Beyond Another Curtain

By TONY NASH

SEQUEL TO ‘BLOCKBUSTER’
Jane, DI John Hunter’s wife, was abducted and killed during the Blockbuster affair and at last John and Jane’s father, Sir Henry Bliss, Minister for Internal Affairs in the present Government, go to recover her body from the well down which the criminal Harry Haggar had insisted she had been thrown after being killed.
Thirteen bodies are recovered, but not Jane’s. John is even more devastated. He continues with investigations, but life is merely going through the motions; he is dead inside, and though Annie Green, his old love, offers TLC, he cannot accept any kind of involvement.
He believes that the assassination of the Russian President during a state visit to Britain has nothing whatsoever to do with him, but the Prime Minister, remembering his service to the country, insists that Special Branch incorporate Hunter into the investigation.
While carrying out checks for the SB he is shot in the chest. After signing himself out of hospital against the doctor’s wishes he discovers that a Russian agent was one of the two people involved in the assassination, which takes the heat off the British Government, but there the trail goes cold.
A series of unusual homespun murders begins, where the victims are emasculated before they are killed and John is faced with an investigation where there are dozens of possible perpetrators, since the murdered men were part of a paedophile ring involving a large and unknown quantity of teenaged girls. Every brother, father, mother and sister is a possible killer.
After three such murders, which John has linked to an old rape case involving all three men, he believes that the killings will stop, but four weeks later he receives a call from *DCI Tony Dyce of the Norfolk Constabulary. Another similar murder has taken place on a houseboat on the Broads.
John finds out that the Norfolk victim was charged along with the other three for a rape in 2001, a case he had ignored until then because of the long time lapse.
After much prevarication, Sir Henry Bliss gives John a small piece of information that leads him to the fifth man involved in the 2001 rape case. That information leads him on to other explosive discoveries, one of which turns his life upside down: the serial killer he has been hunting and the assassin of the Russian President is none other than his own wife, Jane...
*See ‘Murder on Tiptoes’ et al.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TONY NASH
• Release date: Aug 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311670564

TONY NASH

Tony Nash is the author of over thirty detective, historical and war novels. He began his career as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, later re-training at Bletchley Park to become an electronic spy, intercepting Russian and East German agent transmissions, during which time he studied many languages and achieved a BA Honours Degree from London University. Diverse occupations followed: Head of Modern Languages in a large comprehensive school, ocean yacht skipper, deep sea fisher, fly tyer, antique dealer, bespoke furniture maker, restorer and French polisher, professional deer stalker and creative writer.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The briefly brilliant exploding star faded fast and disappeared completely in the western night sky, as if the aircraft and the Russian crooks it was carrying had never existed. Simultaneously and without a word of instruction Sir Henry’s driver turned the ignition key and shoved the big engine into ‘Drive’. Once out of the airport security gates we turned left, heading for Rock’s estate, our hearts heavy with the certain knowledge that there we would find Jane’s decomposing body.

The SAS troopers who had stormed and overcome the armed men Rock had left behind on his small estate, having deliberately omitted to tell them he would never return, had stayed to guard the place. Those of Rock’s men who had not been killed in the exchanges of fire - just three of them - were interrogated mercilessly by the victors with no concern for any book of rules, but only one of them admitted to knowing anything of Jane’s existence. He told them he had seen a woman of her description brought to the estate one evening in one of the cars. She had been bustled into the house and he had not seen her after that nor heard anything of what had been done with her. He admitted to knowing that several bodies had been put down a well, but insisted that he was merely a guard and not part of the extermination team.

When pressed as to why he knew so little he told them that being inquisitive in Rock’s employ was a sure way of ending up in the well with the others. Seeing his four crushed fingers and the state of his face after the questioning I believed he was telling the truth. It confirmed that Jane had been there at some point, but no more than that.

