The Locker

by Adrian Magson

  She went out into the hallway and heard a faint rasp of breathing coming from the study. Vaslik, showing his independence by eschewing the sofa over the more Spartan leather club chair.

  She returned to the living room and sat down. Closed her eyes.

  And was jerked instantly awake by the jangle of a telephone.

  It was the landline on the table at her elbow.

  She snatched it up and remembered to hold the mouthpiece away from her lips before answering.

  “Yes?” She uttered the single word in a rush as if dragged from reluctant sleep, the sound not long enough for anyone to determine who was speaking, only that it was a woman and hopefully, Nancy.

  “Tell your husband.” The voice was male, harsh and clearly disguised, with no clue to accent or inflection.

  It was uttering the last line from the kidnap note.

  It was them.

  “I don’t understand.” She allowed her voice to break and rise in pitch as they would expect. ‘Who are you? Why are you doing this?’” She watched the doorway to the hall, hoping Nancy hadn’t heard. If whoever was doing this was to be convinced that the police weren’t involved, she had to come across like a terrorised, frantic mother.

  It worked.

  “Tell your husband. Tell him.” The voice was insistent but showed no signs of suspicion.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  The caller rang off.

  “Them?” Vaslik was in the doorway, speaking softly, fully alert. He checked the curtains were pulled tight before switching on the light. If the kidnappers were close enough, it would be the expected reaction; a need to see familiar things, to come out of the dark.

  “One of them.”

  Behind Vaslik, Gina was a darker shadow, moving quickly down the stairs in her bare feet.

  Ruth waited until Gina joined them before repeating what the man had said. “That seems to be their main message, don’t you think? They want the husband.”

  eighteen

  Gina was up and patrolling the house when Ruth got in from a short walk at eight the next morning. The former bodyguard met her at the back door, glancing hungrily at a bag of croissants Ruth had bought at the supermarket bakery.

  “Yum. I could eat that lot myself.”

  “Anything doing?” Ruth put the croissants in the microwave for a quick zap while Vaslik stirred and went off to do a visual check of the perimeter. Somehow instinct had allowed them all to snatch a few minutes with their heads down when they needed it, but none had had a full four hours.

  “Not a peep. A few cars have come and gone but none that shouldn’t be here as far as I can tell.”

  “Did Nancy wake up?” Ruth dusted off her hands and sniffed the air appreciatively. “Can I smell coffee?”

  “Yes, you can and yes, she did. She’s in the shower. She was up and about in her room a couple of times, but in between I checked on her and she was spark-out.”

  Ruth nodded. “I tried talking to her when she was up but she didn’t seem too interested. In the end I left her to it. Did she say anything to you about our talk last night?”

  “Only that you’d got a bit personal. I told her we had to talk about this stuff because it might help find out who had an interest in Michael. Find who that is and we find Beth. She seemed OK after that.” Gina poured coffee all round and helped herself to a croissant, wolfing it down. “I’ve seen this up-down reaction before, though: I think she’s a little stir-crazy. Not surprising with her daughter missing, but she asked me for more pills. I said no and she called me a mean bitch.”

  Ruth wasn’t surprised. Nancy had looked fragile enough yesterday; now Gina was withholding the sweeties she’d introduced her to, she was feeling resentful towards her.

  “I’m going to call the company medic to check her over.” Cruxys had a consultant on tap for emergencies, and he would make sure she was holding up and prescribe pills if necessary. Whether Nancy would go along with it was something else, but they couldn’t allow her to fall apart without trying to do something to prevent it.

  “Take her shopping.” Vaslik had returned without them hearing him. He picked up a croissant and sipped his coffee. When he saw them staring at him he explained, “The ones left behind are the most stressed in these situations. Looking at four walls while waiting for news is almost the worst thing they can do; it’s like their brains go into free-fall. We need to break the spell, allow her to breathe.” He gestured with his croissant at the large fridge in the corner. “She won’t agree to go, but I’m pretty sure there’s stuff she needs, anyway. It’ll do her good.”

