House of the Dead, page 7
Dani nodded. Tony was right; he had to see the scene, no matter how grisly it might be. She’d worked with the psychologist long enough to know he could gain insights about people from the tiniest details.
“I’ll stay on the radio and let you know what’s happening in the feeds,” Toombs said. He spun around in his seat and took a radio off a charging dock.
He gave it to Tony. “Here, take this.”
Tony took it and said, “How does it work?”
“Just press that button to talk. I’ll put it on a private channel, so our conversation doesn’t get lost in all the chatter. I’ll let you know what’s happening on the David feed.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll do the same with your radio,” Toombs said to Dani, opening a window on his computer and typing into it.
Dani looked at the timers on the website. 0:32.10. Time was slipping away.
Battle came back when there were less than five minutes left. “All units are on standby. Now we wait for him to call.”
Three minutes later, with the timers showing less than two minutes left, there was still no call from dispatch.
“Why isn’t he calling?” Battle said frustratedly.
“He’s keeping us off balance,” Tony said. “Just when we think we know what he’s going to do, he switches it up.”
The timers reached one minute.
“Come on,” Battle muttered under his breath. “Tell us where they are.”
0:48.03
The squares on the screen expanded and sat side by side. The feeds began but only showed static.
0:46.34
Dani gripped the back of Toombs’ chair, her knuckles turning white from the pressure.
0:28.02
The seconds seemed longer than usual, as if time had elongated. Dani needed to see something on the feeds, needed to know what they were dealing with.
0:11.22
Dani felt her heart hammering in her chest.
0:08.01
She wanted to make a move, needed to be in motion. Someone was in danger, and she was standing here doing nothing. But without more information, there was nothing she could do. She felt helpless.
0:00:00
The static cleared and the images in both feeds became visible.
On the left, the feed showed the interior of a warehouse. In the centre of the space sat a large Perspex tank that looked at least eight feet tall. Lying on the bottom of the tank, tangled in fishing nets, was a dark-haired man. His eyes were wide with fear, and he struggled against the thick nets that weighed his body down.
The tank was sealed. Water trickled in from a pipe connected to one wall. The water level was no more than an inch deep at the moment, but it wouldn’t be long before it covered the man tangled in the net.
The image on the other feed was of twelve-year-old David Goddard. The boy was thankfully alive and didn’t appear to be in immediate danger. He was inside what looked like a wooden shack. David was sitting on a wooden dining chair in the middle of an empty room. Although he didn’t seem to be restrained or tied to the chair he sat there quietly.
“Where the hell are they?” Battle said. “Why hasn’t he told us?”
Dani’s phone buzzed. She checked the screen and saw a number she didn’t recognise. This was not the time to be taking a call from a telemarketer or insurance salesman. She answered, ready to give the person on the other end an earful.
But as soon as she lifted the phone to her ear, a male voice said, “Hello, Detective Summers.”
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Who I am doesn’t matter right now. What matters is the man in the tank and the boy in the cabin.”
She felt a chill wrap around her spine like a thread of ice.
“Listen carefully,” the man continued. “The water tank is in unit 15, York Business Park. The boy is in a cabin in the forest near Sutton. Take the York Road out of the city and you’ll see a sign. Hurry up, Detective Summers, the clock is ticking.”
The line went dead.
“Unit 15, York Business Park,” she told the others. “David is in the forest near Sutton. North on York Road.”
Everyone moved at once, grabbing their things and leaving the office.
“Why the hell did he call you?” Battle said as they headed for the exit.
“I have no idea,” she said.
The chill she’d felt when the man had spoken to her remained as she and Battle crossed the car park to his Range Rover.
Why had he rung her? And why had he killed her old partner? It was all starting to feel personal.
She couldn’t think about that now. They had lives to save.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
They sped across the outskirts of the city to the York Business Park. Battle’s Range Rover headed the convoy of police and emergency vehicles, followed closely by patrol cars, unmarked detective vehicles, a SOCO van, and an ambulance.
Dani was on her radio, speaking to Toombs.
“The water is still trickling slowly into the tank,” the IT technician said. “You should get there in plenty of time.”
“What about David?” She knew she should be focussing on the man in the tank but couldn’t help asking about the boy.
“No change there. He’s still sitting in the middle of the room. Shouldn’t be too long until Tony and the others get there. Don’t worry.”
She knew Toombs meant well but she couldn’t help worrying. So far, they hadn’t managed to save anyone in the live feeds. The man who had set all of this up—the man who’d called her and given her the locations—was always a step ahead.
They reached the business park and found unit 15, a large warehouse surrounded by skips and piles of rubbish. The doors were two large steel sliding doors that were currently shut.
Battle and Dani got out of the Range Rover. He went to the doors. She spied a high window and scrambled onto a skip to reach it.
The glass was grimy, but she could see the tank in there. She couldn’t see if the sliding doors were rigged in any way, though.
