Missing Persons (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 5)

by Sean Campbell

  He stepped forward to look for her, and she sprang into action. The first thing he felt was the sheer weight of Faye launching herself at him from behind. Tim felt his knees give way under their combined weight, and he fell forward to land on the hardwood floor with a crack.

  He twisted to try to see what was going on. Faye had a knife – his favourite gyuto knife from his kitchen – clutched in her left hand.

  Before he could stop her, Faye had the knife to his throat.

  ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,’ Faye said.

  ‘I... Laura! No!’ Tim cried as Laura appeared in the doorway to see what was going on.

  Time seemed to freeze. He pleaded with her with his eyes, begging her to run, to turn tail, to save herself. She locked eyes with him for an instant, and then time seemed to unfreeze. The bedroom door slammed shut with a bang, and then Tim heard the lock engage. At least Laura was safe.

  The knife was cold against his throat. He knew first-hand just how dangerous the blade was. He’d bought it in Tokyo a few months back, and it had only just been professionally sharpened. It was folded powdered steel, hardened to Rockwell C64, and was finished to a razor-sharp edge. One slip of the hand, and Tim would be gone in minutes.

  ‘Well?’ Faye demanded. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Tim closed his eyes. If his life could end at any moment, he didn’t want to have to watch it happen. ‘Please, I didn’t do anything. I’m not trying to hurt you, Faye.’

  ‘You think I did it. You want me to go back to prison!’ Faye’s hand wavered dangerously, the knife grazing his neck. She was unsettled, and he was powerless to stop her.

  ‘If it’s prison you’re worried about, don’t you think murdering me will send you straight back there?’ Tim said, his voice straining with emotion despite the self-evidence of his logic. ‘Besides, the three of us are the only suspects in Mark’s murder. Even if you got away with whatever you do to me, you’d be the last one standing. The police will figure it out.’

  Faye seemed to pause to think about this. Tim knelt in silence, his throat millimetres from the blade and his knees aching against the hardwood floor.

  ‘By that logic,’ Faye said slowly, ‘I should get rid of any witnesses.’

  ‘No!’ Tim shouted. ‘You can’t. You’d never hurt Laura. You can hurt me all you want. Just leave her be.’

  There had to be something he could do. His whole life, Tim had felt powerful. He was rich. He was white. He was a man. Life had been far too easy for far too long, and it was only now, at the point he might lose it all, that he suddenly saw just how quickly his assets had become liabilities.

  Faye hadn’t had what he’d had. She’d grown up in a broken home with no money and none of his privilege. He needed Faye to see him as human. All the time he was just “the rich guy”, he was inhuman, even disposable.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tim said.

  That confused her. ‘What for?’ Faye asked, her expression quizzical.

  ‘I’m sorry you haven’t been given a chance yet. You’ve never been treated the way every human being deserves to be treated. You’ve been taken for granted, abused, and left to fend for yourself, all the while watching the rest of us live like kings. That can’t have been easy.’

  ‘No... it wasn’t.’

  ‘Then, let’s change that,’ Tim said. ‘You don’t have to do this. You can walk away from this apartment today a free woman. I won’t call the police, and neither will Laura. Do you see that painting over there on the wall?’

  Tim saw the shadow of Faye looming above him shift as Faye looked over to the wall where Tim’s favourite painting hung. It wasn’t anything particularly special, nor was it very valuable. Tim had bought it on eBay with his first-ever pay cheque, and it had come with him every time he’d moved ever since.

  ‘Yes,’ Faye said.

  ‘Behind the painting, there’s a safe. I keep twenty thousand pounds in cash in there. It’s my bolt money. Take it and go find somewhere you can be happy. We won’t follow you.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to go anywhere?’

  ‘There’s nothing here for you, Faye,’ Tim said, still eerily calm. It felt wrong to be so nice to her, but he knew it was his best chance of getting out of the situation alive. ‘Mark’s gone, Jake’s gone, and it’d be pretty hard to stay friends with someone you’ve taken hostage.’

