Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller

Chapter 10

As Heck pulled off the M6 onto the slip-road just after seven that evening, it was raining. It had been dry, mild and spring-like when he’d left London early afternoon, but he’d often suspected that the Northwest had a micro-climate all of its own. As he followed the main dual carriageway into Bradburn, passing the outlying estates, he saw leaves sprouting on hedges, gardens slowly turning green again. But what initially was drizzle had now become a downpour, the sky overhead as grey as lead, and none of that would help improve the atmosphere of a dump like his hometown. Though as Heck drove on, he couldn’t help wondering if he was being a little hard on the old place; it was somewhere he’d enjoyed a happy and uncomplicated childhood after all. Even the early years of his adolescence had been fun – until the thing that had destroyed his family.

It struck him now that maybe this latter event, which had occurred when he was fifteen, had soured the place for him more than it actually deserved. Bradburn had never really recovered from the wholesale closing of its coalmines and mills during the 1960s and 1970s. These days, it was a tale of drab red-brick streets and multiple tower blocks, and here and there the relics of factories, most of them with boarded windows and chimneys that hadn’t smoked in decades. But it was no more run-down than many other urban boroughs that once had depended on heavy industry and now were struggling to adjust to an age in which all that was history. There were some jobs here, but higher-than-average unemployment was an issue that never seemed to go away.

Heck left the dual carriageway to follow lesser routes through intermittent clusters of shops and houses, most on the shabby side. Every other pub he saw was closed, though of course in the twenty-first century that wasn’t solely a Bradburn problem.

It was now half past seven, and Gemma wasn’t expecting him at the Incident Room until the following morning. He was half tempted to stick his nose in anyway, just to grab himself an update, but as he hadn’t yet found any lodgings, he resolved to sort that out first, and the most obvious port of call was his sister’s house. He wasn’t overly keen on the idea, but Dana would never let him hear the last of it if he arrived in Bradburn and didn’t check in with her at the first opportunity. So once he’d penetrated the labyrinthine outer suburbs, he headed inward for what they’d always known as the Old Town, a large residential district lying east of the town centre.

He cut around this central zone, much of which was pedestrianised, via the Blackhall ward. This had always been the town’s poorest quarter, and by the looks of it things hadn’t improved. Its sordid streets appeared semi-derelict, while the lighting was dismal, the little there was of it leaching into smoky bricks and oily flagstones. Beyond Blackhall, Heck swung a left, following Riverside Way, which skirted along the edge of the River Pennington, passing numerous garages, scrapyards and workshops built into railway arches, and several more blocks of high-rise flats, before turning right onto Wardley Rise, which ascended gently into the residential parish of St Nathaniel’s, or the Old Town, at the centre of which stood the teetering needle spire of St Nathaniel’s Roman Catholic Church, known locally as ‘St Nat’s’.

According to a local newspaper, Heck’s home neighbourhood had once ‘summed up everything the old North was about’. It had a lively community, was strongly Catholic and therefore more orderly and law-abiding than a visitor might expect. It was also famous for housing St Nathaniel’s ARLFC, created by Irish monks back in the candle-lit years of the nineteenth century to give local deprived youth an outlet for their aggression, and now one of the most successful amateur rugby league clubs in the whole of Northwest Counties. As a schoolboy star, Heck had represented its various junior teams with distinction. In every way, St Nat’s had been picture-postcard Bradburn: parallel rows of slate roofs and brick chimneys, mills towering in the background. Grimy but picturesque, and also safe – tribes of kids playing on every street corner, mums and grandmas leaning in doorways, chatting idly. Of course that had been the way it was.

As Heck prowled these benighted neighbourhoods now, he scarcely saw a soul.

That might just be down to the rain and the fact it was midweek. Or alternatively, perhaps this district too had fallen onto hard times. Maybe muggers and street-gangs haunted its shadowy backstreets; or perhaps the escalating underworld violence in general was oppressing everybody.

That said, the Old Town wasn’t exactly dead. Not quite yet. Here and there, streams of warm lamplight filtered through curtained windows, though none at all showed from 23 Cranby Street, the Heckenburg family home.

Heck pulled up in front and switched his engine off. The tiny terraced house’s front curtains were open, but the house itself stood in darkness.

He sat still, pondering.

