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Chapter 71 (#u96ec17a4-f809-53d7-ba49-392a6479f197)
Chapter 72 (#u428ae196-f85a-5124-b9d9-4a855697f81d)
Chapter 73 (#u51615b16-8a5f-52c3-8c0f-f5f40f0a9690)
Epilogue (#u8bcd0666-afb2-5696-a970-e1760f549f76)
Acknowledgments (#u395dc6bb-cefe-5e03-a7ef-86fdfd0c3823)
By the Same Author: (#u8088cd6c-89c5-5003-bdec-ea912f1fe130)
Keep Reading … (#u3e50226d-c8ff-585d-b89b-b7cf44d5eca5)
About the Author (#u71d610f0-dea7-5309-acec-1093701c0e9e)
About the Publisher (#u24970274-f708-5d2d-8109-214b2d910c39)
Prologue (#ue580d115-badb-5a20-acdb-be6c6188c379)
We all know Julie Draper now. Her twenty-four-year-old, shyly smiling face is everywhere. Can it really be just nine days since she rushed out of her estate agent’s office in south London to show a client around a house, only to vanish into thin air? The hunt for Julie Draper goes on. Only two people know she’s already dead. The man who killed her.
And me.
It’s this cursed ‘gift’ of mine, you see. These Games with the Dead that I’m forced to play. Julie comes to me at night now, just like the others did before, haunting and tormenting me. And I know she won’t quit. Not until I find her killer.
Don’t judge me. Please. I’m not a dangler of wind chimes or a martyr to the Tarot. I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake, a veritable tank of scepticism. That’s why I’m so desperate to find a clinical explanation for these close encounters with the recently whacked.
Several shrinks on, I’m told its sleep paralysis, but with an inexplicable twist. Whereas sufferers typically hallucinate traditional ‘bogeymen’ figures, like demons, witches or aliens, I see people whose murders I’m investigating. More baffling still, these murder victims give me clues as to how they died.
There’s nothing in their esteemed medical journals covering that …
Which is why I’ve never bought into this Sleep Paralysis quackery. Neither has my jaded girlfriend Zoe: ‘More like Ambition Paralysis.’ Or my hard-bitten hack brother: ‘It’s the DTs.’ I didn’t expect Mam to clear it all up for me like she did, on her deathbed. Presenting me the answer, wrapped in a family curse.
A curse I’m too scared to open.
Turns out mine is a ‘gift’ that just keeps taking. And taking. I’m twenty-five years old; trying to come to terms with an unthinkable new reality.
It’s 50/50 I won’t make it to thirty.
Chapter 1 (#ue580d115-badb-5a20-acdb-be6c6188c379)
New Scotland Yard, London
A few days earlier. Wednesday, June 15, 1994; 19.00
‘It’s not too late to pull out you know, Donal.’ Commander Neil Crossley, Head of the Kidnap Unit, stares through my eyes into a future he barely dares to contemplate: ‘If he’s going to kill Julie Draper, there’s no reason why he won’t kill you. And we know he’s killed before.’
But I know there can be no turning back now. I’ve got something to prove. To ‘Croissant’ Crossley. To my brother Fintan. To Zoe, my perennially disappointed partner. The kidnapper might be getting his ransom money, but the payback will be all mine.
Julie Draper’s abductor has named his price. Crown Estates – her employer – must cough up £175,000 cash for her ‘safe return’. He nominated Julie’s estate agent colleague, Tom Reynolds, to deliver the cash. Any sign of police or media involvement during ‘the drop’, he’ll kill both.
Crown Estates gambled on drafting in the police. Commander Crossley is gambling on a Tom Reynolds-lookalike to deliver the cash.
Me.
I’d never won a lookalike competition before.
Crossley remembered me from a previous attachment to the Kidnap Unit, thought me a ringer for Reynolds, rang me personally to ask if I ‘felt up to becoming part of a top-secret operation’. Having spent the past eighteen months in a career Limbo – languishing in the Cold Case Unit as an ‘Acting’ Detective Constable – I agreed immediately.
My new status as hero-in-waiting has already propelled me into exalted company. Yesterday, I accompanied Crossley to New Scotland Yard’s treasury, where we collected a Crown Estates cheque for 175k. Siren wailing, we floored it to a bullion centre in Chancery Lane, where we exchanged the cheque for equal numbers of £50, £20 and £10 used notes, just as the kidnapper had specified.
