He braked behind it, cursing.
There was a blast of horn behind him. In his mirror he saw a Range Rover. He raised a finger, drove on a few yards, then turned into the first empty space he saw, switched off the engine and jumped out of the car. He sprinted towards the exit, up the steps two at a time, and out into the large open square with a Japanese restaurant in the middle, the Thistle Hotel on one side and rows of shops on the two other sides.
But there was no sign of the man with the rolling gait and the spiky hair.
There were three other exits he could have left by. Grace ran round, covering each of them. But the man had vanished.
Grace cursed, thinking hard, standing by the first exit, nearest the Golf and his car. He doubted the man had seen him tailing him. But how long it would be before he returned to the car was anyone’s guess. It could be five minutes, or five hours.
Then he had an idea.
He dialled his former base, Brighton Central, and asked to be put through to an old mate, Mike Hopkirk, a Brighton Divisional Inspector. To his relief, Hopkirk was in and not on a call.
Hopkirk was a wise owl with many years of service behind him; he commanded a lot of respect in the force and was well liked. Grace had made his choice of who to call for this task very carefully. To get everything galvanized at the speed he needed, if Hopkirk agreed, he was the man.
‘Roy! How are you? Keep seeing your name in the press! Glad to see your move to Sussex House hasn’t blunted your appetite for pissing people off!’
‘Very witty. Listen, I’ll chat later. I need a big favour, and I need it right now. We’re talking about two people’s lives – we’ve reason to believe they’ve been abducted and their lives are in imminent peril.’
‘Tom and Kellie Bryce?’ Hopkirk said, surprising Grace.
‘How the hell do you know that?’ He was forgetting, just how razor sharp Hopkirk was.
The roar of a passing lorry drowned out Hopkirk’s reply. Covering one ear and jamming the phone hard up against the other, Grace shouted, ‘Sorry? Can you repeat that?’
‘They’re on the bloody front page of the Argus!’
The PRO had managed to pull it off. Brilliant. ‘OK, Mike, here’s what I want. I need you to close down Civic Square car park for an hour – to give me enough time to search a car in here.’
He heard what sounded like a lot of air going backwards very quickly. ‘Close it down?’
‘I need an hour.’
‘The biggest car park in Brighton, in the middle of the day. Close it down – are you out of your mind?’
‘No, I need you to do this, now, right this minute.’
‘On what grounds, Roy?’
‘A bomb scare. You’ve had a call from a terrorist cell.’
‘Shit. You are serious, aren’t you?’
‘Come on, it’s a quiet Monday morning. Wake up your troops!’
‘And if this goes pear-shaped?’
‘I’ll take the rap.’
‘Won’t be you, Roy, it’ll be me, and you know that.’
‘But you’ll do it?’
‘Civic Square?’
‘Civic Square.’
‘OK,’ he said, sounding dubious but resigned. ‘Get off my bloody phone; I need it!’
Grace needed his, too. He called Sussex House to arrange for a SOCO team to get down here immediately, and for the officer to be accompanied by someone from Traffic who was capable of getting past the locks and security system of a VW Golf.
Next he phoned a Detective Inspector called Bill Ankram, who was responsible for the deployment of the local surveillance team. In a rare stroke of luck, Ankram had good news for him.
‘We were down to follow someone in central Brighton today and the job’s gone short – we’ve had a no-show. I was about to pull the team out and have a training afternoon instead.’
‘How quickly could you get them covering the Civic Square car park?’ Grace asked.
‘Within an hour. We’re not far away already.’
Grace made the detailed arrangements, gave him the vehicle registration and exact position of the Golf. Then he phoned the Incident Room and had them fax and email the photograph of the Volkswagen’s driver to Ankram.
Next he spoke to Nicholl and told him he would have to see the officer from the Met on his own, after all. As he was speaking to him, there was a deafening explosion of wailing.
It sounded as if all the emergency vehicles in the entire City of Brighton and Hove had switched on their sirens simultaneously.