Not much in Cranby Street had changed, except that there were fewer houses. At least half of them had been demolished at some point in the past, but down at the far end there was still open access through to the canal and the lock-gates, and on the other side the reclaimed spoil-land that had later been turned into the rugby league pitch where a juvenile Heck would score many of his tries. But that was so long ago, and so much had happened since, that it seemed hard to equate this desolate little backwater with the place where he’d spent his early life. And the fact that the house was still in his family made no difference.

Dana – Dana Black, as she’d kept her married name despite having long separated from her waster of a husband – was the sole occupant of number 23, along with Sarah, her sixteen-year-old daughter. Heck hadn’t expected that they wouldn’t be here. It wasn’t quite Easter yet and the kids were still in school, so it had never entered his head that they could be away.

His gaze roved again over the sorry little façade. Like the rest of the street, number 23 only ever seemed to change by getting smaller. It felt incredible that all the Heckenburgs had once dwelled here together: George and Mary, the parents, and their three children, Dana, the eldest, Mark, the youngest, and in the middle … Tom.

It was a deep irony that the head of the Heckenburg clan, George, and Heck’s older brother, Tom, had looked so like each other. Tom had been tall and lean, whereas George had been burly, but there were clear similarities: prominent noses, high, hard cheekbones. Of course, whereas George always stuck with the sober grey suits of his own youth, the sensible ties, the short, brilliantined hair, Tom had preferred the disorderly ‘mophead’ look of the late-80s rock scene (dyeing it straw-blond into the bargain), the tour T-shirts and stone-washed jeans with the knees torn out of them. Father and son had been worlds apart in so many ways. In fact, back in that era, Heck, who was younger than Tom by three years, had been the success story, the ‘normal one’ as his mum and dad would say. Mainly this was due to his star-athlete status at school, and because he and his mates were less a group of intellectual rebels, more a bunch of lads around town, which was something factory worker George Heckenburg could more easily understand.

But the real schism between father and eldest son had only come when Tom got into drugs.

Heck shook his head, deciding he was getting nowhere with such painful reminiscence.

Briefly, he rubbed at a crick in the back of his neck, which was stiffening fast, a result of the long motorway journey he’d just completed. He could certainly have used a warm bath right now, not to mention a hot meal, but it didn’t look as if that was going to happen here.

That said, he at least had to check before resorting to Plan B. He climbed out into the wet and knocked on Dana’s door. There was no response.

He retreated to the car and assessed the building again. The absence of light was very telling, not to mention the absence of drawn curtains or of a television left playing to itself – the kind of precautions an everyday householder would take if they’d just popped around the corner to the chippie. He glanced along the street. A few cars were parked, and there were lights in other windows. But it was improbable there’d be anyone living here now who’d recognise him. If anything, an unknown bloke of his age, wearing jeans, trainers, a zip-up jacket and hoodie, wandering around in the dark and knocking on doors would elicit fear rather than neighbourly assistance.

He climbed back into his Megane, glancing one last time at the house he’d used to call home.

*

With a crunch of brakes, Heck stopped on the car park to St Nathaniel’s. Another place he’d once called home, albeit very briefly. Though it didn’t feel that way now.

The towering religious edifice had been the focal point of this district since the Old Town was first built to house Irish immigrants shipped in as part of the Industrial Revolution. All Heck’s life this had been the beating heart of Bradburn, though again he couldn’t help but wonder how vigorously it beat in the twenty-first century. He hadn’t encountered too many people in the past few years for whom spiritual succour was a high priority. He wasn’t here himself for that reason. He had a more practical purpose in mind – to get directions to a decent billet, and maybe at the same time say hello to his late mother’s younger brother, Father Pat McPhearson, who also happened to be parish priest at St Nat’s.

Heck climbed out and looked the church over. Some parts of its venerable old structure were clad with scaffolding, while its windows were dark and doors locked – though that was no surprise at this time of night. Once, England’s churches were left open twenty-four/seven, their interiors shimmering with candlelight so they could provide a haven for souls in distress whatever the hour. But now a church was just as likely to get robbed and vandalised as any other easily accessible building. Heck crossed the car park on foot to the presbytery, skirting around tins of paint and tools propped against its gatepost. It looked as if extensive refurbishments were under way, probably not before time, given the state of the two-hundred-year-old church.

The presbytery itself wasn’t quite so old, perhaps dating from the late-Victorian period, but evinced the simple austerity of the ecclesiastical life: a narrow building, but tall, again built from red brick, with a steeply sloped roof of heavy grey slate. The fanlight above its large front door was filled with stained glass, as were sections of the two arched windows to either side of it. Both of these were curtained, but dull lamplight speared out.