  ***

  Laura paced frantically. There was no way out of the bedroom except through the door. The windows were tilt-only, and she didn’t fancy a sixteen-storey drop even if she could break them.

  Damn! Why did she have to leave her mobile in her handbag on the kitchen counter?

  She could hear everything they were saying. She wanted to try to say something, to calm Faye down, but the girl Tim was talking to wasn’t the Faye she’d known since preschool. She was different, somehow.

  There wasn’t much in the bedroom, nothing she could use as a weapon to stop Faye. She could try swinging a chair at her, she supposed, but she doubted she could do it quick enough to stop Faye hurting Tim.

  If only she had her phone. She needed to call the police.

  She could scream. There was bound to be someone at home in one of the flats below. Would they hear? Would they call the police? Or would Faye panic?

  Tim’s laptop was on his desk. Laura booted it up. Windows immediately prompted her for a password. Shit.

  123456? Nope. Qwertyuiop? Wrong again. 1q2w3e4r5? It wasn’t that, either. Laura kept trying, hitting the keys as softly as she could to avoid alerting Faye to what she was up to. She tried her own name, Tim’s, and various combinations of their names and dates of birth.

  She was getting nowhere. Out of desperation, she looked around his desk for inspiration. Tim had hung photos of them together on the wall. There was a photo of her moving in with him, a picture of them curled up on the sofa, even a selfie taken in the back of a taxi on the first night they’d gone out as a couple. He’d kissed her that night after a magical evening at Clos Maggiore.

  Could Tim be that sentimental?

  Laura quickly typed in the date of their first kiss. Nope. Then she tried ClosMaggiore, no spaces.

  Bingo! She was in.

  Now what?

  It was hard to think straight. Laura typed “email police” into her search bar. She clicked the first result and landed on the generic police website. It read, “In an emergency, dial 999.” Duh.

  Farther down the page, Laura found a list of local forces’ websites. Some local forces had email contacts. The Metropolitan Police’s website said exactly the same: “In an emergency, dial 999.” There was a contact form – as long as you didn’t need a response any time soon.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Laura spotted social media icons. The police were on Twitter!

  On the Met’s Twitter profile was the same message again: “In emergencies, always call 999.”

  Laura cursed her bad luck. It seemed life could no longer exist without a mobile to hand.

  She could hear Tim still talking quietly to Faye. He was trying to persuade her to go. He’d offered her money, he’d complimented her. Soon, he’d run out of things to say.

  And then it hit her: Skype. She quickly Googled “Skype emergency calls”. The first hits were discouraging: Skype didn’t appear to support emergency calls. Then Laura noticed that all of her results were about US users wanting to dial 911, so she appended “UK” to her search.

  It was possible to dial 999. The Skype website warned against relying on it, and advised her to use a mobile phone whenever possible, but she could do it. Tim already had Skype installed. She opened it up, found the “dial by number” option, and hit 999.

  Chapter 56: VOIP

  Saturday 2nd July, 17:16

  As a veteran of twenty years, Brian had seen all kinds of 999 calls. There were the pranks, the silent phone calls, the suicides, and the occasional crime in progress. Whenever he got a really traumatic call, management were always quick to offer counsellin
g and support.

  The weirdest calls were from the regulars. Brian had a handful of repeat customers who seemed to call out of boredom or loneliness, and every time, Brian had to follow proper procedure in case this time there was a genuine emergency.

  He’d never taken a call about a hostage situation in progress.

  When the call came in, his screen flagged the origin: it was a VOIP call. Brian almost dismissed it immediately. The vast majority of anonymous online calls he dealt with were kids playing pranks. They thought they could hide behind their anonymous online accounts and waste operators’ time.

  The voice belonged to a woman. By his best guess, she was in her late twenties and was probably a smoker.

  ‘Send the police. I’m being held hostage. She’s got a knife,’ the woman whispered so quietly, she was barely audible. Brian turned up the volume on his headset, closed his eyes, and listened intently.

  ‘What’s your location?’ Brian asked.

  ‘The Medici building on Westferry Road. We’re in the penthouse. Hurry!’

