Road Rage (12 page)

At one o’clock he and Burden sent out for sandwiches. He tried to eat but he couldn’t. Having one’s wife abducted was a fine way of losing weight, except that he’d prefer obesity. Once the rejected sandwiches had been removed he went down to check the progress being made in setting up an incident room.

Some five years before, an annex to the police station had been fitted up as a gym. This was at the height of the great fitness craze when it was thought advisable, at least for the younger members of the force, to work out as often as possible on exercise bikes, treadmills, ski tracks, and stair-steppers. Wexford had read somewhere that most people who start exercising keep it up for a maximum of six weeks, and this proved to be the case. Recently the gym had been used entirely as a badminton court, but, as Burden had said, not really intending a pun, that would have to be shuttled out of the way.

The inevitable computers were going in, the modems, the phones. He walked about, looking at things, not seeing, aware that eyes were on him in a new and curious way.

He had become a victim.

Now her son was at school Jenny Burden had gone back to teaching history at Kingsmarkham Comprehensive. It was a pity, as far as she was concerned, that the continental system didn’t operate here and schools start at eight and finish at two. Perhaps that would eventually come about through the European Union, a body her husband had no time for but which Jenny tended to think of as a good thing. As it was, she had to find someone to look
after Mark between the time he stopped at three-thirty and the time she stopped at four.

But things were different on Thursdays, not just this Thursday, the first day of term, when her last class ended at twelve-thirty and she could go home. The nicest thing about it was being there when her friend who did the afternoon school run brought Mark home at three-forty, when he ran in and jumped into her arms. In the meantime, having eaten the one lunch she got all week that didn’t have chips or pizza in it, she was curled up in an armchair reading Roy Jenkins’s
Life of Gladstone
.

The phone ringing slightly annoyed her. People shouldn’t phone during these lovely quiet two-and-a-half hours, her only alone time. But she answered it, she had never managed to get into the way of letting a phone ring.

“Hallo?”

A male voice. Absolutely ordinary, she said afterward, as accent-free as a voice could be, somewhat monotonous, impossible to say if young or middle-aged. Not old, she could say that. A dull voice, perhaps purposely geared to be without a regional note or a peculiarity of pronunciation.

“This is Sacred Globe. Listen carefully. We have five hostages: Ryan Barker, Roxane Masood, Kitty Struther, Owen Struther, and Dora Wexford. I will tell you our price for them in one moment. Naturally, if the price is not paid, they will die one by one. But you know that.

“Our price is that you stop the bypass. All work on the Kingsmarkham Bypass must be discontinued and not resumed. That is our price for these five people.

“We will be in contact again. Another message will be sent before nightfall. We are Sacred Globe, saving the world.”

D
id you guess right?” Burden said.

“I’m afraid so.”

Wexford was reading the transcription Jenny had made, as accurately as she could, of Sacred Globe’s phone message. There was nothing in it to surprise him, it was in fact routine stuff, but the threat to kill the hostages if the “price” was not paid still reared up off the page at him.

His new team had come into the room and it would shortly be time to address them. As well as Burden from Kingsmarkham, there were Detective Sergeants Barry Vine and Karen Malahyde with the four DCs, Lynn Fancourt, James Pemberton, Kenneth Archbold, and Stephen Lambert. The Regional Crime Squad had sent him five officers from their complement of fourteen: DI Nicola Weaver, DS Damon Slesar paired with DC Edward Hennessy, and DS Martin Cook paired with DC Burton Lowry.

Wexford had met Nicola Weaver for the first time ten minutes before. A woman had still to be very good to have risen to where she was at her age. She couldn’t have been more than thirty. Hers was a sturdy figure, not very tall, she had strong features, black hair severely cut, the fringe at right angles to the sides, and she wore a wedding ring. Her eyes were a clear turquoise blue and though she seldom smiled, when she did she showed perfect white
teeth. She had shaken hands with him, a firm handshake, and said as if she meant it, “I’m very glad to be here.”

