Kill Me Again (38 page)

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 damn 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 nobody 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 canal 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, glassless 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 shirt.

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 space. Enough light to see that the space 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 assumed 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.’

‘You mean she was worse than this? Jesus.’

She noticed a plastic-wrapped pack of water bottles. At least they hadn’t intentionally dehydrated the woman, but she was too ill to move and could never have torn open the plastic.

‘Let me go,’ Maggie said, lifting her hand to her hair and tugging it away from Samil’s fist. ‘Let me see to her. I won’t try to run.’

To her amazement, he did what she asked.

‘You won’t run. I know that. I’m standing here, not two metres from you. And anyway, somebody’s coming to see you.’

‘Who? What do you mean?’

He said nothing and Maggie couldn’t worry about that. She needed to help this woman. She took off her coat and suit jacket and untucked her silk blouse. Turning away from the man, she removed her blouse and quickly put her outer clothes back on, buttoning her coat tightly.

She wasn’t strong enough to rip the material so she poured some water onto a sleeve and bunched it up, placing it between the woman’s lips. She didn’t think it was wise to pour cold water directly into her mouth, and anyway she was lying on her side. Maggie dampened another part of the blouse and used it to gently wipe the woman’s face, trying to cool her.

She wanted to make her more comfortable, but then saw how her arm was stretched above her head and the sorry state of her wrist. The massive swelling almost hid the sutures,
but Maggie could see the other end of a plastic tie attached to a chain round one of the pillars.

She glanced up at Samil. ‘You
animal
.’ He was unmoved, and she tried not to think what he might have in store for her.

‘Enough,’ he said, his face set into hard lines. Maggie would never forget this man’s face. His name didn’t matter. She was certain she was never getting out of here, but would find him if ever she got the chance.

He pulled Maggie up by her hair again. Extracting another long plastic cable tie from his coat pocket he pushed Maggie hard up against a metal pillar and told her to put her arms behind her. She did nothing. He lifted her off the floor by her hair, thousands of follicles screaming as they bore the weight of her body.

‘Put your fucking arms around the pillar.’

She would have liked to defy him again, but she was certain he wasn’t going to stop hurting her until she did what he said and she didn’t have the strength to resist.

He secured the plastic tie. ‘Now I would gag you, but you could scream forever here and nobody would hear you, so I won’t bother.’ He turned and walked back towards the doorway to the stairs.

Where was he going? Why was he leaving them?

Maggie tried to comfort the woman. ‘It’s okay. We’re going to get out of here. People are looking for you.’