Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

Copyright © Paul Finch 2013

Cover photographs © Arcangel & Roberto Pastrovicchio

Cover design © Henry Steadman 2013

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: 9780007492312

Ebook Edition ISBN: 9780007492329

Version: 2017-11-14

Dedication

For my lovely wife, Catherine, whose selfless and unswerving support has been the bedrock on which I’ve built my career

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

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

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

The whole of Holbeck should be bombed.

That was Alan Ernshaw’s view. Okay, he was a relatively new police officer – just ten months in the job – so if anyone overheard him make such a politically incorrect statement and complained, he’d have an excuse. But the gaffers still wouldn’t be impressed. Holbeck, the old warehouse district located just south of Leeds city centre, might well consist mainly of buildings that were now empty shells, its Victorian terraced housing might now mostly be derelict, the few parts of it that were inhabited reduced to grotty concrete cul-de-sacs strewn with litter and covered in graffiti, but policemen didn’t take these sorts of things personally anymore. Or at least, they weren’t supposed to.

Ernshaw yawned and scratched the dried razor-cut on his otherwise smoothly shaven jaw.

Radio static crackled. ‘1762 from Three?’

Ernshaw yawned again. ‘Go ahead.’

‘What are you and Keith doing, over?’

‘Well we’re not sitting down for a turkey dinner, put it that way.’

‘Join the club. Listen, if you’ve nothing else on, can you get over to Kemp’s Mill on Franklyn Road?’

Ernshaw, who was from Harrogate, some fifteen miles to the north, and still didn’t completely know his way around West Yorkshire’s sprawling capital city, glanced to his right, where PC Keith Rodwell slouched behind the steering wheel.

Rodwell, a heavy-jowled veteran of twenty years, nodded. ‘ETA … three.’

‘Yeah, three minutes, over,’ Ernshaw said into his radio.

‘Thanks for that.’

‘What’s the job?’

‘It’s a bit of an odd one actually. Anonymous phone call says we’ll find something interesting there.’

Rodwell didn’t comment, just swung the van into a three-point turn.

‘Nothing more?’ Ernshaw asked, puzzled.

‘Like I say, it’s an odd one. Came from a call-box in the city centre. No names, no further details.’

‘Sounds like a ball-acher, but hey, we’ve nothing else to do this Christmas morning.’

‘Much appreciated, over.’

It wasn’t just Christmas morning; it was a snowy Christmas morning. Even Holbeck looked picture-postcard perfect as they cruised along its narrow, silent streets. The rotted facades and rusted hulks of abandoned vehicles lay half-buried under deep, creamy pillows. Spears of ice hung glinting over gaping windows and bashed-in doors. The fresh layer muffling the roads and pavements was pristine, only occasionally marked by the grooves of tyres. There was almost no traffic and even fewer pedestrians, but it wasn’t nine o’clock yet, and at that time on December 25 only fools like Ernshaw and Rodwell were likely to be up and about.

Or so they’d assumed.

‘Something interesting …’ Ernshaw mused. ‘What do you think?’

Rodwell shrugged. He spoke in monosyllables at the best of times, and as he was now deep in thought there wasn’t much chance even of that.

‘Bunch of druggies or something?’ Ernshaw added. ‘Squatting? If that’s it they’ll all be dead by now. Must’ve been minus-ten last night, easily.’

Again, Rodwell shrugged.

Kemp’s was a former flax-spinning mill, but it had been closed now for nearly two decades and was a forlorn reminder of prosperous times past. Its tall octagonal chimney was still intact, the square windows arrayed in uniform rows across its dingy frontage were largely unbroken, and most of its ground-floor entrances were supposedly chained shut, but, like so many of the derelict buildings around here, it wouldn’t be difficult for determined intruders to force entry.

Snow crunched under their tyres as they slid to a halt on the mill’s southward-facing lot. The gaunt structure loomed over them against the white winter sky. The red bricks with which it had been constructed were hidden beneath soot so thick it had become scabrous. Those pipes and gutterings that hadn’t already collapsed sagged beneath alpine overhangs of snow. At first glance there was no sign of life, but the place was enormous; not just a central block, which itself might have housed a thousand workers, but also all kinds of annexes and outbuildings. As the van eased forward at a snail’s pace, it dawned on Ernshaw how long it might take them to locate ‘something interesting’ here.

He put his radio to his mouth. ‘1762 to Three?’

‘Go ahead, Alan.’

‘We’re at Franklyn Road now. Everything looks okay so far. Any further on the complainant, over?’

‘That’s negative, Alan. Could be some prat with nothing better to do, but probably best to check it out, over.’

‘Received,’ he said, adding under his breath: ‘Might take a while, mind.’

They drove in a wide circle around the aged edifice, their tyres sliding as they hit patches of sheet-ice. Ernshaw wound his window down. It was bitterly cold outside – the snow was still dry and crisp as powder – but even if they didn’t see anything untoward, it was possible they might hear it.

That they didn’t was vaguely disconcerting.

Christmas morning ought to be deeply quiet, restful, hushed by the freshly fallen snow, yet the silence around Kemp’s Mill was somehow uncanny; it had a brittle edge, as if it could shatter at any moment.

They rounded corner after corner, gazing up sheer faces of windows and bricks, networks of ancient piping, and hanging, rusted fire-escapes. The van’s wheels constantly skidded, dirty slush flying out behind. They trundled through an access-passage connecting with a row of empty garages, the corrugated plastic roof of which had fallen through after years of decay. On the other side of this they spotted an entrance.

Rodwell applied the brakes gently, but the van still skated several yards before coming to rest.

What looked like a service doorway was set into a recess at the top of three wide steps. There was no sign of the door itself – possibly it lay under the snow, but from the state of the doorjamb, which had perished to soggy splinters, this entry had been forced a long time ago. A pitch-black interior lay beyond it.

‘2376 to Three?’ Rodwell told his radio.

‘Go ahead, Keith.’

‘Yeah, we’re still at Kemp’s Mill. Evidence of a break, over.’

‘Do you want some help?’

‘That’s negative at present. Looks like an old one.’

They climbed out, gloving up and zipping their padded anoraks. Ernshaw adjusted his hat while Rodwell locked the vehicle. They ventured up the steps, the blackness inside retreating under the intense beams of their torches. At the top, Ernshaw thought he heard something – laughter maybe, but it was very distant and very brief. He glanced at Rodwell, whose dour, pitted face registered that he’d heard nothing. Ernshaw was so unsure himself that he declined to mention it. He glanced behind them. This particular section of the property was enclosed by a high wall. The van was parked close alongside it, the entrance to the garage-passage just at its rear. Aside from the tracks the vehicle itself had made on entering the yard, the snowfall lay unbroken. Of course, flakes had been falling heavily until about two hours ago, so this didn’t necessarily mean that no one had been here during the night.

They entered side-by-side, torchlight spearing ahead, and were immediately faced by three options: directly in front, a switchback stair ascended into opaque blackness; on the right, a passage led off down a long gallery zebra-striped by smudges of light intruding through the ground level windows; on the left lay a wide open area, presumably one of the old workshops. They ventured this way first, their torch-beams crisscrossing, revealing bare brick walls and a high plaster ceiling, much of which had rotted, exposing bone-like girders. Shredded cables hung like jungle creeper. The asphalt floor was scattered with planks and fragments of tiles. Here and there, the corroded stubs of machine fittings jutted dangerously upward. Despite the intense cold, there was a sour taint to the air, like mildew. The scuffling of their feet echoed through the vast building’s distant reaches.

They halted to listen, hearing nothing.

‘This is a wild goose chase,’ Ernshaw finally said, his words smoking. ‘You realise that, don’t you?’

‘Probably,’ Rodwell replied, shining his torch into every corner. From the moment they’d received the call, Rodwell had seemed a little graver of purpose than usual, which was intriguing to Ernshaw. Keith Rodwell had been a copper for so long that he generally sized situations up instinctually. The way he was behaving now suggested that he genuinely believed something untoward was going on here.

‘Okay, I give up,’ Ernshaw said. ‘What do you think we’re going to find?’

‘Keep it down. Even if this is someone taking the piss, let’s catch ’em at it.’

‘Keith … it’s Christmas morning. Why would someone …’

‘Shhh!’

But Ernshaw had also just heard the long, low creak from overhead. They regarded each other in the gloom, ears pricked.

‘Take the front stair,’ Rodwell said quietly, edging across the workshop. ‘I’ll go around the back … see if I can find another way up.’

Ernshaw retreated to the door they’d come in through. He glanced at the van out in the yard; as before, there was no sign of movement. He started to ascend, attempting to do it stealthily though his footsteps rang up the stairwell ahead of him. The first floor he came to comprised another huge workshop. Not all the windows up here were boarded, though their glass was so grimy that only a paltry winter light filtered through. Even so, it was enough to hint at an immense hangar-like space ranging far across the building, filled with stacked crates and workbenches, forested by steel pillars.

Ernshaw hesitated, gripping the hilt of his baton. This time last year he’d been an innocent young student at the University of Hull, so he had no trouble admitting to himself that, while it was bad enough being made to work on Christmas Day – only the older, married guys tended to be spared that pain-in-the-arse duty – it was even worse having to spend it trawling through the guts of an eerie, frozen ruin like this.

A loud crackle from his radio made him jump.

The voice of Comms boomed out as it dispatched messages to patrols elsewhere on the subdivision. Irritated, he turned the volume down.

Ernshaw advanced as his eyes adjusted to the half-light. Directly ahead, about forty yards away, a doorway opened into what looked like an antechamber. For some reason, the rear brick wall of that chamber was lit by a greenish glow.

Green?

A coloured candle, maybe? A paper lantern?

Ernshaw halted as a figure flitted past the doorway on the other side.

‘Hey,’ he said under his breath. Then louder: ‘Hey!’

He dashed forward, with baton drawn and angled across his shoulder.

When he entered the chamber, nobody was there, but he saw that the odd-coloured light had been caused by a sheet of mouldy green canvas fastened over a window. A stairway – an indoor fire-escape, all rust and riveted steel – dropped down through a trapdoor; while a secondary stair rose up to the next level, though this was very narrow, scarcely broad enough for an average-sized man to climb it without turning sideways. He peered up, spying a ray of feeble daylight at the top. When he listened, he heard nothing, though it wasn’t difficult to imagine that someone was lurking up there, listening back.

‘Alan?’ someone asked.

Half-shouting, Ernshaw spun around.

Rodwell gazed at him from the trapdoor, in particular at his drawn baton.

‘Have you …?’ Ernshaw glanced back up the stair, listening intently. ‘Have you been up here once? I mean, have you been up already and gone back down for any reason?’ Rodwell shook his head as he rose fully into view. ‘Thought I saw someone, but …’ The more Ernshaw considered it, the less substantial that ‘figure’ seemed. A shadow maybe, cast by his torch? ‘Could’ve been mistaken, I suppose …’

Rodwell also glanced up the next stair. Without speaking, he ascended it, just about able to slide his big body between its encroaching walls.

Ernshaw followed, discomforted by the tightness of the passage. The floor at the top of this had been partitioned into small rooms and connecting corridors. Even fewer of the windows on this level were boarded, but there were less of them, so a sepulchral gloom pervaded.

Before they commenced exploring, Rodwell lifted a dust-caked Venetian blind and peered down into the yard below. It had occurred to them both, somewhat belatedly, that if this was some daft but elaborate ruse to create a diversion by which to steal a police vehicle, they’d be left with an omelette-sized egg on their faces. However, the van sat unmolested; the snow around it unmarked. From this height, they could see further afield into adjacent streets, or what remained of them. Most of the rows of terraced housing on the south side of Kemp’s Mill had been demolished, but even with the recent snowfall, the parallel outlines of their old foundations were still visible.

There was no sign of anyone around. The nearest habitations were two blocks of 1970s flats about three hundred yards away, beyond a mountain of snow-covered scrap; only one or two lights – the garish neon of Christmas decorations – twinkled from their windows.

‘2376 from Three?’ the voice of Comms crackled from Rodwell’s radio.

‘Go ahead,’ he said, dropping the blind back into place.

‘Anything from Franklyn Road yet?’

‘No offences revealed at this stage. Still searching, over.’

‘Message from Sergeant Roebuck, Keith. Don’t waste too much time there. If it’s just some kids messing around, leave it. There are other jobs piling up.’

‘Roger, received.’

‘That it, then?’ Ernshaw asked hopefully.

‘No,’ Rodwell replied.

They ventured along a central passage, peeking around the first door they came to, seeing what had presumably once been an office. In the middle of it, weak daylight illuminated a single filing cabinet from which a ton of paperwork had overflowed. Ernshaw entered, scooping up some of the documents: work rosters yellowed by age; dog-eared time-and-motion sheets. He tossed them away, moving through the next doorway into another identical office. Sometime in the past, vandals had scribbled slogans all over the walls in this one.

‘Kids have been in here, alright,’ he said. ‘Dirty little buggers too. Seen this … “My little sister gave me my first blowjob. She’ll do you too for a fiver.” There’s even a fucking phone number. “Every day I wank into my mum’s knickers – now she’s pregnant again. Oh shit.”’ Getting no response, he turned.

Rodwell had not come into the room with him.

Ernshaw went back to the door and glanced into the office with the filing cabinet; Rodwell wasn’t in there either.

‘Keith?’ he said.

A footfall sounded behind him. He whirled around – to find that he was still alone. But on the far side of the room another door stood ajar.

Hadn’t it been closed previously?

Ernshaw approached it, suddenly suspecting that someone was in the next room. Baton drawn again, he yanked the door open – entering yet another deserted corridor, the contents of more gutted offices spilling into it from adjoining doorways.

‘Keith?’

Still there was no reply.

Ernshaw proceeded forward. At the extreme end there was another stairway, but when he reached this, it was only short and led up to a closed door, beyond which a crack of bright daylight was visible.

‘Keith? You up there, mate?’

Again, nothing.

He ascended slowly, body half-turned so that he could watch both in front and behind. At the top, the door swung open easily and Ernshaw entered the most spacious office he’d seen to date – a good forty foot by thirty – the sort of palatial residence an MD might once have inhabited. It possessed several large windows, all intact, none covered by planking or sheets of green canvas. The walls were even papered, though the floor contained loose boards, several of which had warped and sprung. There was no furniture; just a scattering of broken bricks and, in one corner, rather curiously, a wheelbarrow rimmed with hardened cement, a pick and sledge-hammer standing against it.

But none of this captured Ernshaw’s attention as much as the strange object on the farthest side of the room.

He walked forward.

It appeared to be a section of new wall; a seven-foot-wide rectangle rising almost floor to ceiling. The paper and plaster had recently been torn away, and the ancient stonework beneath demolished; new, yellowish bricks had been mortared into the resulting cavity. But what really caught his eye hung in the middle of this: a sheet of white paper with a message emblazoned on it in startling crimson. The paper was fresh and new; when Ernshaw took it from the wall it had been fixed there with Blu-Tack, which proved to be soft and obviously new as well.

The message had been printed by a modern desk-jet of some sort. It read:

Ho Ho Ho

Ernshaw’s short-cropped hair prickled. This sign could easily be more empty-headed idiocy from the local scrotes. But there was something about it – probably the fact that it was clearly a recent addition to this neglected pile – that made him think it might be significant. He stepped backward, examining the wall again. It had definitely been constructed more recently than the rest of the building. At its base, two lumps of tapered black wood protruded through a tiny gap under the bricks; some builder’s device, no doubt, to keep the whole thing level.

A hand tapped his shoulder.

Ernshaw spun around like a dervish. ‘Fuck me!’ he hissed.

‘What’s this?’ Rodwell asked.

‘Will you stop sneaking up on people!’ Ernshaw handed him the notice. ‘Dunno. Found it pinned to the wall.’

Rodwell stared at the wall first. ‘This brickwork’s new.’

‘That’s what I thought. Well … they’ll have done all sorts of jobs over the years, to keep the place serviceable, won’t they?’

‘Not in the last twenty.’ Rodwell glanced at the notice, then back at the wall again. ‘This is a chimney breast. Or it was. Probably connected to one of the outer flues.’

‘Okay, it’s a chimney,’ Ernshaw said. ‘Bricking up an old chimney isn’t much of a criminal offence these days, is it?’

Rodwell read the notice a second time.

Ho Ho Ho

‘Jesus … Christ,’ he breathed slowly. ‘Jesus Christ almighty!’

Moving faster than Ernshaw had ever seen him, Rodwell threw the paper aside and dropped to one knee to examine the two wooden stubs protruding below the brickwork. Ernshaw leaned down to look as well – and suddenly realised what he was actually seeing; the scuffed toes of a pair of boots.

