Playing the Game (25 page)

            Walking back into the interrogation room, the look on his face must have telegraphed his conversation with Williams to McCrane. ‘So, Agent Balfer, might there be a deal on the table?’

            ‘Two things’, Balfer spat. ‘Number one; we arrest Sarah Caldwell and number two; Katie Patton is recovered unharmed’. McCrane contemplated for a second, shaking his head.

            ‘Unharmed’, he stated calmly, ‘is a little beyond my control. Would you settle for alive? Oh, and until the paperwork is signed, sealed and delivered, I’m afraid I’ll be taking the fifth’, he added.

67

            Even before Charlie and I converged in the house, having covered the ground floor between us, I realised that this house was empty. It wasn’t hard figure out; there was no furniture, bedding, appliances or personal effects of any kind. The rooms were bare, and cracks had begun to form in the flaking plaster on the walls. I could see there was damp coming through from a couple of the ceilings and there was a musty smell coming from the carpets where rain had dripped through and soaked the flooring.

            ‘There’s no-one here man’, Charlie spoke for us both. ‘Doesn’t look like there has been for a while’. We spent several minutes checking over the house; what we found upstairs was reflective of what we had found downstairs; the whole house looked deserted and un-lived in. Had Britland-Jones been right about the address?

            Disappointed and, more to the point, fearful that we still hadn’t had any other communication from The Chemist giving us a starting point to try and get my daughter back, we reconvened outside, rain now beginning to fall from the skies.

            ‘What next?’ Charlie asked. He too had been praying that this would be a fruitful line of enquiry. ‘Where do we go from here?’

            ‘Excuse me, who are you looking for?’ a voice came from behind us from the neighbouring garden. We turned around and saw an old man looking at us enquiringly. He looked to be in his mid seventies with a long grey beard, rimmed glasses and wore clothes that he looked like he hadn’t changed in a week. Well it was worth a shot. I walked to the fence where he was standing and reached for the photograph we had of Sarah Caldwell, holding it up for the old man to see, close to his face, mindful of the fact that his eyesight probably wasn’t the best, even with his glasses.

            ‘Have you ever seen this person before?’ I asked. ‘Did she used to live here?’

            ‘Who wants to know?’ he demanded.

            ‘We’re LAPD’ I told him, flashing my badge. ‘We’re here on a missing person case’, which was slightly misleading the old man who would assume that person in the photograph was the missing person, and not my daughter, Katie.

The old man almost snatched the photograph from my hands, and held it at arms length, studying it intently, although the photograph was shaking in his grasp.

            ‘Why I’m sure that’s Sarah’, he said nodding as my heart seemed to momentarily stop. ‘Yes, I’m sure of it’

            ‘And she used to live here did she?’ Charlie clarified.

            ‘She did indeed’, the old man confirmed. ‘Well, the whole family did. Tragic,’ he said shaking his head, ‘absolutely tragic’.

            ‘What is?’ I quizzed, taking the photograph back.

            ‘Her parents died a long time ago. Looked like they got into a fight together at the top of the stairs and both fell from the top; both killed’, he said, head still shaking. ‘Sarah ran away after that, it was the grief I suppose’, he continued, not supposing for one minute that Sarah could have been responsible for her parents’ deaths. ‘Her brother was taken into care not long after that and I didn’t see her again until just after her brother’s funeral. She stayed here for three or four days then disappeared again until about six months ago’.

            ‘What happened six months ago?’

            ‘Well she reappeared’, he looked puzzled. ‘Stayed for around a week this time, maybe slightly longer, then left again suddenly. Don’t know what happens to the house mind, I suppose she must own it now her family’s gone, but it stays empty most of the time.

            Well the timeframe would fit. We hadn’t known about her parents; well at least Charlie and I hadn’t. If Britland-Jones had uncovered that fact whilst researching his story on her brother’s death, he hadn’t mentioned it to us.

            ‘Do you know where she went?’ I asked urgently. ‘It’s vital that we find her, sir’.

