Stranger Child (36 page)

Where’s Ollie? Why hadn’t Tom found him?

‘Ollie, darling, I’m coming for you I promise,’ she shouted out loud, hoping that some telepathic channel of communication, as yet undiscovered, was working between her and her baby boy.

Emma tried not to think about what had happened in the vault. She parcelled up the thoughts, the questions, and pushed them to the back of her mind. There would be time to unpick everything later. For now, there was only Ollie.

The man had called her again on Tasha’s phone and she had followed his directions. The exit from the motorway was ahead.

She had no idea what was going to happen. Was she about to meet the men who had taken her son? The men that had taken and kept Natasha for all these years? The men who thought it was acceptable to send a kid shoplifting, stealing, ferrying drugs and so much more? With all her heart she wished she had an automatic rifle so she could rattle off a stream of bullets and shoot the whole lot of them down. It felt for a moment that a lifetime in prison would be worth it to rid the world of scum like these men.

She took the third exit from the roundabout and drove on. There was no light, the darkness settling like black velvet around her, the yellow beam of her headlights cutting through it, the rear lights leaving a red stain on the wet surface in her wake.

*

The control room fell quiet as the images on the screen showed something happening in the empty cemetery. It had begun as a low hum, getting louder as the vehicle came into view. Three men got out of a van, balaclavas rolled up, their faces revealed.

‘
Thank God
,’ Paul Green said softly. ‘He’s here. The main man.’

Tom felt a moment’s sympathy for Paul. This should have been the moment they prepared to move in and take Guy Bentley – everything they had been working towards. But with Ollie still missing, it was a risk they couldn’t take.

Tom looked at the screen, and although it was more than twenty years since he had last seen him, he would have recognised Ethan Bentley anywhere. Maturity had improved his looks, and what had appeared a haughty face on a skinny seventeen-year-old had filled out to become distinguished. His hooked nose and thick lips gave him the appearance of a wealthy playboy, and even on a night vision camera it was easy to see the confidence with which he held himself.

Finn McGuinness was carrying a gun. His mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were watchful. He turned a full 360 degrees around, his gaze seeming to penetrate the surrounding shrubbery.

The third man was somebody Tom didn’t recognise. He had been half expecting Rory Slater, but this was probably way above his pay grade. The man had a similar demeanour to McGuinness, but he was much bigger, with the shoulders and upper body of a wrestler.

They hadn’t spoken, but McGuinness looked at his watch.

‘Five minutes,’ was all he said, his voice being picked up by the equipment planted by the Titan team.

Paul Green spoke into his radio, quietly keeping his team informed. But there was still no sign of Ollie Joseph. Arrest Bentley now, and Ollie might never be seen again. These weren’t men to cave in under interrogation.

Tom knew that Emma was coming before the audio kit in the cemetery picked up the sound of her car.

He knew, because three hands went up and pulled balaclavas down over faces.

*

Emma rounded the final bend.

There they were. Three of them, each wearing a mask with a gap for the eyes and the mouth. Just like the one she had seen earlier.

The men were standing in a row at the back of a van, legs apart, the arms of two of them firmly by their sides, the third clutching a gun that looked like some kind of short-barrelled rifle. A new shockwave of fear tore through Emma’s body. Her chest tightened and her breathing speeded up. She felt a moment of dizziness but fought it back.

Should she get out of the car, or stay there? She didn’t know. Fighting the temptation to put her foot down hard on the accelerator and ram them all, squashing them flat against their van, she pulled up about four metres away. The man signalled her with the barrel of his gun to get out of the car.

Not entirely sure that her legs would support her, Emma opened the door and got out. The tallest of the men approached her, signalling to one of his sidekicks – a man with huge shoulders – to get into the Range Rover and pull it around closer to their van.

‘Mrs Joseph, or may I call you Emma?’ he said in a voice practically free from any trace of an accent. He spoke as if they had just met at a party.

‘Call me what you like,’ she answered. ‘I’ve done what you asked. Now give me back my son.’ The last two words came out as a sob.

‘Of course. We’re men of our word, Emma. You shouldn’t have told the police, though. We know that was you.’

