Snatched From Home: What Would You Do To Save Your Children? (DI Harry Evans Book 1) (3 page)

Saturday

Detective Inspector John Campbell lifted the stack of newspapers and offered up a silent prayer today would be the day he’d meet the protection racketeers. He had been playing the part of a shopkeeper for four days and the newsagent’s was bang in the centre of town.

When the shop had become available the police had taken on the lease and installed Campbell as the new shopkeeper. While the shop was being refitted, hidden cameras had been installed along with recording equipment. All he had to do was provoke the thugs into some violent act or get them to ask for protection money on tape, then they would have grounds for arrest and evidence for conviction. The shop was one of many in a row with the usual smattering of independent shops mixed with national chains and charity shops; the same as any other city centre. The white sandstone of the buildings weathered grey black from decades of smog and exhaust fumes.

He was bored rigid by the tedium of playing the part. The harsh accent of Cumbrians sat uneasy on his ears. He struggled to make sense of the local slang, to the point where he wrote down the words he didn’t understand and asked Sarah to translate when he got home. He would be a lot happier when this was over and he could take up the new post he’d got with his transfer.

Carlisle had a lot of history, once a Roman fort, a medieval outpost and an integral part of the border wars between Scotland and England. He’d looked up his new workplace on Google and was astounded and more than a little proud to learn that for a nineteen-year period in the twelfth century the city had been ruled by the Scots.

There was no excitement for him in running a newsagent’s. The only amusement he’d had was a well-dressed man hiding a copy of Good Time Guys inside PC Business, when a bunch of schoolgirls came in as he was waiting in the queue. The rest of his time had been spent restocking shelves, taking payment from customers and trying to keep an eye on the multitude of kids who tried to shoplift the various chocolates bars on sale.

Four men wearing construction worker’s fluorescent jackets walked in. The lead guy was few inches shorter than Campbell, but much broader across the shoulders. A trim waist gave him the appearance of either a serious bodybuilder or a competitive swimmer. Campbell’s money was on bodybuilder though, as the veins in the man’s arms stood out like ivy growing on a tree – a common occurrence in bodybuilders after steroid abuse. One of the others wore a blue Carlisle United bobble hat while the other two wore no hats but one of the two was completely bald.

‘Can I have twenty Lambert and two hundred and fifty quid from the till?’ It was Ivy Arms who spoke.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m your new insurer mate. Me and the lads will be in to collect our premium every Saturday morning. When you insure with us, then you are safe from vandals, thieves and accidental damage.’

Campbell put the packet of cigarettes on the counter and held his hand out, palm upright. ‘Six eighty-nine, please. I already have insurance. I don’t need your policy, thank you.’ He shifted his feet ready for any attack that may come.

‘Big mistake pal.’ Ivy Arms sidestepped around the counter.

‘Wreck it, lads.’ A vicious uppercut was aimed towards Campbell, who leaned back and helped his assailant’s right arm travel upwards as the punch missed his chin. This manoeuvre left a wide open space between belt and ribs into which Campbell threw two solid blows before using his already raised right hand to deliver a stinging backhand punch.

This was almost enough to finish Ivy Arms, but he was rescued by one of his bare-headed compatriots who pulled him away from Campbell’s next flurry of punches.

Being keyed up for this moment for almost a week caused Campbell’s body to dump an overdose of adrenaline into his system.

As the guy with hair squared up to him, Campbell caught sight of a fifth man entering the shop. Quickly he shot a left through the hands held in front of his attacker’s face, hitting him on the forehead with a jab, knocking his head back, giving a sweet target for the uppercut which was launched as soon as the jab landed.

The fifth man just stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, watching as Ivy Arms and his two remaining cohorts tried to decide what to do next. An amused smile labelled the craggy face as he watched the ruckus.

‘You’re fucking mine.’ Ivy Arms turned towards Campbell his composure returning after his earlier defeat.

Campbell seized the advantage of the distraction created by the fifth man and punched the bald guy in the gut doubling him over. A quick combination of blows left Carlisle Hat on his knees with any vestiges of a fight long gone from him.

The fifth man pushed himself from the door frame as Ivy Arms ran towards him, intent only on making his escape. Ivy Arms reached out a muscled arm to brush aside the fifth man.

The fifth man shrugged his way inside the arm to deliver a stunning head butt, sending Ivy Arms crashing to the floor with a reverberating thump.

‘He-Man one, fuckwit nil.’ The fifth man raised his arms like a boxer after a winning bout and did a little Ali shuffle.

He then pulled his left hand from his coat pocket, showing a warrant card to Campbell, identifying himself as DI Harry Evans.

Evans was the man Campbell would be replacing now that this case was dealt with.

A bunch of PCs charged in the shop. ‘How many are there, guv?’

