Abduction: An Angel over Rimini

ABDUCTION

*

An Angel Over Rimini

By Patrick Brigham

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 9781310874208

All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2014 Patrick Brigham

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the copyright holder.

Chapter 1 – The Prologue

Chapter 2 – Europol

Chapter 3 – The Box

Chapter 4 – A Trip to the Adriatic

Chapter 5 - The very Beginning

Chapter 6 – The Inquisition

Chapter 7 – The Investigation

Chapter 8 – The Excuses

Chapter 9 – The End of the Beginning

Chapter 10 – San Marcello

Chapter 11 – The Trip to Greece

Chapter 12 – The Priest

Chapter 13 – Trip to the Evros Delta

Chapter 14 – The Road to Nea Vyssa

Chapter 15 – The Sorting House

Chapter 16 – The Interrogation

Chapter 17 – The Final Journey

Chapter 18 – The Epilogue

Chapter 1 – The Prologue

It was like squeezing out the poison; that and a wish to be absolved of any sins or folly from the past. In fact it was also a form of self-destruction too, but one which he could stop whenever he wanted. Detective Chief Inspector Michael Lambert sat in the porch of the old family farmhouse in Staffordshire, his head in his hands.

In a fit of despair, he had recently handed in his notice to Thames Valley Police Authority and so his time was his own. After the divorce from Arabella, his wife of many years, and with the imminent sale of their house in Sonning-on-Thames in Berkshire, his mother Gladys insisted he should stay with her for a few days, in order to come to terms with his new circumstances.

In the familiar surroundings of his childhood home, there were moments when he descended into uncontrollable bouts of grief. Lambert tried to distance himself from the past with practiced distain, but to no avail. Even the familiar everyday banter that he and his mother Gladys exchanged sounded like a kind of absurd Esperanto for the most part, broadcast to and from nowhere in particular.

Was he trying to cover up his feelings? Or was he expressing the emptiness, the empty words, and the inane repetition of the world’s unending clichés about divorce that had so recently surrounded him? How had he managed to feel this way? He supposed it must be some sort of depression and that a black dog was watching him, somewhere out of sight.

‘I need to find a reason to go on with my life; to like what I do, to like who I am and to quietly pass the days until I can finally accept that I am doing the right thing; both for myself and – he supposed – my immortal soul.’

Uncharacteristically, Lambert wept silently as he wrote these words in his little notebook. But, why had this all been such a surprise to him?

He was writing his thoughts down as a form of catharsis. When he had handed in his notice to Chief Superintendent Burrows – his Castle Hill Police Station Chief – Burrows had insisted that Lambert visit the official police psychologist.

‘It can’t hurt to have a chat, Lambert, that’s what those bloody trick cyclists are there for and you have been through it a bit recently, what with the Kennet Narrow Boat Mystery and your wife buggering off like she did! How long were you two married? Twenty-two years? That’s a long time, Chief Inspector, and that won’t just go away overnight. You can’t sweep all that under the carpet.’ The dyspeptic Chief Superintendent, who had been threatening to retire for some time, was now angling for the job of Assistant Chief Constable. He had been a copper all his life.

‘Take some time off – you deserve it – and try to find yourself again, Lambert: we need you.’ And then as if an afterthought he said, ‘I need you!’ Lambert had been next in line to become the new Detective Superintendent of Police.

But today, Michael Lambert was discovering emotions and doubts which had eluded him in the past. Because clearly it was not just his ex-wife Arabella who had brought him to this tipping point in his life; it was Lambert himself. He now saw that it was he who had made most of the running and it was also he who had chosen to run. He felt an abject failure.

The police psychologist informed Lambert that he was going through a form of post-traumatic stress. ‘My advice is to go away and think it all through, DCI Lambert, to stay in that lovely little cottage of yours in France for a while and to get away from England: you need a complete break.’

That evening, Michael Lambert sauntered up a country lane next to the old family farmhouse. Having been brought up largely by Gladys – who by any definition had been a single mother – once more he wrestled with his late father’s distant memory.

‘Why do I try so hard to know you, Billy, when you died so young and so very long ago?’

