Playing the Game (35 page)

            ‘This is what you do. This is the one thing you’re good at’, she yelled at me, ‘and you didn’t catch her? How could you not catch her?’ I refrained from telling her that I thought saving Katie had been infinitely more important. She already knew that.

            Her anger eventually subsided into audible relief, and she too lay in my arms, sobbing quietly, as she realised how close our daughter had come to being one of Sarah Caldwell’s victims.

            ‘Is she done with you? With us?’ she asked in between cries. I had no choice but to tell her that I didn’t know.

            A doctor came found us and told us that Katie appeared to be fine. Shaken and bruised, but fine. They would keep her in overnight as a precaution and discharge her the following morning. That was what I’d been praying to hear, and thanking the doctor profusely, I couldn’t help the tears that finally came.

95

            The events at the station couldn’t have been further from my mind as I sat by the end of Katie’s hospital bed, watching her sleep. She was exhausted and frightened from her ordeal but looked at peace as she slept. Vikki sat next to me in silence, still blaming me for our daughter’s predicament, but her look had softened somewhat when she realised that Katie hadn’t sustained any real injuries and that she was going to make a full physical and mental recovery. An officer had been placed on the room’s door at my request. Until Sarah Caldwell was caught, she remained a target. Not that I was planning on going anywhere until she was discharged tomorrow morning.

            I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. Charlie stood behind me, smiling. ‘Hey, man’, he greeted me as I stood up.

            ‘Hey’, I reciprocated, giving him a hug. ‘How’s the shoulder?’

            ‘Like I said, it’s gonna take more than that to keep me down, man’, he grinned. ‘Katie’s alright, thank God’, he acknowledged.  ‘Hey Vikki’.

            ‘Yeah she is’, I nodded. ‘But it was a close call’.

            ‘Hi Charlie’, Vikki spoke quietly.

            ‘Just been speaking to the Captain’, he told me. ‘Still no sign of Caldwell, it’s like she’s just completely vanished’. I shook my head, disappointed, although if there had been any news of her capture, I would have been the first to know.

            ‘But the good news’, he informed me, ‘is that we need to get our asses back to the station. Williams says forensics have had some luck with that address we got from the old guy in Wilton. He should have it any minute’.

            Ever since we’d had that address, so much had happened that I’d actually clean forgot that we’d had it, much less that it had been sent to forensics to see what they could repair from the damage the rain had caused. This was not over. If we had a lead, we could potentially get to Sarah Caldwell. Maybe then, we could all get some sleep. I looked at Vikki, not needing her permission or approval to leave but sensing that it would be a well-received gesture on my part. If she didn’t want me to go, then I wouldn’t.

            ‘Go, if you have to’, she said ‘It’s alright. Go and do what you do but just do me one favour’.

            ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

            ‘Make sure you make sure you take that bitch down. Dead or alive, I don’t care which’.

            I stood up, not answering her, but gave her a quick hug.

            ‘One more thing’, Charlie said, gesturing to his bandaged shoulder.

            ‘What?’

            ‘You’re driving, man’, he laughed. ‘You’re driving’.

96

            We made our way back to the station, and as we jogged up to the office of Captain Williams, virtually everyone I passed gave me a message of support for my daughter. I nodded in response, but I was eager to see what Williams had for us. With Katie now accounted for, despite the lack of sleep and the emotional strain that The Chemist’s personal game had placed on me, I was ready to go. I needed to go.

            Williams himself shook my hand, telling me how much of a relief it was that Katie had survived unharmed. When you put it in the context of what had happened to Keeley, Jennifer and even then Stella, I agreed she had been fortunate but I couldn’t help remember how close it had been to an entirely different outcome.

            ‘I’ve not had a chance to tell you,’ Williams began, ‘but we brought Conway in this afternoon for questioning over the shootings of Burr and McCrane’.

            ‘Who’s taking it?’ I questioned.

            ‘Harlow’, Williams answered it. ‘Seemed the least I could do after I took McCrane off him this morning’.

