A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [177]
Dan waited.
‘I’ll do a deal with you,’ Trueman rasped out. ‘I give you the address, you let me go. If you turn me over to the police my boys will get you and crucify you.’
Dan laughed then, relief that he really had got the right man flooding through him. ‘You ain’t got no power now, sunshine! You’re just a nasty old fart with a lot to answer for. When word gets around I just breezed in here and did this, you’ll look a right prat. You might be able to hire a hot-shot defence, but your so-called boys will desert you the moment you’re nicked. So just give us the address and I’ll stop making you squeal.’
There was some hesitation, but Dan only had to put the cigarette close to Trueman’s face again and he began gabbling about a barn at Bexley. He even told Dan that the keys for the padlock on the barn door were in his desk drawer.
‘Who’s there with her?’
‘No one, just her and the Frenchwoman.’
Dan opened the desk drawer. There were several bunches of Yale keys, but two smaller keys on a piece of cord looked as though they opened a padlock. He took all the keys anyway, just in case. There was also a car key with a Jaguar logo. He smiled to himself. ‘Where’s your car parked?’ he asked.
‘In Soho Square,’ Trueman gasped out.
Dan got the registration number out of him, then stood looking down at the man. All he wanted to do was flee and get Fifi, but Trueman might be banking on that, and he was crafty enough to have given him the wrong address, especially if he knew some of his men were coming by later. Then there was Janice, he didn’t like the thought of her coming back to this little lot. The whole office was upturned and Trueman’s face was like something on a butcher’s block.
He aimed one almighty kick at the man’s ribs. ‘Right now, tell me the truth about where she is. No more fucking about,’ he yelled at him.
‘It is the truth,’ Trueman blubbered. ‘The barn is up a track off Hurst Road, Bexley.’
‘If she’s dead when I get there I swear I’ll make it my life’s work to torture you,’ Dan said, kicking him one more time for good measure. But he could wait no longer. He went into the tiny cloakroom, washed the blood off his face and hands, and then phoned Kennington police station. Roper wasn’t there, but he spoke to Sergeant Wallis whom he’d met when he’d gone down to the station with Harry and Clara.
‘I’ve got the man with the red Jag,’ he barked out. ‘His name is Jack Trueman and you’d better come and arrest him because he’s just admitted he’s got my wife. He’ll need an ambulance too.’
Wallis tried to question him but Dan refused to be drawn. ‘You just hold the bastard until I’ve got my wife,’ he said, snapping out the office address. ‘I’m on my way to get Fifi now.’
Hastily he wrote a note for Janice, to stick on the downstairs front door, telling her not to open the street door but to wait outside until the police arrived.
‘The police will be here soon,’ Dan said sweetly, grinning down at the pulp that had once been Trueman’s face. ‘If you haven’t told me the truth about where my Fifi is, I’ll make sure they don’t get a doctor to look at you until you have.’
It was half past two as Dan slid into the driving seat of the red Jaguar. He had blood all over his suit, his knuckles were raw and bleeding and he was shaky. He didn’t even know where Bexley was apart from it being south of the river, but he saw there was a map in the glove compartment, and he’d check it out when he got as far as the Old Kent Road. It felt as if it ought to be eight or nine at night, definitely the longest day he’d ever known. But with luck he’d be with Fifi in an hour.
Dan swore aloud when yet another turning off Hurst Road only took him into a row of houses with no drivable access to the fields behind them. The rain was making visibility poor, and he thought now he should have waited for the police instead of coming alone.
There were very few people around, and those he’d stopped and asked if they knew of a lane with a barn had just looked puzzled.
Hurst Road was