by David Hodges
Callow treated her to a smile that was pure relish. ‘He snapped her spine all right, but he didn’t make a proper job of it,’ she gloated. ‘She was paralysed, but still alive – I heard him mocking her while she was lying on top of me at the foot of the stairs where I’d fallen.’
Both Kate and Lewis froze in the doorway. ‘Gordon Bennett,’ Lewis breathed. ‘What are you saying?’
Callow’s eyes were hard and glinting. ‘I’m saying,’ she said, ‘that the bitch was still alive when she was cremated!’ She leaned forward like a cobra about to strike. ‘Burned alive, Sergeant Hamblin,’ she added. ‘Now, I wonder what he’s got lined up for you?’
And crouched below the open window, listening intently to the conversation, Twister smiled a knowing smile before quietly slipping away.
chapter 16
THE TECHNICAL SUPPORT unit had turned up at Highbridge police station at just after eleven and Ansell gave instructions that the incidentroom be completely vacated while they carried out their electronic sweep for the bugs Kate suspected had been planted there. Roscoe was sceptical about the whole thing. ‘Bloody waste of time,’ he declared to Ansell before his boss left for a case conference with the ACC at police headquarters. ‘Hamblin’s off with the Wizard of Oz.’
But his opinion abruptly changed when the Tech Unit manager poked her head round the door of the DI’s own office in the CID wing downstairs a couple of hours later.
Laura Talbot’s face wore a triumphant grin as she carefully set the tray on the desk in front of him. Roscoe stared curiously at the two black, rectangular boxes, about 3 ½” x 1 ½” x ½” in size, that had been placed in it.
‘Two in all, sir,’ she said. ‘And we’re confident that’s the lot. Nice little beauties, aren’t they? They’re called lithium transmitters and operate on a UHF frequency band. They will pick up conversations within about thirty feet and will transmit even through walls. One was fitted in the SIO’s office, under his desk, and another under a table in the incident-room. They have a range of about 600 metres, so your man would probably have had his receiver quite close by – if not in the nick itself, maybe in a car or building.’
Roscoe gaped. ‘The cheeky bastard,’ he breathed. ‘But what I want to know is how he got in here to fit them in the first place?’
Talbot nodded. ‘One of my team’s just had a chat with the nick’s civvy admin officer and he remembers a BT engineer turning up to check the telephone system about a week ago. The only problem is he wasn’t a BT engineer – despite his very realistic ID card and the kit he brought with him.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Your admin man gave BT a bell and they have no knowledge of any visit by one of their engineers.’
‘Well, I’ll be buggered!’
‘Hopefully not, sir,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘But if it’s OK with you, I’ll bag these up for SOCO. I’ve already had pics taken of them in situ, but you will obviously want them checked for prints.’
Roscoe nodded. ‘Go ahead,’ he growled. ‘I’ll tell Mr Ansell when he gets back from his meeting with the ACC,’ and he added sarcastically: ‘He’ll be highly delighted.’
As Talbot left the office with her prize, he stood up and, crossing to the window, peered out into the police station yards, chewing furiously and frowning as he thought about the cunning assassin who had blatantly walked into the police station to bug the place and had been eavesdropping on their briefings ever since. ‘So, you piece of shit,’ he said heavily, ‘where the hell have you been hiding? And where the bloody hell are you now?’
Kate still looked shaken when she climbed into the CID car beside Lewis. ‘I wish Callow hadn’t just told me that about Pauline Cross,’ she breathed, slamming her door shut and fumbling with her seat belt. ‘It’s the stuff of nightmares.’
Lewis nodded and started the engine. ‘If it’s true, of course,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder before pulling away. ‘After all, why didn’t she tell the inquiry team about it at the time and why bring it up now?’
Kate’s shrug turned into a long shudder. ‘I really don’t know, Hayden,’ she replied. ‘But I reckon it’s true enough – I mean, why would she go to the extent of inventing something so perversely awful? Callow is certainly vindictive, and she’ll cut herself on her tongue one day if she’s not careful, but I can’t see her concocting a story like that.’
He chuckled and she was pleased to hear the warmth in the sound, suggesting he had put his bad mood behind him. ‘The Wicked Witch of the North certainly doesn’t like you anyway,’ he said, then frowned. ‘Thing is, she must also be pretty stupid to come out with that sort of admission anyway. It means she would have been aware that Pauline Cross was alive hours before the cremation, but did nothing about it. Could be a criminal offence there.’
Kate shook her head. ‘She knows we can’t do anything on just her admission. She could easily retract it later and we have no means of proving or disproving it after all this time. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust really does mean that and there won’t be any ashes or dust left now either.’
Lewis flicked up his sleeve to glance at his watch. ‘Well, anyway, enough about death and disaster,’ he said. ‘It’s well past my lunchtime and I know a certain pub out on the Levels where we can get a nice little snack before we head back to the nick.’
Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘Mr Roscoe told me we don’t do dinner on a murder inquiry,’ she replied, thinking of the meal with Norton and the grief it had caused her.
