The Child Taker & Slow Burn (25 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

The Twins

Sarah had been awake for hours now and the effects of the drugs were wearing off. She reached for a plastic beaker, which was full of milk, and drank it greedily, leaving a white tidemark on her top lip. Zak giggled at her and clumsily wiped the milk from her mouth. She passed the beaker to him and he took his turn to drink from it. It was uncanny how the twins shared their food and drinks, preferring to use one cup and one plate between them rather than one each. Most twins have an emotional bond, and Sarah and Zak were no different. They’d taken great comfort from each other during their strange journey, sleeping close to each other and seeing their sibling there next to them when they awoke had reassured them. Sarah missed her mother terribly and she was teary and scared. Zak sensed her fear and he held her and tried to keep her occupied. He smiled at her despite feeling a terrible unease himself. They were five years old, but they knew that something was very wrong.

Their surroundings had changed dramatically. Sarah remembered the smells and sounds of horses, but the memories seemed dream-like and unclear. Now they were bathed and they had been fed well – spaghetti hoops on toast, and milk to drink. A DVD player played a myriad of their favourite programmes and there was an enviable toy collection, though it hadn’t been used much; neither of them felt much like playing with toys yet.

The door opened and the twins fell silent for a moment. They looked longingly towards the door, desperate for their mother to walk through it and take them home. It wasn’t their mother, and Sarah began to cry again. Zak looked at his sister crying and patted her chubby leg to soothe her, but it didn’t work. The DVD player was turned off and Zak started to cry too.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Tarbock Green

John Tankersley left the bunker in his own vehicle, a dark metallic pick-up truck, and headed out of Liverpool on the main arterial route, the M62. The address that he’d been given by the tech team was a postcode which related to a group of buildings in a leafy greenbelt area of the county called Tarbock Green, and it was only twelve miles out of the city. He pulled up satellite pictures of the village that showed a small group of industrial units, two petrol stations, a pub, three big residential houses, and a large pig farm surrounded by a heavily wooded area. Tank had no idea which one of the structures could be housing the server, or if the film studio was actually situated there, but he had to investigate it as there was no time to lose. He had the image of the frightened young girl handcuffed to the wall in his mind, and the banner headline on the payment page had a digital timer counting down from sixty minutes. That meant he had one hour to stop anything happening to the girl. He could only assume that the twins would be used as the main event.  

Tank was going to the village alone. Tara and the trace team were searching for any other possible server addresses, and Grace was charged with selecting and moving in on any other potential targets that appeared. They had decided to leave the Major out of the loop for now, as pressure from Westminster was mounting, especially since the task force vehicle had been found at the scene of the prison bus hijack. So far, the police had blown their cover every time they had moved in on the paedophile ring, and the Moroccans had proved to be slippery customers with access to inside information from informers within the police force. There wasn’t enough time to risk letting them know that they had found the main server, as if they did the Moroccans would be in the wind again and they would never find the twins.

Tank pulled off the motorway and within minutes he was driving down country lanes which weaved between acres and acres of bright yellow rapeseed crops. There was a sharp bend in the road and Tank saw a brass post box fixed to the wall of a thatched cottage, which was the post office for the surrounding area. Entering Tarbock Green was like stepping through a time warp. It was a rural oasis inhabited by a farming community unchanged by modern society for decades. The road straightened and to his right was a white-bricked pub called the Brick Wall Inn, opposite was one of the petrol stations that he’d seen on the map, and directly across the road was the way into the woods. Tank pulled into the pub, as it had a large car park and seemed to be the centre of the village. He pulled up the aerial pictures of the area, and looked around to get his bearings.

The industrial units were hidden from view behind the petrol station, and while they could easily be used as the site for the illicit studio, his attention was drawn to the pig farm. It was situated through the woods to his left, and was hidden from the road by residential properties. Tank could see the top of a large metal silo, which looked like it was part of the pig farm. The trees concealed the other buildings. Tara said that during their search they had seen evidence of snuff films being broadcasted from the server. If they were being made here, then the filmmakers would have the problem of disposing of their victim’s bodies. Pigs would eat anything that was put in front of them, and it was that fact which made the pig farm the favourite in Tank’s mind. He decided to investigate the farm first.