Jane’s father, Sir Henry Bliss, Minister for Internal Security in the present Government, had used his authority to call in more than a dozen top specialists. Most had already arrived at the site, among them Angus Blaine, the Met Fire Brigade’s Chief Investigator, also expert in the recovery of human remains from difficult locations. He had brought his team with him and was standing in the middle of the small group, lit up by floodlights at the front of the house and others that had been erected on poles; around a dozen men and women, his six feet three inches of height making him easily noticeable. As we drew up at the front of the mansion he detached himself from the others and stalked over, looking grim; he thought the world of Jane and had been briefed about the purpose of the search. He’d been a rugby player at school and university and his face showed it: several long-healed white scars on his forehead, a right eyebrow with a centimetre-wide gap in the middle where no hair would ever grow and a nose whose line had a distinct kink in it halfway down. Despite that he was a handsome devil, bronzed from long hours in the sun and normally with a catchy twinkle in his baby blue eyes, a twinkle now conspicuously absent. We knew each other well from the many jobs we had been on where the Brigade had been involved.

He shook my hand and murmured, ‘Terrible business, John. I am so sorry; I just can’t believe it.’

I nodded, that damned lump back in my throat again, and introduced him to Sir Henry, after which he told us, ‘The SAS lads have found the well near the north-east corner of the estate. We were about to go over there, but knew we couldn’t make a start until you arrived. The officer in charge of the troopers is waiting there for you. We’ll follow with the vehicles and the necessary gear.’ He pointed into the distance, ‘You can see where it is; they’ve got floodlights around it and the pathologists’ tent is already up close to it; their equipment is all in place and they are ready to run.’

The disused well where Rock’s chief enforcer, Harry Haggar, had insisted they had dumped Jane’s body, was our number one priority. I could see the large white tent brilliantly lit from inside about a quarter of a mile away and we drove towards it across the short-cropped grass, followed by Angus and his team in their vehicle.

There were four men in plain khaki battledress standing in a group to the left of the tent. They wore no badges of any kind, but I picked one out as an officer by his bearing. If I’d needed proof of Sir Henry’s clout, which I did not – I had seen it in action before - their presence in that undress served to underline it. Behind the troopers in the doorway of the tent I noticed Janet Keller, our willowy blond resident pathologist, with eight other men and women. Janet was deliberately avoiding my gaze and I knew why and could sympathise: as an ex-lover she felt uncomfortable being present at the horrifying exhumation of my wife. They had been good friends. I guessed that of the eight I could see there were four pathologists and an equal number of dieners. Sir Henry wanted results urgently when the bodies had been recovered and had made sure he received them. As we got out of the car the soldier I had picked out as an officer detached himself from his little group and came over.

‘Good evening, gentlemen. I’m Captain Roger Blake. The well is just over there to your left. You were right about its use; that particular odour is not easy to forget. Your men will need breathing apparatus to go down there. The lid is on a sliding mechanism; we moved it once and tried shining powerful lights down, but it’s forty-three feet deep by laser measurement and we saw nothing.’

Sir Henry introduced Blake to Angus, and the fire chief listened to Blake’s description of the well before he nodded and said, ‘Bill is the lad for that job.’

He wiggled his index finger to call over to him a round faced young man of about twenty-five, who stood no more than five feet two inches tall and was as thin as a beanpole. He led the lad over to the well and they went into a huddled conference before Angus slid back the lid and they looked down.

The lad called Bill nodded and walked back to the fire support wagon to get the necessary clothing, LED headlamp and mask. Angus gave instructions to the rest of the crew and they began unloading and erecting a pair of tripods with roller gear on top for ropes to run through.

Watching them work was an education; they were so fluid in their motions and hardly needed a word exchanged between them as they unloaded and assembled their gear, all of their actions automatic, their rigorous training showing clearly in their expertise.

Within minutes Bill, dressed like someone ready to go into outer space, disappeared beneath the lip of the well and his colleagues began paying out the rope from which his harness was suspended.