Another chuckle and Lewis winked at her as he slammed the car into gear and, hitting the accelerator, pulled away with a screech of tyres. ‘Ah, but I bet he didn’t say anything about snacks,’ he said. ‘Pie and chips OK with you?’
Twister watched Kate and Lewis drive away with a grim smile. So the inquiry was going so badly they were into fishing expeditions now, were they? Well, maybe it was time to liven things up a bit for them. First, though, he had a more pressing job to do and, with this in mind, he made no attempt to continue tailing them, but pulled out of the gateway in which he had parked and headed back to Highbridge.
The derelict, boarded-up shop was part of a terrace of shabby premises and stood right next door to the police station. There was a small plot of overgrown waste-ground at the rear, bordered by the wall of the police station yard on one side and the garden wall of the next terraced property on the other. A broken-down fence marked the rear boundary, which separated it from the narrow lane running along the backs of the terrace, and an assortment of faded signs leaned over the fence from inside, declaring that the place was for sale.
Twister pulled in as close to the fence as he could – no sense attracting unwelcome attention by causing an obstruction – then sat for a few moments smoking a cigarette and studying the lane both in front of him and in his rear-view mirror. Nothing moved.
The old shop had served his purpose well, he mused, but the time had now come to abandon it for good. He was quite sure the police would find the two bugs he had planted in the incident-room and he guessed it would not be long before they carried out a search of the immediate area in an effort to locate the UHF receiver. He didn’t much care that they had rumbled him, but he couldn’t afford to lose an expensive automatic receiver/recorder that he might need again in the future. He knew he was cutting it fine and he should have retrieved the equipment over an hour ago – as he had originally intended before deciding to follow Kate Hamblin and her boyfriend instead – but he felt sure he still had enough time before the plods appeared.
Stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray, he eased himself out of the car and, locking the doors with the infra-red remote, he ducked through a gap in the fence, confident that he could be in and out of the place in minutes without anyone being the wiser.
Unbeknown to him, however, his arrival had not escaped notice, for someone was actually there before him – someone who was very surprised indeed to see him making his way through the tramped down grass to the ba
ck door and was determined to see what he was up to.
Naomi Betjeman had already written her story and submitted it to her editor, but an eleventh hour hold had been placed on it to give her an opportunity to try to elicit some comment from the police SIO or his deputy for what was going to be a major front-page splash. Getting into the police station to buttonhole someone, however, was not going to be easy. The internal door beside the front inquiry desk could only be accessed by means of an official security card slotted into a card reader, so that was an absolute no-no, while the entrance to the rear yard was now guarded by uniformed police officers who were checking everyone going in and out.
She had to look for an alternative entry point and, although the rear gateway currently presented a problem, the yard itself provided her with her best means of accessing the building. Once there, she could try and slip in the back door behind someone else – look confident and official so no one would challenge her – or hide behind one of the many parked vehicles until someone important came out. It was all very hit and miss, but it was the only strategy she could come up with, so she had to stick with it.
The problem was how to get into the yard in the first place. The wall was around seven feet high. Attempting to climb over in broad daylight was only likely to get her arrested – if she didn’t break her neck in the first place – and she couldn’t see one of the bobbies on the entrance letting her through the gateway even after a substantial bung.
It was then that she spotted the lane running along the back of the yard and the adjoining terrace and decided to take a look. Almost immediately she found the broken-down fence at the rear of the shop adjoining the police station and felt a surge of excitement. Maybe there was a way in from this side? It was worth a check anyway.
Someone had been there before her too. She spotted the ribbon of trampled grass leading to the back of the shop as she ducked through a hole in the fence, but didn’t give it much thought: kids probably or a tramp looking for somewhere to doss.
Striking off the improvised path deeper into the undergrowth, she found the wall of the police station yard and followed it carefully along as far as the shop itself. Damn! Not a gap anywhere. She was snookered. Ah well, it had been worth a try.
She turned around and was on the point of heading back to the path when she heard a vehicle bump slowly along the lane, then come to an abrupt stop just yards away. Crouching down behind a hawthorn bush, feeling vulnerable and guilty after her trespass – like a small child caught scrumping for apples in a neighbour’s garden – she froze as she heard the creak of the fence, followed by the swish of undergrowth brushed by advancing feet.
Intensely curious in spite of her predicament, she peered around the bush and caught a glimpse of what looked like a man in a long, hooded coat striding purposefully along the strip of trampled grass to the back door of the derelict.
He turned once to stare back down the garden when he reached the half-open door, then pushed against it and disappeared inside.
Naomi forgot the reason she was there and followed him. It was daylight after all; what was there to fear?
chapter 17
TWISTER FOUND THE briefcase containing his receiver/recorder exactly where he had left it – set up behind some boxes in an upstairs room. He smiled to himself as he closed it down and snapped the briefcase shut. Be interesting to update himself on what the cop murder team had been talking about since he had last interrogated the machine. Yes, a nice glass of whisky or three, sitting in the twitcher’s armchair while he sat back and listened to the recordings – what could make a nicer evening?
Then he stiffened and cocked his head on one side. The footfall had only been faint, but it had been enough of a giveaway for his sharp hearing. Someone was moving about downstairs and, by the sound of it, in their bare feet or just socks.
