Ginger stared at the body of his dead boss and wondered where the missing engineer was now. One thing was clear – he needed to go up the chain of command and that meant speaking to Stijn Anholts in Kabul.
But before reporting, he wanted a fuller picture.
‘Nagpal?’ he called back through the open front door of the house.
The Sikh arrived a moment later, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. His black beard glistened with water and there were splashes down the front of his shirt. Ginger wondered if he’d been sick or had merely needed a drink of water to head it off. Whichever, it didn’t matter. He knew from experience that the level of crime-scene protocol followed in the UK simply didn’t exist out here, and that the police barely had the capability to take fingerprints, let alone more detailed forensics.
‘Would you agree that the most likely scenario is that Tomas Bakker has been kidnapped?’
‘It is likely, Ginger,’ said Nagpal. ‘Unless the intruders, whoever they were, killed him too.’
‘But there’s no body, and nothing in the house or out here to suggest another murder. Can we get a search of the surrounding area organised?’
Nagpal nodded. ‘Sure. We need to call the police – they’ll organise a search if we pay them.’
‘Seriously? Isn’t that their job?’
‘You might think so, but they often demand payment from the victim’s family to investigate a crime.’ He sounded suddenly exhausted, and Ginger realised that shock was setting in.
‘We have to assume the gate guard is missing, possibly taken too. What is his name?’
‘Mahmoud.’
‘Mahmoud what?’
Nagpal shrugged. ‘That’s all we know him by.’
‘Do you know where he lives?’
Nagpal nodded, but Ginger could see the shock of what had happened was getting to him.
‘Go back to the Land Rover and have some more water. Wait for me there. Call the police, and ask them to go to the gate guard’s house to check on his whereabouts.’ Ginger thought it unlikely that kidnappers would bother to take an old man. It was far more probable that he’d been paid off or warned off his post the night before. Or maybe he’d simply run away when the intruders had arrived. They needed to find him – he was possibly the only eyewitness to what had happened.
Nagpal nodded and turned towards the gate.
‘One other thing,’ said Ginger. ‘Do you know if there have been any threats to the office or to Vinke or Bakker personally in the last few weeks? Did they ever mention anything suspicious?’
Nagpal blinked. ‘Like what?’
‘People watching them, people following them – anything that gave them pause for thought.’ He was starting to wonder if this attack was somehow linked to the assault in Marja, and whether Well Diggers was now facing an escalation of threat.
Nagpal shook his head. ‘Nothing. They said nothing to me.’
After Nagpal had left, Ginger went back over the house once more, this time taking photographs of every room. He knew from experience that once the police arrived the scene would be compromised, and he wanted his own record before that happened. He took pictures of Vinke’s body from every angle, and of the ground at the front of the house.
It was as he went to the opposite side of the body, closer to the wall, that he noticed something sticking out from underneath Vinke’s shoulder. He dropped down onto his haunches for a closer look. It was the toe of a sneaker, well-worn and grimy, protruding from under the body. Vinke must have fallen on it. Being careful not to disturb the body in case there was an IED underneath it, he stuck a pen under the shoe’s laces and drew it out ever so slowly. The white rubber rim and blue canvas were grey with dirt, and when he flipped it over, he saw that the sole was virtually worn through at the ball of the foot and rubbed down at the heel.
He looked down at Vinke’s feet, but the Dutchman was wearing a pair of trainers – and he could see they were several sizes larger than the sneaker. Vinke was a tall man, and this certainly wasn’t his shoe. Bakker was just as tall, so likely not his either. He went back to the Land Rover.
‘Got any clean plastic bags in here?’ he asked.
Nagpal shook his head.
‘A large envelope?’
Nagpal passed him an empty brown envelope from the back seat. It would do as an evidence bag – it’s not as if there would be any forensic facilities down here in Lashkar Gah. He photographed the sneaker and stuck it the envelope. They would need to find out who it belonged to. It was probably just chance that Vinke had fallen on it, but it still needed to be checked out.
Once he’d stashed the shoe in the back of the Land Rover, he felt he’d done all he could. It was time to call the boss.
Thankfully, Anholts picked up on the first ring, but his voice told Ginger that he was puzzled by the call.
‘Mr Jameson, what can I do for you?’
Ginger took a breath. This wasn’t a message that could be garbled. ‘We’ve got a developing situation down here. Lars Vinke is dead, murdered by the looks of it, and Tomas Bakker is missing. I have reason to believe he may have been kidnapped.’
‘Jesus Christ. Where are you and when did this happen? What makes you think Bakker has been taken?’
‘There’s no sign of him at the house, where we found Vinke’s body, and no sign of his demise. The gate guard is also missing.’
‘What about the cleaning woman?’
‘She wasn’t there at the time. Nagpal has sent a message to her home not to come into work. We don’t want the property disturbed.’
‘Have you had a ransom demand or other communication?’
‘Nothing so far.’ He discounted the nightletter they’d found pinned to the door. Nagpal had assured him it was nothing unusual. ‘Am I right in my understanding that Well Diggers has no K&R insurance?’
There was silence at the other end of the line. It was all Ginger needed.
Finally, Anholts spoke. ‘Jameson, how the hell did this happen? You were employed to ensure that my staff were protected from things like this.’
‘Yes, and I was putting new security protocols in place. Protocols that should have been in use already.’ There was no way he was going to let the bastard shift the blame onto him. It rested squarely on Vinke’s dead shoulders.
‘You need to bloody find him – and fast – or you’ll be out of a job. After the Marja attack, this is the last thing we need. We could lose our financial backers…’
Ginger wasn’t impressed. For Anholts it was all about the optics and the money. Not the fact that a man’s life was on the line.
‘I’ll do what I need to do,’ said Ginger, ‘but I’m going to need men and money.’
