Charlotte's Fear

By Drew Lindsay

When your children are kidnapped, a mother will do almost anything to get them back alive. She will follow the instructions of the kidnapper to the letter, no matter how revolting those demands may be. VIP operative, Ben Hood, is not given instructions to take on this kidnapping case and the desperate mother doesn’t want him interfering and risking the lives of her children. As usual, Ben has other plans that may place the lives of the children at serious risk, but will turn the kidnapper’s life into a deadly nightmare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Drew Lindsay
• Release date: Jun 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301598816

Drew Lindsay

Drew Lindsay is a dynamic Australian Novelist and Writer. He has travelled extensively throughout Australia and the world. His background includes working as a Policeman and detective, then managing his own private investigation business as well as working in Fraud Investigation Management positions within the insurance industry.Drew is a PADI Divemaster and holds a private pilot's license. He has a great love of entertaining others with his vivid imagination. His novels allow the reader to escape into worlds of romance, excitement, humour and fast paced adventure. Drew lives in northern New South Wales with his wife.

Book preview

Charlotte’s Fear

By Drew Lindsay

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © Drew Lindsay 2013

The right of Drew Lindsay as the Author of this Work has been asserted.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to Terry, a brother in law and policeman who was killed in the line of duty when he was far too young.

Thanks to Narelle for making me re-write the wedding scene as well as proof reading, formatting and ePublishing.

Thanks also to Barbara for running a second set of eyes over the manuscript.

Thank you Leonarda for yet another eye catching cover (sorry about the pun).

http://leonardaarmstrong.com

Thanks to Charlotte Kavan for lending me her name.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

****

ALSO BY DREW LINDSAY

All books are available from eRetailers worldwide

Coral Sea Affair

Ben Hood Thriller Number 1

Black Mountain Affair

Ben Hood Thriller Number 2

Flesh Traders

Ben Hood Thriller Number 3

The Dead Woman’s House

Ben Hood Thriller Number 4

The Men’s Club

Ben Hood Thriller Number 5

The Dark Affair

Ben Hood Thriller Number 6

An Explosive Affair

Ben Hood Thriller Number 7

A Lost Lady

Ben Hood Thriller Number 8

Treasure

Ben Hood Thriller Number 9

To learn more about Drew Lindsay, visit him online at

http://www.drew-lindsay.com/

Or at his Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/drew-lindsay-author

****

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

****

CHAPTER ONE

When you’re underground, day and night are without meaning. If you have a digital watch, you may make sense of the time of day or night. If you have no watch, and the Lane children had not seen a watch for almost a month, you wouldn’t know whether it was daylight or dark. Even locked in a room above the ground, you can determine night and day by sounds and smells, however your senses are denied even these signals when you are encased in concrete and volcanic rock. Ten year old Daniel Lane had been making tiny marks in a corner of their huge underground prison every time he felt a day had passed. He was guessing this from the timing of food brought to them twice a day by an old thin woman with long, tangled silver hair and large black framed glasses. The woman would glare at the children, drop the food tray on a table against the wall and leave without saying a word. The single light bulb in the concrete ceiling above the table and chairs would dim considerably from time to time and Daniel Lane also used this to estimate time. They were also given irregular excursions into the sunlight every few days where they saw nothing but trees and distant mountains. The children knew the air was warm and cleaner than their home in Sydney however they still had no idea where they were and even less an idea why they had been kidnapped.

All they knew is that they were walking home together from their school at North Rocks in Western Sydney and a white van pulled up beside them. They were dragged inside by a very strong man with a tight stocking pulled over his face. Eight year old Heidi called him a ghost and the ghost never spoke a word. They were locked in a cage at the rear of the van and then driven for hours, stopping only once so they could go to the toilet in the darkness on the side of the road. They were given a bag of take away food and two small bottles of water.

The children were eventually deposited down a rough stairway into an underground room. The rather ugly thin woman was left to watch over them and as it turned out, attend to their needs in a completely haphazard manner. Daniel speculated that because this old woman’s hair seemed to be dropping out, she was probably dying of some disease. He expressed this opinion to his sister one evening and was thrashed with a cane across the legs the following day. That is when Daniel discovered the tiny video camera in a corner of the ceiling of their prison, looking down on the table and chairs. He cautioned his sister not to speak from that point unless they were in the open air. He was also caned for making that suggestion.

The thin woman would slap the children over the back of the head without any particular reason, other than it gave her personal satisfaction. Every question by the children was totally ignored. Every attempt at gaining the slightest bit of affection was treated with contempt and usually cost a few swipes with the cane. The Lane children had long ceased attempts at all communication with their captor. Heidi didn’t even care anymore. Daniel was still very angry, but his resistance was lowering as each day came and went and no one came to rescue them. Daniel had initially been expecting police to storm their underground prison any moment. That is what happened when there was a kidnapping. CCTV from homes in the area would be viewed and the offender tracked down. Witnesses would be interviewed. He had seen this on the TV. There were dozens of kids around when he and Heidi had been dragged into the white van. They had called to them for help. These kids would have taken the number plate and the police would have been called.

No one came.

Their underground prison was around 12 feet wide and 20 feet deep with the rear of the room formed from rough volcanic rock with cracks running down below the floor area and up past the concrete roof. A rather smelly toilet was off to one side together with a shower and two grubby towels. They slept on camp stretchers with one pillow and blanket each. The small table and two chairs were pushed up against the wall to the left near the stairs. The stretchers seemed to be out of the viewing range of the tiny video camera, but Daniel knew these devices were capable of viewing a very wide area. They had no TV, internet or phone. Two cardboard boxes of old books were pushed underneath the timber staircase. There was no sunlight. Air seemed to come into the room from the cracks in the rocks in the dark end of their prison. It was so dark at that end of the room that both children never ventured there.