If Billy Lambert had lived, it would have been to him that his son Michael would have turned for advice – to be encouraged, admonished or admired – when his life had somehow changed course or somehow gone wrong. But instead of finding his helping hands, when he was young he had been forced to believe exclusively in himself.

With his police detective’s reasoning, it was not so much about Billy having died prematurely, but more a question of what he had really died from. A heart attack at forty-eight years of age; this was very hard to believe. But things were different in those days – it was 1953 after all when he had passed away – and medical care was not that advanced. These questions tumbled through Lambert’s thoughts as he slowly strolled through the fading Staffordshire light.

‘Perhaps you died of drabness or sameness, Billy; from shallow people who only knew how to take and to give nothing in return; people who only cried when they felt guilty. Is that how it was, Billy, and is that how my life will also be?’ Lambert’s feelings were more than just a little confused.

‘Is that how it was for you, my poor un-remembered father?’

Lambert’s angry, tearful eyes gazed into the darkness.

‘Is that why you turned to the booze, Billy? Did you really believe that the answer was in the bottle? Because, that is all I finally remember about you. Did alcohol salvage some sort of dignity when you needed to scream or cry in frustration?’

His dog Samanda was aimlessly running up and down the lane, shooting past him and then galloping back again.

‘Sometimes I think we are the same man, Billy, especially when I go out and touch people and make them laugh. Perhaps we are a little too similar, a little too sensitive to other people’s pain? Perhaps you wore too many disguises for our own good, Billy, because nobody I have ever met seems to know who the hell you were.’

Lambert’s gloom began to wane as his thoughts turned to his imminent move to France. He picked up a small stick and hurled it into the darkness, but within seconds Samanda had returned with it tightly clenched in her teeth.

‘Was it the pain of knowing that really killed you, Billy?’

Old Gladys Lambert sat almost cross-eyed with the noise, as her hearing aid screeched into her ear. She fiddled with the volume control and then finally pulled it out of her ear altogether and switched it off.

‘Bloody thing, I can’t stand it.’

At this point, she put the hearing aid into her other, less deaf ear, so that the pink contraption was now upside down. It hung precariously beneath her good ear supported only by the earpiece which she had somehow jammed in.

‘I can’t hear a thing now,’ she muttered to herself, as she painfully got up from her chair. She walked over to the television set and turned the volume up to full blast.

She did not realise it, but the noise from the television was so loud that the windows had started to rattle in their casements. Outside, in their surprise, the starlings which had been pecking at the lawn now took flight in a flurry of wings and squawks.

‘Come on, Dunwoody, go on, that’s it, go on – ah, well done!’

Sitting down once again, she inspected the horseracing pages of the Daily Telegraph. This she did by squinting through her hand-held, pink-framed NHS reading glasses. She clicked her biro pen two or three times – to make sure that it was working properly – and then ticked the fourth runner in the next race.

She said to herself, ‘this horse has got quite good form.’ But before phoning the bookie she whispered once more, ‘I want to see what he looks like in the paddock before I decide.’ And sitting about two feet away from the blaring TV screen, she smiled.

‘Yes, he looks very fit today, but who’s on it?’ Then once more she said to herself, ‘Ah good, it’s good old Jim Culloty. Yes, that is a very good choice of jockey – I think I will back him both ways.’

Once more, she struggled up from her armchair but this time she shuffled into the central hallway, carefully closing the door behind her. She purposefully picked up an antique Bakelite telephone – as though it was some strange foreign object – and slowly dialled the numbers that were scrawled on a small piece of paper pinned to the wall.

‘Is that you, Mr. Eatwell? This is Mrs. Gladys Lambert here. What? I’m sorry I can’t hear you. Yes, he ran very well, didn’t he? Eleven to two, wasn’t it? What did you say? He likes the hard ground at Cheltenham? Oh, yes I see, I have won fourteen pounds. Yes, quite! Well, I have got another one here, in the three-thirty, you know, The Cheltenham Gold Cup. What? Do I like Americans? Oh, I see – why don’t I do a Yankee Double? No thanks, Mr. Eatwell. I would rather bet ten pounds each way if you don’t mind. What? No, on Best Mate. Did you ask what the time is? It’s about three-fifteen. Oh, the odds are seven to one, are they? Then why didn’t you say so? Anyway, put that on my account will you please? Thank you so much, Mr. Eatwell. Yes. Goodbye.’

