The Winter Killings, page 26
‘Jess!’ Gardner shouted, starting forward, keeping to the far right of the room where the flames were yet to spread.
Barnett, coughing, came out of nowhere and thrust out a hand to stop her.
She watched him, hand over his mouth, take long, fast strides over the smouldering wood, hoping his trousers didn’t catch, and the floor didn’t give way. She covered her own mouth, coughing, her mind awash with potential outcomes. None of which were positive.
Barnett got to the sofa. He had to stop and lean over to grab Jess. ‘Ray!’ Gardner shouted, watching the flames scratching the sofa lick his legs, too. ‘Hurry!’
She heard Barnett grunting as he scooped up Jess, uncertain whether his noises came from pain or exertion. Probably both.
At that point, a sudden force pushed Gardner backwards into the hall through the front door, and the wall knocked the wind out of her chest.
She looked up into the wild eyes of her assailant.
‘Elizabeth!’
Gardner’s eyes fell to the kitchen knife in her hand, and, for one terrifying moment, she thought she’d been stabbed. She touched her chest and saw there was no blood on her fingers, recalling the time, years ago, when a blade had punctured a lung, and she’d almost died.
‘Elizabeth… please listen,’ Gardner said, lifting the palms of her hands, showing that she was unarmed.
‘You’re early,’ Elizabeth hissed. ‘Too early.’ She lashed out.
Gardner felt a searing pain in her temple and lifted her hands to her face to protect it. She slipped to the side, along the wall, and uncovered her eyes. Elizabeth was no longer in front of her.
‘Ray,’ she shouted. ‘Elizabeth is in here.’
Gardner sprang forward back into the lounge.
Over the shoulder of Elizabeth Sykes, who had the knife raised, she saw the face of Barnett, contorted in pain, as he held Jess Beaumont over one shoulder in a firefighter’s lift.
He’d no time to act.
Gardner charged and crashed into Elizabeth’s back. The two of them went down together onto the smouldering wood beside the flaming rug.
Elizabeth screamed in agony. Her body protected Gardner from burning, too. Gardner’s instinct was to hold Elizabeth down, restrain her, but that would surely kill her. She tried to scramble up off her without touching the flames. But the heat was intense, and the smoke was overwhelming.
And then the screaming intensified.
Elizabeth’s hair had caught fire from the rug.
Barnett’s hand was suddenly hanging there in front of Gardner’s face. Instinctively, she reached out and gripped it.
Barnett yanked her upwards with no effort of her own. She saw that he still had Jess slung over his shoulder. God, how strong was he?
‘Elizabeth!’ Gardner shouted, looking down.
Elizabeth had turned onto her back, hair flaming, face smoking, waving the blade in the air.
Barnett was tugging Gardner away by her hand. ‘Come on,’ he hissed. He, too, sounded in a great deal of pain. ‘Now.’
Gardner slipped her hand free and hissed, ‘Get out, Ray.’ She reached down for the writhing woman. ‘Please, Elizabeth,’ she coughed. ‘Please take my hand.’
Elizabeth was still waving the knife as she burned. It was unclear whether she was comprehending Gardner’s request.
Gardner yanked her hand back. The blade narrowly missed.
‘Boss,’ Barnett shouted in. ‘Leave now!’
Elizabeth screamed again. She seemed to shout something, but the words were difficult to understand over the wailing alarms and her own agony. And what she could make out sounded like nonsense.
She reached down again, and this time, she felt the sting of the blade.
It was no use. She wouldn’t accept help, and she was being rapidly consumed by the fire.
Despite her impending death, Elizabeth shouted again and again, but the words still seemed to make little sense, and then… it was all brought to a sudden close. Barnett’s hand landed on her shoulder, and before she knew it, she was in the garden, coughing her guts up.
Barnett slumped down, moaning in agony and coughing, rolling in the snow. Smoke rose from his trousers as he moaned in pain. Beside him lay the prone form of Jess Beaumont.
