Missing Believed Dead by Chris Longmuir Page A

care not to slam the doors or make a noise. Several of them jumped a fence and headed for the rear of the bungalows where they would move from garden to garden until they reached the rear of the factory. The others bent double, scuttled round the corner in single file, and up the street.
    When they reached the bungalow the first man in the line hefted the bull bar onto his shoulder and, at a signal from Kate, ran up the path with the other officers following close behind.
    Reaching the door he pounded it with the bar, shouting, ‘Police, police!’
    It took several hard thumps with the bull bar before the door caved in. Yelling, ‘Police, police,’ they surged in, followed by Kate and Adam Strachan.
    The heat engulfed Kate. The only time she’d encountered anything like it before was when she walked off a plane in Cyprus during a heatwave. She blinked and wiped the sweat from her eyes. The light was blinding, the smell of the plants overwhelming, and there was so much greenery the pots holding the plants couldn’t be seen. Every wall inside the house had been demolished leaving one large room filled with thousands of plants, electric wires, duct pipes encased in silver foil, fans and heat lamps.
    The two Asian boys cowering in a corner couldn’t have been any older than fourteen. They looked blankly at the officer questioning them.
    ‘Are these boys the only ones here?’ Kate frowned. The intelligence had been that six men had entered the house late in the afternoon.
    DC Jim Morgan nodded. ‘They don’t seem to speak English and I can’t find out what happened to the others,’ he said. ‘The boys we’ve detained are gardeners. It’s common for gangs to use kids they’ve brought in to the country to tend the crops.’
    ‘Bring them in anyway. Maybe they can tell us something if we get a translator.’
    ‘They probably don’t know much. These gangs are clever.’
    ‘It’s worth a try.’
    * * * *
     
    Bill’s stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten anything since midday, and that had only been a sandwich. Sue was always saying he’d get an ulcer because he didn’t look after himself. Maybe she was right, it was the bane of many a policeman’s life, one of the occupational hazards of the job.
    The wind caught him as he left the centrally heated police headquarters for the cold of a typical March night in Dundee. He stopped, buttoned his jacket, turned his collar up, and ran down the steps to where he’d left his car in one of the disabled parking spaces. It started at the first turn of the ignition, something of a miracle considering the trouble he’d been having lately, then he drove in the direction of Perth Road and the Deep Sea fish restaurant. A fish and chip supper would go down nicely.
    The fish restaurant was a popular place with the students from the university, and workers on their way home, and the queues were usually long, but Bill hit a quiet period and was soon outside again clutching his paper-wrapped supper. He drove the car to Riverside Drive where he found a parking place facing the river. Grabbing the parcel from the front passenger seat he unwrapped it and ate, relishing the taste of fish and chips liberally sprinkled with vinegar. The car would stink for days but he didn’t care, he was enjoying it. Finished, he screwed the paper wrapping into a ball and heaved it into the passenger footwell, wiped his hands on a duster he used to clean his windscreen, leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
    He woke with a start thinking of Evie. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep and the dream of his ex-wife was unwelcome. Usually he pushed thoughts of her to the back of his mind, but now he remembered the time before everything became intolerable. Evie, with her long blonde hair streaming behind her in the wind as they walked along the esplanade, her waist soft beneath his hand. They stopped to kiss in front of where he was parked now. He had thought he was lucky having someone like