Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

He hadn’t slept all that night. When there was a major investigation on the go and his adrenalin was flowing, he rarely seemed to need sleep. Indeed, the only person at Five Tors Farm who had actually been persuaded to go to bed had been Mary, weak and sick from her pregnancy on top of everything else.

Fielding had just sat at the big old table in the Phillipses’ kitchen along, most of the time, with the rest of the family. He had been acutely aware of their pain as he drank copious amounts of coffee and went over and over the case in his mind. It wasn’t that he really reckoned any of the Phillipses was responsible for Angela’s disappearance, although you never knew for certain, even with an apparently close and decent family like them. It was more that if anybody knew anything which would give a clue to Angela’s disappearance it was likely to be one of her immediate family, even if they didn’t realise it. As for the boyfriend, he didn’t really think so — the boy hadn’t broken for a start and he had looked a pretty soft touch.

Mike felt in his gut that the case had a long way to go. There were two possibilities: either that, dead or alive, Angela had been left in the immediate vicinity, or that she had been taken away from the vicinity, almost certainly in a vehicle.

But by mid-Monday morning the search team, including specially trained officers with dogs, had thoroughly combed a circle of more than a mile in diameter with the scene of the crime at its centre. There had been no further results. It became increasingly likely that Angela had been taken from the scene in a vehicle. But was it Jeremy Thomas’s vehicle? Mike somehow thought it unlikely.

By two in the afternoon, lack of action had more or less brought his adrenalin flow to an end and he was starting to feel the effect of his sleepless night. Wearily, he was also beginning to wonder if he would, in fact, learn anything more from the family after all.

Then the telephone rang.

Lillian Phillips ran to answer it eagerly, as she had done each time it had rung since Angela’s disappearance. Even though all the calls to date had either been from concerned friends and relatives or the press, it was quite apparent that she kept hoping to hear her missing daughter’s voice on the other end of the phone.

This time, after putting the receiver to her ear, she seemed to freeze. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘Yes, yes. How? Yes.’

Then, ‘Wait, please don’t go, is my daughter all right? Can I speak to her...’

Fielding’s weariness left him at once. He launched himself across the kitchen where the entire family had been gathered round the old pine table and snatched the receiver from Lillian’s hand. All he could hear was the dialling tone. He turned to Lillian Phillips, who looked absolutely stricken. ‘Talk me through it,’ he said. And he knew more or less what he was going to hear.

A muffled voice had told Angela’s mother that if she wanted to see her daughter alive the family must pay a ransom of £50,000. ‘And you can tell the filth they may as well call off the search. They’ll never find her.’

The caller had said that he would ring back the following morning, when he expected confirmation that they had the money in cash to give him. He would then give instructions for its delivery.

Fielding cursed under his breath. A kidnap and a ransom demand were the last things he and the team had expected. If they had they would never have called for media involvement. Kidnaps were a staggeringly rare crime. From the kidnapper’s point of view the success rate was minuscule. He knew that professional criminals would stage a kidnap only in exceptional circumstances and amateurs were highly unlikely to have the organisational skills required. They had had absolutely no reason to suspect that Angela’s abduction would result in a ransom demand. Fielding felt the muscles in the back of his neck tighten into a knot of tension. The nature of her disappearance had led him, and Parsons and Mallett, to suspect, almost exclusively, a sex crime. Phone calls to Five Tors Farm had not been monitored. All the probabilities had been against a kidnap for ransom. Christ!

He made himself concentrate hard. Was that really what they had on their hands? They couldn’t be sure yet, of course. There were all kinds of nutters out there who would get some sort of sick kick out of making a malicious phone call to the family of a missing girl. There was no proof so far that the call was genuine.

Lillian Phillips’s stunned silence had turned into hysterical weeping. The sound cut through Fielding’s thought process. ‘There, there, love, don’t carry on so,’ he heard Bill Phillips soothe his wife. ‘At least we know she’s alive, think on that. She’s alive, Lil, and we’ll get her back, I promise.’

Abruptly Lillian stopped crying. ‘Oh, Bill, you’re right. Of course. She’s alive. Thank God. She’s alive.’

I wouldn’t bank on it, thought Fielding. But he kept the thought to himself.

Within an hour Parsons arrived at the farm with Todd Mallett. Jeremy Thomas had already been released. The boy wasn’t totally out of the frame yet. Particularly not while the ransom call could still be a hoax. But Jeremy continued to stick resolutely to his story and had, in any case, already been detained for almost twenty-four hours without any progress being made.

‘Thought we could do with Todd’s local knowledge,’ said Parsons.

Fielding grunted unenthusiastically. But he had to admit that Todd was a hell of a lot better than him at coping with the family. Better than Parsons, too. Everybody knew that Parsons’s biggest strength was planning, not dealing with people. He was, however, an ace delegator, which was another of his great strengths.

There was, of course, something reassuringly solid about Mallett. Fielding hoped he himself was solid enough in his way, but uttering reassurance was not one of his finer qualities. Mallett had a calming effect on the family, whose first reaction had been to rush to their bank. ‘First thing is to make sure this joker really does have your Angela,’ he told them. ‘The call may not be genuine, you know.’

They hadn’t thought of that. It stopped them in their tracks.

Parsons, who had been largely silent till that point, allowing Todd to smooth the way for him, took over then, issuing instructions in his clipped, businesslike tones. ‘Right, when this man calls again you ask him for proof that he’s got your girl. OK? He’ll be expecting that. Bound to be. If he can prove it, then you say yes, you’ll pay up. But when he’s given you your delivery instructions you play for time, say it’ll take you a day or two to raise the cash, that kind of thing...’

‘I don’t want to stall,’ interrupted Bill Phillips. ‘I’m not playing games with my daughter’s life. If the price of getting her back is £50,000 then I’m paying it. Right away.’

‘I’m not asking you to play games, Mr Phillips.’ Parsons was firm and authoritative, as sure of himself as ever. ‘I’m asking you to accept that we have learned a bit about this sort of thing over the years. If we are dealing with a kidnapper, he won’t expect you to move too fast; he might even be suspicious if you do. It’s important for us to take the initiative, not to let him make all the running. We need to know where he wants you to make the drop and consider all the implications. We have to think of a way to make sure that he doesn’t get the cash without your daughter being returned. If we move hastily and let him get the money without ensuring that he returns Angela — well, anything could happen...’

There was a silence while his words sank in. Lillian Phillips moaned. Her husband grasped her hand tightly. It was several seconds before he spoke. ‘OK. Just tell us what we have to do,’ he said eventually.