The Controller

by Linda Coles

  Amanda handed Ruth her card. “Mobile is best, or email if it’s more convenient for you, it’s all on there. I’m going to join the group and watch for myself and see what comes up, just so you’re aware, but let’s keep in touch with developments and if you think of anything else, just let me know. I’ll also be going back to Pam and Lorna, see if they can remember anything else, even smallest of details can help.” She smiled brightly at Ruth as she stood to leave and Ruth returned the gesture. “And thanks for the delicious lemonade. I’ll be in touch,” and she slowly walked back down the hallway towards the front door, her own footsteps now audible on the polished floor.

  “I’ll get the door for you,” said Ruth and squeezed past her to do so. “Where are my manners?” With the front door wide open, Amanda left the house and followed the front path back down to the curb and her waiting car. Ruth stood in the doorway and watched as Amanda drove off, giving a little wave through the passenger side window as she did so. Ruth was glad of her visit, that something would now be done to find the culprits and stop any more heartache, but as she closed the front door, she also realised she was just as glad to have met Amanda.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ruth awoke the following morning with the sun streaming through her bedroom window. It was something she always loved to see, and it made getting up a whole lot easier and much more pleasant. As she came to, and stretched like a cat on a lazy Saturday morning, she wondered if the little Jack Russell was back at home with its owners yet. That would be a nice start to the weekend for them all. She let her mind wander to what the detective, Amanda, had said about things progressing in the wrong direction for these gangs. She knew she had to do something more to help, but what exactly? She couldn’t attach herself to the police force just because it suited her to do so, and she was no private detective on her own, but could she somehow use her IT skills to do good? Ideas entered her mind slowly and as each one was disregarded, she was left with just one. Could she pose for a dognapping victim herself with the aid of the police, and a GPS-chipped dog? Would that work? As she thought more about it, she realised neither she nor the police knew anything about where this gang hung out or what they were looking for so that probably wouldn’t work, and it was too damn risky. Then it hit her. She leapt out of bed, headed downstairs to the kitchen, grabbed her iPad, a pen and paper and put a capsule in the coffee machine. With the smell of fresh coffee in the background, she made a list of everything she knew about the four victims so far, where the dogs were taken from and what each dog’s breed was. Anything she could think of went down on the paper. Then she looked at what she had. While there was no common denominator in the breed, they were all small dogs. The majority were taken from the park without their owners seeing anything, and they all got a phone call within 48 hours, though Lorna’s was within 24. Ransom demands were between £500 and £4000, that being the most and that being Lorna’s. So what was so different there then, why the larger amount? She looked at the addresses of the other victims and Lorna’s stood out for one reason – The Heath. It was an expensive area. If the gang knew this, they must have known where she lived. Pam’s Gemma was taken from her home, a small house on a regular street, and as she was the oldest victim, that must have been the reason for the smallest ransom. The answer was obvious. The gang knew things about their targets beforehand; it wasn’t just a random snatch. She opened The Daisy Chain on her iPad and checked for replies to her post on missing dogs. Three more people had come forward and so she messaged them back to get the details to add to her list. The puzzle was coming together but within a few minutes there was a private message from someone else.

  “Holy shit,” she said out loud, and her heart sank a little as she read the message. A ransom drop had been made last night but the little dog had not been given back, even though the owners had done everything the caller had asked. They feared they might now never see their dog Jack again. This changed everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lionel clicked the little red ‘x’ and closed the web page down. He sat thoughtfully at the kitchen table, chewing the little piece of skin that always seemed to stick out by the nail on his middle finger of his left hand, then glanced at the surrounding area of the offending piece of skin. It was the colour of the inside of a ruby grapefruit. He picked his mug up and swigged back the remains of his second coffee of the day and wondered about what he’d just read. He was putting two and two together. He’d heard of gangs like this before but had never had any dealings with them himself. It wasn’t his scene, he’d never agreed with them.

  Thinking back to the posts he’d just read, he knew all too well that a ransom gang was in town and it wouldn’t be long before either a copycat group set up and took things to the next level, or they were approached by someone to do the job themselves – for an extra fee. And gangs liked extra fees. And he thought he knew just who the person doing the approaching might be. MacAlister – his boss.

  Lionel knew his boss wasn’t the most scrupulous of businessmen but he had never actually seen him do anything wrong, but then he wouldn’t be likely to. MacAlister was smart, and rough, the type of guy you didn’t ever question. As long as Lionel did his job and kept his nose out, they both got along just fine. So that’s what he did, but that didn’t stop his mind whirring round. He knew that MacAlister had been involved in illegal gambling before, it was good money, but he’d managed to keep himself out of bother. Lionel had long since suspected MacAlister had a friend on the inside that owed him, and that someone kept a blind eye turned as repayment for his debt. Or for a bung. A policeman’s wage was okay but nothing special and there was always someone in need of the extra cash, you just had to find out who it was. And why. Then you had them.