Emma didn’t like the sound of that. How could they have known it was her?

The man with the gun approached and pulled a device that Emma didn’t recognise out of his pocket. He switched it on and read the screen. He held up one hand.

‘Where’s the phone?’ he asked, the thick, harsh tones instantly recognisable as belonging to the man she had spoken to on the phone.

Emma hadn’t thought it possible to be more frightened, but a chill of terror ran through her body.

‘What phone?’ she asked. She had thrown the damned thing away – what could they mean?

‘Don’t piss me about, lady. Where’s the fucking phone?’

Emma stood stock still. He lifted the gun so it was pointing upwards, slung the strap over his shoulder and approached Emma, reaching his hands out and sliding them over her body, lingering on her buttocks. She shuddered. He laughed.

He ran one hand unnecessarily up the inside of her thighs, as far as it could go, lingering there, stroking her with his thumb. Emma stood as still as she could, her skin crawling with disgust.

‘Stop arsing around, Finn,’ the boss man said without rancour. ‘Save it for later.’

The hand moved to the outside of her thighs and stopped at a pocket.

‘This phone,’ he said, removing Tasha’s mobile. Why hadn’t she realised they meant that one? She was too terrified to think straight.

‘You won’t be needing this again,’ he said, sticking it into his own pocket.

The man by the Range Rover nodded, and Emma assumed he had checked her car for phones or bugs too. He jumped in and drove it closer to the van and opened the rear doors.

‘Shit,’ she heard.

Had she done something wrong? Panic swept through her. What?

‘Watch her,’ the boss man said to the man called Finn as he walked over to the Range Rover.

He peered into the back, where the bags of gold were stacked, and then he looked at her.

‘Bring her over here,’ he instructed.

She didn’t want to be touched by Finn again, so she went of her own accord.

‘How the fuck did you get all this up the stairs on your own, little lady?’ the boss man asked, the enquiring note in his voice barely masking his suspicion.

‘Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?’ Emma could hear the quiver in her voice.

‘Don’t be smart with me, Emma. We thought you’d only get half this. How did you do it?’

Finn grabbed her ponytail and pulled it down her back so that her throat was exposed. She was going to die if she didn’t give them the right answer.

‘Bloody hard work, that’s how,’ she answered. ‘Adrenaline can do miraculous things to the body, you know.’

The boss indicated with his head that the gold should be moved into the van, and her hair was released.

She watched as the huge man hurled the bags into the back of the van as if they weighed little more than a sack of potatoes.

The last one was transferred.

‘What about Ollie? Where’s my son?’

She saw a nod pass between the man who was obviously the boss and Finn – the weasel with the gun.

‘Get in the car,’ Finn said, walking round to the passenger side of the Range Rover. He threw his gun to the man with the shoulders, then pulled a handgun out of his pocket, pointing it at her head.

‘Drive. I’ll take you to your son. Do anything stupid, and he’ll be dead before we get there.

62

Once again, the control room was silent. The only sounds came from the radios and the monitors. The audio equipment had picked up every dreadful word.

Tom couldn’t believe what he was seeing. McGuinness was getting into the car with Emma. She would be thinking of Ollie – trusting that Finn would be taking her to her son.

The silver commander of the armed response team was issuing orders, telling his team that McGuinness was on the move and possibly on his way home. He turned to Tom and Paul Green.

‘I think we all know how this is going to end for Emma Joseph. We’re going to have to take McGuinness. Anybody disagree?’

Nobody did.

There were unmarked police cars covering all the exits to the cemetery, and Tom listened as Titan reassigned some of the detectives to follow McGuinness, who probably believed Ollie was still with Julie. Just in case he had other plans for Emma, though, they couldn’t let him out of sight.

Tom radioed Becky. ‘You’ve got at the most ten minutes to find out where Ollie is, then get out, Becky. McGuinness could be heading there. Make Julie talk. Finn’s got Emma with him, and he’s armed.’

He heard a muffled expletive from Becky, who would understand perfectly what that meant.

