Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Paul Finch 2017

Cover photographs © Henry Steadman

Cover design © Henry Steadman 2017

Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007551293

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780007551309

Version 2017-10-26

Praise for Paul Finch

‘Wonderfully dark and peppered with grim humour. Finch is a born storyteller and writes with the authentic voice of the ex-copper he is.’

PETER JAMES

‘Edge-of-the-seat reading … formidable – a British Alex Cross.’

SUN

‘An ingenious and original plot. Compulsive reading.’

RACHEL ABBOTT

‘As good as I expected from Paul Finch. Relentlessly action-packed, breathless in its finale, Paul expertly weaves a trail through the North’s dark underbelly.’

NEIL WHITE

‘A deliciously twisted and fiendish set of murders and a great pairing of detectives.’

STAV SHEREZ

‘Avon’s big star … part edge-of-the-seat, part hide-behind-the-sofa!’

THE BOOKSELLER

‘An explosive thriller that will leave you completely hooked.’

WE LOVE THIS BOOK

Dedication

For Cathy, who has not just been my beloved wife for the last three decades, but also my best friend, my toughest critic, my staunchest supporter, my constant adviser and, in all things, my strong right arm.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Paul Finch

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

About the author

By the same author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Barrie and Les saw customer care as an essential part of their role as porno merchants.

Some might laugh at that notion, given pornography’s normal place in the world. It was all very well people pretending it was near enough respectable now, but the reality was that, even if you used porn, you tended not to talk about it. You weren’t generally interested in building a rapport with the providers – you just wanted to acquire your goods and go (said goods then to reside in a secret compartment in your home where hopefully no one would ever find them). No, one wouldn’t normally have thought this a business where the friendly touch would pay dividends, but Barrie and Les, who’d jointly and successfully managed Sadie’s Dungeon, their street-corner sex shop for twelve years, didn’t see it that way at all.

Certainly Barrie didn’t, and he was the thinker of the twosome.

In Barrie’s opinion, it was all about improving the customer’s experience so that he would happily return. Happily – that was the key. Yes, it was about providing quality material, but at the same time doing it with a smile and a quip or two, and being helpful with it – if someone requested information or advice, you actually tried to assist, you didn’t just stand there with that bored, bovine expression so common among service industry staff throughout the UK.

This way the customer would more likely buy from Sadie’s Dungeon again – it wasn’t difficult to understand. And it worked.

Even in this day and age, there was something apparently disquieting about the act of buying smut. Barrie and Les had seen every kind of person in here, from scruffy, drunken louts to well-dressed businessmen, and yet all had ventured through the front door in similar fashion: rigid around the shoulders, licks of sweat gleaming on their brows, eyes darting left and right as though fearful they were about to encounter their father-in-law – and always apparently eager to engage in an ice-breaking natter with the unexpectedly friendly guys behind the counter, though this was usually while their merchandise was being bagged; it was almost as if they were so relieved the experience was over that they suddenly felt free to gabble, to let all that pent-up humiliation pour out of them.

It was probably also a relief to them that Sadie’s Dungeon was so neat and tidy. The old cliché about sex shops being seedy backstreet establishments with grubby windows and broken neon signs, populated by the dirty-raincoat brigade and trading solely in well-thumbed mags and second-hand videotapes covered in suspiciously sticky fingerprints, was a thing of the past. Sadie’s Dungeon was a clean, modern boutique. OK, its main window was blacked-out and it still announced its presence at the end of Buckeye Lane with garish luminous lettering, but behind the dangling ribbons in the doorway it was spacious, clean and very well lit. There was no tacky carpet here to make you feel physically sick, no thumping rock music or lurid light show to create an air of intimidation. Perhaps more to the point, Barrie and Les were local lads, born and raised right here in Bradburn. It wasn’t a small borough as Lancashire towns went – more a sprawling post-industrial wasteland – but even for those punters who didn’t know them, at least their native accents, along with their friendly demeanour, evoked an air of familiarity. Made it feel a little more welcoming, almost wholesome.

‘Fucking shit!’ Les snarled from his stool behind the till. ‘Bastard!’

‘What’s up?’ Barrie said, only half hearing.

‘Fucking takings are crap again.’

‘Yeah?’ Barrie was distracted by the adjustments he was making to one of the displays.

When Sadie’s Dungeon had first opened, sales had initially been great, but ever since then – thanks mainly to the internet, and despite the lads’ conscientious customer-care routine – business had steadily declined.

‘Don’t get your undies in a twist,’ Barrie said, determinedly relaxed about it. ‘They’re not that far down. We’re doing all right.’

Though Les didn’t share such airy optimism, he tended to listen to Barrie, who was undoubtedly the brains behind Sadie’s Dungeon, and in Les’s eyes a very smart cookie.

‘Sonja, we’re almost done!’ Les shouted down the corridor behind the counter.

‘’Kay … getting dressed,’ came a female voice.

Which was when the bell rang as the shop’s outer door was opened. The breeze set the ribbons fluttering as a bulky shape backed in, lugging something heavy behind him.

Les turned from the rack of DVDs he was busy reordering. ‘Sorry, sir – we’re closing.’

The customer halted but didn’t turn around; he bent down slightly as if what he was dragging was cumbersome as well as heavy. They noticed that under his massive silvery coat he wore steel-shod boots and baggy, shapeless trousers made from some thick, dark material.

‘Sir, we’re closed,’ Barrie said, approaching along the right-hand aisle.

Where Les was short, stocky and shaven-headed, Barrie was six-four and, though rangy of build with a mop of dark hair and good looks, he knew how to impose himself and use his height.

‘Hey, excuse me … hey, mate!’

The figure backed all the way into the shop, the door jammed open behind him. When he straightened up, they saw that he was wearing a motorcycle helmet.

‘Shit!’ Les yanked open a drawer and snatched out a homemade cosh, a chunk of iron cable with cloth wrapped around it.

Barrie might have reacted violently too, except that as the figure pivoted around, the sight froze him where he stood. He wasn’t sure what fixated him more, the extended, gold-tinted welder’s visor riveted to the front of the intruder’s helmet, completely concealing the features beneath, or the charred-black steel muzzle now pointing at him, the rubber pipe attachment to which snaked back around the guy’s body to a wheeled tank at his rear.

Les shouted hoarsely as he lifted the counter hatch, but it was too late.

A gloved finger depressed a trigger, and a fireball exploded outward, immersing Barrie head to foot. As he tottered backward, screeching and burning, it abruptly shut off again, swirling oil-black smoke filling the void. The intruder advanced, a second discharge following, the gushing jet of flame expanding across the shop in a ballooning cloud, sweeping sideways as he turned, engulfing everything in its path. Les flung his cosh, missing by a mile, and then ran across the back of the shop, stumbling for the exit. But the intruder followed, weapon levelled, squirting out a fresh torrent of fire, dousing him thoroughly as he hung helplessly on the escape bar.

The suspended ceiling crashed downward, its warping tiles exposing hissing pipework and sparking electrics. But the intruder held his ground, a featureless rock-like horror, hulking, gold-faced, armoured against the debris raining from above, insulated against the heat and flames. Slowly, systematically, he swivelled, pumping out further jets of blazing fuel, bathing everything he saw until the inferno raged wall to wall, until the room was a crematorium, the screaming howl of which drowned out even those shrieks of the two shop-managers as they tottered and wilted and sagged in the heart of it, like a pair of melting human candles.

Chapter 2

The quarter of Peckham where Fairfax House stood was not the most salubrious. To be fair, this whole district of South London had once been renowned for its desolate tower blocks, maze-like alleys and soaring crime rates. That wasn’t the whole story these days. It was, as so many internet articles liked to boast, ‘looking to the future’, and its various regeneration projects were ‘well under way’. But there were still some pockets here which time had left behind.

Like the Fairfax estate, the centrepiece of which was Fairfax House.

A twelve-storey residential block, it stood amid a confusion of glass-strewn lots and shadowy underpasses, a textbook example of urban decay. Much was once made in the popular press of the menacing gangs that liked to prowl this neighbourhood, or the lone figures who would loiter on its corners after dark, looking either to mug you or to sell you some weed, or maybe both, but the sadder reality was the sense of hopelessness here. Nobody lived in or even visited this neighbourhood if they could avoid it. Several entire apartment blocks were now hollow ruins, boarded up and awaiting demolition.

At least Fairfax House had been spared that indignity. Darkness had now fallen, and various lights showed from its grotty façade, indicating the presence of a few occupants. There were several cars parked on the litter-strewn cul-de-sac out front, and even a small sandpit and a set of swings on the grass nearby, fenced off by the residents to keep it free from condoms and crack phials. Even so, this wasn’t the sort of place one might have expected to find John Sagan.

A high-earning criminal, or so the story went, Sagan would certainly value his anonymity. Unaffiliated to any gang or syndicate, he was the archetypical loner. He wasn’t married as far as the Local Intelligence Unit knew; he didn’t even have a girlfriend, or boyfriend for that matter. He worked by day as an office admin assistant, and as such seemed to lead a conventional nine-’til-five existence. This, presumably, was the main reason he’d flown beneath the police radar for as long as he had. But even so, it was a hell of a place he’d found to bury himself in. It wouldn’t appeal to the average man in the street. But then, contrary to appearances, there was nothing average about John Sagan. At least, not according to the detailed statement Heck had recently taken from a certain Penny Flint, a local streetwalker of his acquaintance.

Heck, as his colleagues knew him – real title Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg – was currently ensconced in Fairfax House himself, though in his case lolling on a damp, badly-sprung sofa on the lower section of a split-level corridor on the third floor. Immediately facing him was the tarnished metal door to a lift which had malfunctioned so long ago that even the ‘Out of Order’ notice had fallen off. On his right stood a pair of fire-doors complete with glass panels so grimy you could barely see through them; on the other side of those was the building’s main stairwell. It was a cold, dank position, only partly lit because most of the bulbs on this level were out.

He’d been here the best part of the afternoon, with only a patched-up jumper, a pair of scruffy jeans, a raggedy old combat jacket and a woollen hat to protect him against the March chill. He didn’t even have fingers in his gloves, or socks inside his rotted, toeless trainers. Of course, just in case all that failed to create the impression that he was a hopeless wino, he hadn’t shaved for a week or combed his hair in several days, and the half-full bottle of water tinted purple to look like meths that was hanging from his pocket was not so wrapped in greasy newspaper that it wouldn’t be spotted.

The guise had worked thus far. Several of the gaunt individuals who inhabited the building had been and gone during the course of the day, and hadn’t given him a second glance. But of John Sagan there’d been no sign. Heck knew that because, from where he was slumped, he had a good vantage along the passage, and number 36, the door to Sagan’s flat, which stood on the right-hand side, hadn’t opened once since he’d come on duty that lunchtime. The team knew Sagan was in there – officers on the previous shift had made casual walk-bys, and had heard him moving around. But he was yet to emerge.

Heck was certain he would recognise the guy, having studied the photographs carefully beforehand. Purely in terms of appearance, Sagan really was the everyday Joe: somewhere in his mid-forties, about five-eight, of medium build, with a round face and thinning, close-cropped fair hair. He usually wore a pair of round-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles, but otherwise had no distinguishing features: no tattoos, no scars. And yet, ironically, it was this workaday image that was most likely to make him stand out. In his efforts to look the part-time clerk he actually was, Sagan favoured suits, shirts, ties and leather shoes. But that wasn’t the regular costume in this neck of the woods. Far from it.

And yet this was only one of many contradictions in the curious character that was John Sagan.

For example, who would have guessed that his real profession was torturer-for-hire? Who would have known from his outward appearance that he was a vicious sadist who loaned his talents to the underworld’s highest bidders, and performed his unspeakable skills all over the country?

Heck wouldn’t have believed it himself – especially as the Serial Crimes Unit had never heard about John Sagan before – had the intel not come from Penny Flint, who was one of his more trustworthy informants. She’d even told Heck that Sagan had a specially adapted caravan called the ‘Pain Box’, which he took with him on every job. Apparently, this was a mobile torture chamber, kitted on the inside with all kinds of specialist devices ranging from clamps, manacles and cat o’nine tails to pliers, drills, surgical saws, electrodes, knives, needles and, exclusively for use on male victims, a pair of nutcrackers. To make things worse, and apparently to increase the sense of horror for those taken inside there, its whole interior was spattered with dried bloodstains, which Sagan purposely never cleaned off.

Penny Flint knew all this because, having offended some underworld bigwig, she herself had recently survived a session in the Pain Box – if you could call it surviving; when Heck had gone to see her in her Lewisham flat, she’d been on crutches and looked to have aged thirty years. She’d advised him that there were even medical manuals on the shelves in the Pain Box to aid Sagan in his quest to apply the maximum torment, while its central fixture was a horizontal X-shaped cross, on which the victims would be secured with belts and straps. Video feeds of each session played live on a screen positioned on the ceiling overhead, so that the victims were forced to watch in close detail as they were brutalised.

As he waited there on the semi-derelict corridor, and took another swig of ‘meths’, Heck recollected the initial reaction back at the Serial Crimes Unit, or SCU as it was officially known in police circles, when he’d first broken the story. Strictly speaking, a freelance torturer operating inside the underworld wasn’t entirely within their normal remit, but it was anyone’s guess how many people this guy had maimed and/or murdered. It was way too tempting a case to simply hand over. Even so, there had been understandable doubts expressed.

‘Why haven’t we heard about this guy before?’ DC Shawna McCluskey wanted to know.

Shawna had grown increasingly cynical and pugnacious the longer she’d served in SCU. These days she never took anything at face value, but it was a fair question. Heck had asked the same of Penny Flint when he’d been to see her. The primary explanation – that Sagan was an arch-pro and that those he was actually paid to kill were disposed of without trace – was plausible enough. But the secondary explanation – that he’d mostly tended to punish gangland figures who’d betrayed or defied their bosses, and so those who were merely tortured and released again would be unwilling to blab – was less so. Contrary to popular belief, the much-mythologised code of silence didn’t extend widely across the underworld. But then, Penny Flint had been the proof of that. From what she’d told Heck, she’d had no idea who Sagan initially was and had merely thought him another customer. She’d gone off with him voluntarily to perform a sex service, or so she’d expected. When they’d arrived at what she assumed was his caravan sitting on a nondescript backstreet in Lewisham, she’d had no idea what was inside it.

Perhaps if he’d simply beaten her up, Penny would have accepted it as justified punishment for a foolish transgression, but Sagan was nothing if not a meticulous torturer. In her case, after she’d recovered from the chloroform to find herself manacled and helpless, it had been deliberately sexual – the idea being not just to hurt her in a deep and lasting way, but to deprive her of an income afterwards. And that was too much to tolerate.

‘Why is Flint tipping us the wink?’ Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper, head of SCU, asked. ‘What does she have to gain?’

‘In this case I think it’s personal, ma’am,’ Heck replied.

‘That won’t cut it, Heck – we need specifics.’

‘Well … she wasn’t very forthcoming on the details, but she’s got a kid now. A baby – less than one year old.’

‘Bloody great!’ DC Gary Quinnell chipped in. A burly Welshman and a regular attender at chapel, he was well known for tempering his sometimes brutal brand of law-enforcement with Christian sentiment. ‘God knows what kind of life that little mite’s going to have.’

‘The first thing it’s going to get acquainted with is the Food Bank,’ Heck replied. ‘By the looks of Penny, she won’t be working the streets any time soon. Unless she can find some johns who like getting it on with cripples.’

Gemma shrugged. ‘So she’s got a child and suddenly she’s lost her job. Perfect timing. But how does grassing on John Sagan help with that?’

‘It doesn’t, ma’am. But Penny isn’t the sort to go down without a fight. She told me that if she isn’t good for the game any more, she’ll make sure this bastard’s put out of business too.’

‘So it’s purely about revenge?’ Gemma still sounded sceptical.

‘Penny’s an emotional girl, ma’am. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of her.’