‘Four. They’re here, here and here. Oh yeah, there’s one here as well, Sergeant,’ Evans indicated each of the gang to the policemen who were charging into the shop, with a hard kick timed to match each call of ‘here’.

Sitting alone in his flat, Evans laid down his glasses and the faded letter he was reading. He’d read it a thousand times before. With each reading it made perfect sense, yet at the same time it made no sense at all.

The letter was from the love of his life. The one he’d forsaken all others for. She’d made him the happiest man alive the day he’d married her. They’d been married for just two years when she’d written the letter.

When Janet had told him she was expecting, he thought his heart would burst from his chest and wrap its arms around her such was the love he felt. The child he hadn’t known he wanted was due to make an appearance, but he’d never meet his son or daughter.

Janet was twelve years his junior and before he’d met her, he’d given up any hope of marriage and children. Like almost every copper he knew, he’d had a series of failed relationships. The job had seen to that. Few women would tolerate the string of broken dates, the endless uneaten meals and telephone calls at all hours of the night.

Janet had. She had embraced it, knowing it was what made him the man he was. Her father had been an inspector, her upbringing conditioning her to the vagaries of life with a dedicated copper.

Yet here he was alone. Single. Empty. Reading and rereading the last note she had written him.

His detective’s mind had analysed her words and cross-examined her motives countless times. Every time he read it, he understood why she had chosen to leave him, but he could never understand why she actually had.

Five months had passed since she’d written that damned letter and still he couldn’t accept she was gone from his life. That he’d never see his child grow up. At his age, he’d long ago given up on finding love and starting a family. Janet was his last and only chance.

His fifty-first birthday was charging over the horizon at him and he knew that once again his life would change forever. After thirty years of service, detective inspectors like him were retired from front-line policing. Of course, they didn’t call it retired any more and had some fancy management term for it. But that didn’t change anything in his mind. A sack of shit would always be a sack of shit, despite some desk-bound fuckwit calling it a manure-transfer system.

Most of the coppers he’d known over the years had been only too glad to reach retirement, many of them taking it after reaching their thirty years. Those who didn’t want to retire stayed on in an office-based role supporting the front-line troops.

He couldn’t envision a worse fate. He would sooner retire than be tied to a desk, reading other people’s reports. A people person at heart, he would find life as a desk jockey akin to imprisonment.

DI Harry Evans knew countless hundreds of people around his native Cumbria and they all knew him. They knew he was hard but fair. An old-school copper who would still dish out a clip round the ear where it was needed. A blind eye where appropriate. Yet when necessary he would bring down the full weight of the law. No career criminal in the county had escaped his attention.

Yet all this was about to be taken away from him. Like Janet. Like his last chance of fatherhood.

He had options of course. Local security firms were falling over each other to offer him consultancy roles. G4S had offered him a full-time position managing their Carlisle office, but like the police role he would be desk-bound.

A high-street retailer wanted him to manage store security across their north of England shops. While it was the best offer he’d had, he was more familiar with catching murderers, rapists and drug dealers than shoplifters. It was a step down and he wasn’t ready to step down yet.

A wet tongue slithered its way across his left hand, jolting himself out of his melancholy. Evans petted the aged Labrador who was never more than six feet away from him, whenever he was at home.

‘Good boy. Wanna walk?’

Seeing the Labrador caper around on its three legs, Evans eased his slender frame from the wing back chair, wandered into the hall and shucked on his jacket to brave the chill evening one last time.

‘C’mon, Tripod, walkies.’

After her fruitless search, Samantha had cuddled into Kyle’s back and pulled the thin sheet over herself. Sleep hadn’t come easy to her as she fretted and worried about their fate.

She was more worried about her brother than herself. He hated being away from home. He was uncomfortable visiting friends and he even got homesick when they went on holiday. If they had to stay in this room for any length of time, she knew he would suffer greatly. Without a window and with no watch between them, there was no way to measure time and when they awoke they had no idea whether it was early or late morning.

‘Can we have Coco Pops for breakfast?’

Samantha smiled in spite of herself. Kyle was treating their imprisonment as a holiday. ‘We’ll have to wait and see what they bring us.’

‘Why don’t we bang on the door and shout to them? Tell them we’re hungry?’

‘I don’t know what time it is. It might be the middle of the night. I don’t think it will be a very good idea to make the men cross.’

‘But I’m hungry and I want to see Mummy.’

Samantha faked a smile and admonished him with a wagging finger. ‘You’re always hungry. You eat more than I do.’

A metallic clatter interrupted them and they shrank back, hugging each other tight. Samantha identified the sounds as bolts being drawn back and a key rotating the tumblers inside a lock.

The bedroom door opened to reveal the man in the Elvis mask. He was holding a tray bearing a carton of orange juice, two plastic glasses and a pile of buttered toast.

