The electrical fizz and static lasted a couple of seconds.
“This is November Uniform Six Four, Sir. We’re coming through Guide Bridge junction, will be on site in one minute, over.” The officer sounded nervous. It was a nerve-wracking day for all of the police staff on duty. They had all upped their game today, they knew that one of their colleagues was out there, in very real trouble, and that any one of them could be the person who found him, or found a clue. This really was as high-octane as it got for the police.
*****
Within five minutes of the Janitor’s arrival, DCI Miller had a name. The man who had gone into the flats, turned on Sergeant Knight’s phone, then left five minutes later was called Peter Meyer. His father, Philip Meyer lived on the sixth floor of the building. Further CCTV coverage that the Janitor accessed from the external cameras showed the man’s white van, a large Ford Transit parking up in the small car park, and then leaving again just after Peter Meyer left the building. Nobody else had entered, or left the building between four pm, and the moment that the police closed the building, at four fifteen pm.
This was the man. He knew where Sergeant Knight was.
Miller felt a cold wave wash over him, as the realisation that the van was very probably holding the missing sergeant inside. He stared at the grainy images of the van flickering on the screen, trying to get some kind of a clue from inside as to Sergeant Knight’s condition. He was frustrated that he couldn’t, and was annoyed with himself for even trying. Miller radioed through to the control room.
“Message for DCS Dixon. We’ve got a trail. I need to go live across all channels, over.”
A voice in the control room spoke. “Message received. This is MCP Comms. You are live on all frequencies DCI Miller, over.”
Miller thought for a couple of seconds before pressing the button on his little radio - the little button that would transmit what he was about to say to every single police officer in the Greater Manchester region.
“Okay, listen up, all officers and staff in the Manchester force. This is DCI Miller, I’m heading the investigation into the disappearance of Sergeant Jason Knight. We’ve got a trail. Grab a pen. This search is about to get very, very intense.” Miller released his button, creating a loud kerccchhttt sound, just to add drama. He pressed his voice button again and continued speaking. “We are looking for a white transit van, no signage, registration Yankee Tango Five Nine Sierra Foxtrot Delta. Get that registration plate circulated to every police car in Greater Manchester, get it circulated to neighbouring forces, Lancashire, Cheshire, Merseyside, West Yorks, South Yorks – come on guys, get your fingers out, we need TV news, radio, we need social media, we need absolutely everybody in the north of England looking out for that van. It was in Ashton fifty minutes ago, five zero minutes. Sergeant Knight is most probably inside it, and not in good shape. So do everything, check all ANPR records in the city, he’s bound to have passed one of the cameras. It’s in our area, right now, so stop that van, find that van. This is a critical situation. I repeat, our missing colleague is very likely to be inside the white Ford Transit, registration Yankee Tango Five Nine Sierra Foxtrot Delta. Good luck. Over.” Kerccchhttt.
The message left goose pimples on the arms of every police officer that heard Miller’s cold, desperate, emotional message. This was it.
Chapter Nineteen
“What, ow, Jesus, my leg man, it’s… aaagh. A-haaaargh! Fuck off!” There was a long, awful scream, a man screaming, howling, in horrific pain. “Ah, shit man, fuck… aaarrg - my leg.” Jason Knight’s leg was in a terrible state. It was clear to see why he was screaming, and making such gut-churning pleas for help. He was begging for help, for mercy. There could be no mistake from the screwed-up look of torture on the cyclist’s face - this man was in absolute agony.
The man who had just dragged him from the back of the van, and allowed the badly broken leg to smash so violently against the floor, from a drop of almost two feet -was laughing. He was chortling, quite absent-mindedly as though he was just fooling with a kitten and a ball of wool.
The man was overweight, but he looked strong. He didn’t seem unfit, as he continued dragging his victim backwards along the dirty, dusty floor. Jason Knight was being dragged along by the duct tape that was strapped tightly around his wrists. The man didn’t seem interested in anything that Jason Knight had to say, or how loudly he screamed.
