Kill Me Again Part 27

Stop it! she told herself. How many bad b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were there really? Surely there was a much better chance of him being picked up by somebody decent? And what choice was there? If he stayed with her, she was sure he was going to die.

'I want to stay with you, Mum,' he said, turning his scared little face towards her.

'I know you do, sweetheart. But this is for the best. Somebody will find you and take you home. You know what to do. I need you to be brave one more time.'

The tears were running down Josh's face as he slowly opened the door and lowered himself out of the van onto the pavement. He looked back at Maggie, and she could see confusion and doubt written all over his face. His world had been torn apart over the last week, and he must have felt totally lost.

'I love you, Joshy with every inch of my soul.' He stared at her as if he didn't believe a word of it.

'Face the wall, Josh, or I'm coming back for you.' That he did believe.

It was almost unbearable when Samil leaned across and pulled the door shut. Maggie couldn't see Josh any more, but as the van pulled away, she looked out of the back window at the tiny figure of her son, still in his muddy football kit, one sock up, one around his ankles, standing facing the side wall of a carpet warehouse, his shoulders slumped, his head hanging.

58.

Tom and Becky were both resigned to another late night. Tom had spent the afternoon on the telephone and now felt depressed because none of the ideas that were whizzing around inside his head seemed to help in any way in the hunt for Leo.

He glanced out of the window. It was dark now, and wherever Leo was it would probably be cold. He was now as certain as he could be that she had been abducted. Everything pointed to it the flower delivery but no flowers left in the apartment, the car in the garage, no clothes or jewellery missing, failing to turn up to her niece's christening. Ellie had asked her to be the baby's G.o.dmother, Tom had discovered, and she would never have missed that. Right now Leo would no doubt be dreading the cold night ahead and he wasn't able to find her.

He shook his head. That was his job, for G.o.d's sake. He should be able to do this. His frustration wasn't helping but she was his priority now, not crimes from the past. He had to prevent anything from happening to Leo, if he wasn't already too late.

He turned his attention to the list of properties still owned by the Mellor family business, including those that had been sold off and were either already converted or due to be.

'Great work, Becky, and tell Mark thanks.'

Becky nodded without taking her eyes off the list she was holding.

'If those murders twelve years ago had anything to do with Adam Mellor, there's a perfect building just here.' Becky lifted her eyes from the list and pointed to a spot on the map they had pinned up in the incident room. 'The first girl had her throat slit, right? And she was found on Pomona Island, but she had been killed somewhere else. This building is a short walk, under the arches below the tram line, to where you found her.'

'But any trace of anything at all will by now have been obliterated. That mill was renovated eight years ago.'

'I know.' Tom could see Becky was avoiding his eyes. He had told her how much he had wanted to have the buildings searched. 'What about the more recent girls?' she asked.

Tom thought about it. The trouble was, the location of the bodies gave no clue at all. They had been found at different ends of the city. He was working on the a.s.sumption that the van had been used to move the bodies, and possibly the shopping trolley to get them to their final locations, but that meant the killing site could be any one of the derelict buildings still owned by the company.

'Let's consider access,' Tom said. He called over his shoulder to one of the team, 'Can we get Google Maps up on this screen, please?' He pointed to the whiteboard next to the map they were studying. 'If we can get street views and have a look around, we might be able to see which of these buildings has the best access. Mills with nowhere to park a van opposite newly renovated places are unlikely they would have to cart a body across a pavement in full view of the neighbours. Let's see if we can narrow it down.'

'Do you want to leave it with me, boss?' Becky asked. 'I can give you a shout when we have it down to a couple of hot favourites.'

Tom nodded his thanks and made his way back to his office. He couldn't get rid of the knot of anxiety in his gut, and everything was telling him that tonight was critical.

Hayley Walker's mobile records had told them nothing, and Tom was increasingly convinced that Ben Coleman had lured her out of her house and into Adam Mellor's clutches, but he couldn't prove it. Maybe Coleman had fixed up a date with her before he had supposedly gone on holiday. Tom had asked for alerts to be put on the credit and debit cards of both Coleman and Mellor, and their phones were being monitored, but nothing had come up.

A couple of the reports Tom had asked for were on his desk. Neither of them filled him with joy, but he picked up the first one and scanned it again. He had just reached an interesting point when his telephone rang.

'Mr Douglas, we've had a call from a member of the public. A gentleman and his wife discovered a little boy standing crying by the side of the road Bury New Road, heading into town. He says his name is Josh Taylor and a man has taken his mother.' Tom felt a familiar leap in his chest. This had to be Maggie Taylor's son. 'It's a convoluted story, sir, but it appears when he was trying to escape he keeps talking about crawling through a pipe his mum told him to find a policeman and ask for Tom Douglas.'