The dog, which so desperately wanted to get out, was literally howling at the door of its room. The front doorbell was ringing and the TV set continued to blare into the small front room, but all this went unnoticed.

Gladys returned from her phone call and sat down with a bump, sitting right on top of her hearing aid which had by now fallen out of her ear. As she intently watched the TV set she saw the horses galloping up to the starting gate. The Cheltenham Gold Cup was about to begin.

‘That’s better. I can hear now,’ she said out loud, as a furious-looking, red-faced man banged on the casement window in order to attract her attention. ‘Mrs. Lambert,’ the man silently shouted, ‘I’ve got your groceries here, Mrs. Lambert.’

After a few moments she turned, and smiled and waved at him. Getting out of her chair once more, she slowly moved towards the front of the house and opened up a large heavy oak door, revealing the man standing in the porch.

‘I’ve got your groceries, Mrs. Lambert. I’m sorry about the flowerbed, but I couldn’t make you hear. I expect the television was too loud.’

‘Yes, it is a nice day. I’ve got the racing on; it’s very good you know! Do you like horseracing, Mr. Curle?’

‘No, Marm, I prefer football,’ he said in his strong Staffordshire country accent.

‘Oh really, how interesting,’ she said, appearing to be quite baffled.

He looked like a little weasel, dressed in his brown shop coat. He smiled at her in an ingratiating kind of way, his rough hands holding a large cardboard box full of groceries, a fixed smile revealing crooked and tobacco-stained teeth.

‘Shall I bring your groceries into the house, Mrs. Lambert, or would you prefer me to leave the box on the porch seat as usual?’ But he immediately put it down in the porch, simultaneously producing an invoice from his jacket pocket. ‘I’ll leave this here for you and you can send me a cheque later.’ Finally he said, ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Lambert. I will see you again next week.’

Having escaped the confines of its room, the dog now galloped speedily through the house, nearly tipping Gladys over as it catapulted through the front door and into the garden. It skidded to a halt in the middle of the lawn and as the dog’s pupils began to dilate with the release of its cumbersome load, it turned and looked round at the old woman and then ran through the open gate, down the lane at the side of the farmhouse and off across the fields.

Gladys Lambert had noticed none of this and having wished the weasel good day, she closed the front door and returned once more to the horserace which had literally just started.

‘Come on, Culloty,’ she shouted, ‘come on …!’

***

‘I have got your old room ready for you, dear, if that’s all right? I got Mrs. Winter to give it a good clean and to air the bed for you.’

‘It will only be for a little while, Mum, until I get a few things sorted out and move to France. I have practically sold the house in Sonning; it is well and truly under offer now. I’m glad it’s gone because I just hated living there on my own and walking round it, making sure squatters hadn’t moved in or it had been vandalised. Anyway, contracts have now been exchanged and financial completion is due in four weeks' time.’ ‘How’s the house in Sonning? Is it all right?’ Gladys asked.

‘I’ve just told you, Mum, I’VE SOLD IT!’

‘Oh, that’s good, dear. Would you like a cup of tea and some biscuits? I have got some of your favourite chocolate digestives. Why don’t you sit in the porch, it is so nice out today.’

‘Has anybody phoned me?’

‘Not that I can remember. The phone never seems to ring.’ He had connected the noisiest bell he could find but she seldom answered the phone, because she was either asleep or watching television.

For Lambert, the best thing you could say about the old, cold Staffordshire farmhouse was that nothing seemed to change. The garden certainly never changed and everything was in its usual place, even the fig tree which his father had brought back from Italy in a Lancaster Bomber at the end of WW2. It was planted at the side of the house on a sunny return wall.

‘Here you are, dear, and I have made you a sandwich as well. I hope you like fish paste, I’ve forgotten. But Mr. Curle put it into my grocery order this week by mistake.’

‘No, that’s fine, Mum. How’s Tom? I haven’t seen him for months.’

‘What?’

