.’

  He nodded. ‘I was thinking along the lines of those reports of French criminals gassing people in parked-up motor homes.’

  ‘The commonest narcotic gas available is diethyl ether. You can get it in cold-start sprays for cars – the kind of thing you spray into your engine to help it turn over when the weather’s below freezing. You’d want to purify the ether, I guess. The best way I’ve heard is to take a piece of PVC pipe and a jar, then spray the can down the pipe and into the jar. The propellant gas is expelled and the diethyl ether condenses on the pipe and runs down into the jar. When the entire can is empty you end up with a very high-content diethyl ether solution. There’s still some impurities in there, so you add an equal volume of water and shake it, then let it stand for a few minutes. It’ll settle out into two layers: pure diethyl ether in the top layer and everything else in the bottom layer. You then take the diethyl ether and introduce it into the house. It vaporizes at around thirty-six degrees centigrade, so surrounding it with hot water would do the trick, and you can use a rubber pipe to direct it into the house.’

  ‘You know your stuff,’ Lapslie admitted. ‘I didn’t realise you had to know how to make your own anaesthetics. I thought you just bought them wholesale.’

  She laughed. ‘I had some odd friends at medical school. They used to try all kinds of tricks.’ She thought for a moment, her face becoming more serious in the headlights of the oncoming cars. ‘The alternative is something like propane. That’s not narcotic, but it does replace the oxygen in the air, and effectively suffocates people. The trick is to stop pumping it in before they die. Either way, I wouldn’t want to try it myself. Too much risk.’

  ‘Okay.’ He let the thoughts coagulate in his brain. ‘Thanks.’

  The main flow of traffic was heading out of London, not in, and they got to the Thames Embankment within an hour. Charlotte parked in a slot in a car park next to St Thomas’s Hospital. ‘Medical perk,’ she said as he raised an eyebrow.

  He’d already guessed that they were heading for the South Bank Centre, and he was right. Charlotte took his hand and guided him through the concrete pathways towards the Festival Hall. She stopped in front of a row of restaurants and bars that ran alongside the Hall, between it and the trains coming off Hungerford Bridge. ‘We’ve got half an hour,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘Time for a quick bite. You up for it?’

  ‘OK.’ He looked along the line. ‘Not sure I can choose. I’m still trying to get used to the concept that tasting something can be pleasurable, rather than painful.’

  ‘Then let’s go for sushi,’ she said. ‘It’s fast
and it’s not in-your-face. Or, in your case, in-your-mouth.’

  The restaurant was small and basic, and the food was indeed fast, but with little explosions of flavour. On Charlotte’s advice he avoided the wasabi sauce, but the slices of vividly fresh fish against the plain rice backdrop were amazing. When she told him it was time to pay up and go, he was disappointed.

  She took his hand and led him into the massive bulk of the Festival Hall. He tried to see if there was a poster or a sign advertising what they were about to see, but there were too many posters advertising too many forthcoming events for him to make anything out. Not a theatrical event, not in the Festival Hall. An orchestra? A recital? What? The unexpected anticipation was making him feel tense.

  She already had tickets, which she produced from her bag.

  ‘What if I’d been late?’ he asked. ‘I’m on a case. Things can drag on.’

  ‘Then we’d have missed tonight’s event,’ she said. ‘Things happen. I’m a doctor in a hospital, remember? I work unusual hours too. That’s no reason not to plan on going out. If the plan fails, it fails.’

  Overcome by a sudden rush of emotion, he pulled her to him and kissed her. She responded, surprised. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘For reminding me that life should be lived, not endured.’

  She stopped at a kiosk to buy a programme, and then they entered the hall itself, which was already nearly full. The sound of hushed conversations would previously have made Lapslie feel like he was drowning in his own blood, but now he could taste nothing apart from the lingering remains of the sushi. Even the nervousness with which he normally faced large crowds was nearly absent.

  The tickets put them at the front of the main circle. The stage was bare apart from seven chairs and music stands, a piano, two electronic keyboards and what looked like a couple of xylophones or vibraphones, although Lapslie wasn’t sure he’d seen a xylophone since school. Like a recorder, it had always seemed to him to be an instrument designed solely for schoolchildren to use.

  ‘OK,’ Charlotte said, leaning towards him so that their heads were touching. ‘I’ll put you out of your misery. It’s a performance of a piece of music called Music for Airports, which was written by Brian Eno. It’s an example of what’s called “ambient music”.’ She opened her programme. ‘It says here that he’s described ambient music as being “music that’s designed to modify one’s perception of the surrounding environment”.’