Nick Oldham - One Dead Witness

‘ I feel pretty safe now,’ Myrna said. ‘Just tired, that’s all.’

‘ Hey, my fault. I’ve kept you talking too long.’

‘ No, it’s okay. I’ve enjoyed it.’ And she had, because the main topic of conversation had been the memories both had of Steve Kruger.

‘ Fine, see ya,’ Tapperman waved. He stood up, his head almost brushing the ceiling. His cell-phone rang. He unhooked it from his belt. ‘Tapperman.’

Myrna collected the cups and wandered wearily into the kitchen, a burnt-out case. She returned as Tapperman finished his call. His face was white, because he was suddenly remembering the familiar face he had bumped into at the airport. Now he knew who it belonged to.

‘ That was the office. An anonymous called just left a message for me.’ He gritted his teeth and found himself short of breath. ‘Patrick Orlove is on board that plane with Danny and Tracey. He’s got orders to take Tracey out and then disappear into Europe.’

Both their eyes turned to the clock.

‘ The plane’s due to land in half an hour,’ Myrna said.

‘ We need to get a message to the cops in England.’

‘ Do you know any cops in England?’

‘ No — but I know a man who does.’ She reached for her phone.

Since reading Stanway’s letter, Henry Christie had been far too excited to sleep. He had re-read the thing several times and spent the night agitatedly wandering about the house whilst upstairs his wife and two daughters slept soundly.

He must have dropped off around 3 a.m. because he awoke in a contorted position on the settee just before 6 a.m. with a stiff neck and dead arm. Then in a panic, he rushed round, brushing his teeth, grabbing a quick shower and getting into his work suit, waking the whole household as he did so, before leaping into the car and heading off towards Manchester Airport.

He arrived at the terminal building at 7.45 a.m., parked up and walked into International Arrivals. According to the screens, the flight from Miami was slightly delayed. He cursed, he was looking forward to seeing Danny.

At exactly that time, the first of three cells on the Solitary wing at Risley Remand Centre was unlocked by four prison guards. The door was pulled open and the inmate was found standing there ready prepared.

Louis Vernon Trent smiled amiably at the guards and compliantly held his hands out for the cuffs to be clamped around his wrists. His eyes watched everything that was happening, and everyone. He knew this would be his last chance to escape from custody for a while. After today his remand hearings would take place without his presence. The next time he would be at court would be for his committal hearing, and after that his trial.

This was the first of three chances to effect an escape and if the opportunity arose, he would be on his toes because he knew that, most probably, after the court appearances he would never be released for the rest of his life.

He was prodded along the landing to the next cell, opened by one of the screws. A mean-faced, impatient Charlie Gilbert was also ready and waiting. A pair of specially widened handcuffs were ratcheted onto his fat wrists.

He was dressed very well and expensively. He fully expected to walk out of court a free man, or at the very least on bail today. Bussola would see to that, he believed. And if he did leave as a free man, he would show the cops a thing or two. He would tighten up his network and continue to abuse young girls and if they were difficult, he would kill them; more and more he wanted to kill them anyway. It gave him a great sense of satisfaction. If he walked out of court on bail, he would flee the country, he had decided.

A prison guard’s hand propelled him to the next cell from which Ollie Spencer was extracted.

He was a man with no dreams or expectations. What happened, happened. He was content to take things as they came.

All three men were led out to the yard and bundled into a converted mini-bus with armoured windows and toughened body panels. The prisoners were put into an inner cage, the guards took up positions on seats outside the cage. The driver was in a protected cabin.

When they were ready the mini-bus pulled out of the remand centre.

‘ Would Henry Christie please attend the information desk to take an urgent phone call?’

Henry was standing under the Meeting Point with a cup of coffee in his hand. His mind was retracing the words of Stanway’s letter again and again. He was in deep thought. The letter was very much on his mind, everything else simply background.

I know that Charles has always loved little girls, Henry remembered reading, and he has always directed his energies to being in a position where he could meet them — or arrange to meet them. His amusement arcades were always a good place for this to happen and he frequently lured girls aged around eleven (because that’s the age group he loved the best) and then he would ultimately abuse them. Most he discarded back onto the scrap heap they came from (many were missing from homes, many never got to know his name), but some became regulars, being paid to perform the most disgusting sexual acts with him and his friend Spencer — who was always there. Some liked it. Some didn’t. Some fought him and he overpowered them. Some he could not overpower… and these he would kill.

‘ I repeat, would Mr Henry Christie please attend the information desk for an urgent message…’

At this mention of his name, Henry snapped back into the here and now. He threw his coffee down his neck and with a quick glance at the arrivals screen, which told him the flight from Miami had touched down, he went to the information desk.

The flight had been peaceful. A couple of good films were shown. The food was passable and the service excellent. Some people even managed to sleep.

Danny and Tracey spent a long time talking about Charlie Gilbert and Mario Bussola. Tracey knew a great deal about both and their activities, and her story was pretty typical of a young person’s involvement with them. Gilbert often arranged to take ‘likely candidates’ across to America where they were inducted into Bussola’s porn empire. It was easy, Tracey said, to arrange forged passports, work permits, social security numbers. Bussola did that for Gilbert so that all the Brit had to do was bring the right sort of kids over.

Gilbert would promise his girls a chance in films. Most were under his power and influence and believed anything he told them anyway. The reality of the ‘films’ soon hit them. Once Bussola had abused them to his own personal satisfaction, he passed them down the line where they got roles in poorly made, but expensive to buy, blue movies. They then passed on into prostitution and subsequently burned out on drugs and booze.

Gilbert had promised Tracey stardom. She had ‘it’, he told her. Looks, presence, potential, the body… everything.

But she knew he was lying. All he was trying to do was shut her up because she had witnessed him murder her friend; he’d whisked her off to America, where he handed her over to Bussola and his organisation. It was doomed from the start. She could not even pretend she liked being fucked in front of a camera, or that it was a pleasure fellating a guy with a lens pointed at her. She tried, because the cash and dope payment was good… but she hated it, her eyes could not hide it and the camera saw it.

She didn’t last long before she was turned out onto the mean and dirty streets of Miami.

Eventually she gravitated into one of Florida’s most notorious motorcycle gangs — like Hell’s Angels, only a million times worse. Her life became a series of scenes from a movie: guns, robberies, shootings, drugs, one-man rape and then a gang-rape — fifteen of them — and being left for alligators to eat in the Everglades.