The Sandman
Page 17
Alice and Jagjit exchanged a glance. ‘We hadn’t thought of that,’ Jagjit admitted. ‘Actually, we wondered if she might still be alive.’
I shook my head. ‘Doubtful.’ Moving swiftly on, I said, ‘If you found this, the police will already have it and they will have swooped on his premises hours ago. His assets will be seized, his staff will all be on the run …’
‘He’s rich,’ said Alice.
Amanda hitched an eyebrow. ‘How rich?’
Alice had to shrug. ‘His father owned a small airline. Ramsey grew up in a mansion. The houses he’s bought will be small change to him. He could have millions stashed away somewhere. You said he isn’t anywhere the police are looking so we have to assume he’s got a place that is off the books. If he has that kind of money, he might be able to move his whole operation to a new place and set up again.’
This was not what I wanted to hear.
‘Okay. He’s rich, he’s got a small army of willing thugs, and we still have no idea where he is. He is here somewhere, and the sun is going down again in an hour. There is no way Jane and the others will survive tonight. That’s if they are still alive now. There is something we are missing.’
I wanted to go back to his house and search it again. Of course, the police would have taken everything worth looking at so what I really wanted to do was travel back in time and get a better look yesterday.
A sudden noise jolted me. It wasn’t just me; everyone heard it and every head in the office shot around to look at the back door.
Big Ben was already moving, going around us as he started to run. I went with him, but half a second after we heard someone open the back door, we were all running to investigate.
Big Ben got there first, ripping the door open to peer into the barren corridor that led to the carpark.
There was no one there.
Of course, that just prompted us to run to the back door so we could look outside.
Spilling into the carpark, the cold air of late December reminded us that it was necessary to layer up before venturing outside, though none of us were paying attention to the temperature. We were all looking around to spot who might have been at the door.
There was no one in sight. They hadn’t thrown in a firebomb, as happened with my last office, and they hadn’t left a note.
We hadn’t imagined the sound of the door closing though.
Trying to not make it sound like an accusation, I asked Jagjit, ‘Did you guys make sure the door was shut when you came in?’
Jagjit looked about guiltily. ‘I’m not sure.’
Amanda grabbed my arm. ‘There’s no one here. It might have been the wind. Let’s just get back inside and lock the door.’
We did that, trudging back through to the main part of the office where we were met by a huge surprise.
Tempest. A Note from the Sandman. Saturday, December 24th 1417hrs
On the coffee table sat a nondescript cardboard box. It wasn’t there when we left, so someone came in the front door as we all ran out the back. Apart from Alice, I think we all saw it at about the same time. The first surprised gasp from her triggered everyone else to look.
I wanted to run at it, worried it might be a bomb or worried for what might be inside and hoping to stop anyone from seeing it. All manner of horrors filled my mind as I made stuttering steps toward it. I both wanted to look inside and wished I would never have to at the same time.
Big Ben barged by me, giving my shoulder a deliberate nudge as he said, ‘Pansy.’ He made a big act of being braver than everyone else as he strode right up to it when I hesitated, but once poised above it, the nervousness he felt was easy to see.
‘Go on, Mr Indestructible,’ goaded Amanda, never Big Ben’s greatest fan. ‘Open it. Just give the rest of us a moment to get behind a wall. We’ll all say nice things at your funeral.’
Grimacing because now he had no choice, Big Ben grabbed the box lids, held his breath, and pulled them apart.
Nothing happened.
He’d leaned his head back and turned it away - as if that would make any difference if it were to explode. When it didn’t, he opened one eye, swivelled his head around a little and peered at it cautiously.
Since we didn’t appear to be about to die, we all crowded around.
Jagjit asked, ‘Is it a body part?’ The thought made him gag and he had to step away so he wouldn’t see when Big Ben reached in to retrieve the box’s contents.
‘It’s a note,’ announced Big Ben, pulling a neatly folded piece of writing paper. ‘And an old vinyl single.’ He snagged it with two fingers. ‘Guess what song it is.’
None of us needed to stretch our brains to work out it was Mr Sandman by The Chordettes.
Holding the note aloft, Big Ben read it aloud. ‘You can have Jane back; I don’t want her. If you alert the police, you will never find her or her boyfriend. Then there is a ten-figure reference.’
We crowded around, even Jagjit wanted to see now that he knew there wasn’t a head in the box.
Big Ben handed the note over and went to the front door. I watched him, waiting to see if he would spot something, but after a few seconds of scanning outside, he came back inside and locked that door too.
We had been remiss in leaving the doors open, but it had yielded us a result. All our efforts to break this guy down, our hopes to find him before he killed Jane were all for naught because the Sandman wanted to tell us where he was.
‘You know this is a trap, right?’ asked Amanda in a completely rhetorical way.
I nodded. ‘Of course it is. What choice do we have though? If there is even a slim chance we can save any of them, then we have to do it.’
Amanda faced me with a grim expression. ‘He’s luring us there so he can kill us. The police are all over him. We need to get a tactical unit involved right now.’
