The Third Breath

by Malcolm Hollingdrake

  Cyril could see pools welling in April’s eyes. He removed a handkerchief square and slipped it into her hand. She dabbed her eyes as she whispered her thanks.

  “It’s so clever, sir, so cruel and yet… this is well planned and well exec—” She didn’t finish the word. “Sorry! We have Claire imprisoned in what we believe to be a freezer, a cell, the music is suggesting to us that she’s not seeking revenge but is simply asking for comfort. The fact that the message portrayed has been sent from her phone suggests that it’s her wish, like the writing on the wall and that it’s directed at Baines and Stephens and maybe even Thorndyke. The very nature of the visual message, the removal of the characters one by one, the chant of the rhyme, the French accent allowing the play on words, the elimination process, all precise, strangely playful and yet so calculated. But to me, the visual and the audible interpretations of this message are at loggerheads, a contradiction in themselves. Do you see?”

  There was a long pause as Cyril and April watched it play through again.

  “I do, April, thanks to your musical understanding, I do,” he admitted as he placed a hand on hers. “And who is to be the last, can you tell me that? Maybe the French is a nod towards Stephens and his trips.”

  Both looked at the paused image. The potato head of what could loosely be seen as a police officer stared back. The initial smile that had seemed so benign and yet so sinister had suddenly been changed. The mouth, downturned, mirrored very much that of April’s as she sat holding onto the handkerchief. Cyril’s stomach churned. He knew that they had to work quickly before the next victim was taken.

  “One potato, two potatoes. Surely we’re not waiting for three more?”

  April turned and lifted her shoulders. “Who knows what the rules of this person’s game are. I think there’s more to this than we’ve seen. I need to watch it a few more times.”

  Cyril printed the image of the emoji and stared at it. “Are you the face that comes back to haunt, are you the disappointed one?” he said out loud before walking through and pinning it on the board in the incident room. Going to the aviation chart, he focussed on the circled areas completed by Bob Ryan before calling Shakti over. She had just entered the room with Nixon. Cyril explained what they were looking at.

  “I want each and every one of these locations checking out. Owners, who flies in and who keeps what where and I don’t just want you to take their word for it. Look… Look in the hangars and in the outhouses. You’re searching for a freezer, chest freezers. If they won’t cooperate we can get a warrant. Look in whatever cold store they might have. Anything from our enquiry about Ashton?”

  “The records for his supply of liquid nitrogen are scrupulous. However, there’s no log of when it’s used. You have to take account of evaporation so you’ll never achieve a perfect record.” They left.

  Cyril stood in front of the boards and focussed on two photographs, one of a cocktail glass and the other of the beer mat. It was clear the connection the mat had with the crop art but why? He was still puzzled by the cocktail glass.

  29

  The room allocated for the early briefing was full. They had all watched the video of the potato heads and April had bravely interpreted her thoughts on the music and the actions revealed. The room was opened to debate.

  Cyril showed the photograph of the corn emoji and explained the circumstances in which it had been discovered before emphasising the link with the beer mat that had been removed from Baines’s car. He knew that it was a strong clue and clearly matched the evidence that suggested two of the victims had seen a face and the other had been recently unsettled. He was determined to develop the idea that the case revolved around the smuggling of drugs but he still did not have any vital evidence to support his belief.

  “Stuart and Shakti are investigating eight possible landing sites but currently there’s no evidence to suggest that this face was created in any of those places. They’re also looking for any deep freeze storage at the sites, as there is likely to be a link. At the moment, no one can recall where or when the photograph was taken. I’m confident we’ll find that information but not when. As I said at the beginning of this briefing, time is against us if we believe our killer plans to make the game run to seven.” He paused, allowing those in the room to assimilate the information. A number of group conversations immediately started until Cyril continued speaking. “We’re looking for a motive, a reason for this action, and I want all possibilities put into the frame. Just call them out, there are no right or wrong answers here, just your personal interpretation of the evidence you have to date. As I said earlier, keep an open mind.”

  “Thorndyke. Could it possibly be industrial espionage? Could he have been wanting to get back at them and therefore thrown a metaphorical spanner in the works?”

  “Who? Stephens, Baines, Thorndyke, Claire are all dead.”

  “Someone linked with Claire’s place of work?”

  “Drug cartel, local. Maybe York or Leeds. Stephens has trodden on toes.”

  “Stephens’s business partner, Paul Ashton. He’d nothing to lose but plenty to gain.”

  Owen quickly interrupted. “He’d everything to lose. The business was dying before Stephens got involved. Besides, how would he know Baines and Baldwin, let alone Thorndyke?”

  “They were both known to have been in the bar,” someone interjected.

  Cyril stood and waved a hand. “Stop! This is not as yet a discussion, it’s simply a way of tagging possible suspects within a frame. The whys and the wherefores can come in a minute. If you call out a name then you have reasons, sound, intelligent, professional reasons that will be based on what you know. Now, any more?”

  Cyril knew that there would be a pause from the previous free-for-all. It took a while but an officer at the back of the room raised his hand. Cyril noticed it immediately but was unable to attach a name. “Yes?”