‘I SAID, HOW IS MY BROTHER TOM? I HAVEN’T SEEN HIM FOR MONTHS.’

It was impossible to have a normal conversation with Gladys, who could be so exhausting at times. Lambert had always believed that she had become so used to her silent world that she didn’t want to, or was unable to, communicate anymore.

‘I thought I saw a note from him on the dining room table. It was something about your diabetes pills. Haven’t you been taking them? You are very naughty you know and you are lucky you don’t have to inject insulin instead.’

‘That must have been yesterday. That’s right, he came in the morning. In any case, this is my house and I can do what I want.’ It was funny how she managed to hear when it suited her and how her almost mad sense of independence appeared in the form of this well-repeated mantra; her own special defence mechanism.

‘Yes, but have you taken your pills today, Mum?’

‘Of course I have. I remember, I took them this morning.’

She had on her best skirt, her hair was combed and she was wearing a little bit of lipstick, which was uneven around the edges of her lips. He also knew that she hadn’t taken her pills, but there was a point at which Gladys had to be responsible for her own wellbeing.

‘It will be nice coming back here for a few days, Mum, especially now the garden looks so pretty. Anyway, I suppose I had better go and get my stuff unpacked. Oh, and by the way, is it all right if Jebb comes to stay this weekend?’

‘Who, dear? Did you say you were leaving?’

‘I AM GOING TO UNPACK MY THINGS, BUT CAN JEBB COME AND STAY THIS WEEKEND?’

She looked a little puzzled, as she tried to remember who he meant and then she said, ‘Who’s Jebb?’

‘JEBB IS YOUR GRANDSON, MUM. DON’T YOU REMEMBER?’

‘Yes of course, dear, I couldn’t hear you properly; I think the batteries have gone in this bloody contraption!’ Lambert had bought this contraption – as she often referred to it – but he wasn’t falling for that one, not ever again. It was obviously time for Gladys to go into some sort of sheltered housing; there was no doubt about that.

***

Later that evening, Gladys sat with Michael, looking at the family photo album. ‘Your father Billy used to tell stories to you children before you went to sleep at night. Do you remember, dear? After he had eaten his dinner he would go to the pub till about eight o’clock and then he would come home and tell you both a bedtime story, just before you went to sleep.’

She turned the thick cardboard pages of the family photo album, straightening up the crooked black and white photos as she went. ‘He could be so funny, especially when he had had a drink or two.’

She picked up a photo of Billy in his Royal Air Force uniform. ‘This is a picture of him when he came back from Italy. That was the last time he was away. He brought you back a big blue teddy bear, do you remember, with red bottoms to his feet? Daddy would sit on the end of your cot and sing.’

She started to sing, her thin little voice, which was so full of emotion:

‘Fuzzy-wuzzy was a bear, but

Fuzzy-wuzzy had no hair, so

Fuzzy-wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,

Was he?’

‘You used to love that, but then one day his leg fell off – I mean the bear’s – and you cried all night until I stitched his leg back on in the morning.’ She turned the page.

‘And here’s a photo of you with father, just before he died. You had on your new school blazer, short trousers and some new sandals. You must have been about eight years old.’ She looked closely at the uniformed figure of her late husband, as if gazing deeply into the past.

‘He was a wonderful man your father, and so funny, especially when he’d had a few drinks.’

***

It was a bad time for Michael Lambert to start worrying about his mother, but subsequently – after a long telephone conversation with his older brother Tom – it confirmed their mutual belief that she should be moved into sheltered accommodation as soon as possible. That only left the house and contents to be disposed of, the farmland having been re-let by the local landowners to a neighbouring farmer many years before, when Billy Lambert died.

The farmhouse itself, and the few remaining outbuildings, had been bought from the local landowner’s estate when Billy and Gladys Lambert had originally got married in 1932, and from then onwards they had been tenant farmers, renting their farmland from the Lord Thrumpton Estate, which owned most of the property thereabouts. Interrupted only by WW2 – when a farm manager had been appointed by the government and some Land Girls employed – between them she and Billy had farmed Hatch Farm together for over twenty years.