  Ruth agreed. “Good idea—if we can get her out. She won’t go willingly; she’ll be frightened of missing a call. Frightened of being a target herself, too.”

  “Quite possibly.” He looked at her. “That’s why Gina should go with her and you should stay here. She trusts you more than us and to anybody watching, Gina looks more like a friend than a cop.”

  “Gee, thanks. What will you be doing, hot shot?”

  He gave a smile and swallowed the last of his croissant. “Me? I’ll be ghosting along in the background, watching for anybody taking too close an interest.”

  Gina looked intrigued. “You think that’s likely?”

  “I’d bet on it. Kidnappers never fail to watch for a reaction after the event. It’s part of what they do. No reaction and they’ve already lost the initiative. It means they’ve got to come out from cover to stir things up. They don’t like doing that.”

  “Does that ever happen—where people don’t react?”

  “I’ve seen it two or three times. A family isn’t that close or the victim’s colleagues don’t care enough to do anything—end of game. Admittedly, the people involved aren’t exactly normal, you understand, so that explains a lot.”

  “And here?”

  “They’re watching.” He nodded towards the front of the house. “Every time I go near the windows I get the feeling we’re under observation.”

  “Have you seen anything?” Gina looked sceptical.

  “No. But I’ve experienced it too many times to be imagining things. I can’t prove it but I’d like to give it a try.”

  “You want to bring them out?” Ruth looked intrigued.

  “Why not? It’s better than sitting here waiting for them to pull the strings, don’t you think? Stay local, though.”

  Neither of them argued with that.

  Ruth watched as Gina and Nancy left the house. It was just after eight. They had had a hard time convincing Nancy that it was OK to go out and that the fresh air would do her good. Most of all they had stressed that it was safe for her to be away from the house and leave Ruth behind to watch over things. They would only be a short distance and a phone call away if anything happened.

  She finally gave in and put on her coat and shoes. The plan was simple: to go to the nearest supermarket, a large building where they could walk around without attracting attention but where Vaslik could keep an eye on them from a distance. If anybody did latch onto them, he would soon know it.

  Ruth felt an instant loss of control as the two women walked away down the street and Vaslik exited via the rear gate. It was a familiar feeling from previous assignments, signalling a disconnection from the main players of an event while the pieces on the chessboard were moving into position. Gina was at the end of a phone, but it still meant the two women could be dangerously exposed and beyond her immediate reach. It was a feeling she would have to get used to.

  She opened her laptop and called up a map of the area, then switched to Street Map so she could see the same picture that they would see. It wasn’t very up to date and the traffic and weather conditions wouldn’t be the same, but it gave her something on which to focus, as if she was moving along with them and sharing the route.

  With the house empty, time seemed to pass
grindingly slowly. She made coffee, resisted another croissant, did a tour of the rooms and constantly eyeballed the monitors. She resisted the temptation to call Slik for an update. If he had something, he’d call, she knew it.

  There was a knock at the door.

  She went to the front window, which gave a narrow view of visitors. It was a woman, dressed in jeans and a baggy jumper, hair scrunched out of sight beneath a gaudy yellow-and-mauve beanie cap. She wore heavy glasses balanced on her nose and she kept touching them with her forefinger and brushing her face. She was holding a couple of magazines in her other hand.

  Neighbour, thought Ruth. Coffee and chat call? Somehow she couldn’t see Nancy in the chat or sugar-lending category.

  She shrugged off her jacket and stepped into the kitchen, picking up a tea towel and a mug as props, then went to the front door and opened it.

  “Hi, Nancy—” the woman began with a bright smile. Then her face changed when she saw Ruth. “Oh, sorry. I was expecting … Is Nancy in?” She had the faintest American intonation, Ruth noted, overlaid with something she couldn’t quite place. A displaced foreigner too long away from home, she guessed.