Rodwell grabbed the pick and Ernshaw the hammer.

They went at the new wall as hard as they could, and at first it resisted their efforts – but they pounded fiercely, Rodwell stopping only to call for supervision and an ambulance, Ernshaw to unzip his anorak and throw off his hat. After several minutes grunting and sweating, mortar was bursting out with every impact – then they were loosening bricks, extricating them with their fingers, guarding their eyes against flying chips. Piece by piece, the wall came down, gradually exposing what stood behind it – though the aroma hit them first.

Ernshaw gagged, clamping a hand to his nose and mouth. Rodwell worked all the harder, smashing away the last vestiges of brickwork.

They stood back panting, wafting at the dust, retching at the stink.

‘Good God!’ Rodwell said as he focused on what they’d uncovered.

Though it stood upright, this was only because it had been suspended by the wrists from two manacles fixed above its head. It had reached that stage of early putrefaction where it could either have been a shrivelled corpse or a wax dummy, its complexion somewhere between sickly yellow and maggoty green. It had once been an elderly man – that much was evident from the scraggly white beard on its skullish jaw, plus it was bone-thin, an impression only enhanced by its baggy, extremely dirty garb. This consisted of a red tunic hanging in foul-smelling folds, trimmed with dirt-grey fur, and red pantaloons, the front of them thick with frozen urine, their cuffs tucked into a pair of oversized wellingtons.

It was not an unusual experience, even for relatively new bobbies like Ernshaw, to discover corpses in a state of corruption. Not everyone handled it well, though Ernshaw usually had – until now.

He laughed. Bizarrely. It was almost a cackle.

‘S-Santa,’ he stuttered.

Rodwell glanced at him, distracted.

‘Fucking Santa!’ Ernshaw continued to cackle, though his glazed expression contained no mirth. ‘Looks like there was no one nice waiting for him at the bottom of this chimney. Only naughty …’

Rodwell glanced back at the corpse as he recalled the words on the sign – Ho Ho Ho. He noticed that a red hood with a filthy fur trim had been pulled up over the wizened, hairless cranium.

‘Christ save us,’ he whispered. The corpse wore a tortured expression, its eyes bugging like marbles in a face twisted into a rigid, grimacing death-mask. ‘This poor bastard was walled up in here alive.’

Chapter 2
M1 MANIAC LATEST – POLICE ADMIT FEW LEADS

If it was possible for a newsagent billboard to shriek, this one did.

Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg observed it through the driver’s window of his Fiat while he waited at a traffic light. Homeward-bound commuters darted across the road in front of him, muffled against the February evening. Much of the heavy winter snow had cleared, but dirty, frozen lumps of it lingered in the gutters.

Heck eased his Fiat forward, glancing continually at his sat-nav. Milton Keynes was a big place; it comprised about two hundred thousand citizens, and like most of the so-called ‘new towns’ – purpose-built conurbation designed to accommodate the overspill population after World War II left so many British cities in smoking rubble – its suburbs seemed to drag on interminably. After half an hour, the entrance to Wilberforce Drive appeared on his left. He rounded its corner and cruised along a quiet, middle-class street – though, in the current climate of terror, all these streets were quiet after nightfall, particularly in towns like Milton Keynes, so close to the M1 motorway.

The houses were semi-detached, nestling behind low brick walls or privet fences. All had front gardens and neatly paved driveways. In the majority of cases, cars were already parked there, curtains drawn. When he reached number eighteen, Heck halted on the opposite side of the road and turned his engine off.

Then he waited. It would soon get cold, so he zipped up his leather jacket and pulled on his gloves. Eighteen, Wilberforce Drive seemed almost impossibly innocent. A snug pink light issued through its downstairs window. A child’s skateboard was propped against its garage door. There was even the relic of a snowman on its front lawn.

Heck took his notes from the glove-box and checked through them. Yes – eighteen, Wilberforce Drive, the home of Jordan Savage, thirty-three years old, a married man who managed the local garden centre for a living. The homely environs made it altogether less menacing a scene than Heck had expected. It would be easier than usual to walk up the path and rap on the door here – this wasn’t the sort of place where cops normally got their teeth knocked out. But Heck was still nervous that he might be on the wrong track.

Not that he would ever know sitting behind his steering wheel. But before he could open the car door, another door opened – the front door to number eighteen. The man who stepped out could only be Jordan Savage: his solid build and six-foot-two inches made him unmistakable; likewise his shock of red, spiky hair. No doubt, up close, those penetrating blue eyes of his would be another give-away.

Savage was wearing jeans, a sweater and a heavy waxed jacket. As Heck watched, he moved the skateboard aside, took a key from his pocket and opened the garage door. There was a vehicle inside; a green Mondeo Sport. The registration mark checked out as well. It was the same car the Traffic patrol had become suspicious of and had stopped that dank October night. The Mondeo’s engine rumbled to life, its headlights snapped on and Savage eased it down the drive. If he noticed Heck seated in the car opposite, he gave no indication, but turned right along Wilberforce Drive, heading for the junction with the main road. When Savage was a hundred yards ahead, Heck switched his own engine on and followed.

Tailing a suspect was never easy, especially when you were doing it unofficially – but Heck had performed this task dozens of times. Once they were on the main road, he stayed about three cars behind – not too close to attract attention, but close enough to keep a careful eye on his target. Even so, after two and a half miles, when the Mondeo suddenly veered left onto what looked like another housing estate, he was taken by surprise.

This neighbourhood was less salubrious than the previous one. Its houses were council stock, some terraced with communal passages between them, some with front gates hanging from broken hinges. But its central artery was called Boroughbridge Avenue, and that rang a bell of familiarity. Heck didn’t need to rifle through his notes this time to know that this was where Jason Savage, Jordan’s twin brother, lived.

The Mondeo stopped outside a two-flat maisonette. Jordan Savage didn’t get out, but sat there, his exhaust pumping winter fog. Heck slowed to a halt as well – just as a glint of light revealed that a door to the upstairs flat had opened and closed. A figure trotted down a narrow flight of cement steps.

Even from fifty yards away, the similarities between the two men were startling. Jason Savage, who was a mechanic by trade, wore an old donkey jacket over what looked like black coveralls, but he too was about six-foot-two and had a thatch of bristly red hair. He climbed into the Mondeo’s front passenger seat, and it drew away from the kerb. Heck remained where he was, wondering if they were about to make a three-point turn, though apparently there was another exit from this estate – the Mondeo drove on ahead until it rounded a bend and vanished.

Heck nosed forward. This was better than he’d hoped for, but it could also mean nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time that two brothers had spent an evening playing darts together. That said, when he swung around the bend and found himself at a deserted T-junction, he briefly panicked.

Trusting to luck, he swung his car right and got his foot down. Leafless trees closed from either side as he passed through public woodland – this didn’t look promising, but then it gave way to the high fencing of an industrial park, and about fifty yards ahead a red traffic light was showing, a lone vehicle waiting there. Heck accelerated and, to his relief, recognised the Mondeo. He’d be directly behind them now, but he couldn’t afford to worry about that. His police instinct – the ‘hunch’ honed through so many criminal investigations (or alternatively, ‘his imagination’, as Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper called it), told him he was onto something.

The light turned to green as he pulled up behind the Mondeo, and it swung left. Heck followed, but decelerated a little. They were on another main road, with houses to either side, followed by shops and pubs. More and more vehicles joined the traffic flow. Heck slowed down further to allow a couple to push in front of him. Jordan Savage worked his way across the centre of Milton Keynes, negotiating roundabouts and one-way systems as if he could do it blindfolded. Heck, who wasn’t a local and in fact had never even been to Milton Keynes until he’d arrived here as part of the enquiry team some six months earlier, found it more difficult, though thankfully that ultimate bugbear of the covert tail – a traffic light or stop-sign separating him from his target – never occurred. It almost did as they approached a bustling intersection, but Jordan Savage halted at the white line even though, if he’d floored his pedal, he could probably have made it through the break in traffic.

Heck was only one car behind Savage at this stage. He too slowed and stopped, by chance underneath a large Crimestoppers noticeboard. As well as various telephone numbers, including the hotline to the Main Incident Room at Milton Keynes Central, it carried a massive e-fit of the so-called ‘M1 Maniac’, a frightful figure with hunched, gorilla-like shoulders, wearing a black hood pulled down almost to his eyes, which in turn were half-covered by a fringe of lank hair, and a collar zipped up to his nose. It was impossible to tell in the yellowish glow of the streetlamps, but in normal daylight those eyes would be a startling blue and that fringe a vivid red. To emphasise this, the artist who’d constructed the e-fit had only colourised those sections; the rest of it was in black and white.

Heck followed as the Mondeo advanced through the intersection. The vehicles between them peeled off left, but the Mondeo headed straight on, taking a narrow street between industrial units surrounded by high walls. Past these lay shabby apartment blocks: broken glass strewed their forecourts, ramshackle cars cluttered the parking bays. Heck slowed to a crawl, but still managed to keep the Mondeo in sight. It was about a hundred yards ahead when it turned right, appearing to descend a ramp.

He cruised forward another fifty yards, then pulled up and stopped. He grabbed the radio from his dashboard, switched its volume down and shoved it under his jacket, before climbing out and walking the rest of the way.

The ramp swerved down beneath a monolithic tower block, which, from a rusted nameplate, was called Fairwood House. As Heck ventured down, he kept close to the wall on his right. When he reached the bottom, he halted, waiting until his eyes adjusted. A labyrinthine underground car park swam slowly into view. Unlit alleyways wound between concrete stanchions, or led off along narrow alleys between rows of padlocked timber doors. There was no immediate sign of the Mondeo.

Heck walked back up the ramp and climbed into his Fiat, releasing the handbrake. It was tempting to freewheel down there with his headlights off, but if he did encounter the Savage brothers, that would look suspicious in the extreme. Instead, he behaved as normally as possible, switching the engine on and driving down as if he was just looking for a parking space. Once below, he casually prowled, turning corner after corner. There were other exits, he noticed – some were caged off, others stood wide open. It occurred to him that his targets might have exited the place altogether; perhaps they’d sensed they were being followed and had used this car park as a diversion. But then, as he cruised another gallery between rows of padlocked garage doors, he saw orange, flickering light ahead.

Firelight?

He proceeded for forty yards, before parking and creeping the rest of the distance on foot. The firelight was reflecting on a wall beyond the next T-junction. When he edged forward the last few feet and peeked around to the right, he spied a parking bay in which a couple of ragged, elderly men were burning rubbish in an oil-drum. They were bearded and grizzled; one glanced around – his face was weasel-thin, his mouth a toothless maw.

Heck swore.

He went doggedly back to his Fiat. Somehow or other the bastards had eluded him. He slotted his key into the ignition – and bright illumination fell over him. In his rear-view mirror, two powerful headlamps approached from behind.

Heck sank down so low that he couldn’t see the vehicle as it passed him slowly by. But when he peered after it, it was the Mondeo. It reached the end of the drag, turning left. Heck jumped out, running back to the T-junction. The Mondeo was now making a second left-hand turn. He chased after it, sweat stippling his brow. From the next corner he saw that it had stopped some thirty yards ahead, alongside another row of lock-ups. The Savage brothers climbed out, conversing quietly.

Heck flattened himself against the concrete wall to listen. He fancied he heard them use the word ‘van’, at which his hand unconsciously stole to his radio, though he managed to restrain himself from grabbing it. He risked another peek. Jason Savage clambered into the Mondeo’s driving seat, switching its engine back on. Meanwhile, Jordan Savage approached the nearest lock-up, produced a key and, opening its narrow side-panel, stepped through into darkness.

Heck felt a massive tremor of anticipation.

It was several minutes before Jordan Savage reappeared, but when he did he had changed into black waterproof trousers and a black hooded anorak. He handed something to his brother through the window of the Mondeo – it looked like a pistol. Heck couldn’t quite identify it, but a Ruger Mark II had been used in all eight killings to date.

Jordan Savage stepped back inside the lock-up and closed the side-panel behind him, while the Mondeo pulled forward about twenty yards. The lock-up’s main door was then lifted laboriously from within. Headlamp beams shot out as a second vehicle emerged. Heck clutched the concrete corner with such force that it almost drew blood from his fingernails. When a white transit van rolled into view, he jerked backwards, retreating quickly, fishing his radio from his jacket and easing up its volume.

‘DS Heckenburg on Taskforce, to Sierra Six … over?’

‘DS Heckenburg?’ came a chirpy response.

‘Urgent message. Immediate support required. Underground car park at Fairwood House. Send as many units as possible, block off all exits … but silent approach. I also want a Trojan unit, over.’

‘Could you repeat the latter, sarge?’

Heck tried to keep his voice low. ‘Get me a Trojan unit pronto! And get me supervision … DI Hunter and Chief Superintendent Humphreys. I’m sitting on two targets I believe to be the M1 murderers, so I need that back-up ASAP, over and out!’

He turned the volume down again as the message went rapid-fire across the airwaves. Lurching back to his car, he unlocked the steering, knocked the handbrake off and pushed the vehicle forward. As he reached the end of the drag, he yanked the handbrake on and crept to the corner, where he risked another glance at the suspect vehicles.

The white van sat behind the Mondeo, both chugging fumes, while the two twins talked. Jason Savage had removed his donkey jacket and put on a similar black hooded anorak to his brother.

If they would just keep the conflab going until firearms support arrived …

‘Any change today, sur?’ someone asked loudly.

Heck twirled. One of the tramps had come stumbling around the corner and was standing out in the open with hand cupped. Grey locks hung in matted strands over his semi-glazed eyes.

Heck glanced back towards the Savage brothers, who were suddenly staring in his direction. A piercing light sprang forward as one of them switched on a torch. Heck jumped back around the corner, but the tramp didn’t move, except to shield his eyes.

No doubt the Savage boys knew there were human derelicts down here and had discerned there was no threat from them. But it was plainly obvious to anyone that this particular tramp was interacting with someone else.

‘Just a little change, sur,’ he said in fluting Irish, sticking an empty hand under Heck’s nose. ‘A couple of pounds wouldn’t go amiss …’

Heck chanced another glance. One of the two brothers had opened the driver’s door to the van and looked set to climb into it. The other was still frozen in place, still peering along the passage.

‘Get down, you damn fool!’ Heck hissed. ‘Get on the floor now!’

‘Just a little change, sur. An entry fee, if you loike. The price of visiting our little parlour …’

Heck lunged, grabbing the skeletal figure by the lapel of his coat and dragging him out of the torchlight, hurling him to the floor. At the same time he bellowed: ‘Armed police! You’re completely surrounded! Drop your weapons and get on the ground with your arms outspread!’

The response was two thundering gunshots, the first kicking a fist-sized chunk from the concrete corner in front of Heck, the second whining past. There was an echo of slamming doors.

Heck slid forward to look. The transit van was already haring away down the passage, its tail-lights receding. The Mondeo sat unattended. Heck raced back to his Fiat, stepping around the groaning tramp.

‘’Tis a cruel thing to manhandle a fella so,’ came a feeble voice.

Heck leapt behind the wheel, slammed his key into the ignition and hit the gas. The tramp, staggering back to his feet, gave a V-sign to the windscreen, only to be blinded by Heck’s headlights. He toppled backwards as Heck wove the car around him, accelerating past the lock-ups, tyres screeching. Far ahead, the transit van rounded a corner at such speed that its bodywork drew sparks from the opposing wall. Heck took the corner tightly as well. The van was still far ahead; at the end of the next drag, it ascended another ramp into the sodium-yellow glow of the streets.

Heck thumbed the volume control on his radio and shouted at the top of his voice. ‘DS Heckenburg chasing! Two suspects for M1 murders travelling in a white Ford van, leaving Fairwood House car park by what I believe is the east exit … no registration as yet! Urgent warning! At least one of the suspects is armed; shots already fired … no casualties, over!’

There was nothing more dangerous, nor more discouraged in the modern police, than high-speed pursuit of suspects through built-up areas, yet Heck knew he had no choice. For so many months they’d had nothing – no forensics, no CCTV footage, no crime scenes, no survivors (bar one, who was severely injured), no likely suspects at all – and now, suddenly, they had everything … just in front of him by a skinny fifty yards, yet moving at seventy miles per hour through a busy town centre.