            ‘She’s not in any trouble is she?’ he asked, suddenly looking worried. ‘I wouldn’t want to get her into any trouble’.

            ‘Oh no sir, she’s not’, I assured him. ‘We just need her to help us with some routine enquiries’.

            ‘Ah, well that’s alright then’, the old man looked relieved. ‘She did leave me a forwarding address actually, last time she was here. She told me she wouldn’t have usually done so but that she was expecting an urgent letter from a friend and that she was going to be too busy to check here as often as she’d like.

            ‘Did you forward it when it arrived?’ I asked. That sounded like it could have some relevance.

            ‘I did as a matter of fact. It was just the one’, he told us. ‘Wait there, I’ll see if I can find the address for you’.

            It took the old man only a couple of minutes to reappear, during which time both Charlie and I waited nervously. Was this too much to hope for? I wondered what she would need to receive so urgently that she would risk leaving an address with this old man. ‘Do me a favour,’ the old man wheezed, ‘and don’t tell her where you got the address from. She made me promise not to give it to anyone and I’ve known her since she was a child. Think I was the only person she could trust with the address.’ he added. ‘Sad, sad, sad’, he shook his head once more.

            I took the address off him, eagerly. Reading it, it looked familiar; like I should know it already, but I couldn’t place it.  It would be easy enough to check through dispatch though; we’d know exactly where it was in minutes. Thanking the old man, for what was now the best lead we’d had in the month that we had been chasing The Chemist, we walked back to the car. Only then, and even then it was purely chance that I turned my head in the direction that I did, did we notice a woman standing on the opposite side of the road to our parked car, about a hundred yards or so away from us, watching us, smiling.

            I locked eyes with the woman, who was swaying slightly; the wind had picked up a little and it was raining harder than it had been whilst we were talking to the old man. Even through the rain, in the couple of seconds after I noticed her, I could see her clearly. She looked to be around a hundred and twenty pounds, maybe slightly more, and was around five foot seven. I could see her smiling, even from here. As I stood staring at her, Charlie followed my gaze to see what I was looking at.

            We both knew instantaneously, and with no communication between us, that we were both looking at Sarah Caldwell. And she was looking back at us.

68

            I’m not sure how long the stare down lasted, but as we looked at her, the rain started to drive down harder and harder. As I squinted, more to check I wasn’t seeing things more than anything else, she stood rooted to the spot, still swaying, almost taunting us; daring us to try and catch her.  As my eyes became accustomed to the rain, I began to see her clearly. I couldn’t get over how ordinary she looked.

            ‘That’s her, right?’ Charlie asked, his gaze still fixated on her across the road in the distance. By way of an answer, I started running towards her, reaching for my firearm, sure that it was indeed Sarah Caldwell.

            For a moment, she stood and watched as I ran towards her. Even in the driving rain, I could see her still smiling as we crossed the road, dodging the few vehicles that dove past, before she turned quickly and ran; darting into an alley, ruling out the possibility of Charlie following in the car. She must have followed us from the station, there was no other way she could know we were here.

            Charlie ran just behind me and I’d thought we’d make up our ground in no time but she was much quicker than I had anticipated, and as we turned out of the alleyway onto a long winding road that led back to the centre of Wilton, we were still a good distance behind her.

            The forceful rain had sent the few people that had been on the sidewalks of Wilton darting for immediate cover, and as a result, the road was deserted apart from the three of us. That should have given us a clear line of sight on Sarah Caldwell, but in reality the harsh rain made it anything but. Large drops of water cascaded off us as we ran, soaking us both to the skin. It slowed us down somewhat, but had seemingly no effect on our target, who was pulling away from us a little, if anything.

            I pushed myself to another level, despite the weather, the desire to get my daughter back burning inside me. Charlie followed suit, though I could tell from our breathing that we wouldn’t be able to keep this pace up much longer.

            From somewhere, I found the strength to pull away from Charlie; and within a minute I was right behind her. The speed with which I was running meant that it was difficult to pull my gun without losing my footing but that wouldn’t matter; I was literally a couple of feet behind her by now.

