The Child Taker & Slow Burn (9 page)

“It wouldn’t be the first elaborate hoax manufactured by a family member, and none of the family adults were there at the time of the abduction, so we have to keep that door open.” She rolled her eyes towards the press. “This lot don’t help one bit. People see missing children convert into headlines, exclusive interviews with the family and pound signs.”

“Do you think they were stolen to order?”

She looked at him hard, and swallowed. The cigarette had burned to the filter and she tossed it onto the lawn before answering. Tank frowned and picked it up. He rolled it between his finger and thumb.

“It doesn’t matter what I think happened, we have to keep an open mind.” She started the engine and smiled sadly. “There is a Major Investigation Team working flat out on this case, which has thirty senior detectives headed up by our most experienced Detective Inspector, Alec Ramsay. I’m a very small cog in a very big wheel.” 

“Is he any good?” Tank raised an eyebrow.

“The best around at the moment, earmarked as the next Superintendent they say.”

“Good. If you were him, what would you think is happening?”

“That’s pure speculation,” she smiled. 

“Granted, but I’d appreciate your opinion.” He stepped away from the car. She closed the door and opened the window so that they could still converse.

“Okay, yes. I think that they were stolen to order,” she said slowly.

“And you must have details of the usual suspects when this type of crime occurs?” He pushed. 

“John, do you have any idea how many paedophiles are on the sex offenders’ register in Cheshire alone?”

“Surprise me.”

“Over five hundred, and another four hundred inside doing time.” She took a deep breath. “That is just one county.”

“That’s a lot of perverts to look at.” Tank sighed at the enormity of the task facing the police investigation. “What are your thoughts about the chances of recovering them?”

“Alive?”

“Well that would be the most favourable outcome surely?” Tank raised an eyebrow at her frankness.

She took a deep breath, realising that what she’d said had shaken him. “We have a guideline when we’re dealing with child abduction, and it’s called ‘The Golden Hour’. The odds of recovering an abducted child alive outside of that first hour get progressively lower and lower. The length of time that the twins have been missing means that their chances are slim.”

“How slim?”

“Anorexic. In child abduction murder cases, over ninety five percent of the victims are dead within three hours of being kidnapped,” she explained. The statistics were frightening, but he needed to know what they were against.

“If they were stolen specifically to order then the percentages become more favourable?”

“Yes, but if they were taken to order, then its either paedophiles, or someone wants a readymade family. Either way they need to get those children out of the country pronto.” She shook her head as she realised just how negative all this must have sounded.

“I’m assuming there’s an all-ports warning in force?”

“It’s one of the first things the Major Investigating Team would have done when they were allocated to this abduction. They deal with cases like this every day, you know,” she said sarcastically. Tank stood up to his full height and leaned on the roof of the car. He looked towards the house and saw Karl watching them from the living room window, looking tired and alone. Hayley noticed him too.

“I’m sorry if I sounded patronising, I didn’t mean to. You know that if you come up with anything, we may be able to help you,” Tank said.

“How do you mean?”

“I can get access to things that the police cannot.”

“Well I’ll bear it in mind, but I’m just a lowly constable on secondment with family liaison. I’m no detective,” she replied cautiously.

“Okay, but if anything comes up which hampers the investigation then let me know and I can make it go away.”

Sylvia looked into his eyes again and saw steel in there, which frightened her a little. She wasn’t sure what he meant by his last comment, but she was sure that every word was true. Tank waved and walked back towards the front door. He paused to look back a second before stepping into the house and his huge shoulders filled the doorframe. Sylvia picked up her mobile phone. She needed to tell her boss that Karl was possibly having an affair with his brother’s wife, and about the arrival of the grandfather and his friend, both members of a Special Forces unit.

Tank watched her leave through the throng of paparazzi; the camera flashes gave a strobe effect as she drove by them. He closed the door and reached into his pocket for his mobile, and made a telephone call of his own.

“Grace, are you nearly there?” He asked.

“We’re pulling into the campsite now,” she replied.

“Good, are the police still there?”

“No, it’s deserted. There’s some crime scene tape to the left near the woods, but the forested area on the opposite side is clear. Have you spoken to the police?”

“Briefly,” he said. Karl walked into the room and then realised that Tank was making a call.