Tank opened a lock box that was situated between the front seats of his pickup, and he took out his spare Glock, slipping it into his waistband next to his standard issue weapon. It was rare that he’d ever needed two handguns, but losing his Glock during the hijack had left him feeling uneasy about carrying one weapon, especially as he was going in alone. He removed four full clips of nine-millimetre ammunition and slipped them into his pocket, before strapping a Smith and Wesson boot knife to his ankle. Tara and the team knew where he was approximately, but there were at least a dozen buildings which came under the same postcode so Tank activated a GPS tracker which fitted into his spare Glock. The task force would already be aware that the weapon had been removed from its safety box, and now they would know if it was discharged and how many times it was fired. Better safe than sorry, he thought. If the twins were in the pig farm then there was only one way he was going to get them out, and he didn’t believe that he’d be arresting anybody in the process. He was used to being judge, jury and executioner, but this time it was personal.

The pick-up beeped and the indicator lights flashed as he walked away from the vehicle. He checked the road was clear and apart from the sound of music drifting from the jukebox in the pub everything was quiet. Suddenly there was a loud concussion noise which came from the direction of the pig farm, and it was followed quickly by the sound of a second blast. Tank thought that a twelve-gauge shotgun had been discharged, and a huge flock of starlings took to the air from the woods. They formed a huge black cloud, ducking and darting across the sky in a panic.

“Bird-scaring machine,” a voice said behind him.

“I beg your pardon?” Tank turned around surprised. The noise of a shotgun had startled him, and he was ready to draw his weapon in response. He eyed the man that had spoken, and relaxed.

“That noise, it’s a bird-scaring machine. I could see you were confused, most visitors are,” the old man said, drawing deeply on his hand rolled cigarette. He had obviously stepped out of the pub to have a smoke.

“I see,” Tank said. “Are you local then?”

“Lived here all my life, Sir,” the old man replied. “They have to keep the starlings away from the pigs’ food because they carry disease, you see.”

“Who owns the pig farm?”

“It used to be the Price brothers, until swine foot and mouth wiped out all the animals about five years ago. Everyone still calls it Price’s farm though,” the old man explained.

“Who owns it now?”

“Foreign company owns it now, brought their own herdsman too, and fired all the locals.”

“Do they keep any horses?”

“They do, couple of sheep in the back fields too, you should never keep horses and sheep together with pigs,” the old man began to explain, but his voice trailed off when the big man turned and walked into the woods. “Charming, I’m sure.”

Tank was fifty yards into the woods when he came to a fork in the path. There was a sign nailed to a tree that declared the land to the right as private property but he ignored the warning and ducked off the access road into the trees, heading towards the outer perimeter of the pig farm. He pulled out his mobile phone and texted Grace, telling her to run a check with the land registry department to find out who owned the pig farm, and more to the point where they were from. The results wouldn’t stop him from searching it himself but it might speed things up for the traditional law enforcement agencies, especially if there was a Moroccan connection. He pressed ‘send’ and then moved on through the woods.

To his left was a thicket of hedge which had grown unchecked to at least head height. Through it, he could see manicured lawns and the rear gardens of the houses that he’d seen earlier on the road. To his right the trees thickened, but he could see the shapes of farm buildings through them. He picked his way towards them, following narrow paths that had been flattened by woodland animals and the poachers that stalked them. The sunlight was filtered through the tree canopy into bright shafts of light, and squadrons of midges and gnats seemed to hang in the air enjoying the warmth of the sun. Five hundred yards further on he came to a small pond, and he kneeled down in the long grass to look at it. It was silted up, and polluted with pig excrement and green slime. It blocked his path and he looked for a way around it. As he progressed the bird-scaring machine retorted again. It had been fired every ten minutes or so, and although Tank knew what it was, it still made his nerves stand on end when the blank shotgun cartridges were discharged.

He circumnavigated the pond and the thick brambles that grew on its banks and at the other side he reached the outbuildings that were on the periphery of the pig farm. Two rolls of razor wire spiralled their way as far as he could see in either direction, forming a barrier between him and the farm. Tank searched the immediate area and found a thick rotting tree trunk beneath the dark green foliage of a rhododendron bush. He slid his fingers underneath it and lifted the heavy log with ease. An army of woodlice and black beetles scurried for cover as their microscopic universe was exposed to the daylight. Tank shifted the tree trunk onto his shoulder, waiting for the bird-scaring machine to roar again, and then with a huge shrug he tossed it across the razor wire. The wire was flattened and it rattled and vibrated beneath the crushing weight of the trunk, but the bird-scaring machine smothered the noise. Tank stepped along the rotten tree, crossing the wire and breaching their defences.

