House of the dead, p.8
House of the Dead, page 8
“Wait a minute,” Toombs said. “I’m going to check a map of the area.”
The radio went dead for a few seconds, then Toombs said, “There’s a campsite north of your location. It closed down some time ago, but there are three cabins there.”
“That’s the place,” Tony said. “How do we get there?”
“I can see a trail leading through the trees. Should be to your left.”
Tony leaned forward in his seat and squinted at the trees to the left of the car. He couldn’t see any trail.
Taking the radio, he got out and walked forward into the wide circular area, which had obviously once served as a car park for the now disused campsite.
A narrow dirt trail led into the forest.
“Found it,” he told Toombs. “Stay in touch.”
“I will, Tony. A third window has opened, and I can see you standing there. Must be a camera in one of the trees.”
“So, he’s going to broadcast everything live.”
“Yeah, and there are a lot of viewers. More than ten thousand.”
Tony returned to the cars, feeling a tinge of despair mixed in with the fear that now sat in his belly like a hard knot. He knew that most of those ten thousand people were watching because they wanted to see something terrible happen. It was morbid curiosity that had brought them to the website.
He signalled to the uniformed officers. They got out of their cars and assembled in front of him, along with Matt and Lorna.
“Someone needs to wait here for the ambulance,” he said. “The rest of us are going along that trail. There’s a disused campsite up there. That’s where David is.”
He wasn’t sure why Battle hadn’t put him in charge of this operation. He had no rank over these people—he had no rank at all—yet they all seemed willing to follow his orders. One of the uniforms—a young man named PC Flinn—offered to wait for the ambulance and the others gathered at the trailhead.
“By the way, we’re being filmed,” Tony told Matt and Lorna as they walked over to the where the officers waited.
“Great,” Matt said. “That’s all we need.”
“Everyone be careful,” Tony said as he stepped onto the trail, followed by the two detectives and the uniformed officers. “We don’t know what to expect.”
They moved deeper into the forest.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
The trail took them on a winding path through the trees before ascending a shallow incline. A wooden sign sat at the base of the incline, but this was an old sign that had been here for years.
Sutton Forest Campsite. Tents and Cabins. No Fires.
“This is the place,” Matt said.
They climbed the incline and found a large clearing at the top. A small brick building, which may have been the campsite shop at one time, sat to their left. The door was hanging on one hinge and Tony could see that the interior was full of old timber piled haphazardly on the floor.
A white sign stood in the centre of the clearing. Something was written on it, but it was too far away to be seen clearly.
At the far edge of the clearing, three cabins sat together beneath high, overhanging branches. A large white number had been painted over the door of each building.
1
2
3
There was nothing to indicate which cabin David was in.
As a group, they moved across the clearing to the sign.
Choose wisely.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said one of the uniforms. “Apart from the numbers, they’re all the same.”
Tony looked at the cabins. They were identical. Each had a wooden porch and a single wooden door. The windows were boarded up.
“What are we supposed to be figuring out?” Matt said.
Tony let out a slow breath. They’d been drawn into a game of chance. “There’s nothing to figure out,” he said. “There is no wise choice, despite what the sign says. It’s entirely random.”
“Are you sure?” The detective narrowed his eyes at the three identical cabins. “Everything he’s done so far has been calculated. He hasn’t brought us all the way here just to leave everything to chance.”
“I agree. He hasn’t.” He pressed the button on the radio. “Chris, what’s happening?”
“David is still sitting quietly, and I can see you standing by the sign.”
Tony looked around for a stick. He found one that had some weight to it and threw it at the door of cabin 1. It clattered against the wood and fell to the porch.
“Did David hear that?” he said into the radio.
“If he did, he didn’t react in any way.”
Tony repeated the action, this time throwing a stick at the second cabin. “How about now?”
“Nothing,” Toombs said.
Tony threw a stick at cabin 3. Toombs reported that there was still no reaction from the boy.
Matt came over to Tony. “What’s the plan, Doc?”
Tony considered for a moment. “I don’t think David is in any of the cabins.”
“What? He must be. The sign says choose wisely.”
“Yes, it does. But it doesn’t say to choose one of the cabins, does it?”
Matt looked back at the sign and at the cabins. “Well, no, but I assumed…” His words trailed away.
“We all assumed,” Tony said. “That’s what he wants, for us to assume things. That’s how people have been killed. David isn’t here.”
Matt waved his arms at the cabins and the sign. “What’s all this, then?”
“A misdirection. Look at what happened to the Thompson family. The police were distracted by the fact that a family was in danger inside the house that they barged in and blew the place up. Then there’s the Goddards. The police were thinking about what happened last time, so they waited. And the Goddard family died.”
He shook his head. “These cabins and numbers are the distraction this time. If we go blundering into any of them, they’ll probably blow up, or they’ll be some other type of trap.”
“Where the hell is David, then?”