Heidi had dreams of her beautiful mother tucking her into bed. Her mum always smelt so beautiful. Her long auburn hair and deep hazel eyes were soothing. Her mother often read her a story but she was always fast asleep before the story finished. She would often ask her mother why she had been named Heidi. Her mother would then tell her a story of a very frail and crippled girl who lived in Hamburg (where Heidi concluded hamburgers were invented) who was forced to live with a very cranky grandfather in the Swiss Alps. The clean air and good living eventually cured the girl of her disability and she was able to walk again, much to the amazement of her father, who should have given the grandfather a lot of money, however that didn’t happen. The grandfather didn’t care much for money anyway because money can’t buy lots of things, so Heidi concluded. Seeing his granddaughter made well again was all the reward he needed.

Heidi Lane thought of her father every day and every night in her concrete prison. She knew from the little her mother had said, that her father had done something wrong and went to prison. After that her father never came home again and her mother threw away all of his clothes. She had seen her father drunk and very sick many times but she still loved him. He came back to see her once but her mother began to yell at him and he went away. She never saw or heard from him again. He just ran away without telling her where he was going. There was no explanation. There was no kiss goodbye. He was there one day, and gone the next. That was six months ago perhaps longer. It was very hurtful and Heidi couldn’t understand. She tried to talk to her brother about it but he was even more distressed. He eventually told Heidi that their father had suffered a break down. Heidi didn’t understand what that meant. She asked her mother, Charlotte, for an explanation. Her mother cried and wouldn’t talk about it.

Daniel finally explained to his sister that other kid’s fathers sometimes suffered break downs but sometimes those fathers were found hanging in the garage or in a tree. Some even jumped off buildings or took lots of pills and alcohol. Then the body of that father would be found and that would be the end of it.

Both Daniel and Heidi knew that their father had simply vanished, so something else had happened and there was no end of it. The why? was in their minds all the time and neither their mother, or their favourite Aunt Linda; their mother’s younger sister, could or would offer any explanation.

Now Daniel and Heidi had both been kidnapped and put in an underground prison. Now there was an even more confusing why but no one would answer that question and no one seemed to care.

Following the kidnapping of the children, Charlotte Lane spent the better part of a full day at the Serious Crime Squad within Police Headquarters in Parramatta, answering questions and looking through video clips of white vans with dark tinted windows, particularly one caught on CCTV exiting North Rocks Road, north onto Pennant Hills Road around the time her children were abducted. She read statements obtained from witnesses, mainly school children. Some of the statements were so at variance with others obtained that it had become difficult for police to accurately piece together a logical account of events with factual continuity.

The number plate of the vehicle had been confirmed by two witnesses and it was a stolen plate but not from a white van. The plate had been stolen from a Honda Civic sedan. The make of the van varied from a Holden to a Ford to a Suzuki. The CCTV of the van exiting North Rocks Road, at the relevant time, showed a Suzuki but all further traffic cameras in Western Sydney and on the freeway north could not find a white Suzuki van with the stolen plates. The offender had obviously swapped plates again. White Suzuki vans seemed to be everywhere. The pile of data grew. Police knew that trying to track that particular van after interviewing owners of the number plates identified, would be an extremely time consuming job, but one that simply had to be done. In the meantime, the clock was ticking. The first 24 to 48 hours are crucial in a kidnapping case.

Charlotte Lane put out a frantic plea via the local television. No one came forward with additional information other than a few crank calls which the police quickly dismissed. Detective Superintendent Ryan Peterson, Head of the Serious Crime Squad, selected a team of 4 of his best detectives to work on the case. Detective Inspector Leanne Harris headed up the team. The 30 year old feisty red head with a sharp tongue to match her personality had lost a child many years before to a kidnapper. She finally tracked the offender down but it was too late to save her daughter. She also lost her husband during her relentless pursuit of the man who took away her little girl. She was now Charlotte Lane’s rock; a shoulder to lean on although after three weeks, even Inspector Harris had concluded that both the Lane children were dead. She made no mention of this to their mother.

They waited in vain for the ransom demand. It never came. That was the worst part of all. Charlotte’s missing husband became the prime suspect but all lines of enquiry to find him went up dead ends.

On the first day of the third week of her children’s disappearance, Hayden Bode entered Charlotte’s world quite unexpectedly. He initially contacted her Facebook page, claiming to have also lost a child to a kidnapper. They met at a restaurant in Parramatta and spoke of their respective losses. Charlotte told Hayden of the strange disappearance of her husband almost 6 months ago. He was supportive and sympathetic. One week later, Hayden Bode moved into Charlotte’s home. Charlotte’s sister, Linda Merton was horrified and told her elder sister exactly what she felt of this very odd arrangement. Charlotte refused to discuss her situation. She began to lose weight and increasingly cut Linda out of her life. She avoided her friends and almost became a recluse. She ceased contact with Detective Inspector Leanne Harris.

Charlotte was constantly in Bode’s company. She walked with him but never held his hand and was always half a step behind him. Bode was obviously not happy about Charlotte’s behaviour in this regard as they were now an item as far as he was concerned. He had stern