  ‘Okay,’ Brian said. With a couple of keystrokes, he issued an emergency dispatch to get boots on the ground. ‘Can you tell me who she is?’

  ‘Her name’s Faye Atkins. She’s a murder suspect you let go. Now, she’s threatening to get rid of the witnesses.’

  Brian stared, dumbstruck. Had he really just heard what he thought he’d heard?

  ‘Did you say she’s a murder suspect? Which murder?’

  ‘Mark Sanders. She was his live-aboard girlfriend. I’ve got to go. She’s got a knife to my boyfriend’s throat.’

  ‘Ma’am, stay on the line, please,’ Brian said.

  He was a moment too late. The line went dead.

  ***

  Mayberry returned to Jake’s boat, The Mobile Office, that Saturday. It was empty and had been left in Jake’s home mooring untouched since it had last been searched.

  If Jake had had hundreds of thousands of pounds, it had to be hidden somewhere. That kind of money didn’t just disappear. And yet, nothing on the boat suggested that Jake had had access to that sort of money. He had lived inconspicuously, with few luxuries. The boat was old and in need of repair. His belongings were nothing special. He hadn’t spent the money on travel or property, so it had to have been stashed somewhere. Jake had gone to great pains to conceal the stolen funds as legitimate winnings from bets. The boat had already been searched. If there were valuables around, then they’d have found them the first time.

  How could Jake make nearly half a million pounds just disappear? He had to have done something with the money.

  Mayberry paused. How would he hide the money? It had to be something liquid.

  Liquid... Could it be that simple? There were both a water tank and a diesel tank on The Mobile Office. If Jake had hidden something inert in either tank, it could stay there unseen without anyone being any the wiser.

  Mayberry Googled the size of a small gold bar and then did the maths. Four hundred bars weighing one ounce each would be worth about four hundred grand. At 50mm by 28mm by 1.5mm each, four hundred could fit in a shoebox with space left over for a pair of shoes.

  The water tank was easy enough to search. Mayberry was disappointed to find it empty. The next place to search was the diesel tank. Was it possible to store gold in diesel? Mayberry searched online for the answer and found nothing. There was nothing for it but to drain the tank and see. Thankfully, Jake had a number of jerrycans on board that had been used for filling up the tank.

  Mayberry found a syphon in the kitchen. He washed it quickly, dipped it into the tank, and sucked the end to get the diesel flowing. The diesel, which was dyed red, quickly began to spill out.

  Mayberry glanced inside the tank. Nothing.

  He was about to give up when an idea struck him. No. He couldn’t have. Could he? Mayberry swallowed his pride and headed for the centre of the narrowboat, where the tank for the pump-out toilet was.

  Mayberry was wearing evidence gloves, which offered scant protection for the task. He opened up the tank, took a deep breath and counted down from three. Three. Two. One.

  He thrust his arm in – and hit literal gold.

  Chapter 57: Ride Along

  Saturday 2nd July, 17:20

  When Morton’s phone rang over dinner, he knew it was trouble. After the last emergency, Sarah had begged him to set up different ring tones for different caller IDs. The Mission: Impossible theme tune was Morton’s warning sign that an emergency operator was trying to get hold of him.

  The phone hadn’t rung more than twice before Morton fumbled the answer button.

  Morton listened in silence for nearly a minute as the operator explained the situation, eliciting a curious look from Sarah. Then he said, ‘I’ll be right there.’

  He turned to Sarah, looked longingly at the rack of lamb on the dining table, and sighed.

  ‘Duty calls?’ she asked.

  ‘Duty calls.’ He kissed her goodbye, and then he was gone.

  ***

  Westferry Road had turned into a circus. It was an A road, a main artery around the Isle of Dogs, and on any other day, it would have been thronging with the hum of traffic. Today, the road was closed from Westferry Circus in the north to Cuba Street in the south. It would cause tailbacks for miles, as the diversion route went miles out of the way to avoid the docks. No doubt the Canary Wharf Security Guards, a private group responsible for patrolling the area just north of the Medici building, would be pulling their hair out and wondering why traffic had suddenly come to a complete standstill.