  Lionel closed the computer down, grabbed his car keys and left the house. He headed for the bookies in the village where he worked, the dognapping business very much on his mind. He’d have a look and do some research when it got quieter later in the morning. For some reason, a word had jumped into his head, something floating in his sub conscious – Chatham. Maybe a punter had mentioned something to do with dogs there recently? He couldn’t be sure but he’d double-check the significance of it when he got a minute. It was just a town in Kent, wasn’t it? No harm in looking. But for now, he had a bookies to run, and as he pulled into the small car park at the back of the shop, there was already a car parked there. He instantly recognised the striking high-end Range Rover, wrapped in a menacing-looking matt black paint job and complete with tinted windows – it belonged to Mac MacAlister. If a vehicle could look like its owner, this one certainly did.

  “What the hell does he want?” Only one way to find out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Morning Mac,” Lionel said as he entered the office through the old back door. He was always civil even if he didn’t really like or trust the man – he wanted to stay in the job, so he sucked it up.

  “Morning Lionel. Just dropped by to grab some cash, I’d hoped you hadn’t banked it yet.”

  “No, you’ve beat me to it.” Lionel watched as MacAlister counted out a bunch of £20 notes into several piles on the cheap old Formica table, a hundred in each he guessed, and there were already 10 piles lined up in front of him.

  “Looks like someone’s about to spend up large today, going some place nice with the missus?”

  MacAlister carried on counting and Lionel wished he hadn’t said anything. The only sound was the slight scrapping of the crinkled paper on paper. It seemed an age before he said anything. In a low concentrated voice he said, “Got a little something going on tonight out at Chatham, need to get the dough there before then, don’t need to be seen with it.”

  There was that word again, the one that had popped into his head earlier – Chatham. Lionel knew it would be something shady, it always was, and he kept his own head down and his own nose clean and well out of Mac’s business. He could do what he wanted; Lionel was only interested in his wage at the end o
f the week and a curry every now and then.

  “Well, good luck with it then, I’ll put a note in the banking so you know when it gets tallied up later. In case you forget like.” MacAlister raised his head from gathering the cash up and glared at Lionel, who withered visibly under his gaze.

  “Don’t bother,” was all he said before he pocketed the cash and headed for the back door. So Lionel didn’t. But that didn’t stop him not liking it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  With his drone all set Jim headed out, with Duke, his Alsatian, close by his side.

  “Where do you fancy this morning, the fields or the woods?” Jim glanced down at his best friend as he chatted and Duke didn’t disappoint with the answer. A single bark, it could have been either destination or something unrelated, so Jim made his own mind up, smiling at the stupidity of asking his dog and guessing the answer. But he knew he wasn’t the only one who did it. All pet-lovers do it, whether the owner is talking to a terrapin or a tarantula.

  He clipped the dog’s leash on and they set off down the quiet country road, headed for the woods, which meant crossing several fields he had no right to be in. Although there were plenty of notices posted about stating ‘Private Property’ on fences and gate posts, he chose to ignore them. He wasn’t doing any harm, just walking his dog.

  They’d been walking for about 10 minutes when Jim decided to stop and set his drone up for flight. He loved technology, and his latest drone fascinated him with its capabilities. It could even live stream to Facebook if he wanted it to, though because he didn’t exactly keep to aviation rules, he didn’t think he’d ever do it. Anyway, it recorded its view to a card internally if you activated it, so there could be a record should he need it. No point advertising to the world he was breaking rules, and being in places he really shouldn’t be.

  The familiar whir as the four propellers started was like music to his ears. He made his control selections before allowing the clever eye-in-the-sky to fly off. He could see from the screen in his hands exactly what the drone could see, and it fascinated him how the same place that he was standing could look so different from just a few feet up. He took it higher and at 50 feet he could see himself in the field at the control pad, Duke by his side.

  “Come on Duke, let’s see what we can see today.” They both set off towards the woods in the near distance, the drone’s sensors more than capable of steering itself clear of any obstacles such as power poles and trees. From his screen, he could see way ahead of himself. The drone was now totally out of his sight, probably about half a mile away, and looking so small in the sky, most people would never even know it was there.

  The long grass up past his knees was making it quite slow going, though Duke was happy nipping backwards and forwards to his master as they both ventured towards the thick woodland. Watching the view on his screen, he was in awe of the view, the thick canopy of the woods above his head but below the clever eye, the mass of thick dark green blowing gently in the wind. Birds were leaving high-up branches in a hurry as the whirring machine passed nearby, and then he spotted a clearing. He stopped still for a moment while he navigated the drone back a little and had a look around the small open space that was somewhere up ahead of him. He could see the woodland floor, a few half-rotten tree stumps where trees were had been removed or had fallen over, and what looked like a small decrepit wooden shed. Still without moving, he brought the camera in closer and circled inside the clearing, There wasn’t too much else to see but he made a note of the coordinates anyway. Some people collected train numbers, some people collected GPS coordinates of things that piqued their interest. Jim was the latter and had never understood the former. While he considered himself a nerd, he was a techie nerd not an anorak train-spotter nerd.

  He could hear Duke barking somewhere further on in the trees and called him back.