Gardner looked at her hand. The cut ran down the centre of her palm. It bled freely, and would need stitching, but her injuries would be nothing compared to Barnett’s. She rubbed at her forehead with the back of her hand and saw there was blood there, too.
She glanced at the house, seeing that the flames that had claimed Elizabeth Sykes had grown more ferocious. It was consuming the detached house. She could hear the fire engines. The neighbours were out in their own front garden, watching in horror as the fire tore through the building.
Her eyes moved up to the glowing bedroom window, and she realised that they’d spared no thought for Nigel Beaumont. The chaos of Elizabeth and Jess had taken all their attention.
The fire engine arrived, with several ambulances in tow. She ensured the paramedics got to Barnett and Jess first. And then, as she watched the firefighters work on the house, the words that Elizabeth had been shouting seemed to take on some clarity.
It’s inside of me.
Gardner looked up at the house.
Of us.
She heard something collapsing within the structure.
Let it burn.
Gardner sighed. Elizabeth, what have you done? It should never have ended this way for you.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She looked at it as a third paramedic came towards her. It was a message from Ross. A Google map with a pin.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gardner said, running for her own car.
‘Wait, please,’ the paramedic called. ‘Smoke inhalation is—’
Gardner didn’t need to hear the end. She knew smoke inhalation was deadly. She wasn’t an imbecile.
Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was the tragedy of Elizabeth Sykes, but right now, nothing in the world, nothing, seemed as important as getting to Cecile and Riddick.
65
Unable to bear the sounds of crying children, Riddick was doomed to spend the entire evening awake with his hands to his ears.
He’d even pushed his blood alcohol level excessively high, hoping to black out for a time. It hadn’t worked.
The cries of anguish kept on, and he soon became plagued by images of his own dead children.
Add to that, Tommy had insisted he sleep on the hard floor beside Cecile for the night. Tommy, of course, still didn’t know her actual identity, and still referred to her as Pat, or that suspicious bitch. But he’d been so busy with the trafficked children to attend to it. In a way, this was a good thing. When he finally got around to speaking with her again, he’d probably torture the information out of her. Tommy had also been adamant that the handcuffs stayed on.
This had been the worst of it.
I mean, who can settle with their hands cuffed to the railings behind their head?
So, she’d cried and begged for hours for Riddick to take them off, and Riddick had begged her to just let it go, because if Tommy came in and she was free, it’d be dangerous. But she wouldn’t have it.
Eventually, Tommy had come during the dead of night. ‘Jay, tape her mouth… she’s disturbing the kids.’
Riddick doubted hearing her cry was anything to do with the children’s anguish; more likely, it was the captivity imposed by Tommy, but he did as the bastard wanted anyway. As Riddick taped her mouth, he whispered to Cecile, ‘I’m not who Emma thinks I am any more. She shouldn’t have come looking. You shouldn’t be here.’ However, he then assured her, ‘I’ll take them off when he’s gone back to bed… if you’re quiet.’
She nodded, sending tears from her eyes down towards her ears.
Back on the floor, Riddick thought about the chain of events that had brought him to this moment.
During his time working in Bradford, his team had come across Tommy Rose and his empire on more than one occasion. To be honest, Tommy had been on everyone’s list for time immemorial, but that was what sometimes happened with these vile beings – they existed on the radar for a ludicrous length of time, and never slipped up. Ever. Some officers he’d worked with just blamed luck, but Riddick knew it for what it really was. Determination. Grit. Resilience. If you could find the perfect cocktail of these elements, and then wash it all down with a chaser of immorality, you could just about achieve anything.
Drugs had bothered Riddick, of course. Massively. And yes, Tommy sold drugs. On a massive scale.
But there were plenty of those fish out there, and a limited supply of hooks.
Rumours were that Tommy had gone further. Rumours that had piqued Riddick’s interest, because they involved children. But Tommy trafficking children remained just that, a rumour, and so was yet to attract too much attention from an already overworked force.