It hadn’t been a lot to go on, but it had been a start. Heck had touched other snouts for info regarding Sagan, but none had been prepared to talk. At least, not as much as Penny Flint. She’d given them the suspect’s description, his home address, his place of work and so forth. In fact, just about the only thing she hadn’t been able to deliver was the Pain Box, which he supposedly kept in a lock-up somewhere else in South London, though its actual location was his best kept secret. They’d searched hard, but no avenue had led to his ownership of any kind of vehicle other than a battered old Nissan Primera, which he’d owned since 2005 and which was parked outside Fairfax House at this very moment. Of course, it didn’t help that Penny Flint didn’t know the vehicle registration mark of the Pain Box. It had been late at night when Sagan had taken her to it, and, not knowing what was about to happen, she hadn’t been paying attention to detail.

This was no minor problem.

Even the medical evidence proving that Penny had been severely assaulted was useless on its own; firstly, because there was nothing to physically link this act to John Sagan, but secondly, and mainly, because Penny valued her status as a cash-earning police informer, and had no intention of giving evidence herself – not in open court. The best they could do in this case was ‘respond to information received from an anonymous tip’ by stopping and searching the caravan for items intended for use in criminal activity, and then ‘discovering’ the many bloodstains inside it, which the forensics boys could later, hopefully, link to an extensive list of past crimes – in that event it wouldn’t matter that Penny wasn’t prepared to witness for them.

‘We need that caravan,’ Gemma said emphatically. ‘We could raid his flat, but what would be the point? If this guy’s as careful as Flint says, every incriminating thing in his life is stored in this so-called Pain Box.’

With regard to Sagan himself, it was highly suspicious how clean he seemed to be. No criminal record was one thing, but his employment, financial and educational histories were also unblemished. The guy appeared to have led a completely uneventful life, which was almost never the case with someone involved in violent crime.

‘What we’ve got here is a real Jekyll and Hyde character,’ Heck declared. ‘Openly a picture of respectability, deep down – very deep down – a career degenerate.’

‘Inspired comparisons with cool horror stories don’t make a case,’ Gemma replied. ‘We still need that caravan.’

Short of putting out public appeals, which was obviously a no-no, they’d done everything in their power to locate the Pain Box, but had still come up with nothing. However, when Heck went to visit Penny Flint a second time, now in company with Gemma, it was the prostitute herself who made a suggestion.

‘Why don’t I just piss the local mob off again?’ she said. ‘They’ll send him to teach me another lesson, and you can nab him.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Heck asked her.

‘Christ’s sake, Heck, this is easy. After he finished with me last time, I was half dead, but still conscious enough to listen to his threats. “If I need to see you again, it won’t end so well,” he said. And he really meant it, I’ll tell you.’

‘Who paid him to do that to you?’ Gemma asked.

‘Don’t be soft,’ Penny snorted. ‘I’m not telling you that.’

‘OK, no names, but what did you do to annoy them?’

‘Gimme a fucking break, Miss Piper –’

‘Hey!’ Gemma’s voice adopted that familiar whip-crack tone. ‘We’re not here at your disposal, Miss Flint. Our job is to enforce the law, not pay off private scores. And we can’t do that flying blind. At present we don’t even know who you are, never mind John Sagan. So the least you can do is enlighten us a little.’

Penny glanced at Heck. ‘You gave me your word I’d be immune from prosecution if I helped you out with this …?’

Heck shrugged. ‘Unless you’ve done something very serious, we’re only interested in Sagan.’

‘OK, well …’ She hesitated. ‘Doing a bit of delivering, wasn’t I?’

‘Delivering what?’ Gemma asked. ‘Drugs? Drugs money?’

‘Bit of both. You know the scene.’

‘And let me guess, you were skimming?’

‘What else?’ Penny’s cheeks reddened. ‘Hey, you’re looking at me like I’m some kind of criminal.’

Neither of the two cops commented, though both wanted to. Even so, she detected the irony.

‘Don’t get smarmy on me, Heck. Look at the state I’m in. I’m past forty. Even before that bastard Sagan tore my arse and pussy inside-out, how much shelf-life did I have left? Anyway, I thought I’d been careful. Thought no one’d notice me dip, but they did. And … well, you know the rest.’

‘And you’re seriously saying this firm would trust you with that job again?’ Heck said.

‘Yeah.’ She seemed surprised he’d ask such a question. ‘Sagan’s a scary guy. They’re sure I’ll have learned my lesson.’

‘And what you’re proposing is to commit exactly the same offence all over again?’ Gemma said. ‘Even though you know what the outcome will be?’

‘The difference is this time you lot’ll be sitting on Sagan, won’t you? You can jump on him as soon as he gets his caravan out.’

They were impressed by her courage – in fact they were quietly startled by it. Heck wondered if her desire for revenge was getting the better of her common sense, to which she merely shrugged.

‘Heck – we both want the guy gone. The only way we can make that happen legally is for you to catch him in the act with his Pain Box. This is the quickest and most obvious way to make that happen.’

‘Miss Flint,’ Gemma said. ‘This time you may have pushed things too far. He could just shoot you through the head.’

‘Nah. The firm I’m talking about like to make a show. Besides … Pain Box, gun? Why will it matter? Like I say, you lot’ll jump on him first.’

It had sounded simple initially, but of course there were complicating issues. Even if Penny Flint had been prepared to testify in court, the fact that, by her own admission, she’d been stealing from an underworld bigwig would have made her an unreliable witness. It could even have allowed the defence to accuse the police of conspiracy for ‘encouraging’ her to steal again. It was all the more important, therefore, that the team write up their interest in Sagan as an anonymous tip-off, and go solely on any evidence they found inside the Pain Box, keeping Penny out of it altogether. Despite that, the risks of using a female civilian as bait would be extraordinary. Since the operation had gone live four days ago, Gemma had assigned a round-the-clock armed guard to her flat – all covertly of course, which had added an extra dimension of difficulty.

The same applied to the stakeout at Sagan’s flat.

Thus far, in addition to slumping on this ratty old couch in his state of feigned inebriation, Heck had kept watch for another eight hours from behind a window in the empty low-rise on the other side of the cul-de-sac, and had spent half a day in the back of a shabby old van parked right alongside Sagan’s Primera. Other detectives in the surveillance team had spent hours ‘fixing’ a supposedly broken-down lorry on the same street, while another one – Gary Quinnell of all people, all six-foot-three of him – had donned a hi-vis council-worker jacket in order to sweep gutters and pick litter. The common factors had always been the same: damp, cold, the soul-destroying greyness of this place, and then the smell – that eerie whiff of decay that always seemed to wreathe run-down buildings. The word ‘discomfort’ didn’t cover it; nor ‘boredom’. Even their awareness that at any time they could be called into action – an awareness that was more acute than normal given that every officer here was armed – had gradually faded into the background as the minutes had become hours and, ultimately, days.

Heck shifted position, but in sluggish, slovenly fashion in case someone was watching. He hitched the Glock under his right armpit. It wasn’t a familiar sensation. Though every detective in SCU was required to be firearms-certified, and they were tested and assessed regularly in this capacity, he for one had rarely carried a pistol on duty. But this was an unusual, open-ended operation which no one was even sure would bring a result. Gemma had opted for pistols purely for self-defence purposes, thanks to Sagan’s deadly reputation – though again there was no certainty that reputation had been well earned.

And this lack of overall certainty was the real problem.

There was no way Gemma would commit so many SCU resources to this obbo indefinitely. She was on the plot herself today, having arrived early afternoon, and was now waiting in an unmarked command car somewhere close by. That wasn’t necessarily a good sign – it might be that she’d finally put herself at Ground Zero to get a feel for what was going on, maybe with a view to cancelling the whole show. On the other hand, it could also mean that Sagan’s non-appearance today – all the previous days of the obbo he’d gone to work as usual – might mean something was afoot. They knew he only worked at his official job part-time, so perhaps to maintain the impression of normality he would only indulge in his extracurricular activities on one of his days off.

Heck chewed his lip as he thought this through.

Penny Flint reckoned she’d dipped again into her employers’ funds some four days ago. The retribution could come at any time, but if Sagan was a genuine pro he wouldn’t respond with a kneejerk. He’d strike when the time most suited him – not that they’d want him to leave it too long. That could be inviting the bird to fly.

‘Sorry to break radio silence, ma’am,’ the voice of DC Charlie Finnegan crackled in Heck’s left ear. ‘But two blokes have just gone in through the front door of Fairfax House, male IC1s, well-dressed – too well-dressed if you know what I mean. Can’t help thinking I recognise one of them, but I’m not sure where from, over.’

There was a brief lull, before Gemma’s voice responded: ‘Be advised all units inside Fairfax House – we may have intruders on the plot. Could be nothing, but stay alert. Charlie, did these two arrive in a vehicle, over?’

‘Negative, ma’am, not that I saw. They approached from Parkinson Drive, which lies adjacent to Fairfax House on the southeast side. I’m making my way around there now, over.’

‘Roger that … PNC every vehicle parked, and make it snappy. Heck, you in position?’

‘Affirmative, ma’am,’ Heck replied quietly – he could hear a resounding clump of feet and the low murmur of voices ascending the stairwell on the other side of the fire-doors. He checked his cap to ensure it concealed his earpiece. ‘Sounds like I’m about to get company, over.’

‘Received, Heck … all units stand by, over.’

The airwaves fell silent, and Heck slumped back onto his sofa, eyelids drooped as though he was in a drunken daze. The footfalls grew louder, the fire-doors swung open and two shadowy forms perambulated into view. In the dim light, Heck wasn’t initially able to distinguish them, though from their low Cockney voices he could tell they were both males, probably in their thirties or forties.

‘Q&A session first, all right?’ one said to the other. ‘Don’t let on we know anything …’

For a fleeting half-second the duo were more clearly visible: shirts, sports jackets, ties hanging loose at the collar. And faces, one pale and neatly bearded – he was the taller and younger of the two; the other older and grouchier, with hang-dog jowls.

To Heck they were unmistakeable.

He held his position until they’d passed him, ascending the three steps to the dingy corridor and trundling off along it. He sat upright to watch their receding backs. Once they were out of earshot, he leaned close to his lapel mic. ‘Heckenburg to DSU Piper … ma’am, I know these two. They’re ours. DS Reg Cowling and DC Ben Bishop from Organised Crime.’

In the brief silence, he could imagine Gemma gazing around at whoever else was in the command car, mystified. ‘What the hell are they doing here?’ she’d be asking. ‘How the devil did they get onto this?’ He could also picture the blank expressions that would greet these questions.

‘They’re heading down Sagan’s corridor,’ Heck added. ‘There’ll be other villains living in this building, but if it’s not him they’re here for, ma’am, I’m a sodding Dutchman.’

‘Can you intercept, over?’

‘Negative, ma’am … they’re virtually at his door.’

‘Understood. Heck, hold your position. All we can do now is hope.’

Heck stood up, but slammed himself flat against the wall beside the steps, crooking his neck to look along the passage. He understood her thinking. If he went running down there and tried to grab the two cops, there was every possibility Sagan would open the door and catch all three of them. If he kept out of the way, however, it was just vaguely possible the duo had some routine business to conduct with the guy and might be on their way out again in a minute, with no one any the wiser about the obbo. That latter option was a long shot, of course. Like SCU, the Organised Crime Division was part of the National Crime Group. They didn’t deal with routine matters. There was one other possibility too, which was even more depressing. Suppose Cowling and Bishop were up to no good themselves? Could it be they were here to see Sagan for reasons unconnected with police-work? If so, that would be a whole new level of complexity.

Heck squinted down the gloomy passage. The twosome had halted alongside number 36. They didn’t knock immediately, but appeared to be conferring. He supposed he could try to signal to them, alert them to an additional police presence, but the idea was now growing on him fast that these two might have nefarious motives.

A fist thudded on the apartment door. Heck held his breath. At first there was no audible response, then what sounded like a muffled voice.

‘Yeah, police officers, sir,’ Cowling said. ‘Could you open up? We need to have a chat.’

Heck breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t in cahoots with Sagan after all. But now he felt uneasy for other reasons. Given the severity of Sagan’s suspected offences, this was a very front-on approach – it seemed odd the two detectives had come here without any kind of support. Did they know something SCU didn’t, or did they simply know nothing? Had ambition to feel a good collar overridden the necessity of performing some due diligence?

The muffled voice intoned again. It sounded as if it had said ‘one minute’.

And then two thundering shotgun blasts demolished the door from the inside, the ear-jarring din echoing down the passage. Cowling and Bishop were blown back like rag dolls. The impacts as their bodies struck the facing wall shook the entire building.

‘This is Heck inside Fairfax House!’ Heck shouted into his radio as drew his Glock. ‘Shots fired – immediate armed support required on the third floor! We also have two officers down with gunshot wounds. We need an advance trauma team and rapid evac! Get the Air Ambulance if you can, over!’

A gabble of electronic voices burst in response, but it was Gemma’s that cut through the dirge. ‘Heck, this is DSU Piper … you are to wait for support, I repeat you are to wait for support! Can you acknowledge, over?’

‘Affirmative, ma’am,’ Heck replied, but he’d already removed his woolly hat and replaced it with a hi-vis, chequer-banded baseball cap. Climbing the three steps, he advanced warily along the corridor, weapon cocked but dressed down as per the manual. ‘Both shots fired through the door from inside number 36. Sounded like a shotgun. Both Cowling and Bishop are down … by the looks of it, they’ve incurred severe injuries, over.’

‘What’s your exact position?’ Gemma asked.

‘Approx thirty yards along the corridor … but I’m going to have difficulty reaching the casualties. They’re both still in the line of fire, over.’

‘Negative, Heck! You’re to get no closer until you have full firearms support. Am I clear?’

‘Affirmative, ma’am.’ More by instinct than design, Heck continued to advance, but ultra-slowly, his right shoulder skating the right-hand wall. At twenty yards, he halted again. Neither of the shotgunned officers was moving; both lay slumped on their backsides against the left-hand wall. The plasterwork behind them was peppered with shot and fragments of wood, but also spattered with trickling blood.

Heck’s teeth locked. In these circs, hanging back felt like a non-option. These were fellow coppers pumping out their last. He pressed cautiously on. And then heard a sound of breaking glass from inside the flat.

‘Crap!’ He dashed forward, only for a door to open behind him. He spun around, gun levelled. The thin-faced Chinese woman who peeked out gaped in horror. ‘Police officer!’ he hissed. ‘Go back inside! Stay there!’ The door slammed and Heck resumed his advance, radio mic to his lips. ‘This is Heck – suspect’s making a break for it through a window. It’s three floors down, so I don’t know how he’s going to manage it. But his flat’s on the building’s northeast side, which overlooks Charlton Court … we’ve got to get some cover down there, over.’

Even as he said it, Heck knew this would be easier said than done. The surveillance team on Fairfax House was no more than eight strong at any time. Even with Gemma on the plot, that only made it nine – so they were spread widely and thinly. On top of that, though armed and wearing vests, they were geared for close target reconnaissance, not a gun-battle. No doubt, Trojan units would be en route, but how long it would take them in the mid-evening London traffic was anyone’s guess. He slid to another halt as a dark shape appeared at the farthest end of the corridor, about twenty yards past number 36. By its size and breadth, and by the luminous council-worker doublet pulled over its donkey jacket, he recognised it as Gary Quinnell, whose lying-up position was on one of the floors above. The burly Welshman had also drawn his firearm, and was in the process of pulling on the regulation baseball cap.

They acknowledged each other with a nod. Heck lowered his weapon and proceeded, stopping again about five yards from the shattered doorway.

‘Armed police!’ he shouted. ‘John Sagan, we are armed police officers! There’s no point in resisting any further! Stop this bloody nonsense, and throw your weapon out!’

There was no reply. No further glass crashed or tinkled.

They waited a couple of yards to either side of the front door. From this close range, it was plain that Reg Cowling was dead. His face had been blown away; in fact, his head had almost detached. However, Bishop, while wounded in the face, which was riddled with gashes and splinters, and the right shoulder, which resembled raw beefsteak through the rents in his smouldering jacket, was vaguely conscious. He was ashen-cheeked, but his eyes, which by some miracle had both survived, were visible beneath fluttering, blood-dabbled lashes.

‘Bastard went for head-shots,’ Heck said. ‘Expected them to be wearing body armour.’

Penny Flint had told them Sagan was a pro. Here was the proof.

