Black Daffodil (Trevor Joseph Detective series) (16 page)

A man she’d barely noticed, other than that he was young and nondescript, had stopped her. He’d asked her to help him lift a sick child from the back of his car. She had squeezed in front of the door, looked inside and seen a mound of blankets, but no child. The next thing she knew – and felt – was a hand clamping over her mouth.

A knife waved before her eyes. A massive bladed hunting knife. Her lips were taped shut. She had been forced face down onto the floor of the car and jammed in the well in front of the back seats. Her ankles and wrists were fastened …

She tried to move … if only she could breathe properly and stretch her cramped legs and arms. Her head ached so much … her mouth hurt … She thought of Peter again. Pictured his face as she relived the conversation they’d had in the restaurant just before he’d left to go undercover.

‘I won’t be able to see you for a while.’

She recalled the effort it had cost her to sound light and carefree.

‘No ties, no commitment, that’s what we agreed from the outset.’

Unlike her, he hadn’t bothered to keep the irritation from his voice.

‘Aren’t you going to ask why?’

‘That’s your business, not mine.’

‘It’s work.’

‘Fine.’

‘It shouldn’t be bloody fine, Daisy.’

‘It is and keep your voice down.’

‘Don’t you care?’

‘I’m busy – you’re busy – we knew that when we started spending time together.’

‘Time together. Bloody hell, Daisy, is that all we’re doing “spending time together”.’

Now when she was trussed up in the back of a car by a maniac and being taken to God only knew where, possibly to be killed, it was so obvious. Peter’s proposal shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He loved her. Loved her to distraction. But, being the man he was; obsessed by his tough, steely-eyed, hard-nosed image, he was too afraid of rejection to tell her how he felt. And she had been too afraid of it ending between them to see that he found it difficult to voice his feelings.

She promised herself that if she got out of this alive, she would never – never be afraid to tell him – or anyone else – that she loved them ever again.

If?

Was he going to kill her? She began to shake uncontrollably. Not at the thought of death – because, whatever else – one thing that she was certain of was that pain did not exist after death. But at the thought of dying without ever seeing Peter again. Or being able to tell him exactly how much she cared for him.

Chapter Sixteen

Trevor had never attempted to analyse the relationship that existed between him and Peter. The fact that, under pressure, they thought alike had saved both their lives on several occasions. Before he had even pressed the button on his cell phone to end the call from Dan, Peter eyed him quizzically.

‘What?’

‘Tell you in a minute.’ Trevor knew he was acting like a coward but he needed a moment to work out the best way to pass on the news. He walked over to where Kelly was lying on the floor and realised why the dead girl had looked familiar. She was an older, more haggard version of the photograph of Kelly that he had seen in the brochure.

‘Chris called Sarah,’ Peter said. ‘She’s coming over as soon as the locals are down there.’

Trevor didn’t need Peter to elaborate. Given that the brutes who’d thrown the defenceless girl out of the window were still free and somewhere in the vicinity, Sarah needed someone to cover her back. ‘The girl that was thrown looked like Kelly.’

Kelly’s eyes flickered at the mention of her name. ‘Marissa …?’ she mumbled. She opened her eyes wider. Disorientated, she tried – and failed – to focus on the medic who was standing over her.

Peter kneeled on the floor beside her. ‘Was Marissa with you here, in this room, Kelly?’

She opened her eyes wider and looked around. ‘Gran’s flat?’

‘Was Marissa here, with you?’ Peter repeated patiently.

Kelly saw the open window and screamed, ‘Marissa!’

‘Kelly, who is Marissa?’ Trevor asked.

‘Marissa!’ Kelly’s cry was agonising. A bestial, animal cry that shook even Peter’s equanimity.

‘She was fighting them. I tried to help …’

‘We know, love,’ Peter assured her. ‘Is Marissa your friend?’

‘My sister. Where is she? Tell me? Where is she …’ Kelly reached out and knotted her skeletal fingers into Peter’s shirt.

The paramedic opened his bag. ‘I need to put in a line.’

Kelly saw the syringe and panicked. ‘No! No needles!’ Her voice grew shrill. ‘I’m not a junkie …’

‘I know you’re not, love, but we need to get a line into you,’ the paramedic tried to reassure her. ‘You need fluid and you may need medication later …’

‘No needles! No needles!’ she shrieked.

The paramedic set the syringe aside. ‘All right, no needles –’ he eyed Peter. ‘For the moment,’ he added.

‘You have to calm down, love.’ Peter gripped Kelly’s hand.

‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ she begged.

‘You’ve been hurt, Kelly. You need help. Medical help. You’ll have to go into hospital,’ Peter warned.

‘No! I saw them. They saw me. They know who I am. They’ll find me.’

‘Who saw you?’ Trevor drew closer.

‘They had masks on.’

‘We saw, love, but whoever they are they won’t find you in hospital.’ Peter squeezed her hand lightly.

‘Yes, they will and then they’ll kill me too.’ Kelly whimpered. ‘You can’t leave me. They’ll come looking for me …’

‘You’ll be taken care of, love, I promise you.’ Peter straightened his back. ‘You must have an idea who they are.’

