Captives a completely gr.., p.23
Captives: a completely gripping psychological suspense thriller, page 23
The newsagent had gone to the police on the third night that she’d failed to reappear in his backyard. Although she was homeless and could relocate at any point, he’d doubted she would have done so without a goodbye.
He felt she’d come to harm, but police didn’t share his concern and performed only a superficial search for the missing woman. Like most homeless people, she had very little by way of a digital base. She did have a Facebook account, but she never posted, only read, and always signed in from various phones belonging to homeless friends. None of these had a clue where she might have gone, for apart from the newsagent’s, there were no known haunts. But, when pushed to guess, they all said the same thing the police thought: Kai had been born in Scotland, so perhaps she’d opted to go back.
Kai had been born not knowing her father…
CHAPTER THIRTY
10 NOVEMBER 2020
‘…I heard about him though. My mum would talk about him a lot. But not in a good way. She blamed him. She always reckoned she had a good life until he came along. They met in Glasgow in February 1991. She was working as a cloakroom attendant and he came to watch some concert. They slept together that night. He had a wife, though, and she was also pregnant around the same time, and so he couldn’t be with my mum. That was it: he left her as a single mother and it ruined her life, that’s what she said. That’s all I really know.’
Kai stops here. One of the instructions on the sheet of paper is TALK ABOUT FAMILY. Job done. But the maniac isn’t content.
‘Continue. Tell me about life afterwards.’
She returns her stare to the camera, wondering who aside from him will see this video. There’s no family, no friends. She wonders if the recording will one day end up viral. Shown by police as part of their investigation into her murder. Part of some serial killer documentary years from now.
‘Continue, please,’ he pushes.
‘My mum got into drugs, got into the wrong crowds, and she died when I was five and I went into care. I left care by choice at sixteen and later joined the armed forces–’
‘No, you’re skipping. Life until she died. Life in care. More details.’
He seems very eager and she doesn’t want to disappoint him, but she also hates talking about her life. Being homeless, it was easy to avoid since nobody in her group of street-living friends enjoyed reminiscing about when life meant something.
‘We lived in a shithole bedsit and my mother became a cuckooing victim. Know what that is? I bet you don’t. It means all the scumbags from the estate treated it like their base. Because she needed drugs, she’d let them do what they wanted there. They had parties, sold drugs, hid wanted criminals, the works. Mum was happy as long as they shot her full of drugs. And I just crawled around all day, on needles and rubbish and God knows what. They never let me outside because I was such a mess and had no clothes.
‘Until she died of an overdose one day. September 9th, 1996. So I was five. They all damn scarpered after that. Didn’t tell a soul, though, and it was two days before the police came knocking. No food in the house, doors and windows locked. They found me sleeping on top of her body, is what I heard. I was weak from malnutrition at that point. I was too young to remember this. But she was bald, I later found out. Apparently, I’d cut off and eaten her hair.’
Kai turns away and wipes a tear. It is not his eyes above the hatch that she wishes to avoid, but that camera. Hopefully, if she’s destined for a shallow grave, he will dump the video footage right there next to her corpse.
‘Continue,’ he says, sternly. ‘Face the camera. Tell me about life in care. Tell me about the army. And afterwards. All of it.’
She doesn’t want him upset, so she turns back to the camera. But she looks past it, at the wall beyond, and tries to forget it’s there.
‘The care home was Reclaimed Souls. I liked it, but I ended my care order at sixteen because I wanted to see the world. The best way, I thought, was in the army. In 2008 women were still excluded from close combat roles. The Ministry of Defence deemed that women in ground combat positions would ruin unit cohesion – that was the term they used. But that was what I wanted. I ground on, waiting. The Royal Armoured Corps was the first to permit women. I joined. In 2018, the rest of the army followed suit and I attended the Potential Royal Marine Course. Barely a handful of women did that.
‘But I got injured. I was off the course, and after that I didn’t care to carry on. I quit not long after. I lived with a former services friend for a few months, but when that was over, I found myself on the streets. There’s help for former soldiers because a lot have no homes when they leave, but I refused any assistance. I don’t even know why. I had no friends or family, and Glasgow had nothing but bad memories, so I hitched a ride out of the city and settled where I was dropped off. That was Sheffield. There’s a term – the world is my oyster. Sheffield was mine. I had a choice of all the streets and alleys and dirty holes in that whole city to call home.’
The joke gives her confidence a little boost. She looks away from the wall to the ceiling hatch. ‘Until a maniac kidnapped me. Haven’t I just had the most blessed life?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Bokayo called again around midday with a surprise. One of her handlers offered a phone and she took the call in her bedroom for privacy.
‘The show will go ahead as normal tonight. Live. With you hosting.’
That knocked her for six. ‘Why the sudden change? You said it was too risky to give this guy airtime.’
‘He’s down to his last girl. She’s alive or dead. If he gives us a body, he has nothing left and it’s over. We don’t think he will. He’ll either give her up, or he’ll delay. The public knows we’re talking to him every night, especially after we just went and found two bodies. Transparency.’
