The Locker (11 page)

nineteen

Less than half a
mile away,
Andy Vaslik watched as Gina and Nancy walked arm-in-arm past a parade of shops, stopping occasionally—mostly at Gina's suggestion, he figured—to study something in a window display. His opinion of the former bodyguard was improving steadily; she had Nancy fully covered and was giving Vaslik every chance to keep up with them and study their back-trail for watchers. She had clearly done this before and would be familiar with the problem of trying to run surveillance on a person of interest without blowing everyone's cover.

The sidewalks were busy with workers on their commute and early shoppers, he noted. He had no problem keeping them in sight with Gina's tall figure, but casing all the other people around them while remaining unseen would get tougher as time went by. He took out his cell phone and snapped a couple of covert pictures to check the quality.

Pretty much perfect.

After inspecting all the smaller stores, the two women approached a large supermarket car park situated on the
left-hand
side of the
road. Vaslik crossed over at an angle slightly away from them and waited at a nearby bus stop, blending in with the line and nodding genially at a couple of elderly women. He checked both ways, noting everything that moved. Nothing obvious near the two women yet, mostly other shoppers, a few kids and some older people.

Then his antennae gave a twitch. Something was different. Or someone.

There. A young guy was cruising along in their wake. He'd come right out of nowhere. Tall, bulky but moving easily, eyes definitely locked on Gina and Nancy. Dark coat and pants, could be an office worker who worked out.

Vaslik tensed. A grey van was approaching slowly on the same side. Maybe a coincidence but it was moving just a little too slow. It drifted into the side of the road and stopped thirty yards behind the women, the driver flicking a hand to allow a couple of pedestrians across. Now why would he do that with a crossing just yards away? The
near-side
wheels were almost touching the kerb on
double-yellow
lines, which was bad positioning for any vehicle on a busy road. Was he stopping or not?

The two women moved out, ready to cross the road to the supermarket, unaware of the potential threat. Vaslik went to full alert. This didn't look good.

He took covert snaps of the tall man and the van, but couldn't get a facial of the driver or see how many others were inside. Then he turned away and pretended to take a call, in case any of the watchers picked up on his presence. When he turned back again the women were on the edge of the kerb, still checking traffic.

But wait; Gina must have sensed something. She was tugging Nancy away from the kerb, her shoulders tensed. They walked further along to the crossing. It was busier there and there was safety in numbers.

He forced himself to relax. Fraser knew what she was doing.

He moved away from the bus line and snapped away, catching faces going in the same direction as the women; another man, young and fit looking, dark skin; two women in gym clothing beneath fashionable tops; another woman hurrying along and nearly getting clipped by a taxi cutting the turn into the car park.

The van had disappeared and the tall, bulky guy was continuing on down the street, paying no attention as Gina and Nancy crossed and disappeared into the supermarket.

Vaslik followed, long strides eating up the ground until he was inside and on their tails. He felt a rush of relief as he spotted the two familiar backs down the first aisle, with Nancy pushing a trolley.

Gina turned and looked back, no doubt sensing his presence, and made a subtle
A-OK
sign with her thumb and forefinger. She had it covered.

He stayed around, anyway. He'd seen enough to know they were being watched. And it wasn't by one person, either; it was a team.

Ruth was waiting when the two women returned. It was nine-thirty and Nancy was walking fast, she noted, impatient to be back in familiar surroundings, her brief taste of normal fast dying on its feet. As they walked in the front door, Ruth checked the monitor and saw movement at the back gate.

Vaslik.

When they were all gathered in the living room, Ruth addressed Nancy. “You had a visitor.”

The tone of her voice was enough. Everybody stopped moving. Gina glanced towards the windows, Vaslik looked interested and Nancy turned to stone.

“Who?” Her face was ashen, expecting the worst.

“A woman named Clarisse—from No. 38. Young, heavy specs, a bit grungy, slight American accent?”

“Clarisse? I don't know—” Nancy walked to the window and looked through the net curtain, her mouth moving as she counted off the numbers. When she tuned back, she looked sick.

“No. 38?”

“That's what she said. Problem?”

“It's wrong. It's impossible.” She wobbled and looked very pale.

“Why?” Ruth hurried across to her, offering her arm. Gina moved, too, ready to step in. “Why, Nancy?”

“Because I don't know anyone called Clarisse. And that house has been empty since before we moved in. The owner's in a care home.”