  “Been on my radar for some time, sir. Jonathan Stephens I mean.”

  Cyril added the name to the board.

  “I hope this doesn’t sound stupid,” Owen said. “Someone we’ve yet to find, someone who isn’t connected with anything we’ve looked into, someone who’s got just what he wanted and is closing everything down. The game has either run its course or is just about to commence. The person we seek is without a face.”

  Cyril looked at Owen knowing full well what he was thinking. The last two suggestions had been sound. He turned and drew an outline of a head on the board and added a question mark within it before turning back, like a teacher demanding more from his pupils. “Right, take each name in turn and jot down why they shouldn’t be there.”

  Within forty minutes they had two lists showing potential weak and strong candidates based on the clear evidence they had. The third column simply held a question mark but was as important as either of the other columns. Cyril’s phone rang.

  “Bennett.” He listened whilst scanning the board. “When?” He picked up the pen and drew a ring round Jonathan Stephens’s name.

  “Jonathan Stephens has been missing for fifteen hours. He was last seen in Pool-in-Wharfedale. CCTV had him at the garage there with the Jaguar. He had informed no one as to where he was going but it’s on the road to Leeds Bradford Airport. He wasn’t expected at the hangar. We’re monitoring ANPR and traffic in West Yorkshire has been alerted. Let’s hope we’ve not lost another potato.”

  Cyril looked across at the officer who had first mentioned Jonathan Stephens’s name. Even from across the room, Cyril could see the puzzled frown and somehow knew just what the officer was thinking.

  Cyril sipped a cup of tea in his office as Owen, sitting opposite, nursed his Harrogate Festivals mug. Fine lines had appeared within the glaze, stained brown with the appearance of ancient tree bark.

  “Why do I keep returning to the conclusion that the murders and the discovered cash point to drugs, Owen? Help me.”

  Owen pulled a face. “Stephens’s autopsy, cocaine, cocaine in the fridge
at Baldwin’s, Baldwin linked to Baines. A good deal of money sloshing around with Stephens, plane and helicopter, great house… on three relatively small business interests.”

  “The drugs could just be superficial, a mere link. However, what if someone managed the workplace incidents? People like Baines, Baldwin and Thorndyke were paid to ensure that it would fail, be lacking in the eyes of the H&S executive after the accident. Imagine for a moment that it was supposed to be controlled but it went seriously wrong. That’s why Thorndyke, who broke all of the factory rules, simply disappeared and was put on ice.”

  Owen placed his mug on Cyril’s desk. “Was he stealing liquid nitrogen? If so, why? Chris Mott suggested that he was filling a Dewar at the time of the incident and that there was no reason for him to be doing so. Why photograph the body? Why tell us? Why kill Stephens and Baines and then send those images too? Why kill Claire Baldwin and show off? Surely whoever is responsible would have just got rid of Thorndyke and that’d be it. Job done. Thorndyke, in my opinion, was involved from the start. As I said in the briefing, sir, the person we seek is not yet in this script.”

  Owen lifted his mug and Cyril noticed the brown watery ring. He pulled out a tissue from the box and mopped it up. “So many questions, Owen, but no real answers. Why the liquid nitrogen, why the bodies in the freezer, why the music links and why the potatoes? Let’s hope we get something positive about the emoji and more importantly, let’s hope that we find Jonathan Stephens.”

  Before he’s had his chips! Owen wanted to say but looking at Cyril’s face knew better.

  “What have we found out from the address given at Stephens’s flying club, Appleton Roebuck?”

  “Checked all occupants around the area for the address given. We found a family who were actually called Baldwin with two kids, one of whom was Vicky, but they’re both in their mid-seventies and Vicky lives in Cyprus. Seems to me the guy they employed gave false details of his address and therefore we can assume that his name is too, probably just used their identities.”

  “So why go to all the trouble?”

  “Stephens, that’s why.”

  Cyril picked up the phone after looking up the flying school number at Leeds Bradford.

  “Day Flights Flying Club. How can I help?”

  “DCI Bennett. May I speak to Frank?”

  There was a pause. He could hear the scream of an aircraft engine in the background and then a door banging.

  “Frank.” The voice sounded breathless and impatient.

  “One of my officers spoke with you regarding a Thorndyke who might be a Baldwin who worked for a short time with you. You mentioned that he drove a van. You wouldn’t happen to know the registration and make of the vehicle, would you?”

  The pause was palpable and Cyril was aware that the man at the other end of the line was not the most patient. “Detective Chief Inspector, if I had that information don’t you think I’d have mentioned it to your detective at the time? The answer is no. It was a mix of blue paint and iron oxide, if that helps. He’d daubed a rust proofer on various bits of bodywork giving it the appearance that it had some kind of pox.”

  “Do you hold a collection of photographs taken by students of the club which might have the car in the background?”

  “Look, I’m a busy man with a living to make. The guy was a pain in the arse when he was here and now he’s coming back to haunt me. I have neither the time nor the inclination to look through the club photographs—”

  “This man might be responsible for the death of David Stephens and three other people,” Cyril interrupted him in mid flow. “We know that he has an agenda to kill more. We don’t know who is on the list but we do know that he’s not finished. If it’s our man, who knows why he selects his victims, Frank. At present there appears to be no pattern and the next victim could well turn out to be someone he worked with or for.”