  Morton was waved through the police road block with little fanfare. He parked in the middle of the road next to everyone else. There was a silver BMW X5 parked near the Medici building, which Morton recognised as being an Armed Response Vehicle from the distinctive yellow circles on the windscreen and the asterisk on the roof. He’d always wondered why they had an asterisk there, until someone from the Air Support Unit had explained that it was there so they could easily identify ARVs from the air.

  Morton could see one of the three officers from the ARV standing in front of the building, ushering people out. He was dressed in black, armed, and relaying information back via radio. If proper protocol had been followed, the other two members of his team would be securing the scene as best they could. From what Morton knew of the Medici, that probably meant one man in the lift stopped on the floor below the penthouse, and another in position on the fire escape.

  There were more cars pulling up behind Morton. He looked around to see if the rest of the team had arrived yet. It didn’t look like it. Morton recognised negotiators from the Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Unit who were talking to Jensen.

  Now was not the time for Morton to have it out with the psychiatrist. Morton swallowed his pride and walked over to introduce himself to the negotiators.

  The lead negotiator briefly shook his hand. ‘Joshua Stuart.’

  ‘DCI Morton. What’s the plan?’ Morton asked.

  ‘The firearms officers are standing by,’ Stuart said. ‘She’s not coming out of the penthouse. The Medici building is on lockdown, and all known civvies have been evacuated. The ARV team is armed, but only with Glocks. I wouldn’t trust them to make that shot if they need to.’

  ‘Is there an SFO en route?’ Morton asked, referring to a Specialist Firearms Officer. The Met had just over a hundred of them in their employ, and they were almost all assigned to the Counter Terrorism Command. Only Specialist Firearms Officers underwent advanced weapons training.

  ‘There’s one on the way, but not here. The penthouse faces out over the Thames. Any distance shot would have to go through the balcony.’

  ‘From where?’ Morton looked incredulous. There was nowhere to shoot from.

  Stuart shuffled awkwardly. ‘The other side of the river. There’s an apartment block there of about the same height. If she can get in position, she’ll have a clean shot straight through the patio doors on the balcony.’

 
She? Morton was impressed. There were very few women among the ranks of Specialist Firearms Officers.

  ‘That’s got to be twelve hundred feet away!’ he protested. It was an impossible shot, even on a sunny day with no wind. The SFO’s weapon of choice was the Sig Sauer SG 516 Marksman rifle with an eighteen-inch barrel. Morton had seen a briefing when they were introduced, bragging about their maximum range of a thousand yards. Not once had he seen someone actually make that sort of a shot.

  ‘More like thirteen hundred. We’ve also got a bird in the air,’ Stuart said, pointing up. There was a Eurocopter EC-145 half a mile above them. ‘She can get us visuals, but it’d be too dangerous to shoot from a moving chopper when there are two hostages.’

  ‘What about a drone?’ said Morton.

  ‘To do what? We can’t shoot a civilian with a drone.’

  ‘No, but it would get us a view inside the flat. What you’re telling me is that our options are to shoot from an absurd distance, storm the building, or talk a crazy person off a ledge,’ Morton surmised. He turned to Jensen. ‘I presume that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘You presume correctly,’ Jensen said.

  Morton looked at him disapprovingly. ‘And what will you be doing to keep her calm? You didn’t have much luck the last time you were in charge of her.’

  ‘We have new information this time,’ Jensen said. ‘She’s in a dissociative state. She’s lashing out, and she’s trying to protect herself.’

  ‘By taking two innocent people hostage?’ Morton said incredulously.

  ‘In her mind, she’s doing what needs to be done. We need to understand that to understand her. She isn’t acting logically, David. You can’t treat her like a normal suspect. She will not respond the way you would expect.’

  Morton felt his pulse rising. The doc was really getting under his skin. ‘Is that why you tipped off a defence lawyer when I arrested her?’

  Jensen nodded. ‘She was my patient. I owed her a duty of care. She deserved to have an advocate to fight for her best interests.’