Fallen Angel (25 page)

Martha Day turned left off the Purley Way on the edge of Croydon and headed to the back of a large warehouse at the end of an industrial estate. She parked and opened the boot, helping an exhausted Peter Dawney to climb out.

‘Shall I call the police?' she asked.

‘No. He said not to. You shouldn't even be here. You'd better go, in case he's watching. I need to do this alone.'

‘But Peter –'

‘Promise me you won't tell the police. If you do, he'll kill Michael.'

‘I won't. I promise.'

Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out Martha's mobile. ‘You'd better take this. He told me not to take a phone with me.'

‘Why don't you try to hide it somewhere?'

‘I need to do what he says if I'm going to get Michael back.'

She took the phone, climbed back into the car and drove away. He looked around. In front of him was a disused industrial building surrounded by high metal fences, just as Jenkins had described. He walked towards the main gates and saw that the padlock had been cut. He pushed them open and went inside.

His breathing quickened as he strode up the short path,
a growing sense of anxiety building up inside him. He hoped the nightmare would soon be over.

The heavy front door opened with a gentle push. The inside of the building was in semi-darkness, with light filtering in from holes in the derelict roof.

He moved forward gingerly. In the distance, somewhere in the bowels of the property, he thought he heard a noise: the sound of water running and the occasional muffled sob of a terrified child.

‘Michael? Are you there? Michael? It's Daddy.'

The reply was hard to make out. It seemed to be Michael, but Peter couldn't work out what he was saying. The sound was coming from behind a door at the far end of the building. He hurried towards it.

And that was when a blast knocked him off his feet.

For a few seconds the shock of the impact kept him free of pain, but then the most searing, agonizing burning sensations began to travel through his body, and at once he understood exactly what had happened. He had been shot in the legs.

Screaming in agony and with his face contorted by pain, he twisted around and saw that a shotgun had been attached to a tripwire.

The blast covered his lower back, buttocks, and the backs and sides of his legs. He clenched his fists as tears of sheer agony began to roll down his cheeks. He could feel blood seeping out of him. He reached down to feel the mass of raw flesh where the skin on the back of his right leg had been torn away.

All around him small white rocks were strewn across the floor. A regular clay-pigeon shooter, he realized that
the cartridges had been filled with rock salt. Duncan Jenkins could have easily killed him with a booby trap if he had wanted to. A shotgun filled with regular pellets and aimed at his head or neck would have proved instantly fatal. The man obviously had some darker plan in mind.

The muffled cries were getting louder. ‘Michael, I'm coming, Michael.'

Using his arms, he dragged himself along the filthy ground towards the door, towards the place where the muffled screams were coming from.

He knew that if he stopped fighting, if he tried to block out the pain and let his body's natural painkillers take over, that he would simply slip away into unconsciousness. He couldn't let that happen. He had to keep fighting, no matter how much it hurt. He had to save his son. He had to get to him.

And then he brought himself to a sudden stop, his arms stretched out in front of him as if he were swimming the front crawl. Jenkins had already placed one booby trap in the building. What if there were more in place? What if every inch that Peter crawled towards his son brought him an inch closer to his own death?

Peter dismissed the thoughts from his mind. At last he was beginning to see how Jenkins's mind worked. He wanted him to suffer. He wanted his son to suffer. And he wanted Peter to be there to see his son die. But whatever horrors awaited him at the end of this short journey, he would be sure to stick to the path. He was certain of that. And, holding that firmly in his mind, he resumed his crawl.

With the exception of the uniformed officer on guard outside, Duncan Jenkins's house was pretty much as Collins and Woods had left it earlier in the day.

Collins moved through the rooms slowly and deliberately. The clues were here, she was sure of it; she just wasn't looking properly. She had only spoken about Sophie in the front room, so Jenkins must have been hiding close by to have heard them.

‘Are you sure he was here, guv?' asked Tony. ‘He could have found out about Sophie some other way.'

‘How?'

Woods shrugged. He had no answer.

Collins shook her head. ‘No, what he said was specific. It was exactly what we'd been talking about when we were here.'

Collins walked towards the old sideboard and picked up a photograph of Duncan and his mother in a loving embrace.

‘There's nothing here, boss. Blackwell's going mental trying to get hold of you on the radio. We really need to get back to him.' Woods's voice was becoming tense with impatience. Collins felt it too. Yet somehow she knew the answer simply had to be here.