Since Billy’s death, Hatch Farm had only existed as a smallholding and apart from her horseracing winnings – although remarkably frequent – she had brought up her two sons mainly on her widow’s pension, the proceeds of a large vegetable garden with adjoining fruit orchard, and by selling fresh farm eggs and garden produce.

When the weekend had passed and Jebb had returned to London, Lambert decided that now was the right time to quietly make his exit and journey to his little cottage in France. Tom agreed to be the main mover and to finally convince Gladys that her nigh on seventy years spent living at Hatch Farm was now coming to an end.

She had often remarked in the past how she would move when the time was right and the proceeds of the sale of Hatch Farm House would easily pay for a long stay in a top quality old people’s home. It seemed to be the obvious solution.

‘I hope you enjoyed your stay, Michael, and that you will feel better soon, dear.’ Gladys had tears in her eyes as she bid her son goodbye and it occurred to Michael that there might not be so many goodbyes remaining, as she was nearing her ninetieth year.

Lambert left Gladys with a heavy heart. The road trip down to Portsmouth didn’t take long in his beloved Alvis 21, which effortlessly purred all the way. Lambert arrived at the ferry port and went to Customs to declare Samanda’s ISO microchip, her Pet Passport, vaccination and rabies certificates, and then joined the queue of cars crossing by Brittany Ferries to the Ouistrehan ferry port near Caen in Normandy.

He made sure that Samanda had a good long walk around the port area before the trip because the rules of the ferry company were that dogs had to be muzzled and kept in the car during the journey. The ferryboat to Caen did not have kennels on board, unlike on other routes. Lambert made sure that Samanda had eaten no food for twenty-four hours, which made him feel a little cruel, but it would lessen the possibility of any unwanted messages being left in the car during the trip. This was the problem of a six-hour journey to France, which although good for him, was not so good for his dog.

To Lambert, the sea journey in the past had always seemed like part of the holiday, but this time it was more a break from the past. The house in Sonning was virtually sold and for the sake of peace and quiet he had walked away from his marriage with considerably less than Arabella, his ex–wife, had managed to purloin.

She had convened so many meetings to discuss the house contents—together with her sycophantic and accommodating boyfriend, Marcus Smith—that his conjugal replacement was beginning to feel to Lambert more like an old family friend than a perceived adversary.

In the end, he agreed that most of his things could go to their children, Kate and Jebb. They were both in the process of buying flats in London, having now got good jobs, so all he took with him in his Alvis motorcar that day were his personal possessions and anything he could fit in, which he might find useful in France.

There was an opening for a senior seconded police officer at the newly formed Europol: a European police group situated at The Hague in Holland, and equivalent to the American FBI. They seemed to be intent on employing a large number of British coppers to fill their ranks and, subject to a final interview, he was shortly due to become one of them. It would not mean that he had given up the Thames Valley Police Authority for good, but it would give him some necessary breathing space. The move would also give him a few quiet months to himself in Calvados, where his little village house was situated in Northern France.

Luckily, his French cottage was of no interest at all to his acquisitive ex-wife, who hated provincial France and its inhabitants, so there was very little chance of them meeting there by accident.

On arrival in France, and taking the ring-road around Caen, Lambert soon found his way onto the Rue National 158. A dead straight Roman road, it took them through the green fields and quaint villages of Central Normandy. When they got to St. Pierre-Canivet, he turned right, driving swiftly until he arrived at the village of Treprel and his pretty little townhouse.

Parking the Alvis in front of the integral garage door, he finally released Samanda, removed her muzzle and made his way up the steps. He opened the front door and let the excited white Labrador into the house and then into the back garden. Finally, they were home together in France.

It was now time to catch up with some old friends in Treprel and to stock up with all the wonderful things which only French food shops could offer. The ex-Reading policeman, who had largely looked after himself for months past, traipsed around the provincial French shops with ease. At last he could visit these local shops and buy what they, the French, regarded as everyday items, but to him could only be described as a feast.

To Lambert, it was like a visit to Harrods Food Hall and by that afternoon, the fridge and the freezer were bulging with enough food for the next two weeks. Samanda was introduced to Monsieur and Madam Hiver, the next door neighbours, who agreed not only to look after his dog while Lambert was away but for Mme. Hiver to be the housekeeper and for