  “Are you suggesting…” He paused. “I’ll get them looked at immediately. Do we have your number?”

  “There are more ways of killing a pig than to stuff it full of cherries,” Cyril said to himself after he put down the phone.

  Within twenty minutes he had received a return call. They had discovered two photographs showing not only the car but also the man himself. Cyril was assured that they would scan and mail the images immediately and he gave them his email details.

  On receiving the two images on screen Cyril was disappointed not only by the quality, but also by the position of the man and the vehicle.

  Within minutes he had sent them to the technical IT team to see if they could enhance them. He needed a make and a registration number but he was not optimistic.

  30

  It was two hours after receiving notification that Jonathan Stephens had been reported missing that the Jaguar was discovered. It had been left parked on the roadside near the centre of Ilkley. The car was locked and there was no sign of Jonathan. Owing to its proximity to other parked vehicles, it had not been spotted for a number of hours. Apart from the missing driver, all seemed to be in order. Cyril immediately requested the CCTV images for the area to be checked.

  Within twenty minutes, an image of Stephens entering the train station had been confirmed. Checking the time against the image there was one train timetabled for Bradford, Forster Square.

  “Now why would the lad leave his car and go to Bradford on a train? He’s gone backwards to come forwards. Why, in fact, go by rail?”

  Cyril looked up the stopping places of that specific train and then picked up the phone.

  “Dan, did we keep a track on Jonathan Stephens’s phone?”

  Dan Grimshaw shook his head flustered by his boss’s question. “No, we were instructed to keep open those which were missing.”

  “Jonathan Stephens appears to have gone missing. Can we get onto that?”

  “Has he taken his phone?”

  Cyril suddenly felt foolish, he had not checked. He kicked himself for making such a basic error. “I’ll get back to you.”

  The call to the Stephens’s house confirmed that Jonathan had left his mobile and that was one of the reasons there had been such urgency to notify the police. He usually was never parted from it.

  Cyril immediately felt the anger bubble, anger with himself as he organised an immediate request for a missing person’s bulletin to be issued as a matter of urgency. Control had managed to notify all the stations on the line to check CCTV images for the time after Jonathan had been seen at Ilkley Station. It took barely forty minutes for a response to come through. Jonathan Stephens had left the train at Burley-in-Wharfedale.

  Cyril Bennett and April Richmond parked outside the Stephens’s house. The front door opened before the pair had left the car and Mrs Stephens rushed towards them. April quickly got out and met her.

  “Have you found him?” Jonathan’s mother’s words came through gasps of obvious anguish.

  April held Mrs Stephens’s shoulders as Cyril came to her side and addressed her. His tone was controlled and reassuring. “We have a positive ID and know that he got off a train at Burley-in-Wharfedale just over two hours ago after leaving his car in Ilkley. Let’s go inside so that we can try to understand what’s going on.”

  Once inside, Mrs Stephens calmed down; Cyril’s words were slowly penetrating.

  “What’s he doing there? Why not take his phone? Why not just drive there?”

  “Did anyone contact Jonathan before he left the house?”

  Mrs Stephens raised her shoulders. “He’s always looking at his phone. I don’t know, maybe someone contacted him through Facebook, Messenger or such. I really wouldn’t know.”

  “We know that his phone is here, yes?”

  She stood, walked into the kitchen and returned with Jonathan’s phone. “Never leaves it, that’s why we rang. His sister was shocked to see it sitting on the kitchen table.” Mrs Stephens handed it to Cyril.

  “Do we know his entry code?”

  “He has a pass phrase. He is ve
ry conscious about mobile security and hackers, and it will be difficult. It’ll have a four in it, his so-called lucky number.” The smile was clearly forced.

  “Bloody phones,” Cyril mumbled as he looked at the locked mobile. He tapped 4444 but the phone vibrated in his hand, showing it to be locked.

  April held out her hand. “May I, sir?”

  “The last time you saw Jonathan was?”

  “Yesterday. It was about eleven. He was in the hangar fiddling with something, a container. The next thing he’d gone, his car too. No note, message, nothing. After ten hours we were getting worried.”

  “Can you show me the container?”

  Cyril’s request seemed to surprise her. She stood and took him to the hangar. Clicking the door remote, the helicopter appeared. “It’s there, on the shelf.”

  Cyril slipped on a pair of nitrile gloves before picking up the container. The word cryo 5 was written on the side. He gently shook it and was surprised by its weight; it seemed excessively heavy for its size even though it appeared to be empty. Next to it was a larger one and some smaller stainless steel containers. He brought the original container outside, inspecting the top as he tried to work out how to open it. It took a moment before he gently unclipped what appeared to be a safety catch. He cautiously removed the lid; his assumption was correct, it was empty.

  “What do you know about these, Mrs Stephens?” Cyril asked as he crouched next to the container that stood about fifty centimetres in height.