‘Fuck Blackwell. I know Jenkins was here listening. And if he was here, then Michael might be here too.'

It was all too clear that the kidnap and murder of Daniel Eliot and the subsequent kidnap of Michael Dawney had taken a great deal of privacy. If not here, then where had Jenkins carried it out?

Then Collins saw something that her mind instantly registered as out of place. ‘How many televisions are there in the house?' she asked.

Woods scratched his head in an effort of memory. ‘Just the one, in here.' He pointed to it. ‘Why, do you want to put the news on?'

Collins ignored him and continued. ‘If there's only one television in the house, then what's that cable for?'

Woods looked up to where Collins was now pointing, and their eyes followed the line of the thin white cable that had been tacked into the corner. The two stepped almost in unison up to the wall, where the cable vanished into a small dark hole.

‘What's on the other side of that wall?'

‘The kitchen.'

They walked through the hallway and into the kitchen, turning to face the door of the small pantry. ‘It must come out behind there,' said Woods.

Collins opened the door and looked inside. It was a typical larder, full of tinned and dried goods neatly stacked on shelves on three sides. She crouched down and examined the far wall. The cable came through from the other side of the wall and passed down into the floorboards. She hammered on the lino-covered floor with her fist. It sounded hollow.

‘There's something down there.'

She pulled at the lino. It felt heavy and Collins quickly
realized that it had been stuck on to a hatch door that was opening at the same time. She threw back the door and looked down at a dark narrow staircase.

She opened her mouth to ask for a torch, but Woods had already taken one from the larder shelf. She switched it on, gripped it firmly and began to descend into the darkness.

‘Careful: this might be a trap, just like the money.'

Collins shone the torch beam on the walls of the stairs and the steps in front of her. There was nothing except bare plaster. With Collins leading the way, they headed cautiously down.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Collins found a light switch. As she flicked the bulb into life, she gasped in astonishment.

Every inch of wall space in the rectangular room in which she now found herself had been covered with photographs, newspaper clippings and drawings.

Leading off from the main room was a smaller blocked-off area, accessed through a door that was now ajar. Collins headed towards it and shone her torch into the room beyond. At first she did not quite take in what she was seeing, but after a few moments she knew she was looking at the cell that had been used to hold the kidnapped children.

There was congealed blood on the mattress and floor. It was here that Daniel Eliot had been tortured and killed.

She walked back into the main room and looked around. Directly opposite was a small desk on which sat a computer and dozens of folders. Behind that was a small
television with a digital video camera sitting on top and a pile of tapes.

One wall was full of photographs of the Dawney family spanning many years. There were pictures of Peter Dawney in his university days, distance snapshots of his marriage and press cuttings chronicling his rise in the corporate world. There were even shots of him learning to drive.

Collins scanned the images around her, and suddenly one of the biggest mysteries of the case was solved. How had Jenkins known that Daniel Eliot was Peter Dawney's child when Dawney himself hadn't known?

A long sequence of photographs at the bottom of the wall appeared to have been taken with a telephoto lens. They showed a couple kissing passionately on a park bench, and the same couple going in and out of hotels.

Collins recognized them at once, though they were at least ten years younger in the photos. They were Peter Dawney and Christina Rogers, as she was known back then.

Duncan had been obsessed with Peter and had followed him for years; he had done this so well that he had even stumbled across the fact that he had been having an affair. There were photographs of Christina going to ante-natal classes and then meeting up with a friend at a wine bar. Jenkins had written a scruffy note on the wall next to the print:
Told friend that Peter Dawney is father of baby!

Then there were pictures of Michael and Daniel growing up, going to school, playing and visiting friends.

Collins's eyes continued around the room. Another wall was a testament to the years of torment that Jenkins
had suffered, with many of his innermost thoughts sketched on the wall. There were crude pictures of men whom Collins presumed to be Peter Dawney with their throats cut open and blood pouring out.

As she stared intently at the pictures, she began to truly understand Jenkins's torment and his desire for revenge. She thought back to her father and to the fact that, for many years, not a day had passed without her wishing harm on his attackers. But his need for revenge had been way beyond any desire of hers.