Frowning, he crept to the door and peered out on to the landing. The grey afternoon light filtering in through the broken window was enough for him to see the mark of his own rubber-soled shoes in the dust of the bare floorboards: a trail someone could easily follow.
Stepping backwards across the hall, placing his feet exactly in the imprints he had left on his arrival, he slipped into what had obviously once been a bathroom and waited silently behind the door. Whoever had followed him into the house was sure to see his footprints in the hallway downstairs and, with a bit of luck, would follow them to the bedroom he had just vacated. Setting his briefcase carefully on the floor, he flexed his large hands with a smile of anticipation.
Naomi was scared – not terrified, but scared nevertheless. Her heart was thumping and her mouth was dry as she mounted the single step and peered through the back door of the shop. A large square room made up the space downstairs, running the full length of the premises from the back door to the boarded up front windows. A splintered screen to her right provided what had once no doubt been an office of some sort and the remains of a long counter stood in front of it. Rubbish littered the floor and someone had scrawled ‘Psycho’ on one of the walls in big black letters. She grimaced. Very appropriate.
To her left she glimpsed a narrow flight of stairs dropping away through a low doorway – apparently to a basement – while another wider staircase, just past the doorway, climbed to the upper floor. At first she was undecided, then she noticed the imprint of what looked like crepe-soled shoes in the dust in front of her, a neat trail that led across the floor diagonally and stopped before the lower step of the ascending staircase. Ah, so that was where he had gone.
Removing her shoes, she forced them into the pockets of her coat and, stepping into the shop in her bare feet, approached the stairs cautiously. More footprints on the treads, but she hesitated.
This was stupid. She had no business being here in the first place. She was trespassing. What if the man she had seen was the owner of the place or an estate agent checking on something? What possible excuse could she give for her presence there if she ran into him? And, worse still, what if he was a dosser with an eye for the ladies? She could be in big trouble then.
A warning voice in her head told her to get out while she could. Stick to the story she was investigating already and leave well alone in this creepy derelict. But her journalist’s nose was twitching. Something was going on here, she could feel it in her water, something out of the ordinary, and she knew she would never forgive herself if she walked away from it now.
The stairs were surprisingly firm and didn’t raise a single creak as she made her way to the upper floor, pausing at the top to listen. The sound of traffic on the main road and someone blasting their horn, but nothing stirred inside the house. Maybe she was wrong; maybe her man had gone into the basement instead. But then why were the footprints going up and across the landing?
She moved off again, heading on tip-toe towards the doorway through which the footprints seemed to disappear, then frowning her puzzlement when she peered through into a seemingly empty room. Where on earth had he gone?
The single scraping sound answered her question, but before she could turn, Twister was on to her, one arm round her neck, cutting off her air supply as his other hand jerked her head to one side in a vice-like grip. ‘Nosy, nosy,’ he breathed in her ear as he tensed his muscles for that fatal sideways wrench.
Roscoe went to the front door of the derelict shop first and peered through a split in one boarded-up window, but he could see nothing in the gloom beyond and, testing the door handle, he found it was securely locked.
If the range for these particular electronic bugs was only 600 metres, this empty premises would be ideal for the killer’s purposes and he was determined to take a look inside. ‘Stay here,’ he directed the uniformed officer with him. ‘I’m going round the back.’
‘Do you want me to call someone off one of the other search teams to meet you there, sir,’ the constable queried. ‘Shouldn’t be doing it on your own.’
Even Roscoe was touched by his concern and grinned with genuine amusement. As
a tough ex-marine, who had earned a formidable reputation among his colleagues where physical confrontations were concerned, the DI was quite confident he could take on any man and he squeezed the policeman’s arm with a grip that made the latter wince before heading off along the main road.
‘I think I can manage,’ he threw back over his shoulder and, marching briskly past the front of the police station, barged through a group of reporters hanging around outside and turned into the street which ran down the side of the building.
He saw the brake lights of the big Mercedes come on at the far end of the back lane as he turned into it, but he took no real notice of the car, apart from thinking that it was going a bit fast for the conditions. Even if he had been interested, the departing vehicle would have been much too far away for him to have picked out any detail and he was too preoccupied with other things anyway.
He found the gap in the fence easily enough – muttering an oath as a ragged timber plucked his pork pie hat from his head when he ducked through – and his eyes narrowed the moment he saw the ribbon of trampled grass leading to the back door. So someone had been here earlier, had they? By the look of things, not too long ago either. Maybe they were still inside? And his heartbeat quickened as he thought about that.
He saw the footprints in the dust as soon as he stepped through the back door and immediately bent down to examine them, feeling a bit like an Indian tracker out of a 1950s Western. One, a set of what looked like crepe or heavy rubber soles and the other, what were plainly bare feet – he could see the mark of the small toes of either a woman or a child – and both heading for a flight of stairs which connected with the upper floor. Most peculiar.
Frowning, he approached the stairs cautiously and stared into the gloom above. And it was then that he heard the faint moaning, coming from directly above his head. Throwing caution to the winds, he mounted the stairs two at a time, his gruff voice shouting, ‘Police! Stay where you are!’