Kelly pushed her knuckles into her mouth. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Did they speak? Did you recognise their voices?’ Trevor pressed her.

Kelly tried to sit up, shook her head and retched.

‘Concussion,’ the paramedic diagnosed, turning Kelly’s head to the side to keep her airways clear.

‘Look after her, Chris. Make a note of everything she says.’ Trevor drew Peter into the outside corridor and lowered his voice. ‘That was Dan on the phone.’ He took a deep breath. The only way to give Peter Dan’s news was to come straight out with it. But now the moment had arrived, he simply couldn’t bring himself to do it.

‘And?’

Trevor braced himself. ‘Daisy’s disappeared.’

The colour drained from Peter’s face. ‘When – how long ago –’

‘Dan didn’t say. He’s on his way and he said he’d fix it so the locals won’t drag us into this mess.’

‘Where was Daisy last seen?’ Peter’s voice was distant, mechanical.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did it happen this morning?’

‘I told you everything Dan said.’

‘What exactly did he say?’ Peter demanded. ‘Word for word.’

‘He said to tell you that Daisy has disappeared.’

‘His exact words.’

Trevor searched his memory. ‘“Daisy Sherringham has disappeared. We think she’s been kidnapped. I’ll see that the locals are kept at bay. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”’

‘Dan wouldn’t have mentioned “kidnapped” without proof. He’s coming here?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Peter thumped the wall with his fist.

‘Did you or Chris see who threw Marissa out of the window?’ Trevor asked.

‘Not without their masks. They saw us coming and scarpered. We heard them running up the stairs as we got here. I left Kelly with Chris and went after them. They weren’t on the roof and the corridors on the two top floors were empty. But they could have been hiding behind any of the doors. I knew Sarah would be watching the building so I came back down to see how Kelly was.’ Peter stopped talking when they heard sirens.

Trevor returned to the living room and looked through the window. ‘The locals have arrived. So have Dan and Bill.’

‘I’ll go down and see him.’

‘No need. The paramedic is pointing this window out to Dan now. He’ll be here in a few minutes.’

Chris’s voice fell, loud into the room. ‘You’ll like Sarah, Kelly. She’ll stay with you …’ Chris was trying valiantly to soothe the girl but Trevor could see that Kelly was hysterical.

‘No! I’m not going anywhere … and not to any hospital …’

‘You can’t stay here,’ Chris insisted. ‘The police will need to search this place for evidence …’

‘No!’ Kelly screamed even louder. ‘I’m staying with him.’ She turned to Peter. ‘He’ll look after me.’

‘Kelly …’ Chris persisted in trying.

‘I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. I only trust him.’

Peter walked over to Kelly. ‘Look, love, you can’t allow whoever killed Marissa and attacked you to get away with murder. They have to pay for what they did.’

‘Don’t you understand?’ she pleaded. ‘They have got away with it. If I talk to the coppers, they’ll never leave me alone. They’ll come after me.’

‘People in prison can’t come after you,’ Peter insisted.

‘The coppers won’t put them in prison. They’re too clever. You’ve no idea what they’re like. Or what it’s like to live round here. All anyone’s got is their reputation. Once that’s gone you’re as good as dead. If I grass them up to the coppers I may as well buy my coffin because I’d never be safe again. Never! Marissa thought she’d be safe here and she wasn’t. They may be coming after me right now. Right this minute. I’ll be stuffed out of that window like … Marissa.’ The horrors Kelly had witnessed finally took their toll. She buried her head in her hands and broke down.

Bright red stars punctuated the darkness that surrounded Daisy. The car had stopped moving. She wasn’t sure when. Lost in darkness, time no longer held any meaning. She could have been left, for a minute – an hour – a day. The blankets that covered her had closed out all light. She listened hard but only heard a silence that buzzed, like insects in her ears.

A door opened. Arms slid beneath her body. She was dragged a short distance and bundled, still covered by blankets, head first into a confined space. A slam above her head paralysed her with fear.

Had she been closed into a coffin?

The air stank of petrol – were they going to burn her … footsteps echoed fading in the distance. Then, the insects began buzzing again.

‘We will find her.’ Trevor said it to reassure himself and Peter. He only wished that he knew where to start looking.

Peter looked across the room at Kelly. ‘If anyone does to Daisy what they did to Kelly’s sister or Lee, I’ll track the bastards down and turn them into chopped liver.’

The threat was all the more deadly for being spoken without Peter’s usual venom.

‘Dan will know more,’ Trevor said with more hope than conviction.

‘If they’ve already killed her, I hope they did it quickly. Not like Lee. Bit by sodding bit.’ Peter remained unbelievably cool. ‘We have to find out who took her. Then start looking for them. I won’t let her disappear, Trevor. Not the way Lee’s wife and Lee have.’

Dan walked into the flat. Sarah followed and went to Kelly, freeing Chris to join the others. They congregated in the doorway. Far enough inside the room to reassure Kelly, and not far enough to compromise any forensic evidence.

