A Private Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  There was a padlock on the inside of the wire mesh gates. Smith put a hand through and felt around it – locked, not just hanging there as a latch. He wasn’t using the torch now, no need. He had good night vision, something that he had not known until training on Salisbury plain, when he discovered that he could see things in the dark that many others could not. Just an arrangement of rods and cones, of course, doesn’t make you special, it’s what you do with what you’ve got that counts.

  He stood very still then, bringing the breathing and the nerves back under control. A good decision was needed now. If he was going into the place, it was important to let someone know – that’s a golden rule. And it wasn’t really an “if”, so let’s get on with it. He moved a short distance along the fence, to the right where it was darker, turned his back to the building so that his body was a shield, and opened the phone. He typed in the first words of a message and then remembered the geo-tag thing that Waters had shown him months ago. He found it and it worked at the very first attempt – his position on the planet reduced to a sequence of numbers. He took a few more steps along the fence and the final digit changed, it was that precise. And there look, the option to include this in a message. He began to type Murray’s name and it all appeared, ready to go. So he wrote “Zoe Johnson? Might involve this place” and pressed send. Murray was probably in bed but at least now they’d know where to begin the search in the morning.

  There had once been a concrete path all the way along the fenced area but vegetation had encroached over it years ago. He found himself walking into nettles and then brambles. By now he was opposite the end of the building and he could see no windows, so he stopped and used the torch to look ahead. The fence continued into rising ground, more and more thickly overgrown, but there was a gap before the end where a determined person could get through to the rear of the premises.

  Once inside, he stood still and listened again, but heard only the distant rumble of a lorry on the Kings Lake road half a mile to the east. This was distinctly odd. There was no light at the rear of the building either – Harris had gone into an apparently disused commercial unit and was doing what in the darkness at close to midnight? Smith checked the time on his watch and realised that in about thirty minutes he could be arrested as a trespasser rather than doing the arresting – just one more thing to consider.

  Silently and slowly, he moved around to the end of the building, and from there he could see the rear of the Vauxhall estate. Another minute of listening and wondering, and then quite unexpectedly, the sound of a door closing and a lock being turned – the front door to the building that Harris had gone through fifteen minutes ago. He was coming out now.

  Smith moved quickly into the shadow thrown by the end wall and then forward so that he could peer around the corner. It was Harris alright, some twelve or fifteen yards away, now moving across the yard to the car. Then there was a ping and the phone in Smith’s pocket vibrated. He froze, watching Harris but there was no sign that it had been heard – Harris got something from the car and walked over to the gate. The key to the gate, he’d left it in the car.

  Smith eased the phone out and found the silent switch, impressed that he could do that without looking now. Pressing his back against the wall, he read Is that where you are? It’s nearly midnight.

  Since when had Murray bothered about the time when it came to nicking villains? Since he became a dad, presumably. Which I am too, he thought, but it’s different when you don’t meet them until they’re nearly thirty. Harris had opened the gate and was back in the car. He started it, pulled onto the road, got out and locked the gate again. Then, as Smith continued to watch from the deep shadows, Harris drove away into the night. He would pass one vehicle parked at the side of the road, an old maroon Peugeot saloon.

  Two more minutes now would make no difference, so he took them to think it through again, from the beginning. The odds had to be that Harris knew he had been followed, that Smith was here somewhere. It wasn’t necessarily a trap. Maybe Harris wanted him to see something, to find something; you get to meet all sorts in this line of work and some of them don’t think like you and me. Maybe this was all part of the game that had been played since the beginning. None of this necessarily involved Zoe Johnson herself. In fact, looking at the front doors of this building, as he was now, there being no need to hide anymore, the chances of finding her inside were minimal. What could Harris possibly have to gain from leading Smith here if he had taken her? Harris was strange and probably a little disturbed but he was an acolyte, not a high priest – he was assisting in something, that was all. Harris is not a killer, that was Smith’s conclusion.

  To Murray he sent H drove here, he’s gone now – it took three attempts to get that apostrophe in the right place – will take a look inside. The time on the message was 23.28. Better get a move on, then – he only had thirty-two minutes left.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  There were eight windows along the front of the building, two before the entrance doors, and six after them, and every one was securely shut. He had tried the doors as a matter of course but Harris had locked them properly. Smith arrived at the far end and went round into darkness again; using the torch, he could see two more aluminium sash windows, and the second one was an inch or two from being fully closed.

  He had assumed the place was no longer in use but maybe he was wrong. There were certainly no cameras and no security lights but there might be alarms on the windows. Being found in here by some of Charlie Hills’ lads would be the inglorious end that Detective Superintendent Allen could only have dreamed about, and someone somewhere would suggest sending the details to the Crown Prosecution Service. Smith bent and examined the window closely.

