No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (51 page)

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The atmosphere in the CID room was positively crackling, a new sense of urgency permeating the room.

As yet, there were no missing person reports, but that meant nothing, Warren knew. At this very moment, Richard Cameron could be murdering and raping another innocent young woman.

“Traffic reports that all units are on the lookout for Royal Mail delivery vans and that they are using automated number plate recognition, but coverage is patchy. If he sticks to the back roads as he did before we’ll never pick him up.”

Warren felt helpless, his mind whirring. How could they stop the man? He could always issue a warning to the press but that would take some hours before it made it onto the bulletins. Frustration burned at him. He wanted to stand on top of the building with a megaphone and tell all young women to lock themselves inside then ask the whole world to be on the lookout for a stolen postal van.

The look on Tony Sutton’s face as he entered the office broadcast the same frustration. He shook his wet hair vigorously. “It’s really coming down out there, and starting to settle. Maybe the snow will stop him?”

“Or maybe the snow will help him cover his tracks,” countered Warren, glumly.

DS Kent poked his head around his office door.

“Sir, a young woman, blonde hair, has been reported missing.”

Warren’s stomach lurched. Five long strides and he had the headset pressed against his ear. As he listened to the details the sickness in his gut grew.

“The report’s a fresh one. She’s probably been gone less than thirty minutes,” he broadcast to the office. “A twenty-four-year-old office worker, Jemima Duer. She normally walks to the bus stop at five-thirty each day and catches it to her flat, but her dad has been picking her up for the past few days. She waits for him at the corner of Corporation Street and the high street. He arrived a few minutes late today and she wasn’t there. Her phone’s going through to voicemail and her co-workers claim she left at the usual time.”

“I’ll get onto traffic, see what cameras we’ve got there,” said DS Richardson.

“Even if we get images of him picking her up, they’re going to be minutes old,” cautioned Sutton. “If we’re lucky they’ll show which direction he’s going, but once the van’s outside the town boundary, we’ll be lucky if a patrol car picks them up by chance.

“We need to get smart, try and work out where he’s heading.”

Warren strode over to a massive laminated paper map of Middlesbury and the surrounding villages stuck to the briefing-room wall. Taking a whiteboard marker, he put a cross on the point where Corporation Street and the high street met.

“There are no CCTV cameras overlooking where she catches the bus or was waiting for her old man to pick her up,” Margaret Richardson called across the room, “but one on the junction of the Cambridge road and the high street has what appears to be a Royal Mail delivery van at 17:36 hours.”

Tony Sutton located the junction and drew a large arrow angled up the road, heading roughly north. He glanced at his watch. “That was twelve minutes ago, guv. He’s got a big lead.”

“Well, let’s not let him extend it too much. If he follows past form he’ll be wanting somewhere secluded and woody to do what he needs to do, then dump her. That means he has to be travelling somewhere north. Keep trying to track him. I’m going to call in the cavalry.”

The cavalry in question was Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire’s Mobile Armed Response Unit. Within moments of Warren’s call, they were en route, racing north from their base at Welwyn Garden City. It would take them several minutes to reach Middlesbury. During that time, Warren knew that he had to come up with some better directions for them.

“We’ve got it travelling north on the A506, six minutes ago,” sang out Margaret Richardson from her workstation. “Good news is, he’s travelling well within the speed limit. Conditions are poor and I guess he doesn’t want to risk attracting attention or having an accident.”

“That means he’s heading towards Cambridge. There are loads of potential dumping spots on the way.” Tony Sutton’s local knowledge was far superior to Warren’s so he let his deputy wield the pen on the large map.

“We’re still trailing behind him. He could be going anywhere up there. Armed Response have no chance. There must be some way that we can track him.”

“Sir, that’s it!” yelled Gary Hastings, almost falling off his chair in excitement. “It’s a Royal Mail delivery van. They must have anti-theft and tracking devices, like GPS.”

“Brilliant, Gary. Time for Angus Carroway to redeem himself,” said Warren, snatching up his phone.

It was the work of seconds to call the Royal Mail’s sorting office. Where they were met with nothing but voicemail.