‘Sure. You have my full authority to handle the situation. Get what help you can from the local police – for what it’s worth. And call me the moment you hear anything from the kidnappers. If they make any financial demands, I’ll have to inform the Dutch and British governments.’
‘The UK government won’t pay a ransom,’ said Ginger. He had no idea about the Dutch, but most western governments took a hard line, at least in public – a couple were rumoured to slip money under the table. ‘Do you have any sort of contingency fund, and if so, how high can I go?’
Ginger could virtually hear the man shaking his head. ‘Nothing. Our budgets have been reduced in recent years – we barely manage to finance our operations.’
This was bad news for Bakker.
‘Stijn, can I make a suggestion?’ He used Anholts’s first name deliberately to put himself at the same level as the man.
‘Go ahead.’
‘I know someone, Alasdair MacKenzie, an ex-colleague who worked anti-terrorism in the Met. He’s done their hostage negotiator course, and he has some experience in matters like this. He’s based in Kabul.’ Ginger wasn’t entirely sure of the extent of Mac’s hands-on experience with kidnappings, but it was a fuck of a lot more than his. Which was zero. ‘I’d like to bring him in.’
‘Okay. Sounds like a plan.’
‘It’ll cost you.’
‘Not as much as a ransom, though?’
‘I’ll get in touch with him and let you know.’
As he finished the call, he heard vehicles drawing up in the street outside. The police had arrived.
Ginger had already met Commander Gulwal of the Lashkar Gah Central Police. Nagpal had taken him to the police station a few days earlier to make the introductions. When Ginger informed the tall, skinny police chief that he would be doubling the number of men he hired from him for security details, Gulwal’s face had broken into a wide-mouthed grin, showing off a set of giant discoloured teeth that could have benefited from the attention of an orthodontist.
Nagpal had translated what he said. ‘I think, Mr Ginger-jan, we are going to be the best of friends to you.’
Ginger had grinned back. ‘As long as you can make a decent bloody brew, you could be right.’ He still felt scarred by the gallons of bitter green tea he’d been subjected to in the office of Major Jananga, his contact within the Kabul police.
This morning, however, there was no grin on Gulwal’s face as Ginger met him at the gateway to the compound. A handful of Gulwal’s men stood behind him, craning their necks to see beyond Ginger’s bulk. Nagpal came up to join them so he could interpret.
‘You told him on the phone what we found?’ Ginger asked Nagpal.
Nagpal nodded, at the same time listening to something Gulwal was saying.
‘He wants to see the body, and he wants his men to search the house.’
Ginger looked at the ragtag band of men that accompanied the police commander. None of their uniforms matched, and their weapons, ex-Soviet AK47s, looked older than the men holding them. He felt thankful he’d been able to check over the property before they arrived and stomped through it. He wondered how trustworthy they were, and whether their presence would help in any way at all. He decided to keep the discovery of the sneaker to himself.
‘Of course,’ he said, stepping out of the way so that the police could enter the compound.
Gulwal walked towards the body, stopping a few feet away from it and holding up an arm to prevent his men from going any closer.
‘He wants to know if you’ve checked it for IEDs,’ translated Nagpal.
Ginger shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ It was something he was happy to leave to Gulwal and his men.
Gulwal barked an order at one of his subordinates, who jogged out of the compound to their vehicles. He reappeared a moment later with a coil of rope. The usual discussion ensued at increasing volume, but Gulwal had the last word. The man handed the rope to one of his colleagues, who passed it on to someone else, like some macabre game of pass the parcel. Ginger wondered how long this was going to take. But Vinke had nowhere to be in a hurry, so maybe it didn’t matter.
The policeman who now held the rope passed his AK to his colleague and walked with exaggerated caution towards the body. Gulwal waved everybody else back towards the gate of the compound.
‘We’re to wait outside,’ Nagpal explained to Ginger.
The rest of the men, Gulwal and Nagpal went out onto the street. Ginger leaned into the doorway, watching the now lone policeman with the rope. As he walked, he tied a sliding loop in one end of it. When he was within a couple of feet of Vinke’s body, he paused. He stepped sideways and then bent forward. Ginger watched, his mouth falling open, as the man then attempted to lasso Vinke’s right arm, which was hanging out a couple of inches from the back of his body. Realising the man’s plan, Ginger stepped back behind the protection of the compound wall. It meant he couldn’t see any more, but he’d rather that than have his head blown off if there was an IED underneath Vinke’s body.
He heard the man’s footsteps hurrying back across the ground in front of the house. He appeared in the gateway, carefully paying out the rope behind him with enough slack not to disturb Vinke’s arm. Ginger took a step back to allow the policeman to shelter with him behind the wall.
Once he was out of the line of any blast, the man gave the rope a hefty tug.
Ginger shut his eyes tight in expectation of an explosion, but there was nothing but a dull thud as the body rolled onto its back, away from the wall of the house.
The policeman peered around the side of the compound entrance and started to speak excitedly. Gulwal added his opinion and the police surged forward, crushing each other in the gateway in their rush to get back into the compound.
‘All is okay, I think,’ said Nagpal.
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Ginger, as he watched Gulwal’s men excitedly trample the crime scene. One of them squatted by Vinke’s body, now lying on its back a foot or so out from the wall, and inspected it more closely. The limbs, stiff with rigor, maintained the position they had when it was resting on its front, making it look awkward and uncomfortable, not that Vinke would be feeling anything now. The rest of the men piled into the house as Gulwal shouted orders at them.
No scene-of-crime protocol, no crime-scene suits, no police photographer, no pathologists taking charge.
He took some pictures of the front of Vinke’s body and a couple of close-ups of the bruises on his throat, but he felt out of his depth. It was time to call Mac.