Big Ben chipped in, ‘She’s not wrong, Tempest. If Jagjit is right about this guy having money, then he could be about to pull a vanishing act. If he does that, he can set up some place new and start killing all over again. He wants us, either as punishment for interfering, or because he thinks he is tying up a loose end. Whichever it is, when we go in, we need to have a plan.’
Amanda snorted her disbelief. ‘What? When we go in? You just said I was right about needing the police. Armed, trained officers, that’s what this situation needs.’
‘Babe, I am armed,’ said Big Ben, lifting each bicep to his lips in turn so he could kiss them.
Ignoring the giant doofus, I blew out a steadying breath and gathered my thoughts.
‘He’s been ahead of us the whole time. Everything we have done in the last twenty-four hours is because he did something to make us do it. He had a man waiting for us at the hospital – that’s got to be where I picked up the tracker. He had men waiting at Jane’s gran’s house. He sent someone to deliver this package. If we so much as speak to the police, he will know. I believe we have one shot at getting Jane back and I plan to save her, Jan, and Karen at the same time. I don’t know how yet, but it starts with working out where he is and then outthinking him.’
No one said anything for several seconds until I added, ‘I’m fine to go alone.’
That created havoc in the office as Amanda started ranting at me and Big Ben got all outraged that I should for one second think he wasn’t coming too.
I tapped Jagjit’s arm to get his attention. ‘I need to see where that grid reference is.’
Jane. Hard Choices. Saturday, December 24th 1424hrs
Just like before, I awoke disorientated and alone in the dark with a dry mouth. This time the dry mouth was due to lack of liquid in the last however many hours I had been held captive. Thankful I didn’t have a gag to wrestle with, I nevertheless found my ankles and wrists bound again.
A small sob escaped me. It had taken so long to get out of my bindings and then the cell last time, I wasn’t sure I had the energy to do it again. My stomach felt like I hadn’t eaten in two days and I wond
ered if it had actually been that long now. It was long enough that I was becoming weak from lack of food to give me energy.
The fight in the corridor outside came back to me in a flash that had me contort myself around to feel my right leg. The thing I dropped into my boot was still there.
Crunching my aching abs to pull my legs upward, I raised them into the air and wiggled my legs until the thing started moving. It fell from my boot to land on the bed next to me.
Wrestling with two or three or however many of those goons in black robes it was, my right hand came to rest on a pocket. Who knew monk’s robes had pockets? I grabbed the object because my brain told me what it was, but there had been no time to do anything with it.
When the Sandman came towards me with a syringe in his hands, it took less than a startled second to comprehend who he was and where I knew him from. It was Karen’s neighbour. For the life of me, I could not remember his name, but I remembered tackling him to the carpet believing I had caught her stalker.
That I had been right but let him go stung like vinegar in an open wound.
In that second, when I accepted I was about to go back to sleep, I dropped the thing in my hand down my leg. That it fell into the open top of my boot was blind luck even though it was my aim to do so. Nine times out of ten I would have missed; I’m just not that well-coordinated.
Though my hands were tied together, I could still operate it, thanking my stars that I had something in my arsenal finally as I pushed the catch to release the two-inch blade.
I had a knife. The type that folds into its handle. It wasn’t much but it would make short work of my bindings this time.
The lights in the room flashed on, blinding me instantly and burning my eyes through my tightly shut eyelids. Terrified someone was about to come in, I folded the knife under my hands, cutting myself in the process and praying I could keep it hidden.
The door remained resolutely shut, but the speaker boomed into life.
‘Ah, Jane, I see you are awake again. You have served your purpose well, my dear, but your usefulness is about to come to an end. I had planned to sing you to sleep myself, but my followers have been not only loyal but deserving of the gift I intend to bestow on them. They will attend to you shortly.’
I tried to fight the ball of terror in my core, but the disembodied voice was so calm and chilling as he talked about ending my life.
‘Please make no further attempts at escape. As you will see, your slumber room has been repaired but the plaster is still drying. If you get off the bed, I will have my acolytes beat you. I doubt you will enjoy the experience.’
Overcome by the horror of my situation, I screamed, ‘Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?!’
A slow chuckle echoed around my cell. ‘Because I need you alive for just a short while longer, my dear. Your friends from the detective agency are coming to try to save you. They are walking into a trap, of course, yet it feels prudent to have you available to halt them, should they achieve more than I believe they can. If you like, I will play their progress over the speaker. That way you can hear them die one by one.’
I was hyperventilating. Lying still on the bed, I couldn’t seem to get any oxygen into my lungs. I always knew Tempest and the others would be doing all they could to find me, but now I wished they weren’t.
Were they really walking into a trap? I’d seen Tempest achieve the unbelievable more than a few times. And his friend, Big Ben, well he might be little more than a walking penis, but he was a fighting machine. The pair of them were trained soldiers with a shadowy past. Would they really be suckered in and killed so easily?
If the Sandman’s confidence were any marker, they didn’t stand a chance against him and they were just two against a cohort of his robed helpers. He called them acolytes. It made it sound as if this were a cult or a religion.