The man was carrying a large rucksack on his back, which looked strange inside this cold, dark, smelly building. He was smirking, as though he was getting some kind of a perverse sense of satisfaction from all of this. But it wasn’t a look of amusement. He was smirking in a menacing, half-hearted way, which suggested that this was just the pre-nups. The manic, vaguely pleased expression that the man was wearing worried Sergeant Knight. It scared him, because his instincts warned him that there was plenty more pain still to come.
Although he couldn’t see the damage himself, the cyclist knew that his leg was in a desperate condition. Sergeant Jason Knight’s leg was visibly broken at the femur and the tibia. Often described as being the most painful injury that a person can endure, once the femur bone is snapped in two, the natural constriction of the thigh muscle inadvertently pulls the entire thigh backwards at the break,
like a bow and arrow pulled too tightly, causing it to snap and fold on top of itself. As if this injury wasn’t bad enough, The fracture to the tibia, at the bottom of the left leg was also quite apparent where the leg was bent a third time. To an ordinary person, the sight would be most distressing. it would make even a hardened person look away with a wince and an involuntary “oh my God,” or perhaps even gag, such was the unnatural position that the leg was lay there, at the completely opposite angle that a leg should be situated. These were without question, horrific injuries.
But the stockily-built man who spoke with a local, Mancunian accent just continued dragging the police sergeant along on the cold, dusty floor by his wrists. It looked like some old mill or warehouse. The thick layer of dirt on the floor suggested that it had been abandoned many years earlier. There was bird poo everywhere, all over the walls, the floor, the steps. Sergeant Knight was trying to make as many mental notes as he could, through the pulsating, jarring blur of agony that he was suffering. He’d never known a pain like it. If this was ten, he’d never even been at four before, not even three, when he’d dislocated his shoulder. He was at three with that tooth abscess, although at the time, he’d thought that that was ten. His arm was hurting, as was the bottom of his back, but all of that was small fry compared to the screaming, searing agony that was trembling up through his body from his shattered leg and his broken hip.
“Ah, come on man, fuck’s sake. I need to get a hospital. Fuck, my leg’s hanging off me. Please.” He was sobbing. He was pleading for mercy, begging for some humanity. “Come on man. Please.”
The man who was dragging Sergeant Knight released the grip on his prisoner’s wrists, and his arms fell crashing to the floor.
He looked like any other random man in his thirties or forties. He looked as though he might work in a supermarket, or maybe on a train, checking the tickets. He didn’t look evil, and that was something that Sergeant Knight was confident about. He’d seen many evil, nasty people through his work in the police force and this guy didn’t seem to fit the bill. He did seem mental though, he was definitely struggling with a mental health condition of some sort, and the theory that his captor was ‘mad - not bad’ was giving Sergeant Knight a small sense of hope, after that agonising few hours being driven around in the back of that bouncy, rattling van, with Radio Five Live being played out through the speakers at full volume to drown out the screams.
“Can we get summat straight? Yeah?” The man who had smashed Jason Knight off his bike and had punched him in the face on the floor as he’d appealed for help on that lonely country lane, was standing directly over Knight. His legs were long, and the man’s face seemed miles away, way up in the sky, a long
way away from where the injured policeman lay.
“What?” pleaded Knight, grimacing once more as the pain thrust up through his body, stabbing and pulsating in time with his heartbeat.
“You see, the thing is,” shouted the man, sounding as though it was just a part of some daft pantomime. “I couldn’t give a fuck mate, so stop moaning on at me. You’re here, because I want to fucking hurt you. Yeah?” He was staring down at Knight, smiling at the wounded man. “I said, yeah?”
Sergeant Knight didn’t respond. He just looked up at his tormentor, trying his very best to cope with the pain.
Without warning, the man kicked Sergeant Knight’s broken leg. The pain hit like an express train – the policeman tried to scream but no sound came out, just the air from his lungs. The sergeant was wriggling around in agony. Eventually, he managed to howl, like a feral dog guarding its territory. It wasn’t a human sound, and it came from way down at the very bottom of his gut.
