One Under (26 page)

He surfaced minutes later. They must have loosened the plastic bag. Fresh air tasted of engine fumes and reefer. He was lying on his side in the back of a van. Someone had taken his shoes off and his hands and ankles were tied. The van was grinding along, probably still in the city, and every time it swung left or right he could feel the metal ribs of the floor against his hip. There was music too, loud, interminable lyrics, worse than toothache.

‘Turn that fucking noise down,’ he managed.

There was laughter. He was aware of the stir of someone’s boot in the pit of his belly, someone here in the back of the van with him. A warning. Behave yourself.

‘Cunts,’ he muttered to himself, feeling instantly better.

No one said a word. Winter piled on the abuse. Twats. Retards. Numpties. Anything to spark a riposte, to launch a conversation, to get a fix on an accent, to recognise - if he was really lucky - a voice. But these guys had thought this thing through, recognised the kind of risks they were running. Kidnapping a police officer would put you inside for a very long time, and they didn’t need Winter to remind them where this joyride of theirs might lead.

Nonetheless, he persevered.

‘What’s the game then? Only you’ve got one big fucking problem, haven’t you?’

More laughter, this time from the front of the van. Then something wet and papery between his lips. His tongue explored it. He took an exploratory drag, a tiny sip of air, then spat the spliff out. Somebody very close was creasing himself. I’m the performing fucking bear, Winter thought. What next?

The van was going faster now, the growl of surrounding traffic left behind. The city’s only motorway tracked north towards the mainland, and Winter tried to estimate speed and time as the tick-tock of the indicator signalled a change of lane. The van lurched to the right. East, he thought.

Minutes later, they began to slow, the driver grinding down through the gears until the van had come to a halt. Then, within seconds, they were off again, pulling hard to the left, and Winter visualised the roundabout that funnelled traffic from the motorway into Havant. Soon there’d come a succession of traffic lights, then another roundabout before the brief stretch of dual carriageway that bordered Leigh Park.

Leigh Park was an enormous post-war housing estate, a refuge for countless families as blitzed Pompey made way for the bulldozers. For a while it had been the dream address - fresh air, a bit of countryside, familiar neighbours, handy pubs and schools - but successive generations of kids had put the boot into the planners’ fantasy, and by the time Winter stepped into the job, the badlands of Leigh Park were every copper’s nightmare.

The van was slowing again. A couple of sharp turns, heavy braking for some kind of obstacle, and then they rolled to a stop. With the engine off, Winter could hear shouting outside, the drunken shriek of some fourteen-year-old bint, then the answering taunt of blokes nearby. She’s off her head, Winter thought. Pink handbag. Platform heels. Tats. Belly hanging out. A couple more vodka ices and she won’t remember a thing.

There was a clink of coins and then someone opened the van door at the front and Winter felt the chill of the night air. He was stiff now, his lower legs beginning to cramp, and he toyed for a moment or two with yelling for help but managed to resist the temptation. If he was right about Leigh Park, the last thing he needed was a bigger audience.

‘Bazza in on this, is he?’

Nothing. No response. Then someone tweaked the volume on the music, but amplified rap was too much even for these tossers and there came a brief moment of silence before they were listening to Robbie Williams.

Winter shut his eyes. There were parts of him that associated Leigh Park on a Saturday night with the wilder headlines from Baghdad, and now he began to wonder how blokes taken hostage ever survived. Did you simply switch off? Plunge into zombie mode? Adopt the foetal position and hope to fuck that someone would wake you up? Or was it best to try and get on top of these animals, extract a little respect? He contemplated the prospect for a moment or two then, for some inexplicable reason, he was back in the hospital, back at Jimmy Suttle’s bedside. I’m as helpless as he is, he thought grimly. And twice as uncomfortable.

The van lurched on its springs as someone got in. The front door banged shut and they were off again. Winter could smell vinegar and freshly battered fish, and as they took the next corner at speed, his body rolling back against the wheel arch, he realised how hungry he was. He tried to struggle upright, easing the pain in his legs. In the sitting position, he nudged his body backwards until his bound hands found the side of the van. The effort left him breathless and he could hear the rustle of the black plastic bag as he sucked air into his lungs.