We stood upwind of the well top next to Angus, listening to him relaying instructions to the lowering team in response to the messages he was receiving in his earpiece from Bill as he descended. It seemed to take a long time, but was probably no more than a couple of minutes.

Suddenly Angus ordered, ‘Stop!’ He listened some more then told them, ‘Fresh bodies. He wants a sling harness with a sled first.’

That item of equipment was connected to another rope and lowered over the side from the second tripod. The team paid out the same length of rope as that holding their colleague.

My heart was hammering. Had he found Jane?

Time dragged, the feeling of dread almost overwhelming me. Sir Henry, his own eyes moist, could see my turmoil and squeezed my arm.

He murmured so that only I could hear, ‘It’s better to know, John.’

I nodded, unable to speak, my heart beating so hard that I could hear it.

Responding to another message Angus told his team to ‘Recover’.

I suddenly began to choke after taking a huge amount of air in and realised that I had been holding my breath.

Sir Henry slapped me hard on the back several times as I doubled up, trying to get my breathing back to normal.

The recovery of the body took much longer than the descent of the equipment, but finally the end of the sled appeared, and then the top of a human head.

A huge sigh of relief tempered with sorrow escaped my throat, echoed by another from Sir Henry. The head was obviously that of a young boy, although the face was terribly mutilated. The nose and ears were missing and where the eyes should have been there were merely sockets. The lack of features was accentuated and made even more macabre by the harsh lighting and deep shadows. As more of the totally naked body was revealed we could see that it was not just the face that had been damaged. The body had been emasculated, cut dozens of times on the chest and stomach and was missing the lower half of the left arm. There was just a small fuzz of pubic hair, which told us that the victim had probably been eleven or twelve years old at most.

I knew immediately that the lad had been one of Rock’s sodomites, a victim of the Russian gangster’s twisted, diabolically corrupt sexual practices and murderous methods of disposal after he tired of his kidnapped captives.

Sir Henry, like me, was shaking his head in disbelief, and I growled, ‘Poor little sod.’

‘Death in an explosion was too good for that devilish bastard!’ Sir Henry was vehement, the very first time I had ever seen him angry and the first time I had heard him swear.

I suddenly thought of the unfortunate police officer who would have to tell the boy’s parents what had happened to him, and was mightily glad that it would not be me.

The sled was uncoupled and two of the troopers carried it to the tent, where it was taken from them by two dieners.

Another sled was lowered and we held our breath again.

The second recovery was an almost exact repeat of the first, except that the first boy had been blond and the second had darker hair. His body, too, was taken to the tent and another sled lowered.

As the head of the next victim began to appear I had to close my eyes. Long blond hair indicated a young female. I turned my head away, not daring to look until Sir Henry said, ‘It’s not Jane.’

The girl was no more than eighteen and her body, though naked, had not been disfigured. I could see no damage, but Angus told us, ‘Single shot in the back of the head.’

Another girl’s body followed, killed the same way.

I told Captain Blake, ‘They will have been girls for Rock’s men to use. The captives will give us more information about them if your guys ask them nicely.’

His grim smile confirmed my opinion of how nicely that would be. ‘I’ll see to it now, Inspector.’ He walked over to speak to his men and one of them, probably his NCO, spoke into a walkie-talkie. I guessed the prisoners were still in the house and wondered for a second what Blake would do with the men when his troopers had finished interrogating them, but I was not about to ask. It would not have surprised nor bothered me if they wound up at the bottom of the well. One thing was certain: none of them would be making public accusations.

I died a dozen deaths as recovery followed recovery, each time sure that Jane’s body would appear over the lip of the well, but after seven whole bodies had been brought up, the latter two in advanced states of decomposition, it began to dawn on me that she was not there. For the next recovery Bill asked for a different style of equipment, which appeared to be an opaque deflated balloon. When it came up it contained a skeleton, still held together by sinews, but with little flesh still attached.