            ‘Anything on him so far?’ I wanted to know. Williams shook his head.

            ‘Nothing as yet. Even had a crack at him myself before Harlow took him. Smug bastard knows we haven’t got much’.

            The phone rang, and after taking the call, Williams looked up smiling. ‘That was forensics. They’re ready for us’.

            After having to listen to two of the forensic guys tell us, in more detail than we cared to know, how they had managed to do what they had done, we had the address and were waiting for the computer, which seemed to get slower and slower every day, to return any results. They told us several times that to do what they had done in the timeframe they had was next to impossible, but I guess on reflection, the forensic guys are often the unsung heroes of the police department. Without them, our conviction rate would be nowhere near as high as it was, just the same as it was for every police department across the country.

            I thought the computer network had stalled as it seemed to be taking longer than usual, and I had little patience to begin with. Just as I was about to vent my frustrations, the day’s events had left me wanting Sarah Caldwell more than ever, the computer returned the search with just one match.

            ‘That who I think it is?’ Charlie exclaimed as we stared at the match it had returned. I just nodded as I stared at the screen. The address given to us by the old next door neighbour of Sarah Caldwell was that of Robert Farrington.

97

            The revelation that the address was Farrington’s was a surprise to us all. None of us could get a handle on why someone with such standing, power and presence would be linked with someone like Sarah Caldwell. The address seemed like a cast iron link for some reason. We just didn’t know what that reason was and we all agreed something wasn’t quite right here. Did Farrington have something to hide? How would Sarah Caldwell have gotten that address in the first place? Captain Williams picked up the phone again.

            ‘Get me all you have on Robert Farrington’, he barked. He looked up as me as he spoke, aware that once again we were going to have to tread very carefully indeed.

            Five minutes later, clerical had delivered us the file, the contents of which were massively disappointing. To say that there wasn’t anything pertinent in the file relating to Farrington was an understatement. According to the file, Robert Farrington hadn’t received so much as a parking ticket in the last fifteen years.

            ‘His wife died a couple of years ago’, Charlie noted as he thumbed through a section of the file. ‘He’s got a son, Daniel Farrington. His only son, in fact. Thirty-one’.

            ‘Worth taking a look at the son?’ I asked. ‘Maybe the address relates to him and not Robert Farrington?’ I was reaching and we all knew it. Williams shrugged his shoulders.

            ‘Why not?’ he nodded, picking up the phone once again.

            If the first file that clerical had brought us didn’t have much we could use, then the second file, the file on Daniel Farrington, was an entirely different proposition.

            By the age of thirty-one he had racked up a string of DUI’s including one only six days ago where his blood-alcohol concentration had been 0.11. Well above the maximum legal ration of 0.08. He had been bailed but was looking at doing time after his arraignment took place in just over two weeks. According to the arresting officer’s report, he had hit another motorist whilst driving intoxicated. The driver of the other vehicle, a young woman called Tina Holt, had only sustained minor injuries but that, taking into consideration his previous DUI’s, should be enough to ensure a custodial sentence.

            I flicked over the report to reveal Daniel’s fingerprints and booking photograph. Looking over the background information that the file contained I was so startled I almost dropped the file. Charlie and Captain Williams were surprised by my reaction.

            ‘Hey man’, Charlie asked, ‘you ok? What’s up?’

            I was unable to speak but passed the file to Charlie who looked over the file before making his proclamation. ‘Well I’ll be damned’.

            'What have we got?' Williams demanded. It didn't take me long to tell him that the next of kin in Daniel's file was not listed as Robert Farrington, it was Anne Caldwell: deceased. The address for Anne Caldwell was the same address we visited in Wilton earlier today.

            'So you're saying that we think Sarah Caldwell and Daniel Farrington have the same mother?' he was incredulous.

            'Exactly', I told him. 'And I can't help but think that if they have the same mother, then maybe they have the same father'.

            'Robert Farrington', Williams finished for me, almost smiling.

