by Mike Ripley
The only thing slightly out of place was a TV monitor hooked up to a video cassette player with a tape resting half out of the slot, as if it had just been ejected quickly. Maybe they did Modeller’s World on instructional videos now.
There was a door at the far end, with a Yale lock, which presumably lead into the house, but I had no intention of going there. I didn’t have time. It had been an hour now since I’d sent Steffi back to the races, but at least there had been no phone calls.
I went back outside and reversed the Freelander up to the workshop door. That made unloading the guns easier, and in no time at all I had them stacked in, on and under his workbenches. Then I spread the boxes of .22 ammunition about quite liberally, scattering one box on the floor. Finally, I emptied the bag of dust and metal shavings over the floor, sprinkling some over the workbench near the lathe and one of the drills.
I stood back to admire my work.
Get out of that one, Mr Solicitor.
The back of my legs collided with the poncy laundry basket of rags, a real ‘Ali Baba’-type thing, which I automatically reached out to catch before it fell over.
They weren’t rags.
Well, they were in the sense that they were pieces of material that had been used to mop, wipe and no doubt polish, because they were all covered in grease and oil and, from the smell, metal polish and methylated spirit.
But the curious thing was, they were all pieces of women’s underwear.
Chapter Eighteen
Knickers. Mostly.
Cotton briefs for the majority, in white, pale blue and pink, sizes ranging from 10-12 to 14-16, but also a couple of pairs of thick, black opaque tights, a single red stocking with a black seam, two camisole tops and one bra, size 36B. Analysed by maker, almost all Marks & Spencer, though there were two pairs of French knickers, one green, one red, from Agent Provocateur.
What was I doing? An inventory?
This surely wasn’t regular practice for a model engineer. Oh, I could see the scenario where it was all lads together on the steam railway and one would pull out a pair of pink panties to casually wipe the oil off his hands and he’d say ‘Ooh! Where did those come from?’ or ‘What on Earth will the wife forget next?’ for a bit of a laugh. But this was a bachelor model builder who worked mostly alone in a windowless workshop tacked on to an isolated house at the top of a mountain.
Maybe he threw wild parties, but there was enough underwear here to indicate that every eligible female (I discounted the Daughters of the Dawn) in the town had attended at least once.
I looked at the door to the house at the far end of the workshop and wondered what went on in there. Then I began to wonder exactly where the door went, because the workshop was built at a lower level than the back door, so if it actually went into anywhere, it must be a cellar. If it wasn’t and it was just the outside wall of the back of the house, why build a door there?
And why put the Yale lock on this side? If you wanted to keep intruders out of the house, you put the lock on the inside. The only thing this lock would do is keep people in. As in a prison.
I hadn’t got time for this, I thought, as I turned the Yale and snapped the catch up so that it couldn’t close behind me.
It was the cellar of the house, with a door at the other end, but it wasn’t the dank, dark cellar filled with household rubbish or even wine racks you might expect. The first thing that struck me was how warm it was: positively stifling and definitely sweaty. But it was windowless and dark, though the light from the workshop door was reflecting off something.
I groped my hand up the wall, and sure enough there was a light switch where I would have expected one. I flipped it and almost went blind.
The were six adjustable spotlights on a single track in the centre of the ceiling, and they all seemed to have 100 watt bulbs. One would have been overkill, but the effect was multiplied dramatically be the fact that the walls were lined with sheets of kitchen foil, shiny side out. There was enough there to cook every Christmas turkey in Tregaron.
And it was hot.
There were two portable Calor Gas heaters in the room and an electric fan heater, as well as a large, curved iron radiator with pipes leading up through the ceiling to the domestic central heating system. I took off a glove and put my hand over but not on the radiator. It was on full belt, and I was feeling the heat now. The floor was covered in a bouncy grey carpet of underfelt, which was probably insulating material. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if the gas heaters and the fan heater were on as well.
So the guy was a cold fish, or a reptile who needed to warm up before he could work.
Or he was a pervert.
Given that the only other objects in the cellar were a set of handcuffs locked around the downpipes to the radiator and a Canon digital camcorder on a tripod in the corner pointing at the radiator, I was going to go with pervert.
The camcorder was fixed to the tripod and was powered through an adapter plug from the mains instead of a battery, which was unusual. So unusual that I unplugged it and had a look. It wasn’t just a power lead; there was another small cable alongside it that continued through a hole drilled into the wall of the workshop. I knew instantly what that was and where it went.
I turned the camcorder on, fumbling at the switch with my gloved fingers, and then moved back into the workshop to turn on the TV on the bench directly on the other side of the wall. As the picture emerged, it showed what the camcorder was focused on: the radiator in the cellar. The one with the set of handcuffs dangling from the pipe. These were just like the ones the Turner boys had used on me in Armstrong II. They must get them wholesale in Wales.
I flipped the channels on the set, which seemed to be for a/v input only. There was no aerial, so he didn’t use it to record Pobol Y Cwm while he was out. There was a tape half-in, half-out of the machine with just the number ‘17’ written neatly in ballpoint on the spine label. I slotted it home and the machine indicated that it was on long play, giving six hours of running time.