A chill ran down her spine as she found herself staring at a drawing that was horribly familiar. It depicted a child hanging from the rafters of a building. The position of the body, the angle of the rope and the position of the windows – it was an exact replica of the scene she had encountered when she found Daniel Eliot's body at St Andrew's.

‘Tony, come and have a look at this.'

Woods walked over and stood beside her. She pointed at the drawing. ‘It's Daniel Eliot. He drew it just the way it happened.'

Woods nodded towards the drawing beside it. It was a crude sketch of a cylinder and a simple circuit diagram. ‘This must be how he blew up the money at Oxford Circus.'

They studied the next two drawings in the sequence. The first showed a boy in a pool of water. The second showed a woman with her stomach slit open and the contents pouring out.

Collins touched the first drawing with her finger. ‘If that's Michael –'

‘Then that must be Alice Dawney.'

Peter Dawney's arms and lungs burned like fire with the effort of trying to drag himself along towards his son.

The entire bottom half of his body was soaked in blood, and it formed a slick slug-like trail behind him. He had no idea how much blood he had lost but was acutely aware that he was starting to feel light-headed and dizzy. He needed to get to Michael soon. He couldn't give up, he couldn't stop.

It seemed to take an eternity for him to reach the door, and then a massive effort was required to reach up and grab the handle before pushing it open. Any last remaining hope that Michael's torment was at an end quickly faded away.

Peter found himself staring into a small dark room. The sound of fast-running water was much louder here, as were the sounds of muffled cries. Peter tried to call out his son's name, but his throat was dry. He swallowed hard, forcing down what little saliva remained in his mouth, and tried again.

‘Michael, are you in here? Michael?'

A whimper was the only reply.

Something bright glinted in front of him. As Peter's eyes slowly became accustomed to the light, he found himself looking at bands of razor wire, running in a spiral around what appeared to be a square hole in the middle
of the floor. He blinked a few times and stared hard in front of him, willing the images to become clearer.

Using all his strength, he raised himself upon his arms so that he could look down at exactly what was ahead of him. The centre of the room was occupied by a square inspection well, the kind you could drive cars and other vehicles over in order to inspect their undersides. Michael was in the middle of the well, strapped to a chair with thick ropes that seemed to wind up and down his body like an endless snake. A thick piece of silver tape had been stretched across his mouth, and there was a look of absolute terror in his eyes.

But what scared Peter the most was the large piece of plastic pipe sticking out just behind where Michael was sitting: water was gushing through it and into the well at a furious rate. It was already high enough to cover Michael's knees, and it was only a matter of time before it covered him completely.

The sight of his son in such peril gave him new strength, and Peter pulled himself quickly towards the middle of the room. The razor wire completely surrounded the well, and there was no way to go round it. Disregarding what the blades would do to him, Peter surged forward.

One sliced through the back of his hand, another caught on the belt of his trousers, yet another hooked into the skin on the back his neck. Every new movement not only left him in more pain but caused more of his body to be caught up in the blades. After a few moments Peter was trapped, completely unable to move.

He looked over at Michael, the boy's face silently pleading for help, but there was nothing Peter could do.

Michael seemed to be indicating at something with his eyes, and Peter shifted his gaze to the right. There, in the centre of the bands of razor wire, was a small cassette recorder. Peter was only barely able to reach it with his one free hand.

He hit the play button. ‘Hello, Peter. So sorry I can't be there to share your agony, but I'm on my way to your house to kill your wife. You took everything away from me: my childhood and any chance of my having a family of my own. I've spent many years thinking about how best to show you what it's like to have everything in your life that means something snatched away from you. You never knew about Daniel until I killed him. How does it feel to be responsible for the death of a child you knew nothing about? The money's gone. I blew it up. You'll leave this place alive but spend the rest of your days tormented by what's happened over the past few days, as I've been tormented from the day you took my life away. Enjoy your life, Peter. I'm leaving you with nothing. No money, no children, no wife, nothing at all. It's no more than you deserve. Enjoy the show.'

The tape clicked off, and Peter Dawney looked back over at Michael, who had also heard Jenkins's words. The boys eyes blinked furiously in terror at the sight of his father, who lay helplessly tangled up in the razor wire. His strength was fading fast.

He had no choice but to do exactly what Duncan Jenkins had wanted him to do: sit back and watch his last remaining son die a slow and horrible death.