Tony closed his eyes and replayed their journey since turning onto the forest track. There had been a sign that had said, Tick Tock, meaning time was of the essence. Then the smiley face at the car park and the words that matched the title of the video feed. David is found.
Tony keyed the radio. “Chris, what is David doing?”
“No change, Doc. He’s just sitting there.”
David hadn’t been poisoned; if he had, he’d probably be dead by now like the rest of his family, or he’d be showing signs of some sort of illness.
So why Tick Tock? If David wasn’t poisoned, why was time of the essence?
And why was David sitting still in the chair? Why wasn’t he trying to find a way out of the room? Had the man who’d put him there instilled so much fear in the boy that he didn’t dare move?
Possibly, but that didn’t explain the sign.
Tick Tock
Time running out.
Tick Tock
David sitting quietly in the chair. Trying not to move.
Tick Tock
Trying not to breathe.
Sudden realisation came to Tony. He felt a shot of adrenaline course through his blood. “We’re wasting time here!” he shouted. “Everyone follow me!”
He sprinted back to the path that had led them here.
Matt followed closely. “Doc, what is it? Where are you going?”
“David isn’t moving because he’s trying to preserve his air. He’s underground.”
“No, he can’t be. Dani was told he’d be in a cabin.”
“A cabin isn’t only a house in the woods. It’s also a room on a boat. A room beneath the deck.”
Matt went quiet for a moment as they ran along the trail. Then he said, “But where?”
“Where we saw the sign.”
They reached the car park and Tony pointed at the sign with the smiley face.
David is found.
“He’s under there,” Tony said, pointing at the ground beneath the sign. Now that he was looking closely at it, he could see the soil had been disturbed.
“We need to dig here,” he shouted at the officers as they emerged from the forest.
Tony noticed something in the undergrowth. He stepped towards it and picked it up. A garden spade. It didn’t look new, but Tony was sure it had been placed here recently.
No time to bag it as evidence; if they were going to get to David before his air ran out, the spade had to be put to use.
He thrust the blade into the loose earth and started to dig.
The uniformed officers dropped to their knees and began to dig with their hands, moving the loose earth quickly.
Toombs’ voice came from the radio. “Tony, you’re in the right place. David is looking up towards the ceiling. He can hear you.”
That spurred Tony on. He plunged the spade into the ground again and again and threw the soil over his shoulder. When he was knee deep in the hole, he leaned on the spade handle and gasped for breath.
Matt took the spade from him. “I’ll take it from here, Doc.”
Tony clambered out of the hole and leaned against a tree to support himself while he caught his breath. He made a silent promise to himself that he’d join a gym or take up running. He needed to do something—anything—to improve his fitness.
“Find!” an officer shouted.
Tony returned to the edge of the hole to see the man sweep soil away from wood.
Matt took over with the spade, revealing more wood beneath the earth. After a couple of minutes of digging, he uncovered an eight-foot by eight-foot square of thick timber. A trap door sat in the centre, with a dull metal ring that served as a handle to pull it open.
“Everyone get back,” Matt said.
The officers climbed out of the hole and stood a few feet away.
“Chris, what’s happening,” Tony said into the radio.
“He’s standing up and looking up at the ceiling.”
Matt pulled the trap door open.
There was no explosion, no poison gas, no arrows shot from holes in the trees. Just David Goddard looking up at them from within a wooden box that had been sunk into the earth.
Matt reached down to him, and the boy took his hand. The detective pulled David out of his wooden prison and said, “You’re safe now.”
He guided David towards Tony and lowered himself into the sunken box to check it for clues.
Tony reached for the David and helped him out of the hole. “Come on, let’s get you checked over.” He guided the boy towards the ambulance, which had finally arrived and was sitting behind the line of police cars.
The paramedics saw Tony and David approaching and jumped out of the vehicle, opening the back door. One of them grabbed a blanket and brought it over to the boy, swaddling him in it.
“These people will take good care of you,” Tony said.
“Are you one of the detectives?” David asked him.
“I’m a psychologist.”
“Oh.” The boy seemed disappointed. “I’ve got something I’m supposed to give to a detective.”
“You’ve got something?”
David nodded.
“Well, you see that lady over there?” Tony pointed at Lorna, who was standing by the side of the hole. “She’s a detective. Why don’t you give me whatever it is you’ve got and I’ll make sure she gets it?”
“No, I’m only supposed to give it to a detective.”
“All right. Well then, I’ll go and get her. Let these nice people check you over and we’ll come over to the ambulance. How about that?”
David nodded again. “Okay.”
The paramedic led the boy to the ambulance while Tony went to get Lorna.
“Lorna,” he said as he approached her. “David has got something that he’ll only give to a detective.”
“Let’s have a look, then,” she said, following him to the ambulance.
When they got there, David was sitting with his legs dangling over the rear bumper. He was still wrapped in the blanket, and the paramedic was shining a light into his eyes.
“Here’s the detective I told you about,” Tony said.