Slesar was dark, handsome in a strained bony way, one of those tall skinny people who can eat anything without putting on weight. His very short hair was a dull lampblack, his skin the olive of the Welsh- or Cornishman. Wexford had a feeling he had seen him somewhere before, met him, but for the moment he had no recollection of where. DC Hennessy was his opposite, thickset, of medium height, with a pudgy face, reddish hair, and light hazel eyes like a ginger cat’s. The other sergeant was thickset and heavyish with bright sharp eyes. DC Lowry was black, skinny, and elegant like a cop in a television serial.

Karen Malahyde greeted DS Slesar like an old friend—or something more? At any rate she didn’t favor him with the short cool look and tight nod she gave most male newcomers, but smiled, whispered something, and sat down next to him. Could he have encountered Slesar in her company? Was that the solution? Somehow he didn’t think so. It was something of a mild joke among them all that Karen never seemed to have a boyfriend.

He began by telling them what some but not all of them knew already, that his wife was among the hostages. Nicola Weaver, who evidently didn’t know, said something to her neighbor, Barry Vine, and raised her eyebrows at his answer.

Wexford told them about the two messages, beginning with the one to the
Courier
, which had resulted in the Chief Constable’s press conference and an undertaking secured from all national newspapers that they would print nothing until he lifted the embargo. The second message, he said, had been received by Inspector Burden’s wife at their home, and he had a copy of Jenny’s transcript shown on the screen.

“I think and hope this may be an instance of someone being too clever—and in his opinion amusing—for his own good. We might have expected the message to come to my house, since my wife may well have told her captors who she is and who I am. To choose Inspector Burden’s home took us by surprise, as was the aim. We must try to avoid being taken by surprise again.

“But in being clever he may also have been unwise. How did he know about Mike Burden? How did he know of his existence? Perhaps because Mike had had dealings with him and it’s unlikely these were of a—how shall I put it?—a social nature.” A ripple of laughter made him pause. “That is something we have to go into,” he went on. “No doubt Sacred Globe found his phone number in the book, but we have to investigate how he knew whom to look up.

“The hostages were taken at random. We know that. Therefore there’s little point in much investigation of their backgrounds. That isn’t going to help us find where they are or who has them. We have to begin from the other end, with Sacred Globe itself. That’s our starting point and getting on with it is imperative. This means contact with all the pressure groups protesting currently at the building of the bypass.

“Most of them—a couple of days ago I’d have said all of them—are legitimate groups of sincere people protesting against what they see as an outrage in a peaceable way. But in these instances there are always the others, those in it for the pleasure of causing disruption, for example, the rioters who invaded Kingsmarkham one Saturday night a month ago and many of whom, perhaps like our hostage-takers, were masked and seemingly unidentifiable.

“Someone in these groups, in SPECIES or KABAL, is going to be able to help us. Even someone with Sussex
Wildlife or Friends of the Earth, both legitimate, concerned societies, may well have come in contact with very different elements while on other protests. These people have to be talked to and any clues they may give us quickly followed up. The tree people and those in the camps have to be talked to. They may be our most valuable sources of information.

“I’ve said that the hostages’ backgrounds aren’t apparently of much significance, but, on the other hand, I would draw your attention to a connection between Tanya Paine, Contemporary Cars’ receptionist, and the hostage Roxane Masood. Miss Masood and Miss Paine appear to have been acquaintances if not close friends, they knew each other, which is the principal reason for Miss Masood’s calling that particular taxi firm. This may mean nothing, it’s probably no more than coincidence, but it is a tiny lead that shouldn’t be neglected.

“The Chief Constable is at present with the Highways Agency. What will come of that meeting I don’t know. I do know, as sure as I have any certainties about this business, that government isn’t going to say, ‘Okay, forget about the bypass, let the hostages go and we’ll build it somewhere else.’ Nothing like that is going to happen. That isn’t to say there won’t be some sort of interim compromise. We must wait and see what he has to say when he returns from his meeting.

“Meanwhile, because time is very important, we all have to get going on the lines I’ve just laid down. Principally, to find out who Sacred Globe is, their members, their leaders. We have to wait too for the message we are told will be sent before nightfall.