78
Kellie was scaring Tom. It was like being locked in the darkness with a total stranger. A completely unpredictable one. There were long periods of silence, then suddenly she would screech hysterical abuse at him. She was starting again now, her voice cracked and strained from so much screaming.
‘You stupid bastard! You idiot man! You got us into this! If you had left the bloody CD thing on the train this would never have happened! THEY’RE NEVER GOING TO LET US GO. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, YOU STUPID FUCKING FAILURE OF A MAN???’
Then she burst into a fit of sobs.
Tom felt all scrunched up inside. The sound of her crying was terrible, so harrowing. But there was nothing he could say that she seemed to take on board. He had been talking to her continuously since the fat man had left the room. Trying to calm her down, trying to boost her, to keep up their spirits.
Trying to do anything to distract himself from the searing agony in his bladder. From his raging thirst. And the pangs of hunger. And his fear.
He wondered if it was the vodka that was talking, making Kellie behave like this. Or the lack of it? Had she been on the edge, the way she had been for a few months after Jessica had been born, and this had pushed her over the cliff?
All that stuff with eBay – had that been some kind of a warning, or a cry for help that he had missed?
‘YOU STUPID FUCKING FAILURE!’ she screeched again.
Tom winced. Failure. Was that how she saw him? She was right. He’d failed in business; now he’d failed in the most important thing of all, protecting his family.
He clenched his eyes shut for a few moments and prayed to the God he hadn’t spoken a word to in twenty-five years. Then he opened them again, but it made no difference; it was still totally black in here.
His legs were cramping from being bound together. He rolled over, but only did one complete loop before the chain around his ankle snagged tight and he cried out in pain as the manacle, or clamp, or whatever it was, cut into his leg.
Think, he said to himself. Think!
The wall and the floor immediately around him were smooth; he needed something jagged he could rub against to saw through the cords. But there was nothing, damned, damned, damned nothing.
‘YOU HEAR ME, YOU STUPID FUCKING FAILURE!’
Tears welled in his eyes. Oh, my darling Kellie, I love you so much. Don’t do this to me.
What did the fat creep want? Who the hell was he? How did you get through to someone like that? But deep down he knew who the man was, and why they were here.
Suddenly his fear deepened even further as his thoughts crystallized. He had dropped the kids off with Kellie’s parents some while back, during the night; her mum was feisty enough, but her bedridden father was totally helpless, poor man. Was the fat man planning to seize the kids too? What if he or his thugs came when Kellie’s mother was out?
In desperation Tom rolled over; the chain jerked tight. He pulled, ignoring the pain. Holding his breath, he pulled again, again, again.
But nothing gave.
He lay still for a while. Then he had an idea.
At that moment, some way in the distance, he saw the rectangle of light appear again: the door. Two figures came through, each with a torch. His pulse quickened; he felt a tightness in his throat. He tensed up, ready to fight, any way, any which way he could.
One figure was walking towards Kellie, the other towards himself. Kellie was silent. The next instant
the beam, like quicksilver in his eyes, dazzled him. Then it swung away and lit a paper cup of water and a bread roll lying on the floor.
‘Eat for you,’ said a voice in broken English, a hard voice which sounded eastern European to his untrained ear.
‘I need to urinate,’ Tom said.
‘Go on, piss in your pants like everyone else around here!’ Kellie shouted out.
‘You do no urinate!’ the man replied.
‘I have to go,’ Tom implored. ‘Please take me to the bathroom.’
The man was tall, lean, late twenties, dressed sharply in black, stern-faced with a short modern haircut. Tom could make out his features now. But, more importantly, he could see beyond him.
The nearest row of chemical drums.
‘Eat,’ the man said again, then walked away, joined by his companion. A few seconds later they had gone; the rectangle of light went out. Tom and Kellie were back in total darkness.
‘Darling?’ Tom said.
Silence.
‘Darling, please listen to me.’
