Driving into Darkness (DI Angus Henderson 2) (21 page)

DI Henderson walked slowly into Gary Larner’s house. If there had been an alarm, he would have been shocked, as he couldn’t see a tell-tale box outside and given the general state of disrepair and neglect all around, he would imagine an alarm would be way down low on Larner’s list of DIY priorities. Sure enough there wasn’t, and he stepped into the kitchen confident he wouldn’t be scurrying back out twenty-seconds later, trying to make it back to the car before the ear-splitting bell sounded.

Kitchens were good places to hide things as storage jars and closed food containers looked innocent enough until opened, but he didn’t bother looking as he was certain what he was looking for, wouldn't be there. He didn’t know what it was, short of evidence to prove Larner's involvement in Sir Mathew’s murder, but he was sure if he came across something suspicious, he would recognise it.

Larner’s study was adjacent to the living-room and at first glance, looked like it contained more kit than the Florida Space Centre as it was jam-packed with all manner of computer gear, including three huge screens, two keyboards, a powerful looking server, and on another table, printers, scanners and black boxes all twinkling, all powered-up. He wanted to take a look at one of the screens but worried that as soon as he touched it, the whole room would light up like a beacon, so he kept well away from anything which would hasten such an unfortunate event.

Venetian blinds covered the window and when he looked closer, they were lined in a thick layer of dust, suggesting they hadn’t been opened for a while. He pulled the cord and allowed a little light from the streetlight outside to filter inside. Aside from the computer gear, he could see a bookcase, filing cabinet, cupboard, and pile of stuff in the corner, which would take a four-man SOCO team a week to look through.

He closed the blinds and switched on the torch. He took a quick look inside the filing cabinet and the cupboard, but soon realised that to make any sense out of it, he would have to go through every file one by one. The normal course of action in such circumstances would be for him to obtain a search warrant, but after Harris's tirade earlier today, he would be reaching for his P45 faster than Wild Bill Hickok could draw his Colt Navy revolvers. He needed time to do this thoroughly but at this precise moment, time was one commodity in very short supply.

He switched off the torch and went off in search of Larner’s bedroom. He reached the top of the stairs when heard the sound of a car stopping outside. He moved to the window at the end of the hall and peered out through grubby net curtains.

Adjacent to Larner’s drive, a car was parked and he knew it hadn’t been there when he first arrived. The silence that followed was oppressive, as if the room was filled with thick, dense smoke and it was a relief when the driver’s door opened. It stayed open, swaying back and forth without anyone appearing until he realised the driver was either talking to someone inside the car, or trying to retrieve something from the glove box.

A few seconds later, a man appeared. He had seen Larner’s mug shot in his personnel file but with no idea if he was large or small, fat or thin, and in any case, this guy was too far away and the light from the nearby street lamp too weak to tell if it was him or not.

The guy stood there looking at Larner’s house. Henderson was sure he had closed the back door but did he leave the venetian blinds just as he found them? In legal terms, he was up the Red River Rapids without a paddle, canoe, or life jacket as breaking and entering into house without a warrant, not even with more watertight evidence than he had, would spell the end of his career and a possible criminal prosecution.

A few seconds later, a woman exited the passenger door. She was irate and intent on carrying on with whatever conversation they had been having in the car. For a minute or so their movements were acted out in slow motion, as they seemed more focused on their argument than moving away from the car.

The guy turned and locked the car and the couple walked towards Larner’s driveway. Henderson was about to leg it downstairs to the back door when they stopped, turned, and crossed the road. They passed under a street lamp and the realisation hit him. He carried a bottle of wine and she flowers, the invitees to someone’s dinner party but with a measure of doubt as to which house they were going to. He was glad he hadn’t been invited, as he wasn’t sure the warring couple would make such good company, and knowing his luck he would be seated right next to them.

He waited a few minutes more, until he heard the slam of the door of the house opposite, before making his way downstairs and checking the blind in the study. The blind looked fine but as he emerged from the study, he spotted a door underneath the staircase.