So, Riddick had followed up independently, and had found some truth.
Tommy was not trafficking children on a mammoth scale in the same way he sold drugs. Human trafficking on that scale was challenging beyond belief. More so than drugs. The manpower required was eye-watering. The more people involved, the more variables. And the more variables, the more chance of it collapsing. So, Tommy, at this stage, was merely dabbling.
He was acquiring immigrant teenage children at the borders, storing them at his different properties in the north, this one included, until he was certain that there was no heat attached to his acquisition. Then, he’d have them transported far off the radar, to someone in the south of England, to begin lives of servitude – which Riddick knew would vary from prostitution, factory work and drug dealing.
Riddick had never pursued it while working in Bradford because the situation involving a young, vulnerable man called Arthur Fields raised its head. Following his young friend’s suicide, Riddick spiralled again and fled from his job and his life.
Still, rather than wallow in his own misery, he’d put himself to some use. And when innocent children were involved, he was always available. In this instance, off the books.
Fortunately, he’d made a better job of going undercover than Cecile Metcalf and, fortunately, he’d survived so far, unlike poor Henry Ackroyd.
At three o’clock in the morning, he decided it’d soon be time to act. He peeled off Cecile’s tape, who fulfilled her bargain not to shout and cry again. ‘Tommy has told me that tomorrow, he’ll be away running chores for an hour. He wants me to man the fort while he’s gone. We’re going to walk out with the children in that other room, and I’m going to make sure that this bastard never does anything like this again.’
She looked at him. Her eyes were raw from tears. ‘Is this what it’s all been about?’
Riddick nodded. ‘I’m sorry you had to get mixed up in this.’
‘Why don’t you just phone someone? About the children? Get help.’
‘I think you misunderstand me, Cecile. When I say never again, I mean never again.’
‘You can’t…’
He looked away.
‘You’ll go to jail.’
He shrugged.
‘You’ll ruin your life.’
Riddick laughed – he couldn’t help himself.
Frustratingly, Tommy didn’t go anywhere for the best part of the day. He lingered around downstairs on the sofa, making phone calls.
Riddick still wasn’t expected to work. This house wouldn’t be back in operation until the children had been moved on.
Having Tommy around all the time made it challenging for Riddick to keep his alcohol levels topped up. The supply in the bathroom cabinet was finished, and, having finished two the previous day, he only had one bottle left, concealed beneath Cecile’s bed.
It wasn’t enough.
Yet, he wouldn’t be able to slip out anytime soon, either.
So, he was forced to ration his intake, which made him feel more on edge and shaky.
At one point, he was checking on Cecile, when he heard Tommy calling down from the third floor, where the children were kept. ‘Oi Jay… box of crisps from the kitchen.’
Riddick went down to the kitchen and grabbed a large box loaded with crisps and joined Tommy on the third floor. He stood a metre from the door and called to him.
Tommy emerged and grinned. ‘Don’t be shy. Come on in and meet the crew.’
Riddick followed the large man into the room.
Riddick’s stomach turned as he counted four children. They were a range of ages. One boy couldn’t have been older than ten, whereas one girl looked about fifteen. He’d expected them to look a lot more dishevelled, but that didn’t help with the nausea. That they weren’t battered and bruised brought him relief, though.
‘Lithuanian,’ Tommy said, ripping open the box and throwing packets at them as if he was feeding the ducks in a river. ‘Can’t understand a word we say. Or so it seems…’ He walked over to the girl who immediately clutched the boy who looked ten – her brother, perhaps? They looked alike. Tommy threw the box down and held out his hand to her. The girl paled, shook her head and gripped the boy tighter.
Tommy looked back at Riddick and smiled.
Riddick clenched his fists.
‘But I wonder,’ Tommy said, turning back, kneeling. He reached out and placed a hand on the girl’s face. She tried to turn from it, but he kept his palm clamped there. ‘I wonder if they do actually understand everything that I’m saying.’