In all, thirteen bodies were recovered from the well. Most of them would never be identified.

During the days that followed we tore the rest of the estate apart using every device known to man, including geothermal imaging, sub-surface radar and sniffer dogs. We went over every inch again and again and dug up the entire area, seven acres of it, with spades, diggers and huge JCBs.

After we’d finished with the grounds the team ripped down walls and dug up floors in the mansion using jackhammers and Kangoes, finding six more corpses and skeletons in the process, but not Jane.

At the end of three weeks of continual searching, both there and at Smart’s town house, which we also virtually destroyed, finding two more skeletons bricked up in the walls, we had no option but to give up.

Dozens of times we had asked ourselves and each other, ‘Could she still be alive?’

The urge to hope was paramount, but we knew only too well the inhuman qualities of the two Russians and the hatred they had for me and my wife. Hope did not come easily.

During the first week Sir Henry had ignored all his parliamentary work and spent every minute on site, but after that week important Government business gradually dragged him away from it more and more until he was an infrequent visitor.

DCI Angela Crane, my immediate boss, had sent a message that I had indefinite paid leave, "for as long as you need, however long that might be" and I was living and sleeping on the property, my mind as big a mess as my appearance. I had lost the one great love of my life and was not about to give up the search for her remains, but there came a day when I had to face the truth: we were not going to find her. Not there anyway.

That day, a day of heavy continuous drizzle that had soaked me to the skin, not that I cared a damn, I felt more desolate than ever before in my life, the desperation in my heart a tangible, living thing, accentuated by the rain that mixed haphazardly with the tears of misery and frustration running down my cheeks. When Sir Henry drove himself into the estate and pulled up alongside me as I dug a spade into earth that had already been dug up at least twice I was at the lowest point of my life and not far from madness.

He turned the window down and ordered brusquely, ‘Get in, John.’

I looked up, utterly fatigued, ‘Henry, I can’t…’

He almost bellowed, ‘Get in!’

I let the spade fall out of my hands and did so and once my wet backside had settled on the leather he said, ‘It’s time, John. It’s over. You’ve been here twenty-three days. More than enough. You know she is not here.’

‘But…’ I began, and he held up a hand, ‘No buts. Have you looked in a mirror recently?’

I shook my head wearily.

‘I thought not. Do you think Jane would have wanted to see you looking like that?’

I hadn’t shaved since we first arrived and was still wearing the same clothes, filthy and mud-spattered now since I had not wanted to be absent from the site long enough to go home to change. I knew I looked like a homeless Hippy, so different to the man sitting beside me, his centrally parted dark brown hair, now with the faintest traces of silver, elegantly coiffed, his green eyes so alive with intelligence that it was hard to take one’s eyes away from them, and his head erect as always, a part of his upright posture. His clothes on that day were different to the dark blue, pin-striped suit he wore to go to the House: a pair of light grey Alexander McQueen trousers with a crease sharp enough to shave with, an open-necked cream shirt under a Dunhill dark grey woollen pullover that Jane had bought him for his last birthday and a pair of elegant Johnston and Murphy slip-on shoes.

He wrinkled his nose, ‘You do realise that the rather heady aroma emanating from you is somewhat less than salubrious, don’t you?’

It was his way of saying I stank. I protested, ‘I’ve been washing, Henry.’ Was that what I called a splash in the face and a promise each morning, which was all I had given myself?

‘But not bathing. I’m taking you home, John. Get yourself cleaned up and go back to work tomorrow. We’ve done everything humanly possible to find her, but Jane is not here. We may never find out what happened to her, but one thing I know for certain: she would not want you pining for her, though I know you will, and it is quite natural, but even more than that she would want you to pick up the pieces and get on with your life.’

I couldn’t tell him but realised he knew that I believed that to be impossible. Though we had been together such a relatively short time Jane had become so much a part of my life that I now felt less than half alive, but he was right; she was a practical girl and would have wanted me to resume a kind of normality.

