Page 55

FIFTY-FOUR

Now dark, Gina waited for Jacob to pull into the industrial estate. A tiny disused gatehouse stood at the entrance, along with a pile of old bin bags. A few rats scurried around where a fox had torn one open. In the distance, several industrial units stood large with billowing trees behind them, dark and spidery as they reached for the midnight-blue sky. The moon lit up the roofs and hints of light glinted off the many skips that adorned every car park.

‘Everyone’s in place, guv,’ O’Connor said down the phone that was pressed to her ear. ‘Two police cars are right behind you, no blue lights as requested. I’m going to head towards you now.’

‘Kill all lights on approach to Bishop Fry-Stone. It’s just behind the large unit we’re trundling past.’ She gave her stab vest a little move to make it more comfortable before reluctantly popping her personal phone in Jacob’s glove compartment.

Jacob clocked her doing it. She wondered if he knew; if he too had received a horrible photo of her with some awful caption. ‘You okay?’

She nodded. Maybe the team hadn’t been looking at her in a funny way back at the station, or maybe everyone was too polite to say anything. She only hoped that Pete Bloxwich was going to shut it all down.

Her personal phone beeped. She snatched it back out of the glove compartment.

It was a message from Pete and she had to read it.

White Knight has an account on my forum. He has slipped up in a communication with someone, if indeed it’s the same person you’re looking for. He said he had everything needed for this psycho to build his own prepper jail. He said to this guy – who I can’t trace – that a company called Bishops was the best place for supplies and that he could get a discount for him. I think this was meant to go into a private message but he accidentally put it up in a conversation chain. It was deleted within a minute but I managed to take a snapshot.

Gina couldn’t very well tell the team what Pete had messaged, but it was reassuring that they were on the right path.

Luna and Ruth could be being held there and they had to get them out of the personal hell that they’d been living in, and she hoped that Luna could tell them what had happened to Elissa, Felicity and Joanie.

If her career was to come to an end tonight, then she could at least feel as though she had made one huge final contribution.

Jacob drove in darkness towards the next junction. A derelict-looking block with some sort of corrugated metal stood to the side of the gated yard. Huge trees surrounded most of it, but the unit stood proudly above the many outbuildings.

She stared at the oppressive structure, with its expanse of land behind it. In a bid to save life or limb, they could enter without a warrant.

She cleared her throat. ‘No one knows we’re coming, but I feel so nervous. As soon as we’re in, I know an alarm will be triggered, and if we have it all wrong, we could have just put Ruth and Luna in more danger. We don’t know if our perp is already in there with the victims.’ She took deep breath after deep breath, her nerves jangling like mad.

Jacob pulled the handbrake on and the police cars pulled up behind them. She called O’Connor again. ‘Are we all in place?’

‘Yep, all in place. The area is surrounded and there’s an ambulance and fire engine on standby. We have a dog team, too, in case we get any runners.’

‘We’re going in.’