“Are there any questions?”

Nicola Weaver got to her feet. “Is this to be classified as a terrorist incident?”

“Doubtful,” Wexford said. “Not at any rate at this
stage. As far as we can tell, Sacred Globe isn’t attempting to overthrow the government by force.”

“Wasn’t there a group or an individual who planted bombs on new housing estates?” This was Inspector Weaver again. “I mean, bombed them to discourage new building? They’re a possibility, I should think.”

“What about the guy who made concrete hedgehogs and put them on motorways?” This was DC Hennessy’s contribution. He added, “The idea being simultaneously to avenge squashed hedgehogs and wreck cars.”

“Anyone like that can be a lead,” Wexford said.

Turning with a slight frown from Karen Malahyde, who had apparently been whispering information to him, Damon Slesar asked, “I understand Inspector Burden’s wife is a schoolteacher at a local school. Could one of these Sacred Globe folks have been in her class at school or be a parent of such a child?”

“It’s a good point,” said Wexford. “Good thinking. That way he might know whose wife she was.” At once, as he uttered those words, his own wife came powerfully into his mind, seemed to stand before his eyes. He blinked, resumed, “This is another lead to look into as soon as you leave this room. Talk to Inspector Burden and find out where his wife taught up till five years ago and where she has begun teaching now. Right. That’s all. I hope you’re all happy to work late tonight.”

It was still only four o’clock. Before nightfall, Wexford repeated to himself, before nightfall the third message would come. Now, in early September, night didn’t fall until eight o’clock, if by the term one meant after sunset and when dusk has begun. In the next four hours that message might come to almost anyone. The same options as earlier applied and earlier they had been wrong.

Jenny had, with commendable presence of mind, immediately punched out the number 1471 that summons a
recorded voice telling the subscriber the caller’s number. But the caller had, prior to the call, put in the number that negates this procedure, so there was no result. These days any call could be traced if the caller’s number was known, except that a call box was almost certainly being used and this time it would be a different call box. Were they in the vicinity, he wondered, or a hundred miles away? Were the hostages together or held separately?

He asked himself, knowing he shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t touch it, shy away from this, whom they would kill first. If things didn’t go the way they wanted—and how could they?—who would be first?

The only call to come in during the next hour in connection with the hostages was from Andrew Struther, son of Owen and Kitty Struther, of Savesbury House, Framhurst.

Burden was rather surprised to hear the voice of a reasonable man using reasonable words, even apologizing.

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I was a mite discourteous. The fact was this tale of my parents being missing seemed to me so totally incredible. However—I’ve phoned the Excelsior in Florence and they’re not there. They’ve never been there. I’m not exactly worried …”

“Perhaps you should be, Mr. Struther.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t entirely follow … Hasn’t there simply been a mistake?”

“I think not. The best thing would be for you to come down here and we’ll give you the facts as we know them. I’d have done so this morning, but you were”—Burden endeavored to be polite—“not particularly receptive.”

Struther said he would come. He didn’t know the whereabouts of Kingsmarkham Police Station and Burden had someone give him directions. Pass through Framhurst, over the crossroads, keep straight on, follow the
signs for Kingsmarkham … DCs Hennessy and Fancourt had gone to the bypass site to interview tree people at the Elder Ditches and Savesbury camps, where Burden was to join them. Detective Inspector Weaver was with the KABAL hierarchy, and Karen Malahyde with Archbold were researching SPECIES, where their headquarters was, how many members they had nationwide, what they did and if it ever involved breaking the law.

A phone call came to Wexford from Sheila to say Sylvia was going home. Neil had been in touch with the news that their younger son Robin had chicken pox. She was going home but would be back the next day, as soon as she was certain she couldn’t carry the chicken pox virus or bacterium back to Amulet. Wexford had given up arguing, protesting, telling them both to go home. He just uttered, “Yes, darling, that’s fine” and other consoling pap, adding that he didn’t know when he’d get home. The message wouldn’t come to his home, anyway. Sacred Globe would know very well he wouldn’t see much of the inside of his house at the moment.