‘The locals have sealed off the area. They’re now sealing off this block; we’ll get the bastard who did this.’

‘Bastards,’ Peter corrected. ‘Chris and I chased two of them.’

Dan nodded towards Kelly. ‘Get a name.’

‘No,’ Peter could barely contain his irritation, ‘she’s adamant she won’t give evidence. She’s terrified that if she does they’ll kill her the way they killed her sister.’

Dan looked around at the stained carpet and overturned furniture. ‘We need to get the lab boys up here. Fortunately, we have all your DNAs on record, so we don’t need to take new swabs.'

Sarah joined them.

‘No go?’ Dan guessed.

‘She’s refusing to go to hospital. I told her she needs medical attention and promised we’d take her to a safe house afterwards, but she wants to stay with Peter.’

‘The last thing I need is a kid to baby-sit.’ Peter looked expectantly at Dan. ‘Daisy?’

‘I ordered an officer to follow her and keep his eyes open. He followed her home from the hospital yesterday. When he went off shift I detailed someone to stay outside her flat all night. The original officer took over again at seven this morning. He drove behind Daisy to the hospital car park at eight. She has her own parking space, he didn’t. It took him a couple of minutes to find one. We have Daisy on CCTV parking her car, walking past A & E …’

‘Which she’d have to do to get to the burns unit.’ Peter spoke as if he were walking alongside her.

‘Then she vanished.’

Peter folded her arm across his chest. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do we. There were cars parked in the loading bay, and an ambulance at the end. We have footage of her walking towards the ambulance, then nothing.’

‘It’s Andrew all over again,’ Trevor observed.

‘Time?’ Peter demanded.

‘Eight thirty-eight. The cameras are set at one minute fifteen second intervals. She disappeared in less than one and a quarter minutes.’

‘You checked inside the ambulance?’

‘It was locked because the driver was taking a break, but it was the first vehicle we searched. We sealed off the hospital within ten minutes, and searched all the ambulances and cars in the area. We checked the CCTV footage by the gate, so far all we’ve picked up on is a Ford with false number-plates. We’re trying to track it on motorway.

‘This was e-mailed to Andrew’s computer in the estate agent’s office one hour after Daisy went missing. I asked them to forward it to me on my cell phone. We put a track on it. It looks as though it was sent from an internet café in Morocco but, according to the Tech boys, false trails can be laid by a hacker. They seem confident that they can track it back to its rightful place of origin but it will take time, and that’s something we don’t have.’ Dan handed Peter his mobile phone. Trevor looked over Peter’s shoulder.

If you want to see Andrew Jones and Daisy Sherringham alive, close down the operation immediately. We are watching you. Non-compliance will result in two more corpses in the Bay.

A uniformed constable put his head around the door.

‘Inspector asked me to inform you, sir, that we’ve finished locking down the building and, we’re about to begin sweeping it. The paramedic is on his way up and so are the forensic team.’

‘Thank the senior officer for keeping me informed,’ Dan replied in his slow Welsh lilt.

‘Yes, sir.’ The constable glanced at Peter, Trevor and Chris before running back down the stairs.

‘There goes our cover,’ Peter muttered.

‘That went when Darrow found out who we were. Probably even before we booked into the hotel,’ Trevor said dryly.

Peter read the e-mail again before handing Dan back his cell phone and quoted, ‘“
If you want to see Andrew Jones and Daisy Sherringham alive, close down the operation immediately. We are watching you. Non-compliance will result in two more corpses in the Bay.”
Who are the “we” who are watching and do you think they really are watching us? Or bluffing?’

Dan looked at him quizzically and Trevor realised that he wasn’t the only one who thought that Peter was reacting to Daisy’s kidnapping too coolly and calmly.

‘If we knew the answer to those questions we would be arresting them,’ Dan replied.

Peter retreated towards the corridor to make room for the second paramedic to enter the flat. Kelly saw him move away and screamed hysterically.

‘Don’t leave me, please …’

‘I won’t be far,’ Peter reassured her with remarkable patience considering the strain he was under. ‘Let the paramedic do his job and look at you, Kelly.’

White-suited officers walked through the doors that led from the staircase.

Dan nodded to the forensic teams. ‘A crime scene is not a good place to hold an impromptu conference.’

Trevor glanced around for a quiet place where they could talk. ‘If the staircase is empty we can go out there.’

‘It won’t be quiet for long once the locals have locked down the building ready for searching.’ Peter observed.

Trevor flattened himself against the wall as two officers carried a bulky equipment box past him.

‘It will do for the moment. The landing is big enough and we only need a corner.’ Dan led the way.

‘I’ll tell Kelly I’ll be outside the door then I’ll join you.’ Peter walked back into the flat.

Dan looked at Trevor. ‘What’s going on between Peter and that girl?’

‘A sudden and over-developed bout of paternal instinct.’ Trevor followed Dan on to the graffiti-ornamented concrete landing. ‘It is obvious that whoever’s behind the sale of Black Daffodil tipped off the respective gangs about the undercover officers. Do you think they’ve taken Daisy and Andrew because they couldn’t get anyone else to do it for them?’