‘This is Heck,’ he said into his radio. ‘Update on the casualties … both in a collapsed state and suffering extensive gunshot injuries. DS Cowling appears to be dead, DC Bishop is conscious and breathing – how long for, I can’t say. We still can’t reach them.’

Gemma’s response broke continually and was delivered in a breathless voice, which indicated she was running. Before he could make sense of it, it was blotted out by another explosion of glass from inside the flat.

‘He’s going for it!’ Quinnell warned. ‘Must have decided the coast’s clear!’

‘I repeat, we are armed police officers!’ Heck shouted. ‘Throw your weapon out!’

With a third shuddering BOOM!, what remained of the front door was blasted outward. Again, DC Bishop got lucky. The shot was directed above him, so though he was bombarded by wreckage, he was spared further pellet-wounds.

A loud clunk/clack from inside signified that a fourth shell had been ratcheted into place.

‘Pump-action!’ Heck said.

More glass was struck from its frame. The detectives locked gazes across the open doorway, brows beaded with sweat.

‘We can’t just let him run,’ Heck stated flatly.

Quinnell didn’t argue the point.

Heck swallowed the apple-sized lump of phlegm in his throat, and wheeled partly around into the doorway, only his left arm, left shoulder and the left side of his head visible as he tried to pinpoint the target. Quinnell did the same from the other side.

But the immediate area, which was an actual living room, was bare of life.

There was no sign of the guy. None at all.

They were vaguely aware of plain, simple furnishings, of bookshelves that were empty, of bland pictures on the walls. But there were also doors to other areas, one on the left and one on the right. On the far side of the room stood three tall sash-windows. The left one had been smashed out.

‘Doors first,’ Heck said, running right, but finding only an empty bathroom. ‘Clear!’ he yelled, spinning back.

Quinnell had gone left. He reappeared from the bedroom. ‘Clear.’

Heck darted for the left window, which had had to be broken because, by the look of it, Sagan had only been able to lift the lower panel several inches. He flattened himself against the wall, and risked a glance through it. Some twenty feet below, a figure in dark clothing – what looked like a heavy overcoat – and with the shotgun hung from its shoulder by a strap, scampered away across the tops of five flat-roofed garages standing in a terraced row. It was instantly apparent how he’d got down there. Some five feet to the left of the window, about six feet above it, there was a horizontal steel grating – the platform section of an old-fashioned fire escape. The fire escape stair dropped steeply down on the far side of that. There was no possibility of reaching either the stair or the platform by jumping. But the killer had prepared for this in advance by connecting a knotted rope to the underside of the grating, and looping it over a hook alongside his window, where it would hang down the apartment house wall unobtrusively. All he’d had to do when the time came was get a firm grip, unhook it so that it swung away from the window, thus preventing anyone in pursuit using the same method, and slither down to the garage roofs.

Heck peered dully at the hanging rope a good five feet away. He was vaguely aware of Quinnell appearing alongside him.

‘Bastard!’ the Welshman said, spying the dwindling form of Sagan as he reached the far end of the garages.

About sixty yards to the right of these, a uniformed police car swung over the grass into Charlton Court from the cul-de-sac at the front. Unfortunately, it was only a divisional patrol responding to the call that had just gone out, and it wouldn’t be armed, which rendered it next to useless. Besides, Sagan had now jumped from the left side of the garage roofs onto Bellfield Lane, which led away at a much lower level. As well as the rugged, rubbish-strewn slope slanting down to this, there was a high mesh fence along its edge, which formed an impassable barrier for vehicles. Sagan made a rapidly diminishing shape as he raced away along the lower road. Still there was no sign of a Trojan unit.

‘Check the casualties,’ Heck said tightly.

Quinnell nodded, and went back across the flat.

Heck holstered his Glock and put his mic to his mouth. ‘This is DS Heckenburg … urgent message. Suspect, John Sagan, is at large and on foot … male IC1, mid-forties, fair-haired, wearing glasses and a dark, possibly black overcoat. Currently escaping northeast along Bellfield Lane. Warning, Sagan is armed with a pump shotgun and more than willing to use it. For the cerebrally challenged, that means he’s armed and dangerous. I repeat: John Sagan is armed and very dangerous!’ He bit his lip, and added: ‘In pursuit.’

‘Hey, whoa!’ Gary Quinnell shouted, as Heck climbed up into the casement.

The hanging rope was only five feet away. Heck knew there was a good chance he’d make it, but he also knew that if he stopped to think about this he wouldn’t go any further. So he didn’t think, just launched himself out, diving full-length – and dropping like a stone, maybe ten feet, before managing to catch hold of the rope. Several more feet of cold, greasy hemp slid through his fingers before he brought himself to a halt, ripping both his gloves and the flesh of the palms underneath. Doing his best to ignore the blistering pain, he clambered down and alighted on the garage roof nearest the building.

‘Suspect heading northeast along Bellfield Lane!’ he shouted down to the two uniforms who’d spilled onto Charlton Court from their patrol car, faces aghast at what they’d just seen Heck do. ‘Spread the word!’

Without waiting for a response, Heck ran due north along the flimsy roofs, feet drumming on damp planks covered only in tarpaper, jabbering into his radio again, giving instructions as best he could. At the far end, he dropped onto all fours and swung his body over the parapet. He hung full-length and dropped the last five feet, before careering downhill through grass and clutter onto the road.

‘Bellfield Lane heading northeast,’ he shouted, hammering along the tarmac. ‘Any units in that direction to respond, over?’ But the airwaves were jammed with cross-cutting messages. ‘Shit … come on, someone!’

As he ran, the vast concrete shape of a railway gantry loomed towards him. Above it, stroboscopic lights sped back and forth as trains hurtled between East Dulwich and Peckham Rye. Conversely, the shadows beneath the structure were oil-black. In normal times this would be a muggers’ paradise, but Heck was armed, and besides the night was now alive with sirens – it was just a pity none were in the immediate vicinity.

Beyond the railway overpass, a sheer brick wall stood on the right, but on the left there was wire fencing, and behind that another slope angling down to a glass-littered car park. The fence’s second section was loose, disconnected along the bottom, giving easy access to the other side. Heck swerved towards it – only to find that his quarry, neatly camouflaged in his all-black garb, had secreted himself flat at the foot of the waiting slope. The first Heck knew of this was the muzzle-flash, and the hail of shot that swept the wire mesh.

He threw himself to the pavement, rolling away and landing in the gutter – where he lay on his back, gun trained two-handed on the wall of fencing.

Until he heard feet clattering away again.

He scrambled to his knees.

A dark shape was haring across the car park below, at the far side of which a concrete ramp led down onto yet another housing estate, this one comprising rows of near-identical maisonettes. Heck slid under the fence and gave chase, stumbling down the slope until he reached the level tarmac, all the time trying to get through on his radio.

‘Is no one fucking listening to me?’ he shouted. ‘For what it’s worth … still in pursuit, suspect still on foot, still armed, opening fire at every opportunity. Heading west onto the Hawkwood estate. Listen, this is a built-up area with lots of civvies. Not many around at present, but someone’s got to get over here fast. Over and fucking out!’

At the foot of the ramp, he vaulted a railing and ran along a boulevard faced on two sides by front doors and ground-level windows. Sagan was still in sight at the far end – a minuscule figure, which abruptly wheeled around, levelled the shotgun at its waist and fired twice. Heck was out of lethal range – Sagan was using buckshot rather than solid slugs – but instinct still sent him scrambling for cover behind a bench. When he glanced back up Sagan remained visible, but it went against all the rules to open fire in a residential zone like this. You didn’t even need to be a poor shot; ricochets could go anywhere. To make matters worse, several doors had opened as curious householders peeked out.

Sagan darted left along a side-street. Heck vaulted the bench and gave chase, shouting at the onlookers as he did. ‘Police! Lock your doors! Stay away from the windows!’

He rounded the corner and descended a flight of steps into a covered area. Sagan was visible again, framed in the exit on the other side. He let off two more rounds. Heck dived sideways, smashing through a decayed wooden hoarding and entangling himself in heaps of musty second-hand furniture. He fought his way out through a rear door and sprinted along an alley, hoping to head the bastard off – only to emerge into another car park.

Again, Sagan was waiting, shotgun levelled.

Heck ran low, scuttling behind a row of parked vehicles. Sagan blasted each one of them in turn, bodywork buckling, safety glass flying, before turning, ascending a flight of steps and dashing down a passage between faceless walls. Heck slid over the nearest bonnet and charged up the steps. He entered the passage, which was about fifty yards long; at the far end of it Sagan was rapidly reloading. Before Heck could point his pistol and shout, the bastard fired twice; ear-shattering detonations in the narrow space. This time, as Heck pitched himself down, he pegged off three quick shots of his own, which caromed along the passage, missing their target but sending him ducking out of sight.

Heck retreated around his corner, sucking in lungfuls of chill air. He risked a second glance. The passage still looked empty, but Sagan could be lying in wait, and once Heck was halfway along he’d be a sitting duck. He ran back down the steps, along a row of caged-off shops, and around the base of a tower block. He’d expected to find open space on the other side, but instead the shell of a derelict industrial building stood there.

Swearing, Heck panted the new directions into the radio as he set off running again. At the end of the factory wall there was a net fence and on the other side of that a deep canyon through which another railway passed. The London Overground, Heck realised, though at present it was a good twenty feet below him. He glanced right. The nearest route across it was an arched steel walkover about fifty yards off. A figure was already traipsing over this – slowly, tiredly.

Sagan.

The killer and torturer was an arch-pro. But he was also in early middle age. His energy reserves were finally flagging.

Heck took a short cut along a narrow defile between the factory’s north wall and the railway fence. Initially he had to get through barbed wire, and then found himself negotiating thick, leafless scrub entwined with wastepaper and rubbish. Inevitably, cans and bottles clattered, causing such a racket that the figure on the bridge stopped and looked around – and began to run again. By the time Heck got to the bridge, there was no sign of him.

Exhausted himself, Heck lumbered up the steel staircase and over the top. A train thundered past below, a chaos of light and sound, illuminating the footway to its far end. There was a possibility Sagan could reappear over there – while Heck was hemmed between neck-high barriers of riveted steel. But that didn’t happen. He made it to the other side, descended the stair to half way and halted, hot breath pluming from his body. Open waste-ground lay ahead, on the far side of which stood a cluster of dingy buildings: workshops, offices and garages, with an old Ford van parked at the front. Sagan was almost over there, moving at a fast but weary trudge – about sixty yards distant.

Heck raised his pistol and took aim, but he wasn’t a good enough marksman to ensure a clean shot from this distance. Especially not at night. He continued down, and inadvertently kicked a beer bottle on the bottom step. It cartwheeled forward and smashed.

Sagan twirled around.

Heck scampered down the last couple of steps and veered sideways. Sagan strode back, shooting from the waist like a character out of a western, working the slide again and again, pumping fire and shot. Heck scuttled and crawled, but found no more cover than bits of rubbish and sprigs of weed.

At which point a third party intervened.

‘Drop it!’ came a fierce female voice. ‘Do it now, or I’ll shoot you, you bastard … I swear!’

Heck glanced up, to see a short, shapely figure in jeans, trainers, an anorak and a chequer-banded police cap, circling around from behind the van, her Glock trained with both hands on the back of John Sagan’s head. The gunman froze, the shotgun clasped in his right hand, his left held out to his side.

‘I mean it, you dickless wonder!’ the girl cop shouted in a ringing northern accent. ‘Drop that weapon now, or I’ll drop you!’

Heck’s mouth crooked into a smile as he rose to his feet. It was Shawna McCluskey.

Someone had heard his frantic transmissions after all. And if anyone had, he ought to have realised it would be his old mucker Shawna, who’d started off with him all those years ago in the Greater Manchester Police.

Sagan remained rigid. From this distance, his face was unreadable. Dots of yellow street-light glinting from the lenses of his glasses gave him a non-human aura. His right hand opened and the shotgun clattered to the floor.

‘Keep those mitts where I can see ’em!’ Shawna shouted, approaching from behind. ‘You all right, Heck?’

‘Never better,’ he called, dusting himself down.

‘Kick the weapon back towards me,’ Shawna said, addressing Sagan again. ‘Backheel it … don’t turn around. And keep your hands spread where I can see them … in case you didn’t realise it, you lowlife shithead, you’re under arrest!’

Sagan did exactly as she instructed, the shotgun bouncing past her and vanishing beneath the van. Now Heck could see him more clearly: his black overcoat, a black roll-neck sweater, black leather gloves, black trousers and shoes, his pale face, the thinning fair hair on top, and those gold-rimmed glasses. Yet still the killer was inscrutable, his features a waxen, sweat-soaked mask.

‘DC McCluskey on a lorry park off Camberwell Grove,’ Shawna said into her radio. ‘One in custody. Repeat, one in custody.’

But only now, as she angled around her captive, did Heck spy the possible danger.

Her Glock was trained squarely on Sagan’s body, but side-on, the target’s width had reduced and Sagan’s left hand was suddenly only inches from the muzzle of her weapon – and it was with this hand that he lunged, slapping the pistol aside, and in the same motion, spinning and slamming his other hand, now balled into a fist and yet glittering as if encased in steel – a knuckleduster, Heck realised with horror – straight into Shawna’s face.

Her head hinged backward and she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

‘Shawna!’ Heck bellowed.

But he was still forty yards away. He raised his pistol, but again had to hesitate – Sagan had dropped to a crouch alongside the policewoman’s crumpled form, merging them both into one. Heck dashed forward as the killer flipped off Shawna’s hat and smashed his reinforced fist several times more into her head and face. Then he snatched up her Glock and fired it once into her chest, before leaping to his feet and bolting towards the parked van.

Heck slid to a halt and fired. The van’s nearside front window imploded as Sagan scarpered around it, returning fire over his shoulder, and proving uncannily accurate. Nine-millimetre shells ricocheted from the ground just in front of Heck. He fired back, but Sagan was already on the other side of the vehicle and shielded from view. A door slammed closed somewhere along the front of the building. Heck scrambled forward, but kept low. The killer was now indoors; he might have any number of concealed vantage points from which to aim.

‘DC McCluskey down with head injuries and a possible gunshot wound,’ Heck shouted into his radio, skidding to one knee alongside her, still scanning the grimy windows overhead.

In the partial protection of the van, Shawna lay limp. Heck tore open her jacket and gasped with relief when he saw the slug flattened on her Kevlar vest – it hadn’t penetrated. However, her face was a mass of bloodied pulp, her splayed hair glutinous with gore. He probed for the carotid artery. Her throat was slick with blood, but at last he found a pulse.

An engine now growled to life somewhere inside. Fresh sweat pinpricked Heck’s brow.

As he leaped to his feet, a pair of double doors some twenty yards to the left exploded outward in a shower of splinters and rusted hinges, and a powerful SUV came barrelling through. Heck backed away from Shawna’s body to get a clear shot. But Sagan was already firing through the open passenger window, wildly, blindly. Heck let off one round before diving for cover, aiming at the SUV’s front tyre but missing by centimetres. In the process he caught a fleeting glimpse of the vehicle’s make and model. A Jeep Cherokee, dark-blue in colour with bull bars across the front, but with its headlights switched off it was impossible to make out the registration number. It was towing a gleaming white caravan, which tilted onto one wheel as the car swerved away across the wasteland, finally righting itself again as it accelerated into the darkness. Heck gave chase for several yards. He even got off one final shot, hitting the caravan’s rear door, which judging by the lack of visible damage, was armoured. And then the target was gone, vanishing around the corner of a warehouse, the roar of its engine rapidly diminishing.

Heck got urgently onto the radio, relaying as much info as he could while rushing back to Shawna. As before, she lay perfectly still, and now the blood had congealed in her hair.

When he felt her carotid a second time, there was no pulse.

Chapter 3

Calum and Dean walked along King’s Parade as if they owned it, which, to some degree, they did. There were bouncers on all the doors to the numerous bars and nightclubs; surly, brutish types in monkey suits, with gap-toothed grins and dented noses. But if Calum and Dean wanted admission, there was only a small handful who’d say ‘no’. Most of the doormen, if they weren’t involved with them professionally, knew about them by reputation, sufficiently enough to know that serious trouble was easy enough to come by in Bradburn without inviting it.