She jumped down and joined Battle. “I can’t see if there are any wires, guv.”
The DCI sighed. “Stand back. I’m going in.”
She took a couple of steps back, as ordered, but no more than that. She was going in with him.
Battle grasped the door handle and tried to slide one of the doors. It slid easily, on metal runners. The DCI poked his head inside. “Looks clear.”
He pulled on the door again and slid it open, revealing the interior of the warehouse.
The light spilling in through the doorway, as well as a couple of spotlights that had been mounted on the walls, illuminated the Perspex tank.
The man inside saw them through the Perspex and began to struggle harder against the heavy net that weighed him down.
The other vehicles were arriving now, skidding on the cement as they came to a stop outside the warehouse.
Battle and Dani were inside, rushing to the tank.
“How are we going to get inside, guv?” Dani said.
Battle was running back to the doorway. “We need cutting equipment! Where’s that fire engine? We need the jaws of life,” he shouted at the people outside.
He came back inside and marched over to something that stood by the doorway. Dani realised it was a camera on a tripod. This was where the live feed was coming from.
Battle picked up the tripod by the legs and swung the camera into the concrete floor. The device shattered. Battle threw the broken remains into the corner.
“No need for an audience,” he said as he walked back to the tank.
Dani’s radio crackled and Toombs’ voice said, “The feed’s gone dead.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dani told him. “We’ve disabled the camera. Concentrate on David.”
She heard a rushing sound in the pipes above their head. “What’s that?”
“Sounds like water,” the DCI said.
The trickle of water that had been running down the inside wall of the tank suddenly became a torrent. It gushed over the man and the nets.
“We need that equipment now!” Battle shouted towards the doorway. His eyes scanned the pipework on the ceiling frantically. “How do we turn it off?”
Dani searched the pipework for a valve or a cut-off switch. Anything that would halt the flow of water.
It was rising over the struggling man’s face now. His eyes were wide with terror. He shouted and screamed but the Perspex was so thick and the rushing of the water so loud that his voice was lost.
A uniformed officer ran in with an axe. He swung it at the tank. The axe blade embedded itself in the thick Perspex but didn’t break through. The officer pried it loose and swung it again with the same result.
The man inside was underwater now, thrashing desperately against the nets.
Dani ran outside, desperate to find a tool that would get them into the tank. A fire engine was arriving, coming to a stop behind the ambulance. She ran over to it and shouted, “We need the jaws of life. Now!”
A fireman jumped down and grabbed the hydraulic cutters. He sprinted after Dani into the warehouse.
When she got inside, Dani’s heart fell. Battle and the uniformed officer were standing by the tank with grim expressions on their faces.
The tank was full of water.
The man lying at the bottom, beneath the nets, was no longer struggling. His dead eyes stared out through the Perspex.
“It’s too late,” Battle said.
“No, it can’t be.” Dani couldn’t accept that they’d been beaten again. That another person had died.
“Cut through the tank,” she told the fireman. “We need to get him out of there.”
He nodded and walked over to the tank. He examined the smooth surface, considering where to place the first cut.
“Wait a minute,” said a voice from behind them.
Dani turned to see Ian Radcliffe standing inside the doorway.
“There’s a lever on the wall there,” he said, pointing. “Looks like it’s connected to the tank.”
Dani followed his gaze to a lever on the wall. Insulated cables ran from the lever to the rear of the tank. She hadn’t taken any notice of them before because her attention had been concentrated on the tank and the pipes.
Radcliffe stepped up to the lever and examined it. He followed the cables to the back of the tank and nodded. “There are small incendiary devices on the tank back here.” He returned to the lever and said, “Stand back.”
Everyone stepped away from the tank.
Radcliffe pulled the lever, and a series of small pops filled the air. Then the rear wall of the tank fell away and clattered to the cement. Water gushed out over the warehouse floor.
“Get the paramedics in here!” Battle shouted.
Two paramedics—a man and a woman—rushed in and entered the tank through the missing rear section. They bent down to examine the man in the fishing nets, checking for vital signs.
The woman looked up at Battle and shook her head slowly.
The DCI turned away and left the building, his head low.
Dani looked at Radcliffe. “How did you know that lever was there?”
“I saw it when I came in.”
“Did you? I didn’t. The guv’nor didn’t.”
“What are you saying?”
She wasn’t sure exactly what she was saying. She just found it odd that Radcliffe noticed a lever straight away that she and the DCI had missed because they’d been focussed on the man in the tank.
Anyone entering the warehouse would have their attention drawn to the Perspex tank and its occupant, not anything else.
Unless they were specifically looking for something else.
Even as the thought entered her head, she wasn’t sure what it signified. That Radcliffe knew the lever was there before he entered the warehouse? That wasn’t possible, unless he’d already known about the warehouse and the tank.
“I’m not saying anything,” she said. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated because if we’d known about the lever earlier, we could have saved that man’s life.”
