Fallen Angel (26 page)

‘We got a problem, boss, a big problem.' The voice of Tony Woods echoed down from the room above.

‘What is it?'

Woods made his way down into the basement. ‘Alice Dawney is fine, but Peter's gone missing.'

‘Since when?'

‘Fifteen minutes before the money-drop.'

‘Shit, it has to be Jenkins. He must have made contact with him before the money-drop.'

‘How? Blackwell's monitoring all communications in and out of the house.'

Collins shook her head in frustration. ‘I don't know. I really don't know.' She stared again at the drawings on the wall. Did one of them hold the clue she was looking for?

Then she remembered the phone. The phone she had taken from Jenkins's bag after he had killed himself. She pulled it out and quickly made her way upstairs in order to get a signal.

The minute she got one, she hit the redial button. A woman's voice, tinged with panic, answered almost immediately.

‘Peter? Is Michael all right?'

‘Who is this?' barked Collins.

The voice on the other end of the line immediately fell silent.

‘This is Detective Inspector Stacey Collins of the Metropolitan Police. I want to know who I'm speaking to.'

‘How do I know you are who you say you are?' said the woman's voice, still timid and unsure.

‘For fuck's sake,' said Collins. ‘I don't have time for this shit. I'm working the Michael Dawney case. This number is the last one dialled on a phone that was in the possession of the kidnapper. Unless you want to be charged as an accomplice, I suggest you start talking.'

Collins could hear the woman swallow hard and knew her threat had got through.

‘My name is Martha Day.'

‘And how do you know Duncan Jenkins?'

‘I don't. I don't know anyone by that name.'

‘And how do you know Peter and Michael?'

‘I'm Peter's secretary.'

It was slowly starting to make sense. Jenkins clearly knew enough about police procedure to know that Peter's own phones would have been monitored, so he had got round this by calling his secretary.

‘Do you know where Peter is right now?'

There was a hesitant silence on the other end of the line.

‘For God's sake, woman, I'm trying to save a boy's life. Tell me where Peter Dawney is.'

‘He … he said if I told the police, he'd kill Michael.'

Collins wanted to reach down the phone line, grab the woman by the neck and shake her until she told her what she wanted to know, but she understood that the only way to get anything out of her was to do her best to be sympathetic. ‘Martha,' she said softly, ‘I know how
frightening this must be for you, but you have to trust me. The man who took Michael and called you is dead. People like that, they always make threats about what they're going to do if the police are called, but the truth is that there is no one better placed than the police to rescue the victims in cases like this.'

Collins heard the woman take a sharp intake of breath. ‘I could never live with myself if Michael died like Daniel. For all I know you could be working with the kidnapper, and this could be some kind of test.' The woman was crying now. ‘I promised I wouldn't tell. I just can't.'

Martha Day ended the call. Collins immediately dialled her number again, but this time she was greeted by the answering machine. ‘Shit,' she said in frustration. Then she looked at the keypad and began to dial a new number. This time the voice that answered belonged to a young man with a South London accent.

‘Khan? It's Stacey Collins here.'

‘Where are you? The whole world's trying to track you down.'

‘That's not important right now. Khan, I need a favour.'

The tone of her voice told him she was deadly serious and that his questions would have to wait for another time.

‘What can I do for you?'

‘I've got the number of a mobile that belongs to Peter Dawney's secretary. I need to know everywhere that it's been since midday until now.'

‘I can make the call, but it's going to take –'

‘No, Khan. There isn't time to do this officially. I don't care what you have to do, whose system you have to hack
into. I need the information as quickly as possible. And you have to call me back on Woods's phone; I don't have mine with me.'

‘What's the number, boss?'

Collins returned downstairs to find Woods scrutinizing the pile of video tapes next to the camera.

‘He made the videos here too,' he said. ‘He must have spent years putting this place together. I doubt even his mother knew what was going on down here.'

Collins had no time to respond. She went to the wall where the drawings were pinned up and began to pull them down.

Woods stood up, alarmed at what seemed to be his boss's irrational behaviour. ‘What you doing, guv?'

‘Let's get out of here,' she said.

‘Sure,' he said hesitantly. ‘Where are we going?'

She held up a drawing of the boy in the pool of water. ‘Here.'

Collins had only just got into Woods's car when Khan called back with a list of locations for the mobile phone.

‘It's registered to a Martha Day,' he began, and read through the list of masts that had picked up the phone's signal since noon. ‘She was at Dawney's office until 12.20, then she went over to his house. Then they went to an area just off the Purley Way in Croydon, and the phone is still in that area. It's on the main road, just off Fiveways corner.'