Not that, in a normal time and place, Calum and Dean were even close to being adequately attired to gain entry to any nightspot which held itself in reasonable regard.

The former, who was heavyset – more than was good for a guy in his early/mid-twenties – wore only a pair of grey shell-pants and grey and orange Nike training shoes. He’d removed his ragged pink sweater and now wore it draped across his shoulders, exposing acres of flabby, pallid flesh, particularly around the midriff, not to mention the usual plethora of tasteless tattoos. Whether he felt the evening chill was unclear. In all probability, thanks to his system being overloaded with drugs and drink, he probably didn’t think that he did, though if his body-odour permitted you to get close enough to appraise him in detail, you’d note that the small, pink nipples on his sagging man-boobs stood stiffly to attention.

Dean was no less dressed-down for the occasion. In his case it was blue and blood-red Nikes and emerald green tracksuit pants with white piping down the sides, a stained string-vest and thick gold neck-chains. Such bling was Dean’s most outstanding feature, cheap and nasty though it all looked, especially the sovereign rings on his fingers and diamond studs in his ears.

The irony was that, despite all this, neither of the two lads looked especially menacing.

Calum’s features were rounded and pudgy, with a small nose, a tiny mouth and button-like Teddy Bear eyes. If it hadn’t been for the shaven ginger thatch on his cranium and his various nicks and scars, you could almost have said that he looked soft. Dean, on the other hand, was thin and weasel-like, but closer inspection would reveal that he was wiry rather than bony; he was certainly no weakling. Under his greasy mat of blond locks and between a pair of jug-handle ears, his face was also scarred, his features oddly lopsided, the mouth forever twisted into a weird, lupine grin. Dean didn’t look soft; more like strange.

And yet they swaggered side-by-side through the Saturday night revellers thronging the pavements – the high-heeled, mini-skirted girls, the boys and men in polo-shirts and jeans – and if an alleyway didn’t clear for them, they cleared one for themselves. This only involved pushing and shoving, but it was still early, not yet midnight.

It finally got tastier in the cellar bar at Juicy Lucy’s, where a gold and crimson lightshow filled the crammed, sweaty vault with strobe-like patterns. They knocked back several more beers each, after which Calum decided that the teenager next to him had nudged his drinking-arm once too often. The lad was in the midst of smooching a shapely platinum blonde in the tallest shoes and tiniest, most figure-hugging dress either Calum or Dean had ever seen, but even so he got socked in the side of his kisser, and a real bone-cruncher it was.

Dean guffawed; he could have sworn that the way the blonde tart jerked her head back, he’d filled her mouth with blood and teeth.

At The Place, the door-staff again let them in without a word. They pushed their way through the dizzying throng to the bar. Here, an older guy with iron grey curls, a leather waistcoat over his flowery shirt and a large earring which looked ridiculous on a codger of his age, shouted an order to the barmaid louder than Dean did. So Calum yanked the surprised guy around by his collar and head-butted him, splitting the bridge of his nose crosswise. The guy’s friends, all equally grey-haired and raddle-cheeked, crowded forward belligerently, and so Dean glassed one of them.

This incident looked set to turn into a right old fracas, and another punch was swiftly thrown, but this had nothing whatever to do with Calum or Dean – as usual in Bradburn on a wild session-night, when things kicked off they kicked off generally. It didn’t matter for what reason.

Their next fight, if you could call it that, occurred on the corner of Westgate Street and Audley Way. There was a taxi rank there. Few were queuing yet, most brawling revellers choosing to stay out into the early hours of the morning. That said, one young bloke had hit it too hard too early, and now leaned against the taxi rank pole, being copiously and volubly sick.

Calum and Dean were passing at the time. They were several feet away, but Dean decided that several flecks of puke had spattered his already dingy, beer-stained trousers. So they assaulted the guy together, Dean catching him under the jaw with a roundhouse, Calum kicking his head like a football after he landed on the pavement.

‘Yeeeaaah, bro … goal!’ Dean hooted. ‘Great fucking goal!’

*

Calum and Dean did all these things because they could.

There was no other reason. It gained them nothing except perhaps more notoriety.

But that didn’t matter where Calum and Dean were concerned. It was a very personal thing for these two lads. It was about being who they were – exactly who they were. Expressing themselves in precisely the way they wanted to, with no one else doing anything to stop it.

But eventually even they had to draw the line somewhere. They’d been drinking since lunchtime after all, and were completely sozzled even by their normal standards.

They ambled away from club-land, the Saturday night hubbub fading behind them, the jaunty music gradually losing all definition, dwindling into a dull, distant, repetitive caterwaul.

In the Parish Church yard, they took a minute out.

This was a cut-through between shops and offices during the day, but now it lay quiet under the phosphorescent glow of a single streetlamp, which glimmered eerily on the flagstones where so many epitaphs had once been engraved and yet now were almost indiscernible through age. Bradburn Parish Church dominated the peaceful scene, its innumerable gargoyles jutting out overhead. To the right of it, the so-called Bank Chambers, a row of counting houses, brokerages and solicitors’ offices, led away down an arched passage, the entrance to which was opaque with night-mist.

The sight of that reminded them both, even if only internally, that their bodies were rapidly cooling. Unconsciously, Calum scratched his itchy blubber before pulling his sweater back on. Together, they slumped down onto the War Memorial steps in the middle of the yard, Calum licking at the fresh but stinging notches on his knuckles. Before long, a soft snore issued from Dean’s puckered, spittle-slathered mouth. Dead to the world, he’d tilted back against the orderly lists of heroic names inscribed on brass plaques around the base of the Memorial’s obelisk.

‘Dean!… fuck’s sake!’ Calum nudged him with his elbow. ‘Gi’ us a fucking smoke!’

Dean muttered in response, and slapped at his right hip pocket.

Calum rummaged in there and found a single crooked joint. It was half-smoked already and bent at a right angle. He straightened it out, stuck it between his lips and dug deeper into his friend’s pocket, finding and discarding all kinds of crumby, sticky, manky crap, before retrieving a lighter.

And only then did he become aware that someone was standing in front of him.

Calum glanced up, vision blurring as his eyes tried to focus through the late-night gloom. The newcomer blotted out all light from the single lamp, casting a deep shadow over the lads. But he wasn’t completely in silhouette. Calum could distinguish dark clothing and the bland, bespectacled features of someone he thought he’d spotted a couple of times in the bars earlier.

‘Good evening,’ the newcomer said.

‘Who the fuck are you supposed to be?’ Calum sniggered. ‘Clark fucking Kent?’

‘I’ve got a message for your boss.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘Here are my credentials.’ The newcomer jammed a black-gloved hand into his overcoat pocket, but when he brought it out again, it held a wadded rag, which, as he leaned down, he squashed against Calum’s face, using his other hand to clamp the back of Calum’s head, allowing no room at all for manoeuvre.

The young hoodlum tried to struggle, but what remained of his strength and awareness deserted him remarkably quickly.

‘Now, don’t breathe too deeply,’ the man said, lowering him to the ground. ‘I need you conscious again very soon. And you –’ He turned to Dean, who, more through some basic animal instinct than anything else, was trying to shake himself awake. The newcomer reached for something he’d laid against the steps. It was half a pool cue, the slimmer end neatly sawn off. ‘You can have a longer snooze.’

He swung it single-handed. It clattered against the corner of Dean’s skull, sending him half spinning into oblivion, but not entirely.

Dean dropped panting onto his hands and knees, blood spiralling down from his right temple, which suddenly felt as though it had turned to sponge.

‘You, you fuck …’ Dean stammered. ‘You fuck … ’

‘Thick-skulled, eh? Probably should’ve expected that.’

The next blow came two-handed, down and then up, golf club style. THWACK!

Dean twirled over onto his back, head clanging like a bell, hands hanging flipper-like at his sides – in which prone, helpless posture the newcomer kicked him a couple of good ones in the face. But still, somehow, Dean – probably because he was insulated against real pain by his own inebriation – clung to consciousness.

‘You not … not …’ he gurgled bloodily.

‘Thicker than average, eh?’ The newcomer sounded impressed. ‘OK …’

He re-wadded the rag he’d used on Calum, took a small bottle from his coat pocket, unscrewed the cap and tilted it over.

‘… not know … who … we are?’

‘Of course I do.’ The newcomer knelt alongside him. ‘That’s the whole point.’

He crammed the foul-smelling, chemical-soaked pad onto Dean’s broken nose and mangled mouth, and held it there for as long as he needed to.

Chapter 4

Heck skidded to a halt in the car park behind a line of Brixton shops, his tyres screeching so loud it sent several scrawny pigeons flapping from the surrounding rooftops. He jumped from his silver Megane and trotted up the outside steps to the concrete balcony serving a row of cheap and nasty flats on the upper floor. He hammered on the door to number 3.

Half a minute passed before a dull, muffled voice asked, ‘Yeah … who is it?’

‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg. Open up.’

‘Erm … what do you, erm … what do you want?’

‘Do you want me to shout it at the top of my voice? Because I will.’

‘Erm … hang on.’

‘Never mind “hang on”,’ Heck growled. ‘Open this soddin’, piggin’ door, or I’ll kick it down.’

A chain rattled as it was removed, and the door opened. Penny Flint’s younger brother, Tyler, stood there. He was weedy, pale and with a badly spotted face, particularly around the mouth. He had a mess of dyed-orange hair, and a single earring dangling from an infected lobe. He wore pyjama trousers, dinosaur-feet slippers and a ragged jersey that was three times too large.

‘Thought it’d be you,’ he said dully.

‘Well, obviously.’ Heck shouldered his way inside. ‘No one else knows she’s here. Yet.’

The colour scheme inside the flat was grey, grey and grey, with perhaps a hint of lime-green, which had faded almost to grey. The place was a tip: bare, damp-looking walls, tatty and disordered furniture, dirty crockery and empty beer bottles on a side table. It was cold for an April morning, so the electric fire was on full blast. It was too much really, but it didn’t bother Penny Flint, who was slumped in an armchair and smoking an unfiltered cigarette, focused intently on morning TV, where Jeremy Kyle was putting a bunch of people just like her through their paces. She wore a thin dressing gown, while her long brown hair hung in ratty strands. The ashtray on her armrest was crammed with dog-ends.

In the corner, Alfie, her six-month-old son, lay snug in a rabbit romper suit, burbling to himself in his carry-cot. The baby was the only dab of real colour in the room, aside from Tyler Flint’s ludicrous fake hair. Having checked outside that Heck hadn’t been followed, Tyler had closed and locked the door again and now hovered in the background.

‘Don’t stare at me like that, Heck,’ Penny said without looking round. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘Nervous?’ Heck retorted. ‘You’re lucky I’m not dragging you down to Brixton cop-shop by your knicker-elastic.’

She turned a face on him that had once been pretty but was now haggard.

‘I’m not wearing knickers at the moment, Heck. I can’t stand the pain they cause me. Or maybe I didn’t make that clear enough the last time we spoke.’

If that was true, she was pretty scantily clad, her gown finishing above the knee and her toe- and fingernails painted their trademark shocking-green. There was even a slinky gold chain looped around her left ankle. Her injuries weren’t visible, but Heck had seen the photographs taken at the hospital, and they had spared no anatomical detail. If there was still any doubt, the pair of metal crutches propped against the back of her chair indicated that Penny didn’t even yet figure among the walking wounded. His sympathy for her in this regard hadn’t ebbed. But some things were unforgivable.

‘You realise what you’ve done?’ he asked her quietly.

‘That wasn’t what I intended,’ she said.

‘Intended or not, you tipped off two different police units about John Sagan, and you didn’t have the good grace to warn either of them there were other friendly forces in the field. What did you expect was going to happen?’

‘Look, I just wanted that bastard to go down. Wanted to make sure of it. It’s not my fault if you lot don’t talk to each other.’ She turned back to the TV screen.

‘You deceitful, self-centred cow.’

Her brother ventured forward. ‘Hey, come on. She’s been through –’

‘Sit down, Tyler!’ Heck jabbed a finger at him. ‘Just being who you are and having the life you have is enough for you to worry about. Don’t compound it by getting any more involved than you need to in a shit-storm like this.’

Mouth clamped shut, Tyler sank stiffly onto a chair.

‘It’s all right, Tyle,’ Penny said, with more than a hint of the cocky belligerence which, up until now, had got her through so many years on the streets unscathed. ‘I can handle Heck.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Heck said. ‘What you going to do, set me the same kind of trap you set for Reg Cowling?’

‘I’m sorry ’bout what happened to Cowling. I actually liked him.’

‘I sincerely doubt that, else you wouldn’t have tipped him off about Sagan but at the same time neglected to mention how dangerous the bastard could actually be.’

Penny said nothing. Just focused on the TV screen.

‘You’ve got a sodding nerve,’ Heck added. ‘Blaming us for this. My boss logged our interest in Sagan with the top brass at Organised Crime, and with most of the CID offices in Southeast London. Everyone around here who mattered knew we were watching him. So you decided to go to one of the lower ranks, didn’t you? What was it? Reg Cowling feel his days in National Crime Group were numbered? Perhaps he needed some arrests?’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Don’t give me “maybe”, Penny. Cowling was one of your official handlers at Organised Crime, wasn’t he? Don’t bother answering – I know, I checked.’

‘What if he was?’

‘Let me guess … he wanted something off the record? Something he could big himself up with? And you thought, “Bollocks to Heck and SCU. They’re not making things happen fast enough. I’ll tell someone who’ll knock on Sagan’s door straight away.” But if I was a really cynical man, Pen, I’d say it was actually worse than that. I’d say you engineered this fuck-up deliberately. In the knowledge Sagan would run and bullets would fly. And that maybe, in the ensuing gunfight, he’d get zapped – by the police no less, so there’d be no comeback to you.’ He peered down at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. ‘Is that right, or is that right?’

‘How could I have engineered all that, Heck? I’m a tom, not some criminal mastermind.’

‘But you’ve got street-smarts, love. You always have had. And you knew Sagan wouldn’t come without a fight. Just like you knew Cowling and his inexperienced sidekick would do something stupid like go in feet-first. Like you knew we were on the plot, armed … and that we wouldn’t just stand by.’

‘And still you couldn’t take him,’ she sneered. ‘Two different teams and you both missed him.’

Heck shook his head. ‘You know, Pen, I wish I lived in your world. Where real shithouse behaviour is measured only by the bloody inconvenience it might cause you. Not by guilt, or remorse, or regret …’

She glanced round at him again, wryly amused. ‘You don’t wish you lived in my world, Heck. You’re quite happy in your own. Where you can go home at night and leave all this stuff behind you. Where if anything does go wrong, you’ve got an entire army one radio-call away. You really think it would satisfy me to see John Sagan in jail, in relative comfort, while me and Alfie are living on hand-outs, and the one thing that’s ever earned me anything has turned to putty?’

‘That was the deal we made.’

‘Then more fool you.’ She turned back to the television. ‘Like I’d settle for seeing Sagan get life when the alternative was getting him shot down on the street like the dog he is?’ Her smile grew tighter, thinner. ‘At least that way I’d keep my respect.’

‘Even more so if a few coppers died too, eh?’

‘Like I say, Heck, that wasn’t the plan. But if you need to take a positive from it …’

‘The positive is seeing you for the conniving little mare you are. For your info, I’m having you scrubbed off the grass register!’

She turned again. The sneering smile had faded.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Heck said. ‘I’m gonna drive you into a normal, everyday life if it kills me. And to do that, I first need to ensure that no copper in Greater London ever makes the mistake of using you as an official informant again.’

‘Well … cool. I lose half my income in one fell swoop, and now you’re taking the other half too.’

‘Try getting a proper job … you need to do that anyway if you’re gonna bring that kid up decently.’ Heck’s mobile chirped in his pocket. He checked it and saw a text from Gemma.

Shawna’s come round. Meet at KCH

‘Me – sat on a supermarket till!’ Penny scoffed. ‘You having a laugh, or what?’

‘It could be worse.’ Heck headed for the door. ‘You could be lying on an intensive care bed, like a very good friend of mine.’

‘I’ve been there.’