“Sorry, I didn’t realise,” he said, embarrassed in his own home. Tank waved and said. “No problem, it’s work, I’ll be a minute.” Karl left the room and closed the door behind him.

“Sorry about that, but I need to be careful about what I say,” he said quietly.

“Okay, what leads have they got?”

“Nothing.” He sighed again. “The family liaison officer indicated that the investigation team are looking at the family for the abduction. None of them were actually there when the kids were taken and so they’re all suspects.”

“Oh my God, that’s ridiculous.” Grace was shocked.

“Not so ridiculous. I overheard the liaison officer asking Hayley if Karl was having an affair with his brother’s wife.” Tank whispered into the phone.

“Oh dear, that puts a different perspective on it,” she said slowly.

“Exactly, you can see why the investigation is focusing in on the family,” Tank said. “I don’t buy it one bit, all they are doing is wasting time and allowing the trail to go cold.”

“We’ll have a good look at the scene, and I’ll call you if we find anything.”

“Grace,” Tank said.

“What?”

“We need to get one step ahead of the kidnappers, and at the moment the police are miles behind them and looking in the wrong direction.”

“The light’s fading fast here, we’ll get on it now. If we find anything then you’ll know about it first.”

Chapter Twelve

Coniston Water

Grace Farrington crouched down and touched a clump of flattened grass. It was about a yard away from a barbed wire fence which separated the campsite from the woods. Nettles and dock leaves grew in clumps along the edge of the trees and brambles snaked around the fence posts. To the left, the grassy slopes ran gently down towards the lake. To the right was the road which led to the nearest village, and directly behind her was the woods through which the twins were carried off; or at least that’s what the police thought so far. It was a cloudy evening and across the lake in the distance mist shrouded the peak of Coniston Old Man.

“There’s a footprint here,” Grace said. Tara was a few yards away studying the area.

“Could be where the father entered the woods?”

Grace moved closer to the fence and looked at the sharp metal barbs. There were two barbs with a dark brown substance on the tips of them. “Someone entered here. I think this is blood.” She said as she took a small plastic tube from her belt and swabbed the barbed wire. She placed the swab into the tube and then sealed it. Beyond the wire, the undergrowth was thick, and there was a green carpet of brambles. “I spoke to the campsite owner earlier, and he said that the only time animals graze on this land is through the winter months, so anything we find, tracks or blood, is human.”

              “What about pets?”

              “No pets allowed.”

“Well the brambles look pretty dense here, and he was badly scratched around the ankles, it would fit.” Tara pointed into the trees.

“Let’s see if we can follow his trail.” Grace pulled the top wire up, and Tara climbed through the fence. When she got through, she reciprocated the action to allow Grace to follow suit.

“The branches are broken there.” Grace pointed to the base of a sycamore tree. The lower branches were snapped off, but the exposed wood was still pale in colour and slightly damp to the touch. “It’s a recent break.”

“It looks like he’s gone in at an angle,” Tara noted. In daylight, the most obvious route was straight on, but the evidence said that Karl had progressed through the trees at a tangent to the fence.

“Well it was dark, and he was moving blindly towards the noise,” Grace mused.

“The brambles are ripped over there, and his statement said that he’d stumbled over and then got up again.” There was a thick swathe of undergrowth and thorny brambles ripped from the forest floor and clumped together. Tara moved to the right and they walked on for twenty yards or so. There was a gap between two oak trees and the vegetation on the floor looked damaged and torn. The woods opened up a little beneath the majestic oaks, competition for floor space was fierce in the natural world, and vegetation struggled to survive beneath them. The brambles didn’t extend this far into the woods, and the forest floor was a dark mat of rotting twigs and leaves in various stages of decomposition. There were clear scuffmarks leading away from the clearing towards a dry streambed.

“Over there,” Grace said. At the edge of the dry stream was a large chestnut tree. Its roots were exposed by the power of the flowing water that had once run by it.

“What can you see Grace?”

“The perfect hiding place.” She approached the tree roots and bent down to touch a dark line on the bark. “Look here, something was resting against this for some time.”

“I see, and it was rectangular in shape judging by that line in the moss.”

“Exactly, just like a speaker.”

“Why didn’t the police look in here?”

“Because they had the speaker, and their priority was the wood through which the twins were taken and finding a getaway vehicle. They’ve planned to come back here later. ”

“Okay, so we think we know where the decoy was hidden, now what.”