“Shit! They’ve finished for the day.”

Warren’s heart sank.

“Hang on, those articulated lorries run all through the night,” said Tony Sutton. “I’ll bet they have tracking. It’d be crazy if they used a different system for the vans.”

Gary Hastings was already on the Internet, searching for one of the Royal Mail’s central depots. “Try this number, sir. It’s one of their main hubs and this number should be working until midnight.”

This time, the call went through. It took a few seconds for the bemused operator at the other end of the line to understand what he was asking for, but then he was transferred to the regional logistics manager, Simon Bourne.

“Yes, all of our vehicles are GPS tracked, using the same system. If you give me the licence plate number of the van you want, I’ll be able to pinpoint it in a few seconds.”

Those few seconds seemed more like minutes, before Bourne triumphantly announced a fix.

“OK, I have the van travelling at an average speed of thirty-eight miles per hour north-westerly on the A506. Its current co-ordinates place it three point seven miles north of junction twelve.”

“That’s brilliant, Simon. Can we get you to hold on the line, whilst we direct the response units in?”

“Absolutely, I’m not going anywhere.” Suddenly finding himself assisting in a police car chase had clearly livened up the late shift.

Margaret Richardson had now moved her laptop over to the map wall and was maintaining an open channel with Welwyn, relaying GPS information from Simon Bourne to central Control.

Suddenly, her radio crackled with a message from Control.

“Bad news. A lorry has jackknifed on the A1 just south of the Middlesbury exit, blocking all north-bound carriageways. The armed response units are snarled up in the traffic. They are going to be delayed by at least ten minutes.”

Warren swore.

“Get Essex on the phone, see if they can spare anyone.” Turning back to the open speaker phone to Bourne. “Where’s the van?”

“Still heading north, same speed.”

“Tony, where do you think is the most likely spot?”

Sutton puffed his cheeks out. “Christ…” he muttered under his breath. He stared at the map for a few more seconds, before drawing a big cross.

“Barrington Woods. It’s the first wooded area that they come to. It’s secluded enough for what he wants to do, especially in this weather, but popular with walkers. She’ll be found in a couple of days, which seems to be what he’s aiming for. Keep blaming the old man.”

“Sir, Essex on the line, they’re sending an armed response unit, but it’s in the far east of the county. It’s going to take some time in the traffic.”

“How long until he gets to Barrington Woods, Tony?”

Sutton looked at the map. “At his current speed, he’s probably about ten minutes from the edge of the woods. Presumably he will then have to travel some distance into the forest, either by car or on foot. We need to be there within the next twenty minutes if we want to stop anything happening to her.”

Warren noted his use of the word, ‘we’. His mind was working in the same direction as Warren’s. It was a breach of protocol and he’d have a lot of explaining to do if things went wrong. But then he’d have a lot of explaining to do to his conscience if another young woman was killed when he might have been able to stop it. He made his mind up.

“Grab your coat, Tony. Let’s see how good that advanced driver’s course was that we paid for you to go on.”

Chapter 68

Sutton opted to sign out the station’s unmarked Audi. The car was powerful, with four-wheel drive, ideal for the weather conditions. Just as important, Sutton drove a similar model Audi himself and felt comfortable behind the car’s wheel.

By now the snow was coming thick and fast, a thin, wet layer already settling on the road. The conditions would only get worse as they left the town — something Susan had called the Urban Heat Island effect when Warren had commented on it one day.

Warren was still wrestling with his seat belt when Sutton exited the station’s car park, the car’s wheels spinning slightly in the snow before the traction control kicked in. Warren hit the button that activated the car’s two-tone siren and blue flashing lights hidden behind the front grill. They’d decide if such a noisy arrival was appropriate when they were closer to their destination. For the time being, Warren just wanted everyone out of the way.

He held on tight to the door handle as Sutton jumped a set of red traffic lights. Sutton’s faith in the power of blues and twos to get Joe Public to shift out of the way and not do something silly was a lot greater than his, Warren noted. Christ, he hated high-speed pursuit driving.

After a few more red lights and a brief jaunt the wrong way down a one-way street at forty miles per hour, they joined the A506.