What a scene those 7,750 notes made! We then whisked the windfall back to technical support at the Yard, who spent the night painstakingly videotaping each note’s serial number.
As if reading our every move, a second ransom note lands this morning with an additional demand: £5,000 in two bank accounts with cash cards and PIN numbers. Our nemesis knows that the serial numbers from cash machines can’t be traced. He can use this ‘clean’ cash to travel anywhere in Europe to launder the dirty money. Our target is so smart, so well-informed, he reads our every move. Many of my colleagues are convinced he’s done this before. Or that he’s one of us, a serving or ex-cop, with a snout inside the investigation.
Today is our last chance to find out. To collect the ransom, he has to break cover. As in any extortion case, this represents our best and, possibly, only chance of catching the culprit.
We return to New Scotland Yard, take the lift to tech support on the third floor and sign for receipt of a black Head sports bag with a transmitter sewn into the base. As per the ransom note instructions, we divide the cash into thirty-one equal units of 250 notes, wrapping each bundle in polythene no more than twelve microns thick. Crossley inserts the cash cards into one of the bricks, but trousers the piece of paper revealing their PIN codes.
‘A little insurance,’ he says. ‘No matter what happens today, he’ll have to get back to us for these.’
We stack the bundles together and gift-wrap them in brown paper. As per a diagram enclosed with the ransom note, Crossley uses nylon cord to secure the parcel, with a substantial loop on top. Why the kidnapper is insisting on certain specifics, we’ve yet to figure out. We place the loot carefully inside the sports bag so as not to disturb the transmitter, then head to the operational hub in East Croydon, just south of London.
As I get trussed up in a bulletproof vest, Crossley re-reads the kidnapper’s delivery brief.
‘At 9pm, the courier must await a call at the Mercury public phone in the foyer of East Croydon train station. He’ll be given instructions and a trail to follow, which will take him from phone box to phone box over quiet roads so that the presence of police surveillance vehicles or aircraft will be detected. Any publicity or apparent police action will result in no further communication.’ Crossley glances up: ‘Which means he’ll kill Julie Draper, and he’ll probably kill you.’
As I refuse to let that sink in, he gets back to the kidnapper’s instructions: ‘Once the courier gets to the drop-off point, the money will not be collected by me, but by a young male who parks up in a nearby lovers’ lane for a few hours every Wednesday night. His female companion will be held hostage while I direct the male to bring the cash to me via a two-way radio. Once I receive the cash, I will reveal Julie’s location via an anonymous call to a media outlet, using the code phrase “Is Kipper a red herring?”’
Crossley folds the paper precisely, as if securing it for posterity, then searches my eyes deeply. For weakness? For reassurance? I can’t tell, but it’s a real ransacking of the irises.
‘Okay Donal, in your car is a two-way radio linked to the controller here in the operations room. He, in turn, is in touch with surveillance teams in front and behind you. You know about the transmitter in the money bag, so keep it with you at all times.’
My mind lags behind, conducting a dry run, seeking out pitfalls. ‘He mentioned quiet roads. How close will these surveillance teams be? I don’t want them blowing my cover.’
‘They’re the best in the business, Donal, shadowed IRA terrorists, underworld hitmen, the lot. They’ll be in constant contact with a stealth chopper who’ll follow the suspect once he picks up the money. Look, if you remember just one instruction tonight, Donal, it’s that these surveillance teams need to know the kidnapper’s every move. Each time you get a fresh set of instructions, pass them on. You must get back into your car and repeat them over the radio, loud and clear, twice. You then wait five minutes before you drive on. Understood?’
I nod.
‘I just can’t wait to get it over with now, Guv,’ I say brightly, diving into my car before his unflagging angst sucks the last bead of self-belief out of me. The door slams shut with a fatalistic thud.
‘Actually, there is one last thing,’ he says, passing me a note through the open window.
It’s Met-police-headed paper; the word ‘Disclaimer’ screams out from the bold, underlined first sentence.
‘They just handed this to me,’ he says, leaning down to my level, eyes sizing mine for a reaction. ‘It’s to show we haven’t put you under any undue duress if, well, anything goes awry.’
‘Undue duress?’
