hunched shapes of machinery. First stop the site office.
The lights were on, but when Logan sent Butler out to try the door it was locked. No one inside.
A little after five and the sun was long gone, now everything beyond the reach of the headlights was enveloped in darkness.
The Police Land Rover bumped over something in the snow, the front end rearing up, then the back. Behind them, Danby groaned again. At least he was still alive. Probably more than they could say for Richard Knox.
Butler let the four-by-four rumble to a halt. ‘Think we’ve run out of road.’
Logan peered into the whirling white and inky black. Last time he was here with PC Martin and her cadaver dog, Wardrobe, the further away from the site office they got, the more complete the houses were. Assuming they hadn’t just staked Knox out to freeze to death in the great outdoors, he’d be in something that at least had a roof on it.
The Land Rover was fitted with a roof-mounted spotlight. Logan grabbed the handle and flicked the switch. A crack sounded above his head and the harsh white beam leapt out through the snow.
He fiddled with the handle, swinging the spotlight about, trying to get a feel for it, then did a slow sweep left to right. Didn’t matter how strong the light was, it could only penetrate so far before the whirling flakes consumed everything.
He pointed towards the nearest property with a roof. ‘That way.’
The Land Rover bumped and rolled its way slowly through the drift-covered landscape. The first house was dark. So was the second one, blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape snapping and writhing outside it. The third was dark too. But a pale glow oozed out from the downstairs window of house number four.
‘There.’
Logan snapped off the spotlight. Butler killed the engine and the headlights. Darkness. Now the only sound was the howling wind and the creak of springs as the Land Rover rocked with each blast.
‘Right.’
They both stayed where they were, in the dark, watching the house through the windscreen.
Butler cleared her throat. ‘We got any sort of plan?’
No.
Logan licked his lips. Melting snow plastered his hair to his head, trickling down the back of his neck and into his collar. ‘I’ll take the front, you go round the back.’ He pulled his damp sleeve back, exposing his watch. ‘What time have you got?’
She checked. ‘Quarter past.’
‘Right, we go in at twenty past.
Butler nodded and they synchronized watches. ‘You sure about this, Sarge?’
‘Nope. You?’
The constable pulled out her extendible baton, undid her seatbelt. Took three deep breaths. Opened the door, and jumped out into the night.
Logan gave her a couple of minutes to get into place, then climbed into the darkness, sinking up to his knees in a drift of soft grey.
He waded his way forward, clambering upwards until the snow only came as far as his ankles, leaching the heat from his damp socks, making his trouser legs stick to his skin. His whole head burning with the cold.
The front door was painted some dark colour, indistinguishable in the gloom, but the little portico offered a little shelter from the whipping snow.
Logan checked his watch. Twenty past in: three, two, one…He grabbed the handle.
Thank God it wasn’t locked.
He threw the door open and stumbled into the house.
A tiny hallway, door leading off to one side – probably a toilet – stairs leading upstairs, set of glass doors to the right. That was where the light was coming from.
He looked through into a small lounge.
They were obviously still finishing off the property. A stack of skirting boards lay beneath the front window; two or three boxes of bathroom tiles; a table-mounted circular saw; rolls of silver-backed Rockwool; a nail gun; drums of thick, grey electrical cable; some stuff for fitting carpets; a toolbox; a plastic bag of screws, the shiny thorns of metal glinting in the glow of a big battery torch that lay on the floor.
Richard Knox was curled up next to it, naked on a rectangle of plastic sheeting, hands behind his back, silver duct tape thick around his ankles, another strip across his mouth.
Where the hell was PC Butler?
Logan checked his watch again. Twenty-one minutes past. Butler should’ve been here by now.
Logan reached for the glass-panelled door and froze. There was someone in the room with Knox. A man, dressed in a thick padded jacket – goatee beard, glasses, comb-over. The project manager: Brett.
Brett crouched down beside Knox with his back to the door, and Logan caught a flash of needle-nosed pliers.
And then Knox writhed, screaming behind the gag as Brett twisted and pulled and shoved.
Damn it…Now he didn’t have any choice.