'Where is he? Where's the boy now?'

'I asked the gentleman and his wife if they would bring him here, sir. They were happy to help and should be here in about ten minutes. Will you be available to talk to them?'

'I'm on my way down right now. I'll be waiting for them. Thank you.' Tom left the office and went via Becky's desk. 'I need you with me, but can you get one of your team to find out what Sonia Beecham's mother was called, please.'

Becky looked slightly startled, but did as he asked and followed him towards the lift.

Tom bought a couple of soft drinks from the vending machine and asked if somebody would make tea or coffee for the couple who had found Josh and show them into the most comfortable of the interview rooms.

They had made excellent time, and as Tom watched the middle-aged couple enter the reception area he was pleased to see the care with which they were treating the child. An ordinary, homely-looking couple, the woman had her arm around the shoulders of a small boy with a grey, tear-streaked face dressed in muddy football kit; the man was holding his hand.

Tom walked towards them and introduced himself.

'Thank you so much for picking Josh up and bringing him here. I appreciate it. I need to talk to him as quickly as possible if, as he says, somebody has taken his mother. I hope you understand. My colleague will be along to chat to you in a couple of minutes, and will ask you for details of where you found Josh, anything that he might have said to you, and so on. I hope you don't mind helping us; it's quite a serious case.'

'No, no. Not a problem at all,' the man said, looking slightly excited by the idea of being involved in a major investigation.

Tom crouched down in front of Josh so his face was level with the boy's.

'You've been very brave, Josh, and I know you must be frightened, but can you come with me and this lady here she's called Becky. We're going to find your mum, but we need your help. Is that okay?'

Josh looked up at the man who had brought him in, clearly feeling safer with the devil he knew than a completely new face.

The man crouched down too. 'Go with this policeman, Josh. He's going to look after you. You take care now. You're a brave little boy.'

The boy looked bewildered and glanced from one adult to the other.

Josh's rescuer stood up and smiled at Tom, holding out his hand. 'He's a good kid, Chief Inspector.'

Tom nodded and shook the outstretched hand as Becky gently ushered Josh into one of the interview rooms.

After they had offered Josh a drink, Tom nodded to Becky. Josh might find the questioning easier from a woman.

'We going to call your dad, Josh, to let him know that you're okay. Is he back home now? Your mum said he'd gone down south for something.'

An expression flitted over Josh's face that Tom couldn't read. The kid was wary of saying something out of turn, and it occurred to Tom that maybe his dad had left and Josh didn't want anybody to know.

'He's not back yet. He's probably mending someone's boiler or something. That's his job, you see. My auntie's at our house, though.'

Tom asked a PC to call the house to let Josh's aunt know he was safe, and gradually over the course of the next fifteen minutes they learned what had happened from the end of the football match to the minute the van drove off.

'He made me turn away so I couldn't read the number plate. He said if I turned round he'd come back for me. So I didn't. But I still remember it from last time.'

'That was really useful too. We know who the van belongs to, and now we're using something called automatic number plate recognition to see if we can spot it on the roads. Then we can work out where your mummy is. Don't worry we'll find the van.'

Josh was shaking his head.

'What is it, Josh?' Tom asked.

'My mum said that to Sam when he pushed her in the back of the van. And he laughed.'

As Tom had thought, they had obviously changed the number plates. Easy enough to do. But it was the name that made him sit up.

'You called him Sam, Josh. He told you his name, did he?'

'Yes. When he was waiting for me. He said, "My name's Sam," but Mummy called him something else. I think it was Samil.'

'Well done for remembering, Josh.'

Tom turned to Becky and raised his eyebrows but didn't comment on the name. 'Get the CCTV and anything else you can get. Let's see if we can establish the time Josh was dropped off and see if we can follow the van's route.'

Becky looked at Tom and said quietly, 'A white van, Tom, driving into Manchester?'

He knew what she meant. There would be dozens of the d.a.m.n things.

'I know. Do your best. In the meantime, let's keep checking those mill sites to see which is the most likely.'

Tom turned back to Josh. 'Do you remember what Sam looked like? Anything about him that would help us to recognise him?'

Josh thought about it. 'He had a thin face, sort of. These bits stuck out a lot.' Josh pointed to his cheekbones. 'And he had dark hair and was very tall.'

'That's really helpful. I'm going to show you a picture of quite a few people. If you think he's one of them, can you point to him for me? It doesn't matter if you don't recognise anybody.'

Josh nodded, and Tom pulled out the picture that Louisa Knight had given him. 'Just have a look, Josh.'

