Sarah took hold of Jack’s shoulders. ‘Sir, listen to me, you’ve been seriously injured. You must tell me what you know before it’s too late.’
‘Emily,’ Jack whispered.
‘Who was that man? Give me a name.’
‘Lisa…’
‘Give me a name.’
Jack Glover’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he lost consciousness.
Sarah checked his pulse. ‘He’s still hanging on. The priority is searching this place. Maybe they are here.’
Ruby nodded. ‘You go.’ And she watched as Sarah sprinted for the first building.
37
Grant and Tom stared down at Jack Glover. There had been no sign of the children at the farm. Glover lay on a hospital trolley and he was ready to be wheeled into an operating theatre.
‘Can you wake him up?’ Grant asked.
‘Impossible. He’s been prepped for emergency surgery,’ the doctor said.
‘Lisa and Emily Glover are missing and their father has vital information. Couldn’t you administer a stimulant?’
The surgeon wasn’t amused. ‘Out of the question. A man’s life is in the balance. Please get out of my way.’
The surgical team left, taking Jack Glover with them.
Grant was fuming. ‘Jack has been talking directly with the abductor. The idiot kept us in the dark. That pay-as-you-go-phone we found on him? Well, the techies have recovered messages setting up the handover. The real handover. And when I checked with the damn concierge at Jack’s apartment, he told me a package had been dropped off there yesterday. It must have been the phone. We were there earlier asking questions and searching Jack’s apartment, why the hell didn’t the concierge call me?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Delaney said. ‘I don’t know how a second phone slipped past me. I thought I had good lines of communication with both Jack and Alice.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up. If people want to be underhand they find ways to do it. Jack Glover had his own agenda and now we’re in a bloody mess.’
The doctors would be saving Jack’s life and Grant wasn’t sure the man deserved it.
It had gone horribly wrong. Half a million pounds stayed in the middle of a field while Alice climbed to the top of a hill, clambered halfway down the other side, and then waited desperately for news of her children. Grant had left her there for ten minutes, knowing each moment was torture for her.
He’d paced and Billingham had chewed his nails and they’d stared at the landscape willing the abductor to appear until their eyeballs practically dropped out. And nothing happened. By the time Grant heard from DI Hunter and he called it to a close, Alice had been a wreck and McGowan had to carry her to the bottom while she screamed for her children.
Grant now knew events had been unfolding at the barn between Jack and the person Grant assumed was the abductor. By the time DI Hunter had managed to contact Grant it was all too late.
Alice had been set up. Hers was the dummy drop-off to keep attention from the real one and they’d since found out Jack had withdrawn one million pounds from his private account.
‘Now we know why the abductor left half a million sitting in the middle of nowhere,’ Grant said grimly. ‘Because Jack was going to handover twice that amount. What a fool Glover is.’
Grant slammed his hand into the wall. ACC Treadgold had labelled the handover a fiasco.
‘Right boss, except now we have a lead on the abductor,’ Delaney said. ‘That’s got to be good news.’
It was the one bright point of the whole mess.
They rushed back to the station and Tom closed the door of the incident room.
‘It was a damn set-up.’ Grant wasn’t trying to hide his fury. ‘And Jack bloody Glover will probably live.’
‘Stupid bastard,’ McGowan said.
They had thoroughly searched the farm and the surrounding countryside and they found no trace of Emily and Lisa. Since the drop-off, neither Alice’s mobile nor Jack’s secret pay-as-you-go-phone had received any further messages from the abductor.
‘Well done to DI Hunter and to you too, Ruby. You overhearing the exchange gives us a lead.’ Grant slapped his palm on the board. ‘The perp said, “You think you’re better than me, but you’re not.” I’ve heard this exact phrase before.’
Everyone’s attention was riveted on Grant.
‘It links straight to the man who broke into Daniel Pearson’s house six years ago. Pearson told me the person who knifed him said exactly the same thing.’
‘You’re talking about Ronnie Hardman’s accountant? The one who was accused of embezzling funds?’ McGowan asked.
‘That’s the one. Pearson’s house was broken into and he was knifed. His assailant, Nick Riley, said exactly this phrase as he stabbed Pearson. Riley is a known local criminal and he got a sentence of nine years. On the way here I checked his records and he got out three years early for good behaviour. The time of his release was a few months ago.’
Grant wrote Nick Riley’s name on the board.
‘It’s one tiny detail and it’s all we need. Plus I checked with the prison and he was known as a biter. When Riley was inside, he bit off another prisoner’s earlobe during a fight.’
‘The same as with Joan Hardman,’ Diane said. ‘When she fought him, he bit her.’
‘We’ve damn well got him,’ McGowan said.
Grant had already circulated Riley as missing on the national computer. Officers were looking to track him via his usage of money, phone and financial records. If research threw up a car and that car passed a camera, using automatic number plate recognition it would trigger an alert. The net would be closing in on Nick Riley.
‘I’m sure Riley and Jack knew each other,’ Ruby said. ‘From the way they spoke it was obvious they weren’t strangers.’
‘Think about the Pearson break-in. Pearson was a threat to Jack. Perhaps Jack believed Pearson already had evidence or was going to find evidence from those young women Jack assaulted. Jack risked losing everything if Ronnie Hardman turned against him. I’m betting Jack Glover wanted someone to shake Pearson up. And the person he