He glanced back. ‘Or alternatively, you could be on a slab. Like Reg Cowling. You thank your lucky stars it’s me you’re dealing with, Pen, and not some other coppers I could name. Now, I’m pretty certain John Sagan’s employers, these people whose identity you’ve so jealously protected, will already be asking lots and lots of questions about how the police discovered who the bastard was. You’ve already twigged that, else you wouldn’t be hiding out in a shithole like this. But that won’t be enough. They might have you marked as a tough chick who even gangsters shouldn’t mess with, but you’re still a flyspeck at the end of the day. So at a rough guess, love, I’d say you need to get yourself and, more importantly, your kid out of London. Right the way out. Right now.’

‘Everyone I know is down here, Heck!’ she shouted as he stepped out onto the balcony.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘Some of them might even miss you.’

‘Piss off, you flatfoot bastard!’

Back in his car, he sat brooding. Penny had easily slipped the armed guard Gemma had posted at her flat the previous month. He’d spent the last two weeks looking for her before he’d finally learned she had a loser of a brother and had located her here in this scum-hole apartment. Cops who knew her less well than Heck might never have traced her, but the underworld would, and sooner rather than later. So it was definitely in her interest to skedaddle out of the capital as soon as possible. But if she didn’t – and she was a silly, obstinate bitch – he didn’t really intend to strike her off the grass register. Penny had long been one of his most reliable informers. He knew this indiscretion of hers had been a one-off. She’d never pulled a stunt like this before, and would be unlikely to do so again; Sagan had hurt her in a uniquely terrible way, after all – Heck understood her desire for revenge. On top of that, there might be even more she could tell him about Sagan – she clearly had her ear to the ground in the right places.

But then again, should this level of chicanery really go unpunished?

Another problem lay with the Organised Crime Division. While the Serial Crimes Unit were still officially heading up the enquiry into John Sagan – now entitled Operation Wandering Wolf – with Gemma herself as lead investigator, OC were still going ballistic about the shooting of detectives Cowling and Bishop and constantly harassing her with demands for information and requests to get involved. Gemma had resisted up until now because she didn’t want a bunch of hot-headed cowboys compromising her investigation, though OC were well connected at Scotland Yard and the pressure was growing on her daily. At present, Heck’s SCU colleagues were currently staking out Penny’s empty flat in Lewisham. The trouble was that if he revealed her new hiding place, Gemma would go by the book, dragging her in and leaning on her hard. Penny would hold out – it was inconceivable that she’d admit she’d deliberately created that confrontation at Fairfax House. Do that, and the very least she’d expect was to be charged with obstructing an enquiry, but maybe with conspiracy to commit murder as well. Most likely she’d just clam up and refuse to offer anything further.

This whole thing was a confused mess, and he was torn with indecision.

The arrival of another text broke into his thoughts. Again it was from Gemma.

ETA?

He texted back:

10

He drove east along Coldharbour Lane, eventually pulling into the visitors’ car park of King’s College Hospital. Gemma was waiting for him, leaning against her aquamarine Mercedes E-class. By pure luck, he was able to find a parking bay close by.

She straightened up, hands stuffed into her overcoat pockets.

There were few more striking figures in Heck’s life than Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper. Tall, only a couple of inches shorter than he was, athletic and good-looking in a lean, fierce, feline sort of way, she’d been a key fixture throughout his police service – as a fellow junior detective back in their days at Bethnal Green together, so many years ago now it seemed, for a brief time as his girlfriend, and more recently as his senior supervisor at the Serial Crimes Unit. She didn’t look best pleased as he approached, but she rarely looked best pleased anyway. Gemma was renowned throughout the National Crime Group for her ultra-no-nonsense attitude. Anyone getting on the wrong side of her was likely to be mown down in the ensuing tirade. This was partly the reason she was known behind her back as ‘the Lioness’ – her roar was legendary, though her famously unmanageable mane of wild ash-blonde hair was another reason for that, even if at present she was wearing it stylish and short.

‘What’ve you been up to all morning?’ she asked.

Heck pocketed his keys. ‘I had half an idea how Bishop and Cowling might have got onto Sagan.’

‘And …?’

‘Didn’t pan out.’ It cut him to lie to her, but at present he had to make a finely balanced judgement call. She pondered that as they walked towards Intensive Care.

‘Bishop’s playing schtum,’ she finally said. ‘I mean, he’s not all there at present. Still high on medication. But he reckons Cowling got the tip-off and didn’t share the source.’

‘The Devil protects his own,’ Heck murmured, wondering if Penny Flint had any clue just how much luck she was enjoying.

Chapter 5

‘Well, I got shot in the legs two years ago, along with getting my nose broken,’ Shawna McCluskey said. ‘Last year, I got suspended for serious disciplinary offences I didn’t even commit, and now I wake up to find I got my brains beaten in over three weeks ago and that I’ve been lying in a coma ever since. Am I supposed to just carry on, ma’am? Is this all supposed to be in a day’s work for me?’

Her eyebrows were still swollen and discoloured, covered by railway lines of stitching. Her nose, which had needed to be completely reconstructed, was buried under a pyramid of dressings and gauze. Her scalp had been partly shaved, so that numerous other lacerations could be sutured. She’d suffered extensive fractures to her left eye-socket and cheekbone, and in consequence a perforated left eardrum, while the blow delivered to her chest by the point-blank impact of a 9mm bullet from her own Glock pistol had broken her sternum and three ribs. She currently lay at an angle, supported in an orthopaedic framework made from bars and straps, which looked more like a medieval torture device. She was also attached to a drip, which fed her a constant supply of painkillers. This might have been the cause of her slurred, frothy voice, or on the other hand that might have been down to her broken teeth. Once she was out of intensive care, a dental surgeon was going to look at her mouth.

‘For two minutes back there I was technically dead,’ she added. ‘If Heck hadn’t given me the kiss of life …’

Heck shrugged. ‘I knew it was the only way I’d ever get any action with you.’

But the patient didn’t smile.

‘If you really want to collect your ticket, Shawna,’ Gemma replied, ‘I’m not going to try and talk you out of it. But I don’t think you should make this decision hastily.’

‘I love this job, ma’am … it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. But at present, I’ve not got much choice. I’ve no feeling at all in my left arm and left leg, much less any movement.’

‘But if they’ve told you that’ll be OK eventually …?’ Heck offered.

‘Eventually, yeah. But when’s eventually? No one can say.’

‘Shawna, come on …’

‘Heck, I’m tired of getting hurt!’ She said this with such force that it brought a cringe of pain to what remained of her pretty face. ‘Seriously, Heck … ma’am. Me and Todd were looking to get married next year. He’s now wondering if he’ll be standing at the altar next to someone in callipers and a body-brace.’

‘Why don’t you look for a transfer?’ Gemma said. ‘Just take yourself off the frontline for a bit?’

‘Yeah,’ Heck said. ‘Something with a community brief maybe.’

‘At present, I’m not even fit to make cuppas for little old ladies,’ Shawna replied. ‘Mind you, might be a welcome change – going into a nice person’s house to say hello and have a chat, instead of picking over their mutilated corpse.’ If it was possible with a face as black and blue as hers, Shawna blushed, turned sheepish. ‘Sorry, ma’am … feel like I’m letting you down.’

‘Why would you feel that?’ Gemma asked.

‘For not being tough enough to carry on.’

‘Shawna, you’ve been with SCU what – seven, eight years? In that time, you’ve logged an impressive number of arrests and secured the convictions of some very nasty people. You’ve done your bit. So don’t worry. If you really want to finish on a medical, it won’t be a problem. I’ll put the paperwork through and make any phone-calls necessary. But I recommend you think about it first.’

‘I’ve already thought about it …’

‘How long for?’ Heck wondered. ‘You’ve only been conscious half an hour.’

Shawna glowered at him, only for a fresh stab of pain to bring new tears to her bloodshot eyes. ‘Half … an hour was long enough. Because if I took any longer, I might change my mind. And that’d be no good for me or Todd.’

Suddenly Heck wanted to ask if Todd Martindale was hanging around in the hospital somewhere, and perhaps if he’d visited Shawna before they had. Could he be the one who’d put her up to this? Heck didn’t know the guy too well, only that Shawna had hooked up with him through a dating site a year and a half ago, and had finally, in her own words, found happiness. He certainly sounded the real deal. A divorced middle manager at a sports retail company, he was safe, stable and apparently considerate to her in every way. Hell, why shouldn’t the guy raise questions about what Shawna did for a living? If he genuinely loved her, he’d be worried for her safety every day she spent in an outfit like SCU. Having initially felt hostile towards Todd, Heck now found himself warming to the guy even without having met him.

‘The light duties option doesn’t appeal?’ Gemma asked. ‘There’s no such thing as a job for life in the cops any more, but with your record, Shawna, I’m sure I can swing something.’

‘Permanent light duties, ma’am?’ Shawna said. ‘After SCU? That’d be even more likely to kill me.’

Heck understood that part of it, at least.

‘It’s better if I just make a clean break,’ she added.

Gemma nodded understandingly. ‘In the meantime, what work have you got outstanding?’

‘Nothing that can’t be picked up by someone else.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Heck said. ‘I’m at the Old Bailey for a couple of days from tomorrow, but I can sort it after that. Don’t fret.’

‘Shawna?’ Gemma asked again. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’

Shawna took a deep, painful breath, and nodded.

‘OK … well, it’s your call. When you due to get out of here?’

‘I’ve not asked, ma’am.’ Shawna’s eyelids fluttered, as if fatigue was overtaking her – as well it might, given the cocktail of drugs she was on. ‘And I’m not bothered. Thanks for coming to see me, though. Sorry I’ve nothing better to tell you.’

They left, walking without speaking back to the hospital exit.

‘You know she doesn’t really want to leave?’ Heck said when they arrived in the car park. ‘She’s probably just in shock.’

‘Sometimes when you’re in shock you get greater clarity of vision,’ Gemma replied.

‘I thought Sagan had killed her for sure. If he hadn’t been panicking himself, he would have. He’d have put that bullet straight between her eyes.’

‘Most normal folk would have thought they’d done enough damage cracking her skull open.’

‘I think we can safely say there’s nothing normal about John Sagan, ma’am.’

Gemma eyed him sidelong as they strode, appraising his pale, tense features, his taut body-language.

‘We’re going to handle this investigation professionally, aren’t we?’ she asked.

‘As always.’

‘We’re not going to go looking for payback?’

‘Do I ever, ma’am?’

‘It’s just that you seem, I dunno … edgy?’

‘What can I say, ma’am. It’s been a disappointing morning. For all sorts of reasons.’

‘We’re not thinking of going solo on this, are we?’

She halted and probed him with those penetrating blue eyes of hers. Heck smiled in response, which, from her expression, didn’t look as if it reassured her much. Heck and Gemma had clashed several times in the recent past over his preference for working on his own, though he’d often argued that this stemmed from his either mistrusting those around him or finding them inadequate – he’d argued this point unsuccessfully, it had to be said.

‘No chance.’ He shrugged, walking on, as if it was ridiculous that she’d have any doubts. ‘Shawna’ll pull through. Plus, this time we’re frying a much bigger fish. It isn’t personal.’

‘And I’ve told you not to. That would be even more of a reason, wouldn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘Lots of motivation to keep this one by the book.’

Gemma still looked unconvinced. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d soft-soaped her to try and buy himself extra leg-room. She knew perfectly well that Heck and Shawna were more than just work colleagues. They’d never been lovers, but they’d known each other virtually since the commencement of their two careers, and that was a huge thing in cop terms; on top of that, as fellow natives of the Northwest exiled in London, they’d drawn additional strength and comfort from each other’s presence in that curious, indefinable way that only those of close heritage did when thrown together as strangers in a strange land.

‘That’s as long as the Organised Crime Division don’t muscle their way in,’ he felt it necessary to add, though immediately he could have kicked himself for saying this. Whatever your inner turmoil, you didn’t give Gemma Piper conditions. It could literally be a red rag to a bull. But on this occasion – despite working her lips together tightly, as if she was strongly tempted to say something sharp in response – her reply was cool and measured.

‘They won’t. They’re making a lot of noise at present, but they’re also a bit shamefaced about blundering in on our operation. They know they’re walking on thin ice.’

‘Who’s doing the shouting?’

‘DSU Garrickson.’

‘Garrickson, eh. For a minute then I thought it’d be some clueless, inept tosser.’

She glanced sidelong at him, and he raised his hands.

‘I know, ma’am, I know. It’s completely wrong and unforgivable to discuss a senior officer in such irreverent terms. But wasn’t Mike Garrickson the one you spoke to when you first logged with OC that we were looking into syndicate activity in Peckham?’ Gemma’s lack of response implied that it was. ‘And it somehow slipped his mind to inform the rest of his team?’

‘I expect he assumed that if they had any leads on new cases they’d have come to him before acting on them,’ she said. ‘And with some justification. Reg Cowling was out of order, Heck. He’s the one who blew that obbo. No one else.’ They stopped beside Gemma’s Merc. ‘Mind you –’ she remained cool, but frustration lay visible underneath ‘– it would have helped if all I’d had to do was walk upstairs and tell them. Like I used to be able to.’

There was a time when all departments of the National Crime Group had been based in the same building at Scotland Yard, and very convenient it had been. As Gemma said, it was certainly easier back then to exchange intel. But cost-saving changes were under way all across the British police service. Though both squads still came under the umbrella of the National Crime Group, Organised Crime had been moved to new, state-of-the-art offices at London Bridge, while the Serial Crimes Unit had relocated to a somewhat less remarkable building at Staples Corner in Brent Cross. SCU had only been in place there a couple of months, and it still felt a long way from anywhere, though, situated at the heart of the North London transport infrastructure, it was actually well placed to house a national investigation team.

‘Anyway,’ she said, pointedly changing the subject – Heck was a devil for teasing out her true feelings regarding her fellow top brass – ‘remind me why you’re in court again?’

‘Regina versus Wheeler.’

‘Oh, yeah … that charmer.’

The previous spring SCU had arrested the so-called ‘Wimbledon Rapist’, a masked predator responsible for raping two young women and one schoolgirl at knifepoint after accosting them while they were crossing the Common early in the morning. The team had first homed in on local man Charlie Wheeler when his taxi was spotted on CCTV several times in the right area and at roughly the right time, but they only became actively suspicious when Heck noted that Wheeler never seemed to be transporting any passengers.

‘He’s banged to rights,’ Heck said. ‘Two days and he’s topped and tailed.’

‘Well, let’s make sure. You can put all this aside until it’s done.’

He nodded.

‘Mark,’ Gemma said, ‘I don’t want to fall out with you on this one.’ She regarded him carefully, still spoke in that measured tone. ‘Whatever happens, whatever Shawna decides, she’s a grown woman, and if she leaves the job it’s because she wants to.’

‘Yeah, but … we owe it to her to get this right.’

‘We do indeed. So we’re onside, yes?’

‘Ma’am, this was my case from the beginning. I want John Sagan, and not just for Shawna.’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Look, he could’ve tortured a hundred people for all we know. He could’ve murdered that many too. OK, they might be worthless vermin just like him, but that doesn’t give him a free pass. In fact, we don’t even know for sure that they’re all worthless. He may not draw the line anywhere. What’s to stop him targeting regular citizens if the price is right? Trust me, I’m giving no one any reason to kick me off this case.’

She nodded and climbed into her Merc.

And yet here he was, he thought, watching her reverse out and drive away – already withholding from her the whereabouts of the grass who’d deliberately set the disaster up in the first place. Whether protecting Penny Flint in this way was likely to pay any kind of dividend he simply didn’t know. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to wait too long to find out.

Chapter 6

Following one behind the other, Heck and Gemma crossed the Thames at Tower Bridge and cut northwest through the City, Shoreditch, Islington, Camden Town and Finchley, before heading west on the North Circular. It all sounded quick and straightforward on paper, but in midday traffic it still took close to two hours, and the new HQ at Staples Corner was a very unrewarding sight for those who’d had to fight through rivers of exhaust fumes and contraflows to get there.