            The next hour was a flurry of activity as we decided the best way forward. We now had a cast iron link between Sarah Caldwell and Robert Farrington. Williams was confident that he could get a warrant first thing in the morning but I knew we needed more. Farrington wasn’t going to just roll over was he? I tossed an idea out to the room which both Charlie and Williams agreed was our only option. For this idea to work though, we needed to speak to Daniel Farrington.

            We were able to confirm that Daniel was not at home but we knew he could return at any minute. We had to act quickly.

            ‘If he co-operates, can we lose the DUI thing?’ I asked Williams. ‘It’s our best card to play. It may be our
only
card. He’ll want that null and voided, I guarantee it’. Williams thought for a moment before giving me his response.

            ‘We can keep him out of jail’. I nodded my approval. That should be enough.

            ‘Let me sit on the house, man’, Charlie growled, popping a couple of Tramadol for the pain his shoulder was giving him. ‘He comes back man, I’ll get him on side. Let me do this for you’.

            As much as I didn’t want the big man flying solo on this, the emotional strain of Sarah Caldwell abducting my daughter was overwhelming me and I finally gave in.

            ‘Do it for all of us’, I told my partner. This might be our last roll of the dice and I prayed it would pay off.

98

            Daylight had already broken when the search warrant came through for Farrington’s house. Captain Williams had naturally wanted any case that might be forthcoming to be watertight and not leave us wide open for prosecution by taking any short cuts. He’d woken up one of the most senior judges in the city, Judge Martin Tyrell, at six o’ clock and it was a call that, even given the circumstances, Williams hadn’t relished making. Nevertheless, the early hour of the morning aside, Tyrell had been more than accommodating once he’d heard what we had, and the warrant had been rushed through. He agreed there was definitely enough probable cause for the warrant to be issued, although he had stopped short of agreeing with Williams that these were exigent circumstances. Farrington’s standing within the state had probably played a part in Tyrell’s decision. I’d wanted to go in with the warrant unannounced but under Tyrell’s ruling, had to abide by the standard ‘knock and announce’ procedure. In the end I hoped it wouldn’t make a difference but I wasn’t about to jeopardise any case we could make against Farrington by disregarding the Judge’s wishes.

            Charlie had sat on Farrington’s house last night until Daniel had returned at around one in the morning. He had taken Daniel for a ride and made him our offer. Charlie seemed to think we were in business but we both knew that we had no way of knowing for sure.

            We drove up to Farrington’s house, which was coincidently only about a mile from Conway’s, although it was far greater in stature. Farrington had obviously spared no expense as his lavish three storey mansion and acres of surrounding land attested to. It also had state of the art security cameras that meant we couldn’t arrive unannounced. He would almost certainly be aware of our presence before we had the opportunity to knock on his door and present the warrant.

            Williams was adamant that we should have substantial back up. Given that we had linked him to Sarah Caldwell, whose bomb at Sutherland Boulevard yesterday had injured and killed several officers, not to mention the two girls she had successfully killed, that was understandable. Although I’d had no backup apart from Balfer directly behind me yesterday in Windsor Hills, I had no such restrictions now.

            Six black and whites followed us to the mansion. Charlie and I led the way, driving us right up to the door, which took over a minute from the entrance; such was the expanse of Farrington’s land. When we officially made our presence known, Robert Farrington answered the door personally, giving us the impression that he already knew we were here.

            ‘Good morning’, he greeted, almost smiling. He was calm and unruffled by the unsociable hour of our arrival. He was dressed in a silk dressing gown and held a fat Cuban cigar in his left hand. Not a hair was out of place, though the bags under his eyes were perhaps signs of a restless night. He didn’t look surprised to see us one bit. I wondered if he was simply an expert at not revealing his hand, or if someone had tipped him off as to our impending arrival. I prayed my gamble was going to pay off but at that moment I wasn’t sure it would at all. ‘What can I do for you gentlemen on this fine morning?’