As he reached it, he looked around again. There was a tinkle of laughter behind him. Four more people had emerged from the hotel, holding glasses and sparking up cigarettes. He heard a shrill cackle of laughter.
Laughing at him?
He watched them. There was another shrill laugh. Then, as he entered through the hole in the wall which passed for a door, he smelled the familiar rank stench of dung, urine and lichen. He pulled out his phone, about to switch on the torch app, when a sharp ping-ping right behind him made him jump.
He spun round in shock, expecting to see someone. Instead, he saw a ghostly green light, at eye-level. The light was emitted by a small mobile phone taped to the wall. On the display was a poorly lit close-up photograph of Mungo. Grey duct tape was wound round his face, below his nostrils. His eyes were wide open in fear. Darkness surrounded him, but Kipp could just make out a shape of what looked like his topknot. He could have been in a cave, a cellar, a closet.
A sudden ping from the phone startled him.
A text.
Good man. You are being sensible coming alone. Take this phone home. We will use it for the next instruxxion on how to save Mungo’s life. Do not text back. Do not speak to the police, unless you want directions to Mungo’s corpse.
With shaking hands, Kipp removed the phone and the tape and, ignoring what he was told, tapped out a text back.
I will pay whatever money you want, I promise. Just tell me how and where to send it. Please do not hurt my son.
He tried to send it, but nothing happened. It was blocked.
He tried again. Then again.
It would not send.
He waited for several minutes, then pocketed the tape and the phone, and stepped back out of the structure, looking around fearfully into the darkness. Was someone out there, watching him?
Where?
He studied the few vehicles in the car park. No sign of a figure or movement in any of them. Was someone out in the darkness with night-vision binoculars?
He walked slowly back to the car park, his shoes sodden from the long, wet grass, then stood beside his Porsche, looking around before unlocking it. When he finally climbed in, he sat and waited. Five minutes. Ten. He tried sending the text again, without success.
He drove home slowly, thinking. Thinking. Again, a spelling error. The next instruxxion.
Who had sent it? Who had taken his son?
Had he made a big mistake contacting the police? Were they watching his house, not fooled by the fridge delivery? He put the phone down on the passenger seat, glancing at it repeatedly as he drove home, waiting for it to light up and ping with another text. But it stayed dark and silent.
Stacey opened the front door before he had even reached it. Her eyes were red and hollow, her face gaunt, as if she had lost several stone in weight in the past hour. Her breath reeked of booze. ‘What? What news?’
He showed her the phone, with the text and the photograph of Mungo. When she saw that she collapsed, sobbing, into his arms.
‘We’ll get him back safely, babes, I promise you.’
She continued sobbing uncontrollably.
He steered her through into the living room. The television was on, showing a recording of The Crown from earlier that evening. On the coffee table in front of the sofa was a wine glass, and a nearly empty bottle of white wine. He sat her down and put the glass in her hand, then went off in search of the two detectives, down in the basement.
Branson studied the photograph of Mungo. His younger colleague, Jack, produced an elaborate scanner, which he placed right against the phone. Then he tapped some keys on the device. ‘Sending the image for enhancement to Digital Forensics,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we get any clues from it.’
Within half an hour, another text came in.
47
Saturday 12 August
21.30–22.30
It was almost dark now outside the windows of the Digital Forensics suite. But neither Jason Quigley, Dan Salter, Shaun Robbins nor Aiden Gilbert noticed. They were all focused on the image that the Acting Detective Sergeant had just sent through.
The image of a teenage boy with terror in his eyes and grey duct tape across his mouth. Surrounded by darkness.
The team dressed casually in here. Despite the endless shocks from the frequently grim and often brutal images of child pornography that they all had to look at regularly in this job, they did their best to keep the atmosphere as cheerful as they could. Quigley, in a polo shirt, jeans and sneakers, tapped his keyboard, starting the process of enhancing the image, whilst trying to stop it turning grainy. He was using a development of software created originally by NASA for the first moon landing in 1969.
The four men watched as the background slowly lightened. Mungo Brown was seated on the floor, leaning against a bare, flint wall. Quigley tapped more keys and suddenly the image zoomed in. First on the boy’s frightened eyes. Then the duct tape across his mouth. Down his torso, his hands out of sight behind his back. Restrained by something.
Then there was a close-up of a wall socket.
‘This could be of interest,’ Quigley said. ‘Anyone spot it?’
They all shook their heads.
He went in closer, and now the socket became very clearly visible. It looked old-fashioned, yellowed, with three round pinholes, one smaller than the other two. ‘Who’s the eldest here?’
‘Probably me,’ Aiden Gilbert said. ‘I’m fifty-two.’
‘When did you last plug anything into a round-pin socket, Aiden?’
‘Never.’
Jason Quigley nodded, with a self-satisfied grin. ‘My point exactly! You aren’t going to see one in any house in the UK that’s been modernized in the last forty years.’
‘So, this socket predates that, Jason?’ Dan Salter quizzed.
‘It sodding predates Noah’s Ark! There’s got to be a clue here.’
‘That we’re looking for a derelict property?’ Gilbert said.
‘Smack on the money, boss!’
Daniel Salter’s phone rang. It was his contact at the phone company EE.
‘Hi, Joe,’ he said. ‘You have? Brilliant!’ He wrote down the details. ‘Well done, mate!’
48
Saturday 12 August
21.30–22.30
Shortly before 10 p.m. Roy Grace, shirtsleeves rolled up and a mug of coffee beside him, was sitting at his workstation in the Intel suite, updating his Policy Book and looking once more at the latest information that had come in from Digital Forensics. He had already given the action to two analysts, following the information, to search for derelict properties within a twenty-mile radius, although he felt that was a slender hope.
The mood in the room was purposeful but sombre. Everyone was concerned for the missing boy, and on top of this was the sense of disappointment that Brighton and Hove Albion had lost, 2–0, in the football. Not that there would have been any noticeable jubilation in this room had they won. The intensity of concentration was so strong that the outside world, unless it materially affected their investigation, was for now irrelevant.
A key person they needed to speak to was Mungo Brown’s school friend, Aleksander Dervishi, the friend his father had seen him talking to shortly before he had disappeared. They had spoken to Aleksander’s mother, Mirlinda, a couple of times. The first time she told them he hadn’t returned from the football yet, but she wasn’t worried. He’d told her he was going to another school friend’s house in Brighton after the game, to work on a video for a YouTube project for school, and their chauffeur would collect him when he was ready. The second time she was spoken to, by DC Boutwood, she was sounding anxious, saying he wasn’t answering his phone.