Once I Was A Soldier, page 31
“Has the Yorkshire force been put on full alert, Commander?” I asked, fishing for administrative police information.
“Yes, before anyone else! A Mr Fraser Ughert did that as soon as he was told. That call was logged at 07:33. I was told he was coming here but all I've seen from joint intelligence is a grumpy chap called Harwood. He said he was your boss, but I thought a man named Ughert was!”
“I have more bosses than lady friends, Serena,” diplomatically I replied.
“I doubt that, Mr Jeffries,” she replied rather seductively.
“Won't you call me Terry?”
The dark blue tunic and tight fitting skirt of her uniform started to arouse my imagination. I visualised her slowly unbuttoning the top half and me…I stopped myself there.
“Not when we're working, no.”
I shrugged my shoulders and confined that imagination of mine to another day.
“As you know more about the inner workings of police budgets and all that than I do, Commander, how long do you suppose the Chief Constable of Yorkshire is prepared to keep his men posted around Iverson Hall?”
“Hard to say. Unfortunately, budgets are becoming more and more important and that will certainly be on his mind. This is the time of year when the budgets are starting to be drawn up. Tops; I would go five days at full complement, but if he's coming up short on his numbers, and he's under Home Office pressure, it could be as few as two at full strength, then a shift by shift reduction on the third and full withdrawal on the fourth.”
“Would you happen to know what Iverson Hall is being used for nowadays or should I contact someone at Yorkshire Police HQ to get that information?”
“Yes, I do know. The Hall and the house the Spencers occupied, including all the grounds and outbuildings, were snapped up the day it went on the market by a local millionaire property developer. He applied for 'change of use' from a dwelling into a private members' exclusive countryside club, featuring all the facilities for the super-rich along with a casino. He was granted planning permission for everything except that casino. So he boarded the place up and is apparently waiting for a new enlightened Britain to relax its gaming laws.”
“He probably knows when that will be, as well. Millionaires don't buy country estates just to watch them decaying!”
I figured Mackinaw would wait for five days just to be sure and then he'd take her to a place inside the Hall for his final act of revenge. That was my gamble and my call to make, but no one other than Job, Freddie and Mike were to know at this stage.
* * *
Fraser arrived as we were speaking. He had a distinct look of displeasure lining his already craggy face.
“I want words with you, laddie, and I want them now! Get everyone out of that apartment, Commander!” Serena shot a knowing look across at me before beating a hasty retreat.
“There is no one in the frame for Solokov's murder other than you and Muller. I don't how you managed to kill two people as professionally as that but do it you did! What's more, I know why you did it. The PM was spitting so many nails at me that I thought I might end up being pinned to the Cabinet Office wall. I've been on that rack all bloody day, laddie! Where's Muller now, Jeffries? I want words with him.”
To say he wasn't happy would have been an understatement of huge proportions bordering on the imbecilic; nevertheless I was standing facing him with the biggest smile on my face I could conjure up.
“What on earth do you find funny what I've just said?”
“Oh, nothing, sir! Very serious business, Prime Ministers spitting nails. I would suggest a change of diet, but it's not any of that I find amusing. It's just that no one has told you that your flies are undone and your shirt is poking out, sir. Do you still want Job?”
“What!” The figure he cut trying to poke his shirt back behind his zipper and then zip his trousers up, along with his normal untidy appearance, was not that of the Chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee. It was more like a vagrant after he had taken a pee up a wall. I fought against laughing. Luckily I won!
“Muller, no! Waste of time. I want someone to fetch me something to eat. I'm starving! I've known times when sausage sandwiches have been served at crisis meetings in the past, but not today. Austerity is an empty plate, Terry.” A frown of regret replaced his anger.
“Get me a well done sausage and mustard sandwich with a cup of tea, three sugars, and all will be forgiven, laddie.” It was his turn to smile and he did it well. In a different frame of mind, he carried on.
“I sat, dry mouthed and dying of starvation having missed breakfast and lunch, listening to Russian communiques claiming Solokov was something between the reincarnated Moses and a prophet proclaiming the Second Coming. Must be their cold winters that give them such inventiveness. In truth, laddie, you did us all a favour, but you've never heard me say that. Right! Now, fill me in with what's happening about your girlfriend.”
* * *
I repeated all Serena had told me to Fraser who, like me, considered that Sheffield would be his destination, then I told him what I intended to do and how I needed his cooperation. The next morning he would phone people who would in turn phone other people who would plant the seeds of expediency in the minds of Home Office finance-driven officials who would remind a certain Chief Constable of his responsibilities to the ever-tightening strings around the public purse and the prudence needed towards the deployment of his workforce. For the time being Solokov and Harman's death were confined to a memory for both of us, but it would not stay just as a memory for me when Mackinaw was found.