The girl squeezed her eyes closed, tears springing from the corners.
Gritting his teeth, Riddick edged forward, until he was a metre behind Tommy.
‘Because maybe, if they could understand, then they’d be a little more grateful for the life that I’m going to give them.’
Tommy leaned closer, keeping her face clamped in his hands, drawing her nearer. His breath would be on her face. Riddick took another step. The anger surged through him, making his clenched fists tremble at his side.
It’d be so easy to swing right now…
But then what?
The man was a giant and, if he knocked Riddick out of this world, then the children were doomed.
He sucked in a deep breath, willing himself to be calmer.
Then, an idea occurred to him. ‘Can I speak with you, Tommy?’
Tommy let his hand slip away and rose. He pointed down at the box. ‘Eat as much as you need. I’ll fetch another when that’s done.’
The girl placed her chin on the young boy’s head and hugged him tightly.
‘Kids, eh?’ Tommy said, heading past Riddick and out into the hall.
Riddick followed him out. Tommy turned and locked the door and thrust the key into the left pocket of his jeans. ‘Get to it, Jay… what’s up?’
‘Just that I think I’m getting somewhere with Pat.’
‘How so? She told you why she’s here yet?’
‘Not exactly, no, but she’s vulnerable following the dose she had the other night… she let it slip she’s from outside of this area—’
‘Which begs the question, how does she know about this place?’
Riddick nodded.
‘Go in harder… hurt her.’ Tommy hit his arm. ‘I know you’ve got it in you, Jay.’
‘I was thinking, I might just dose her again, if that’s all right?’
‘Good idea. Let me know how it goes.’
‘The combination?’
Tommy had changed the safe combination the previous day. ‘Not that I don’t trust you, Jay, but if we’re out of service, then I’d keep it secure from my grandmother until business resumes… I’ll get it.’
Downstairs, Tommy opened the safe and handed him a couple of little baggies. ‘I need you on the ball, though, Jay. Just her. I’ve seen how you’ve developed a taste for it.’ He winked down at Riddick.
‘Of course,’ Riddick said.
‘Go and give her some medicine. It’s time for my run. One hour. Got someone pocketing some loose change if you catch my meaning. Time to put a stop to it. I’ll grab supplies and some other bits and bobs. You’re good to hold the fort? Keep an eye on the third floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘This will be over tomorrow.’ Tommy hit his arm again. Riddick felt anger bubbling inside him. ‘And you’ll get a good payday.’
66
After watching Tommy leave the house, Riddick went upstairs and released Cecile.
She perched on the edge of the bed, rubbing her wrists. She wept with relief.
He could feel her staring at him as he readied the syringe.
‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked.
‘Let me concentrate.’ He felt agitated by the lack of alcohol and the excess adrenaline in his system.
‘But, why—’
‘Please!’ he snapped.
She turned away, shocked.
He felt guilty. ‘Sorry… on edge. It’s all going to be fine. Just give me a minute.’
After he finished, he flicked the syringe and caught her looking again.
‘Whatever it is you’re planning to do… you don’t have to. We can just get the children and run. That’s enough.’
‘It isn’t,’ Riddick said, placing the syringe on the bedside table. ‘Whatever we do will never be enough, but I’ll at least do what I can while I’m able.’ He stood. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes,’ she said, still rubbing her wrists.
‘Now listen… As we planned, after I kick the door down upstairs, you grab those children, and you get out of here. Don’t look back until you get to your car.’
She’d already explained how she’d left her keys beneath the car behind the front right wheel. ‘Imagine if you’d searched me and found the keys to a Lexus?’
‘Now if your car is gone,’ Riddick said. ‘Not outside the realm of possibility.’ Especially with a key hidden behind the wheel. ‘You just keep going. A bus, a taxi, a shop… anything… anyone who can make that phone call. Just don’t give anyone this address for two hours. Two hours. Do I have your word?’