  “Not right now. She’s just gone to the supermarket to get some cakes. I told her she shouldn’t bother but she said she needed some fresh air, too. Can I help?” She peered at the cup and rubbed it with the tea towel, then shrugged. “How do you get tea stains out? I hate yellow patches on crockery—it’s like nicotine fingers.”

  “I don’t know.” The woman looked slightly perplexed. “Umm …I’m a neighbour—Clarisse—from up the street. No. 38. I haven’t seen Nancy for a couple of days so I thought it was time we caught up and did some girlie things. Are you local, too, uh … ?

  “Ruth. No. I’m a friend from school. I finally decided it was time to come and say hello again. I think I might have interrupted her gym visits today. Not that she needs it, the slim-line bitch.” She waved a hand at the woman’s frown. “It’s OK—we talk about each other like that all the time; we’ve been friends too long to take offence.”

  “Of course.” Clarisse gave a weak smile and moved away. “I’d better get back. Let her know I called, will you, and I’ll come round another day. We can do lunch, maybe.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Ruth moved back into the front room and watched the woman walk along the street and turn into a house several doors up. She had the springy walk of an athlete, proving that gym visits worked for some people. But hell, Ruth thought sourly, don’t they have better things to do?

  Moments later Clarisse appeared again, this time pulling on a coat. She walked along the street, head down and collar up, and turned the corner out of sight. She looked as if she was in a hurry to get somewhere, and Ruth wondered why.

  nineteen

  Less than half a mile away, Andy Vaslik watched as Gina and Nancy walked arm-in-arm past a parade of shops, stopping occasionally—mostly at Gina’s suggestion, he figured—to study something in a window display. His opinion of the former bodyguard was improving steadily; she had Nancy fully covered and was giving Vaslik every chance to keep up with them and study their back-trail for watchers. She had clearly done this before and would be familiar with the problem of trying to run surveillance on a person of interest without blowing everyone’s cover.

  The sidewalks were busy with workers on their commute and early shoppers, he noted. He had no problem keeping them in sight with Gina’s tall figure, but casing all the other people around them while remaining unseen would get tougher as time went by. He took out his cell phone and snapped a couple of covert pictures to check the quality.

  Pretty much perfect.

  After inspecting all the smaller stores, the two women approached a large supermarket car park situated on the left-hand side of the road. Vaslik crossed over at an angle slightly away from them and waited at a nearby bus stop, blending in with the line and nodding genially at a couple of elderly women. He checked both ways, noting everything that moved. Nothing obvious near the two women yet, mostly other shoppers, a few kids and some older people.

  Then his antennae gave a twitch. Something was different. Or someone.

  There. A young guy was cruising along in their wake. He’d come right out of nowhere. Tall, bulky but moving easily, eyes definitely locked on Gina and Nancy. Dark coat and pants, could be an office worker who worked out.

  Vaslik tensed. A grey van was approaching slowly on the same side. Maybe a coincidence but it was moving just a little too slow. It drifted into the side of the road and stopped thirty yards behind the women, the driver flicking a hand to allow a couple of pedestrians across. Now why would he do that with a crossing just yards away? The near-side wheels were almost touching the kerb on double-yellow lines, which was bad positioning for any vehicle on a busy road. Was he stopping or not?

  The two women moved out, ready to cross the road to the supermarket, unaware of the potential threat. Vaslik went to full alert. This didn’t look good.

  He took covert snaps of the tall man and the van, but couldn’t get a facial of the driver or see how many others were inside. Then he turned away and pretended to take a call, in case any of the watchers picked up on his presence. When he turned back again the women were on the edge of the kerb, still checking traffic.

  But wait; Gina must have sensed something. She was tugging Nancy away from the kerb, her shoulders tensed. They walked further along to the crossing. It was busier there and there was safety in numbers.

  He forced himself to relax. Fraser knew what she was doing.

  He moved away from the bus line and snapped away, catching faces going in the same direction as the women; another man, young and fit looking, dark skin; two women in gym clothing beneath fashionable tops; another woman hurrying along and nearly getting clipped by a taxi cutting the turn into the car park.