The knife was still tucked under my hands, but any thoughts I had about using it to free myself had to go on hold for I held no doubt about his willingness to punish me if I tried to get free. A chance would come. The question was whether I would be able to use it to free myself, or if the option I would take would be to kill the Sandman.
Though it terrified me to even think it, I knew the only way to stop him, might be to sacrifice myself.
Tempest. Hidden Things. Saturday, December 24th 1428hrs
‘Does this look right?’ asked Jagjit.
I turned my head to look at his screen. He’d navigated to an Ordnance Survey map where the ten-figure grid reference could be translated into a position on the planet.
When I saw where it was, I did a double take.
‘I know this place!’ I blurted.
Amanda swivelled around to look at what had me excited and the others crowded around to see the screen.
Basic was still finishing off the now cold sausages in buns. Most of us had eaten a couple, all except Alice and Jagjit who had been at home all day and able to eat when they wanted to. Basic was on his fifth or sixth and I hoped they gave him energy because we were going to need it.
My claim to know the place we were looking at was doubly true. It was inside a country park where I occasionally walked my dogs, but I also saw it just a few hours ago. It was on a map on the desk inside Harry Hengist’s house. At the time, I spent a few seconds looking it over and wondering about its significance. I hadn’t recognised it though. Not at the time. Now I did.
‘That’s Cobham Country Park,’ said Alice, recognising it too.
‘Oh. So it is,’ agreed Big Ben.
With a finger, Alice traced the A2 dual carriageway as it passed the location on the map. A main artery bisecting Kent, it led directly from Dover to London. Anyone familiar with the county could recognise the towns and villages on the map before us.
I told them about the map in Harry Hengist’s house. ‘There’s something you probably don’t know about that park,’ I told them all.
Amanda asked, ‘What about it?’
I pointed to a small mark on the screen and had Jagjit zoom in. It appeared as a series of dashes that made a line. It indicated something buried beneath the ground. I only knew what it was because I had been there and stumbled across it once.
‘There is a second world war operations room beneath the ground.’
Jagjit’s jaw dropped open. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’
‘There’s nothing labelled on the map?’ questioned Alice.
I nodded. ‘That’s because secret stuff doesn’t get labelled. It’s there. There is a plaque erected to tell people what it is, but it is sealed up. At least, it has been whenever I have passed it. I walk the dogs there sometimes,’ I explained. ‘The only indication on the surface is a barrier to stop people falling into the hole where the stairs go down to a door. The surface is completely flush with trees and stuff growing on top.’
‘How many ways in are there?’ asked Big Ben, his business face was showing, and he was thinking tactically.
Six sets of eyes scoured the map.
‘There.’ Amanda jabbed a finger at the screen. We spent minutes looking for another set of dashed lines but could find none. There were two ways in. Both would be locked under normal circumstances, yet if the Sandman were using it as a lair and wanted to lure us in, I figured at least one door would be open. The grid reference took us to one of the doors, not the other.
Big Ben growled, ‘We need to tool up. Did the cops leave anything in the back?’
He referred to our chest of weapons, some of which we’d taken to Harry’s house yesterday. I’d already checked though, and the whole thing had been taken at the same time as the filing cabinets. No doubt Quinn had his forensics chaps testing them to see if he could match blood to a crime.
‘Okay,’ I said as forcefully as I could muster – mostly for my own benefit. ‘It’s time to go.’
Amanda sounded shocked when she said, ‘Wait, what? We need to have some kind of plan first, surely. You already said this was a trap.’
‘What about weapons?’ asked Big Ben.
‘We’ll get those on the way too.’
Outside the office, the streets were filled with people excited for Christmas. Midnight was only hours away and the sun was on its way down.
While the world around us revelled in the joys of the holiday season, we were going to storm a madman’s underground fortress, take on a force of unknown size and attempt to rescue three people. It was foolhardy beyond belief, and I felt no choice but to do it anyway.
I had just one ace up my sleeve and it was based entirely on a hunch. The Sandman was too confident. He believed we were going to do exactly as he demanded, and he was right, sort of.
The bunker in Cobham Woods was a trap. A dead end where he could easily trap us, but an underground bunker with just two access points was a trap for those already inside too. Something about it did not feel right, by which I mean, I didn’t believe he was going to allow us to corner him there.
Leaving the back of the office to pile into Jagjit’s car, I fingered the tracking device in my pocket and failed to notice a shadow lean out from the wall opposite.
Quinn. Reason to get Excited? Saturday, December 24th 1441hrs
‘Copeland what have you to report?’ Chief Inspector Quinn had been anxiously waiting to hear from his plain-clothes men. With fifty officers in a hastily requisitioned school gymnasium, the task of sifting through all they had taken from the houses owned by Ramsey Mitchell and from the Blue Moon office was going well, but it was yet to yield a result.
There was just too much data. From the house in New Ash Green alone there was enough paperwork, documents, books, photographs, and other items to keep a team going for a year.
Yet the clock was ticking, and it grew dark outside. He couldn’t tell how much of James Butterworth’s research could be trusted, and it was clear from the odd crossdresser’s notes that he was guessing most of his conclusions about the serial killer. However, his belief that the victims would be killed the night they were kidnapped was not only plausible but likely.