“Hi. Everything okay?” she asked.
“Susan was just telling me about her time in the basement.”
Before the conversation could continue, a staff nurse entered.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, “but Susan needs to rest.”
“I understand,” Souter said. He got to his feet and turned to Susan. “I’ll look into it for you and let you know.”
“Hey,” she called out, “don’t forget it’s my story.”
Souter smiled. “Promise. But we’ll work it together.”
17
Strong was sitting in the canteen with Jim Ryan drinking a tea when Ormerod spotted them. He bought a sandwich and a coffee and came over to their table.
“Charged Chapman as well?” Strong asked him.
Ormerod sat down beside Ryan and opposite Strong. “Yep. Both released on bail this afternoon. But tell me what was all that about a dark coloured Merc?”
“I saw Susan Brown in hospital this morning,” Strong said. “She’s regained consciousness, thank God. Anyway, she confirmed what we thought, she’d linked Chapman to the message and followed him when he was picked up by Baker. She saw the white sports car in the barn but panicked when another car came up the track. She ran into the old farmhouse so she wouldn’t be seen. Just as she stepped back to avoid the headlights, she noticed the distinctive front end of a large Mercedes saloon. The only other thing she could say was that it was dark coloured. As she took a step back, well we know the rest.”
“Wouldn’t be a 300SE would it?” Ryan asked.
“Don’t know, Jim. It was dark and with the headlights on that’s all Susan could tell me. Why? What are you thinking?”
“Probably nothing. Maybe a coincidence, but Mirczack drives a dark blue version.”
Strong paused for a second with his drink halfway to his lips. “I thought vice and people trafficking were his forte. Anyway, Susan’s description is way too vague. No, as you say, it’s probably coincidence.”
“Probably.” Ryan didn’t look convinced.
“At least we know Gary Baker didn’t nick the Merc sports car,” Ormerod said.
“He didn’t have a clue where it came from,” Strong agreed. “I doubt if he could tell you where any of them were stolen. No, Chapman, did the lifting. The message on Susan’s phone was from him to Gary remember, telling Gary that he, Chapman, had lifted another one. Baker may well have cleaned them out and changed the plates, but who are they working for? They wouldn’t have the nous or the contacts to pass them on.”
“Mirczack?” Ryan put forward.
Strong puffed his cheeks out and raised his eyebrows. “Bit of a leap, Jim.”
“What did Kelly want?” Ormerod asked.
“Ah, that farmer lad who found the car reckons that a local one-man band transport operator by the name of Dave Pratt had his lorry up at the farm on a number of occasions over the past two months. He was coupled to a trailer with a container on it.”
“Ideal way of transporting a vehicle relatively unnoticed.”
“Exactly.”
Strong drained his tea then asked Ryan about progress on the missing Albanian girl.
“No sign of her on any bus CCTV,” Ryan said, “and none of the crews remembered her. I’m beginning to think she never took the bus. In fact, I think there’s a lot about Helena we don’t know.”
“I think there’s a lot Magda doesn’t know either,” Strong agreed. “What did Vice tell you about Mirczack?”
“Apparently, he owns three massage parlours in Leeds and Bradford plus interests in two nightclubs in Leeds. They reckon Szymanski manages the parlours for him. At the moment, they’re keeping a watching brief. They know what goes on there but as long as it doesn’t involve under-age, they’d rather have it off the streets.”
“After hearing what Magda had to say yesterday, you don’t think Helena was working in one of those parlours, do you?”
“She’s an attractive girl and, as we heard, I don’t think she was too honest with her sister.” Ryan took a drink. “I didn’t think so when you asked me yesterday. Now, it could be possible, I suppose.”
“We need to get some inside info on these parlours when Szymanski’s not around and ask some of the girls if they know Helena. I’ll give a contact of mine in Vice a call. I’m beginning to get a nasty feeling about this, Jim.”
It was Stainmore’s turn to join them, tray in hand. As she sat down next to Strong, she handed him a sheet of paper. “Hot off the press, guv,” she said. “Both Gary Baker and Steve Chapman’s prints are on the parking ticket.”