“Hi, David,” Lorna said, smiling. “What have you got for me.”
David reached into his pocket and held something out to her. “I’m supposed to give you this.”
Lorna took it and held it in her fingers.
It was a small, black, plastic flash drive.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Dani was sitting in the passenger seat of Battle’s Range Rover, on the way back to headquarters, when Toombs’ voice came over the radio.
“The boy is safe.”
She felt a wave of relief wash over her. If nothing else, they’d managed to save David Goddard.
Battle picked up the radio. “Tell Dr Sheridan to question the boy. Find out what he knows.”
“Don’t you think we should give David time to recover?” Dani said to the DCI. “He’s been through an ordeal.”
“We need to question him while the details are still fresh in his mind. You know this, Summers, I shouldn’t have to remind you.”
She knew that eyewitness accounts were sharper in a victim’s mind directly following an event, and that they faded with time, but she’d been thinking that David’s mental welfare might be more important than any statement he could give.
The man they were chasing was meticulous to the last detail; Battle had said so himself. There was no way he’d reveal his identity to David, especially if he knew the boy would be talking to the police later.
The radio crackled. It was Toombs again. “We’ve got another flash drive. David Goddard gave it to DS Morgan.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes,” Battle said, putting his foot down. The Range Rover accelerated, and Dani gripped the edges of her seat. She wondered if Battle, who had obviously not slept in the last 24 hours—should be driving at all, never mind racing along the outskirts of York.
She let out a breath of relief when they arrived at HQ and jumped out of the vehicle. She and Battle went up to the IT floor and found Toombs in his office, as well as Tony, Lorna, and Matt.
“Doctor, I want you to talk to David Goddard,” Battle said. “Find out what he remembers.”
“I can’t, boss,” Tony said. “He’s been sedated.”
Battle looked like he was about to argue, then his face softened. “Well, as soon as he wakes up, then.”
He turned to Toombs. “What’s this about another flash drive?”
The technician held up the small, plastic device. “David had this in his pocket. He’d been told to give it to a detective.”
“All right, let’s have a look.”
As Toombs pushed the flash drive into the laptop, Dani felt her muscles tense. She half expected some grisly scene to appear on the screen.
A video file appeared, which did nothing to allay her fear that she was about to watch something gruesome, but when Toombs clicked the file, the video showed nothing more than a white screen.
Then a voice began to speak. It was a man’s voice, digitally altered to remove any identifying characteristics.
”This is the GameMaster speaking. You call yourselves guardians, bringers of justice, protectors of the innocent, but you are none of these things.
Your actions cause more harm than good, as you have now shown to the world with your failed rescue attempts of the Thompson and Goddard families.”
An image appeared onscreen. A photo of the inside of the Thompson house, showing the wired front door and the living room.
”If any of the officers arriving at this scene had looked through this window, they would have seen the wires and realised that the only safe way to enter the house was through the back door, or through any of the windows.”
A red arrow appeared, pointing at the living room window. Then the image switched to a photo of the back door, which hadn’t been booby-trapped.
”Fools rush in. And now the Thompson family is gone.”
The image disappeared, to be replaced by a photo of a bedside table with four loaded syringes sitting on it.
“Mrs Goddard’s bedside table. If you had reached the family in time, the antidotes to what was in their system was sitting right there next to the bed. Injecting them with it would have given you more than enough time to get them to the hospital.”
A red arrow pointed at the syringes.
”Your ineptitude caused you to wait too long outside the house. Fools hesitate, detectives.”
“There’s no way we’d inject someone with an unknown substance,” Battle grumbled. “He knows that.”
”Since you are watching this video, you found David Goddard alive and well. You are probably congratulating yourselves on a job well done. It’s nothing more than a game to you.”
The screen turned black.
”Just remember that now, you’re playing my game. And I make the rules.”
The video ended.
“Right,” Battle said. “What do we make of all that?” He looked from face to face, then his gaze settled on Tony. “Doctor?”
Tony narrowed his eyes, thinking. “There’s a lot to unpick out of that diatribe, but one thing that stands out to me is his assumption that we found David alive. He recorded this before he put the boy in the box, and we’d still have this video even if we’d found David’s dead body because it was in his pocket. So how did he know David wouldn’t run out of air?”
“The box was ventilated,” Matt said. “There was a grille on the wall behind David, near the floor. A pipe ran underground from there and was poking up through the surface a few feet away, in the woods. There was plenty of air.”
“And you’re only telling us this now?” Tony said.
“You were talking to the paramedics at the time. I didn’t think it was that important.”
“It’s of vital importance,” the psychologist said. “It’s a piece of the puzzle.”
Matt shrugged. “I don’t see it, myself.”
“This guy will kill anyone without a second thought,” Tony said, waving his hand at the now-blank laptop screen. “Women, children, he doesn’t care. But he has this boy for over 24 hours, and he doesn’t harm a hair on his head. Why not?”