The VCR hummed and whirred but nothing appeared on the screen to replace the live picture from the cellar. I stabbed the channel button again, flipping to ‘8’, which was where most people put the video link.
Bingo. There was the picture from the tape. It was still the same shot of the radiator in the brightly lit cellar, although the camcorder had been angled so that it didn’t show in the reflective tinfoil that coated the walls.
But I wasn’t really looking at the fixtures and fittings of the cellar, I was looking at Amy.
Amy wearing the light blue woollen two piece suit I had found in a dustbin bag back home, the skirt riding up to reveal a lot of leg and her red Jimmy Choo shoes.
Amy kneeling uncomfortably on the grey carpet of the cellar, turning her head to try to blow away the strand of hair that was falling over her eyes.
Amy itching and wriggling inside the suit jacket, trying to wipe the sweat from her forehead on the sleeve.
Amy moving position and touching the radiator with her knees and pulling away rapidly.
Amy handcuffed to the radiator pipes.
I stopped the tape and fast-forwarded it, then pressed ‘Play’.
Same scene, same Amy, same handcuffs; only by now the heat was getting to her. Her skirt was now around her waist, and she had managed to unbutton the jacket so that the camera could see her white bra with darker damp stains where the sweat was running off her breasts. She had her eyes closed and was slumped, resting her head on her forearms, her hair hanging in damp strands like wet string.
I stopped the tape and ejected it.
It said it was tape ‘17’. That meant there were 16 others.
I went back into the cellar and tried the far door. It wasn’t locked, and it revealed a flight of stairs up into the house with another door at the top, which was not only unlocked but open.
This was the bachelor-pad living room, with two black leather swivel chairs, bookshelves with a few paperback thrillers, a low coffee table, a compact hi-fi system and a cube rack of CDs, another VCR and the biggest wide-screen television I’d ever seen. I’ve been in Odeons with smaller screens.
And he had three shelves of video tapes. I ignored the commercial ones and concentrated on the home video recordings. There in a neat row were tapes marked ‘1’ to ‘16’. I turned the TV on and selected tape ‘4’ at random.
It was a tall, slim redhead, aged about 20, looking slightly bewildered and slightly amused by being handcuffed to the radiator. She wore a checked shirt and tight jeans and high heeled boots. I fast-forwarded a good way and pressed ‘Play’.
She was still handcuffed to the radiator, but had managed to strip herself of boots and jeans and had ripped open the front of her shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and I thought I recognised her panties from the laundry basket in the workshop.
I ejected the tape and threw it across the room, selected number ‘6’, pushed it in and pressed ‘Fast Forward’.
While the tape was spooling forward, I charged back to the computer room. The desktop was up and I clicked on ‘My Documents’. There were a hundred or so files listed alphabetically. Fortunately for me, ‘Amy’ came near the beginning alphabetically. I clicked the mouse and it opened on to nothing. There was a blank space, clearly filed as ‘Amy’, but a blank space nevertheless.
I hadn’t the time to go through the computer. A spotty 16-year-old nerd could have told me which files had been deleted and could have recreated them from the ghosting on the hard disc in ten seconds; but there wasn’t one available.
I didn’t know how to do anything else, and I was about to turn it off when I noticed the rewriteable CDs in a rack on the desk. They were a commercial brand, all in clear plastic wallets, and some had written descriptions of the contents such as ‘Property’ and ‘Ongoing Litigation’ but several had just numbers. There was a Number 4, a 10 and a 14. There was no Number 17.
I fed disc 4 into the computer, and the screen jerked into life. It was the redhead in the check shirt and jeans in her initial pose of looking slightly bemused. I let the disc run, took the others with numbers on, threw them around the office.
The tape I had put on fast forward had reached the end and was automatically rewinding. I stopped it and played. Girl Number 6 was a small, straight-haired blonde who had probably looked frightened from the start. She wore a blue shirt with a fringe down the sleeves, long suede skirt and cowboy boots. She wasn’t kneeling, she was standing, tugging at the handcuffs as they slid up the pipe. When she put one leg against the wall to try and get leverage, her skirt rode up to reveal stockings and a suspender belt. Red stockings with black seams.
I left that running as well and selected tape 10 to take into the workshop.
The only good thing about the tapes was that there was no sound. Whatever Rees was getting out of them, it wasn’t the sound of women pleading to be set free. That was something, I supposed.
But nowhere near enough to save him.
The unmistakable sound of a diesel engine interrupted my train of thought, and I rushed back into the office, which had a window looking to the front.
Steffi Innocent was driving her cab right up to the front door, and just in case I hadn’t heard her coming, she was blowing the horn.
I ran down into and across the cellar and out through the workshop, to where she was pulling up behind the Freelander.
She lowered her window and stuck her head out as she braked.
‘I knew you’d be here, you lying bastard!’
‘You should have rung me. Why didn’t you call?’