Strong laughed. “Not the brightest of criminals, are they? How did you get on with that transport lead?”
“According to his wife, he’s on his way back from Cardiff. He’d taken a container down to Felixstowe on Monday, picked up a job to Birmingham then Cardiff yesterday and a run back to Leeds tonight.”
“Do we know who the Felixstowe run was for?”
“She didn’t know. But it’s the biggest container port in Europe, so handy to ship a car abroad.”
“And you’ll be catching up with him tonight?”
“Yes, guv.”
“Right,” Strong stood up. “I’m off to finish more reports for the Chief Super. This is what real policing is all about.”
The others chuckled as he walked out of the canteen.
18
Souter felt a buzz of adrenaline as he walked back down to the newspaper offices. Something in the dim recesses of his memory had been stimulated. He thought there was something familiar about what Susan had told him. He had to check it out. It must have been a good ten or fifteen years ago. Was it when he was on the Doncaster Evening Post or just when he joined the Sheffield Star? He was a sports reporter back then but he had some vague recollection of missing schoolgirls.
“Aah, you’re back,” Janey Clarke said, as he appeared at his workstation. Janey was a plump but attractive dark-haired girl in her mid-twenties who sat at the next desk. He thought she showed a lot of promise in her junior reporting role. “Chandler’s been looking for you,” she went on. “Something about the Home Secretary visiting the region tomorrow.”
Souter sat down and picked off the three post-it note messages he had on his computer monitor. John Chandler was the deputy editor of the Post and the man who had brought him in. “Oh, yes, he mentioned that last week. I’ve got to do an interview at the Queens Hotel tomorrow. It’ll be the usual old bollocks – ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes,’ blah, blah, blah.”
“Not impressed then?”
“That’s politicians for you.” He swivelled in his seat to face his colleague, hesitated, then asked, “Janey, how long have you been here?”
She stopped what she was doing and turned towards him. “About three years, why?”
“No, you’re too young.”
”For what?”
“To remember something from the eighties.”
Janey looked indignant. “Try me.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply … I suppose they would have been about your age now. Where were you brought up?”
“Darwen in Lancashire. And who would have been my age?”
“You don’t remember anything about missing schoolgirls from about ten, fifteen years ago? Maybe more, I don’t know.”
She looked thoughtful for a few moments. “Nothing rings a bell.”
“Mmm. Okay, not to worry.”
“You’ve got something, haven’t you?”
“I don’t really know. I’ll check the archives later.” He turned back to his desk and brought his computer to life.
The archives were slowly being transferred to microfiche in the room behind reception on the Ground Floor. Every now and then Phyllis, who seemed to be as old as the paper itself, would transfer another month’s issues to film. She used to be a receptionist years ago and did a bit of part-time filling in from time to time. As luck would have it she wasn’t in this week so Souter would have to search the files himself.
He discovered the index and saw that she had filed papers as far back as November 1981. That was the year Peter Sutcliffe was convicted. He was sure what he was looking for was more recent than that. He pulled out the film for January 1983 and fitted it into the viewer then spun it through, checking the front pages for anything of interest. By six o’clock, he had made it as far as July of that year. Nothing had jumped out at him. He rubbed his eyes and replaced that month’s film back on the storage rack. Tomorrow, he’d start afresh.
19
Chris Baker left the house at ten-fifteen.
His wife was none too pleased about him going out again. “Where the hell are you off to now at this time of night?” She was angry. “You’ve already been down to Wood Street twice in two days because of that waste of space of a brother of yours.” He could also tell she was suspicious.
“I’ve just got to go out, that’s all,” he said.
“I hope you’re not getting involved in his business.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll not be long.”
“Or another woman. I’ll kill you if you are.”
“Don’t be silly.” He bent to kiss her but she turned away.
Just off Agbrigg Road to the south of Wakefield, Chris turned into a road with shabby houses on both sides, mostly converted into bedsits over the years. Gary, watching for his brother’s arrival from the ground floor window, dashed out to meet him. Over the course of the half hour drive, Chris tried to make sense of the past twenty-four hours.