‘Why didn’t they bring me anything to drink?’ she said.
‘They brought water.’
‘That is not what I fucking meant.’
How long had she been drinking? Tom wondered. How long he had not noticed?
‘How am I supposed to drink with my arms tied to my side? Want to tell me that, Mr Smart Husband?’
Tom moved his head slowly towards where the water and the roll had been placed. His nose touched the side of the cup, and he cursed silently at the indignity of what he was being put through. Moving his lips gingerly over the rim, desperate not to spill any precious drop, he finally gripped the rim with his teeth, tilted the cup up, and drained it greedily.
Then, like some kind of blind nocturnal animal, he felt with his nose until he found the roll. He had no appetite, but forced himself to take a bite. He struggled to chew and swallow. Then he took one more bite, swallowed and spat the rest out.
‘I think we should go home now,’ Kellie announced. ‘Do you think they’ll give us goody bags?’
And for the first time in the last couple of days, Tom smiled.
Maybe she was calming down. ‘I don’t think much of their hospitality so far,’ he said, trying to crack a joke back. But his words fell away into black silence.
The water and the food were already making him feel a little better, giving him some strength. He decided to make his move.
Half rolling, half squirming, he eased his way slowly, painfully, across the floor, over to the left, in the direction he had memorized from the spill of the torch beam a few minutes ago.
Towards the line of chemical drums.
Then he panicked as the chain jerked tight on his ankle. Please, just a little more, just give a little more. He pulled hard, but the clamp bit in even harder, making him cry out in pain.
‘Tom, are you OK? Darling?’
Thank God, she was calm now. ‘Yes,’ he hissed, suddenly concerned anyone might be listening in. ‘I’m fine.’
Then his face touched something. Please don’t let it be the wall. It felt plastic, cold, round. It was a drum!
He tried to push his way up it. The drum wobbled. He slid down. Rolling onto his stomach, his legs tangled behind him, his ankle agony, he jerked himself up, then up again. Finally, taking a massive breath and exhaling and pushing himself at the same time with all he had, he succeeded. He got his chin over the rim.
And it felt beautifully, raggedly, sharp.
Slowly, inching back, keeping his chin clamped over it, he levered it back; it was heavy, much heavier than he had imagined, too heavy for him. Suddenly it toppled and fell to the floor with a loud, echoing boom.
‘Tom?’ Kellie cried out.
‘It’s OK.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
Working as fast as he could, he moved up to the rim, felt in the darkness where the cord strapping his arms to his sides was, and began to rub that against the rough edge.
After some minutes – almost as surprised that it had actually worked as relieved – he was able to move his arms away from his body. Just one tiny step, he knew, but he felt as if he had just climbed Everest. Relief surged through him. He could do this!
Now he swung his hands, still tied tightly together, through the darkness, feeling for the rim. He found it and began to rub the cord between his wrists furiously against the edge. Slowly, steadily, he could feel the strands giving and the binding loosening. And suddenly his hands were free. He shook off the last bit of slack cord from his wrist, pushed himself upright, stretching his arms and flexing his hands, trying to get the blood circulating in them once more.
‘Are we going to die here, Tom?’ Kelly whimpered.
‘No, we are not.’
‘Mum and Dad couldn’t bring the children up. We’ve never thought about that, have we?’
‘We’re not going to die.’
‘I love you so much, Tom.’
Her voice brought him close to tears again. There was so much tenderness, warmth, caring in it. ‘I love you more than anything in the world, Kellie,’ he said, leaning forward, feeling his way along the cords that bound his legs until he came to the knot.
It was tied incredibly tightly. But he worked on it relentlessly and after a short while it started to come loose. And suddenly his legs were free! Except for his shackled ankle. The thought was ever present in his mind that if the fat man came in now, there would be hell to pay. But it was a risk he had to take.
He knelt, gripped the rim of the drum, then stood up and, lifting as hard as he could, righted it. Then he felt along the top for the cap, and found it quickly, clasping his hands around it, moving them across it, trying to work out how it opened, for the first time in his life having some understanding of what it must be like to be blind.
