The Room on the Second Floor (30 page)

His home was now, thanks to his oldest friend, a brothel. That in itself was pretty outrageous. But he was still trying to digest the news that many of the most influential people in the area were regular clients. Was the world going crazy? Why on earth did these respectable men, many of them a good deal older than Roger himself, feel the need to patronise such an establishment? For his part, he knew full well that Linda, particularly now she had suddenly acquired a selection of wonderfully exciting underclothes, was all the woman he would ever need. Duggie had admitted as much, when talking about his relationship with Tina. Were they all mad? And now the news that one of the staff would appeared to have gone mental. Attacking a pretty little girl like Natascha, for crying out loud? Perish the thought.

He looked across at the miserable remains of Duggie. His voice had become progressively more and more hoarse and ashamed as the tale unfolded. He was now slumped forward dejectedly, a shadow of his former boisterous self. Of course Roger knew him of old. Duggie had always had this rebellious, some might call it self-destructive, streak in him. It had ruined a number of his previous attempts to carve out a career. It had probably ruined his two marriages. It was stronger than he was, this impulse to break the rules, to do what he knew he shouldn’t. Roger knew full well it was all part of his multi-faceted, larger-than-life character.

In the past, Roger had been an onlooker, observing Duggie’s numerous falls from grace. He had been on hand as a friend to offer support and advice. Now it was up to him to deal out justice. He cleared his throat and saw Duggie’s head rise, ready for the inevitable blow. Roger had a sudden image of Charles I on a cold January day in 1649, wearing two shirts lest he shiver with cold and it be construed as fear. He imagined the king laying his head on the block in Whitehall. The axe glinted in the weak sunlight above. Roger sighed inwardly.

‘Duggie, you and I go back a long way.’ He made a start.

Duggie nodded gloomily. Roger took a deep breath but, as he opened his mouth, his words were obscured by a crash of breaking glass. A brick smashed through the window, showering them both with splinters of glass. The dog was sent yelping under the desk. Duggie jumped backwards in surprise. Roger would have done the same, but for the fact that he was leaning back with his plaster cast on the stool. As it was, Duggie rushed to the broken window. With his back to the wall, he risked a fast glance out. His military training told him it was unwise to present himself at the window in case the perpetrator had a gun.

All he saw was the rope to which the brick was attached. It was hanging out over the window sill. He risked another look, down into the darkness below, but nothing and nobody moved. He pulled on the rope. The end came into view. It was only then that he realised its significance. The brick had been swung against the side of the house like a pendulum. So the person who had done it was above, not below them. He turned back and untied the brick from the rope. He brought it over to Roger. Attached to the brick with a length of twine was a piece of paper. Roger tore it open, to be confronted with a classic ransom note, painstakingly made up of letters cut from a newspaper, and glued to the page.

I HAVE GOT LINDA. STAY BY TELEPHONE
.

A sensation akin to a cold knife plunged deep into Roger’s stomach. Turning to Duggie, he showed him the note.

‘Please, Duggie, go and look for her. Please.’

Duggie read it in a flash and took to his heels. Roger was still scrabbling for his crutches, seriously hindered by the overexcited dog. Less than half a minute later, before Roger made it to the door, Duggie was back again. Now he was accompanied by Chief Inspector Cocker.

The inspector was doing his best to concentrate. He was still trying to take in what he had seen in the bedrooms on the second floor. The sight of the manager of the local football team, dressed in suspenders and high heels, chasing Josephine from the Ivory Coast around a huge bed, would stay with him for years to come. Not least the referee’s whistle, clenched between his teeth. And, of course, there was the judge with the steel helmet…

‘Give us the note, Rog.’ Duggie took the paper from Roger’s hand and passed it on to Cocker.

The inspector scanned it. ‘How long ago did this arrive?’

‘Seconds. Whoever did it is probably still out there.’ Duggie explained his theory as to how the brick had been swung from above. The inspector decided the time had come for back-up. He picked up Roger’s phone and dialled. After a short exchange of conversation, he replaced the receiver.

‘Professor Dalby, I have called for some extra help. Uniformed officers will be along shortly.’