‘You know what it’s like these days, Donal,’ he smiles lamely. ‘All about protecting the brand.’
By the second line of legal gymnastics, I’m sufficiently bamboozled to quit reading, get signing and hand it back.
‘I expect this is going to be tortuous, Donal, but you must try to concentrate at all times. Be prepared for a last-second change. A sudden contact. You must be ready for anything and everything. But follow his instructions to the letter.
‘Absolutely no heroics. Remember, he may have an accomplice ready to kill Julie if anything goes wrong. It doesn’t matter if the money or the man slip away tonight. It’s all about getting Julie back, alive.’
He passes the sports bag slowly, almost reverentially, through the car window, as if handing over her very fate.
‘We’re counting on you, Donal. Because one mistake, and we’ve all got Julie Draper’s blood on our hands.’
Chapter 2 (#ue580d115-badb-5a20-acdb-be6c6188c379)
East Croydon, South London
Wednesday, June 15, 1994; 20.50
At 9.40am the previous Tuesday, Julie Draper left her office on Church Road, Croydon to show a client around a four-bedroom house. She didn’t come back. Her colleague, Tom Reynolds, checked out the house, found her car on the driveway, her house keys on the landing. No Julie.
He checked out her client. John West’s phone number doesn’t exist. The address he’d provided doesn’t exist. The kidnap squad baulks at the name.
Seven years ago, estate agent Suzy Fairclough vanished in West London. Neither her body nor her abductor have ever been found. Also aged twenty-four and a brunette, Suzy had arranged to meet a client called ‘Mr Kipper’.
‘John West Kippers’ are a British supermarket staple.
Has he struck again? Or is it some sort of twisted copycat attack? The kidnapper’s methodology has convinced senior officers that their fishiest nemesis is back.
The meticulous, almost obsessive attention to detail is the crowning Kipper hallmark. His demand, for example, that the ransom cash be wrapped in polythene twelve microns thick is a direct steal from the Fairclough abduction. Tech wizards have figured out why; through plastic that thin any bugs we might hide in the cash can be detected by a bog-standard, shop-bought metal detector.
Yesterday morning’s proof-of-life phone call had also been classic Kipper. He rang Julie’s office from a public phone box and played a tape recording of her reading headlines from that day’s Daily Mirror newspaper. He made the call from a non-digital exchange, which takes longer to trace. But trace it we did, to Worthing on the south coast.
In another parallel with the Suzy Fairclough abductor, the ransom letter had been typed on generic WH Smith stationery using an old Olivetti, the typewriter equivalent of a Model T Ford – so, impossible to trace. Once again, he’d been careful not to lick the envelope or stamp, or to leave prints, fibres or hairs.
Without a solid lead, detectives agreed to pay the ransom. To my surprise, there is no secret police slush fund to meet this kind of shakedown. Crown Estates had to raise the cash. Now it’s my job to hand it over.
East Croydon train station finally looms into view, just as Crossley’s forlorn prophecies perform another club-footed cancan across my aching crown. Change his plan at any second … ready for anything and everything … one mistake and we’ve got Julie Draper’s blood on our hands.
I park up and brace myself for the kidnapper’s first instruction; stand by the open car boot for 30 seconds. Presumably, he or his associates want to ensure I’m not harbouring a crack team of SAS midgets between the golf clubs and the jerry can.
Getting out unleashes a Grand National of competing terrors. They’re led at the first by the very real fear he’ll realise I’m not Tom Reynolds. What then? I yank down my baseball cap’s stiff peak until it fringes my vision. I take the holdall of cash and my identifying ‘Crown Estates’ clipboard from the back seat, walk to the car boot, open it and start to count. I feel exposed, helpless, JFK in Dealey Plaza. I make it all the way to seven before cracking. Boot still open, I set off pacing and weaving through people outside the station, taking sudden, wild turns like a coursed hare. If he’s planning a head shot, he’ll need to be Robin fucking Hood.
I rush to thirty, shut the boot and hotfoot into the station foyer. To my left, I spot the metallic-blue Mercury public phone he’s selected for our cosy chat. It’s framed by a glass hood, open at the front, New York-style. I wonder why he’s selected such an exposed phone, and hover there twitchily, head scoping in case of ambush. Through the frosted glass of a nearby waiting room, a frowning man peers out. Kidnapper or cop? Who can tell? Opposite me, two scruffy men in their twenties loiter outside the ticket office. One of them clocks my clipboard and approaches. I stiffen.