If it was a cellar, it was a rarity as this valuable extra space had been phased out of UK house building over the years since the Second World War, due to cost constraints, but it was a great place to hide all manner of stuff. He turned the handle but the door was locked and instinctively he did what he used to do at his grandmother’s rambling old house in Inverness, he ran his hand across the top of the doorframe.

The key was large, metal and ornate and looked more like an offensive weapon than a door entry device, but when he fitted it into the keyhole, it turned and pulled back the bolt with the same, sure snap of a modern, well-oiled mortice. He opened the door and peered inside. It was dark but he could see enough to know he was looking into a cellar and not a broom cupboard.

If sheds, greenhouses, lofts, and garages held unknown calamities which could kill and maim the unwary, cellars were ten times more dangerous and one time he fell down a steep flight of steps as they started immediately on opening the door. He switched on the torch and after making sure of his footing, ventured inside and closed the door, but not before pocketing the key, as there was no way he wanted to be locked inside by accident or on purpose.

Standing at the top of the stairs he panned the torch around the wall until he found a light switch and using the combination of the weak light spilling up from a bulb in the cellar and the torch, descended the stairs. Near the bottom, he ducked under low-lying rafters and looked inside.

Expecting to find boxes, old books, and discarded household appliances and furniture, it took two takes to realise there was a fair amount of those but behind them, a woman was chained to one wall and a man to the other.

They were hard to spot against the grey walls as their clothes and faces were as grimy as their surroundings. He ran over to the woman and knelt down to loosen the rope around her hands, while bombarding her with a volley of questions before realising she had something in her mouth, gagging her.

He removed the gag and with the only handkerchief in his pocket, wiped her dirty and blood stained face. He guessed her age at early forties with long black hair, now tousled and matted. She sported a fat lip where dark, red blood had coagulated, and a black eye. In addition to the rope tied around her hands, her leg was secured at the ankle to a long, metal chain, set into the concrete of the wall and impossible for him to undo without bolt cutters.

‘Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?’

‘My name is Marta Stevenson,’ she said in an American accent after spitting out some gunk in her mouth. ‘Who are you?’

Marta Stevenson? Wasn’t she the microprocessor designer Lawton was praising earlier? ‘I’m Detective Inspector Angus Henderson, Sussex Police.’

‘Thank God,’ she said, her face lighting up. ‘You’ve come to rescue us.’

‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he said, not wishing to tell her the truth, that he was there under his own initiative. He realised he needed reinforcements and reached for his phone but when he tried to dial, he found there wasn’t a signal. A cellar offered many advantages but this wasn’t one of them.

‘I need to go upstairs and phone for help, I can’t get a phone signal here.’

‘Don’t go, please. Don’t leave us. He says he's going to drown us. He’s only gone to get stuff for his boat and then he’s going to dump us both at sea.’

‘Who? Where?’

‘Larner, Gary Larner says he’s taking us to Brighton Marina where he has a boat and he’s gonna take it out to sea and drown us. We were kidnapped yesterday.’

On hearing the word ‘we’ it reminded him of the other prisoner behind him. He turned and moved towards him. If Marta looked bruised and bashed, her companion appeared to his untrained eye, to be in bad shape, as he had a large cut on the side of his head that was leaking blood down the side of his face, he had a knife slash on his upper arm, and his leg was tucked to the side at an odd angle, making him think it was broken.

He looked dead but when he felt for a pulse, he was alive but in need of immediate hospital treatment. He tried moving him into a more comfortable position and to make sure his airways weren’t blocked but stopped when he heard a strange noise. He listened, and heard it again. There was a creak on the cellar stairs.

‘Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my basement?’

Henderson turned. Gary Larner stood at the bottom of the cellar stairs. He was smaller than Henderson expected, about five-nine but solidly built. His hair was a tousled mop of long, sandy-brown strands, making him look wild, reinforced by the angry scowl and wide-eyed glare on his face.