Fraser would begin to start to pressurise on Friday evening, thereby leaving a worried chief of Yorkshire's finest to brood over the weekend. He did the rounds of shaking hands with the senior police on the scene at Dulwich then, suitably refreshed by the satiating tea and grub from Job's local, got into the safety of his departmental car and drove off home. Meanwhile, Job and I were hatching what I hoped would result in Melissa's freedom and a monumental surprise for a psychopath.
* * *
We changed cars at Dartford just before the tunnel at a place Freddie knew.
“That transporter over there is packed with ex-hire cars being taken to Manchester for auction. I know the driver. For a monetary consideration he's willing to swop one for this car that was waiting for you at Dulwich. In all probability this motor's wired and if it is no one's going to know it's been switched for days.”
It was late evening by the time we found four separate bed and breakfast rooms in Sheffield after first driving past Iverson Hall. There were no advertising signs from any security company that we could see. Property developers in this part of the north were careful with their money. Freddie had supplied the Bowman personal radios and later, Job and I, carrying one each, had a cursory look at the Hall.
“What's the plan to slip through that police cordon, Terry?”
“We need to make sure there's no security company guarding that building first. Then it's down to Mike and Freddie to find us a way in. I'm betting on the Hall as his destination, but it could be his parents' old house, which by the look of things is roughly eighty yards away from the main building. We'll need to be in both to be sure of saying hello and freeing Melissa. The thing is, we can't wait until the police are withdrawn. We have to go in whilst they're still here in case he's armed and stupid enough to shoot his way in holding her as cover.”
“Can we wait until tomorrow night or has it got to be done tonight?” he asked.
“How much time do you need to get everything together?”
“Hmm, enough grub and water for four days, you reckon? We'll need quite a bit of stock, but I'll keep it to the minimum. Half an hour to make a list and another half an hour to go get it. That would make it about eleven. Mike and Freddie need to look around and pick spots. They can do that while I'm out. Shuteye for say, four hours. If it were me, I'd make the move then! It's supposed to be raining tonight and cold. Three o'clock is when the body is fighting to stay alert the most. With the cold, rain, natural fatigue and the important factor of not being professionals at this sort of game, then that's the most opportune time, Terry.”
* * *
Most of Iverson Hall was surrounded by grass, with the few shrubs that were planted in those lawns providing no cover whatsoever, even allowing for the thick, incessant rain-pouring clouds hovering above. However, the once well-kept grounds surrounding the outbuildings had been neglected to such an extent that it was possible to reach them without risk if Job and I followed Mike's instructions to the letter. From those once used storage facilities access to first, Mackinaw's parents' house was fairly easy, and then to gain entry into the Hall—“A piece of cake for even you, governor,” Mike declared, looking me in the eyes!
We parked a little over a mile away, then with night vision goggles and wearing tactical night clothing, the three of us made our way to Freddie's forward position under heavy rain and increasingly strong winds.
Chapter Six
Mackinaw had knocked Melissa out using the same chloroform he'd used on Megan, but it had taken him longer to apply it over her nose and mouth than it had with the housekeeper. She had put up a spirited fight. He had hit her twice. The first blow split her lip and the second, to the solar plexus, doubled her up enough for the handkerchief. He then dragged her from the bedroom and down the stairs by her arms. As she was dragged over the demolished door of her bedroom she grazed her right leg from just below the knee almost to her ankle. It did not start to bleed until she was thrown into the side door of the blue Transit, when it was caught again and then it bled profusely up to the time Mackinaw made his first stop in a large carpark adjoining a public house about a mile from the caretaker's apartment. There he entered the back of his van and saw her wound. He dug his fingernails into the deepest part, ripping the skin off sideways in both directions and then he got the filthiest rag he could find, wrapped that around the wound and sealed it with duct tape. He wrapped that tape around her legs and down to her feet. More tape was applied across her mouth and to her hands behind her back. Finally, he trussed her now naked body in a blanket and placed her on the improvised foam 'bed' he'd made in the centre of the floor, piling more foam around to stop her from rolling about and making unnecessary noise. He made his second stop in a lock-up garage on a small, rundown industrial site just west of Harlow in Essex.
When the chloroform had worn off the pain from her leg was excruciating, but she had distractions which took away some of the pain. From outside the van she heard the scraping noise of stepladders being opened then closed, and something making a stop-go hissing noise as a compressor was whirring away in the background. Then came the unmistakable bitter, sharp smell of paint that only added to her misery, filling her lungs and making her cough. If despair was lying next to her it was now pressing upwards from her lungs.
After he finished changing the colour of the van he added the red lettered stick-on banners of Harris Laundry Service to both sides before he too was irked by the smell and opened the garage doors for a breath of fresh air to blow in. She remembered a line from a poem written many centuries ago: 'Nothing can come from nothing.' Was his simple act of opening the outside doors the nothing that something could come from? She started to pray for her life.
Inside the van he roughly cut a slit in the tape over her mouth and placed an intravenous tube in there before speaking to her. She was coughing uncontrollably.