‘Are you doing a survey?’ he asks brightly.
‘No, I’m waiting for a phone call.’
He raises his arm. I flinch. Calmly, he reaches past me, lifts the receiver, checks for a dialling tone and replaces it. ‘Well it’s working,’ he says chirpily and returns to his pal. Kidnapper? Undercover cop? Mercury Communications telephone angel? Who knows.
A thunderous rumble grows inside the station. I step out from my glass arch to see an army of knackered, dead-eyed commuters march up a walkway towards me, looking set to sack the city. As they storm the ticket barriers, I scan their addled, timetable-enslaved faces.
Ready for anything and everything …
He could be one of them, ready to pluck the bag from my grasp and sprint to a getaway car.
No one stops. No one even looks. All hopes of a swift exchange evaporate.
I sag and step back, my back raging hot against the phone’s cold metal. The money bag’s strap burns a timely reminder into my left shoulder blade; I’m standing here alone with everything he wants. What if he’s watching me, planning to pounce? Who would save me?
I scan again. Those surveillance officers are either very good or very not here. The phone’s shrill ring lifts me six inches off the floor. I pick up, killing the ring and every other sound in the world, as if it has ceased spinning. I picture birds tumbling out of the sky, landing with a thud on Croydon concrete.
Cold hard plastic cools my scorching right ear. ‘Yes,’ I croak.
‘Tom Reynolds?’
‘That’s me.’
‘What’s your car reg?’ demands the Geoff Boycott sounda- like.
My addled mind empties like a toppled glass. I can’t even remember my own licence plate!
I whimper. He barks: ‘Make, model, colour?’
‘Nissan Bluebird. Maroon.’
I hear a muffled rustle. ‘Parked outside the station,’ I hear him say, faintly, as if to someone else. He’s got watchers!
‘Get back into your car,’ he demands, tetchily. ‘Follow signs for the M23 and A23 to Brighton. When you see a sign saying Brighton 8 miles, look out for the next left, the A273. Take the exit. On the left after 200 yards you’ll see a lay-by with two phone boxes. The first is a phone card kiosk. Taped beneath the shelf will be an envelope containing a new set of instructions.’
‘My God,’ I sigh into the dead phone. ‘The world’s grimmest treasure hunt.’
I almost run back to the car to parrot the details, then wait five agonising minutes before setting off south. Signs for Penge, Riddlesdown and Titsey flash past, making me wonder if every Croydon suburb is named after some squalid seventeenth-century disease. It would seem fitting. All I see are rows and rows of houses punctuated by identikit shopping parades, invariably featuring an estate agent, bookmaker, greasy spoon café, off-licence, post office, pharmacy and funeral parlour.
There’s the futility and emptiness of modern life, right there, I think, in my fug of fatalistic gloom. Each cluster of shops tells our real-life story: you buy a house, spend your life paying for it, cheer yourself up gambling, drinking and eating shit, get ill, old and die.
Zap! The suburbs vanish to a vast, velvet night-sky being munched on by tiny, shiny, Pac-Men; on closer inspection, aircraft queueing to land at Gatwick airport.
‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Fintan calls the A23, leading as it invariably does to sun-kissed excess-by-sea. Not tonight. The prospect of messing up in the South Downs yanks my knotted guts to twanging.
Be prepared for a last-second change. A sudden contact.
Crossley’s ceaseless advice drowns out all self-soothing inner monologues.
If he’s going to kill Julie Draper, there’s no reason why he won’t kill you …
Christ, poor Matt. My sweet, adorable stepson. The single best thing ever to happen in my life. Why am I taking this risk?
None of this is Matt’s fault. Stupid selfish grown-ups. I’m sure Zoe and I will be okay. We’re just in bit of a rut right now. Living together but not really living at all. It’s all work, childcare and sleep deprivation. I know I’m doing this for her. I’m just not sure why. To impress her? To prove myself? To make her worry about me? In place of an answer, I’ve coined a mantra: If I get through this, everything will be better. I’ll have proven myself, to her, to me. We’ll get back to how it was. She’ll look at me in that way again, eyes soft and warm. Smile at my corny gags. Sleep facing me.