Gina accompanied Nancy up to her bedroom while Ruth called Cruxys with an update report on events and asked for their medical consultant to come round urgently. From almost breezy while at the supermarket, according to Gina, she'd gone to near-collapse on hearing about the woman visitor.

“So what's going on?” Ruth demanded, as they gathered in the kitchen. She'd been tempted to dismiss Nancy's claim about the empty house, but her instant reaction to news of the caller had been too compelling. Now with this latest turn of events the situation seemed to have accelerated.

Vaslik filled them in on what he'd observed, keeping it brief. Too much detail sometimes led to
over-elaboration
which could cloud the real issue. “I'm guessing there's more than one person on this. And whoever they are, they're good.”

“A team? Are you sure?”

“Has to be. I made at least three, maybe more if the van was involved.”

Ruth chewed it over. In spite of her earlier reservations about Vaslik, so much had happened since first being paired up with him that she realised she trusted him implicitly. If his gut feeling told him something, it was good enough for her. “Let's go over this in order. Gina, what did you see when you were out?”

Gina described noticing the same van as Vaslik, and a tall man,
well-built
and heavy across the upper body, like a weightlifter. Both had seemed out of place, yet neither had appeared directly threatening towards Nancy. “You see people and vehicles that stand out all the time; it doesn't mean they're a danger. But we're on the lookout for possible threats, so we'd notice anything out of the ordinary. Other than that, I have to say I didn't
see
anyone. But I agree with Andy: something was going on. It had that feel, you know?”

She knew. “Anything else, either of you?”

Vaslik nodded. “Don't forget I could see from an angle Gina couldn't. The tall guy was focussed on them, I'm certain. But you'd have to have been in my position to see it.”

“And the van? Could it have been a snatch team?” The idea of another potential abduction was alarming, because the only target they could have had in mind was Nancy. Was that to put more pressure on Michael Hardman, picking up his wife as well as his daughter? It was a risky manoeuvre holding two hostages instead of one, especially the second being the mother. It would pile on the pressure of keeping them isolated. This group had to know what they were doing.

“I don't know. If it wasn't, the only thing I can think of is it might have been a local drugs intercept team and we happened to pitch across their line of travel.” As he spoke he was on his cell phone calling up the pictures of the grey van and the tall man. He passed it to Ruth and she began flicking through the images.

She stopped, her mouth open.

“Who's this?” She pointed at the screen.

Vaslik took the phone and checked the image. It showed the van turning into the supermarket, after Gina and Nancy had walked into the car park. The tall man was in the background on the other side, walking away. “That's the tall guy. He cut away and disappeared. I'm pretty sure it was a
hand-off
.” He meant that another follower had taken over, to avoid the same face coming up too often.

“Not him. Her.” She was pointing at a female figure dodging the front bumper of a taxi turning into the car park. The woman was slim, wearing a coat and jeans and a colourful beanie hat jammed down over her head. But no glasses.

“What about her?”

“It's the woman called Clarisse—from the house that's supposed to be empty.”

twenty

The three of them
swung into action. The woman might have been the genuine article, going about her business of calling on a neighbour. A friendly gesture from one person to another, commonplace and harmless.

But their combined instincts and experience said otherwise. Even given the trauma of having her daughter kidnapped, Nancy wouldn't have made a mistake about knowing such an unusual name or the fact that a house just along the street was supposed to be empty.

Gina checked that the doors and windows were locked tight and all the camera monitors were in full working order, while Vaslik took a walk out to the rear gate and the lane outside. He came back and shook his head. All clear, with no obvious surveillance on the house. If they were there, they were being very cautious.

Ruth was standing at the front window, studying the building at No. 38 and hatching a plan of action. She was too far away to see much detail without binoculars, and without investigating closer, couldn't tell if they were currently under surveillance. But she had to gauge the effects of doing nothing against the risk of running into the mystery woman and her colleagues at the house in question.

“Do you think they know we're around?” Gina queried.

“They know somebody is. But not who. They've seen you with Nancy at the shops and seen me here in the house. That doesn't mean anything. Friends drop by all the time and people put on an act, even under stress. Hopefully they haven't seen Slik yet.”

“I vote we go make a house call,” said Vaslik calmly. “If they're gone they might have got careless and left a trace. It's better than sitting here wondering.”

“What if they're in there?” said Gina.

Vaslik merely smiled. He looked as if he would enjoy finding out.

“I agree with Slik.” Ruth looked at Gina. “We go take a look. Can you stay here in case the consultant comes round? We won't be long.”

Gina nodded reluctantly. She wanted in on the action.