Duggie could hardly believe what had happened. ‘It was only a few minutes ago that she left me in the corridor.’

‘Maybe a bit longer than that.’ Duggie’s confession to Roger had taken longer than he thought. He had made it as complete as possible, trying hard to leave nothing out. ‘It is probably a good half hour now.’

Roger’s worst fears just got worse. In half an hour, God only knew what could have happened to her.

‘There’s no way she would have gone outside at this time of night. Whoever is responsible for this must have been waiting inside the building.’

They looked at each other. Duggie was appalled. It might be ages before the police arrived. In that time, who could tell what might happen to Linda? More convinced than ever that it was his fault all this had happened, he decided it was up to him to do something about it. His years in the Special Forces probably made him better prepared than anybody else in the building. He excused himself and left the two of them alone.

‘What about the crazy lady from the Salon?’ Roger was thinking back to Duggie’s tale. The inspector shook his head in a vain attempt to clear the confusion.

‘I suppose it is just feasible that she might have got hold of Linda, immobilised her, then prepared the note and thrown it. However, it seems very unlikely, not least as Ms Turner is almost certainly still hiding on the roof. What on earth would Linda have been doing on the roof? No, I think the manager’s up there on her own. One of my men is in position by the security door into the Salon. There’s no other way down. She has got to be up there still.’

He held out the ransom note. ‘Anyway, I don’t see it. The ransom note, look at it. Just cutting out the letters and gluing them on would have taken time.’ He took a more professional look at the note. ‘Different fonts and sizes. Different newspapers. It would have taken far too long. No,’ he made up his mind, ‘I am in no doubt at all that this note had to be prepared in advance. Somebody has planned this whole scenario. Now, whether it could still be the woman from upstairs or somebody else, I really don’t know.’ As he finished, the sound of sirens grew louder. A gaggle of police cars came up the drive and stopped outside. The inspector knew he had to go down and brief the men.

Before he left the study, he put his hand on Roger’s shoulder and tried to give him comfort. ‘Don’t worry about your fiancée. Nothing bad can have happened to her yet. Otherwise, why send the note?’

‘Yet?’ Roger echoed the inspector’s word, an icy fear gripping him. For one horrible moment, he thought he was going to be sick again, but it passed. The cold ache in his stomach, however, remained.

After a few minutes, Inspector Cocker reappeared with two solid-looking policemen. ‘Professor Dalby, these officers are here to protect you. I have also asked for a firearms team. They should be here in the next five to ten minutes. As it looks as though the ransom note came from upstairs, I will go back up to the second floor now with a few other officers. We’ll check all the rooms again, and then we’ll try to get up on the roof. I have just been told that the fire brigade will be here any moment with a turntable ladder and floodlights.’

He laid the note back on the table beside Roger.

‘If the telephone rings, try to keep him or her talking as long as possible. One of these officers will alert me on his radio.’ With that he was gone. Roger waved the policemen into the room. They took up places either side of the broken window, backs to the wall, eyes covering the whole room. They smiled reassuringly, but did not speak.

Chapter 52

Duggie nodded to the policeman on duty by the security door to the Salon.

‘No sign of our friend on the roof?’

The constable shook his head. ‘I would imagine she’s getting pretty cold out there by now. Anyway, the fire brigade will be here any minute.’

Duggie passed through the doorway and hurried down the row of now empty bedrooms. Mo had escorted the clients out via the back stairs, assuring them as she did so that they had nothing to fear from the police. As one of them was a judge and two were solicitors, she was on pretty safe ground there. A stereo was still playing the theme music to
Star Wars
in the Gossamer room. Idly, Duggie found himself trying to remember which of the clients requested that. Mo had told him, but he had forgotten. The man liked to pretend to be Chewbacca, the Wookiee. He would chase the girls around the bedroom, uttering plaintive, wailing cries.

Each to his own.