“I said, yeah? You fucking hero.” The man was asking Sergeant Knight if he understood. This time the policeman nodded and said “yes,” through tears of fear and distress.
“Good. Wise up will you? You crying, saying “ow, it hurts” it’s music to my ears you thick twat. Now shut the fuck up moaning and whingeing, or I’ll fucking jump on that shitty leg. Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Fucking idiot.”
Despite the anger, or perhaps irritation - the man’s voice was calm, steady. This was all very calculated, there wasn’t much panic or spontaneity from the man. He put his finger up to his lip, smiled sarcastically, then walked back around the sergeant, back round to his prisoner’s head, grabbing Knight’s duct-taped wrists up off the floor, and he began dragging him once again across the cold, filthy stinking floor.
Jason Knight was sobbing like a baby. For the first time in his life, he wished that he was dead, or would soon be dead. He was praying that his mangled, screaming, burning, freezing, twitching leg was bleeding out. He just couldn’t take this.
Chapter Twenty
The incredibly personal, and emotional message that had been relayed across the entire Manchester police radio network had now found its way onto the media. Dozens of local radio stations around the North West area were planning to broadcast DCI Miller’s chilling message on their hourly news bulletins. BBC Radio Manchester and BBC Radio Lancashire had beaten them to it, thanks to their rolling talk programmes and had quickly gone live with the broadcast, and instant listener feedback and reaction confirmed that this was an unforgettable transmission.
Never before had a live, ongoing police investigation appeared to have such a heavily emotional investment from the lead officer.
Sky News had also relayed the message, as had their competitors at the BBC News channel, Euronews, Fox News UK and CNN. The recording of Miller’s words was being played out over and over again, against a spine tingling back-drop of photographs which portrayed Sergeant Knight taking part in all manner of activities. There was the shot of his passing-out parade some twenty years earlier. Another picture was a black and white newspaper photo that showed the missing policeman laughing and joking around as he pretended to arrest the Mayor of Bolton as part of a charity event. There followed a sombre looking photo of Sergeant Knight taking part in a Remembrance Sunday event at Bolton’s Albert Halls amid hundreds of other uniformed servicemen. Next, the photograph of Jason Knight and his wife Rebecca enjoying a drink on holiday flashed up on the screen. The wife’s face was blurred out, but the message was still powerful. That simple photo made the man in the story become human, and his charming, happy smile not only looked, but felt real. The broadcasters were doing an excellent job of making this story “come alive.” They needed to make sure that every single viewer understood that this was a very real, live-right-now human interest story, and they were constantly hammering home the message that the missing man was a husband, a father of two, an ordinary Peter Kay fan, a music lover who had been on Ken Bruce’s Pop Master radio quiz. He was a chips and gravy eating, bike riding, Bolton Wanderers supporter from the north of England, who wasn’t a bad cook by all accounts. Jason Knight was just an ordinary bloke, and the more details that the press revealed about him, the more “real” and “urgent” everything felt.
The story was of such a massive importance, it had gravitated way above a local news item. All around the UK, the story was very quickly becoming the lead news item. The message regarding the missing van was repeated everywhere. Online news services all prioritised the message “Have you seen this van? Call 999.” From small, local newspaper feeds on Facebook, to national, million-follower pages such as the Daily Mail, The Sun and The Mirror - they all flooded social media with the message.
Elsewhere on the web, the sick jokes were starting to surface from the more insensitive people. Those who found their comedy in the most provocative and shocking humour were trying to capitalise on the nation’s growing concern for the missing Sergeant. On Facebook, those who dared, or rather, those that didn’t really give a shit what people thought of them were posting some of the vile “jokes.” The most popular one that was getting banded around online and via text message read; “Looks like that missing copper Sergeant Knight has been run over by a reversing car. Criminals in the north of England are now asking the driver to come forward.”