The outbuildings were nothing more than wooden storage sheds which harped back to another era of farming. Hand-held sickles and scythes hung from rusted brackets on the walls, and huge swathes of spider silk hung from the ceilings. There were dust-covered workbenches laden with wooden planes, and metal vices, handsaws and chisels that looked like they had laid there untouched for decades. Tank moved quietly across the dusty floor and reached the doorway of the first building. He looked out across the main farmyard. To his right was a deep cesspit about one hundred yards wide, filled to the brim with pig sewage. The smell of excrement filled Tank’s nostrils and the strength of the ammonia in the urine made his eyes water. A loud gurgling sound turned his attention to a tall metal silo on his left. It was the one that he had seen from the road earlier. Beneath the silo a bulldozer was busy pushing tons of rotting vegetables and supermarket food waste into an enormous metal vat, where it was boiled into tons of liquid pigswill, before being piped into the silo. Tank knew that the two businesses could fit hand in glove. A human body could be dumped into the vat, and it would disappear in the boiling process in minutes. The gurgling sound became louder as thousands of gallons of pigswill poured through a network of pipes, finally being sloshed into over three hundred pig troughs across the farm. The pigs could smell the swill boiling and they anticipated their food being delivered. The hungry animals were becoming excited and the noise of the pigs squealing became a deafening cacophony of grunting sounds.

Tank stayed hidden behind the out buildings and looked to the left. There was a central building made up of animal pens, stables and storage lofts, and behind that was a newer, modern brick-built block. Tank was about to double back and make his way to the new building by skirting behind the animal sheds, when a different type of scream rang out across the farm. Tank knew that it was human, probably female although it could have been a child. He looked at his wristwatch, and guessed that the internet show was about to begin. He drew his Glock and bolted straight across the farmyard. There was no time left for stealth.

Tank was fifty yards across the yard when the bulldozer driver spotted him. He began shouting in a foreign language that Tank couldn’t decipher, and as he ran, from the corner of his eye Tank saw the vehicle change direction. He turned to face the advancing machine, dropping to one knee. He had no wish to repeat the episode with the JCB digger, and he wanted to make his first shot count. He closed one eye as he aimed, squeezed the trigger twice, and the Glock kicked in his hand. The retort was barely audible over the sound of the screaming pigs, and the bird-scaring machine fired again, adding to the racket. The bulldozer veered wildly to the right and it trundled across the yard towards the cesspit. The driver was slouched over the steering wheel, mortally wounded, but not quite dead. Bubbles of blood and phlegm seeped from a deep hole in his throat, and he tried in vain to steer the bulldozer onto a different course, but it smashed through a low breezeblock wall before dropping over the edge and plummeting nose first into a million gallons of pig excrement. The heavy machine disappeared in a matter of seconds, swallowed up by the septic sludge.

Tank bent low and ran towards the new building. He was out in the open, and as such, he was a sitting duck for an accomplished sniper. He tensed his body as he ran, and visually scanned the area around him, looking for the most likely position for a shot to come from, but none came. As he reached the corner of the new building, and another scream rang out. This time there was no doubt that it had come from inside the newer block, and despite the deafening noise of the pigs, he knew it was a young girl that had screamed.

The building was two storeys high, square with a flat roof. It was built from grey prefabricated concrete slabs, and although there were several windows they had all been blanked out from the inside. Tank let his breathing calm down and wiped perspiration from his brow with his sleeve. His heart was racing and he knew that he had to rescue the young girl from her torture, but he couldn’t throw caution to the wind or he would wind up dead and so would she. He checked the surrounding area, and it was clear. Tank bolted for the door with his weapon pointed skyward at the ready. He reached for the handle and twisted it, but it wouldn’t budge, locked from the inside. Another scream from inside rocked him, and he ran to a ground floor window to his left. There was a large rusty oil drum beneath the windowsill, which he rocked to test if it was full or not. The oil drum was about a quarter full of diesel engine oil. Tank holstered his Glock, tipped the oil drum, and slipped his fingers beneath it. He breathed deeply, as a weight lifter would in the Olympics, and then he heaved the metal barrel up above his head, pausing for only a second before he launched it at the glass. The window imploded completely, shattered glass was catapulted into the air, and the wooden panel that had blanked out the window splintered into pieces with a load crack.