As Heck rang the doorbell, he recollected the brief time he’d spent lodging here after his family had unanimously decided they didn’t want an officer of the law living under their roof. He’d taken official police digs at first, but those had been in short supply back in the mid-1990s – most of the old section-houses were being sold off. So he’d soon finished up here. His uncle, Father Pat as the local schoolchildren had known him, though equally bemused by his nephew’s decision to join the force, had at least shown a spirit of Christian kindness. Heck had crashed in the presbytery’s spare room until he could afford his own place.

‘How can I help you?’ came a terse Irish voice.

Heck had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t realised the door had opened.

An extremely short woman stood there – five feet at the most – with a truculent, weather-beaten face and thinning red-grey hair. Heck recognised her as Mrs O’Malley, his uncle’s housekeeper. She’d filled out a little since he’d last seen her, which was roughly nineteen years ago. She’d been stocky before, but now was quite plump – an impression enhanced by the thick raincoat she was in the process of buttoning up with a set of stubby, ring-covered fingers.

‘Erm … Mrs O’Malley?’

‘Yes?’ she said impatiently, as if this was something he should surely already know.

She’d been the official housekeeper here for the last thirty years, but she clearly didn’t recognise him. And it was hardly fair to expect otherwise. He hadn’t changed too much in physical terms. He’d been six feet tall then and was six feet tall now. He’d been lean, weighing in at an athletic thirteen and a half stone, and was only slightly above that all these years later. But the smart police uniform had gone, along with the short-back-and-sides, and the unscarred, unlived-in face. It was tempting to say: ‘Hey, it’s me – Mark. I’ve come back to see you after all this time.’ But Mrs O’Malley, who’d always been an irascible soul, was the last person he would ever have come back to visit voluntarily.

‘There’s no bed here,’ she added, before he could say anything. ‘The spare room’s now a lumber room. You’ll have to find one of the shelters down in town.’

Heck was a little surprised. OK, he was wearing jeans, trainers and a hoodie top, but none of it was tatty. Perhaps, if he was so easily mistaken for a hobo, he shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to dress down in Peckham.

‘I’m looking for Father Pat,’ he said. ‘I’d just like a quick word.’

‘He’s not in.’ She stepped out into the porch as she closed the door behind her. Its latch clunked home with an air of finality. ‘He’s making his evening rounds.’

These ‘evening rounds’ had been part of Heck’s uncle’s routine for as long as he remembered. Once the day’s Masses had been said, Father Pat would visit the hospitals and hospices, then the homeless centres, then the houses of the sick and the bereaved and the down-at-heart. That wasn’t the sort of thing you could wrap up in half an hour.

‘OK.’ Heck turned away. ‘Thanks.’

‘He might – just might – pop into The Coal Hole down on Shadwell Road,’ she called after him. ‘But only if he has a bit of time left.’

Heck glanced back and nodded. He knew where The Coal Hole was. Father Pat might be a priest, and a good one too, but he was occasionally partial to a small whiskey.

‘If he misses you tonight, I’ll be seeing him again in the morning. Who shall I say called?’

‘Mark – his nephew.’

There was a long, cool silence, the woman’s features inscrutable in the dimness. Finally, she said, ‘Well, well … you wouldn’t by any chance be in trouble again?’

Mrs O’Malley was another who’d disapproved of what Heck had done all those years ago. Descended from a long line of Irish Republicans, she’d disapproved of the British police in general, so she’d felt especially affronted by Heck taking up lodgings here.

‘No, I’m not in trouble, Mrs O’Malley,’ Heck replied. ‘But you guys may be.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘All of you.’ He walked on to the gate.

‘If Father Pat asks?’ she called again, now sounding a tad concerned.

‘Yep,’ Heck said over his shoulder. ‘Him too.’

Chapter 11

Bradburn wasn’t just known for being a grim town up north. It had also produced several celebrated sons and daughters who’d made an impact in the entertainment industry.

One of the most controversial of these – at least in his time – was Terry Bayber, a knockabout northern comic whose heyday was the late 1940s and early 1950s, but who’d mainly been famous back then for being irreverent and even ‘subversive’ according to one daily newspaper. Bayber’s risqué routines were always aided and abetted by his busty, blonde and ever scantily clad girlfriend and business partner, Mavis Broom, ‘Our Mavis’, who was the recipient of endless light-hearted innuendo throughout his shows. Bayber’s death in 1954, at the age of 55, was very premature, but his memory lived on, certainly on his home patch, where campaigners had lobbied from an early stage for a permanent memorial to him. Only now had this dream finally become reality, with Bradburn Council coughing up, and further donations coming from local businesses, to produce a seven-foot-tall bronze figure mounted on a plinth in the town’s central Plaza.