The trolls were also lurking in the dark shadows of the web. “I hope he gets murdered” was one typical, pointless troll post that was quickly reacted to and condemned on Twitter. Lots of genuinely concerned people would reply to such messages, asking the same thing;
“How can you say that?”
“You are sick in the head mate.”
“What goes around comes around you sick fuck.”
The comments just bounced back and forth, the trolls getting off on their pointless nastiness, and those members of the public who were genuinely worried about Sergeant Knight, had fallen into the trap and were becoming outraged by the senseless remarks. The vast majority of Twitter users had cottoned on a long time ago that reacting to an internet troll was like giving an ice cream to one. As such, most of the trolling remarks went largely ignored nowadays. None the less, they still managed to shock and upset a lot of people.
The Daily Star attracted a great deal of attention to their social media activity, by announcing that they were offering a reward of £10,000 to any member of the public who found the van and reported it to police. The post was shared across Facebook and Twitter over thirty thousand times within the first twenty five minutes.
Sergeant Knight’s disappearance was leading all of the trending and popular activity charts across the British online platforms. One thing was for certain; the message had successfully got out into the community. That message was simple. If you see this white transit van, registration YT59 SFD, ring 999 and you could save Sergeant Knight’s life. And you might get a reward of ten grand as well.
Sky News were enjoying the hash-tag and e-mail interaction that came with increased viewer numbers. It had the main thing that news junkies and news-room staff craved. Drama, and lots of it. All of the essential ingredients were in the mix, suspense, excitement, horror, anxiety and that most crucial addition – genuine, real-time reaction to live news from the presenters and journalists. The best stories were the ones where the viewers were hearing the latest updates at the same time as the broadcasters. The scruffy, badly executed links, the shocked glances and confused expressions as each new detail came in was exhilarating stuff for a great many TV viewers who just loved the excitement of live news output in the middle of a major story.
Sue Bentley, Sky’s afternoon presenter, and one of the UK’s best recognised newscasters was doing her very best to keep on top of events, but the story was moving at such a rapid pace, she and her team of producers, journalists and directors were having a hard time trying to figure out what was happening. Trying to piece together a worthwhile and informative news sequence based on sketchy facts, dubious
gu
ess work and various expert’s opinions was not only very difficult, but it was also extremely dangerous. Any misrepresentations or wrongly worded statements could very easily put the missing man in danger.
Every single one of the broadcast companies were acutely aware of the sensitive role that they had to play in their reporting, but Sky News in particular had many years of experience in making it look as though they were in total control and were ahead of the game, when in fact they were still in the process of finding out what was going on themselves. It all seemed calm and organised on the surface, but underwater, every single one of the broadcasters was flapping around furiously, treading water and trying to stay afloat.
And as though things weren’t hectic enough, the story was about to take on its next energetic twist, as footage emerged of DCI Miller storming out of the block of flats in Ashton, and getting into the back of a police car, which then sped off with its sirens blaring and the blues and twos revolving.
“Well, so, there goes the man who is leading the investigation, DCI Miller – and he didn’t look too upbeat there. Do you want to come in on that, Paul?” asked Sue Bentley of her northern England colleague, Paul Mitchell who was in Manchester, trying his best to keep the studio up-to-date with developments.
“Yes, well, DCI Andrew Miller had a very determined look on his face as he got into that car. I don’t think he’s beaten yet, Sue.”
“No. I agree Paul. He certainly had a great deal of purpose in the way that he raced to the police car. Any idea where he’s headed now Paul?”
“We’re just trying to get confirmation of that right now Sue. I’m hearing that the police car has headed off towards the motorway, and we’ll try and confirm that in the next few moments. But I would suspect that whatever it was that brought all these police officers to this estate close to the centre of Ashton, has indeed provided the investigating officers the next clue that they were looking for.”
ROAD TO NOWHERE : DCI MILLER 3: Another Manchester Crime Thriller With A Killer Twist Page 12