Horns blared and pedestrians scattered, shrieking, as the white van mounted pavements to cut across junctions. Other vehicles swerved and skidded into shop-fronts, lampposts, or each other; panes of glass imploded, splinters of metal flew. Heck weaved frantically through the chaos. Reaching out of his offside window, he managed to throw his detachable beacon onto the roof of his Fiat. He shouted again into his radio, updating the Comms suite as best he could. By the approaching wail of sirens, other units were close by, but it still seemed likely that the target vehicle would escape. He lost sight of it completely when it sped through a stop-zone on red, other vehicles slewing sideways, one crunching headlong into the traffic light, buckling its pole and bringing the signal head down in a mass of dancing sparks. The cars in front of Heck shunted together, while others turned sharply to avoid the pile-up. Instinctively, Heck shot down a right-hand alleyway, trying to evade the snarled-up junction, only to see the van zip past the end of the alley, now headed in the opposite direction.

‘DS Heckenburg to Sierra Six!’ he bawled, swerving into pursuit. ‘Target vehicle doubling back on itself, headed west along …’ He scanned the buildings flicking by, trying to catch a street name. ‘Heading west along Avebury Boulevard. The suspects are Jordan and Jason Savage, and they live at eighteen, Wilberforce Drive and fourteen, Boroughbridge Avenue respectively. I repeat they are armed and highly dangerous!’

Ahead, the van mounted a pedestrianised precinct, sending benches cartwheeling. Heck mounted the precinct as well, but the van slid to a halt about forty yards in front, smearing rubber as it pulled a handbrake turn. Heck only realised at the last second that he’d been lured into a side-on approach. He ducked as a gun-muzzle flashed from the driver’s window, the projectile punching the top corner of his windscreen, spider-webbing it.

‘Where’s that firearms support!’ he shouted, backhanding the Fiat into reverse, crashing through heaps of boxes.

A local police patrol, a Vauxhall Astra in yellow and blue Battenberg, came hurtling onto the precinct from the opposite end, sirens whooping. The van lurched forward again, bolting down a side-street and veering left onto another main road. The patrol car made immediate pursuit, litter swirling from its wheels. Heck went next, still shouting into his radio.

‘Target headed north along Saxon Gate! Seventy-five plus!’

The van was all over the road as it hit speeds it had never been designed for, sideswiping a litter-bin through a shop window. The Astra kept pace from behind, only for the van’s back doors to burst open and one of the Savage brothers to crouch there and take aim with his pistol. Over the howling engines, Heck barely heard the detonations, but the three rapid gun-flashes were clear enough. With windscreen peppered, the Astra crashed over the outer wall of a civic building with such explosive force, the footings tore out its front undercarriage, so that it finished standing on its nose in an ornamental pond.

‘Police RTA on the entrance to Portway!’ Heck shouted. ‘Ambulance required!’

He wasn’t sure that his instructions were even being heard. The airwaves were alive with frantic messages. In front, the van’s rear doors slammed open and closed as it juddered from side to side. The gunman knelt just inside, slotting another magazine into place.

‘Heading east along Portway!’ Heck shouted. ‘These guys are fucking packed! Get me that Trojan quick!’

Sirens could now be heard from all directions. A Thames Valley motorcyclist overtook Heck in a swirl of blues and twos. It tried to overtake the van as well, but the van swung right, sending the bike hurtling onto the pavement and glancing along a wrought-iron fence, from which it caromed back onto the blacktop, managing to right itself again – only to flip end-over-end when it struck the kerb of a traffic island, its rider somersaulting through the air.

Heck glimpsed this in his rear-view mirror as he blistered past. ‘DS Heckenburg to Sierra Six! We now have two police RTAs … one on Saxon Gate, one on Portway! At least two officers injured! Ambulances essential! Still pursuing!’

Ahead, flashing blue lights were clustered across a bridge. He hoped this meant that a stinger unit had been deployed underneath, but the white van rocketed through unhindered. Two more police vehicles, a Vectra and a Vivaro, came surging down the slip road; not soon enough to intercept the target, though they managed to block Heck’s progress. He shouted and swore as he took evasive action.

The gunman opened fire again, concentrating first on the Vectra. Two holes the size of hubcaps were torn in its bonnet. A third slug missed, and ricocheted from the road surface, blasting Heck’s offside mirror to shards.

The Vectra lost speed, pouring black smoke. Heck accelerated into the gap, he and the Vivaro running neck and neck. On an open, empty road there were manoeuvres they could attempt, boxing the van in, bringing it to a forced halt. But too many members of the public were around. A Royal Mail vehicle spun out of control as the target rear-ended it, trying to ram it out of the way. Heck swerved again to avoid a body-crumpling collision. The Vivaro wasn’t so lucky: it slid across the opposing carriageway, hitting a row of bollards, jerking around on impact, steam boiling from its mangled radiator. The van accelerated again as it found open space, the gunman in the back falling left to right, unable to get a shot off at his one remaining pursuer, Heck.

The two vehicles tail-gated each other as they blazed across a flyover, beyond which signposts gave directions to the M1 motorway.

Heck swore volubly – there would be many, many more road-users on the motorway – and these guys had shown no interest in preserving innocent life.

Before they reached it they hit another roundabout. Here, more police patrols – Traffic unit Range-Rovers – were waiting at the turn-offs. They seemed more interested in holding back the public than in attempting to intercept the target, allowing it to roar away unimpeded, spewing black fumes. Possibly, Milton Keynes Comms were issuing orders for officers to stand off. But Heck had received no such instruction, so he continued the chase, bulleting along the slip road and down the access ramp.

The M1 southbound was busy at the best of times. Now, at the tail-end of rush hour, it was heaving. The average speed was still about sixty miles per hour, but it was a fast- moving log-jam. Despite this, the van forged ruthlessly ahead, ramming and shunting, ignoring the honking horns and shaking fists. Heck hit his own horn repeatedly, but had to swerve and skid as vehicles were sideswiped into his path.

The bastards were trying to cause a pile-up, he realised. Their plan was to create a barricade of car-wrecks. And on top of that, they were still armed. He glimpsed more flickering blue lights in his rear-view mirror, but they were far behind and nobody in the control room seemed to be answering his messages – at which point his quarry suddenly attempted the craziest manoeuvre Heck had ever seen.

There was a double-sided crash barrier down the motorway’s central reservation. A fleeting gap appeared – and the van jack-knifed into it, attempting a U-turn.

A U-turn! At sixty miles an hour! On the motorway!

By instinct rather than logic, Heck did the same. The next junction was a good fifteen miles away, and he couldn’t take the chance that the felons might escape.

But even though Heck jammed his brakes on as he turned, he lost control crossing the northbound carriageway, skidding on two wheels and slamming side-on into the grass embankment with such bone-shuddering force that his Fiat rolled uphill … before rolling back down again and landing on its roof, its chassis groaning, glass fragments tinkling over him. The white van had also lost control, but whereas Heck had lost it at thirty, the Savage brothers had lost it at sixty. Their vehicle didn’t even manage to turn into the skid, but ploughed headlong across the carriageway – straight into the concrete buttress of a motorway bridge. The resulting impact boomed in Heck’s ears.

That sound echoed for what seemed like seconds as Heck lay groggily on his side.

At length, in a daze akin to the worst hangover in history, he began to probe at his body with his fingertips. Everything seemed to be intact, though his neck and shoulders ached, suggesting whiplash. His left wrist was also hurting, though he had full movement in the joint. With an agonised grunt, Heck released the catch of his seatbelt, crawled gingerly across the ceiling of his car and tried to open the passenger door, only to find that it was buckled in its frame and immovable. For a second he was too stupored to work this out; then slowly, painfully, he shifted himself around and clambered feet-first through the shattered window.

When he finally stood up, he found himself gazing across the underside of his Fiat, which was gashed and dented and thick with tufts of grass and soil. Clouds of steam hissed from his busted radiator. Passing vehicles slowed down, the faces of drivers blurring white as they gawked at him. Multiple sirens approached from the near-distance.

Clamping a hand to his throbbing neck, he had to turn his entire body to gaze along the debris-strewn hard shoulder. Thirty yards away, the smouldering hulk of the white van was crushed against the concrete buttress, reduced to about a third of its original length. Heck hobbled towards it, but when he got within ten yards the stench of fuel and rubber and twisted, melted metal was enough to make him sick.

So was the sight of the Savage brothers.

Whichever one of them had fired the shots from out of the back had been catapulted clean across the van’s interior, bursting through its windscreen, his head striking the buttress of the bridge and splurging several feet up the concrete in a deluge of blood, brain and bone splinters. The driver had been flung onto the steering wheel, and now lay across it like a bundle of limp rags. From the crimson rivers gurgling out underneath him, the central column had torn through his breastbone and punctured his cardiovascular system.

Heck tottered queasily away from the wreck.

Other police vehicles were now drawing in behind his Fiat. The first of their drivers, a young Motorway Division officer in a bright orange slicker, came running up. ‘Is that him?’ he asked. ‘The Maniac?’

Heck slumped backwards onto the grass. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody hell … let’s hope so.’

Chapter 3

The ‘M1 Maniac’, to use the nickname the press had given him (or ‘them’, as it turned out), had terrorised southern England for the previous six months, primarily targeting teenage boys.

His hunting ground was confined to the vicinity of the M1 motorway, but this was not small. In geographic terms, his attacks ranged from Luton in the south to Northampton in the north; from Aylesbury in the west to Bedford in the east. He claimed nine victims, all older teenagers, all abducted from public places – usually when they were walking home from pubs or nightclubs. Eight of these were later found bound with wire, raped anally and orally, and killed by an execution-style gunshot to the back of the head. Their bodies had been dumped in ditches or roadside culverts.

The victim who survived was fourth in terms of the running order. His name was Lewis Pettigrew, and he was a nineteen-year-old Oxford University student who was on a visit to his parents’ home in Milton Keynes. Like the others, he was found bound, badly assaulted and with a bullet-wound to the back of the head, but in his case, possibly because of the angle at which it was fired, the bullet had lodged in his skull rather than penetrating his brain. Pettigrew, though he’d lost the power of speech, was able to write and thus informed the police that he had been standing at a bus stop just around midnight when a white van pulled up alongside him. The hooded driver climbed out and produced a handgun, forcing the boy into the back, where his wrists and ankles were tied with wire which was pulled so tight that he feared it had cut off his blood supply.

The van was then driven around for an estimated half-hour or so. When it finally stopped, the abductor climbed from the driving cab and re-entered the vehicle through its rear doors, still armed with his pistol, at which point he forced Pettigrew to perform fellatio on him. When this was over, the abductor climbed out of the van, only to climb back in again a few minutes later and sodomise the prisoner. When this second sex act was complete, the van’s rear doors were opened again, Pettigrew was forced to kneel up, facing outwards – into what looked like isolated woodland – and was shot in the back of the head. It was a miracle he survived, but an entire day passed before a woman walking her dog discovered him; like the others, he had been dragged into a ditch and covered with branches and moss.

This was a major break for the police, because it explained the M1 Maniac’s modus operandi. There was no DNA, just as there never was with any of the other cases, because the killer always wore protection, but at least Pettigrew was able to describe the van and the assailant, even if this latter description amounted to little more than a man with blue eyes and red hair, wearing a black anorak hood.

Unfortunately, none of this did much to make the public less frightened, because the murders continued. The fact that it was red-blooded young men who were the object of the viciousness made it all the more disturbing. There were athletes among them; one had even been a junior boxing champion. Additionally terrifying, the Maniac’s victims had been grabbed off the street while going about their everyday business. A criminal psychologist on the radio exacerbated the situation when he voiced a theory that the perpetrator was probably not gay; that in fact he was straight and that his sexual sadism was simply a means to assert his dominance. Women could be next, he said.

Needless to say, others were less sure about this, and as the panic rose the public order situation deteriorated: anti-gay graffiti appeared, gay nightspots were stoned. Vigilante justice became ever more brutal and indiscriminate – a prominent gay spokesman was dragged from a podium and beaten while attempting to address a public meeting.

In the midst of all this, the police came under mounting criticism. It was noted in the popular press that speed-cameras had assisted in the prosecution of thousands of motorists in the time since the reign of terror had begun, but that they seemed incapable of playing any role in the apprehension of this ‘real criminal’, even though road-use was integral to his method.

Such an incendiary atmosphere was soon going to explode. It looked increasingly unlikely that the hunt for the M1 Maniac would end in anything less than a disaster.

Though perhaps no one realised how much of a disaster, Heck thought, as he sat in A&E, trying not to wince while an orthopaedic collar was carefully fitted around his neck. Even now, the bodies of the Savage brothers were being brought to the mortuary here at the Milton Keynes Hospital. He grunted his thanks as the nurse told him he was done and moved away. As well as the neck-brace, his left arm had been strapped and fixed in a sling; a doctor had checked it earlier and concluded that it was only sprained but that it needed rest – which was always easier said than done. Heck shuffled to the lavatory. When he’d finished his ablutions, a surprisingly complex procedure with one hand, he regarded himself in the mirror over the washbasin. He’d looked better. His black hair was a sweaty mop, his lean, rugged features cut and bruised. He was thirty-eight later this year and still in reasonable nick, but time waited for no man, and whenever he got a little beaten-up these days, it seemed to take that much longer to recover.

When he went back into A&E, two other officers from the Serial Crimes Unit were waiting for him.

Detective Constable Shawna McCluskey was of short stature, in her mid-thirties, and of shapely, athletic build – ‘a neat little package’, as she’d written on a file for the personnel department when asked to describe herself. She was pretty, but in tough, tomboyish fashion, with a dusting of freckles on her turned-up nose, hazel eyes and lush, dark hair which she nearly always wore up. A broad Manchester accent, which she’d never moderated despite working in the south for several years, revealed solid blue-collar origins. Detective Constable Gary Quinnell was formerly of the South Wales Police. He was six-foot-three, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered. He’d have been handsome in a wholesome ‘family man’ sort of way, had a few too many Rugby Union forwards not kept breaking his nose for him. Despite being younger than Shawna, he was already thinning on top, so kept his reddish hair cropped very close. Had he realised that this combined with his cauliflower ears to give him a vaguely criminal aspect, he’d have been more upset than he could say.

Both had been into A&E once already, firstly to check that Heck was okay and then to congratulate him, which Shawna did by hugging him and Quinnell did by slapping his shoulder hard – the latter causing Heck to yelp in pain.

‘Press are gathering outside,’ Shawna said.

‘Shit,’ Heck groaned. ‘How did they find out?’

Quinnell chuckled. ‘How do you think? Half of Milton Keynes just got trashed.’

‘No supervision here yet?’

‘No one,’ Shawna said. ‘You sure you’re alright?’

Heck nodded.

‘Your Fiat’s a write-off,’ Quinnell observed.

‘Something good came from this then.’

‘And the word is they’ve found the gun,’ Shawna added.

Heck glanced up. ‘Yeah?’

‘In the back of the van.’

‘Thank Christ for that!’

Quinnell laughed again. ‘So even if they’re not the murderers, at least we could have done them for using you and Thames Valley for target practice, eh?’

Heck was about to respond when Shawna nodded past him. He turned. Detective Inspector Bob Hunter was approaching.

Hunter was in his mid-forties but hadn’t yet gone to seed. His short blond hair was running to grey and he’d thickened around the middle, but he was bull-necked, square-jawed, and his grey eyes brooked no nonsense. His jacket and tie were uncharacteristically dishevelled, though that wasn’t a surprise. He’d been off-duty this evening – it was his first evening off in months; apparently they’d traced him to a local health club, where he’d been in the process of having a swim and a sauna.

‘Sir,’ Heck said.

Hunter glanced at the other two. ‘Security are having problems with the press … why don’t you give ’em a hand?’ They nodded and left. ‘Sit down, Heck,’ Hunter said.

Heck pulled up the chair in the treatment bay and lowered himself into it. Hunter half-drew the curtain before getting straight to the point.

‘What made you think there were two of them?’ he asked.

‘It was just a thought,’ Heck replied. ‘It struck me as odd the perp was always able to perform sex twice so quickly in succession.’

‘Some blokes can.’

‘Like I say, sir, it was just a thought.’

‘And that led you to the Savage twins?’

‘Not straight away.’ Heck adjusted his position. It seemed that every part of his body had taken a beating during the crash. ‘Given we both agreed the investigation was stagnating … I took it on myself to go back through the case notes to see if we’d missed anything.’

He had to be careful how he worded this; he didn’t want to imply that Hunter had handled things incompetently. Hunter had not been the official boss of the enquiry, but once the Serial Crimes Unit had been brought in – and that had been at a relatively early stage – he’d taken over the whole show.

‘You’ll recall that Jordan Savage was one of several persons formerly of interest to us but later dismissed,’ Heck said.