‘You want the country to hear everything so there’s no doubts? Even though he could make another threat or demand? That goes against the attitude the police have had from the start.’
‘Well, it’s the plan. I’m just a messenger. So, stay at the safe house. Read some books, eat, play with yourself, and I’ll collect you tonight and take you to the police station. We’re using a new one.’
‘And the plan for me during the show? What I’m supposed to say?’
‘You know him by now. He respects you. Just talk to him and find out what you can. Chat later.’ He hung up.
His demeanour played with her mind over the next hour as she made and ate lunch alone in her room. The police were going to allow her to ‘just talk to him’? Something seemed wrong. She remembered Bokayo’s suspicion when she’d uttered that strange ‘I need milk’ line to Poe. For some reason, he hadn’t questioned her about it. Why?
A little later, Noa heard the front door open and close. She ran into another bedroom and looked out of the window, to see the two male officers walking down the garden path. They got into a car and vanished.
Noa went downstairs and found Simone in the kitchen, cleaning the cooker. ‘You know a lot about me, don’t you? How much I’m worth?’
Simone looked up. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘Give me your phone and cancel your GoFundMe campaign.’
Simone stood up. ‘I can’t give you a phone. Not yet. How do you know about the GoFundMe thing?’
‘I overheard. I know you want £10,000 to get your brother a trip. I’ll give it to you, all of it. Ten grand. I just want to see the news. Bokayo is being evasive.’
The lack of immediate puzzlement on Simone’s face was answer enough. Noa said, ‘That explains it. I won’t call anyone. I just want to see the news.’
Simone’s face changed, and it told the story. The busted TV and the missing radio. They wanted to make sure the news was something Noa didn’t get hold of today.
‘I’ll tell Bokayo I heard two people outside talking about it. Let me have your phone, and then you can have it back to tell your brother he’s going to Disneyland.’
Simone thought, and there was a real struggle given the frown on her face. But then she reached into her pocket.
Shortly afterwards, Noa knew the truth. Many newspapers, including national, had her big secret displayed for all to see. This code had been harder to break than The Tell-Tale Heart one, but the internet made everyone smart these days. On UbyU she found a story that encompassed everything:
Many familiar with the recent telephone calls between Noa Vickerman, a late-night confession show host, and a killer calling himself Poe, might remember him stating that they were both fans of Edgar Allan Poe. He even quoted a line from The Tell-Tale Heart when describing what he might or might not have done to a victim.
Poe was a regular contributor to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger and it was in this publication in December 1839 that he sought to test himself by challenging readers to submit to him substitution ciphers. He helped popularise such things.
In 1843, The Dollar Newspaper published The Gold-Bug, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. In that story, William Legrand and two comrades head off to Sullivan’s Island on a treasure hunt after finding and decoding a secret message.
The Gold-Bug displays Poe’s intense love of cryptography. In it there is a substitution code, which we have listed below.
In one of his phone calls, the confession show killer said, ‘Call me Saturn. Or Ringo, from The Beatles, if you like. Perhaps even something normal like William. Or Poe or Edgar, since we’re fans. Let’s go with that. I am Poe.’
Many Poe fans on social media have talked about this. ‘Saturn’ could be a sideways reference to Jupiter, a character in The Gold-Bug. The mention of The ‘Beatles’ could relate to The Gold ‘BUG’. ‘William’ could relate to legrand, from the story, or William Kidd, a 17th Century pirate who buried the treasure mentioned in The Gold-Bug. William Friedman, a cryptologist who helped break Japanese codes in World War II, got his interest in codes after reading The Gold-Bug.
The killer was heard on the show to say, ‘Ah, Polly, gone, with her many sides. Can’t wait to see all the media speculation about who she could be. You have a deal. I’ll tell you how much money I want on our next call. Here’s a number. 2-8-3… 9-8… 1-5… 9-6-0-7.’
One of Poe’s codes in the Weekly Messenger was ‘Poor Mary’s dead! why is she a many-sided figure?’ The answer: Polygon. Could this have been the killer’s way of trying to get Vickerman to speak in code?
Using Poe’s famous substitution cipher code key, we ran the so-called phone number the killer gave and got the code BEG ME FA MILK…
Noa groaned. Now she knew why Bokayo hadn’t questioned her about the ‘milk’ line. The code had been broken, finally. The police knew Poe had asked her to beg for milk, to prove she understood their secret language. Now it made sense why they were allowing her to talk with Poe tonight. They wanted to see if she and the killer would speak again; if Poe would say something that would lead them to his doorstep.
She would be buried for this betrayal, but that was the least of her worries. Now, she would never get a secret message to Poe. Her plan, weak as it had been, was dead.
Noa got Simone to call Bokayo and tell him that Noa had gotten hold of her phone and read the news. He was at the safe house an hour later. Noa took him to her bedroom for the confrontation.
‘You tricked me. You knew all along.’
His response: ‘I’m not sure you’re the one who should be annoyed here. You went against the police. You were trying to secretly communicate with Britain’s most wanted criminal. I had to talk my bosses out of having you arrested.’