“That's so you can drink, but don't drink a lot 'cause you got to piss where you are and lay in it. You haven't a clue who I am have you, you spoilt little brat? But I know you! Don't I know you! My mum and dad rammed your brother's fucking name down my throat from the day he was born. 'Frederick is doing so well at this, so well at that. So good at everything, that boy!' Then, when your daddy brought you from America to the house.” Melissa's eye widened in surprise.
“Oh dear! Didn't know you were a bastard? Icing on the cake before I get a bite. You weren't Margret's little girl, but you were your daddy's bastard. He paid some American slag a lot of money to fetch you to England. She didn't want you, you see! My dad said he should have left you in America as you caused so much pain to your mum. I ran away shortly after the time you came on the scene, but Mum used to come and see me whenever she could, provided I was banged up somewhere near home. That's a strange word isn't it; home? Their home next to the mighty Iversons. They looked after your fucking family for the best part of their lives, they did, even cried when the little-arsed General died. Poor fuck! And what did you do as soon as the only person who really cared about you popped his clogs; sell it all and throw my mum and dad out on the street without a pot to piss in.
“You're a fucking spoilt little piece of shit. You killed them slowly because of the shame and disgrace you made them feel. Any idea what it's like being poor and old? No, you ain't and you ain't going find out either. You ain't getting old! I'm going to see to that with pleasure after I've had a bit of fun with yer!”
The degradation he inflicted started that afternoon when his van was locked inside that garage. His hands went under the blanket as he started to poke her in places that made her whimper in hopelessness. Then he re-taped her arms to her side, spread-eagled her legs and taped them to the hooks he'd fitted into the wheel arches, raping her repeatedly until at last he fell asleep on top of her. Her tears never disturbed him. Her wretchedness never concerned him and the oil smeared over her open cut below her knee made it pound to the beat of the metronome that was drumming in her head. He hadn't finished with her. He stubbed his cigarette along the length of that cut before putting out in it then wrapping the wound, with the cigarette butt inside, in a filthy rag!
* * *
We could see four police officer in our sector of the house and outbuildings; they were in two groups of two. Stupid really! Keeping low to the ground and avoiding the widest puddles on that hard ground, we made the first building with ease. The second was more difficult as it involved a dog-leg around what looked like coal bunkers and a vigorously swaying tree, its bare branches whipping against the side of the two-storeyed wooden storage building.
“Take great care, gents! That noise draws attention,” Freddie, now at the rear of our column quietly warned, scanning the front of the Hall for additional police.
I made it across as did Mike, but as Job rounded the long coal bunkers a violent gust of wind slammed into the tree, snapping a thick, heavy branch as it crashed against the building. From where I was the sound was deafening! All four of our watchers were staring at where it had fallen; the last place I'd seen Job. Frantically I scanned around the bunker and underneath the branch, then left and right of it, but nothing. No sign of him! Fearing the worst, I tugged at Mike's sleeve and made signs that I was going back. Mike shook his head then pointed to the gravel drive in front of the Hall. A lone figure in a dripping cape and flat-banded cap was approaching. He had the three chevrons of a sergeant sewn on the epaulettes of the cape. We had no other choice. Mike pointed to the way we'd come.
* * *
Melissa could neither remembering Mackinaw leaving nor falling asleep, but she remember the slight sweet smell under her nose from yesterday. As she slowly regained her senses it was the pain from his sustained assault that hit her first as she was trussed up in the blanket with her legs taped together with her arms returned to behind her back. Only now she was not lying down. She was propped up in a sitting position wedged tight by the blocks of foam. Then she felt uncomfortably cold. Particularly around her head. It took all her concentration to recognise what decorated her blanket in untidy, tangled tufts. It was her black ringlets of hair. Why has he shaved me? Silent tears ran down her face, washing away the odour of chloroform and trickling onto her bare shoulders and beyond. But not that far! Fear was joined by dejection as she realised she was lying in her own urine and could not move from it.
She missed her father and regretted her remarks to him when Margret had died. He must have loved me so much. If only I could tell him that I loved him when he was alive. The rare practice of introspection was not helping to deflect her disgrace. It made it worse. The salty tears trickled under the tape and into her mouth as she probed into her memory.
I wish I known Margret better. It must have been a terrible shock to have my father tell her that he had a daughter and she was to bring me up. What about my brother? I never spent a second in wanting to know him! I don't even remember crying when I was told he had died. I should not have disregarded the Spencers as I did. He's right, it was a shameful act. What did I gain from all that money? From all those affairs I've had? Nothing! I use people and allow them to use me. Terry Jeffries! It was Lord Edwin who said to tell him about this man's letters. 'He could well be of use.' Another one to use. What would I give to see him right now? A right arm? A right leg? The love that has escaped me from giving? My fortune! Yes, I'd give anything! Have I a chance to give something?