Hunter shrugged. ‘Don’t even remember him.’

‘Well … it seems Savage was interviewed last October because he was stopped driving late at night on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard, where, as you know, two of the early murders took place. The patrol that stopped him felt his description matched the suspect – blue eyes, red hair. Anyway, a stop-and-search was performed. When he was found to be in possession of burglary tools, he was arrested for going equipped, though as this was his first offence and there was nothing else to link him to the murders, he got cautioned and bailed.’

‘What motor was he in when he was stopped?’

‘A green Mondeo, not a white van. That was the problem.’

‘Okay … go on.’

‘I assessed that stop-and-search again, sir. That was when I observed that Jordan Savage was actually going equipped with a pair of pliers.’

Hunter looked puzzled. ‘Pliers?’

‘If you remember, the medical examiner told us the wire bonds on the victims had been drawn so tight that it might have been done with a tool. I got thinking … pliers.’

Hunter pondered this.

‘That’s why I looked at Savage more closely,’ Heck said. ‘When I found out that he had a twin brother, Jason, I started wondering … did the two of them trawl the streets together but maybe in separate vehicles? Suppose the one in the van actually secured the victim and performed the oral rape? The second one then arrived a short time later – in the green Mondeo – to perform the anal? That would have explained the Maniac’s apparent virility.’

‘And this is what led you to Jordan Savage’s door?’

‘It was a theory, sir. I had nothing that wasn’t circumstantial. So I was only planning to speak to him, tell him we had a couple of things to clear up about the stop-and-search, and see how he reacted to learning that he was still a suspect …’

‘And that was when you caught them going on the prowl?’

‘That was a stroke of luck.’

‘“Give me lucky generals,” said Napoleon,’ Hunter mused. Then smiled, which was alarming because it didn’t happen very often. ‘That was excellent work, Heck. On-the-hoof, but still bloody excellent.’

Heck acknowledged the compliment, but couldn’t help thinking that it should not have come to ‘on the hoof’. As only one of dozens of junior and mid-ranking detectives attached to the Maniac taskforce, Heck couldn’t possibly be blamed that this vital clue about Jordan Savage had slipped through the net at an early stage, but Bob Hunter could. As deputy SIO, it was his job to keep everything under review. That Hunter had made this error in the first place was worrying, but his apparent unawareness of it was more worrying still.

‘Two of the worst bits of scum the Home Counties ever saw have been taken off the streets,’ Hunter said in a satisfied tone.

‘We need to be sure it’s them,’ Heck cautioned.

‘Don’t worry, we’re sure. The van’s been towed off for forensic – but I’ve already had word that its interior matches the description of the vehicle in which Pettigrew was abducted. On top of that, they’ve found rolls of wire in there, spent bullet-casings, and the not insignificant matter of the gun.’

‘I thought they’d have tossed the gun at the first opportunity.’

‘Wanted to go down fighting, didn’t they?’

‘That chase was a bit Wild West, boss. Sorry about that. Didn’t plan it.’

‘Bollocks. You had more than enough justification. There’d likely be a ton of physical evidence in that van. What if they’d torched it?’

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

‘How you feeling anyway?’

‘Stiff, but that’s all.’

‘Well you’ve done a cracking job.’ Hunter stood up. ‘We’re all in your debt.’ He turned as Quinnell came ambling back across A&E.

‘Going like a chippie out there, sir,’ the big Welshman said.

‘No sign of Humphreys?’ Hunter asked.

‘Not yet.’

Hunter snorted, as if this was no more than he’d expect. ‘Hang fire, Heck,’ he said over his shoulder as he headed out. ‘But don’t dash off.’

‘I won’t, sir.’

When Hunter had gone, Quinnell grinned. ‘Did I hear that right? He reckons he’s in your debt? He can’t have said that to many people.’

‘It was a general term, not him in particular.’

‘He’s chuffed to buggery, I’ll bet.’

Heck sat forward. ‘It’s a result, but it would have been nice to know a bit more about them, eh – the Savage brothers? I mean why they did the things they did.’

Shawna reappeared. ‘Heck – the boss wants you out front.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s decided he’s making a statement to the press.’

Heck felt vaguely alarmed. ‘What about? We don’t know anything yet … not for sure.’

‘He’s got to say something. There’s a whole raft of journos.’

‘What about Chief Superintendent Humphreys?’

‘Won’t surprise you to know he’s still not available.’

‘What’s Bob saying?’

‘If you come out, like he’s asked you to, you’ll know?’ Shawna said.

Heck allowed her to hustle him to his feet and steer him out of A&E to the front of the hospital steps, where DI Hunter was standing in front of a bank of mikes, Dictaphones and video cameras. Flash-bulbs went off constantly. At least fifty journalists were present, with more streaming across the car park to join the throng.

Heck stood nervously to Hunter’s rear. Shawna and Quinnell stood even further back.

‘So you’re attached to the Maniac taskforce, sir?’ one of the journos shouted.

‘Correct … I’m with the Serial Crimes Unit at Scotland Yard,’ Hunter replied. ‘As you’re probably aware, we regularly get seconded to regional forces in the event of major crimes like this.’

It was rare the DI allowed himself any displays of emotion while on duty, but as a clear indication of the immense pressure that had been removed from his shoulders, he was beaming like the Cheshire Cat – though maybe it went a little further than that. Heck wondered if Hunter had perhaps finished his sauna and had been in the health club bar when the team had reached him.

‘Can you identify the two fatalities?’ another journalist asked.

‘Not at this stage, no.’

‘Is there anything you can tell us?’

‘You must understand, these events have only just occurred. We’re still assessing the situation, gathering evidence and so forth, but I will say this … we’re very happy.’

‘When you say “we”, DI Hunter … do you mean the Serial Crimes Unit or the Maniac taskforce?’

‘All of us. There has been a double fatality and that’s always a tragedy, but I must reiterate … we are very pleased with developments to date. Ah …’ He noticed Heck lurking at the rear, and ushered him forward. ‘Here’s one of the officers who attended the scene. This is Detective Sergeant Heckenburg, also from the Serial Crimes Unit. As you can see, he’s had a tough evening, but let me assure you this is one top-notch officer who has more than done his job today.’

‘Were you involved in the pursuit, Sergeant Heckenburg?’ a reporter shouted.

Heck hesitated before replying. He didn’t have the first idea how much Hunter had revealed about the car chase, though given the severity of it, it was likely the press had already discovered an awful lot.

‘I was in one of the cars pursuing the suspect vehicle,’ he admitted.

‘Can you tell us what happened?’

‘As I’ve told you,’ Hunter interrupted, ‘we can’t say any more about that at present.’

‘Were you in the vehicle that rode the two suspects off the motorway, DS Heckenburg?’ a different voice asked.

‘There were a number of police units involved,’ Heck replied.

‘When was it that you realised you were chasing the M1 Maniac?’

‘I’ve told you, we can’t say anything yet,’ Hunter answered for him.

‘Did you know from the beginning there were two murderers?’

‘Please gentlemen!’ Hunter said. ‘We’ve told you all we can.’

‘And that would be that you’re very happy two men have died in a car crash, sir?’

Hunter’s smile tightened, but he retained his cool. ‘I think you know what I mean …’

‘Sir,’ Heck whispered, ‘we’ve probably said enough.’

Hunter raised his voice one final time. ‘All you need tell the public at present is that there’s been a major development in the M1 Maniac enquiry – a major development – and that we are very, very encouraged by it.’

He and Heck turned and walked back into the hospital, ignoring all further questions. Once they were safe in A&E, Hunter dabbed sweat from his brow with a handkerchief but still looked satisfied. ‘That gave them something to chew on at least.’

Heck didn’t say what he was thinking: Yes, sir … your arse.

Chapter 4

Todd really liked Cheryl, and Cheryl really liked Todd. In fact, if they were honest, it went a lot further than that. The first time Todd had told Cheryl he loved her it had been just before Christmas, while they were walking Monty, her parents’ pet Labrador, over the snowy ridges of Rivington Moor. She’d simply replied: ‘I know.’

Which had thrown him a little.

Todd could only muster small-talk all the way back to the car park. But once Cheryl had installed Monty on the blanket in the back of her boyfriend’s periwinkle-blue Volkswagen Polo, and had climbed into the front passenger seat alongside him, she kissed him on the cheek. Not just any old kiss, not just a peck; it was long and moist and warm. He turned to face her, and their lips entwined and their tongues snaked together, and there’d been no going back really from that point on.

They hadn’t told anybody yet, especially not their respective parents, but they planned to marry in about two years’ time, depending on their ability to save up for a mortgage. Of course they were only nineteen and twenty, so they weren’t rushing anything.

Even so, they were electric together.

That was what Cheryl told her girlfriends: ‘We’re electric.’ If Todd so much as touched her hand, a warm jolt passed through her. And in one of their more intimate moments, he confessed the same about her.

They couldn’t wait to see each other that Valentine’s Eve.

As always, Todd arrived at Cheryl’s parents’ house bang on time, looking spick and span in his dark jeans, his bold striped sport shirt and well-pressed blazer. His gleaming, newly-washed Polo waited at the end of the drive – her chariot. That was one thing Cheryl’s parents really liked about Todd. He nearly always drove, so he rarely drank, which was a good thing in itself and in addition meant their lovely daughter was always assured of getting home safely.

It was Cheryl’s mum, Marlene, who answered the door. She was a bit of a looker herself, and she too was going out somewhere that evening, so she looked sexy, her voluptuous curves wrapped in chiffon and black lace, her blood-red toenails peeking out of patent black stilettos. But it was Cheryl who was the star of the show in a metallic-blue sequin dress with gloss tights and sky-high heels. Presenting Cheryl with ten red Valentine’s roses, Todd didn’t know what to say, except what he always said, which was that he was the luckiest man alive.

By seven-thirty they’d hit the road. After stopping for a bite to eat at their favourite pizzeria, they drove to a pub they knew, where they met up with two other couples they were friendly with. After a few drinks, the girls already getting tipsy on the landlady’s special Valentine’s cocktail, they headed off to Manchester together to hit one of the expensive, glitzy nightclubs.

It was a cracking event.

City centre clubs could get a bit crowded, a bit sweaty, a bit noisy – but the atmosphere in this one was just right. The music was ultra schmaltzy, but Cheryl really didn’t care because tonight was all about love, and she had Todd. There was lots of dancing and lots and lots of kissing. Subsequently, by two o’clock in the morning, their intense affection for each other had become unmanageably passionate. So they said their goodbyes and hurried outside hand-in-hand, giggling.

It was another very cold night, their breath steaming, and the light sweat on their foreheads prickling like ice. As they made their way down the back alley to the car park, its cobblestones were rimed with frost.

The moment they got into the car and closed the doors, Todd put a hungry hand on Cheryl’s nylon-clad thigh.

‘Not here,’ she said, pouting.

Todd glanced around. She was probably right. People would be coming and going for a little while yet. ‘Usual place?’ he asked with an impish grin.

‘It’s a lot quieter there,’ she said.

So Todd drove them back out of Manchester along the M61 motorway. Their home town, Bolton, was only about eight or nine miles away, but before they reached it, they diverted along the A675 onto the West Pennine Moors. En route, Cheryl lifted the hem of her dress to reveal that she wasn’t wearing shiny tights at all, but shiny stockings fastened to pretty white suspender straps. She wiggled her bottom as she drew a pair of panties down her shapely legs.

‘Watch the road,’ she said sternly as Todd kept glancing down, his eyes popping.

There were few other cars around at this time of night, especially here on the West Pennine Moors, though these weren’t wild moors as such – more like open countryside alternating with reservoirs and dense tracts of woodland. But only one or two main roads led through this area, with few streetlamps.

Todd eventually decided he couldn’t wait any longer and pulled up in a lay-by – only for Cheryl to glance around, discomforted. ‘Here?’ she said. ‘We’re still on the road.’

‘There’s no one out at this hour,’ he replied, loosening his seatbelt.

‘I thought we were going to the usual place?’

‘That’s another five minutes off …’

‘Yeah, but it’s more sheltered than this.’ She pouted. ‘Please.’

Sighing, he switched the engine back on. Two miles further along, they swung left down a short access way and into a small car park, which was used during the day by walkers and picnickers but at night was nearly always deserted. At present it was pitch-black, huddled beneath a roof of branches so interlaced that only faint beams of frosty moonlight penetrated. Even so, Todd drove down to its farthest end, about a hundred yards from the entrance. He pulled up, applied the handbrake and switched off his headlights.

Beside them stood a wall of leafless thickets, but these were only vaguely distinguishable in the gloom. Beyond those lay a blackness in which nothing stirred, at least nothing they could see. At normal times they might have been a little oppressed by this sense of isolation, but now the twosome were hot for each other, breathless with anticipation.

At first only Cheryl reacted to the brief, shrill cry, which sounded from somewhere close by.

‘What was that?’ she said, sitting bolt upright.

‘Does it matter?’ Todd fumbled eagerly with the button of his jeans.

‘No Todd, seriously … what was it?’

‘I don’t know … a bird probably.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Mating call. How appropriate.’ He leaned over, planted his mouth on Cheryl’s perfumed neck and tried to worm a mischievous hand between her thighs – but she kept them clamped together and pushed him away.

‘Stop it … that didn’t sound like a bird to me.’

Realising that she wasn’t just being coy, Todd straightened up. ‘What’s the matter now?’

Cheryl stared through the windows, beyond which tendrils of icy mist ebbed amid meshed, naked twigs. ‘What … what if it’s someone messing around?’

‘All the way out here?’

She pondered that, inwardly agreeing that it seemed unlikely, but still discomforted. ‘Look, I definitely heard something …’

‘There are night birds, you know.’

‘In February?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Hey … if someone’s here, and … I dunno, if they want to watch us, would they give themselves away by making daft noises?’

‘Watch us?’ She looked dismayed by the mere thought. ‘You mean like doggers?’

‘Well … yeah. But what are the chances of that at this hour?’

Even as he said this Cheryl thought she glimpsed movement: a black shadow flitting out of sight behind the even blacker pillar of a tree-trunk. She squealed and grabbed Todd’s hand. ‘There’s someone out there, I know it!’

‘Cheryl, there’s no one. It’s three in the morning!’

She peered into the encircling darkness, and he could tell that she was genuinely frightened.

‘What did you think you saw?’ he asked quietly.

‘I don’t know. It could have been a trick of the light …’

‘There is no light.’

Todd opened the car door and jumped out, his smoky breath wreathed around him as he scanned the nearby trees. Fleetingly, he too felt vulnerable. In darkness this opaque someone could be very near and he wouldn’t necessarily see them. But it was ridiculous, surely? No one would be all the way …

Something flickered at the corner of his vision. He spun in that direction; a low bough on the car park’s edge was quivering, as if someone had just brushed past it.

‘Hey!’ he called, striding quickly over there. ‘Hey, you fucking pervert!’

‘Todd, don’t!’ Cheryl hissed.

‘Why don’t you go back to the internet and knock a quick one off over some underagers, eh?’

‘Todd!’

He halted at the edge of the undergrowth, right next to the quivering bough. ‘There’s nothing here for you tonight … you got it?’ His eyes slowly attuned as he peered into the foliage, though it diminished quickly into a foggy gloom.

In truth, he’d only half heard the keening cry that had distracted Cheryl. But now that he pondered it, there had been something vaguely fake about it, as if – how had Cheryl put it? – someone was messing around. Again, Todd scanned the murky woodland, his ears pricked. It was so still, so quiet, as though the roots, the branches, the bark were listening back to him. He hung on there for several more seconds, defying someone to respond.

‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ Cheryl said, coming up behind, heels clattering the tarmac.

He shrugged. ‘Just a precaution.’

‘You’ll make them angry.’

‘Cheryl, there’s no one here, okay? I shouted on the off chance, but it’s a bit late at night for someone to be creeping around.’

She took his arm in a tight grip. ‘Right, fine … enough showing off, alright?’

‘I’m not showing off.’

She led him back to the car. ‘You don’t have to do stuff like that to impress me …’

Her words tailed off as they stumbled to a standstill.

An electric light was visible about seventy yards away, in the farthest corner of the car park. It was a single, feebly glowing bulb, only just managing to illuminate the narrow doorway underneath it, which they knew gave access to a small public lavatory. But this was the first time either of them had noticed it.

‘When did that get switched on?’ Cheryl asked quietly.

Todd mused. ‘Must’ve been on all the time.’

‘I didn’t see it when we first arrived.’

‘Were you looking?’

‘No, but surely we’d have spotted it?’