‘I am Detective Inspector Henderson of Sussex Police and I’m arresting you for the kidnap and assault of these two people.’

Larner strode towards him. Before he could react, Larner punched him in the face. He fell back in pain but as Larner swung another, he ducked, but not enough as it still made contact and knocked him to the ground and into a pile of cardboard boxes.

His head was still swimming when he felt Larner reach down and grab hold of his jacket and attempt to pull him upright. As if in a dream, Henderson pulled up his knees, planted the soles of his feet on Larner’s chest and pushed with all his might. Larner staggered back but lost his footing when he tripped over the prone figure of Marta Stevenson and smacked his head on an exposed water pipe.

Henderson struggled to stand upright, a simple task made way more difficult as he was standing on cardboard boxes, many of which were half-empty and when he tried to lever himself up, they collapsed, reminding him of trying to move around his yacht 'Mingary' on a rough sea.

He got to his feet at the same time Larner got to his. Henderson’s head cleared quickly but Larner's didn't and he staggered around like a Friday night drunk, a glassy look in his eyes and in his hand he held a gun. Larner shook his head and slapped his face while waving the gun to and fro, trying to maintain his balance and shift the fog clouding his brain. He had the look and smile of a Friday night inebriate, slow and lopsided.

‘Think you can come in here and fuck everything up for me copper? Except my boat ain’t so big and there’s only space for these two fuckers,’ he said, flicking the barrel of the gun towards the woman. ‘So I guess, I’ll have to kill you now and dump your body overboard later. But wait a minute Gary. You’re not coming back, are you? No, I’m not copper, sorry about this. So what will you do Gary?’ Theatrically, he put his index finger over his lips as if thinking.

‘Why don’t you let these people go?’ Henderson said. ‘This man needs urgent medical help.’

‘Medical help, eh? Ha, what a good joke. Where Sanjay’s going, the little fishes will give him all the help he needs. Won’t they Sanjay?’

‘You could–’

‘Shut up copper,’ he bellowed. ‘I’m thinking.’

His eyes narrowed and a devious smile creased his face, the smile of a psychopath planning his next kill. ‘Yeah, I know what it is. I know just what to do,’ he said, ‘Gary comes to the rescue once again.’ He raised the gun.

To his surprise, Henderson didn’t close his eyes as he thought he would, when facing instant death. He wanted to look this madman in the eye, wanted to imprint his face as a lasting memory in his brain. Slowly, slowly his fingers tightened around the handle of the gun, his face contorted in a concentrated frown. He saw movement in the trigger finger.

Out of the corner of his eye, something moved behind Larner, the gun went off with a boom, nearly deafening him in such a confined space and to his surprise, Larner crumpled up in pain.

At first, Henderson assumed Larner shot himself as he couldn’t feel any pain, but he soon realised Stevenson whacked him on the shin with a slack bit of her leg chain. Henderson threw himself at his assailant, catching him in the midriff in a clumsy tackle and the two men careered into the empty void at the back of the cellar, the gun clattering to the floor somewhere behind them.

Larner tripped and fell but Henderson still maintained a grip on his jacket and they tumbled to the ground, Henderson on top and Larner on the bottom, breaking the DI's fall. They rolled together on the floor trading blows. Henderson was getting the better of him but many of his punches were ineffective as he couldn’t get a good swing and doing nothing to subdue the struggling Larner. Just then, Larner kneed him the groin.

He doubled up in agony and despite tears in his eyes and the inside of his head experiencing an explosion of colour as if peering through a child’s kaleidoscope, he forced them open as no way did he want to lose sight of this slippery bastard even for a second. Instead of teeing up for another blow, Larner hobbled across the floor towards the stairs and after grabbing the banister and holding it for a second or two for support, he disappeared up the cellar stairs.

Gingerly, Henderson forced himself upright but as soon as he did so, he felt giddy. He waited a few seconds and despite vehement protestations from Stevenson to stay with them, he headed up the stairs. The front door lay wide open, blowing in the chilled night air and making the sweat on his face feel clammy. He crossed the threshold and looked outside, in time to see the rear end of a Subaru Impreza disappear over the short driveway and roar off down the road.