‘Do you know what she drives?'

She heard Khan tapping away at the computer. ‘A red Suzuki Vitara.' He proceeded to give her the registration number as Woods started up the car and headed towards Croydon.

They were there in less than twenty minutes and spotted Martha Day's car in a lay-by. Woods pulled up directly in front of her. ‘I haven't got my warrant card,' said Collins; ‘you'd better show her yours.'

The two officers jumped out and went to the driver's side of the vehicle. Martha Day looked scared as the officers approached. Woods held up his warrant card. ‘I'm Detective Sergeant Tony Woods and this is my colleague Detective Inspector Stacey Collins. Please get out of the car.'

She stepped out cautiously as Collins led her on to the pavement.

‘Martha, please listen. You know I'm a police officer now. What I told you on the phone was the truth. Duncan Jenkins, the man who kidnapped Michael, is dead. Please tell me where Peter is now. He and his son are in great danger. We don't have time to wait.'

‘He said he would kill them both if I contacted the police.'

Collins placed her hand gently on the woman's shoulder. ‘Please, Martha, you're the only person who knows where they are. You're the only one who can save them.'

Tears of panic and emotion began to fall from her eyes as she began to explain the sequence of events that had brought her to Croydon.

Collins pushed open the heavy front door, stepped into the derelict building and looked around the empty space in front of her, which was illuminated by beams of light from several large holes in the roof.

An acrid odour hung in the air. ‘Shotgun residue,' said Collins to Woods, who was following behind her. ‘You'd better call an ambulance, and some back-up.' She continued on into the building and soon spotted a shotgun on her right, tied to a post and with wire attached to the trigger. A trail of glistening blood led through the room to a door at the far end. She could hear the sound of running water coming from beyond the door and ran towards it.

She pushed the door open and instantly saw the motionless body of Peter Dawney in a pool of blood,
tangled up in a four-foot-high roll of razor wire. Just in Peter's view was Michael Dawney, tied up in a pit of water. The child's eyes showed that he was petrified.

She reached through a gap in the wire and took Peter's pulse. It was weak. He was alive but only just.

In an instant Collins had taken in the situation. There was no way through the wire, no way to help Michael. The water was above his neck. He was screaming through the gag, desperately trying to suck in the air he needed to stay alive through his nose.

She circled the room, moving around the razor wire, looking for some way to turn the water off. She was still looking when Woods entered the room.

‘Tony, we've got to get the water switched off.'

‘How?'

‘Call the fire brigade, call the Water Board. Call anybody who can turn it off. And fast. Try the other units, see if anyone can help.'

Woods rushed out, and Collins turned back to Michael. ‘It's going to be okay, Michael. Help is on the way.'

But the look in the boy's eyes, and the fact that the water had already risen while she had been there, told her that help would not arrive in time. The water was above the boy's upper lip, and his nostrils were almost submerged. If Michael was going to be saved from drowning, it had to be now.

She took off her shoes and stepped back so that she was flat against the wall. Taking a deep breath, she ran as fast as she could towards the wire and jumped over it into the water. She felt her left foot rip as it caught one of the blades, but she landed safely in the water and
quickly stood up. She removed the gag from Michael's mouth, but he couldn't talk because the water level was too high.

The water reached just below her chest. She tried to lift the cast-iron chair that Michael was tied to, but it was far too heavy to budge. She could feel where the flow of water was coming from, so she took off her jacket and plunged under the water, trying to block the pipe. It was useless. The water flowed just as quickly as ever.

She went back to the chair, standing behind it and planting her bare feet firmly on the ground. She gripped the bottom of the seat and tried to lift it with all her might. The chair rose a few inches into the air, just high enough for Michael's mouth to be out of the water. She heard him suck in a lungful of air and then begin to scream with panic.

The muscles in her arms and shoulders began to burn. She knew she couldn't hold the chair up for much longer. Her voice was strained as she spoke. ‘Michael, I can't hold you up for long. You're gonna have to take a deep breath. I've got to put you back down.'

‘No, please, please, no.'

Collins had to ignore the boy's screams. ‘Take a deep breath, Michael, now,' she shouted as the chair sank back down, taking the boy's mouth and nose under the water. She shook her arms and lifted him back up again, knowing she wouldn't be able to keep doing this for long. Within a matter of minutes the water level would be too high for her to lift him above it.