Todd started towards it, slowly at first but then with purpose.

‘What are we doing now?’ Cheryl asked, following, still clutching his arm.

‘Just seeing if there’s anyone there.’

‘Er … why?’

‘Because like you say, we don’t want spectators!’

‘But you said there’d be no one here at this hour.’

Todd had no immediate answer to that. It was possible they’d simply driven in here and hadn’t observed that the lavatory’s exterior light was on, but he doubted it. The clicking of their footfalls echoed eerily as they approached the tiny structure, its simple square dimensions slowly coming into view. They were about thirty yards away when its light winked off – they froze mid-stride – and then winked on again.

‘Not working properly,’ Todd stated. The exterior light flickered several times more, finally went off again, and then stayed off. ‘Just wait here … I’ll go and check.’

Cheryl remained where she was while Todd ventured forward over the last few yards, one eye on the lavatory’s half-open door behind which lay dank blackness, the other on the deep, dim undergrowth at the building’s rear. That too lay thick, motionless and impenetrable.

The lavatory was little more in size than a suburban outhouse. It was built from red brick and when seen in daylight, written all over with obscene slogans. Inside, it comprised a single narrow passage with a broken washbasin at the far end, and two cubicles that, when he’d gone in there once before to take a leak, were as dirty and smelly as animal stalls. Todd poked his head around the door first and fumbled along the jamb for a switch. He encountered two, and when he threw the first the interior bulb flickered to life, revealing an unwashed tile floor and damp plaster walls. He glanced into both cubicles. The first was empty and the toilet lid closed, but in the second the lid was open and someone had daubed the bowl’s fecal contents all over the surrounding woodwork in broad smears, at one point attempting to write something with it. Not surprisingly, the stench in there was appalling, and Todd was grateful to beat a hasty retreat. As he exited, the internal light also began flickering and buzzing loudly.

‘Loose connections,’ he said, rejoining Cheryl outside. ‘Probably been going on and off all day.’

‘But why would it be on in the first place?’ she asked as he walked her back across the car park.

‘Someone left it on … it’s no big deal.’

‘Listen, Todd …’ She glanced again at the encircling woodland, clotted with night-mist. ‘I think we should just go home.’

They’d now reached the Polo, and he gazed at her across its roof, hugely disappointed. ‘Oh … come on, Cheryl!’

She regarded him carefully. Todd was every inch the gentleman – he’d been so quick to protect her honour then, even against foes that were possibly imaginary – but he was a man too, and they hadn’t got frisky with each other for over a week. No wonder he looked so dejected.

‘Well at least get close to the road,’ she said, ‘so we can make a quick getaway if we need to.’

‘Whatever you say.’

They climbed in together. Todd twisted the key, put the Polo back in gear, and nosed it around in a three-point turn. Finger-like twigs groped at the windscreen and then at the side windows as the vehicle manoeuvred. As they drove back across the car park, Cheryl glanced towards the lavatory block. Both its internal and external lights had now gone off.

‘Even if there is someone around,’ Todd said cheerfully, ‘they won’t see much in this darkness.’

‘Dirty old men,’ she replied with disgust.

‘Dogging’s a popular sport these days. You get codgers, you get husky athletic types. All sorts.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it?’

‘Hey, I’m a man of the world.’ Todd was making light of the situation, though he couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder again, eyes roving the empty, moon-dappled tarmac behind them. It was funny how once you’d told yourself you weren’t alone in a dark and lonely place, it was difficult to get the idea out of your head. Not that it was easy to be distracted by this for long, the way Cheryl was now moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue.

‘I hope you’re going to show me how much of a man you are in a minute,’ she said.

He grinned as he drove.

This time they parked at the foot of the access lane, about thirty yards from the car park entrance. Even though a slice of grey, moonlit ribbon was visible where the main road passed by, deep, skeletal thickets blotted out the rest. Todd hurriedly unzipped his flies and pulled his trousers to his knees, pushing his underpants down after them. As his engorged penis sprang to life, Cheryl climbed over the gearstick to face him, straddling his lap. He entered her easily and quickly.

She grunted gently as she rode him, wrapping her arms around his neck, bending her head down to greedily kiss at his lips, their tongues lashing. Cheryl screwed her eyes shut to suffer no other distractions, to maximise every millisecond of bliss. And then, for some reason unknown to her, she opened them again.

Only briefly, fleetingly – but that was when she realised they had company.

At first she thought the tall figure with the glowing green eyes was standing in the car park directly behind them – only to realise that this was a reflection on the inside of the rear window. The figure was actually standing in front of the car.

As if telepathically connected, Todd realised someone was there too. His eyes snapped open and he stared past Cheryl’s suddenly rigid shoulder, focusing on the figure about twenty yards in front. He couldn’t distinguish anything about it except that it was taut, as though twisted partly around. In the very same second Todd realised why this was. The figure was straining on some complex, hi-tech instrument; he appeared to have drawn a heavy cord back to his shoulder.

Todd gasped, choked …

It was a bow and arrow.

There was a muffled twang.

And the windscreen shattered.

Chapter 5

When Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper gave you a bollocking, you knew you’d been bollocked. They didn’t call her ‘the Lioness’ for nothing. When Gemma roared, the corridors at New Scotland Yard shook. And she was articulate with it, so it wasn’t just uncontrolled rage you were exposed to; her choice of words could be so scathing that even if delivered in terms of friendly banter, they could make an eavesdropper wince.

And this wasn’t friendly banter.

Heck sat alone outside her office as he listened to the racket within. Because of his rank, Bob Hunter had been summoned in to see the superintendent first. That had been a good thirty minutes ago, and Gemma was still tearing strips off him, the whipcrack voice penetrating the closed door and ringing down the central corridor of the Serial Crimes Unit. By the sounds of it, she’d now moved from criticising Hunter’s handling of the enquiry, primarily the way he’d allowed it to ‘crash and burn’, to something more akin to common abuse. Phrases like ‘swaggering overconfidence’, ‘buffoonish disregard for protocol’, and ‘off-the-scale ineptitude’ sounded decidedly non-specific.

In one respect, it all seemed a little unfair, given that the M1 murders had officially been solved. The evidence found in the wrecked van, including the pistol used in all the killings, had strongly indicated that the Savage twins were the culprits. What was more, two days ago, the inquest into their deaths, which had delayed the team returning to base from Milton Keynes, had returned a verdict of death by misadventure, so there ought to be no further questions regarding the double fatality.

The problem was that even though the case of the M1 Maniac was now firmly closed, the press, who had fed on it for months in a shark-like frenzy, weren’t content to leave it there. With the inquest over, the finer details of the enquiry had been made public, and fascinated journalists had pored over them, determined to find mistakes. It almost seemed as if the actions of two cold-blooded serial killers had provided insufficient explanation for the deaths of eight teenage boys. Any errors made by those charged with catching the deranged duo had to be immediately and ruthlessly exposed, as though these constituted sins as reprehensible as the homicides themselves.

Heck wouldn’t ordinarily dispute that viewpoint – it was the job of the police to catch killers, and if they couldn’t do it, they ought to be asked why. But the hunt for the M1 Maniac had stirred widespread panic across southern England and put intolerable pressure on the investigating team. There’d been massive interference at all levels, both judicial and political; everyone from the Prime Minister down to the average petty criminal had stridently demanded a resolution. Exhaustion had set in, mental and physical, so it was no wonder errors were made by the team: failure to follow up leads, failure to update computer files, innocent suspects suffering heavy-handed treatment from overworked officers, and so forth.

Now, after the revelation that Jordan Savage had been spoken to at an early stage of the investigation but then disregarded, resulting in he and his brother going on to commit a further five murders – the press were having an absolute field day.

‘Keystone Cops,’ one headline proclaimed over a photograph of the Yard’s famous revolving signpost. ‘Police 2, Bad Guys 9,’ another said. Its strapline added: ‘So how dare they claim victory’. It was enough to make even Heck cringe with guilt, and he was the one who had broken the case.

He wasn’t sure where to look when the door to Gemma’s office opened and Bob Hunter came stiffly out. The DI winked, but the only colour registering in his chastened face were two dots of bright pink, one on either cheekbone. He stuck a thumb over his shoulder at the half-closed door, turned and perambulated down the corridor, his gait slow and delicate.

Heck stood up and brushed his hair with his hand, before knocking.

‘Yes?’ came an irritable voice.

Heck walked in, closing the door behind him.

‘Ah-hah … the arresting officer!’ Gemma said. ‘Or something to that effect.’

Her personal office was always fastidiously neat – and rather bare, in fact some would say ‘spartan’ – and yet surprisingly small, given her high rank. Of course, this made it all the easier for it to be filled by her towering personality.

Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper was formidable; a force of nature. Her beauty helped her in this regard. It was fierce, leonine (hence the nickname) – she had wild, ash-blonde hair, blue eyes, red lips, flawless features – all the usual accoutrements of fine femininity, yet somehow it combined to create a warrior rather than a princess. In addition she was tall and athletically built, and she dressed to enhance this; men could be reduced to jelly in Gemma’s presence for all kinds of reasons. Heck knew this better than anyone, because at one time, many years ago now, he’d shared her life and her bed.

‘Morning, ma’am,’ he said.

She pointed to the chair in front of her desk. He sat.

‘You know why I want to see you?’ She leaned forward, fingers steepled. She was pale in the cheek, but her anger seemed to have abated a little, presumably because she’d vented most of it on Bob Hunter – though there was still a menacing snap in her tone.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Because this …’ and she dropped a file related to the M1 enquiry on the desk; it landed like a paving stone, ‘… should have “Cowboys and Indians” written on it. Particularly the bit at the end. You know, the bit where the damage runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds … caused by a frantic car-chase, which you instigated. The bit where the two perpetrators suffered horrific, life-ending injuries. I mean, killing the two chief suspects, Heck … that kind of faux pas knocks everything else that went wrong on this enquiry into a cocked hat.’

‘Ma’am …’ Heck shrugged helplessly. ‘These guys had a lot to lose. They were never going to come quietly.’

‘I understand that, but we still have to be accountable for our actions.’

‘If we have to account to Joe Public, we’ve no worries. He’s fine with it.’

‘Joe Public is an arsehole!’ she replied, her voice sharpening again. ‘Joe Public will turn on us viciously the first time we do the slightest thing he doesn’t agree with. Don’t pretend Joe Public is our mate, Heck, because he isn’t.’

‘Ma’am …’ Heck tried his most earnest tone. ‘You can surely see I had no choice but to pursue the suspects?’

‘Even though they were armed and you weren’t?’

‘Well … yes. I knew it was a risk, but it was less of a risk for me than it would have been a risk for the general public if those two were allowed to remain at liberty. For what it’s worth, if I’d been going there to make an arrest, I’d have taken armed support with me, but it didn’t happen that way.’

Gemma pondered this. There was no doubt she was torn. If Heck’s actions leading to the fatal accident were reckless, he’d also showed exceptional bravery, which was something she valued in her officers.

‘Even if the suspects had got away, ma’am, I couldn’t afford to lose that van,’ he added. ‘It was chock full of physical evidence.’

‘Celebrating its capture hardly seemed appropriate, given that two men had died.’

‘I know that.’

She sat back. ‘It won’t surprise you to learn that Max Humphreys has distanced himself – by some margin – from the comments Bob Hunter made on the hospital steps.’

‘No, that doesn’t surprise me.’

Detective Chief Superintendent Max Humphreys of the Thames Valley Police, nominal SIO in the M1 Maniac enquiry, had struck Heck from the outset as an uninspiring leader; too old and tired, too disorganised, and alarmingly prone to avoiding responsibility. For all that, Bob Hunter’s triumphalist attitude in front of the press had been very ill-advised, given the errors that would later emerge.

‘Now in actual fact,’ Gemma said, ‘I’m not too concerned that you were involved in that extremely injudicious press conference. I know you were acting under Hunter’s orders, and I’ve already had it verbatim from DCs Quinnell and McCluskey that you were against the idea. But I’m very concerned at the way this investigation ended overall. What should have been a feather in our cap has brought ridicule on us. The press are ripping us a new one.’

Heck snorted. ‘To be fair, ma’am, the press did their own bit to turn the M1 Maniac into a monster. They created the name, they caused the anti-gay panic. In fact, the whole thing’s ended too quickly for them. They wanted more and more – a show-trial, exemplary sentences, maybe a protracted appeals process. And now they can’t have it, and they’re looking for scapegoats …’

‘Have you finished?’ she asked, eyebrows arched. ‘Because anyone would think you believe the investigation was handled well!’

He shook his head. ‘Ma’am, Chief Superintendent Humphreys …’

‘I’m well aware of Max Humphreys’ shortcomings. He’ll be getting exactly the same bollocking up at Thames Valley that you lot are getting now. But Max Humphreys is a carrot cruncher, whereas we’re supposed to be experts. We were advising him, leading the enquiry, and by the looks of it, missing stuff that was right under our noses.’

Heck nodded, unable to disagree. ‘That’s why I spent three days going back through the files. I’d never known any case before where we just weren’t getting anywhere.’

‘And it was good initiative. So congratulations. And I mean that, Heck.’ She sighed, the annoyance finally sapped out of her. ‘If you hadn’t done what you did, God alone knows how this thing would have ended. But … and I appreciate it may not seem very important after how close you came to getting killed, this is not the way the brass want the Serial Crimes Unit portrayed. Like some redneck posse charging around. Especially not after the investigation was botched. Needless to say, the Savage family is pushing for a public enquiry. The coroner exonerated us of any wrongdoing, the case is officially closed and it’s in no one’s interest to rake over it again, so I’m sure we’ll be spared that … thank God. But at the end of the day it’s about professionalism. We need to keep the mayhem to a minimum.’

‘Has anyone told the criminals that?’

She arched an eyebrow again. ‘Are you trying to be clever?’

‘No, ma’am … but, it’s not an irrelevant point.’

‘One way or another, the criminals will go down. My concern is that SCU may go down with them.’

‘How so? We stopped the M1 killers …’

‘We also stopped the Nice Guys Club, and look at the bad publicity that caused.’

‘That was Laycock.’

‘And he paid the price,’ she said. ‘Which should be a salutary lesson to all of us.’

Heck pursed his lips, nodding. There was no question that she was right on that score. The Nice Guys enquiry, in which he had played an integral role, had led to several deaths on both sides of the law, and an embarrassing internal investigation, which eventually saw National Crime Group Commander Jim Laycock demoted in rank and removed from his post for gross negligence. If Heck had got his own way, Laycock would have been investigated for criminal activity, but there hadn’t been sufficient evidence of that.

‘The point is that attention is now focused on us,’ Gemma said. ‘On SCU. We’re a key facet of the National Crime Group. We’re part of the bright new future for British law enforcement. Or at least we were, until we started initiating cock-ups on a regular basis.’

‘I wouldn’t call it regular …’

‘One is too many, Heck! Two is a total clusterfuck.’

That was a sure proof of how upset she was: Gemma almost never swore. She took another moment to compose herself. ‘So the first thing I’m going to do is appoint a full-time Media Liaison Officer.’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Just for us,’ she added. ‘A civvie … a real pro. Someone who can give us a far more professional face.’

‘Does the budget extend to that?’

‘It wouldn’t do normally, but as you know, Des Palliser’s retiring at the end of next month. If I don’t replace him we can manage it.’

‘You’re going to replace an operational DI with a civvie?’

‘He’s hardly operational. He’s been acting duty-officer for the last eighteen months, which means filing paperwork and manning phones. I’m sure we can live without him.’

‘Someone’ll have to do that job.’

She eyed him carefully. ‘Bob Hunter.’

Heck thought he’d misheard. ‘You’re taking Hunter off the streets?’

Gemma shuffled the paperwork on her desk. ‘Bob’s better days are behind him. Milton Keynes wasn’t the first time he’s shown a lack of judgment recently.’

‘But we’re already under-strength, ma’am.’

‘Bob Hunter’s grounded for the foreseeable, and that’s all there is to it. We are under-strength, I agree … but the last thing I need at present is a loose cannon out in the field. Now let’s get back to work. We’re all busy.’ Heck stood up. Gemma was already engrossed in checking another report. He headed for the door. ‘Well done on the case,’ she said to his back. He glanced around, but she didn’t look up. ‘I said I meant that, and I do. But none of us smell of roses right now. And I have to take any action necessary to put that right.’

Heck nodded and left.

Chapter 6

If nothing else, Kate was glad it was spring.