Then came a mutter of conversation, very low, and a giggle from somewhere close. Seconds later he felt the brush of knuckles against his chin as a hand found his mouth inside the bag, and he tasted the saltiness of the chip. Bloody hot, he thought. And not quite enough vinegar.

More chips, presumably from the same hand. Then, unannounced, a flake or two of fish before a brief explosion of light. They’re taking pictures, Winter thought. They’ve put the monkey in the cage and now they want a souvenir or two. He felt the nudge of the hand again, another titbit, but he turned his head away.

‘Just fuck off,’ he said quietly.

More laughter. They drove around for a while, the driver grinding up and down through the gearbox, then the van began to slow and finally stopped. For a moment there was total silence. Winter stirred.

‘What now then?’

As if in response there came a squeak as someone wound one of the front windows down. Then, very distantly, Winter heard the clatter of an approaching train. He stiffened, asked the question again, tried to imagine just where they might have parked up. Then the train was on top of them, very close, a deafening roar in the chilly darkness, receding as quickly as it had appeared, taking with it a little of his bravado and his courage. In the space of a minute or two a Pompey jape had become something infinitely more sinister.

They must have stayed beside the railway track for a couple of hours. Trains came and went, each one - Winter assumed - trailing the same message. This wasn’t subtle, far from it, but by the time the van’s engine stirred back into life and they began to bump away, Winter’s sense of humour was exhausted. He was cold, extremely uncomfortable and not a little frightened. The last thing he wanted to concede was any hint of anxiety, but he, like everyone else on the
Coppice
squad, had taken a good look at the thick sheaf of photos from the Buriton Tunnel. Dying under the surgeon’s knife was one thing, Winter thought. Being torn apart by several hundred tons of speeding train quite another.

‘Cunts,’ he muttered again. And meant it.

This time the journey was shorter. Towards the end the van was grinding uphill. At length they slowed, pulled left off the road, and bumped down over rough ground. The driver killed the engine, and there was a stir of movement in the back of the van. Winter was aware of his numbed body being pulled forward. Someone rolled him over. Flat on his face on the floor of the van, he felt the coldness of a knife against his bare wrists, sawing back and forth, then his hands were suddenly free. He rubbed them together, winced at the hot scald of blood flooding back into his fingers, wondered what on earth was coming next.

Someone was pulling at his ankles. Moments later they too were free. Winter flexed his legs, making sure, then tried to roll over and tear the plastic bag off his head. But he barely had time to register a flicker of light and the shape of someone bending over him before the hands were back again, pulling him into a sitting position, winding a rough blindfold around his head. The blindfold was very tight, the knot biting into the back of his neck, and he bellowed with pain as these same hands finally pushed him back against the side of the van. He felt the belt of his trousers loosening, then a grunt as someone pulled hard on his trouser bottoms. Instinctively, he brought his knees up, protecting himself, then he felt the kiss of cold steel again and relaxed, a gesture of hopeless surrender as the knife sliced through his favourite kaks. Naked below the waist, aware of the hands again, tugging at his shirt, Winter knew what was coming next.

‘Leave it out, will you?’ he grunted. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

He struggled out of his jacket, then undid the buttons on his shirt and peeled it off. Naked, still wearing the blindfold, he felt someone arranging him before a series of flashes signalled more photos. Winter drew up his knees, covering himself, but knew it was too late. Moments later, he was being dragged towards the back of the van. Then came the briefest pause and the touch of something light across his back, before a hefty push rolled him out of the van. Face down again, arse in the air, struggling to get to his feet, he could feel dew on the grass. The van’s engine was already stirring into life. As it accelerated away, Winter did his best to get rid of the blindfold, his fingers tearing at the tightness of the knot, but by the time he’d managed to undo the thing, the van was a distant pair of red lights, back up on the road, hundreds of metres away.