            Without warning, she made a sharp right into another alley way which caught me by surprise. She made the turn as sure-footedly as I’d imagine it was possible, given the conditions, and I tried to follow her lead.

            I kind of half made it. I managed to turn into the alleyway itself but my momentum, combined with the wet conditions underfoot, made me lose my footing and I landed with a hard thud against two trashcans that were overflowing with debris, cracking my head against the floor which knocked me out cold for several seconds.

            Charlie, several yards behind, saw us turn off, and slowed his pace accordingly. He must have seen me fall but didn’t stop to see how I was; he knew all I cared about was having Sarah Caldwell apprehended. I saw him rush past just before I passed out and I tried but failed to call out to him to be careful.

            Though he was carrying considerably more weight than Patton, Holland moved fast and was soon right behind The Chemist as she weaved through the alley, never once glancing over her shoulder to see if he was closing down on her.

            She leapt over an abandoned shopping trolley that had been tipped over; probably left there by one of the many hobos that liked to call this alleyway home. As she did so, her foot clipped the handle of the trolley, causing her to stumble but not enough to take her off her feet. That gave Holland the opening he needed; Launching himself after her, he cleared the trolley by several inches, and managed to get a hand to Caldwell’s shoulder, spinning her around as they both fell.

            The tumble took them both off their feet and they landed in the sticky wet mud that was now running like a river through the alley.

            Rising to get his bearings, out of the corner of his eye, Holland saw the bright sheen of a blade glistening, even in the rain which had turned the daylight into a dull grey mist. Rolling sideways out of instinct, he managed to avoid the knife that Sarah Caldwell sliced in his direction, but only just. He swung out with his fist, which connected with The Chemist’s temple just as much out of luck as it did out of precision, knocking her over once more.

            Rising, drawing his gun as he did so, he didn’t see Caldwell lash out with her foot with a vicious strike to his right leg. The force of the strike should have been enough to break his patella, but Caldwell was maybe a couple of inches too far away to get all she could on the strike. Nevertheless, Holland dropped to the floor in considerable pain, dropping his gun as he did so.

            If The Chemist had seen where the gun had gone, she gave no indication of wanting it, preferring to bring her blade high up once more and drive it through the collarbone of the grounded detective, who let out a sharp intake of breath and he felt the knife pierce his skin and tissue.

            Trying to overcome the pain, Holland lashed out with a couple of wild swings; but the pain had clouded his judgement and the rain impaired his vision. As she stood over him, Holland got his first good look, up close and personal, at Sarah Caldwell. She certainly didn’t look how he’d imagined. She was actually strikingly attractive, her natural beauty shining through the mud that had covered her face when she fell. Her eyes shone through; deep blue and piercing and her hair was jet black, tied neatly back in a pony tail, which had remained in place despite their tussle. She smiled at him as she bent down. If he didn’t know what she’d done and what she was capable of, she looked just the kind of woman he might ask out for a drink, the stereotypical ‘girl next door’. And that terrified him.

            Reaching into her coat pocket, The Chemist pulled out another envelope. ‘Please give this to Detective Patton’, she whispered in Charlie’s ear, as his blood continued to pool around them.

69

            I stood up, somewhat groggily, my head pounding and my chest aching where the fall had winded me. As I tried to get my bearings, I peered down the alley, looking for any sign of Caldwell or my partner but the rain had severely reduced visibility and I could see no sign of either of them.

            I jogged in the direction I knew they had gone, and it took me several seconds to build up my pace again, trying to ignore the pain of my fall, the mud in the alley way making it all the more difficult.

            I found Charlie around a minute later; frantically scrambling as he tried to stand, using a discarded wooden pallet to assist his endeavour. I could see immediately that he was injured but couldn’t tell how seriously.

            ‘Easy, Charlie boy, easy’, I took him with both arms to help him stand, which only made blood stream out of his shoulder wound faster. ‘Gonna have to lie you back down, partner’, I told him. ‘You ok?’