Eventually, the woodland began to thin out and they arrived at a large pond covered in green algae. Ferns and willow trees dipped their branches into the water — making it look quite beautiful, in an eerie, long-forgotten kind of way.
About twenty yards to Jack’s left, an officer was prodding his search-stick into the pond, assessing the depth. As he did this, the water came to life — huge koi carp and the biggest goldfish any of them had ever seen, darted and splashed, dragging the algae below the surface and churning up dark silt from the bottom until visibility alongside the bank was non-existent. The koi headed into the centre of the pond where the water remained clear.
‘It’s much deeper in the middle,’ Anik said. ‘Five or more feet, I reckon. You can tell by the clarity of the water.’ Anik hadn’t said much since arriving, apart from moaning about how cold and muddy the woodland was. ‘Those koi shouldn’t be in a wild pond, really. It’s good they’ve got hornwort for oxygen, but it’s a bit too mucky and crowded for them in there.’
‘Quick, call the RSPCA!’ Laura said sarcastically, while Ridley instructed one of the uniformed officers to make a call for a boat, and to put divers on standby.
‘Or we could just use that boat, sir,’ Anik said, pointing to a small, weathered rowing boat beneath the branches of a low-reaching willow tree.
Five minutes later, Anik was seated in the rowing boat, holding the longest search-stick he could find and wishing he’d never noticed the rickety old death-trap. As he was rowed out to the centre of the pond by a young PC, Ridley couldn’t stop himself from smirking.
When the PC stopped rowing, Anik lowered his search-stick over the side of the boat to see how deep the pond actually was. The stick, which was taller than Anik, hit the bottom with several inches to spare.
‘Five feet was about right, then. Come back in, Anik. Good job.’
As the PC started to row back to the edge of the pond, Anik tried to pull the search-stick out, but it had caught on something. With one final yank, Anik pulled it free. He slowly raised the stick, allowing the cold, smelly pond water to run down the pole, onto his hands, down his sleeves and into his armpits. His obvious discomfort brought ironic cheers from the watchers on the bank.
On the end of the pole, just breaking the surface of the water, was a duffel bag. The laughter stopped. Anik, now oblivious to how wet he was getting, jiggled the shoulder strap further onto the stick and lifted it clear of the water. He looked back at Ridley and beamed.
Ridley moved round the edge of the pond to the spot where Anik’s rowing boat would hit the bank, pulling on nitrile gloves as he went. When they were close enough, Anik swung the search-stick round, allowing Ridley to slide the duffel bag off the end. By the time Ridley had turned back towards dry land, Laura had laid a plastic sheet on the ground. He placed the bag in the centre of the plastic and glanced at Jack with the intention of asking him to film the opening of the duffel bag — only to see that Jack, mobile in hand, was one step ahead of him. The two men nodded ‘ready’ and Ridley carefully unclipped the two front plastic clasps. One clasp shattered between Ridley’s fingers, the plastic shards dropping onto the sheeting beneath to be collected for forensics at a later time. Ridley unzipped the bag, pushed the main section open with one finger and peered inside.
It seemed to be packed like an overnight bag. Ridley reached inside and — one soaking wet item at a time — pulled out a pair of jeans, two T-shirts, a make-up bag, a toiletries bag, one pair of trainers, one bra, four pairs of knickers and four balled pairs of socks. Once the main compartment was empty, he unzipped an inside pocket and found a woman’s black leather purse. Inside this, was £100 in £20 notes, some loose change, an Oyster card and a student travel card complete with a passport-size photograph of Jessica Chi.
Ridley stood up, leaving all of the contents on the plastic sheet. ‘Laura, bag all of this and get it to forensics. Anik, Jessica’s home address is on the King’s Road. I want to know if she made her own way here on public transport, so get every inch of CCTV between here and there.’
Anik took a quick photograph of the reference numbers on Jessica’s Oyster card and student travel card, then walked away to a quieter spot, announcing that he’d start by calling Jessica’s landlady to find out what time her journey began.
‘And Laura, we still need divers, please.’
As Laura gloved-up in order to bag the contents of the duffel bag, Ridley and Jack headed back towards the house. After an unexpectedly productive hour or so in the newly discovered woodland, it was finally time to head down into the cellar.
Ridley’s initial reaction to seeing the cellar was very much the same as Jack and Mal’s had been: silent shock as he took it all in. When Ridley eventually snapped on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves and began opening boxes, Jack followed his lead. As each box was opened, each man told the other what was inside, so that they built a joint picture of what this cellar was being used for.
One box contained fifteen burner phones, giving them some indication of the number of people potentially involved. Several boxes were filled with replacement parts for computers, chemical equipment, heaters and drainage pumps: clearly, if any aspect of this drugs operation broke down, they’d have it back up and running within seconds without ever having to leave the grounds.
The next box that Jack opened, made him reel. He was now looking at four Beretta 9000 handguns, two M16 rifles and two sawn-off shotguns. Jack’s silence caught Ridley’s attention. ‘Well, we knew weapons were likely with an operation of this size.’ As Ridley spoke, Jack opened an identical box to reveal a row of eight tear gas canisters packed tightly into a black foam mould. And the depth of the box suggested a second identical row would be hiding underneath.
As they systematically opened and moved each box in turn, they slowly revealed a row of five old dented and rusty four-drawer filing cabinets against the back wall. There were no labels to indicate what each drawer might contain and all of them were locked... except one. The bottom drawer in the fifth filing cabinet was labelled AVRIL and contained all of the personal documents Jack had been searching for: diaries, photo albums, bank statements, old cheque books and a small red notebook.
‘So, if this drawer was hers...’ Jack scanned his eyes across the other nineteen locked drawers. ‘Who do they belong to?’
Ridley broke open the top drawer in the first filing cabinet and was stunned to find a monitor showing him the master bedroom. What the hell had they uncovered now? He then broke open the second drawer down, revealing another monitor. It showed the lounge.
‘I thought you checked for security cameras?’ Ridley’s question wasn’t accusatory. They both knew how small hidden cameras could be and so missing a complex set-up like this was definitely nothing for Jack to be ashamed of.
Twenty minutes later, all nineteen drawers were open and in their extended position, forming a tiered bank of monitors showing every room in the house, except the main cellar and the hidden cellar they were currently in. The rear garden was not covered, but there were two external cameras showing the front of the house. The Drug Squad van wasn’t visible on either camera, but all their collaborative manpower milling about outside the property could intermittently be seen.
Ridley breathed the words they were both thinking: ‘They’re watching us.’