The door burst open, and Woods entered with three men, one of whom immediately began to slice through
the razor wire with a pair of bolt cutters. Michael's screams again filled the room.

‘Quickly,' gasped Collins. ‘I can't hold him.'

Woods didn't wait for the wire to be cut. He jumped over it and helped her lift the boy higher, until the three volunteers were able to get through and carry the boy out.

Within minutes the room was filled with police, paramedics and fire fighters, who untied Michael's bonds and conveyed him and his father into waiting ambulances.

Collins sat alone in a corner of the room, struggling to dry herself with a towel because of her exhaustion. Suddenly a familiar face entered the room; she stood up, and he went straight over to her.

‘Listen, Collins, just because you were right this time, doesn't mean you'll always be.'

Blackwell turned and headed towards the door, pausing as he reached it and looking back at her with a half-smile on his face. ‘But well done.'

In place of an opening hymn, there was music by some semi-obscure boy band. Collins couldn't name the song, but she recognized the tune, having heard it blasting out of Sophie's room dozens of times in recent months.

She was in a pew of the chapel right behind family and friends, at Higgins's insistence. If the choice had been her own, she would have sat much further back. But he had wanted the police to be highly visible at the funeral. Although they had failed to save Daniel Eliot, Collins had managed to rescue Michael Dawney in the nick of time. Higgins wanted the press and the public to know that the police had done their best.

From where she sat, Collins could see Christina and David Eliot sitting in the front row. Their faces were full of tears. Christina's brother and sister sat on one side of her, while David was on the other. His face was full of redness, betraying the fact that he was still drinking as heavily as ever. For once Collins couldn't blame him. The family liaison officer had told her that David Eliot now knew he wasn't Daniel's biological father.

Looking along the pew, Collins saw the usher make a gesture. Everyone rose to their feet as the tiny coffin was carried up the aisle. By the time it reached the top, the song was only a little more than halfway through.

The service that followed was heartbreaking. ‘What can
you say when a life ends at such a young and tender age,' the priest began. ‘We'll never know the man that Daniel Eliot would have become, but we know that he was a kind and considerate boy with a gentle and generous nature that his parents were rightly proud of.

‘These days we hear a lot about evil. We read about evil tyrants and dictators in obscure parts of the world, we read about evil figures from history, but few of us ever come face to face with evil. Daniel Eliot did just that. The thing that took his innocence away from this world, the thing that cut short his bright and beautiful life, was the worst kind of evil that any of us will ever know. But the ultimate justice, the justice handed out by God himself, awaits the man who did this.

‘Daniel's laughter, smile and love of life will always be missed in our community.'

The congregation stood for the final hymn as the curtains opened and the coffin was conveyed away for cremation. Collins found her eyes filled with unstoppable tears.

As she left the crowded chapel, she saw someone whom she hadn't expected to be there. Peter Dawney rolled towards her in his wheelchair, his eyes bloodshot, his face weak and tired.

‘Peter,' she said. ‘I didn't think you'd be … well, I suppose …'

He held up a hand to silence her. ‘I know, I wasn't sure whether I should come. The doctors said I wasn't strong enough. I certainly don't think Christina and David wanted me to be here, but I had to do it for Daniel. Poor little kid never had a chance, I wasn't there for him. Perhaps
if I had been, none of this would ever have happened.'

There was nothing Collins could say. In her heart she knew it was a waste of time to worry about things that could no longer be changed.

Their eyes followed Christina as she was led away from the chapel by family and friends. Christina met Peter's gaze, but the sad expression on her face did not change. David followed closely behind, staring at the ground in front of him.

Peter watched Christina vanish into a parked car. ‘Still hasn't spoken to me,' he said.

‘What is there for her to say?' said Collins. They stood in silence.

Peter Dawney's marriage was in tatters – the revelation that he had been having an affair at a time when his wife thought they were at their happiest had been devastating. But at least for them there was hope of a reconciliation. Christina Eliot was seeking a divorce from her husband. The pain of the loss they were feeling was simply too great for either of them to bear.

‘Tell me something, Stacey. What's your take on all of this? How could she not tell me? Keep something like that hidden for so long? And now he's not here any more. My own flesh and blood, and I never even knew him. How can it be right for a child to grow up not knowing who their real father is?'

‘She had her reasons,' said Collins gently.

‘I guess. But it's still not right. How would you feel if you never knew your real father? Every child deserves to know who their father is. I mean, it's just a fundamental right. Don't you think?'

Collins said nothing. Her thoughts were of Sophie. There was nothing she could possibly say to Peter. Not under the circumstances.