One Dead Witness (23 page)

Trent went into a darkened room, illuminated by lights which
had been dimmed almost to black. He paused on the threshold,
allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom.

He saw four rows of chairs arranged in a horseshoe shape
facing a huge TV screen at the far end of the small room. About a
dozen people, all men, were seated. Some conversed in a subdued
way. Others were completely alone.

Trent weaved his way through the chairs and sat down on the
front row to have an unrestricted view of the screen. He checked
his watch - stolen from the ambulanceman - and saw the digital
figures flicker onto 3.00 a.m.

What light there was in the room doused to black. Everyone’s
attention focused on the screen, which flickered.

The image of a child, wide-eyed and beautiful,
appeared.

A frisson of excitement captivated Trent’s body.

The films Trent saw that night were about half an hour each.
They originated from Holland and had been dubbed poorly into
English. The quality of the camerawork was shoddy, but the pictures
were fairly sharp. The editing was questionable.

Both told much the same story.

One was based around a little boy who looked to be about nine
years old.

The other was about a little blonde girl who looked slightly
older.

They were both very graphic tales.

Each film began with what appeared to be the abduction off the
street of the child. The story carried on with the captivity of the
children, both of whom were tied naked to a bed. The story
progressed to the sexual abuse of the kids. Sometimes by one person
only, more often by a group of people. All men. During these scenes
the children screamed and were allowed to do so. This seemed to
fire the depraved lust of their captors and tormentors.

The climax of each mm was the rape of the child by one person,
who with a noose around the neck of the child reached orgasm at the
same time as apparently strangling the child to death. The deaths
looked very real. Probably were.

Trent left the viewing room tremendously excited by what he
had seen. It had been worth every penny.

He knew he had to go and repeat it.

Less than two miles away was the sea-front hotel on South
Shore which belonged to the Lilton family. The hotel was quiet and
in darkness. Outwardly it looked peaceful at four in the
morning.

Inside was a different matter.

Ruth Lilton was in a deep, coma-like sleep on her bed. She lay
on her back, mouth open, snoring. A cocktail of carefully
administered alcohol and sleeping tablets had put her there.
Virtually nothing could have woken her. Not even the whimpering
cries and the deep male groans escaping from under the closed door
of her daughter’s room.

Claire cried out in pain and shame each time her stepfather
rammed his unprotected self into her. It was almost a blessed
relief when he roughly turned her over, adjusted her loose limbs so
she was on her hands and knees and carried on from the rear. The
pain increased with deeper penetration, but at least she did not
have to look up at his face, wasn’t obliged to inhale the
intoxicant fumes he breathed all over her, or smell the sweat and
body odour of him. She could bury her face in the pillow. It was
also a relief because she knew he would finish quicker in this
position.

He did. With fearsome, violent strokes.

It was all over. He collapsed exhausted across her, squeezing
her young breasts roughly with his big, hard hands.

‘
That was great,’ he breathed.

He got off the bed and leaned towards her ear. ‘Don’t tell
your mum, or I’ll fucking kill you,’ he warned her quietly. Then he
left the room and returned to his marital bed.

Claire cried for a long, long time.

Finally her sobs subsided. She rolled off the bed and packed
her bag. This time she wasn’t going to return.

‘
I thought you were never gonna answer,’ Steve Kruger’s voice
boomed down the phone-line.

Mark Tapperman had had a busy day and night and was only an
hour into what was going to be, at best, four hours’ sleep. He
tried to force open his groggy eyelids. His wife uttered something
unrepeatable next to him and dragged the single sheet over her
head.

‘
Steve, what the hell do you want?’ Tapperman asked with some
difficulty. Two reasons for that: his throat was bone dry (a sure
sign he’d been snoring loudly) and it was hard work to coordinate
the brain-speech function. ‘It’s ... damn, I can’t even open my
eyes to see the clock.’

‘
Four in the morning,’ Kruger informed him.

‘
Steve, you asshole, I’m shattered here. I’ve been on the go
for twenty-four hours, as have you. In fact, why the hell aren’t
you asleep? Anybody with any sense would be.’

‘
Okay, so I’ve woken you. Sorry and all that, but I couldn’t
sleep and something came into my mind I needed
clarifying.’

Tapperman sighed with reluctance. ‘Fire away.’

‘
You said that English guy, Gilbert, was catching a plane out
of Miami. When, exactly?’

Tapperman shuffled his brain cells and sorted through them.
‘Er, gee ... five or six o’clock this morning, I think it leaves. .
. I’m not completely sure. Why?’

‘
Thanks for that,’ Kruger said brightly.

‘
Why, Steve?’ the detective insisted.

‘
Gonna pay the bastards a call.’ Kruger hung up.

Tapperman leaned back against the headboard, wondering what
the hell that was all about. He closed his eyes as his thoughts
evaporated and he fell asleep immediately.

Chapter Nine

Detective Inspector Henry Christie read through the long and
detailed message switch which had arrived in the early hours of the
morning at Blackpool nick. It concerned the escape from prison of
Louis Vernon Trent, a man born and raised in Blackpool. The story
had been all over the daily newspaper Henry read before coming to
work, but the nitty-gritty detail of what Trent had done in order
to effect the escape was spelled out starkly in the police report
in front of him. What the media could only guess at was laid out,
blow by blow.

To Henry, the rather formal language of the message made
Trent’s exploits seem much more callous and evil than the
sensationalism of the newspaper articles.