It had previously been some kind of transport office, and it looked the part: a functional, flat-topped structure resembling three stacks of overlarge shoeboxes jammed unceremoniously together, its roofs covered with dishes and TV antennae. It wasn’t exactly prefabricated, but it had the distinct air of something that had never been intended to last. Its once weedy car park had been tarmacked over, and, as a beefed-up security measure, the rusty metal fence that had formerly encircled it had been replaced by a tall perimeter of slatted, spike-headed steel. But its best defence was still its anonymity. It could have been any one of the thousands of nondescript semi-official buildings dotted across the various boroughs of Greater London, blending perfectly into its drab but noisy location.

Heck and Gemma parked next to each other, and headed in through the personnel door, which was at the back. The ground floor housed the SCU garages, equipment and evidence store, and armoury. Admin and civvie staff were located on the first floor, while the detectives’ office, or DO as it was known in the unit, was on the second. The Command Centre and Press and PR Suite were on the third. There was also a conference room up there, but that had now been co-opted by Wandering Wolf as an Incident Room.

It still felt like alien territory to Heck. They had only been in here a few weeks, having made the move from Scotland Yard in late February. Certain members of the team, who’d been assigned to enquiries elsewhere in the country at the time, were only just arriving and discovering their new workplaces. Two cases in point were DCs Andy Rawlins and Burt Cunliffe. When Heck entered the DO, they were arguing bitterly.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, pulling off his jacket.

Cunliffe and Rawlins occupied facing desks in a recessed bay, with a large, horizontal window directly behind them, though at present both were standing nose to nose.

Cunliffe gave his side of the story first, demanding to swap desks with Rawlins as otherwise the sun would shine in his eyes all day. Rawlins’s response was to argue that if he was next to the window, he’d get vertigo.

‘OK, here’s the deal,’ Heck said tonelessly. ‘Burt, the sun is not going to shine in your eyes. You’ve got a motorway over the top to block it. And you, Andy, are not going to get vertigo! Now plant your arses where you’ve been told, and get some sodding work done!’

‘This dump’s crap,’ Cunliffe muttered under his breath.

‘Yeah, welcome to the rest of your career.’ Heck turned from the disgruntled twosome in time to see DS Eric Fisher amble in from the side-stair leading up to the Incident Room. Fisher had a pile of buff folders in his arms, which he slammed down on Heck’s desk.

Heck regarded him blankly. ‘What’s this?’

Fisher was the unit’s main intelligence analyst, and a permanent inside-man these days given that he was now in his mid-fifties with a waistline to match.

‘You’re taking Shawna’s gigs, apparently.’ He rubbed the lenses of his glasses with a handkerchief so grubby that it surely couldn’t make any difference.

‘Already?’ Heck protested. ‘I was just about to come upstairs.’

‘Forget it,’ Fisher replied. ‘Apparently you’re at the Central Criminal Court tomorrow?’

‘Yeah … so?’

‘So Gemma says there’s no point you coming back on Wandering Wolf until you’ve been discharged from the trial. That means there’s no point you coming back today either – so you can crack on with this lot. New referrals from Division. Yours plus Shawna’s.’

There was a muted snigger from the direction of Rawlins’s desk.

‘This is all?’ Heck said.

‘Hey, there’s a bigger pile on my desk if you want some of them.’ Fisher sloped off towards his own corner of the room without awaiting a response.

Heck slumped into his chair, glowering at the tower of documentation. One of the least enjoyable aspects of working in the Serial Crimes Unit was trawling through paperwork forwarded to it from other divisions. SCU had a remit to cover all the police force areas of England and Wales, and had recognised expertise with regard to serial violent offenders – mainly murderers. If they weren’t pursuing investigations they’d generated themselves or had been assigned to by the Director of the National Crime Group, SCU would provide operational, consultative and investigative support to other forces who might have uncovered evidence that they had a serial murderer or rapist on their patch. A national general order now ensured that details of all homicides or violent sexual attacks satisfying certain specified criteria (the ‘weird and wonderful’ as Heck tended to think of them) must be sent to the SCU office for assessment at the first opportunity.

Heck grabbed himself a tea before leafing through the top two folders on the pile.

At first glance either one might have heralded the arrival of a new kid on the serial killer block. A female torso had been found on a rubbish tip in Hull; it had been identified as belonging to a forty-year-old prostitute who had vanished two weeks earlier. OK, there was only one victim here (thus far), but immediately there were signs of excessive violence and bizarre post-mortem behaviour in the form of the dismemberment, while the aggrieved party had been a sex-worker – so that was three boxes ticked straight away. The second file described two homicides in the space of two weeks in Coventry. An elderly bag-lady had been found in a subway, her skull shattered by an estimated twenty blows from a hammer. Six days later, a homeless man was found brutally kicked and beaten in a backstreet some three miles away. He was alive when discovered, but died en route to hospital without ever regaining consciousness. That case carried the ultimate red flag in that already there was more than one victim.

Both these submissions required analysis, yet conclusions could never be jumped to.

Murder was rarely what it appeared to be at first glance.

It could be that the Hull prostitute had been a victim of domestic violence – apparently her common-law husband, from whom she was estranged but whom she’d fought with constantly while they were together, had dropped out of sight several months ago and his whereabouts were still unknown. Likewise, violent assaults on street-people were sadly common. The old Coventry woman had been a known heroin-user, but was not in possession of any drugs or drugs paraphernalia when her body was found, so the motive in her case might have been robbery. In contrast, the homeless male had a reputation for being an argumentative drunk, so he could have been beaten simply because he’d picked a fight with the wrong person.

Heck would need to wade through the directory-thick wads of affixed notes and photos sent down from the investigation teams up at Humberside and West Midlands before he could make a judgement. But before he had a chance even to start on this, his mobile rang.

The name on the screen was Penny Flint.

He walked out to the adjoining corridor before answering it.

‘Don’t take me off the register,’ she said.

‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.’

‘I can still be useful to you, Heck.’

‘Penny, you should be thinking about being useful to that kid of yours. Get your tail out of town before someone comes along and really damages it.’

‘You want Sagan?’ she said.

He moved to the window. ‘However did you guess?’

‘I’ve not lost track of him totally.’

Heck stiffened. ‘What’re you on about now?’

‘He’s left London.’

‘Penny, you’re in hiding. You’re not talking to anyone if you’ve got any sense. How can you possibly know this?’

‘I have my informers, just like you do.’

‘You’d better hope yours are more reliable.’

‘Do you want this intel or not?’

Heck gazed across the river of traffic flowing along the North Circular.

‘What do you propose, Pen?’

‘I give you info on Sagan’s new location, and in return you keep me on the register and never tell anyone that I’m the one who set Cowling and Bishop up.’

The mere thought of this stuck in Heck’s craw.

‘Penny … a police officer died.’

‘I told you, Heck, that wasn’t the plan. It was Sagan who was supposed to die.’

‘Tell me what you know and I’ll tell you what it’s worth.’

There was a lengthy silence at the other end, as she considered this. She knew Heck didn’t trust her any more. The question was: did she trust him?

‘He’s gone north.’

‘I need specifics.’

‘Not at the moment. Not till I get what I want.’

Heck pondered. Though he was loath to admit it, it kind of helped him out. A good lead was something he could take straight upstairs to Gemma. It might also help him clear his conscience about the info he was currently sitting on.

‘I’ll need to tell my gaffer what you’ve been up to,’ he replied.

‘No way. They’ll lock me up.’

‘Not necessarily. If your intel bears fruit, chances are they’ll make an executive decision to keep using you. And it’s not like you pulled the trigger on Cowling yourself. All we have to say is that you tipped off your various police handlers. It wasn’t your fault the OC guys decided not to tell anyone what they were doing.’

‘No deal, Heck. I know your gaffer. Piper, isn’t it? She’ll chuck the fucking book at me.’

‘Not if I can persuade her otherwise.’

‘Sorry, no deal.’

‘Listen, you stupid cow!’ He checked there was no one else in the passage behind him. ‘A copper died! And you’re asking me to sit on vital information. Not just now but maybe for the rest of my career. If you seriously think I’m carrying that burden, you can forget it.’

‘Heck –’

‘Shut up, Penny! This is how we play. I’m going up to the Incident Room in approximately one minute’s time. And I’m going to tell Superintendent Piper exactly what I know, namely that you contrived that clusterfuck. I’ll probably get suspended for not telling her sooner, but even that’s better than looking over my shoulder for the rest of my career on the off-chance you suddenly get tempted to spill the beans and drop me in it. The alternative is that I go up there with your red-hot tip and the mitigating circumstances I’ve just laid out. You don’t have to be a genius to work out which’ll be better for you.’

When Penny spoke again it was in a distinctly worried voice. ‘Even if they don’t lock me up, won’t they at least take me off the register?’

‘Not if you’re giving us good stuff. Why would they? It’d be shooting themselves in the foot.’

‘I don’t want to go into protective custody or anything like that.’

He laughed. ‘You’d be lucky. It’s not easy selling supergrasses to the top floor these days. Anyway, it depends what you know.’

‘Manchester,’ she said sullenly.

‘Manchester?’

‘Somewhere in the Manchester area. That’s where Sagan’s parked himself. It’s the usual thing. He’s gone there as muscle, and he’s getting well paid for his services.’

‘Somewhere in the Manchester area?’ Heck said slowly. ‘Seriously? That’s the best you can give me?’

‘Christ’s sake, Heck! I’m not his babysitter. I just hear things. He’s in the Manchester area, and he’s signed on for a firm who are in a bit of trouble. Jesus wept, you know his form … it’s not like you won’t know what to look out for.’

He didn’t answer.

‘So where do we stand?’ she asked.

‘Get out of London, Penny.’

‘You deceitful bastard! You just said –’

‘I said I’d put a good word in for you, which I will. But if you get out of London – like now! – I won’t know where you are if they decide to pull you in as an accessory, will I? On top of that, I can’t protect you from yourself, love. Whichever mob you’ve fucked over south of the river, they’ll be looking for you as we speak.’

She gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘How long do I have to duck out of sight for?’

‘That’s your call. If it was me, till the kid’s eighteen at least. But either way, do it quick. And when you do, make sure I’ve still got a number I can contact you on.’

He hung up before she could argue further, and wandered back into the DO, halting in the doorway. Everyone was beavering away at their paperwork, but then Eric Fisher glanced up and spotted him. He arched a bushy eyebrow.

‘I don’t suppose we’ve had anything from the Northwest?’ Heck asked, acutely aware that it sounded ridiculously vague.

Fisher sat back. ‘Anything what?’

‘Let’s say, for the sake of argument … any recent torture-murders.’

Fisher remained blank-faced. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Eric!’ Heck approached him. ‘Have we or haven’t we?’

Almost theatrically, Fisher pushed an open file across his desk. ‘Came in this morning.’

Heck picked it up and flipped through the various photographic images paper-clipped on top.

They were Greater Manchester Police crime-scene glossies, and they depicted two vaguely recognisable forms – naked males, by the looks of it – lying half-buried amid broken, mouldy furniture and other manky, rat-infested rubbish, and covered with filth and thick, clotted blood.

‘Found by scavengers on a landfill,’ Fisher added.

Heck flipped more pages, but barely saw the text. He knew already that he’d found what he was looking for. ‘When did this happen?’

‘March 24 or 25, GMP reckon. Seen the location, mate?’

Heck focused on the name of the Greater Manchester township where the double slaying had occurred. And it couldn’t have hit him harder had it been inscribed on a house-brick.

Bradburn.

His home.

Chapter 7

‘How long have you known about this?’ Gemma asked coolly.

Heck, who was standing in front of her desk, made a vague gesture. ‘Just since today.’

She tapped the pile of documents with a neatly manicured fingernail. ‘This morning?’

He shrugged. ‘Sort of.’

‘Sort of.’ She nodded and sat back. ‘So let me understand this … when you told me earlier that this morning’s lead didn’t pan out, it was a barefaced lie? Is that what you’re now admitting to me?’

She didn’t look surprised by any of this, which, on reflection, he realised he ought to have expected. There was rarely any point trying to deceive Gemma Piper. Her will was iron, and she had a built-in bullshit radar.

‘Ma’am,’ he tried to explain, ‘if I’d told you where Penny Flint was, you’d have had to act. You’d have her in custody by now, and we wouldn’t have got this juicy titbit.’

Gemma remained calm, remarkably so given her infamously volcanic temper. She glanced again at the spillage of paperwork and crime-scene glossies. ‘You think we wouldn’t have assessed this at some point under our own steam and detected John Sagan’s handiwork … without a hooker who’s got a screw loose needing to show us the way?’

‘Not as quickly, ma’am. This file was sent to SCU, not the Incident Room.’

Gemma said nothing else for some time, but perused the paperwork again.

Heck stood waiting, stiff-shouldered, feeling like a convict facing a hanging judge. They weren’t in the Incident Room now but Gemma’s own office, which conveniently was only located across the corridor from it.

‘You take the bloody biscuit, Heck.’ She glanced up again. ‘Did everything I said to you back at the hospital go in one ear and trickle out the other?’

‘No,’ he assured her. ‘I absolutely guarantee it.’

She spoke on as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘And of course, much as I’d like to kick you off Operation Wandering Wolf, I can’t, can I?’ Her voice rose, that old familiar whip-crack no doubt penetrating the closed door and echoing along the main corridor. ‘Because the likelihood now is that we’ll have to go all the way up to Bradburn, and you being a Bradburn native are probably the best weapon in that fight I could possibly have!’

That explained a lot actually, Heck realised. This time she needed him for more than his ability as a detective. But also, he couldn’t help thinking that she wasn’t giving him the total third degree because this latest little white lie of his had been well meant. Even the most productive police informants could be troublesome customers. You had to play it canny with them.

‘So you want me to go up to Bradburn?’ he said.

‘I want you to sit down. We’re not making hasty decisions.’ She aimed a finger at him as he pulled up a chair. ‘And don’t think this means I’m not thoroughly pissed off with you, Heck! If it wasn’t for the fact I’ve already lost Shawna from the team today, I’d be much more inclined to kick your impertinent arse all the way back to Division.’

Heck sat down while she read again through the GMP dossier. He glanced around her office, which, while it was larger than the cubby-hole she’d occupied back at the Yard, still didn’t bespeak the rank of Detective Superintendent.

Gemma Piper was a conundrum to many who knew her: handsome and fiery, two traits that combined well when she fought her corner in this most competitive and male-dominated of environments. But at the same time she didn’t routinely favour the trappings of power. She was forceful enough to pull rank any time she felt it was necessary, her bollockings were legendary, today’s relatively painless session notwithstanding, and when she gave evidence in court or to a House of Commons Select Committee, she radiated strength and competence. But, possibly because she’d done her stint in the lower ranks, and had scrapped tooth and nail for every promotion she’d ever had, she didn’t like to paint herself as an aristocrat of the job. Hence the Spartan décor and bare furnishings in this dull little room at the top of their dull new building.

‘Four murders in Bradburn inside five weeks,’ she said. ‘Is that your hometown’s normal strike rate?’

‘Not when I lived there,’ he replied. ‘But times change.’

‘Does this surprise you?’

She dropped another glossy onto her desk. It depicted two hunks of human-shaped charcoal laid side by side on a rubber sheet. This image had been inserted at the bottom of the file. Heck had only found it several minutes after seeing the pictures of the corpses in the landfill. It depicted the remains of two Bradburn porno merchants, Barrie Briggs and Les Harris, who early last March had been cremated alive in their own sex shop.

He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘A bit, yeah.’

‘It’s pretty extreme stuff.’

‘If what you’re asking, ma’am, is: can I equate this kind of violence with the town I grew up in?… then no. We had crime. Of course we did – plenty of it, it was a rough old place. But there was a kind of moral focus in those days. At least in general terms. This is way off the scale in comparison, but I don’t think these are normal times, are they? GMP Serious reckon Briggs and Harris were the first shots fired in an underworld war. The bad boys in the landfill – Calum Price and Dean Lumley – were probably retaliation.’

Gemma read more of the attached notes, this time concentrating on the latter two victims.

‘Lots of form,’ she said. ‘Lots of it. For which they paid a very high price. Both castrated, eyes slit, tongues cut out, nipples scissored off, fingers removed with an electric saw. They finally died when a power-drill penetrated each of their brains through the left ear.’