“What I can’t understand,” Gary said, “was how they got on to us in the first place. Steve said he’d left me a message on my answerphone last week. They played it in his interview.” He paused and looked at his brother. “But I don’t have an answerphone.”
“Fuck’s sake, Gary, I thought he was the brains behind you two.”
“But I still don’t get it.”
“Maybe I was right in the first place. Look it’s obvious, he left that message on someone else’s phone.”
Gary still looked puzzled.
“He misdialled you pratt.”
“Oh, right, yeah.”
They were quiet for a few minutes before Gary had another thought. “But then they asked me if anyone else had turned up on Saturday night. Someone in a big Mercedes. I mean, how did they know that? How did they know the big man was there?”
Chris flashed a stern look at his brother. “You didn’t say he was did you?”
“Course not. I said there was nobody else. Just me and Steve.”
“I don’t like it. This is getting all too close. I wish I’d never got involved. And I wish I hadn’t got you two involved either. This has got to be the last time. I’ll just get the money for this last one and that’s it. No more.”
Five minutes later, Chris pulled in to a remote lay-by, killed the lights, switched the engine off and waited. The adrenaline was pumping round his veins and his heart was racing. This wasn’t a usual meet.
The lay-by had been created by a road improvement scheme where the bend had been straightened out. It was now well hidden from the road by a high hedgerow. On the other side, a new hedge and fence separated it from a field. An articulated lorry was parked up about fifty yards away, curtains drawn in the cab, the driver already in the bunk ready for an early drop in Leeds in the morning.
“What time did he say?” Gary asked.
Chris checked the clock on the dash.
“In about five minutes.”
“Good. I’ve got time for a piss.”
Gary got out of the car and walked along the footpath for a few yards until he came to a gap in the hedge to the wooden fence. With one hand on a post he vaulted over it.
“Shit!” he cried out, as he went straight down a six foot drop into a ditch.
Chris had watched him disappear. “Fucking stupid bastard,” he muttered quietly to himself.
Dropping the window a touch, he lit a cigarette and tried to relax. A half moon gave a little light but clouds kept sweeping across and pitching the scene into darkness every now and then.
He was growing increasingly uncomfortable thinking about the events of the past few months. What started out as being a means to an end, a one-off to avoid any embarrassment, had become a burden. He had told himself he was helping Gary but that was far from the truth. It was bringing his brother back into crime again. And all because of his weakness for the women. If he hadn’t spotted the advert; if he hadn’t looked for it in the first place. If he hadn’t walked in through the door. And Mariana, she drew him in, hook, line and sinker. Like her, he shouldn’t have used his real name, shouldn’t have told her anything about himself, what he did, where he worked. If he hadn’t, none of this would have happened. He would never have been drawn into the whole murky world of car crime.
He never picked up on the car coming in behind, stopping about twenty yards from his. The lights were already off when it left the main road. A figure in dark clothes and wearing a balaclava stepped silently from the car. The figure watched the smoke escape from the driver’s window, then looked to the sky. Clouds were just about to cover the moon once more. The figure waited until the moonlight had gone before making their way towards Baker’s Rover, pausing to screw the silencer tube to the gun barrel.
Baker drew on his cigarette for the last time. As he flicked the butt from the window, his periphery vision caught movement. It was the last thing he would ever be conscious of. A low crack, then his brains were churned to soup inside his skull. His lifeless body slumped forward, head on the steering wheel, arms down by its side.
The figure turned and walked away from the car, removing the silencer.
Down in the ditch, Gary had finished and was desperately trying for a foothold to get himself back up to the fence. Finally, he managed to grab hold of the bottom rail and pull himself up the last few feet, just in time to see a car drive out of the lay-by and back onto the main road, waiting until the last moment to put the lights on.
“Bollocks,” he said to himself. “I’ve missed the handover.”
Climbing back over the fence he scraped as much mud off his shoes as he could. He didn’t want to upset his brother any more.