She turned away—making a mental note to look into Ian Radcliffe and find out if he was connected to this case in more ways than he was letting on—and walked out of the warehouse.
The Counter Terrorism officer stood alone by the tank as the fireman and uniformed officer cut through the nets that weighed the dead man down.
When she got outside, she pushed through the crowd of detectives, uniforms, and firemen to find Battle sitting in his Range Rover.
She climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door.
“Are you all right, guv?”
“No, I’m not bloody all right. This bastard has got us running round like blue-arsed flies and all we’ve got to show for it is more dead people. He’s ten moves ahead of us.”
“He’ll make a mistake eventually,” she said, attempting to reassure him. “They usually do.”
“Not this fellow. He’s planned everything so meticulously. He even felt confident enough to put a lever that blew the tank open right there in plain sight because he knew we’d miss it.”
“We can’t blame ourselves for that, guv. We were focussed on trying to save someone’s life.”
“And the means to do so was on the wall next to us.”
“We couldn’t have known that.”
He sighed and shook his head. “He’s playing us for fools.”
He picked up his radio and said, “Toombs, what’s happening with the boy?”
“Nothing yet,” Toombs said. “He’s still sitting there. Tony’s team are still on their way.”
Battle put the radio on the dashboard and turned to face Dani. “They’d better save him. If anything good is to come out of this day, then they’d better save David Goddard.”
Tony sat in the passenger seat of DS Lorna Morgan’s Saab as it sped north out of the city towards Sutton. Matt Flowers sat in the backseat. The atmosphere in the car was tense and quiet. Everyone knew that a child’s life depended on them.
“Anything to report, Chris?” Tony said into the radio. The silence in the car was putting him on edge.
“Nothing yet,” Toombs replied. “He’s still just sitting there.”
At least he’s alive, Tony thought.
“How do we know where the cabin is?” Lorna said.
“He said we’ll see a sign.”
“What? An actual road sign?”
“I have no idea.”
Tony looked in the wing mirror and saw the three police cars following them. They didn’t have their lights or sirens on, but they were sure to be noticed by someone. And then the media would be on their way, looking for a story.
He hoped this story would have a happy ending.
“I just got a text from one of my mates in the support team,” Matt said from the backseat. “They couldn’t save the bloke in the tank. The water started gushing in as soon as the DCI and Dani arrived. Battle went crazy. Smashed up the camera.”
Tony and Lorna didn’t reply. Tony knew they were both thinking the same thing: We’re not going to be able to save David, either. The game is rigged to make sure we lose.
“Sign ahead,” Lorna said.
Tony saw it at the same time she did. A wooden, square sign posted at the side of the road. Painted on it in black, capital letters were the words, Boy in cabin. Next right.
“We’ll need to canvass motorists along this stretch of road,” Matt said. “Someone might have seen him putting that up.”
It was worth a try, but Tony doubted it would yield any results. “He’s much too clever to be spotted while setting up the game.”
“Is that what you think this is, Doc? A game?”
“To him it is. We’re just playing pieces that he’s moving around a board. He tells us where to go and we go.”
“There are people in danger,” Matt said. “We don’t have a choice.”
“No, we don’t. He’s manipulating us every step of the way.”
“Next right coming up,” Lorna said.
Up ahead, a right turn was marked with a white arrow. Below the arrow, on an oblong piece of wood, were the words, Tick Tock.
Tony balled his hand into a fist and slowly released the pressure in an attempt to stay calm. They were being led into a trap, there was no doubt about that. The only question that remained was who would live and who would die today.
He balled his hand into another fist.
The road—which was nothing more than a wide track that was probably used by forestry vehicles—cut through the trees. Tall pines towered over the cars as the police convoy proceeded deeper into the forest.
“Isn’t there supposed to be an ambulance with us?” Tony asked, checking the wing mirror again and seeing only police cars. He felt suddenly distressed that there was no ambulance close by.
“It’s delayed,” Matt said. “Someone back there is in contact with them, letting them know where we are.”
“Right.” Tony wasn’t reassured by that at all. His fear that today was going to end in tragedy had heightened since they’d entered the forest. It gnawed at his stomach and made him feel sick.
The Saab rumbled over the uneven track. It was dark in the forest, beneath the canopy of foliage, and Tony felt suddenly cold. He knew that was more to do with the creeping fear he felt than the absence of sunlight in this place.
They drove along the track for fifteen minutes before it ended in a circular area of compacted dirt. There was another sign here. This one depicted a large smiley face, painted black on a white background. Beneath the face were the words, David is found.
“Same as the title on the video feed,” Lorna said. “But where’s the cabin?”
Tony keyed the radio. “Chris, we’re here. What’s happening?”
“Nothing new,” the technician’s voice said. “Wait a minute. Another window is opening up. I can see you. There’s a camera somewhere in front of you. I can see a Saab and three police cars.”
“What about David?”
“Still the same.”
“What do we do?” Matt said. “There’s nothing here.”