‘There’s no signal up here. No signal anywhere in Tregaron. Check your phone if you don’t believe me.’
I pulled it out of my pocket and did so. She was right. The one time I had remembered to charge the battery and turn it on and I was in a dead zone.
‘Where’s Rees?’
‘That’s why I’m here. He decided to leave. The train rides stopped about half an hour ago and he started to pack up. What have you been doing? It’s been nearly three hours.’
It had?
‘How much start have you got on him?’
‘Five minutes maybe, tops. He wouldn’t stay and talk to me, just ignored all my questions and said he was on holiday and to contact him at his office next week. Just cut me dead, but he was looking for somebody in the crowd. Probably you.’
‘Probably. Look, stay in the cab, keep the engine running. If you see anyone coming down the track, honk the horn. I’ll be back in two minutes.’
She started to protest, but I was running back into the workshop before she could get a word out.
I slotted tape 10 into the VCR and set it to play, then ran through the cellar and up the stairs. Disc 4 was still on the computer screen. I gathered up the other numbered discs from where I had thrown them and then checked the living room, where the tape of Girl 6 was still running. I took as many of the numbered tapes as I could clutch to my chest, but left two or three scattered across the floor.
I looked around to make sure I hadn’t left anything of mine and checked that I had tape 17 safely in my pocket. Then I went back into the office, where the phone was.
‘Police, please’.
I was put through to a central control, which could have been in England so distant was the answering female voice and so English the accent when she asked me where I was calling from.
‘Listen. I’m in a house called Brynteg on the mountain road going south-west out of Tregaron. That’s T-r-e-g-a-r-o-n, north of Lampeter and south of Aberystwyth. The house is being used to keep young girls against their will. They make pornographic videos of them. This is not a joke. There are also guns in the house. Lots of guns. A whole factory of guns. They might be terrorists. Check the cellar. Check the workshop. Get here fast. I repeat, this is not a drill.’
I hadn’t bothered to disguise my voice. Keep it short and snappy and voice prints are rubbish as evidence. I had given them ‘young girls’, ‘guns’ and ‘terrorists’, three trigger words that should set wheels in motion in the remote-call-centre set-up. The phones would be manned by civilians, but they would have been trained to act on any of those and channel the message to the appropriate unit despatch, or police station as we used to call them.
I hung up before she could say anything, but if they wanted to trace the call, they were welcome. I ripped the receiver off its wire and replaced it carefully so that the break didn’t show at first glance.
Then I was tripping down the stairs into the cellar, remembering to close the doors after me. I dropped a couple of the tapes on the cellar floor near the camcorder, turned off the lights and snapped the Yale lock shut behind me as I reached the workshop.
The tape was still running, as it would for about six hours, or however long Rees kept the girls for. I made sure that even a daffy Welsh copper could see the boxes of guns, and I actually skidded on some of the loose .22 ammunition I had thrown around. I dropped another tape here and then dug into the laundry basket and grabbed an armful of underwear.
Outside I dumped the tapes and the knickers on the ground while I rescrewed the padlock hasp.
‘Stop pissing about. Come on!’ shouted Steffi. Then: ‘What the hell have you got there?’
I didn’t answer, just concentrated on ratchet-driving the last screws home. It wasn’t a perfect job, but it would pass muster.
Then I dived for the Freelander, clutching the underwear and videos. I turned the keys with one hand and rammed tape 17 into the
glove compartment just to make sure I didn’t lose it. As the engine roared into life, I checked I was in 4 x 4 drive and fastened my seat belt.
Then I lowered my window and shouted to Steffi to follow me.
‘Down there?’ she shouted back.
‘No problem,’ I yelled.
Well it wouldn’t be for me.
I moved off and aimed well to the left of where I reckoned Ion Jones was, dropping videos and bits of female underwear at 20 yard intervals. Then I was concentrating on my driving and trying to lead Steffi down the gentlest path around and down the hill to the road at the bottom.
The sight of her TX1 swerving and bouncing and occasionally leaving space under all four wheels in my mirror was the best entertainment I’d had in a long while. I couldn’t resist a chuckle at the thought of the state of her suspension by the time we got to the road. It was no more than a cat-kicker deserved, and it took my mind off the other things I’d seen that afternoon.
I grimaced in sympathy as I saw her hit one particularly savage depression, and I swear I saw her head bang into the roof of the cab.
If anyone was out walking the dog on the hillside across the valley and saw the two of us careering down the mountain like that, they must have thought it was a Euro-funded Welsh re-make of The Dukes of Hazard.
Then again, it was the week of the races, and they’d probably just shrug and put it down to the mad Irish visitors. Or again, someone might start a rumour that Jones the Farmer had got ideas above his station and had taken to herding his sheep with a London taxi.
In a way, I regretted that I wouldn’t be in the back bar of The Talbot that night to start some of the better rumours.
Eventually we hit the road, and I turned right, past The Talbot, and right again, behind it into the car park, remembering to park ready for a quick exit.
About a minute later, the TX1 appeared and parked next to me.