‘But instead the plan was to listen carefully and see what we spoke about?’
‘You could have confided in us and worked together. Poe was up for coded talk. That could have been helpful to us. Instead, you decided to play a dangerous game. But now you know that we know, let’s get down to it. What was your plan?’
‘To pay him. To work out a way. I was scared that the police would try to trap him, and he’d get away and hurt his prisoners. I was just trying to help.’
‘Anything else?’
Noa watched him carefully, and knew he knew the truth. ‘Okay, look. Let me show you. I wrote a poem.’
Bokayo showed her his phone. A text. It was a copy of her poem, doubtless sent by one of her handlers. ‘Is this just something you hoped would appeal to the killer’s heart?’
There was no point lying. ‘No. It’s another code. But you knew that.’
So many girls, a hell of a lot.
1, 3, 5, 7, how many does he have?
1, 2, 3, gone like the wind.
But 999 can’t do a thing.
It is zany, this world of ours.
Life axed in a split second.
If only 1 could survive.
This man Poe, we think him a monster.
But he is a mortal, with compassion.
He said, ‘We easily worked it out once we knew you were using Edgar Allan Poe ciphers.’
‘Yes. It’s based on a short story called An Enigma. Line one, you take the first letter. Line two, the second, and so on. A very simple code.’
‘S33 9ZX 1pm,’ Bokayo said, too fast to have worked it out. He already knew the postcode. ‘So you were planning to try to meet him in secret. But was it really just to pay him?’
‘Yes. I promise. And it can still happen. So you can’t take me off this.’
‘That decision has already–’
‘Then get it changed,’ she snapped. ‘You need me. If we go ahead with this code, Poe will think he’s in the clear. And I know he’ll meet me.’
‘The postcode is for a pub in Bradwell, a village in Derbyshire. Why that place?’
‘Based on where he’s been snatching women and dumping them, Derbyshire seems right in the middle, so I’m assuming it’s close to where he is holding Kai.’
Bokayo moved to her window, to stare out at the backyard or the countryside beyond. ‘So you really thought he’d do this? Take your money and then release Kai?’
‘Yes. I also knew the police wouldn’t allow a killer to just walk, so you’d try some trick and it might make things worse. I can still do this. You can put us under surveillance. He won’t meet anyone else. Besides, he’s expecting me live tonight. We can’t risk him killing the last girl. He could do that and go underground if I’m taken away from him.’
Bokayo was silent for a time. She watched the back of his head and waited.
Eventually he turned to her. ‘I’ll have to get this authorised. I need to go see some people. Let’s say I let you know in a couple of hours.’
He tried to leave, but she blocked him. ‘Wait. Let’s not try to pretend you’re doing me a favour. You wanted Poe to speak to me in code, and you still do. I’m helping you, not the other way round. Now you know everything I was up to, and there’s no reason to keep me locked up here.’
‘That was mostly for your own safety.’
‘I’ll keep my face hidden. I want out. Have people follow me if that makes you feel better. But I’m going. So arrange it to happen via the front door, or I’ll jump out the window.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
12 NOVEMBER 2020
Kai’s body clock tells her it’s lunchtime, and she’s dressed and waiting when the maniac comes for her. But he opens only the hatch in the door, through which he drops a banana and a wrapped sandwich. She catches sight of his hand, sans glove. It’s pale, smooth, and the fingernails are painted black.
‘I don’t get to eat with the others?’ she asks. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘Everybody eats in their rooms. I have to go out.’
This worries her. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I can’t say. I will hopefully be back for feasting. If not, save the banana for then.’
‘What if you get hurt and can’t come back?’
‘That now makes all of you. All my girls have displayed the same concern.’
‘And a legitimate one. You fall down dead somewhere, we all starve to death.’
‘I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.’
‘No one goes out planning to die in a car crash. You won’t get your special girl. All your work will have been for nothing.’
He stares in silence for a few seconds, thinking. It’s a common habit of his, and it gives his gaunt-face mask a more ominous look. ‘You really are worried about that. The keys to this place will be in my pocket. They have the address. They’ll be passed from hospital staff to police, who will come to break the news to any family I might have. They will search this place and you will be rescued.’
Sometimes she cracks offensive jokes and he seems not to mind, but it might be a step too far to say, Oh, well, let’s hope you die then. She decides to head in the opposite direction: ‘Please drive carefully.’
Another long, silent stare. ‘I like you. I will tell you that I am going to collect the final component.’
‘Component?’
‘The shortlist contains six competitors.’
Kai realises what he means. ‘You’re going out to kidnap another girl?’
‘The final one. Isn’t that good? We’ll be ready finally. We can start the challenges.’
She pictures an innocent young woman, snatched by force. Drugged into oblivion. Terrified as she wakes in a strange room. Shocked at discovering she’s one of many captives. Distraught upon realising she’s not going home, at least not for a long, long time.
‘No, you can’t. You have five of us. Five is enough. Don’t take anyone else.’