Ruth and Vaslik left through the rear gate and circled the block, scanning the area for parked cars with people inside. Nothing doing. Everything looked normal; houses, gardens, cars, voices, a loud burst of rock music from an open garage where a man had his head under the bonnet of a car.

They entered the road running past the Hardman house and approached No. 38 side by side, two people chatting casually, nothing out of the ordinary.

Just as they reached it, Vaslik took a deep breath and said softly, “Keep walking and don't look at it.”

He'd just realised that this was the house where the real estate agent had been taking photographs.

“What's got you all fired up?” Ruth queried when they were fifty yards past the property. “Did you see something?”

“Maybe nothing.” He explained about the photographer, and they debated abandoning their house call.

“It could have been a genuine agent,” Ruth countered. “People do sell houses all the time—even empty ones.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “But why this one right now? It's spooky.”

“So what do we do?”

He chewed it over for another few paces, then said, “Let's go for it. If they're in there, at least we'll know it. If it's empty, we can tick it off the list.”

They turned round and walked back.

The paved area in front of the target house was bare, with dead leaf mould crushed into jagged gaps between the stones and a layer of gritty dust over the top. Twin pot plants held the remains of dead bushes, long dried out and abandoned, their branches decorated with bits of paper debris.

“No recent traffic,” Vaslik murmured. He sounded very calm but Ruth could feel the tension radiating off him. He aimed for the side gate leading to the rear garden. “Won't be long.”

Ruth let him go, eyeing the upper windows which had grey net curtains hanging limply behind dirty glass. The lower windows were impenetrable behind vertical blinds, the original royal blue colour of the fabric faded in places from sunlight and layered in dust. All the frames showed signs of peeling paint and gaps in the pointing.

Ruth stepped up to the front door and used the knocker. It echoed emptily back at her. She gave it a count of five and tried again. If anybody was in, they must have nerves of steel. If not, it might distract them long enough for Vaslik to take a good look and see what they might be up against. If anyone inside tried slipping out the back, they'd run slap into him. For some reason the thought encouraged her.

Nothing.

She followed the route Vaslik had taken down a paved path, past a small garden shed and a greenhouse grimy with moss and ancient cobwebs. Both structures were empty. The path opened out onto a patio surrounded by a
foot-high
brick wall topped with coping stones.

Vaslik was standing by a set of
wood-framed
French doors, peering through the glass at the inside. He was holding a lethal looking folding knife in his hand, the point inserted in the crack near the lock. He gave a sharp twist and the door sprang open.

Seconds later he was inside.

“Care to show me how you did that?” Ruth asked, following him in and closing the door behind her.

“Session three from the DHS Basic Investigation Techniques manual,” he said, snapping the knife shut. “Somebody's been camping out in here. Smell it?”

She did. The air smelled musty and damp, of abandonment. And something else.

Takeaway food.

They checked the rooms quickly, not knowing how long they had got before Clarisse returned. The house had been emptied of all furnishings, and each sound echoed back at them. Slik ran upstairs while Ruth did the downstairs. Kitchen, utility, small breakfast room, toilet and living room. All empty.

She checked the sink. Water lay pooled in the bottom. She dipped her finger in it and sniffed. It smelled fresh. She gave the tap a shake. There was a gurgle and a spiral of residual water trickled out into her hand. She tasted it.

A faint chemical residue, but also fresh.

She went back to check the toilet. Whoever had used it last had forgotten to flush. She wasn't about to take the same taste test but she was willing to bet that the contents were not more than a few hours old.

She stepped through to the front window and teased open a slat in the blinds. From here she had a clear view of the Hardman's front door. She looked down at the floor, which was
wood-block
. Then she got down on her knees and checked closer. The blocks were covered in a layer of dust … except for the area right in front of the window. She felt a kick of excitement.

This had been an O.P.—an observation point.

She had no problem imagining the woman named Clarisse on her knees here; even though the house was empty, it would have been essential to remain still this close to the window, to avoid catching the eye of a casual observer or a neighbour with too much time on their hands.

Vaslik entered the room and saw what she was doing. “They watched from upstairs, too. There's a flattened area in the carpet. Great O.P.”

“Did you check the bathroom?”

“Used but not flushed. The water's on but they wouldn't have wanted to alert the neighbours.”

They left the empty house and walked back the way they had come. Neither spoke; the situation didn't need it. It was patently obvious that the Hardmans had been under observation before and after the kidnap, and the woman in the beanie hat had come over to check what was happening before they made a move on Nancy.

It meant the other side was getting impatient.