He pulled out his phone and this time it did have a signal. ‘Control? This is DI Henderson, Serious Crimes Unit. I need an ambulance and two patrol cars to Bolnore Road in Haywards Heath.’ He turned to look at the front door. ‘The number of the house is...sorry there’s only a house name. It’s called The Cedars, that’s C-E-D-A-R-S. Inside the house, two people are chained to a wall in the cellar, so they’ll need cutting gear and one of the victims is in a bad way. Have you got all this?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘I am now in pursuit of a grey or silver Subaru Impreza heading out of Haywards Heath to destination unknown. See if you can get the number from the DVLA, the car belongs to one Gary Larner, L-A-R-N-E-R at the Bolnore Road address. When you get it, put it out on ANPR straight away but flag him as armed and extremely dangerous and not to be approached.’

He ran to his car and drove after Larner. At the junction of Bolnore Road and the A272, he waited for a line of cars to pass but couldn’t see which way Larner went. He knew he owned a boat at Brighton Marina but would he still go there after his plans had been revealed? Henderson didn’t know much about him, whether he had a mother in Maidstone, a brother in Bradford, or a friend in Farnborough, or if he even possessed a passport, and so he didn’t have a clue where he was going. By the time he reached the A23, offering the choice of north to London or south to Brighton, his mind was made up.

He called DS Walters.

‘Hello sir, how are you? Which pub are you in? Are you looking for some company to come and cheer you up?’

‘What the hell are you on about?’

‘I heard Harris mouthing off about the interviews we did last week. In fact, I think the whole office heard him. I imagine you’re sitting in some pub drowning them.’

‘What me? No chance, it’s not my style. Now listen up. I’ve just found two of Markham’s software designers chained up in Gary Larner’s house. At least I think that’s who they are.’

‘Who’s Gary Larner?’

‘A guy who used to work for Markham but he got booted out for taking dope and entertaining girls on company premises. He was working on a secret project but thinks Markham cheated him out of the profits.’

‘I’m with you now.’

‘He kidnapped the leaders of the team working on this secret project and he was planning to drown them before I turned up.’

‘Bloody hell. Where is he now?’

‘I’m in pursuit or at least I think I am, unless he’s headed off to the airport or a train station. I’m on the way to Brighton Marina.’

‘Why do you think he’s heading there?’

‘It’s where he keeps his boat and after dumping the two captives overboard and shooting me, I think he was probably going to leg it across the Channel to France or Belgium.’

‘I take it he didn’t shoot you?’

‘You’re right, I’m more or less intact.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it as he sounds a right nutter. Have you arranged back-up?’

‘No, because I can't tell them exactly where to go. I might be wrong about the marina.’

‘You’ll need back-up in case you run into him again, and your hunch is as good as any. I’ll set it up.’

‘Cheers. Where are you now?’

‘Still in the office.’

‘Don’t you have a home to go to?’

‘We spent so much time talking about the barney between you and Harris, I didn’t get anything done. I get the feeling I’ll start paying for it now though, as I think you’re going to keep me here all night. Hey, I’ve got some good news for you. Mathew Markham’s Bentley has been found.’

‘What? I’m amazed.’

‘Me too. It was discovered in one of the access roads leading into the Ashdown Forest, a burned out shell. An ignominious end to a beautiful car and hardly the behaviour of a bunch of car thieves, intent making a quick buck, don’t you think?’

He thumped the steering wheel in anger. ‘Why couldn’t they have found it a couple of days ago? It would have strengthened my case.’

‘I think so too.’

‘Does it mean you and everybody else are now coming around to my way of thinking?’

‘Just about.’

‘The best thing you can do is stay where you are and coordinate everything until somebody locates Larner. Keep in touch with Lewes control and call me if he’s spotted by any camera, ok?’

‘No problem. Good luck, sir. I think you’re going to need it.’