Okay, some parts of Liverpool didn’t look great at any time of year, and Toxteth was undoubtedly one of them, especially when rainy as today. But just standing outside the front of the shop this evening and not having to wrap up like an Eskimo was a boon.

To call the winter that had just passed ‘bitter’ would have been a big understatement. An arctic air-stream had caused record lows and persistent whiteouts across the whole of the UK from mid-December until well into February. Great fun, of course, for the kiddies, whose schools were repeatedly closed. But there were an awful lot of people for whom those conditions were a living hell. The flotsam of the city – the lonely, the homeless, the sick, the drug-addled – did well to get through their average day and keep warm, dry and fed, but rotting cardboard boxes, piss-stained sleeping bags and windy concrete underpasses offered scant protection when the ice and snow bit with that much savagery.

Kate chuffed on her cig, and considered it a miracle that any of her charges had survived this last winter at all – and they weren’t totally out of the woods yet. It was seven o’clock now and today’s inclement weather appeared to be clearing at last, though it still felt dank and chilly.

She was in the process of closing up, loading bundles of plastic-wrapped second-hand clothing, all cleaned and pressed, into the boot of her battered old Ford Fiesta. The backstreet on which the charity shop was located, which was unused by any other businesses, became a deep, dark canyon once night fell. Only a single yellow lamp glowed at the far end, and as the street was narrow and the industrial buildings running down either side of it were tall, gloomy and mostly windowless, no more than a thin slice of sky was visible overhead. Kate shivered as she loaded the last bundle into the boot. She would get all this lot down to the Whitechapel Centre on Langsdale Street and then hang around to see if they needed a spare volunteer for the evening. She’d put in a lot of hours recently, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t sleep easily tonight knowing there were people out of doors who’d be neither warm nor dry.

She stubbed her cigarette out, pulled her Afghan coat on, wove a scarf around her neck and was about to switch the lights off inside, when she heard a loud, metallic clank from somewhere to the rear of the shop. She stopped what she was doing to listen. No additional sound followed. Assuming something in the kitchen had fallen over, she wandered into the shop to check, remembering that she needed to empty the bin while she was at it – but nothing looked to have been disturbed. Her knife, fork and dinner plate were stacked on the draining board, where she’d left them that lunchtime. Her coffee cup was in its usual place alongside the kettle, which was safely unplugged, its cable wound around it. The doors to the fridge and microwave were both closed; the dishcloth and sponge were in the washing-up bowl, the Fairy Liquid on the windowsill.

Shrugging, Kate lugged the bulging plastic sack from out of the bin, tying its neck in a knot, and opened the back door – and only then did it occur to her that perhaps the sound she’d heard had come from outside. That wouldn’t be unusual, even though she worked here alone; this was a city, people did things at all hours, there were loud noises. And yet, fleetingly, she was hesitant to go and investigate the murky yard. The only light out there came from the interior of the shop via its grimy window and narrow back door. There was a faint ambient glow in the sky – the residue of surrounding street lighting, though no lamps shone directly down on the yard.

Kate hovered on the step. From what she could see, everything looked to be in place: the wheelie-bin, the bucket and mop, the row of empty plant-pots. There was nothing suspicious here.

Except that the back gate was open.

That wasn’t a big thing in itself, though Kate was sure she’d closed it earlier. Was that the sound she’d heard? Had someone climbed over the gate to case the place, and had they then opened it to get away again?

Good luck to them, she thought; it wasn’t like there was much here worth stealing.

Her eyes had now adapted to the dimness, and she could see that she was alone. There was no dilapidated shed for someone to hide behind, no concealed corner where they might crouch unseen. Deciding she was being daft, she went boldly forward, throwing the rubbish sack into the bin and walking over to the gate. She even stepped outside it. The cobbled alley beyond wasn’t too salubrious, but they never were in this part of town. There were no other vehicles of course; no one was packing or unpacking goods. But at least that meant she could see clear down to either end of the alley. On the left it ran forty litter-strewn yards before halting at a wall of sheer bricks. On the right it ran further, eighty yards or more, and then opened into an adjacent road. Even down there, the street lighting was restricted to a narrow gap, where a caul of mist was slowly twisting.

That was spooky for sure, but it wasn’t unusual either – even if Kate did stare at it for several seconds, as though mesmerised. They were very near the river. And it was only April, as she kept reminding herself. The main thing was that there was no one skulking about. She went back into the yard, this time ensuring to close and bolt the gate, then re-entered the building, locking the back door behind her, before turning the lights off and leaving the shop.

Her car was years old, so it would take an age for the radiator to warm up. Kate pulled her mittens on, twisted the key in the ignition and steered the chugging old motor along the street. That sound she’d heard would have been nothing, but it was strange how even though you’d worked in the heart of the city for so many years, its dreary facades and bleak, empty passages could occasionally menace you. Perhaps it was the way the light leached into its stones, the way shadows seemed to clot at its every nook and corner. You were surrounded by people in the inner city, yet it was the easiest place in the world to feel isolated and threatened. How much worse it must be, of course, for those who roamed it endlessly with no place to call their own.

In perfect sync with these thoughts, and before Kate had even reached the next junction, her headlights swept over another pathetic specimen of humanity huddled in a trash-filled doorway. All she saw at first was a dingy quilted blanket, frayed around its edges and odiously stained. The shape curled up beneath was visibly shuddering.

She pulled up at the kerb and applied the handbrake, but left the engine running to try and warm the vehicle’s interior. She climbed out amid clouds of exhaust made thick and pungent by the dampness. The poor sod must have known she was there, but made no effort to look up.

‘Hi,’ Kate said, approaching cautiously. Even someone with experience had to be a little bit careful – some of these cases were so damaged that they were almost animalistic in their reaction when frightened or disturbed. ‘Can I help?’

There was no response. The shrouded form continued to shudder. God alone knew how long the miserable creature had been out here.

‘My name’s Kate. I run the outreach shop at the end of the road there. Look … there’s nothing to be scared of. I’m sure I can assist.’ Kate hunkered down. ‘I’m on my way to one of the shelters in the centre of town right now. Why don’t you hop in and I’ll give you a lift? In half an hour you’ll be drinking hot soup and have a proper bed to sleep in. You can have a wash, a change of clothes …’ Whoever was under there stopped shuddering, as if they were suddenly listening. ‘Here,’ Kate said, encouraged. She reached forward to peel the ragged blanket away. ‘Let me help you …’

The figure sprang.

Kate never saw this – before she knew it, she was the one swathed in filthy material. The pavement hit her in the back. She gasped with shock, but could barely draw a breath as the blanket was wrapped tightly around her – as if she was being quickly and efficiently packaged. Something cinched her waist – a rope or belt – binding her arms tightly to her sides. Effortlessly, she was scooped into someone’s arms.

Kate made muffled screams, even though she knew no one could hear her. She was flung into the back seat of her own vehicle, where what felt like further straps were fixed in place and another blanket was tossed over her. A split second later someone climbed into the driving seat, closed the door and put the car in gear.

She screamed again, futilely. The traitorous vehicle rumbled on along the narrow street as though the brief, terrifying interlude had never occurred.

Chapter 7

‘Get stuffed, Heck!’ Shawna McCluskey said. ‘That wasn’t me.’

‘It was,’ Heck assured the bunch of detectives crammed around them in the pub vault. ‘I drive round the back to try and cut these idiots off. I look up, and there’s two uniforms coming down the other side of the pub. One of them’s Shawna. These two lads they’re chasing see me in the panda car, and cut across this patch of grass. Shawna veers over it to intercept. Best rugby tackle you’ve ever seen. She took this big bastard right out, almost killed him.’

There was laughter.

‘That wasn’t me,’ Shawna informed everyone for the umpteenth time.

‘And what had he done again?’ Des Palliser asked.

‘He’d only bitten some bugger’s nose and ear off in a fight in the pub,’ Heck said. ‘The other one had kicked the shit out of the landlord when he objected. Anyway, she takes out Jaws, and then wallops the other one as well. Puts him down with one punch.’

There was more laughter.

‘That wasn’t me either,’ Shawna said tartly. ‘It was Ian Kershaw. “Dreadnought”, we used to call him. He didn’t want the lock-up because it was ten minutes to finishing time and it was his sister’s wedding the next day. I took the prisoners for him.’

‘What did the two scrotes say?’ Gary Quinnell asked.

‘Nothing,’ Heck replied. ‘They were out cold. They didn’t know who’d hit them.’

There were further roars of laughter.

The Chop House was located under the arches on the edge of Borough Market, and was redolent with Victoriana: leaded windows, etched mirrors, elegant hardwood décor, and an open fire. Its various rooms were packed with off-duty police and police civilian staff, the booze was flowing and there was an atmosphere of bonhomie.

Shawna shook her head as though tolerating the boyishness around her, and handed Heck her empty glass. ‘For that, it’s your round.’

Heck nodded and threaded his way through to the bar, taking a rash of orders en route. Bob Hunter was leaning there, a treble scotch in his hand. He looked rumpled and sour-faced; his tie hung in a limp knot.

‘Everyone’s having a good time, I see,’ he said as Heck put the order in.

‘Gotta give Des a send-off, haven’t we?’ Heck replied.

‘No sign of the Lioness yet?’

Heck looked around. ‘Thought she’d be in by now.’

It was possible that Gemma was in one of the other rooms – she always had a lot of flesh to press at police functions – but the bulk of SCU were squashed into this one, so he’d have expected her to come in here first, probably to buy Des Palliser a drink.

‘Second round of interviews this afternoon for the Media Liaison job, wasn’t it?’ Hunter said.

‘Oh yeah, that.’

‘Yeah … that. What a fucking joke, eh? This is the way they repay us for taking nutjobs off the street.’

Heck shrugged. ‘Won’t interfere with our work, will it?’

‘Says who? I’ve been demoted to fucking duty-officer!’

‘It’s only temporary.’

‘How temporary is temporary, Heck?’ Hunter barely acknowledged the double scotch that Heck placed in front of him. ‘Fucking Lioness wants me out, I can tell.’

‘She doesn’t,’ Heck said.

‘Why, has she told you that?’

‘No, but …’

‘Exactly … no.’ Hunter swallowed whisky. ‘Suddenly the way I work doesn’t suit her anymore. I wonder why that is? I’d say it was because some over-decorated twat on the top floor had her by the gonads … but as a bird she hasn’t got any, has she?’

‘Bob … it was a fuck-up. We should never have spoken to the press.’

‘Alright, I accept that.’ Hunter looked surprisingly contrite. ‘But it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Christ’s sake, Heck … we’d just topped and tailed the fucking M1 Maniacs. Some kind of result, that. No wonder we were all a bit excited. I’ll tell you, I’m fed up with this fucking job.’

Heck had heard such a sentiment before, of course; he’d expressed it himself.

‘You may as well know, I’m putting my papers in for a transfer,’ Hunter added.

‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know. Anywhere out of NCG.’ Hunter wrinkled his nose, as though the whole thing literally stank. ‘Could’ve been the best gig in town, this, but now it’s going like everything else. It’s all politics these days. I mean, you of all people ought to be pissed off by that.’

Heck was; he’d had his share of reprimands over the years, and when in his cups he too was inclined to make such comments, though in reality he kept soldiering on.

‘Just don’t do anything hasty, Bob,’ he said. ‘We don’t know how long this duty-officer thing’ll last. At least you’re working nine-till-five again.’

‘Why should that appeal to me? I’ve nothing to go home to. Sal took the kids yonks ago.’ Hunter shook his head as if that was someone else’s fault too. ‘Fucking Lioness! Sorry, Heck, I know you and her were an item.’

‘That was a while ago.’

‘But when she bites …’

‘She’s here,’ Heck said, spotting that Gemma had entered the pub in company with a slim young woman in a smart skirt-suit. ‘Keep it down, eh?’

Hunter took another big swallow. ‘Don’t worry, pal. I’m not stupid enough to give her any more ammo than she needs …’

‘Drink ma’am?’ Heck said, stepping away from the bar to hand out the rest of the round he’d just bought.

‘Perrier please, Heck,’ Gemma said, taking her raincoat off. She turned to the woman beside her. ‘Claire?’

The young woman, who was girlishly pretty – her black hair was cut to shoulder-length in a cute ‘pageboy’ bob, she had a fresh complexion and startling peppermint-green eyes – smiled nervously. ‘Same for me please,’ she said.

Gemma nodded. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Heckenburg, by the way. Heck, this is Claire Moody, our new Media Liaison.’

Heck was caught by surprise. He hadn’t expected a candidate to be selected so quickly. ‘Oh … you got the job then?’

Claire seemed equally amazed. ‘Looks like it.’

‘Congratulations.’

She nodded her thanks.

‘I thought this’d be a good opportunity for Claire to meet the rest of the team,’ Gemma said, eyeing the raucous crowd gathered around Des Palliser, who was sniffing at an exotic-looking cocktail someone had just bought for him. ‘But I’m not so sure now.’

‘We are what we are, ma’am,’ Heck said, adopting his best blokish air.

‘And she must take you or leave you, eh?’ Gemma said.

‘Something like that.’

She turned back to her new employee. ‘DS Heckenburg is one of our more … persuasive officers. He could sell STD ointment in a nunnery, if you’ll pardon the crude terminology. So long as you remember to believe only five per cent of everything he tells you, you’ll get along with him fine.’

‘Ouch!’ Heck said, which Claire seemed to find amusing.

Gemma sighed. ‘Well … might as well try and get everyone’s attention while they’re not totally bladdered. Come on, Claire. I’ll introduce you.’

The two women moved away, Gemma clearing a path through the mob.

‘Cute little thing anyway,’ Hunter remarked. ‘Looks like butter wouldn’t melt.’ He snickered. ‘I give her a month at the most.’

Heck said nothing.

Hunter remained for another half-hour, before downing his drink and sloping away without saying goodbye. Claire Moody, rather to Heck’s surprise, lasted a little longer, which in some ways was admirable given that she didn’t really know anyone here. She stuck fairly close to Gemma, probably because most of the rest of the team had moved in on her in predatory fashion, alternately trying to flirt or wind her up, though he later saw her being led to one side and getting her ear bent by Shawna McCluskey.

‘Heck … hey Heck!’ Shawna shouted. ‘Come over here a sec!’

He drifted over. Everyone was now well-oiled. Deafening laughter boomed; beer was sloshing. Shawna was on her way to getting drunk too.

‘Claire … you met Heck yet?’ she shouted, gesturing with a lager bottle.

Claire smiled awkwardly. ‘Sort of.’

‘Heck’s our ace thief-taker. Me and him were in GMP together when we were whippersnappers.’

Claire frowned. ‘GMP … that’s Greater Manchester Police?’

Shawna laughed. ‘Bang on. The pride of the northwest.’

‘And you both ended up in London?’

‘We didn’t come down together,’ Shawna replied, burping. ‘Sorry. Heck transferred to the Met while he was still in uniform. It was a few years later with me. I joined CID in Manchester, then the Major Crimes Squad. When I heard SCU had a vacancy, I jumped at it. I arrived here and stone me, Heck’s on the next desk … a bloody DS! Mind you, I shouldn’t have been surprised. When he was in uniform he did more locking-up than the rest of the relief put together. If he fell over a wall he’d find two tea-leaves on the other side waiting to do a job.’

‘Yeah, I’m so lucky I passed my inspector’s exam fourteen years ago, and I’ve never had a sniff of an interview,’ Heck replied.

Shawna slapped his shoulder. ‘Too gobby, pal, that’s your trouble. Always too gobby.’ She turned to Claire. ‘He’s not like me – I’m not gobby. I’m just crap. Not be a mo … gotta pee.’

Shawna blundered away, leaving her half-drunk bottle in Claire’s hand.

‘She’s not actually,’ Heck said. ‘She’s a pretty good detective. She wouldn’t be in SCU otherwise.’

‘I was a bit intimidated about that,’ Claire admitted; her accent was refined South Coast, which was rather fetching. ‘I mean, you chaps are not just any old police unit are you? I heard you’ve cracked some really big cases.’

‘Well, things haven’t gone totally swimmingly for us in recent times.’

‘I heard about that too. And … I’m hoping that’s something I can help you with.’

‘Claire!’ someone else shouted. Gary Quinnell, minus jacket and tie, lurched towards her. Beefy red faces grinned behind him. ‘Can we have you over here?’

‘Sure,’ she replied, handing Shawna’s bottle to Heck, giving him a nervous glance.

‘There’s something you need to know about if you’re going to work with us,’ the burly Welshman said, leading her away. ‘But it isn’t covered in any manual.’

‘Okay …?’ She still sounded nervous.