‘And you need to start eating again. You must have lost over a stone.’

I had to admit that my trousers seemed more and more inclined to fly at half mast, but the will to eat had left me. Jane and I had enjoyed so much good food together and I had felt guilty even wanting to eat.

‘You will do as I ask?’

I could see how concerned he was and told him, without much conviction, ‘I will, Henry.’

‘Good. I am taking you home now.’

He restarted the engine and turned the car back towards London.

That was eight months ago.

CHAPTER TWO

I still felt numb inside but was going through the motions. My friends and co-workers had tried their best to bolster my well-being, and Annie had only yesterday quietly suggested that I might need a course of TLC, which she was ready to supply with no strings whatsoever. I’d been expecting it and was surprised she had waited so long, but I knew it could not happen. Not yet anyway; not until I was sure, and even then…

Moving back in with her would be so easy; like pulling on a pair of well worn, infinitely comfortable old slippers. We were the same age, give or take a couple of weeks, neither of us any longer in the spring chicken category, and in the three years we had lived together we had never had the slightest disagreement about anything. We knew each other’s little foibles and habits, both good and bad, and could live comfortably with them. Our tastes in most things were similar and compatible and if Annie had not begun to push for a commitment I was not prepared to give we would probably still be a couple and I would not have married Jane. Annie had regretted her mistake from the moment I moved out, and had many times told me she would happily start again with no conditions whatsoever, but then Jane came along and the rest was history.

I knew it would not work, but wanted to let her down lightly.

‘If I knew for certain that Jane was dead, Annie…’ I shrugged and sighed, ‘then maybe, but until I see her corpse myself I will never believe it.’

I could see in her eyes that she wanted to tell me yet again that I was wrong, but she had too much human compassion for that. She was a genuinely good woman and I had met few enough of them.

She nodded, ‘I understand, John, and that was the first time I’ve seen the trace of a smile on your face since you came back.’ She hesitated for just a couple of seconds before adding, ‘You know it’s a standing invitation.’

I nodded; I did know. I told her, ‘You are wonderfully kind, Annie, but you know what it would be like, don’t you?’

My body had been telling me I badly needed the sex, and Annie was certainly an excellent partner in that area of human activity, but I could picture myself on top of her, working up to the paradise stroke, suddenly imagining Jane watching and the disastrously dire result.

Annie was no fool. I could see she understood only too well.

‘It doesn’t have to be about sex, John. If you need anything at all, even just a shoulder to cry on or a good meal, which, incidentally, you could certainly use, I’m here for you, any time, day or night.’

She was right about the meal. I could not face cooking for myself and was subsisting on sandwiches thrown together with any old thing in them, but it would mean a foot in her door and guilt would not allow it. I still blamed myself for Jane’s abduction, even though I knew how stupid that was.

‘I know that, Annie, and I do appreciate it, believe me.

On my desk I had the full findings of the post mortems carried out on the corpses found on the Russians’ properties. One of the young boys, the one with light coloured hair, had been identified as Patrick Carsin, eleven. He had disappeared early one morning while doing his daily paper round. His family had been informed, but were told they could not view the corpse because of the danger of contracting the dangerous disease from which he had died. It was a white lie to save them further agony, and they luckily accepted it. The other lad’s DNA suggested a middle European ancestry and we believed that he, along with the two young girls, had been smuggled into the country somehow from the Eastern Block. One of the skeletons was identified as that of a police officer, Sergeant Richard Black, who had disappeared eighteen months earlier. He had been a member of the Vice Squad and his colleagues told us that he had mentioned having received information about a prostitute smuggling ring two days before he disappeared, but said that he needed more evidence before setting the wheels in motion to arrest those responsible. Seeking that evidence had cost him his life.

The rest of the corpses were still under investigation and no one was expecting quick answers.

I had investigated