In the passenger seat, an increasingly pale Warren juggled his mobile phone, the car’s radio and a road atlas. If there was one thing he hated more than high-speed driving it was reading in a moving vehicle. But his personal discomfort was a trivial concern. He just prayed he wasn’t sick — even if he could bribe Tony Sutton to keep quiet, there was an open radio-link.

Warren’s stomach lurched as Sutton swerved into the oncoming lane to overtake a line of more sedately moving cars. The car’s powerful engine roared as Sutton down-shifted to squeeze more acceleration out of it. The needle flicked past eighty miles per hour. Up ahead the massive headlights of a lorry loomed increasingly large. The line of traffic on their left-hand-side stretched endlessly ahead of them.

The lorry’s air horn blared. In response, Sutton reached over and toggled the lights and siren. Warren’s fist tightened on his seat belt. “Um, Tony…” he started.

“I’m on it, guv,” he muttered as he racing-changed up to fifth gear. The glare of the lorry’s headlamps now filled the windscreen, angling downward as the driver started to apply his brakes, shifting the huge vehicle’s centre of gravity forward. That was all they needed, worried Warren — another jackknifed lorry.

At the last possible second, the line of traffic to the left came to an end and Sutton threw the Audi into the newly opened gap. The car fish-tailed slightly, buffeted by the close passage of the lorry, its four-wheel drive struggling to grip the slick surface.

Warren let out a breath as the car righted itself.

“Sorry, guv. I’m used to driving on my own, forgot to take into account the extra weight.”

Warren just nodded, not quite trusting himself to comment.

The radio crackled. “Bourne says he’s turning left off the A506 onto the B1198 a single-lane side road that should lead him alongside Barrington Woods. There is a dirt track about a mile and a quarter past the turn-off, which leads into the woods proper. The smart money is on him turning up there.”

“Roger that,” replied Warren. “We are approximately four minutes from the turn-off, making good progress.”

“Three and a half minutes,” corrected Sutton.

“Three and a half minutes,” assuming we aren’t killed first, he added silently.

By now the traffic was thinning out and Sutton could race along the carriageway as fast as he wished without having to perform any more death-defying overtaking manoeuvres.

Finally, the exit for the B1198 and Barrington Woods loomed up ahead. Sutton down-shifted and left the main road at speed.

The radio crackled into life again. “Sir. We have a problem. The van has not, repeat not, turned up the dirt track. He’s still on the side road, travelling at thirty miles per hour. We’re trying to work out where he is heading.”

Forcing his discomfort to one side, Warren flicked on the map light, locating both cars on the road map on his lap. Immediately, he could see an even bigger problem.

“He’s travelling almost due west. That means he is travelling away from both our armed response unit and Essex’s.”

“We’re already on that, Sir. Det Supt Grayson has contacted Cambridgeshire. They’re sending a unit now, although it’s questionable how much sooner they’ll make it.”

They now had armed response units from three counties involved in the chase. We’d better have something to show for it at the end of this or I’ll be paying the deployment bill out of my pension pot, thought Warren ruefully.

“OK, next best guess for a dumping spot is Livingstone Forest.” Gary Hastings took over the radio.

Warren located it.

“There is a turn-off three miles from where he is now, assuming he stays on the same road. Dirt track, little more than an access road by the looks of things.”

Warren could just about make out the faint brown marking in the dim glow of the overhead map-light. The whole area seemed to be tree-covered with a few small clearings, bisected by a river, although Warren had no idea how accurate or up to date the map was.

He opened the Google maps app on his smartphone. No 3G signal. He cursed.

“Good try, boss. But don’t worry, if we keep at this speed and he doesn’t go any quicker, we’ll intercept him about thirty seconds after he makes the turn off.”

Then we’ll just need to decide what the hell we’re going to do against a man with a shotgun, worried Warren. He’d give anything for a bullet-proof vest right now. In fact, if he was being absolutely honest, he’d give anything for the comfort of his duvet, safely pulled over his head…

Both men saw the pair of eyes at the same moment, Warren stamping on an imaginary brake pedal even as Sutton cursed mightily and stood hard on the Audi’s brakes.