‘It’s called the Ways And Means Act …’

‘I’m going to miss all this,’ Des Palliser said, appearing at Heck’s shoulder.

‘Don’t beat yourself up too much,’ Heck replied. ‘It’s not like we roll out the barrel every week.’

‘We should. Reminds everyone what life’s really about.’

Briefly, Palliser looked pensive. He was a grizzled oldster with a lean frame and a scraggy grey beard. A knowledgeable detective with good political acumen, he knew how to play the game but, with such long service in, he’d had little personal ambition left and thus had become something of a ‘father-figure’ in SCU; a font of wisdom and reliable advice for those junior officers he regarded as his protégés.

‘What I meant was I’m going to miss you lot,’ he said. ‘Bunch of scruffy urchins. Who’s going to knock you into shape if I’m not there?’

‘Enough, thank you!’ Gemma’s voice carried across the pub. In one corner, Detective Constable Charlie Finnegan was standing on a table with his trousers around his ankles. ‘Remember who we are and where we are, please!’ Finnegan got down, abashed.

‘Who do you think?’ Heck said.

Palliser smiled fondly. ‘Taught her everything she knows.’

‘I always knew we had to thank you for something.’

‘I’m glad you could come, pal.’

Heck glanced around at him. ‘No one had to drag us here, Des. You’ll be missed too.’

‘I want you to do something for me.’

‘Name it.’

‘Be careful, okay?’ Palliser regarded him gravely. His face was a nest of wrinkles, his teeth gnarly and yellowed by decades of smoking, yet all of this served to give him character. ‘No more go-it-alone heroics like we saw during the Nice Guys enquiry. No job’s worth putting your life on the line for.’

Heck smiled. ‘It’s not something I plan to make a habit of.’

‘And that M1 Maniac thing was almost as bad. You got some kind of death-wish?’

‘Just the way the cards fell, Des.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Palliser put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Heck, you’ve got a good boss in Gemma. Make use of that. Try and forget you and her once had a thing going. Unless of course, well …’ he almost sounded hopeful, ‘unless you feel like going there again?’

Heck glanced towards Claire, who, though she was besieged by shouting, guffawing coppers, was also laughing. Gary Quinnell made some jibe, but she responded sharply and they fell about again.

‘I don’t think so,’ Heck said slowly.

Palliser followed his gaze. ‘Something more interesting on the horizon?’

‘Who’s to say?’

‘Well … if it gives you a reason to go home at night, all to the good.’

‘Who are we kidding, Des? She’s probably got a boyfriend with a Ferrari.’

‘Just remember what I said, eh? Do what you do, Heck … you’re bloody good at it. But be sensible and be safe.’

Heck nodded, surprised by the depth of feeling in his colleague’s voice.

‘Anyway, what’re you having?’ Palliser lurched away to the bar.

‘Bitter please,’ Heck said to his retreating back. ‘Pint of.’

Gemma strode up. She looked as cool and unruffled as ever, despite the heat and noise. She glanced after Palliser. ‘He sorry to be going?’

‘Thinks SCU will fall apart without him,’ Heck replied.

‘The perceptiveness of old age.’

Heck nodded towards Claire. ‘Our new recruit looks comfy already.’

‘Good.’ Gemma sipped her mineral water. ‘Because there’s no point us handling her with kid gloves. This’ll be a testing job.’

‘Presumably she’s well qualified for it?’

‘Worked for a major financial house in the City and at least two government departments.’

‘When does she start?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’

‘That soon?’

‘She might as well get her feet under the table while things seem to be fairly quiet.’

Heck pondered that, wondering if they were challenging fate. He wasn’t superstitious, but one thing he’d learned during his seventeen years as a police officer was that you didn’t make any decisions based on an assumption that nothing tumultuously crap was about to happen. Because, almost invariably, it was.

Chapter 8

‘Look … whatever happened to you in your past, whatever it is that’s making you do this, I beg you to reconsider.’

Kate wasn’t sure how much her abductor could hear. He hadn’t actually gagged her, so, although she was swathed in this dirty old blanket which stank of sweat and stale urine, there was nothing to prevent her trying to project words. No doubt they’d be muffled, while the ongoing rumble of the engine and the vibration of the tyres on the road might blot them out altogether. But given that she was still bound and that no matter how much she wriggled, she remained tightly trussed, she had no option but to keep trying.

‘Please listen to me,’ she begged. It had been two hours at least, and at no stage had she received a single reply. ‘I understand that someone was once cruel to you. Maybe they tortured you – over months, perhaps years. But what you’re doing now is in no way going to make up for that. You won’t be getting even with them, you won’t be punishing them. You’ll just be hurting an ordinary person who bears you no ill will, doing exactly the same thing as was done to you …’

She was more terrified than she’d ever been in her life. The revolting stench inside the blanket would only get worse as her own sweat of fear mingled with it; it was highly possible she’d add her own urine to it, maybe her own vomit, and the temperature didn’t help. The heater in the car had activated some time ago and now was at its stultifying worst, but she couldn’t afford to let it fog her reason – not yet. The only weapon available to her was her intellect – so she had to continue with this, trying to appeal to his better nature, if he had one.

It was appalling to think that anyone could be reduced to such a state that they’d do this sort of thing. She’d heard stories of course: about street people who’d had petrol poured on them and been set alight while they were sleeping rough, about stabbings and clubbings, about their being made to fight each other with chains and bottles while someone filmed it. Yet none of these abhorrent things had seemed real – not even to Kate, who worked with the victims – until now, when it was apparently happening to her.

‘Listen … please!’ It took an immense effort of will to reduce the quake in her voice, to make her sound less like a frightened little girl. ‘Please … this hatred you’re demonstrating. It’s not a natural state for a human being to exist in. Don’t you see that? Animals don’t live that way, not even animals that have been scarred by illness or injury. They just accept it and get on with life. Don’t let the person who abused you win by watching you become a mirror-image of him. Remember what it was like when …’

She’d wanted to talk about the days when he himself was a young child, but no … that could be a horrendous mistake. Some of these poor creatures’ earliest memories comprised nothing but pain.

‘Remember your humanity. Try to think how you like to be treated. I know that’s something that was denied to you. But try to picture yourself on a normal morning, setting out with no intention of doing harm to anyone, just hoping to get through the day in a simple, dignified manner. Isn’t that how you feel most of the time? There’s no pleasure to be found in what you’re doing now. You understand that, I know you do.’

She halted, not just to get her breath – which was increasingly difficult in the sweltering confines of the blanket, but to listen in case there was any response from whoever was driving. There wasn’t. But if nothing else he had to be listening. He hadn’t put the radio on to drown her out.

‘I’m making one last appeal to you,’ Kate said. ‘Whatever you think you’ll gain from this, you’re wrong. I know that sounds arrogant and presumptuous of me. But I honestly know about this. I work every day with people who have suffered the most dreadful misfortune. Most of them are deeply miserable and deeply angry. But in almost all cases – when you sit down and counsel them, try to get through to the person who was there before – they are ordinary men and women, and they realise that giving in to their baser instincts will achieve nothing …’

Her words petered out as she realised the vehicle was jolting and bouncing, as if traversing rough ground. The terror of this took her breath away. She imagined wasteland somewhere, far from prying eyes.

There was a change of tone from the engine. The Fiesta was slowing down.

With a clunk, the gearstick shifted, then the handbrake was applied. When the engine was switched off, the silence was ear-pummelling. Despite the kiln-like heat, the sweat coating Kate’s body was ice-cold. A seatbelt was unfastened; a car door was flung open. Horrifyingly, there was no sound of night-traffic from beyond. Wherever he’d brought her to, it was far, far from civilisation.

Kate’s whimpers became helpless wails as a door was opened next to her head, and brute hands yanked the straps aside, grabbed her and threw her over a brawny shoulder. The effect of this was to nauseate her, a sensation that grew worse as she was carried through the darkness. Heavy feet crunched what sounded like soil and leaf debris, and then clumped on hollow wood, the impacts of which began to echo – she was inside a building. Different smells assailed her: sawdust, fresh paint. When she was dumped onto the floor, she felt rugged planking, nail-heads. Old hinges squealed and a foul smell arose. Kate felt a new sense of paralysing horror.

A trapdoor had been opened alongside her.

Those hands gripped her again and lifted her. Before they dropped her down into the void, a hoarse voice whispered in her ear: ‘You have a good heart and an eloquent tongue. That makes you more than worthy.’

Chapter 9

‘Morning!’ came a bright, cheery voice.

Heck, who wasn’t suffering from a hangover, but who was slightly muzzy-headed, glanced up from his desk. Claire Moody was standing in the doorway to the Detectives’ Office, or DO, as they called it. ‘Oh, erm … hello,’ he said awkwardly.

She stripped off her overcoat as she glanced at the empty desks and unmanned computers. It was just past seven in the morning. Heck was the only one in, but perhaps Claire hadn’t expected to find anyone. ‘You’re bright and early,’ she said.

‘Well … so are you.’

‘I didn’t have anything to celebrate last night.’

‘None of us did, if only we’d realised it. Des is a good guy. Look, don’t stand out there on ceremony, come in.’

Claire entered, coat folded over her arm. ‘Des obviously has a lot of friends.’

‘Yeah, got a bit crazy in there, didn’t it? Your office up and running now?’

‘Hardly … I don’t know where anything is yet.’

As far as Heck was aware, a room had been set aside for the new Media Management suite just along the main corridor, and though a carpentry team and then the techie guys had been in it during the last few days, he hadn’t got the impression it was anywhere near ready for use. But he remembered what Gemma had said about easing Claire in as quickly as possible.

He stood up. ‘Erm … I can give you the tour, if you’d like.’

‘No please, it’s okay. Don’t let me interrupt you. I think your work’s a bit more important than mine.’

In broad daylight, viewed through the eyes of sobriety, Claire was even more attractive than he’d first realised. She wasn’t just pretty, she was gracious, well-spoken, innately pleasant … almost genteel. He had a worrying feeling that what Bob Hunter had said might turn out to be true, and that Claire would prove to be too nice for this environment.

‘If nothing else, I can offer you a brew,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing you haven’t got your own tea-making stuff yet?’

‘I hadn’t even thought about it. Thanks, I’d love one.’

He produced a key, unlocked a cupboard near his desk, and took a kettle out, along with a big bottle of water, two mugs, a jar of teabags, a cup of sugar and a sachet of powdered milk. ‘Here’s a tip. Keep this kind of gear secured, because round here it’ll walk … usually upstairs to Organised Crime.’

‘You can’t trust police officers, eh?’

‘Definitely not.’ He filled the kettle and plugged it in. ‘Don’t be scared of us, though; we don’t really bite. Speaking of which, the boss will be in soon. I suppose she’ll brief you on everything you need to know.’

‘She’s fire and brimstone, isn’t she?’

‘See … you know her already.’

Claire glanced around again at the sprawling, open-plan office. Despite its size, the DO bore the usual police hallmarks of organised chaos. There might be nobody else in at present, but desks were strewn with documents, in-trays overloaded, paperwork and photographs hanging in disorderly wads, not just from noticeboards but from those few patches of wall that weren’t already covered with maps, timetables and flow-charts.

‘I was a bit unsure I was doing the right thing when I actually got the job,’ Claire said. ‘I mean, I’ve been in PR all my working life, but this is something totally new.’

‘It’ll probably amount to the same thing you had at the Department of Utilities.’

She looked surprised. ‘You know I was at Utilities?’

‘Not to mention the Ministry for Cultural Affairs,’ he added. ‘Don’t worry … nothing stays quiet round here for long.’

‘Obviously not.’

‘Just do what you did there. Fob the public off with any old crap.’

She gazed at him, uncertain whether to take him seriously.

‘Do that and you’ll fit right in,’ he said mischievously.

‘You’re Detective Sergeant Heckenburg, aren’t you?’

‘Call me “Heck”. How many sugars, by the way?’

‘None please, just milk. If I remember, Superintendent Piper said I should only believe five per cent of anything you told me.’

Heck handed her a steaming mug. ‘That was a bit mean of her. Ten per cent at least. While you’re still a newbie.’

She looked thoughtful as she sipped. ‘Seriously, do we often get crimes where … well, where we have to be economical with the truth?’

‘Seriously? … I couldn’t comment. All I do is investigate them.’

‘Superintendent Piper seems to think you’re very good at that.’

‘Even though I’m a bare-faced liar?’

‘She thinks you’re too opinionated as well. And sometimes pig-headed, and that you try to do everything yourself because you think – wrongly – that you know better than anyone else in the whole police force.’

‘You two had a chat about me, eh?’ Heck feigned suspicion, but inwardly was pleased. He’d just revealed to Claire that he’d researched her, and she was now revealing that she’d researched him. Touché.

‘She also thinks that you enjoy much more leeway in the job than is good for you, or her,’ Claire added. ‘And that you don’t know how lucky you are to have her for a boss.’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘Are you pulling my leg?’

‘She’s still glad you work for her though.’

‘That proves it. If you’re not pulling my leg, she was definitely pulling yours.’

Claire chuckled. ‘So what’s on the agenda for today?’

He indicated the documents and photos on his desk. ‘Well, for me … these.’

Claire glanced down – and almost dropped her tea. ‘Oh my God!’ She promptly turned a milky shade of grey. ‘Are these … real crime scenes?’

Heck eyed her curiously. ‘Well, we don’t deal in movie-stills.’

The first of the two photos displayed a youngish man, possibly in his late twenties, stripped to his underpants and hanging by the hands from a tree branch. His limbs and torso were black and purple as though from a savage and sustained beating – but perhaps the most disturbing thing was his face, which had been painted with clown make-up: a white base, rouged cheeks, a red nose, black cream liner around his glazed, bloodshot eyes. The second picture showed a naked woman lying in a bath; she too had been brutalised, her body battered beyond belief, splintered bones protruding through the pulped, shredded flesh – and she too was wearing clown make-up, the lips green, the eyes and mouth thickly outlined in white, forming a ghoulish smile.

Claire had physically backed away; it had been an involuntary motion, but there was more to it than a nervous flinch.

‘You alright?’ Heck asked.

She nodded, her eyes riveted on the photographic horrors. ‘I will be, yeah. Sorry … that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a real murder.’

‘That’s something you’re going to have to get used to, I’m afraid.’

‘Yes, yes … I realise that, of course. Oh my God, these are awful …’

Heck flipped the photos into a buff folder. ‘Probably a bit much for your first morning.’

‘Probably, but …’ She seemed to steel herself, planting her tea on the desk. ‘As you say, it’s something I’ve got to deal with. So, why don’t you tell me about it?’

‘This case, you mean?’

She nodded.

He regarded her warily. ‘If you’re sure?’

She nodded again, determinedly.

‘Okay …’ He sat down and reopened the folder. ‘The murders of this man and woman occurred last month, about two weeks apart – in Gillingham and Maidstone respectively. The Murder Squad in Kent sent them along for our assessment as a matter of course.’ He glanced up at her. Claire was doing her damnedest to focus on the two images and at the same time maintain a cool, professional demeanour. ‘They obviously look similar,’ Heck said. ‘But my impression is that they aren’t connected.’

‘They aren’t?’

‘Given his own criminal record, I suspect the male was the victim of a gangland vendetta. The brutality is quite excessive, so it may have been a punishment.’

‘They were making an example, you mean?’

‘Correct. My gut feeling about the woman is that she died during a domestic incident. The perp is probably her husband.’

Claire looked at him askance. ‘Are you serious?’

Heck shrugged. ‘He reads about the first homicide in the papers, and he thinks it’s so wild and whacky that it can only be a matter of time before a lunatic capable of doing that will strike again. So he decides here’s his chance to knock off his nagging missus and make it look like someone else. Of course, he doesn’t realise that the first killing is down to organised crime … which illustrates the advantage we gain from only telling the press as much as we have to.’

‘But how can you be sure this is domestic?’

‘I’m not absolutely sure. But my advice to the Murder Squad in Kent will be to look a bit closer to home first, and the other facts support this. This woman was murdered in her own bathtub early evening – to be specific between seven-thirty and eight-fifteen. The timing of that incident alone would make it unusual for a home-invasion by a stranger. In addition, the window of opportunity is too small. The husband, who found her, would have us believe that he’d driven off to the local golf club to pay his annual subs. He’d also have us believe that in this brief time, some headcase happened to walk up to an ordinary suburban home, ascertained that the female occupant was alone, forced entry, did the dirty deed, painted a clown face on her, and then vanished without anyone seeing or hearing a thing.’

‘It seems unlikely, but could that be what happened?’