“Well my theory is that the speaker was put here well before the abduction was attempted, and then they waited for the right time to turn it on.” Grace stood up and looked around the clearing. “We followed the father’s tracks easily enough, so let’s try and find the kidnapper’s trail. They had to come here to leave the speaker.” Grace walked along the dry streambed in the opposite direction to the one that they’d come in. Tara walked the other way at ninety degrees to Grace’s path.

“How far away would the source of the signal have to be?”

“Wireless speakers generally fall into two categories.” Grace answered as she walked. “Infrared and radio frequency, both operated by remote control, which beams a signal to the speakers. But if they used infrared, there couldn’t be any obstacles between the source and the receiver.”

“So we have to assume they used radio frequency.”

“We’ll assume that for now, but unless we locate the source we’ll have to wait until the police have done their forensic tests.” Grace noticed that a boulder in the streambed had been dislodged. The exposed soil beneath was dark and damp. Someone had walked here recently.

“Over here,” Grace shouted. She crouched next to the boulder and followed the streambed with her eyes. “Since infrared requires a direct line of sight, any objects in the way can prevent the wireless speakers from receiving. I’m guessing that wireless speakers using radio frequency waves to transmit the signal would have to be no more than a hundred metres from the source. You take that side of the stream, and I’ll take this side.”

Tara nodded and stepped carefully down into the dry stream. They paced slowly, heads down, studying the ground before them. “There.” Tara pointed to the top of a rock where the moss had been scraped off. Grace followed her lead. “Do you think that the source will still be here?”

“Well, think about it. If you had snatched two five year old children from their tent, would you hang around to retrieve it?”

Tara shook her head. She spotted a piece of paper in the long grass which lined the dry streambed. It was a chocolate bar wrapper. She moved the grass away from it and looked again.

“Have you found anything?” Grace asked.

“No, all the ink has been washed away from it. It’s been here for months.” She left the wrapper where it lay and moved on. “I haven’t been evidence gathering since I left the Met.” Tara had joined London’s Metropolitan police force as a degree entrant, and was a promising young officer until she was seconded into the Armed Response Unit. She quickly became one of the top-ranking sharpshooters and reacted well in live fire situations, gaining a commendation for taking down a bank robber during a shootout. Although she loved the unit, when she was approached to trial for the Terrorist Task Force she jumped at the chance. She had no regrets, despite the move costing her marriage. The relationship had always been shaky as her husband was intensely jealous of her working with men, and of her success. One day Tara had enough. She packed a small case and left without so much as a goodbye and she hadn’t spoken to him since. Their divorce had been brokered via solicitors and she never looked back. Her workmates were her family now. Grace could be prickly to say the least but the rest of the counter-terrorist unit were friendly and supportive.

“Look here.” Grace’s voice interrupted her thoughts. On the floor was a cone-shaped red plastic top, less than an inch in length. “What do you make of that?”

“It looks like the top from a tube of glue. Super glue?”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“We shouldn’t be looking for something on the floor. He’s stuck it to a tree.” Tara looked around the immediate area and checked the trunks of the nearby trees. “I’ll check the clearing, you take the streambed.” Tara could tell by the look on Grace’s face that she didn’t appreciate being told what to do, and she smiled to placate her. Grace turned and walked in the other direction without saying a word. Tara reached the clearing and then tracked backwards, checking the trunks, boughs and branches of the trees that she past.

“Over here,” Grace’s voice called. “We’ve got something.” Tara walked back up the streambed to where they had separated. She saw Grace twenty yards on, crouching next to a thick oak tree. As Tara approached, she could see the silver glint of a metallic object.

“What is it?”

“Some kind of voice recorder.”

“Glued to the tree?”

“Yes, just like you said, Sherlock” Grace joked, her animosity to her colleague forgotten for the moment. “And look what else we have here.”

Tara bent low and brought her head level with Grace. The glue was hardened into a clear plastic resin, and behind the recorder a tiny fibre shimmered in the light. “Is it hair?”

“I think so.” Grace took a small evidence blade from her belt pack and prised the recorder from the wood.

“Shouldn’t we inform the police?” Tara smiled.

“We test it first, and then we’ll inform them, agreed?”

“Agreed, let’s get this stuff back to the lab.”