There was a twisted wire and a paper seal over it. He worked his fingers underneath the wire and pulled. It cut into his flesh. Digging his hand in his pocket, he pulled out his handkerchief and wound it round his fingers, then tried again.
The wire snapped.
‘Why are we here, Tom?’ she asked plaintively. ‘Who is that gross creep?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did he mean, about us “looking good dead”?’
‘He was just trying to scare us,’ Tom replied, attempting to sound convincing, struggling to make the cap move, aware that his voice sounded considerably higher than usual, a vague, flimsy plan developing in his mind.
Slowly the cap began to turn. It took five, maybe six full turns before it came away in his hand. A vile, burning acrid reek instantly filled his nostrils. He lurched back, choking, dropping the cap and hearing it roll away in the darkness.
‘TOM?’ Kellie called out, alarmed.
He continued coughing, his lungs on fire. He was trying to think back to when he had done chemistry at school, a subject he had been crap at. There had been bottles of acid in the chemistry lab. Sulphuric and hydrochloric were the ones he could immediately remember. Would this stuff, whatever it was, eat through the chain attached to his ankle?
But how could he get it out of the drum in this darkness? If the drum fell over and the stuff started pouring out, it could spread over the floor to Kellie. Or choke them.
Then his heart felt as if it had stopped. He saw the ray of light out of the corner of his eye. The rectangle in the distance. Someone was coming in.
79
Down on Level 4 of the Civic Square car park a group of police officers was clustered around the black Volkswagen Golf. Outside, officers were blocking every entrance. There was not a soul anywhere else inside the entire building.
‘I don’t want the owner to know we’ve been in,’ Grace said to the young PC from Traffic who was kneeling by the driver’s door, holding a huge set of levers on a ring in one hand and what looked like a radio transmitter in the other.
‘No worries. I’ll be able to lock it again. H
e’ll never know.’
Joe Tindall, in a white protective suit, stood beside Grace, chewing a stick of gum. He seemed in an even more grumpy mood than usual. ‘Not content with ruining my weekend, Roy?’ the senior SOCO said. ‘Making sure you screw my week up right from the word go too, eh?’
There was a loud click and the Golf’s door opened. Instantly its horn started blaring, a deafening, echoing beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
The Traffic constable popped the bonnet open and ducked under it. Within seconds, the beeping stopped. He closed the bonnet. ‘OK,’ he said to Tindall and Grace. ‘All yours.’
Grace, also in white protective suit and gloves, let Tindall go in first, and stood watching him. A quick check of his watch showed it had been twenty-five minutes since they had closed the car park. The scene outside the entrances was total chaos: police vehicles, ambulances, fire engines, dozens of stranded shoppers, business people, visitors. And the knock-on effect was that most of central Brighton’s traffic was now gridlocked.
Grace was going to have a lot of egg on his face if nothing came of this.
He watched Tindall take print dustings in the most likely places first: the interior mirror, gear stick, horn pad, interior and exterior door handles. When he was done with those, Tindall picked a hair off the driver’s headrest with tweezers and deposited it in an evidence bag. Then again using the tweezers, he removed one of several cigarette butts in the ashtray, and put that into a separate bag.
After a further five minutes he emerged from the car, looking marginally more cheerful than when he had arrived. ‘Got some good prints, Roy. I’ll get straight back and have the boys run them on NAFIS.’
NAFIS was the National Automated Fingerprint Information System.
‘I’m coming up there myself,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll be about ten minutes behind you.’
‘I’ll have a result waiting for you.’
‘I appreciate it.’
‘Actually, I don’t give a fuck whether you appreciate it or not,’ the SOCO said, staring hard at the Detective Superintendent.
Sometimes Grace found it hard to tell when Joe Tindall was being serious and when he was joking; the man had a peculiar sense of humour. He couldn’t gauge it now.