Josh scanned the image for no more than a few seconds. His finger shot out and touched the photograph. 'It's him.'

Tom nodded. Ben Coleman, in Adam Mellor's van. So where was Mellor?

'Thank you you've done very well. We're going to arrange for somebody to take you home now. Is that okay? Then we're going to look for your mum.'

'You will find her, won't you?' he asked, the face looking up at Tom's showing a level of fear and anguish that no child of this age should have to experience.

'Course we will,' Tom said.

He hated lying.

59.

Maggie couldn't bear to think about Josh and what might be happening to him right at this minute. Had somebody picked him up? Would they be kind to him, or had she lost her son forever? She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She had to persuade Samil to let her out of the van so she could go back and find her little boy. But shouting and screaming were never going to work with a man like this.

'Don't you think it's in your interests to let me go?' Maggie asked. She tried to keep her voice reasonable, but she could hear how unsteady it was. 'At the moment you've done nothing more than push me into a van. If you let me go now there's very little the police can get you on. A good lawyer would get you off with probation for this.'

'Maggie, Maggie,' he said, sounding like a tired parent with a recalcitrant child. 'You and I know perfectly well that I've done more than that. Of course n.o.body can prove a thing, and they won't be able to prove it when I kill you, either. That's if I kill you, and I'm hoping that's not going to be necessary.'

'What do you mean?'

She saw him shake his head and knew he wasn't going to say any more. Maggie remembered what she had read earlier in the week about psychopaths. He had no sense of guilt or remorse and was supremely confident. He showed no fear either, and she could easily see how people might make the mistake of finding him charming. He had let Josh go, not out of guilt or even fear, but almost definitely because he knew that a manhunt for a child killer would be fierce. He had simply weighed up the odds, and as Josh hadn't been part of his original plan, letting him go was easy.

Any chance she had left of working on him disappeared as Samil drove down what appeared to be one of the last unrenovated streets of central Manchester. She knew they must be nearing their destination. On one side of the road a building had been demolished, and Samil stopped and threw the van into reverse. He was backing into what looked like the loading bay of an old mill.

He jumped out of the van and came round to the side door, pulled it open and dragged her out, wrapping her long hair around his fist.

'Don't try anything,' he muttered close to her right ear.

Maggie tried to get a sense of everything around her. She needed to work out where she was. She had no idea if it would be useful, but she wasn't going down without a fight. There was a slightly musty smell, and she wondered if they were close to a ca.n.a.l or perhaps the mustiness was coming from within the building. She had to think and hold her fear at bay.

Samil marched her to an open wooden staircase at the far end of the loading bay. He pulled her head slightly back so she could only look up. She couldn't see to place her feet, and she couldn't turn round to kick him.

There were no identifiable sounds. As she tripped and stumbled up the steps she could hear a banging noise, but could only guess it came from an empty, gla.s.sless window. It was icy cold, and whatever was causing the musty smell, the damp was penetrating the thin coat covering her tailored work suit and silk s.h.i.+rt.

They reached the first floor of the building, and he slackened his hold slightly so she could lower her head, but she still couldn't turn round.

The room was poorly lit with only two fluorescent tubes working, one at each end of the vast s.p.a.ce. Enough light to see that the s.p.a.ce was empty just a dirty wooden floor with green metal pillars reaching up to the ceiling high above them. There was an unpleasant smell here, far worse than below, and Maggie a.s.sumed squatters had lived here in the recent past. About half way across the room there was a table, and up against it what appeared to be a pile of rags.

And then the rags moved.

Maggie yelped. Rats. They must be nesting in the material.

With an extra twist of his wrist, Samil yanked Maggie towards the rags and the rats. She stood still, refusing to budge. He lifted his leg and kneed her in the backside, forcing her hips forward but holding her head back. She cried out in pain.

'Well move, then,' he said.

Maggie approached the pile of rags cautiously. Surely the rats would run if they heard humans. The rags moved again, and this time there was a sound.

Samil gave one of his harsh laughs. 'Maggie, meet your room mate,' he said.

Maggie looked down at the pile of rags. From under what it had become apparent was an arm, a filthy face appeared, the skin mottled white and deep pink, the eyes red and weeping.

'Maggie, this is Leo.'

Maggie fell to her knees. She could feel the woman's pain as if it were her own.

'Oh you poor soul,' she whispered. She looked up at Samil. 'How could you do something like this? How could you let her suffer? It's one thing holding her prisoner, but she's clearly seriously ill. Do something about it. Don't let her die this way.'

Samil stood above her looking down, still grasping her hair.

'That's not the way she's going to die, trust me. Anyway, she's had antibiotics. She's getting better.'