‘We don’t close the door on any possibility – the perp may have scoped the house out beforehand and lain in wait. But the husband didn’t leave the premises as part of a regular routine. So that makes it improbable. On top of all that, the first victim was a male in his late twenties, the second a female in her early forties. There was no sexual assault in either case. Okay, it could be some complete madman who just gets off on drawing clown faces. But that’s not the sort of guy you’d expect to have kept his light under a bushel up till now.’

‘So … what happens next?’

Heck sat back. ‘I send it to Gemma with my report. I don’t recommend that we get involved because I don’t see any need. Our main responsibility is to identify patterns, series and clusters that may indicate a repeat-offender, and then respond accordingly.’

‘What if Gemma disagrees with you on this?’

‘If she disagrees, some of us – almost certainly me, as I copped for the job in the first place – will be off to Kent, which would be great because that’d take me out of the office. But I can tell you now she won’t. Most likely she’ll just send our official observations.’

Claire glanced further along the desk. There was another pile of similar folders awaiting his attention. Other desks in the room were equally weighed down. ‘Are all these files the same kind of thing?’

‘We get copied in on a lot of stuff,’ Heck said. ‘But most of it is what we call “slush”.’

‘Slush?’

‘Not relevant to our remit. Various types of crimes are automatically sent for our assessment. All stranger-murders of children, for example. All murders of prostitutes. All murders of runaways. All murders committed during burglary or rape. All murders involving exceptional violence, sadism or depravity. All murders where there are ritual or theatrical elements. All murders where there’s evidence of bizarre post-death behaviour – mutilation, dismemberment, necrophilia. All murders where the perpetrator has apparently tried to contact the police or press … left clues, cryptic messages, that kind of thing. All murders which may not satisfy any of these criteria but where there is reasonable suspicion that it’s part of a series. And basically any murder at all that we request to look at. No police force in England and Wales has the right to refuse us.’

Claire glanced around the room again. In another corner, two more crime scene blow-ups were mounted on a noticeboard amid masses of scribbled notations. One was a close-up glossy of a middle-aged black woman. She looked to have been propped against a wall in a house or flat. Her grin stretched from ear to ear – literally, because someone had slashed her cheeks with a razor blade and had fixed a stick vertically in her mouth. The other had been taken in a bedroom, which looked like it had been wrecked by a hurricane. The bed occupied the centre of the image. A figure lay in it hidden by a sheet, though so much blood had soaked through this that a clear outline of the body was visible. On the wall above it, bloody handwriting proclaimed: ‘Hey Mum, he fucked me first!’

‘And this you call “slush”?’ Claire said, unable to conceal her revulsion.

‘It’s just a turn of phrase. Every one of these files represents a life lost. You can’t hide from that. But it’s an odd fact that by far the highest percentage of homicides committed in the industrialised West, however they may initially appear, are the work of family members or other so-called loved ones. Either that, or they’re one-off events committed by people who will probably never break the law again. The result of anger, greed, jealousy … course, we need to establish that before we send them back. Oh crap, your tea’s gone cold.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘I’ll make you another.’ He attended to it. ‘If there’s one thing I’m supposedly good at round here, it’s brewing up.’

Claire pulled a chair and sat down. She hoped Heck didn’t notice that she needed to.

‘The upside to all this,’ he said, as he handed her a fresh mug, ‘is that there’s no better feeling than getting justice for these people.’

‘It’ll make a change,’ she said. ‘Doing a job that feels worthwhile.’

He sat down too. ‘You must have done some useful stuff in your previous jobs.’

‘No, you were right before. Telling lies to cover ministerial incompetence, massaging figures to make inaccurate departmental forecasts look good, putting out endless spin to save someone their one-forty-K-a-year salary … that doesn’t always make you feel like a useful member of society.’

‘There you are then,’ Heck replied. ‘You’re in the right place with SCU. No one ever screws up here.’

She caught his sidelong glance, and couldn’t help but chuckle. Heck smiled – and almost on cue Gemma appeared in the doorway, peeling off her raincoat. She made a good job of disguising her double-take at the sight of them cosied up together.

‘Morning,’ Claire said, standing.

‘Morning Claire. Heck.’

Heck stood up too. ‘Ma’am.’

‘None of the other sleeping beauties checked in yet?’

‘I’m sure they’re on their way.’

Gemma glanced at her watch. ‘They’ve got forty-five minutes. If no one’s shown by then, start making phone calls. And don’t shy from using harsh language.’ She moved back out into the main corridor, but then reappeared. ‘Heck, you haven’t seen Joe Wullerton this morning, have you?’

‘Not so far, ma’am.’

‘I’ve got a note to go up and see him.’

‘Can’t help you with that.’

‘Okay.’ She breezed away.

Heck turned to Claire. ‘Forty-five minutes. Enough time for breakfast?’

‘Breakfast?’

‘There’s a smashing little deli round the corner. They do a nice egg sandwich.’

Claire glanced again at the photo of the woman with the stick in her mouth. ‘I’m not sure I can eat, but … hey, the fresh air can’t hurt.’

Gemma watched from the other end of the corridor as they headed off together.

For a thirty-year-old, Claire Moody was already very experienced. Her references had been among the best Gemma had ever seen, and she’d interviewed excellently. The girl’s good looks and lively personality were another bonus – the bulk of the detectives in SCU were men, and if that would make them more deferential around her, all the better; at least until she’d found her feet. It was no surprise that Claire was being hit on of course, though it took Gemma aback a little to see Heck’s interest.

Not that she could afford to worry about that now. She let herself into her office, dumping her coat and brolly and thinking again about Joe Wullerton.

She hadn’t known him very long – he’d only been in his post about half a year, having replaced the disgraced Jim Laycock, and from the beginning had set his stall out to be an affable, approachable boss with an even temper and easy manner. On first arrival, he’d voluntarily changed his official title, replacing the macho Metropolitan Police-style ‘Commander’ of the National Crime Group with the more neutral ‘Director’, which she fully approved of. But she wasn’t naïve enough to think it would be warm and fuzzy all the way. Wullerton had transferred in from the Hampshire Constabulary’s Critical Incident Cadre, which he’d run effectively for fifteen years, so he was clearly a sharp bloke who knew his job, and probably a toughie as well. And he would need to be for the new position he occupied: as well as the Serial Crimes Unit, NCG also comprised the Organised Crime Division and the Kidnap Squad, and that little lot would take some managing.

She glanced again at the memo to go and see him. Rather than being emailed to her, it had been handed to her – in fact shoved into her grasp – the moment she’d entered the building.

Somehow that seemed ominous.

Chapter 10

Kate wasn’t sure how long she’d lain in the darkness.

It was difficult to work out how far she’d fallen when he’d dropped her down into this pitch-black hole – ten feet, twelve, maybe more. But the impact at the bottom, though slightly cushioned by what felt like straw, had knocked her unconscious for a time.

Sick and dazed, Kate now lay balled up in a crumpled heap. The blanket had been ripped away as she’d descended, but wherever she now was, it smelled equally disgusting.

That was when she realised that she wasn’t alone.

Movement sounded somewhere to her left; she detected a dull, hoarse breathing.

Kate jerked upright onto her knees.

Her late father, who’d been a coal miner, had often used the phrase ‘it’s as black as the pit’, meaning there were no chinks of light at all. That was the situation now. Impenetrable blackness veiled Kate on all sides. Yet she knew there was somebody else there. She could hear them – shuffling about, and not too far away. She groped into the pocket of her Afghan, where mercifully her cigarette lighter was still in place. She held it in front of her as she struck it, as though to ward off a blow.

The sudden flame, though weak and wavering, was initially like a burst of lightning in the pitch blackness. She had to shield her eyes, but when they finally adjusted, she didn’t know which to be more horrified by: the sight of the cell she’d been imprisoned in or the sight of her two cellmates.

The former resembled the bottom of a well. Its geometry was circular, its walls constructed from damp, mildewed brick and rising into opaque shadow. There were no windows and no apparent handholds or footholds by which she could climb out. Its floor was hard-packed earth covered in straw. She also saw where the stench came from: one side of the cell – and it was close at hand, because the entire place was probably only ten feet in diameter – had been used as a toilet. Numerous human droppings were scattered there, indicating the length of time her fellow prisoners had been confined. One of these sat against the opposite wall, his knees drawn up to his chest; the other was kneeling about three yards away on her left.

Kate quickly backed away, though both were scrawny and dirty, and pop-eyed in the unexpected light; they looked as fazed by her arrival as she was.

The one on the left wore a grubby white vest and khaki pants, a military-training-type ensemble, which somehow contrived to make him look even more emaciated than his bony frame actually was, as did his tattoos – of which he had plenty, though all looked cheap and homemade. His face was rodent-thin, his hair a greasy, ginger mat. The one against the wall wore a light blue shell-suit, though this too was ragged and exceedingly dirty. His hair was an unwashed mop. Like his mate, he had gaunt, pock-marked features, and was hollow-eyed with fear and pain.

Fearing that her lighter fuel would run out, Kate flicked it off, plunging them into blackness again. She stayed where she was, back firmly to the wall. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Where am I?’

‘I’m Carl,’ said a voice on her left; that was the guy in the khaki pants.

‘And I’m Lee,’ said another voice.

They were flat-toned, whiney. Kate was reassured that she was not in imminent danger, though she still had to struggle to contain her emotions.

‘Okay … Carl, Lee. Why are we here? What is this place?’

‘We’re underground,’ Carl said.

‘I think I realise that!’ she replied, more sharply than she’d intended. ‘Just … what’s going on?’

‘Dunno.’ That was Lee. ‘Bastard just grabbed us and chucked us down here.’

‘We don’t know why,’ Carl added. ‘We don’t know who.’

Their accents were thin, nasal. By the sounds of it, they came from Manchester, but one of the poorer districts.

‘Where are you from, Carl?’ Kate asked, sensing that he was the less beaten-down of the two.

‘Salford,’ he said, confirming her suspicion.

‘Me too,’ came Lee’s voice.

‘You were together when this happened?’

‘Never met each other before last week.’

She shuddered. ‘You’ve been in here a whole week?’

‘Seems like it,’ Carl said. ‘Difficult keeping track. Can you put your lighter on again?’

‘I’d better not. We should save it. But you think it’s been a whole week? Seriously?’

‘Could be longer.’

‘What actually happened?’

Carl hesitated before saying: ‘I was screwing cars on the Weaste.’

‘You mean stealing?’

‘Riding round in them.’ He sounded briefly defensive. ‘I always left them after. The owners got them back, or got the insurance. No one ever got hurt.’ He sniffed. ‘I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Just summat I could take for a spin, you know. Maybe whip the CD and sat-nav as well. I’d fixed on this Renault Scenic in a side-street, when this big bleeder stands up in front of me – right in front of me, like he’s been crouching down, waiting – and punches my fucking lights out. I woke up in here. Thought maybe it was his cellar, or something. Then, a couple of days later, he drops Lee down as well. It’s like he’s collecting people.’

‘Who is he?’ she asked.

‘Didn’t see him properly. Too dark.’

‘I didn’t see him either,’ Lee said. ‘I’d been doing houses up Clifton … I know that sounds bad. But I’ve got a habit, haven’t I? I’ve got to get money somehow. It’s not like I want to do it …’

‘Oh, can it for fuck’s sake!’ Carl blurted. ‘Just admit you’re a thieving little scrote. Maybe if this bastard’s listening, that’s what he’s waiting for. Maybe he’ll let us out when we finally ’fess up to all the fucking shit we cause.’

‘Did you get a look at him, Lee?’ Kate asked.

‘Nah. It was half-one in the morning. Pitch black. I’d just gone over this back wall. Next thing I know, this big fucker’s waiting on the other side. At first I thought it was a copper. I was going to go quietly – bed for the night, you know, square meal. Even if it did mean I’d be strung out in the morning …’

‘Did he say anything?’ she interrupted.

‘Nothing. Cracked my head on the bricks. Don’t remember anything after that.’

‘He wouldn’t keep feeding us if he wanted to kill us, would he?’ Carl said, sounding faintly hopeful.

‘He feeds us, does he?’ Kate didn’t know whether to be encouraged by that revelation, or even more worried.

‘Every so often he drops a few slices of bread down,’ Carl said. She heard the scrunch of wrapping paper, and pictured him licking at it, trying to mop up every minuscule crumb. ‘Couple of chocolate biscuits as well, only a couple of them mind.’

‘What do you reckon, missus?’ Lee said.

‘If he’s feeding us, it means that he wants us alive,’ Kate agreed. She didn’t bother to add: for the time being. You didn’t kidnap someone and keep them in an underground cell with no light and no running water because you had something pleasant in mind.

Chapter 11

According to the piles of documentation they’d each been provided with, all bound in special folders and stencilled: ‘Operation Festival’, the withered corpse walled into the base of the old factory chimney had been a homeless man called Ernest Shapiro.

‘He was sixty-eight years old and so far down the pecking order that he was never even reported missing,’ Gemma told the thirty-five SCU personnel gathered in the DO.

They gazed at the big screen in fascinated silence.

‘In case you were wondering, this was done to him while he was still alive,’ she added, ‘as evidenced by the loss of tissue from his wrists where he’d attempted to wriggle free of his manacles. The cause of death was slow dehydration – in other words, thirst – which meant he’d been imprisoned in his brick coffin at least a week before the lads in Yorkshire found him.’

There was a similar astonished silence when she brought up images of the second crime; a double homicide in this case, a young male and female facing each other in the front seat of a parked motor vehicle, the female seated on the male’s lap. His head had slumped to the right, hers to the left. They were covered front and back with thickly clotted blood.

‘Todd Burling and Cheryl Mayers,’ Gemma said, ‘twenty and nineteen respectively – killed a month and a half after Shapiro, on February 14, Valentine’s Day. Believe it or not, they were transfixed together through their hearts by an arrow while having sex in Burling’s parked car.’

‘The Father Christmas victim was found on December 25?’ Shawna McCluskey asked. ‘And this happened on Valentine’s Day?’

‘Correct.’

‘Someone has a sense of humour,’ Charlie Finnegan snorted.

‘It gets funnier.’ Gemma hit her remote control and brought various images of a third murder scene to their attention. These were the most graphic so far. They portrayed an elongated, only vaguely human form, blackened almost to a crisp and lying on leaf-strewn grass. ‘This was Barry Butterfield,’ she explained. ‘Male, aged forty-three, and a registered alcoholic. His body was found last autumn, late on the evening of November 5, on the outskirts of Preston, Lancashire.’

‘Not burning on a bonfire by any chance?’ Detective Inspector Ben Kane wondered.

He was one of Gemma’s more bookish officers, a stout, bespectacled man of about forty, with neat, prematurely greying hair and a neat line in corduroy jackets, checked shirts and dickie-bows.

‘However did you guess?’ she said, hitting the remote control several times more, presenting a number of grisly close-ups.

Some fragments of clothing still adhered to the burnt carcass, but charred musculature and even bones were exposed. The face had melted beyond recognition – it resembled a wax mannequin after blowtorch treatment, yet somehow its look of horrific agony was still discernible.

‘It wasn’t initially treated as suspicious,’ Gemma added. ‘Apparently Butterfield went off on solo pub-crawls every night. The first assumption was that he’d got thoroughly intoxicated and found his way to some unofficial bonfire on wasteland outside the town, probably looking for more booze. Whether there were other people there at the time, or it was after everyone else had gone, there was no obvious indication … but it seemed possible that in his inebriated state he passed out and fell into the flames.’

‘So the cause of death was burning?’ Shawna asked.

‘That’s the problem. The coroner ordered a post-mortem, which then revealed that Butterfield had died before he was put into the fire … as a result of neurogenic shock caused by massive internal tissue damage. Almost every joint in his body was either torn or dislocated.’

‘It was like he’d been stretched out on a rack.’ This came from Detective Chief Inspector Mike Garrickson, who had recently been seconded to the unit to act as Gemma’s DSIO and up until now had been sitting quietly to one side.

‘And if you remember your school history,’ Gemma said, ‘Guy Fawkes was stretched on a rack before he was executed. And we celebrate the anniversary of this event on November 5 by burning his effigy on bonfires.’

‘We’re dealing with some kind of calendar killer?’ Gary Quinnell said. He almost sounded amused by the notion, but the expression on his face told a different story – even to hardened homicide detectives like the Serial Crimes Unit, the graphic images of Barry Butterfield were stomach-turning.

‘It would seem that way,’ Gemma replied. ‘And he’s now struck three times.’

‘I take it there are no other connected homicides or assaults that we’re aware of?’ DI Kane asked.

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