Neither needed to give voice to what they both were already thinking: that, even given the two deaths by fire, this was a further escalation still, and to some tune.

‘Put two and two together often enough, ma’am, and sometimes you get four,’ Heck said. ‘Those two torture-killings have got Sagan written all over them, especially now we know he’s in the Manchester area. A war’s erupted up there. A real one and Sagan’s taken sides.’

‘Taken sides or hired himself to the highest bidder?’

‘Probably the latter. He doesn’t have friends. But he does have chloroform.’

She glanced up from the file. ‘Sorry?’

‘You’ll note from the post-mortem reports, ma’am, that both Price and Lumley’s bodies contained traces of chloroform. Penny Flint told me that was how Sagan subdued her when she tried to fight back inside his caravan.’

‘So chloroform’s his signature?’

‘One of them, yeah. Though this one, I’d argue, is the smoking gun. It makes sense that he would use it too. According to Penny, he’s punished a lot of wayward underworld guys in the past. Some of them will have been pretty handy, and John Sagan’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chloroform would have helped him overpower them. Plus, it’s not a long-lasting anaesthetic – would give him just enough time to strap them down, and then they wake up bang in time for the fun to start.’

‘OK.’ She spread out more paperwork. ‘So what do you know about this guy?’

These particular notes originated from the GMP Local Intelligence Office, and referred to one Vic Ship, a notorious Manchester gangster who had been an associate of Briggs and Harris. GMP now believed him to be engaged in a power-struggle with the smaller Bradburn faction with whom Price and Lumley were connected. If Sagan had signed on for anyone up there, it was most likely to be Ship given that he was the bigger fish. Ship’s mugshot in the file portrayed an overweight, brutal-looking guy in his mid-fifties, with pudgy, pock-marked cheeks, a small mouth and piggy eyes. His grey hair had thinned to the point where he was almost bald, and yet it was long enough to be greased back to his collar and fastened there with an elastic band. Distinguishing marks included a tattoo of a gorgon’s head on the left side of his neck, and a jagged scar across the bridge of his nose.

‘Never had dealings with Ship personally, ma’am,’ Heck said. ‘But way back when I was in GMP it was said he’d buried more bones than you’d find in the average brontosaurus room. And just skimming these notes, you can see that for yourself. Born in Whalley Range, which is Gangster Central. Lots of known previous for armed robbery, attempted murder, demanding money with menaces, supplying, you name it. He’s the real deal. Likes violence and highly placed. By any standards, a player.’

‘If Ship’s genuinely the big time, why’s he involved in an undignified scrap with a bunch of street-punks in a nowhere place like Bradburn?’ Gemma asked. ‘No disrespect to your hometown, Heck, but it’s hardly Chicago or south-central Los Angeles.’

‘True. But like most other nowhere towns in that part of the world, they’ll have a voracious appetite for drugs, sex and contraband booze. Besides, Bradburn’s probably only the battlefield-of-the-moment. I suspect what this is really about is Ship trying to firm up his control across the whole of the Northwest, which is a massive market. Other local elements will try to resist him in due course.’

Gemma scoured the documentation. ‘Penny Flint … have we got everything out of her we can?’

‘Sorry, ma’am. I just don’t know.’

‘If she’s so keen to see Sagan go down, why didn’t she volunteer the information about Manchester in the first place without you having to pressurise her?’

Heck had been wondering about this too. ‘My reading is that she tried the police route first, but we blew it. This time I think she was hoping that whatever he’s got himself into up north, that’d be the death of him in due course. She reckons prison’s too good for Sagan. She wants him dead. That’s why she tried to engineer that shoot-out.’

‘And this is the person whose info we’re basing a whole new line of enquiry on?’

Heck shrugged.

‘These torture-murders?’ Gemma said. ‘Price and Lumley? How much was publicised?’

‘Only the bare bones, as far as I can see. Names of the victims, confirmation there are sus circs. GMP Serious are sitting on the detail.’

‘But people are not stupid, Heck. These fellas were known hoodlums, so it won’t take long for the public to work out that these are tit-for-tat killings – probably in response to the fire-attack on the sex shop.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but nothing was given to the press about the use of chloroform or the extreme torture. So if what’s concerning you is that Penny might have read all this in the papers and decided to spin us a line about Sagan to send us in the wrong direction, I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s happened.’

‘Obviously we’re going to have to go up there.’ She dragged a pad from a drawer and started jotting notes. ‘We’ll keep the MIR here for the time being. But we need to liaise with GMP Serious, possibly about opening a subsidiary office in Bradburn.’

A former Greater Manchester Police officer himself, and knowing the macho culture that persisted in that corner – GMP were one police force whose approach to crime and criminals was proactive to say the least – Heck didn’t think this would be quite so easy.

‘I think we’ll have to bring GMP in on it, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It was simple enough fending off the OC, but that was because their foul-up allowed all this to happen in the first place. Greater Manchester’s Serious Crimes Division will be a different matter, and they’ll consider it a right liberty if we just barge in and try to take over.’

‘Story of our life, isn’t it?’ Gemma muttered.

‘Seriously, ma’am. We’re only after Sagan, but they’ve got this whole gangster war thing going on. They’ll have wider priorities.’

Gemma stopped writing and tapped her pen on the table as she thought it through.

‘Well, organised crime is not our specific field,’ she conceded. ‘So any help would be appreciated, I suppose. But like I say, Sagan’s our case and I’m not relinquishing it. I’ll go up there myself. See what I can sort out. In the meantime, Heck, you only need to think about convicting Charlie Wheeler. Join us in Bradburn when it’s over.’

‘Ma’am.’ He nodded and stood up to leave.

‘Unless that’s a problem, of course?’

He glanced back from the door. ‘Sorry?’

‘You hate Bradburn, Heck. You can’t stand going back there. You’ve told me a dozen times if you’ve told me once. It’s got nothing but bad memories for you. You don’t even like anyone who lives there.’

‘I’ve probably mellowed a bit over the years.’

‘Mellowed?’ She smiled without humour. ‘Heck, no one else in the job carries grudges as long as you do. Don’t get me wrong – on one hand I agree that if we set up a new enquiry team in Bradburn, you should be in it for your local knowledge. But on the other, given your history with that place, perhaps it would be better if you were nowhere near.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘We don’t do emotions in SCU, as you know perfectly well … or we try not to.’

‘Ma’am,’ he replied, ‘if tomorrow morning someone was to detonate a dirty bomb in the centre of Bradburn, the only reason I’d lose sleep is because it would prevent us getting our hands on John Sagan. My desire to bring to book a bloke who hurts people as his business is much stronger than any lingering dislike I may have for the hometown that shat on me.’

‘That’s fair enough, but is this something you actually want to do? And I’m asking you that as a friend, not your boss … maybe even as your ex. We could be up there quite a while. Do you think you could stand that? It’s not like there isn’t lots you can be doing down here.’

‘I’ll be fine. The past is gone.’

‘If you say so.’ She only seemed vaguely satisfied, though she rarely gave a more positive response than this to any of Heck’s glib assurances.

He opened the door. ‘Any message for Penny Flint, in case she gets in touch?’

‘Yes,’ Gemma said distractedly, writing notes again. ‘Tell her she’s a bitch and she deserves locking up. And tell her that if she ever meets me again she needs to tread warily, because it might still happen.’

Chapter 8

April was supposed to be a spring month, Danny reminded himself as he plodded down the dank alleys of the Blackhall ward, heavy feet tramping the wet black cobbles. And, while it wasn’t what you’d call bitter, it was a tad colder than it should be at this time of year, even late at night. His breath misted out in front of him as he stumped his way along. Danny hated cold weather, but then it didn’t care much for him. A gangling six-foot-three and bone-thin, he felt it more than most, and his ragged denims and oily old military coat did little to help with that.

Of course, cold or hot, rain or shine, business was business – and it didn’t stop for anything.

Not that Danny Hollister looked much like a businessman, or even someone who might be carrying money. And that was to his advantage at this time of night, though he always had a roll of cash on him and a stash of gear in his pocket.

He reached his normal pitch just after eleven. It was halfway down a narrow brick entry between two derelict warehouses alongside the Leeds–Liverpool Canal, whose water lay black and motionless under a thin film of oil.

Clapping his gloved hands together, Danny waited patiently beneath the decayed stoop of a side entrance. It was a good position. He wasn’t exactly hidden from the world; those who wanted to find him would do so easily. But the canal lay forty yards to his right, and an open cobbled backstreet forty yards to his left; if a patrolling cop turned in from either of those directions all he had to do was back out of sight and beat a retreat through the burned-out innards of the industrial ruin. But in all honesty, what were the chances of a patrolling cop showing up here? It was well known that they were understaffed to an epic degree. Course, if the Drug Squad came sniffing around, that would be more of a problem. But there was an open drain just to the left. Everything could go down there at a second’s notice if it needed to. It was all cellophane-wrapped anyway, and Danny knew where it washed out again. He didn’t see it’d be a problem. Such cops as were available these days surely had more important things to do. OK, Danny traded in crack and heroin as well as grass, not to mention a bit of China. It wasn’t what the average Joe would call small potatoes, but for safety purposes he never carried massive amounts of the stuff. And Danny was a user as much as a dealer. If the time ever arrived, he’d shrug his stick-thin shoulders and say: ‘I only shift enough to feed my own habit.’ And he’d be absolutely sincere.

He coughed harshly. It hurt, the air rasping in his sunken chest. His head ached too – he always seemed to have a headache these days. And a cold. Snot spooled out from his sore-encrusted left nostril, and he wiped it with his skinny wrist.

An engine rumbled somewhere close by.

Danny stepped back into the recess, crooking his head right and left. There was no sign of anyone on the towpath, but the other way he saw that a vehicle had pulled up on the cobbled space beyond the entry. By instinct, his left hand burrowed more deeply into his pocket, fingers caressing the folded switchblade he kept down there.

The vehicle at the end of the alley had turned its lights off, but remained motionless. Danny watched it irritably. This happened on occasion. Middle-class kids looking to score would come down here nervously. Not wanting to get jumped on these mean streets, they’d get as close as they could in the car and then, ignorant of the protocol, would sit there waiting, engine chugging. With every passing minute, it was more likely they’d draw attention to themselves. The narrow backstreet they were parked on might feel like it was in the middle of nowhere, but actually it wasn’t. A couple of hundred yards further up, another old warehouse had been changed into a nightclub. OK, it was only open on Fridays and Saturdays; there was no one there on weekday nights, but there was a small car park in front of it, and on the other side of that a grotty little pool bar which sometimes entertained midweek custom.

The fact the car was grey, or looked grey in the dimness, would reduce this risk a little. But even so, its occupants were clearly not for venturing down the alley.

Danny swore under his breath. He could picture them. A twenty-something couple. Probably both doing jobs they loved and at the same time earning good money. They’d have put street-gear on to come down here. Stonewashed jeans or Army Surplus, maybe hoodie tops, perhaps a baseball cap for the guy. But everything would be crisp and clean, with designer branding.

Danny loathed middle-class phoneys, but he could never allow himself to show it. Whatever their pretensions in life, they were still dopers, and dopers were his lifeblood.

But still the car sat at the end of the alley, swimming in a smog of its own exhaust.

‘Shit,’ he said.

These really would be silly little rich kids. They might not intend it, they possibly didn’t even realise it, but it clearly came natural to them to get served. Well, this once – just this once, to get rid of the dickless fool and his bint before they attracted the entire town – Danny would wander down there. But once business was concluded, he’d give them some advice, spiced with a few choice swear-words of his own.

He ambled along the passage, hands in his coat pockets. Even when he reached the end, he couldn’t tell for sure what kind of motor it was. It surprised him actually – it was an estate car, but it looked a bit grubby and beaten-up; not what he’d expected. Though perhaps this was the family spare; something they felt safer in down on the Blackhall ward, a bit more incognito. As he approached, its front passenger window scrolled down. Most likely this would be the guy. The girl would be behind the wheel, because he wouldn’t want her dealing face to face with a criminal. Obviously not.

But then it all turned a bit unreal.

The window had reached the bottom of the frame, and yet no bearded or handsomely chiselled face appeared there. Instead, Danny saw a circular steel muzzle – a broad one, at least three inches in diameter. His mouth dropped open.

A bulky figure was visible behind the muzzle, hunched over from the driving seat. There was no one else in there, quite clearly. To operate this mechanism, one man was enough.

A fountain of white-hot flame spewed out.

One minute Danny’s tall, thin body was uncomfortably cold, the next every part of him was ablaze with agony. He stumbled backward with such force that he bounced from the warehouse wall. At first, he was so agonised that he was unable to make a sound. But as his clothes fell away in charring tatters, taking much of the flaming, adhesive fuel with them, he found his voice – in long, braying screeches. Only for a second jet to engulf him, lighting him head to foot, eating immediately into his scorched and vitreous flesh.

Danny tottered around like a burning mannequin. He blundered back into the dark alleyway, thrusting his way headlong, the dancing firelight shooting ahead of him and up the brick walls, his arms weaving glittering patterns. He didn’t just feel the heat all over him, but inside him – inside his head even. Along with a pain he’d never known, a pain that clawed through his muscles and nerves and bones, shredding his very sanity it was so unbearable, and yet somehow he kept going, one unsteady foot following another, until he’d passed his normal pitch and was out at the other end, on the cinder towpath.

And now, in the reeling, tortured inferno of his mind, he realised why he had done this.

His brain was malfunctioning, but his body had made the decision for him.

He sensed the canal in front.

Staggering another few yards, he pitched down face-first into the water, a hissing cloud erupting behind him.

At first it was so frigid that it was like passing out of reality, and yet as well as quenching the flames, it served to numb him – to an extreme degree, to a point where he was able to flounder across the channel like a crazed fish. The semi-liquid flesh unravelled from his twisted limbs, but he threw himself forward until he reached the far side, where, with eyeballs seared beyond use, he thudded into a wall of bricks hung with tufts of rank vegetation. His blistered hands groped left and found an upright ladder, rusted and rotted in its moorings, but just about capable of holding his weight as he hauled his agonised form to the top of it, and there flopped wheezing onto another cinder path.

Danny’s tongue had melted to a molten stub in the scalded cave of his mouth, so he couldn’t even sob let alone scream. His nose had gone, along with his eardrums and eyelids. He had minimal senses left with which to detect the armoured, helmeted figure that had clumped steadily after him down the warehouse alley, petrol tank sloshing in the harness on its back, and now came over the canal as well, footfalls louder on the metal footbridge some twenty yards to the left.

Even when the hulking, pitiless form came and stood right over him, the shuddering, mewling wreck that had once been Danny Hollister didn’t know it was there. Thus it met no opposition, not even a protest, as it trained its weapon down, and from point-blank range blasted him with flame again, and again, and again.

Chapter 9

Heck didn’t hang around at court to celebrate the conviction of three-times-rapist Charlie Wheeler, despite the bastard receiving the severe but appropriate penalty of three life sentences including a judge’s recommendation that he serve no less than 45 years. While DI Dave Brunwick, who’d officially headed the Wimbledon enquiry, spoke to a bank of microphones and news cameras outside the front of the Old Bailey, Heck left via a rear door and hurried off back to Staples Corner, arriving there just around lunchtime, where he grabbed a quick sandwich before hitting the motorway.

Three days had now passed since Gemma had taken several other SCU detectives north to liaise with the Greater Manchester Police in Bradburn, but plenty more had happened since. To start with, there’d been another fatal fire-attack in the town. This time it was a drugs dealer called Daniel Hollister, another goon believed to have been on Vic Ship’s payroll, and the modus operandi had been near enough exactly the same as that used in the sex-shop attack: the victim sprayed with some combustible accelerant, most likely petrol, while the delivery mechanism – quite literally a flamethrower – had been clearly identified on this occasion because the armoured and helmeted killer had got caught in the act on CCTV, though the footage wasn’t of the best quality. Only yesterday, Gemma, in company with DI Katie Hayes of the Greater Manchester Serious Crimes Division, had held a joint press conference at Bradburn Central police station to announce that a pre-existing investigative SCU taskforce, Operation Wandering Wolf, had now been expanded to tackle in full the escalating underworld war in the town.