But this was Bradburn, so things had not gone entirely smoothly.

There’d been considerable debate about the proposed grand unveiling, some officials expressing concern that on a rainy midweek evening there’d be a relatively low attendance. Others, however, argued that the recent gangland violence had frightened and depressed everyone, making them feel that they lived in a no-go zone, and that it could only be good for Bradburn to host some kind of event in the town centre, something lively and fun, something that would cheer people up and distract from the painful present by injecting it with a touch of nostalgia. As for the weather – that was a moot point. A bit of rain was easily tolerable for the average Bradburner, especially if they hired their woman-of-the-moment, Shelley Harper, to do the bouncy, blonde Our Mavis thing while she unveiled the statue.

Shelley Harper.

She’d been the town’s official doe-eyed beauty for as long as most Bradburn residents could remember. A pageant winner from way back, and a mainstay of high-profile charity events, where she’d parachuted in wearing basque and suspenders or had run marathons in a thong and baby-doll nightie, the latter turning ever more suggestively transparent the hotter and sweatier she got, Shelley had always been one to catch the eye. But a recent television appearance had raised her profile dramatically, and on a national scale, even earning her the much-sought moniker ‘reality TV star’.

Ever the willing lass, Shelley had signed up for the unveiling without hesitation, even though she’d never heard of Terry Bayber. Reflecting her recent TV success, the money would be marginally better than it used to be for events for this, though it still wasn’t up to much. But, on the positive side, it wouldn’t take long and would be easy enough work. All she had to do was pull some cord and a sheet would fall down, and if it was a little bit demeaning that yet again she’d be posing and preening while wearing next to nothing in the midst of goggling spectators, well … that was Shelley’s stock-in-trade.

So she was there bang on time at the Town Hall that damp Thursday night of April 5, and, suited and booted, found herself ushered out into the middle of the Plaza, where, swathed in a heavy blue cloak, she was confronted by a lively crowd, mainly male, milling around behind the red velvet ropes and, though easily marshalled by a handful of uniformed bobbies in hi-vis doublets, so eager for the unveiling to commence – the unveiling of Shelley Harper as much as the unveiling of the statue – that they were shouting and hooting with impatience.

The mayoral party lined up alongside her in their overcoats and waterproofs, though Bradburn’s actual Mayor, Councillor Jim Croakwell, who was currently at the microphone making a rather ponderous speech, was wearing his robes and chain of office, plus his tricorn, which, given his porcine shape, triple chins, roseate cheeks and gruff northern voice, made him look like some kind of Victorian beadle.

At least he isn’t standing next to me any more, Shelley thought.

Several times already that evening he’d allowed his arm to steal around her waist under the pretence of fatherly protectiveness.

It wasn’t very respectful, but there was nothing new in it.

In truth, she was under no illusions about her status here: she was no real VIP, and everyone in the Plaza knew it. She was little more than a bit-part actress and wannabe model. Shelley’s glorious looks and figure and her flowing blonde hair were all for real. She was a natural-born stunner. But a variety of ill-advised career moves had served to limit her life’s ambitions at an early stage. For example, an appearance on Page Three back when she was nineteen had led on to a much more explicit role as a centrefold in a less than classy girlie mag a couple of years later, and even if both those adventures had paid her well at the time, they’d detracted from her marketability in later years. So, on approaching her late twenties and fearing her star was waning, she’d embarked on several well-publicised affairs with other, somewhat less minor celebrities from the Northwest – one a locally born TV writer, whose married life was subsequently ruined, the other a Premiership footballer whose fabulous wealth had ensured that his wasn’t – none of which had done her long-term reputation any good. This had been her career’s last gasp, or so she’d thought at the time – fame for all the wrong reasons – yet now, ten years later (after doing a few other things she was even more ashamed of, though thankfully they remained private), she was suddenly in the midst of a personal renaissance thanks to Bond or Break, a satellite TV talent show in which the Z-list contestants had to endure extreme hardships as they trekked through the Amazon jungle, cooking their own food, sleeping under canvas and only able to bathe in rivers, lakes and waterfalls.