He read the story once more, then picked up a copy of a
message received from the Royal Bank of Scotland, informing him
that the bank account belonging to the dead ambulance-driver had
been plundered twice since his death. The second time - and the
time that interested Henry - was at two thirty-five that morning,
from their cash-point at the branch on Talbot Square in
Blackpool.

Two thirty-five! The bastard had obviously been walking
around, bold as brass, through the streets of Blackpool.

Next Henry read a crime report concerning the theft of a purse
belonging to an old woman; it had been stolen from her bag whilst
she was on the train to Blackpool. The description of the offender
fitted that of Trent, who had been seen to get off the train at
Poulton-le-Fylde.

He was definitely in town. That much was obvious.

Henry laid the crime report down and looked at the fax next to
it from the prison service. It showed a two-year-old photo of
Trent. Much of the quality had disappeared during transmission, but
Henry could see from the image that the man had a piercing pair of
eyes; they made him shiver.

‘
Shit,’ he breathed.

Underneath the fax was a copy of Trent’s previous
convictions.

His telephone squawked. He answered it on the second
ring.

‘
Henry, I hope you’re looking at the reports I’m looking at,
otherwise I’ll have your effin’ guts for shoelaces!’ the voice
shouted rudely down the line. The person did not have the courtesy
to introduce himself, expecting to be instantly recognised. Henry
knew it was the newly promoted Assistant Chief Constable
(Operations), Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, known generally as FB and in
particular as ‘that Fucking Bastard’.

Although FB’s responsibilities covered the whole range of
police operations in Lancashire County, FB’s main love and interest
was crime. He’d been a detective for most of his
service.

He and Henry went back many years. However, Henry did not like
him.

In response to FB’s opening broadside, Henry said, ‘I assume
you mean our friend Mr Trent?’

‘
You assume dead-fucking-right. This is very much your pigeon,
Henry, so what the hell are you doing about him? I’ve had the press
crawlin’ right up my arse already this morning and also the Chief
Constable of Staffordshire where the prison is located; she is not
a happy woman with seven murders on her patch, I can tell you, and
she wants this bastard catching. So, what’re you doing to catch
him?’

‘
Actually nothing,’ should have been Henry’s truthful reply.
‘I’ve done bugger all but sit here, scratching my backside and
trying to look moderately intelligent while I wonder what the hell
to do.’

‘
Well, sir,’ Henry began, when there was a light tap on his
office door and Danny poked her head round. Henry’s eyes lit up as
a thought struck him. He beckoned her in and waved her to sit
down.

‘
Well, sir -
what?
’
FB demanded, annoyed by Henry’s
hesitation.

The DI’s voice remained calm whilst underneath he paddled like
mad. ‘I was just this minute chatting to DC Furness from Family
Protection about this very matter. She’s the one who caught Trent
originally and got him sent down; obviously, she knows quite a bit
about him. We were discussing the possibility of her transferring
onto CID a few days early - as you know, she joins us as a DS next
Monday anyway. If she came early, she could coordinate the
operation to nail Trent. We’re bringing in some Divisional Support
Units to assist ours. . .’ Henry cringed at Danny and closed his
eyes desperately ‘... and I’ve arranged a briefing at eleven.’
Henry hoped he sounded. convincing. He crossed his
fingers.

‘
Good, good.’ FB was impressed. ‘Trusted you to be ahead of the
game. . . I expected nothing less.’

‘
There is a slight hitch,’ Henry interjected.

‘
Go on.’

‘
Regarding DC Furness joining us early. It might be, er ...
politically sensitive, so will you sanction it in
writing?’

This time it was Danny who crossed her fingers.

The expression which broke over Henry’s face told her the news
was good.

He put the phone down at last. ‘Hope that’s okay with
you?’

‘
Okay is a bit of an understatement. I’d say ecstatic. Jack
won’t like it one little bit, though. He’ll dig his heels
in.’

‘
In that case, we’ll present him with a
fait accompli.
He won’t have any
choice in the matter. So, Danny,’ Henry raised his eyebrows, ‘have
you come to talk to me about Jack again?’

She nodded sadly.

Steve Kruger drove recklessly to MIA with little or no thought
about what exactly he was doing. He didn’t know the number of the
flight Bussola’s friend was due to catch; didn’t know where in the
airport he was likely to find them (and Miami International Airport
is a very big place) and, most stupid of all, he hadn’t a clue what
he was going to do if a confrontation took place with
Bussola.

Remonstrate nicely with him? Be politely assertive? Explain
just how deeply peeved he was feeling because Bussola had managed
to wriggle out of child-abuse indictments and subsequently chopped
up two Kruger Investigations’ employees with more skill than a meat
butcher and decorated a hallway with their body parts?

He didn’t know. He just didn’t fucking know.

But what he
did
know was that the chances of actually coming face to face with
Bussola in future would be minimal. The gangster led an existence
shrouded in secrecy and protected by guards, however useless they
might be. It wasn’t often he stepped into public, and when he did
so no one usually knew when or where it would be. Kruger had only
learned of Bussola’s whereabouts the other night because Felicity
had told him. Kruger guessed that in future Bussola would be even
more careful following the shock of his arrest.

This might be Kruger’s last chance to get right into Bussola’s
face and let the bastard know he meant business; that he was on his
case and wouldn’t be off it until a grand jury sat there examining
him.

Once parked up at MIA, Kruger made his way into the terminal
building. The place was extremely crowded, making Kruger step back
when he saw them.

He checked the departure screens and saw that the first flight
to the UK was to Manchester; apparently it was delayed for an hour,
which gave him some heart. Yet finding Bussola amongst all these
folks would be like looking for a proverbial needle.