Already feeling left behind by these events, Heck initially sped along the M1, not that he was looking forward to reaching his destination. As Gemma had intimated, there was no love lost between Heck and Bradburn, though in some ways it was quite illogical. Back in his youth, a major domestic crisis – not unconnected to his embarking on a career in the police – had put a deep rift between himself and his immediate family, which hadn’t been easily bridged.

In truth, it hadn’t properly been bridged even now, though Heck and his sole surviving close relative, his older sister Dana, were in regular contact and the tone was friendly enough. Dana’s only daughter, Sarah, knew Heck simply as ‘Uncle Mark’ and though she hadn’t been around in the bad old days and with luck had never been informed about them, she hadn’t seen him often enough to forge any kind of real emotional bond with him.

So … no, Heck didn’t particularly enjoy going back to Bradburn, but this would never stop him. It was true what he’d told Gemma: the past was the past as far as he was concerned; it was time to let bygones be bygones. In any case, he’d now lived almost as long in London as he had in Lancashire, having voluntarily transferred from the Greater Manchester Police to the Metropolitan Police at the age of twenty, shortly after joining the force. He didn’t consider himself a Bradburn native any more. So why should it matter? More important than any of that was finding John Sagan, though it already sounded as if Gemma had succumbed to the inevitable and, to avoid putting out any GMP noses, had made her team available to launch a full-scale assault against all the mobsters who were making life such a misery up there.

By mid-afternoon, the traffic flow had increased, worsening noticeably when Heck hit the M6, forcing him to divert onto the toll-road at Coleshill. From there, the driving was easier so he was able to take a guilt-free break at Norton Canes Services.

Over a coffee, he perused the latest batch of paperwork emailed down that morning by the admin staff on Wandering Wolf.

This latest intelligence finally confirmed that the Bradburn feud was being waged between Vic Ship’s Manchester-based firm and a breakaway crew who had once run Bradburn on Ship’s behalf but now were looking to go independent. There was no evidence as yet, at least nothing firm, that John Sagan had hooked up with Ship, but if there was a retaliatory strike for the fire-attack on Daniel Hollister, which the taskforce was now nervously anticipating, and it involved torture and the use of chloroform to overpower the subject, it would be as good as a signature.

In the meantime, purely in terms of numbers and expertise, the contrasts between the two factions could not be more extreme.

As Heck had already seen, Ship headed a traditional inner-city crime family whose main areas of influence were tough districts like Whalley Range, Fallowfield, Rusholme and Longsight. According to the intel, Ship’s crew dabbled in all the usual activities – pimping, loansharking, protection, drugs – and had a much-feared reputation. They could and would use serious violence if they deemed it necessary, and in the long term, even before this latest shooting war, were suspected of involvement in the murders of at least four rival gangsters. That said, on the whole it was believed that Ship’s mob observed the old-fashioned laws of gangland etiquette in that mainly they messed with their own kind while the general public didn’t even know they existed. This didn’t make them Robin Hood and his Merry Men – they were high-level criminals, whose numbers and activities were on the rise thanks to a new infusion of Russian boeviks, which literally translated into English as ‘warriors’. It seemed that Vic Ship, in his capacity as self-appointed Manchester godfather, had recently made contact with the Tatarstan Brigade in St Petersburg, a deadly cartel who had apparently been looking for an alliance in Britain to open new markets for their narcotics. If nothing else, the expectation of this hook-up was that Ship’s crew would start to display a greater degree of viciousness. The Russian mob weren’t slow to stomp on their opponents, and that would include policemen, judges, politicians, ordinary citizens, anyone. More to the point, with these Russian torpedoes in harness, alongside a merciless enforcer like Sagan, Ship’s outfit ought to be more than a match for anyone if it came to a genuine gangster war.

As a result, Lee Shaughnessy – alleged head of the breakaway group in Bradburn, and Ship’s main rival in the town – could not have looked more out of his depth.

In contrast to Ship’s brutish mugshot, Shaughnessy’s official photo depicted a much younger guy, thirty at the most and remarkably unblemished by his chosen lifestyle. There wasn’t a shaving nick to be seen, let alone a full-blown scar. In fact, with his neatly combed white-blond hair, grey eyes and refined, almost pleasant features, he was a boy next door, the guy you’d be totally happy with if your daughter brought him home. And yet his criminal record was ghastly. He was a Bradburn local, but he’d been in trouble all his life, with multiple convictions for burglary, robbery, car theft and assault. At the tender age of twelve, he’d raped and beaten the female warden in charge of the secure care-home where he was installed. All the credentials you needed, Heck supposed, to eventually work for someone like Vic Ship, though Shaughnessy had only come to the gang boss’s notice in his mid-twenties while serving four years for attacking a police observation post opposite his house at a time when he was suspected of planning a post office raid – two undercover officers were battered unconscious and fifty grand’s worth of surveillance kit was smashed up.

But it was under Ship’s tutelage that Shaughnessy had really blossomed. Acting as the Manchester mob’s chief lieutenant in Bradburn, his brief had been to take charge of the local drugs trade, and lean on the pub and club owners for protection money – all of which he’d pulled off with aplomb. So much aplomb that he’d soon flooded the town’s estates with heroin and crack, while there was scarcely a nightspot where he didn’t have at least some interest. The readies had rolled in, but, perhaps inevitably, Shaughnessy had soon got tired of taking only a small cut when he could (and, in his mind, should) have been taking everything. So he’d recently broken away, taking many of Ship’s Bradburn business interests with him.

GMP were fairly sure the recent war had commenced with the murders, on Shaughnessy’s orders, of the sex-shop managers and Ship loyalists Les Harris and Barrie Briggs, though there was some surprise that Shaughnessy had laid so open and violent a challenge at the door of the larger syndicate, especially as burning two men alive was an extreme punishment even by gangland standards – unless there’d been some provocation by Ship first which had not yet come to the police’s attention. One theory was that this use of fire was intended to be exemplary – in other words a message for any other Ship soldiers still remaining in Bradburn. GMP intelligence officers also felt that such savagery would not be completely atypical of Shaughnessy’s outfit, who were said to be wilder than the norm. Shaughnessy had achieved this by bringing together the worst of the worst in Bradburn’s previously disorganised criminal underworld, recruiting only the most dangerous and unstable individuals: alienated, disenfranchised young punks who were more than willing to rip the world a new one to get what they believed they were owed, and now, under his guidance, would have the knowhow and the means.

As a footnote, Shaughnessy’s mob were also well armed. Ship’s crew produced firearms when it suited them, but only in certain circumstances. By contrast, Shaughnessy’s crew carried guns as a mark of their manhood, a status symbol by which they would demand respect.

Heck shook his head as he perused this material.

Bradburn, his home and a former colliery and mill-town – turned into Dodge City.

It meant more drugs, more vice, more corruption, more opportunities for underachievers to break out of the poverty trap by embracing violence. On top of that, Shaughnessy’s crew in particular were leaning towards public displays of aggression. In their eyes, profit and discretion didn’t necessarily go together. To them, it was as much about status and bling and swaggering down streets that lived in terror of them. And looking further down the page, it became apparent where this attitude, and the guns, had come from. Because Shaughnessy’s number two was another Vic Ship defector, a certain Marvin Langton. Heck had heard that name even in London.

Before joining Ship, Langton, a one-time pro boxer, had been a member of the so-called Wild Bunch, a mixed-race Moss Side posse. They’d almost exclusively been drugs traffickers, but they’d believed strongly in firepower and turf wars, and had become notorious in Manchester’s poorest quarter for such American-style innovations as drive-by shootings, kerb-crunching – where the unlucky victim’s open mouth was slammed down on the edge of a kerbstone – and gang initiation rites involving the random murders of everyday citizens.

Shaughnessy and his crew hadn’t quite resorted to that just yet, but with Langton on the team how far off could it actually be?

The Wild Bunch had finally been taken down by GMP’s Serious Crimes Division, but somehow Langton, who even now was suspected of having been a senior killer in their ranks, had slipped through the prosecution net. He’d signed on for a brief time with Vic Ship, but then he too had got greedy and had relocated to Bradburn to serve as Lee Shaughnessy’s deputy. How long he’d be happy in that secondary role was anyone’s guess, but for the moment at least he made a set of very nasty opponents even nastier still.

Heck was already wondering if Langton could be the lunatic behind the flamethrower. His mugshot depicted a tough-looking black dude in his early thirties. He was broad as an ox across the shoulders, and now in his post-sportsman days was inclined towards heaviness, though there was still something solid and virile about him. He had broad, even features, but wore his hair in a mop of dreads and his eyes burned with an odd metallic-grey lustre. His sneering half-smile revealed a single golden tooth.

As he folded it all away and finished his coffee, Heck was thoughtful.

Shaughnessy’s lot were rough customers and no mistake. A real bunch of cowboys, but they’d still be meat and drink for Vic Ship’s Russian assassins, not to mention John Sagan – as that pair of eviscerated losers in the landfill had discovered.

It was an unusual thing, he reflected, that all these animals were preying on each other and the only thing the cops actually needed to do was sit there and watch as they gradually and bloodily depopulated their own hate-filled world – but instead, SCU was going to intervene.

Damn right it was going to intervene.

Paperwork tucked under his arm, he walked back out towards the car park.

It would always intervene.

If it failed to do that innocent bystanders would get hurt, as they invariably did. And not all the bastards would perish anyway; some, most likely the very worst of them, would survive, stronger, meaner, wealthier, more deeply and widely feared than ever before.

No, the rule of law could never give way to the rule of chaos.

But more important than any of that, John Sagan was not going to die in some crazy midnight crossfire, or in a cloud of flame, or at the hands of Lee Shaughnessy or his brute-of-the-moment, Marvin Langton.

John Sagan was Heck’s.

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.

This latter aspect was where Shelley had come good, mainly because of the teeny string bikini she’d fortunately remembered to take along with her, and the fact that she was still in terrific shape. It didn’t win her the contest, but it won her the hearts of male viewers, while her bubbly personality and determination to do well in the face of private accusations from one rival contestant that she was a ‘cutie-pie airhead’ won the admiration of women. She didn’t cop off with anyone on the show either, which the dailies suggested meant that Shelley Harper had finally grown up and earned her widespread approval.

Of course her career hadn’t exactly been relaunched. No sooner was she being talked about again than images from that infamous top-shelfer reappeared on the internet. But Shelley wasn’t too concerned. This was, she understood, a brief second throw of the dice, which would get her back into the gossip columns for a short time, grant her a few unexpected earners here and there, and, if nothing else, make her ‘Bayber’s Babe’ for 2017.

And why the hell not? She might be in her late thirties by now, but she was still the whole package. As eight o’clock came, she peeled off her cloak – to much ribald cheering from the crowd – and sashayed forward to stand alongside the veiled statue and its dangling cord. She boasted an impressive 36-24-36 figure, which fitted snugly into her sexy little showgirl outfit (the ‘Our Mavis Special’, as the organisers had referred to it). It was a bright-blue minidress, with a thigh-high hem and plunging neckline, and, trimmed with white tassels, it perfectly complemented her white fishnets and high-heeled white leather ankle boots. Shelley’s flowing blonde mane shone to dazzling effect in the explosion of flash-bulbs.

Fleetingly, the attention switched away from her as she yanked the cord and the sheet rustled to the ground, exposing the glittering bronze form of Bradburn’s very own cheeky chappie, standing in the guise of his personal favourite character, Wing Commander Porkins, complete with bomber jacket, flying helmet and monocle.

This was the moment when Shelley had to go that extra yard to win back the onlookers’ attention. Because after all, if they weren’t looking at her, what was the point in her being here? So she held her ground boldly, poised, pert, waving to the crowd, smiling gorgeously, throwing enormous kisses, shamelessly upstaging one of the grand old men of suggestive comedy, until gradually she became the focus again, everyone shouting and gesticulating back, and if some of those gestures were a little crude, and some of the comments a tad on the coarse side, what did it really matter if they desired her too?

The main thing was that she was back where she’d always wanted to be, in front of a mob of people who adored her. Whatever their preference, whatever their kink, adoration was the bottom line. They wanted her.

They idolised her.

They loved her.

Every single one of them.

Chapter 12

Heck felt no emotions as he stood on the corner of Shadwell Road and looked up at the grimy red-brick façade of The Coal Hole. Or perhaps he was just holding them in check, subconsciously restraining them. His dad’s old local, the Hole had barely changed: the familiar image of a pithead flywheel framed on a cloudy sky still adorned the shield over the door; the two front windows were still frosted to half their depth, the words FINE ALES printed in an arch over the top of each; it was still basically an end-terrace, though now an end-terrace on the edge of a post-demolition wasteland.

How the Hole had avoided the wrecker’s ball, Heck couldn’t imagine, but somehow it had – a bewildering stroke of fortune, which might, under ordinary circumstances, have brought a tear to his eye. He’d lost count of the Sunday lunchtimes as a small boy, when he’d sat on the hostelry’s back-step in his rugby scarf and bob-cap, listening to the jovial shouts from inside, smelling the mingled fragrances of alcohol and cigarette smoke, waiting with infinite patience for his dad to finally emerge, a clutch of workmates around him, so they could all set off to the match together. Or the Sunday afternoons afterwards, when the landlord would open the back door and allow the kids to come in with their dads and granddads. While the elders would drink and discuss the game, young Mark would spend endless happy hours clacking balls around on the snooker table, or sitting quietly at the back of the vault, a glass of lemonade and a bag of salted peanuts keeping him company while he carefully built armies out of dominoes.

Heck shoved the car keys into the pocket of his jeans, and went inside.

There was only a handful of people present now, most dotted at tables around the main taproom. The vault, which was accessible through an open arch at the far end, was empty, but a pool table now occupied the place where the snooker table had once stood. Otherwise, everything else was the same. The décor perfectly matched Heck’s memories: coats of arms, sports trophies, sepia-toned photographs.

Heck ambled to the bar. When he got there, the pub landlord was a familiar face. Harry Philbert, a professional rugby league star of the 1980s, and apparently still content in his role as licensee of The Coal Hole, was silver-haired these days and paunchy. In his silk shirt and club tie, he looked hale, hearty and every inch ‘mine host’, but when he saw Heck he stiffened.

‘Pint of Best, please,’ Heck said, producing his wallet.

Philbert hesitated to pull the pint.

‘Something wrong?’ Heck asked.

‘No, no.’ Philbert blustered. ‘Just … didn’t expect you round here again.’

‘I’ve been back once or twice.’

‘First I’ve seen of you.’

‘Well, funnily enough, Harry, you weren’t number one on my catch-up list. Wonder why that might’ve been?’

Philbert reddened, clearly remembering that night all those years ago when he’d refused to serve the young off-duty bobby, telling him that he wasn’t welcome in The Coal Hole any more. He cleared his throat as he drew the beer. ‘Keeping you busy, is it? Your job.’

Heck shrugged, pushing his money across the bar.

‘So busy you couldn’t even attend your mum and dad’s funerals?’

‘Well, you know what, Harry … here’s a funny thing. No one told me they were dead until they were underground.’

Even Philbert had the good grace to look shocked by that. ‘Surely, your Dana …?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Your Uncle Pat …?’

‘I found it harder to believe in his case, but I’d imagine he was acting on the wishes of the recently departed.’

Philbert pondered this for some time, then, apparently finding it understandable, maybe even appropriate, nodded and pushed the brimming pint across the counter. Heck grabbed it and walked away. Not particularly looking for company, he avoided the tables where other customers were sat, and strode into the vault. He stood contemplating the pool table, wondering if he had the interest and/or patience to play a couple of sets. He supposed there was nothing else to do – it was anyone’s guess how long it would be before his uncle came in, if he appeared at all. He placed his pint down and took a cue from the rack.

‘Now, stranger,’ a voice said. ‘You not talking?’

Heck glanced sideways, surprised. He hadn’t heard the woman approach. A minute ago she’d been seated in a quiet corner, drinking from a tall glass of coke while busying herself on a laptop. She’d caught his eye fleetingly: denim-clad and wearing a Motorhead T-shirt, but shapely with it, her thick dark hair hanging past her shoulders. He hadn’t recognised her though.

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