As detectives, none of them were used to the extra six pounds of weight, and Kim thanked the lord they weren’t wearing the military issue type which weighed around twenty pounds.
The vests had been gathered from every nook and cranny of the West Midlands police force. Stab vests were plentiful but offered no protection against bullets. Ironically the ones they were wearing offered little defence against knives.
And even though they were under strict instructions not to enter either site without a firearms unit, she had to ensure that her team was safe. The ones she could see, anyway.
Hang on, Stace, we’re coming, she thought to herself as they all piled back into the car.
‘The main entrance is about half a mile along this road,’ Gibbs said, viewing a picture on his phone.
He tapped on it and passed it forward.
Kim could see thick metal fencing between two brick pillars with a gatehouse to the left.
She passed the phone back. Gibbs tapped twice more.
‘If we carry on along this road we’re driving parallel to the perimeter of the site,’ he said. ‘In about a mile we should be as close as we’re going to get to the hub, where the main building is situated; but there’s no way in, obviously. The place is surrounded by metal fencing.’
Kim cast a glance backwards to Dawson. Even in the relative darkness of the car she saw his almost imperceptible nod.
Good. The others hadn’t needed to know about their private conversation.
Her phone rang, startling them all. It was Travis, eleven miles away in Bromsgrove.
‘Nothing here, Stone,’ he said, without greeting. ‘Searched the perimeter and the grounds of the manor house. Nothing happening.’
‘Thanks, Travis. How long until you’re here?’
‘Twenty minutes or so. We’re leaving right now.’
Kim heard the car engine fire up in the background.
She gave him directions from the main entrance and ended the call.
‘Anywhere here,’ Gibbs said.
Bryant drove another hundred feet and parked on the grass verge.
Kim got out of the car and listened.
Dawson stood beside her. ‘Boss, what?…’
‘Shh…’ she said, holding up her hand.
Her initial sense check offered her nothing but silence, but she closed her eyes and focussed. Somewhere in the distance were voices, chatter, an occasional laugh.
Kim tried to loosen the tension in her jaw.
Bryant shone the torch around them, ensuring he kept it low to the ground. Weeds and grass grew both sides of the metal fence. Barbed wire ran across the top. An unlit street lamp lay approximately thirty feet beyond the boundary.
Her heart began to pound in her chest.
Suddenly the street lamp illuminated above them.
She stepped forward, right up to the fence and followed the line of lights. Every third light was now illuminated.
She heard a distant roar of excitement, and her stomach turned.
‘Bryant, how long?’ she asked.
He had been liaising with the armed response unit.
‘Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.’
She paced back and forth along the fence line, feeling like a tiger in a zoo.
As ever, Bryant could read her thoughts.
‘Guv, you know we can’t—’
His words ended as a shot rang out in the distance, stunning them all. A roar of barking dogs followed.
Kim looked to Dawson, who stepped forward with wire cutters in his hand.
‘Shit, guv, you know you can’t—’
‘Bryant,’ she said over the sound of the cutters snipping at the wire. ‘Stacey is in there ? so please, tell me again I can’t.’
NINETY-NINE
All thoughts about the size of the room and the location of the doorway had fled from Stacey’s mind the second the key had turned in the lock.
Who the hell had been in here with her and what had he meant about a ‘warm-up act’?
She pushed herself back against the wall, hoping its solidity would stop the trembling. The coolness of the breeze block bit through her shirt and sent further shivers through her bones.
She thought about her colleagues and swallowed back the emotion. There was no team of people that she would want looking for her more than them but it was hopeless. There was no trail of breadcrumbs left behind her. She cursed the moment that it had felt like a good idea to not trust her team.
The sound of the key in the door obliterated the silence that was pounding in her ear. She backed further into the wall as the bumps that covered her skin rose.
The blinding light shone directly into her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to escape the glare.
A hand grabbed at her shirt.
She tried to move away, but the fabric was gripped tightly.
‘No… No…’ she said as the terror surged through her body.
She felt herself being yanked to her feet.
‘Please. I don’t…’
‘Shut up,’ said the male voice that she’d already heard.
Those two words stopped her dead. The tone was one of disgust, derision, as though talking to an unwanted animal.
The rage began to swirl around her body.
Her hands began to flail around her, seeking a direction of attack. She swallowed through the pain still pounding from the back of her head.
‘Get off me…’
‘Calm down,’ he commanded.
She did the opposite and struggled even more, the anger surging around her veins.
‘Take your hands off—’
Her words stopped as her foot made contact with flesh, and he cried out.
She tried to get a bearing of where he was. She wanted to aim her blows for maximum effect.
He slapped her around the face. Hard.
He then tried to turn her towards the wall, but she squirmed away from his grip.
She remembered her father trying to get hold of her to tickle her ribs, and the physical shapes she had formed to prevent it.
She ducked to the left, to the right, felt her face being pressed against the cold brick. Her top half was pinned against the wall. Her options were limited but she tried kicking out backwards. Her foot was hitting nothing but open space.
‘Stop struggling you stupid…’
He cried out as the back of her head met with hard bone when she threw it backwards.
She would not go quietly, she thought, just as the torch struck the back of her head, reigniting the red hot pain of earlier.
Her legs faltered as the nausea travelled up to her throat, and she buckled to the ground.
She felt her right arm being lifted and pulled into some kind of garment that then went around her back. Her left arm was pulled through before she heard and felt a cable tie securing her wrists behind her back.
There was a rough dabbing motion on her shirt sleeves and then down the fabric of her tights before she felt the sensation of something warm and sticky penetrating the fabric onto her skin.
She had no time to think about it further, as she felt herself being dragged to her feet.
Suddenly Stacey knew only three things.
She was in the presence of Floda.
She was involved in some kind of sick game.
And her time had run out.
ONE HUNDRED
Kim was heading in the general direction of the shot when Bryant appeared to her right.
‘Guv, this is a bad idea.’
For once she wished he would tell her something she didn’t know.