  “Duke!” he shouted. The last thing he wanted while he was trespassing was for his dog to give him away, so he tried calling him again with a little more urgency in his voice. But Duke was ignoring him.

  “Damn it Duke! Keep it down would you,” he shouted, and started off in the direction the barking was coming from, gathering speed as the long grass and undergrowth allowed.

  “Duke! Here boy, come!” Still the dog ignored his command but Jim was getting closer, the dog’s bark was getting louder.

  “Duke! Come here. Duke!” He pushed his way through the low branches and prickly bushes, having left the drone to circle above nearby while he made his way to get his dog. He could just see him in the distance.

  “Duke! Shush will you and come here! Duke!” The dog was not happy at something, and Jim he approached him, he could see the hairs standing up on the back of his neck, a low growl interspersing his barks, his tail showing he was upset. Jim made his way over, talking calmly now to his dog, aware something was worryingly wrong – he never acted like this usually. Duke turned and saw him but carried on barking, trying to tell Jim what was bothering him. As Jim scanned the nearby surroundings, he finally saw what Duke was so upset by. Realisation dawned at what he was looking at, and as Duke finally quieted down in his presence, Jim couldn’t stop himself. He bent over and heaved his breakfast up in three violent spasms.

  “The sick bastards.”

  When he finally recovered, he took note of the GPS coordinates of his location and got the hell out of there, taking Duke with him as quickly as he could.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Look Pete, I know what I was looking at, I just don’t know what I can do about it. Not only do I have a police record, I was trespassing and using a drone illegally, but I can’t sit back and do nothing. They’re real sick bastards but I don’t know how I can fix this without landing myself in it.”

  Pete thought for a moment before replying to his friend’s message.

  “I’m guessing an anonymous tip-off wouldn’t work?”

  “No, I think we need to get more evidence first. What I saw could have come from anywhere, though I assume it was local. I’m going to ask around a little, see if I can find out more, then drop them in it maybe.”

  “Look Jim, I wouldn’t do that, that sounds dicey, too risky. Did you record it while you were there?”

  “I got the coordinates so I know exactly where it is but I didn’t record it, no. But I see what you’re getting at.”

  Pete confirmed the idea. “Send the drone back in to record it, but keep well back, and then send me the file. I’ll find someone this end who can help, I’ll keep it anonymous. We’ve both got records to think about but we can’t leave this.”

  Pete could almost feel Jim relax a little at his end. Even in juvie, Jim had always been the anxious one, not the villain he tried to portray, a bit like Pete in that respect. Somewhere, life had knocked the points handle of his tracks and his engine and carriages had gone hurtling in the wrong direction, not unlike Pete’s, destination ‘trouble.’ They’d kept in touch when they’d come out of juvie, and while they didn’t see each other in person much, they talked in various chat rooms and via Messenger. They both found socialising way much easier that way.

  “Thanks Pete, I knew you’d figure it out, always was the brighter one. I’ll get it done tomorrow and let you have it. I’ll send you the link, stick the file in the cloud.”

  “Great, now don’t say a word, let the drone do the work tomorrow, and for god’s sake, stay out of sight.”

  “Got that.”

  They signed off and Pete sat looking at his screen. His chess game had turned to shit so he made his last move that pretty much finished the game anyway, the other guy the winner. His mind hadn’t been on it when Jim told him what he’d seen and he was starting to put two and two together and come up with four. He knew that Niles was up to something, ever since he’d overheard the conversation in the pub with the tattooed man, though he’d never let on he had heard. Add that to the fact that that last ransom drop hadn’t gone as normal either. They’d got the money okay but Vic hadn’t hande
d the dog back, saying she thought someone was loitering in the park, maybe a plain-clothed policeman, and she hadn’t wanted to risk it.

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” she’d explained to him, so the dog was still in the basement. When he’d asked Niles how they were going to get it back to the owner, he’d simply laughed in his face, cigarette smoke swirling from the ever-present paper roll in the corner of his mouth. For some reason, Vic and Niles had chosen not to include him in their plan. That meant they didn’t trust him but he could hardly call them out on it otherwise they’d know he knew. He didn’t like the feel of how things were heading and now he suspected they were in something deeper with this other man. He thought he knew the answer, but needed confirmation, and a plan. Pete switched off his computer and sat back in his cheap mock leather chair to think – he needed to put this right. And soon.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Shut the hell up, would you!” The man turned round and shouted behind the driver’s seat in the van. “I can’t do with that noise all the damn way!”

  In the back of his small van were four small rusty metal cages, each holding a dog, each one barking its lungs out. The sound was deafening in the small space of the old van and the driver couldn’t normally care less, but today he had a banging headache and the dogs were only adding to his pain.

  He turned off the narrow road, bumping along an unsealed single track lane that led to his final destination, the old van bouncing from side to side as it went. No one would ever stumble across the place where he was headed, which was one of the reasons it had been picked, yet if you knew where to look, it wasn’t that hard to find. And for what they used the property for, they needed certain people to be able find it or else it didn’t make any money. But not the cops.