Хилари Боннер - A Kind Of Wild Justice

The call came as promised the next morning. This time fully monitored.

Bill Phillips had decided he would be the one to take it. His wife was more than happy to let him do so. Mike Fielding listened in on a specially installed extension.

At first Bill adhered strictly to his instructions. ‘You have to give me proof that you’ve got my daughter,’ he told the caller.

There was a brief silence, then a girl’s voice, weak and frightened: ‘Dad, Mum, it’s me, Angela, please give him what he wants. Please. I want to come home. I can’t stand...’ The voice ended abruptly. The listening police noticed the click of a tape recorder.

Bill Phillips, predictably enough, did not. ‘Ange, Ange,’ he called plaintively. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ Then, getting only silence in response, ‘Of course I’ll give him what he wants, darling. I’ll do anything to get you home. Anything.’

The muffled voice came on the line again: ‘At midnight tonight you will put £50,000 in used ten-pound notes into a rucksack and leave it at the foot of a pine tree in Fernworthy Forest. I want your son to do it. On his own. No filth. Nobody else. You want to see your son again, don’t you? Mess with me and he’ll go missing too. Tell him to take the road around the reservoir. It comes to a dead end. Park there and walk approximately 150 yards due west into the forest. Ordnance survey map OL 28, reference 8390.6574. The tree will be marked with a red cross. The kid will be nearby. You’ll find her.’

‘I haven’t got the cash, I can’t get it till tomorrow morning.’

‘Tell the filth to keep their snotty noses out. I know they’re with you and I know their tricks. Tonight — or your precious Angela dies. Oh, and it won’t be a pretty death...’

The caller hung up. So did Bill Phillips. His complexion seemed to be growing greyer by the minute.

His wife looked at him questioningly.

He shook his head numbly. ‘So much about wanting to take control away from him,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be tonight and I don’t want any interference. I want it the way he’s said. I’m not taking chances with my children’s lives.’

Parsons and Fielding exchanged glances. ‘Can you raise the money that quickly, Mr Phillips?’ asked Fielding.

The other man smiled weakly. ‘One call to my bank manager,’ he said. ‘And I won’t have to explain why.’

Fielding glanced around the big farmhouse kitchen. It reeked of affluent well-being. The house must have a minimum of eight bedrooms, he thought. He glanced out of the window over Dartmoor, taking in the five tors that gave the farm its name. He had learned that the Phillipses were mixed farmers, big on beef, some dairy, and several thousand sheep on their higher ground and moorland. Their more lush land, on which they raised their beef including one of the country’s finest herds of pedigree Devon cattle, was to the rear of the farmhouse stretching back towards and beyond Okehampton. Fielding also knew the size of the farm, approaching 2000 acres, pretty big anywhere and huge in the West Country. He felt a bit silly having even asked the question that he did.

Parsons stepped in brusquely. ‘You’d better do it in that case, Mr Phillips,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll discuss the next step.’

Phillips turned away and picked up the phone again.

Fielding spoke in the DCI’s ear. ‘A word, boss,’ he said.

Silently the older man turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Fielding followed him. ‘Boss, we can’t let Rob Phillips make the drop. Let me go in his place.’

Parsons looked thoughtful. ‘I’m not sure, Matey obviously knows this family. Or all about them anyway. We don’t know how well he might know Rob Phillips, do we? It’s not at all unlikely that he’s local, don’t forget. At the very least he’s done his homework. Almost certainly he knows what Rob looks like. That’s the problem.’

‘I’m about the same height and build. It’ll be pitch-black out there. I’ll keep my head down. The bastard’ll never know the difference.’

Parsons considered for a moment. Then he nodded abruptly.

Rob Phillips, however, who had already been notified by his father of the kidnapper’s instructions, needed a little more convincing. ‘We mustn’t take any chances,’ he said, echoing his father’s earlier remark. ‘I don’t want anyone standing in for me. I want to go get my sister. It’s my fault she was taken in the first place.’

Fielding wondered if the young man was waiting for somebody to say that it wasn’t his fault. But nobody did.

Parsons did have something to say, though. ‘Mr Phillips, at the very least your sister is in very grave danger. I cannot allow you to put yourself in danger too.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t allow...’ Rob was bristling, quick to find a target for the anger inside him, which was really directed at himself.

His father interrupted. ‘No, boy, the inspector’s right. Your mother and I can’t risk losing you too. Let the sergeant take the money. He knows what he’s doing.’

Fielding just hoped Bill Phillips was right.

It took about half an hour to drive from Blackstone to Fernworthy Forest, mostly along dark deserted roads skirting the moor. Apart from Fielding himself, alone in Rob Phillips’s Land Rover, there did not seem to be a soul about. There are few roads over Dartmoor and the heart of the moor remains remote and inaccessible, but the last couple of miles or so, from Chagford to the reservoir, cut right across the stretch of rugged moorland known as Chagford Common. At one point, as the Land Rover reached the brow of a hill, a pony loomed abruptly in its headlights and Fielding had to swerve violently to avoid it. As he swung the wheel, his nerves jangled far more than they would normally do.

The thing about surveillance was that it was so much easier in urban areas. People are the best camouflage. Want to lose yourself, go to a city. Policemen and villains both knew that.

The number one priority was to retrieve Angela Phillips safely — if that were even still possible, Fielding thought wryly. There were plenty of police officers waiting nearby for the call everyone hoped Fielding would be able to make, the call to say that he had Angela Phillips safe. But no attempt had been made to plant police officers at the delivery point. There was something about the kidnapper’s approach, the use of precise map readings, which tagged him as a military man. Indeed, kidnappers often were. They were the kind who enjoyed plotting complex operations. Parsons had reckoned that close surveillance would not be possible. ‘Not without Matey sussing it out pretty damned quickly,’ he had said. And he hadn’t been prepared to take that risk. So Fielding was pretty much on his own. His mouth felt dry, the palms of his hands were clammy.

On the car seat next to him was a freshly purchased Millet’s rucksack containing £50,000 in used tenners. As instructed. It also contained a signalling device, concealed in the padding in the bottom. It might be discovered at once. Or Angela’s kidnapper might just empty the cash into another container or straight into a vehicle. On the other hand it might just give out a signal for long enough for the police to close in on him. After Angela Phillips was freed, of course. Nothing was to happen until then. That was the priority.

It was all a matter of survival, really. And not just the survival of Angela Phillips, but also that of the senior police officers on the case. Fielding knew the way Parsons’s mind worked. He was unlikely to catch much criticism, if any at all, over loss of the Phillipses’ £50,000 as long as Angela was safely recovered. Indeed, he would be a hero again. So would Fielding himself, he considered with some satisfaction. As Todd Mallett had worked out long ago, he liked being a hero. But if Angela were lost, he and Parsons, already involved in an unorthodox operation, would both be deeply in the mire, whether or not the money was ever recovered. In fact, probably particularly if it were — if it looked as though any priority had been given to anything other than the safety of the missing girl.