Making sure he kept himself between them and the door he set the tray on the floor and then faced them. ‘You are going to be here for a few days at most. If you’re good, then we won’t harm you. If you’re not good, then we will punish you. Do you understand?’

Samantha nodded and held a crying Kyle closer to her body.

‘Come with me for a minute, lass.’

When Samantha didn’t move, he crooked his finger at her. ‘You’re not exactly being good, are you? I’m not gonna hurt you. I’ve just got something you need to see.’

‘You make a start on the toast, Kyle. I’ll be back in a minute.’ Samantha tried to reassure her brother, but she was petrified of being raped by the masked man.

Surely that was what he wanted her for. The one wearing the Blair mask was a definite perv. She’d felt his hands grabbing her backside and boobs when he led them from the van last night.

‘Don’t even think of trying to escape, ’cause we’ve still got the boy.’ Elvis locked the door and pocketed the key.

This is it. They’re going to rape me now.

Trudging down the stairs in front of her captor, Samantha tried to push her plight to the back of her mind. She was no virgin and only a few months ago had allowed a drunken boyfriend to make love to her when she was afraid to say no. If she didn’t fight with the men then perhaps it wouldn’t be much worse than that ordeal.

The house had a decayed feel to it, as if it had been neglected by its owner for many years. Mould adorned the top of skirting boards, the wallpaper was decades out of date and there was a damp fusty smell in every room.

Samantha tried to look out of the windows to see if she could spot a local landmark but all the curtains were pulled to. Elvis was hot on her heels, uttering one-word directions until they were in a small downstairs room.

The room held one chair and a desk with a laptop. Sprouting from the side of the laptop was a mouse and what she recognised as a dongle to connect the laptop to the Internet.

At Elvis’s command, she sat in front of the laptop and clicked play to activate the video on the screen.

‘Pay attention. This is what will happen to you if you don’t do as we say.’

The blood drained from Samantha’s face as she watched the forty-five second video.

‘Oh my God, no.’ Samantha propelled herself back from the laptop until she was tight against the wall. ‘Please no, I’ll do anything you want, don’t do that to us. I beg you. Please. Anything you say, I’ll do.’

‘Now that I’ve got your attention I want you to listen very carefully. If you try to escape, you’ll star in the next video. If you don’t do as we say, you’ll star in the next video. You hold the power of decision.’ He paused and stared at Samantha.

‘We’ll be good. I promise. You won’t hear a peep from us. We’ll do whatever you say.’

‘Good. Now that we’re on the same page you can go back upstairs. There are a few games up there for the PS2 to keep you amused; the telly is already tuned to the right channel. We don’t mean you any harm so long as you do as you’re told.’

Returning back to her prison, Samantha found Kyle curled up in a ball with silent tears running from his one visible eye. When she called his name he leapt up and ran to her flinging his arms around her waist and squeezing her tight.

‘I was scared, Sam. I thought those nasty men were going to do something to you. I didn’t know if you were coming back.’

Swallowing back an honest answer, Samantha pried her brother loose and offered him a piece of toast.

‘Don’t be silly. They are looking after us for a few days and if we’re good we can play video games all day.’ A smile was forced onto her lips. ‘Now, who said they were hungry?’

*    *    *

Once the girl was locked back in the bedroom, Marshall pulled off the Elvis mask and hung it on the door handle.

Lighting a cigarette, he walked through the front door, admiring the sight of Skiddaw bathed in morning sunlight. Sheep munching at the tough hill grass dotted its flanks.

Not keen on hill-walking or hiking, he still enjoyed looking at scenery and had spent many a weekend in the lakes with his ex-wife. The only blots on the landscape he could see other than the farm buildings were the dry stone dykes on the lower hills and the TV mast at Caldbeck.

A short saunter across the yard and he pulled back the shed door to find Alker on his back underneath a small tractor. Sparks were flying in an orange arc as he ground away serial numbers. Williams and Johnstone were at work replacing the tin tags on small power tools with ones they had fabricated themselves.

‘How you getting on?’

‘Like he said last night, we’ll finish this lot today. When they drop off tonight’s load they can take this lot away with them.’

‘Make sure that you get them done and ready to load then. We don’t want them here any longer than they need to be.’

As Marshall left to return to the house, Johnstone turned to Williams. ‘He doesn’t want them here any length of time yet we have to unload all the stolen stuff. We work our arses off while he spends all day on that laptop. He’s in the warm drinking coffee and we’re covering stolen goods with our fingerprints.’

‘Quit moaning, will you? You knew what the deal was when you signed up. He’s the one who knows where the stuff is available and how to get it. Without him we’d be wasting our time trying to rob places which have nowt worth taking.’