  The van had disappeared and the tall, bulky guy was continuing on down the street, paying no attention as Gina and Nancy crossed and disappeared into the supermarket.

  Vaslik followed, long strides eating up the ground until he was inside and on their tails. He felt a rush of relief as he spotted the two familiar backs down the first aisle, with Nancy pushing a trolley.

  Gina turned and looked back, no doubt sensing his presence, and made a subtle A-OK sign with her thumb and forefinger. She had it covered.

  He stayed around, anyway. He’d seen enough to know they were being watched. And it wasn’t by one person, either; it was a team.

  Ruth was waiting when the two women returned. It was nine-thirty and Nancy was walking fast, she noted, impatient to be back in familiar surroundings, her brief taste of normal fast dying on its feet. As they walked in the front door, Ruth checked the monitor and saw movement at the back gate.

  Vaslik.

  When they were all gathered in the living room, Ruth addressed Nancy. “You had a visitor.”

  The tone of her voice was enough. Everybody stopped moving. Gina glanced towards the windows, Vaslik looked interested and Nancy turned to stone.

  “Who?” Her face was ashen, expecting the worst.

  “A woman named Clarisse—from No. 38. Young, heavy specs, a bit grungy, slight American accent?”

  “Clarisse? I don’t know—” Nancy walked to the window and looked through the net curtain, her mouth moving as she counted off the numbers. When she tuned back, she looked sick.

  “No. 38?”

  “That’s what she said. Problem?”

  “It’s wrong. It’s impossible.” She wobbled and looked very pale.

  “Why?” Ruth hurried across to her, offering her arm. Gina moved, too, ready to step in. “Why, Nancy?”

  “Because I don’t know anyone called Clarisse. And that house has been empty since before we moved in. The owner’s in a care home.”

  Gina accompanied Nancy up to her bedroom while Ruth called Cruxys with an
update report on events and asked for their medical consultant to come round urgently. From almost breezy while at the supermarket, according to Gina, she’d gone to near-collapse on hearing about the woman visitor.

  “So what’s going on?” Ruth demanded, as they gathered in the kitchen. She’d been tempted to dismiss Nancy’s claim about the empty house, but her instant reaction to news of the caller had been too compelling. Now with this latest turn of events the situation seemed to have accelerated.

  Vaslik filled them in on what he’d observed, keeping it brief. Too much detail sometimes led to over-elaboration which could cloud the real issue. “I’m guessing there’s more than one person on this. And whoever they are, they’re good.”

  “A team? Are you sure?”

  “Has to be. I made at least three, maybe more if the van was involved.”

  Ruth chewed it over. In spite of her earlier reservations about Vaslik, so much had happened since first being paired up with him that she realised she trusted him implicitly. If his gut feeling told him something, it was good enough for her. “Let’s go over this in order. Gina, what did you see when you were out?”

  Gina described noticing the same van as Vaslik, and a tall man, well-built and heavy across the upper body, like a weightlifter. Both had seemed out of place, yet neither had appeared directly threatening towards Nancy. “You see people and vehicles that stand out all the time; it doesn’t mean they’re a danger. But we’re on the lookout for possible threats, so we’d notice anything out of the ordinary. Other than that, I have to say I didn’t see anyone. But I agree with Andy: something was going on. It had that feel, you know?”

  She knew. “Anything else, either of you?”

  Vaslik nodded. “Don’t forget I could see from an angle Gina couldn’t. The tall guy was focussed on them, I’m certain. But you’d have to have been in my position to see it.”

  “And the van? Could it have been a snatch team?” The idea of another potential abduction was alarming, because the only target they could have had in mind was Nancy. Was that to put more pressure on Michael Hardman, picking up his wife as well as his daughter? It was a risky manoeuvre holding two hostages instead of one, especially the second being the mother. It would pile on the pressure of keeping them isolated. This group had to know what they were doing.