He stopped at the entrance to Gossamer. Mindy had said that it was possible to get out onto the flat roof from the window of that room. He decided to investigate. The brick with the message had been attached to a rope, presumably dropped down from the second floor or the roof. As Rachel Turner was still at large on the roof, he decided to start there. Maybe he could kill two birds with one stone ? catch the crazy woman and the kidnapper in one fell swoop. And there was always the possibility that they were one and the same.

He closed the door behind him and switched off the light. He felt his way across to the CD player, and switched it off. The sudden silence was deafening. As he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark, he found himself wishing he had an MP5 in his hands. A pair of night-vision goggles would be handy as well. For the first time since he had left the regiment, it felt good to remember.

He knew he had waited too long to talk to someone about his years of active service. Inevitably, by bottling it up, he had let it fester. There were things he had done that he was very proud of. And others he never wanted to think of, ever again. But now that he had started to open up to Tina, the sorrow was fading. He took a deep breath as the old, familiar adrenalin charge swept through him.

He reached for the window and released the catch. He did his best to slide the old sash window up as silently as possible. A blast of cold night air blew in. Nevertheless, he slipped off his jacket, thankful that he was wearing a dark jumper underneath. He stepped out onto the roof. Up here, far from the street lights of the road, it was pitch dark. He pushed the window down behind him until it closed. He leant back against the wall of the building and glanced up. No moon, no stars. The sky was completely overcast. The only source of light was the glow from the broken window of Whiplash, further along the roof.

He stayed immobile for a good few minutes, watching and listening. He began to make out the shape of the roof alongside where he was standing. It sloped up, away from him. He knew that on the other side of the ridge, it fell sharply away to the gutter. From there, it was three storeys to the ground. There was no way either the kidnapper or the crazy manager would be up there, so he concentrated on the shadows beyond the lighted window. Still he did not move. One thing you learn in the regiment is how to stay still and wait.

Then, a few yards beyond Whiplash, there was a movement. His eyes narrowed.

Chapter 53

The telephone on Roger’s desk started ringing. Everything in the room stopped, including Roger’s heart for a second. He looked across at the two policemen and raised an eyebrow. The one with sergeant’s stripes nodded back. Roger reached across and picked up the receiver.

‘Roger Dalby.’

For a moment there was no response at the other end. Then, after a long, heartfelt sigh, came the voice. At first it sounded like a woman, but he quickly realised it was a man’s voice. It sounded unexpectedly high-pitched, close to hysteria.

‘At last…I’ve got Linda here, Professor Dalby.’ There was something very, very familiar about the voice. Roger struggled to recognise it. ‘But it’s not her I want. It’s you.’

Roger broke in. ‘How do I know you’ve got her there? How do I know nothing has happened to her?’

The high-pitched voice screamed back at him at him. ‘Of course I’ve got her. Listen.’

As Roger strained his ears, he heard the man speaking to her.

‘It’s Roger Dalby on the phone. He wants to know if you are all right.’ His voice was full of menace. Roger breathed in deeply. ‘Go on, tell him you’re all right. Tell him I haven’t started hurting you…yet.’

There was silence for a moment. Then he heard her voice. ‘Roger, I’m all right, but he’s really crazy…’ She was suddenly silenced.

The man came back on the line again. ‘Now listen. I know you have called the police. I saw them arrive.’ Roger looked across at the police sergeant, who was speaking quietly into his radio. ‘I’ve been after you for a long time now, but this time I’ll get you. You broke my ribs, you bastard.’ Roger looked blank. ‘And I almost froze to death. Then that stupid girl got in the way. But this time, there is no escape for you. If you want the lovely Linda back, you have only one chance.’

As he heard the words ‘lovely Linda’, suddenly, the penny dropped. Roger realised with amazement who was on the other end of the line. Before he could speak, the voice came back again. Roger’s blood ran cold.

‘Do everything I tell you and she will come to no harm. If you try to trick me, I’ll cut her throat. Now listen.’

As the man on the other end of the line paused for breath, Roger saw the sergeant waving to attract his attention. As he caught Roger’s eye, he mimicked being sick. Immediately, Roger understood. He made a thoroughly convincing retching noise into the phone, panted, ‘I’m being sick again,’ and hung up. The police sergeant gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up, while listening attentively to his radio.