There was an edginess to the atmosphere in the room now, as plans were put in place to covertly tail Finn McGuinness. Any indication that he was being followed could be catastrophic for Emma.

Tom wanted to be there – to make sure that Emma was safe. He forced himself to be rational. If this wasn’t Emma, what would he do? He’d be here – in the control room – managing the situation.

Tom’s attention was diverted to one of the monitors. In the cemetery, the two remaining men were standing by the van.

‘What now?’ he asked Paul Green. ‘Why are they still there?’

‘They’re waiting for our informant. He’s the buyer.’

‘You knew it was gold, then?’

Green shook his head. ‘Not for certain. Our informant wouldn’t tell us what he’s buying – too nervous of a bent copper leaking it to Bentley. But our cyber team came across some guy on the dark web who had exchanged a load of his illegally acquired bitcoin for stolen gold – it’s regularly traded there. He’d been talking on a forum about where best to store it, and safe deposits were mentioned.’

‘And your informant?’

‘Another frequenter of the dark web. I am fairly sure this is a personal vendetta against Guy – or Ethan – Bentley. He said Bentley was setting up a heist, and that he – the informant – was going to buy the goods.’

‘So how did Bentley know the name of the bloke who was stashing the gold? He’d have needed that for the hacker to find his box number.’

‘Given who your brother was, I expect you know that a half-decent hacker can find out every small detail about a person from next to no starting information – he would have tracked back through his comment trail, sites visited, that kind of stuff, and worked out who he was.’

‘What’s your buyer doing now?’

Green tilted his head. ‘Check out the third monitor. He’s there – waiting.’

Tom followed the finger that Paul Green was pointing at the screen. A tall man in a black bomber jacket stood in the shadows invisible to Bentley and his minder. Tom could just make out a shaved head and what looked like a goatee beard.

‘He’s at the far end of the cemetery. Hang on – he’s getting his phone out.’

As the man on the monitor lifted the phone to his ear, he lifted his other hand and rubbed the top of his head.

Tom listened to Paul talking to him, asking him questions. The man lifted his hand and rubbed his head again.

Tom stared at the monitor for a moment longer.

‘Paul, can I speak to your informant please?’

Paul Green frowned. ‘What for?’

‘Will you ask him if he’ll speak to me please?’

Green shrugged.

‘Blake, I have another policeman – a Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas – who would like a word with you if possible.’

Tom would have laughed at the pseudonym Blake, had he not felt so ill, so cheated, so deceived and at the same time, so elated.

Green handed the phone across, and for a moment Tom couldn’t speak.

‘I guess I’ve stunned you into silence, little brother,’ came a voice Tom knew so well and had never expected to hear again in his life. ‘Still the white hat, I see – still putting the world to rights.’

Tom finally found the words.

‘What the fuck’s going on, Jack? What have you done?’

63

Feelings of fury, relief, joy all mingled together as Tom listened to his brother’s voice. More than anything he wanted to be in that cemetery – he wanted to punch Jack in the face, knock him to the floor, then pick him up and hold him as close as he could.

‘Why are you involved in this, Jack?’

‘I’ve always been involved. I thought you might have worked that out by now.’

Tom had indeed worked it out, even if he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. What he hadn’t realised was that Jack hadn’t been working alone. It was obvious now, though. Guy was in it with him. All those days and nights together in Jack’s room, with Tom banished. Probably they set Guy’s father up together. Either that or Jack did it and Guy figured it out. It didn’t much matter now. After that, Guy probably picked the targets and Jack hacked them.

‘Hacking’s one thing, but abduction is another.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Tom. I had nothing to do with Natasha Joseph’s abduction six years ago. My role was to hack the system, and when I found out what Guy was up to, I tried to stop it.’

‘Maybe you weren’t involved in Natasha’s kidnap – but you were still involved in planning a major robbery. That was okay, was it? When did you hit the big time, then?’ Tom asked, sarcasm dripping from his tongue to hide his distress.

‘When Guy decided I was indispensable and set his band of warriors on me to make sure I did what I was told. I was in way above my head. What had started as a bit of a lark suddenly turned serious, and Guy wasn’t prepared to cut me loose.’