  If the building was disused, how long could this have remained open before the local louts had found their way in and trashed the place or burned it to the ground? No cobwebs in the gap and when he ran a finger along the inside of the space, very little dust. Circumstantial, but the evidence pointed to the window having not been open for weeks. Perhaps it had been opened only a matter of minutes ago.

  Back at the front of the building, he studied the road carefully for two or three minutes but there was nothing – no sign of movement, no sound. If the Vauxhall had returned or even parked up, he would be able to see it from here. Then he went around to the window again, and eased it up as quietly as he could until there was enough room for him to lean in onto the sill and climb through, holding the torch in his teeth until he could straighten up.

  This was a storeroom. There were no desks or chairs, just filing cabinets and shelves and the smell of old paper. A row of ancient box files, long since superseded by their digital equivalents, had the word “Export” in large, red capitals on their spines, and underneath the names of various countries. Smith pulled one – Pakistan – out of the line and examined the contents. Copies of invoices by the look of it, technical stuff, lists of things that he couldn’t relate to but which were possibly medical, and the dates were years back, ten years and more. He glanced over another page, replaced it in the file and was halfway to putting the file back on the shelf when something clicked. He took it down again. At the top was the company heading – MV Instruments, UK Ltd. That was the company Harris had worked for, he told them in the second interview.

  Smith went out of the room. There seemed to be a long central corridor with doors off on both sides – the torch wasn’t really up to the job and the far end was only dimly visible. He checked the other end room to his right and found it full of disused office furniture – it was a rest home for broken desks and bent swivel chairs. Maybe the vandals had got in, or maybe MV Instruments had been an unusually stressful working environment. With people like Paul Harrison monitoring your work processes, it probably was. Shining the torch upwards, he could see an alarm, probably the old-style combined fire and burglar sort, but the wire leading to it had been cut. Below that was a light switch but flooding this place with fluorescence was
not an option even if it was still live – he would complete his inspection by torchlight and leave.

  Looking into a couple more rooms confirmed that this had never been a production facility. It was just offices and administration, and it had all been abandoned a while ago. A thin layer of dust had settled like dry snow, bringing its own silence. He checked every room along the corridor, working his way towards the entrance that Harris had locked. What he had been doing here was still a mystery.

  And then, in a small room which had once been a kitchenette behind the reception area, adjacent to the main doors, he found something. There was a red light in the darkness, and when he shone the torch – which didn’t look as if it was going to last more than two more minutes but what else can you expect from a free gift these days – when he shone the torch, he could see a fridge. So there was still an electrical supply, and someone was using it to run a fridge in an otherwise deserted building. At least, he thought with grim irony, it isn’t a chest freezer…

  Inside were a few basic foodstuffs – two plastic bottles of milk, one of them two thirds empty, a plastic bag with some apples, half a loaf of sliced white bread wrapped in film, and a tub of spread. Smith checked the use-by date on that and found that it was still in by a couple of days – bought recently, then. In a wall-mounted cupboard to the right of the fridge there was more: a four-pack of tins of baked beans with two remaining, and several cans of soup from one of the low-cost outlets in Hunston. Beside the little sink, a kettle that contained water – when he felt that, it was cold, not used today. He turned the tap, and water sputtered out and then ran freely. It made a noise, drumming into the hollow of the metal sink, and it was when he turned that off, he heard a noise, somewhere else in the building – in another room nearby.

  He turned off the torch and moved silently back into the corridor, trying to replay what he had heard. A shuffling sound, or a dragging, something on a floor being moved. He had checked every room to this point – only two or three remained. He waited, listening, thinking that Harris might have come back into the building, though he could see the front doors from where he stood, and no-one had come through those. All was quiet now but Smith knew better than to doubt his ears and his instincts in a situation like this. There had been a sound and it was from inside the building.

  Wait some more, never be impatient – and as he waited, he thought about what he had found in the kitchen. Basic foods, enough to keep a body alive, and bought locally within the past few days. Was someone living here? The coast had plenty of problems with squatters and the homeless, but mostly in the summer months. Harris had been in here not half an hour ago. He would have noticed this, and there was no way he would tolerate anyone shacking up here, whatever his connection was to the place now. So…

  So, finally, he came to accept it, the only other explanation. He switched the torch back on and went softly towards the next door. When he turned the handle, it clicked open. He crouched a little and shone the beam around. At first he could see what looked like bedding and froze, but it was only two or three rolled up carpets. There was a desk here and a few scattered papers, nothing more.

  He left that door open and went to the next. The handle clicked in the same way, and then, out of the darkness in this room, came a low, a barely human moan. Barely, but he knew it for what it was – a girl’s voice.

  She had pushed herself into the corner behind the door. When the torch beam found her, she twisted her head away and wriggled backwards until she was half-propped up against the wall, eyes wide with fright. There was heavy duty tape bound across her mouth but Smith could see that this was Zoe Johnson.

