This switch was about shoulder height and wasn’t connected to the lights: they were operated from just inside the kitchen. Jack flicked the switch. What happened next happened slowly. At first, all Jack could hear was a low whirring sound; then there was a click, followed by a thud. Then the wine rack began to move directly forwards — the numerous brackets were not attached to the wall at all, and the screws were nothing more than screw heads.
Jack’s heart pounded as he watched the wine rack slowly and steadily move outwards, towards him. He veered out of its way, peered round the side and there, behind the hardboard, was a sliding double door surrounded by a steel frame. The wine rack stopped moving. Jack paused to find his mobile phone and turn on the torch, before reaching for the door handle. Then he paused again: if this hidden room was filled with more drugs, should he be wearing a mask? Jack quickly found the air bricks he’d identified yesterday, and which he knew opened up into the bin store. Beyond them was a pair of black boots.
Jack shouted, ‘Hey!’ and the boots turned on the spot, searching for the owner of the voice. ‘It’s DS Warr. I’m in the cellar. Find Mal Kaminsky and send him down here. It’s through the kitchen. Tell him it’s important and I need him now.’
Less than a minute later, Mal raced to Jack’s side.
‘I was getting the rubbish bins sent over to the lab, but this sounded way more exciting!’
Both men shone their phone torches towards the handle of the sliding door. Jack reached out and pulled it open.
Their two small beams of light lit the first four stone steps leading downwards, but were then swallowed up in the darkness. Jack tentatively stepped forward and felt the inside wall for a light switch.
‘Look out for snakes!’ Jack quickly pulled his hand back before realising it was a joke. ‘Secret rooms are always protected by snakes,’ Mal continued through his boyish smirk. He handed Jack a vented mask with a wink. ‘Go ahead, Jack. I’m right behind you.’
Jack moved down onto the first step, using his torch to scan the wall until he found the light switch. When the lights finally came on, they were stunned to see — at the bottom of the staircase — a cavernous underground bunker that extended way beyond the cellar. ‘Fuck me,’ Mal whispered.
Jack and Mal followed the small bulbs that lined the top of the walls like Christmas lights. To their left were trestle tables buckling under the weight of computers and laptops, digital scales, bottles of chemicals, and dozens of sealed boxes. One shelf had hundreds of rolled canvases, and lined up on another table were boxes of oil paints and other artists’ paraphernalia. The wall at the far end of the underground bunker was lined with steel filing cabinets. Mal moved to open one of the sealed boxes.
‘No,’ Jack instructed, ‘don’t touch anything. I want DCI Ridley to see this place as is.’ Mal respectfully backed down. ‘If there’s any evidence of Avril in here, then... well, I’m not sure what the hell that means. But Ridley and I need to go through everything first.’
‘No worries,’ Mal said as he tightened his vented mask. ‘I’ll do a visual sweep to make sure there’s nothing dangerous, then it’s over to you.’
Ridley strode down the centre of the corridor with such purpose that everyone coming in the opposite direction had no option but to jump out of his way. His eyes were wide and excited as he listened to Jack relay over the phone what he’d found beneath Avril Jenkins’ house. Jack said that he’d be waiting in the kitchen, then he’d take Ridley down into the cellar.
‘I’ll be with you in twenty.’ Ridley let out a brief, breathy laugh as he negotiated the stairs down to the station car park. ‘Well done, Jack. If anyone was going to find a drug dealer’s subterranean mothership, it’s you. We’ll get them, you know. The truth with this case is, we’ve always had more evidence than we know what to do with. We just need to understand how to decipher it.’
This little speech, which Jack also took as an apology, was a welcome return to the old version of Ridley: the steady motivator who led from the front.
But the renewed confidence and support that Jack now felt was offset by the sadness of knowing that if Ridley was indeed retiring this would be their last case together.
Chapter 10
Jack checked his watch. It had been fifteen minutes since Ridley had said he was twenty minutes away and Jack knew that this ETA would be accurate almost to the second. Jack paced Avril Jenkins’ kitchen, peering down into the dark cellar every now and then, in anticipation of getting back down there and beginning to process this brand new, deeply intriguing space. Mal paced outside, chomping at the bit for it to be his turn to venture down into the Aladdin’s cave.
When Jack’s mobile pinged to say that he had a new email, he was expecting a routine update in connection with the progress of the case. What he wasn’t expecting, was an email plus attachment from Kevin, the building applications manager at Kingston Counciclass="underline"
I know you only asked for new information, but thought I’d send this anyway. FYI.
The attachment was a PDF showing the existing five-acre plot of land owned by Avril, with the layout of the house and garden being exactly as expected. However, beyond the wall at the rear of the garden, was an expanse of woodland, perhaps three acres in size, that was also part of the property.
Jack immediately called Kevin and asked him to confirm that this was correct. Kevin explained that, according to the notes, Frederick Jenkins had purchased the woodland back in 2009 because his neighbour wanted to buy it and build a second house for his elderly parents. To prevent this from happening, Frederick had outbid the neighbour in order to maintain the privacy of his own back garden. Jack couldn’t believe it: the house and garden that they did know about had already provided so much information, so what the hell would three acres of woodland reveal? It was at this moment that Ridley walked in, raring to go.
Once Jack had brought him up to speed about the woodland, he organised the day ahead. ‘OK. So the cellar has had the preliminary once-over from Mal and it’s safe and secure, right? Then let’s do the same with the woodland and, in the meantime, I’ll let SOCO do their preliminary on the cellar. I’ll get twenty or so uniforms, you get Anik and Laura.’
Within ten minutes, Ridley had secured fourteen uniformed officers and half an hour after that they turned up in a police van, kitted out with police tape, wellies, long search-sticks and several metal detectors.
The woodland area was wild and untended. It wasn’t a throughway to anywhere, and it was protected on all sides by either a tall wooden fence or high chicken-wire secured against intermittent concrete posts. However, they could now also see the narrow footpath mentioned by Mr Warton, which cut between Avril’s property and the golf course. In a couple of places, the chicken-wire fence had been damaged, allowing curious walkers to stray onto Avril’s property. Collecting forensic evidence from public spaces was a hellish job and this security breach would make their lives far more difficult. Jack was hoping that if this woodland had anything to reveal, it would be underground.
The uniformed officers worked in a line, maintaining a set distance from each other of around half a metre. They moved in unison, constantly looking at where they were about to place their front foot, so as not to stand on any evidence. Every now and then, one of them would find, collect and bag a discarded piece of litter and mark the spot with a flag. One officer found a small pink mitten, which they sincerely hoped belonged to a clumsy trespasser. The thought of finding another body, especially a child’s, filled everyone with dread.