Winter began to shiver - partly from the cold, partly shock, partly a sense of overwhelming relief that he’d managed to survive more or less intact. They’d dumped him just beneath the top of Portsdown Hill, maybe a hundred metres from the road that ran along the crest of the long fold of chalk. Beyond the road lay one of the Victorian forts that straddled the hill, a looming wall of red brick. Below, when he turned to look, lay the long tongue of Portsmouth, necklaced with street lights, licking out into the blackness of the Solent.

Winter sank onto his haunches, unable to control his bowels, letting the tension spill out of him. Happiness, he thought grimly, has a smell you wouldn’t want to take with you. Immediately below, the grass and scrub was dotted with bushes. He made his way down to them, tearing at the longer clumps of grass around the bushes, doing his best to clean himself up.

Already, he’d dismissed the option of calling for official help. This time of night, he could make his way back to the road, try and flag down the next passing motorist. No way would they stop for some naked stranger but the sight alone would warrant a 999 call on the mobile, and Winter could visualise only too well the arrival of a couple of uniforms and the eternity of wind-ups that would follow. For twenty years Winter had successfully resisted attempts to bring him down. He’d courted controversy, had several near-disasters, but nothing that would hand his many enemies this kind of ammunition. No, there had to be another way.

The nearest public phone box, to Winter’s knowledge, lay amongst the grid of residential avenues on the southern slopes of the hill. Without a mobile or watch, Winter had no real idea of time but the lack of traffic told him it was late, certainly gone midnight. This time in the morning the roads below him should be quiet, most of the residents hopefully asleep in bed.

He began to make his way down the hill. A footpath took him into the first of the avenues. Hugging whatever shadows he could find, he trotted down the hill, stark naked, trying to navigate his way towards the phone box. After a quarter of a mile or so he realised he’d gone wrong. Cursing, breathless, one of his feet already bleeding from a cut, he retraced his steps, took a left, then another left, began to climb again. At the next corner, flattened against a privet hedge, he peered round. The phone box, horribly overlit, was less than fifty metres away.

He checked behind him, looking for somewhere to hide when the time came. Halfway down the street was a bungalow with a fenced front garden. He counted the gates, made a mental note of the address, stole round the corner, and bolted for the phone box. The Response Desk at the Netley Control Room was manned twenty-four hours a day. Calls from public boxes were free.

Winter hopped from one foot to the other, waiting for someone to pick up. To his relief, the heat from his sweating body clouded the glass, masking him from the street, but he was rapidly cooling in the chilly night air.

At last, he found himself talking to the Response Desk. He confirmed his ID and said he wanted a mobile number. She’d find it on the Major Crimes’ database. Name of Jake Tarrant. On call-out for the mortuary at St Mary’s Hospital, Portsmouth.

There was a pause. When the controller came back, there was no way she’d give Winter the number. Instead, she’d ask Tarrant to call Winter.

‘379008,’ he said, peering at the line of figures above the console.

‘That’s a public box.’

‘I know, love.’ Winter was shivering now. ‘Just do it, yeah? And tell him it’s bloody urgent.’

‘I’ll have to log this. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Whatever.’

She told him to hang up. Winter began to jog up and down in the tightness of the space, trying to coax some warmth back into his body. Condensation was running down the glass, little rivulets of moisture, and Winter was beginning to shiver again when the phone rang. It was very loud in the silence. He grabbed for the receiver.

‘Jake?’

‘Yeah, me. You know what time it is? What the fuck’s going on?’

Winter gave him the name of the street and the number of the bungalow round the corner.

‘You got that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Just pick me up, OK?’

‘
Now?
’

‘Sooner. You’ll be coming up from the Eastern Road. You know the New Inn? Drayton? Take the first right. Straight up the hill. You with me?’ He frowned. ‘Jake?’

The connection had gone dead. Winter stared at the phone a moment, then smashed it against the cradle in frustration. Seconds later, through the blurry glass, he saw an upstairs light in the house across the road flick on. Backing out of the phone box, he hurried back towards the corner, glad to be on the move again. Thank Christ he’d given himself somewhere to hide.