  Leaving the door open, he stepped back into the corridor and shone the faltering beam in both directions. Still nothing, still only the silence of a deserted building, but this was too easy. He took time to weigh it up, just a few more seconds would make little difference to the girl who had been missing for more than a fortnight. Harris must have known he was being followed tonight. He must have known that Smith would search this building – he had led him to it. Now Harris had gone and Smith could get her out. The only explanation that made any sense was that this was Harris’s way of giving her up, of trying to wriggle out of it. He could deny that he was ever here, and it would be difficult to prove that he was; there would only be Smith’s word about what had happened tonight.

  But the girl had seen him, Harris, she could testify. Kidnapping attracts a severe sentence, every time. Smith could hear her again and gave up trying to puzzle this out now. They would be on the way back to Kings Lake in ten minutes. He looked at his phone and saw that it was 23.58. Two minutes to midnight. Not bad timing for cracking your last case.

  He put the torch on the floor, knelt beside her and told her who he was and what he was going to do. There was tape binding her wrists and ankles, as well as across her face, and he would have to touch her to begin removing it. She would be in a state of preternatural terror, confronted with another strange man about to lay hands upon her. He used her name, told her about meeting her mother, mentioned the names of her brothers and sisters and Roy Green, said everyone was worried to death about her.

  When he was sure he had made a connection, he said, ‘Alright, let’s get this tape off and then we’ll get you out of here.’

  It was the thick, grey, adhesive builders’ tape. It had been bound around her head and her hair was matted into it. When he began to ease it away from the skin of her face she squealed in pain. He said, ‘OK, we’ll leave that to you or maybe the doctors. Let’s just get you moving first.’

  Like an idiot, he’d left a penknife in the glove compartment of the car. He managed to get the end of the tape around her wrists free, holding both her tiny hands in one of his own while he unwound it with the other. In the dim light he could see that her nails were broken and bloody – she had put up a fight at some point, had tried to claw her way out. Smith gritted his teeth as he worked – letting her see his anger wouldn’t help. But they would have Harris for this, one way or another they would have him.

  When her hands were free, she tried to say thank you. It was difficult to find the end of the tape around her ankles, but then he had it – another minute and they’d be on the way out of this place. She kicked out at him suddenly and he thought he must have torn her skin. He said sorry and went more carefully, but she kicked again, and he could hear her voice trapped behind the tape.

  Smith looked up at her then and realised that she wasn’t looking back at him. She was staring past him and upwards – upwards to where someone might be if they were standing behind him as he knelt on the floor. Then her gaze met his with a mute appeal, and he began to turn his head, thinking, of course, it’s Murray, he couldn’t resist it, had to-

  Someone punched him hard, three or four quick, hard, surprisingly painful punches into the back of his chest. He half fell on top of the girl with the force of it, then pushed himself to his right and rolled onto his back. As the next blow came down, he caught the hand with both of his own, feeling a sharp sensation when the blade cut through between his fingers, inches from his rib cage before he managed to stop it.

  Harris leaned into him then, getting both his hands onto the knife, trying to force it down. Smith had his elbows well braced but Harris was powerful – remember those weights that Murray saw in the house? Always look into the eyes of your assailant if you can… What do you see there?

  Not much in this near-darkness. Not anger, not glee at having fooled the old copper, not even the insane desire for vengeance that had presumably brought them to this moment. Harris’s eyes were fixed on one thing, finishing the job. Somewhere to Smith’s right, the girl was trying to scream.

  Their combined fists and arms were shaking with the effort but Harris would win this in the end – he was younger and stronger. In these situations, a speculative knee can still be surprisingly effective; Smith brought his left one up sharply, missing a direct hit but close enough to throw Harris off balance for a momen
t.

  And that was enough for Smith to roll to his right and twist out of the grip that Harris had on him – twist out and get to his feet between Harris and the girl. The knife was coming again, this time in a wild, haymaking swing; a good thing he doesn’t know how to handle it like those boys in Belfast many years ago, eh Smith? Leaning back, as the knife missed his face, he caught hold of the wrist with his right hand, pulled down and got his left hand in behind the elbow, forcing the joint in entirely the opposite direction to the one that nature intended, forcing it hard.

  Harris shouted and bent forward low to the floor; the fingers on the knife had loosened but didn’t let go. Somehow he was strong enough to begin pushing his way upright, still with the knife in his hand. There is no time for thinking, only milliseconds for any training you’ve had to be recalled by muscle memory. Major Agassiz, instructor to the special forces, help him out one final time, Major…

  Smith let go of the elbow. He reached down with his left hand, prised Harris’s thumb away from the handle of the knife – a filleting knife of all things, he now saw – and twisted it as hard as he was able. He felt something snap. Harris yelled and the knife dropped heavily to the floor. Smith kicked it away at the first attempt, and then Harris had forced him back, now that his right arm was free.