Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015

Copyright © Paul Finch 2015

Cover photographs © Arcangel Images / Trevillion Images

Cover design © Andrew Smith 2015

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: 9780007492336

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007492343

Version: 2017-10-25

Dedication

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

Table of 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

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Dazzer and Deggsy didn’t give a shit about anyone. At least, that was the sort of thing they said if they were bragging to mates at parties, or if the coppers caught them and tried to lay a guilt trip on them.

They did what they did. They didn’t go out looking to hurt anyone, but if people got in the way, tough fucking shit. They pinched motors and had a laugh in ’em. That was their thing. And they were gonna keep doing it, because it was the best laugh ever. No one was gonna stop them, and if some geezer ever got pissed off because he’d just seen his pride and joy totalled, so what? Dazzer and Deggsy didn’t give a shit.

Tonight was a particularly good night for it.

All right, it wasn’t perishing cold, which was a shame. Incredible though it seemed to Dazzer and Deggsy, some numbskulls actually came outside, saw a bit of ice and snow and left their motors running for five minutes with the key in the ignition while they went back indoors for a cuppa; all you had to do was jump in the saddle and ride away, whooping. But if nothing else, it was dank and misty, and with it being the tail end of January, it got dark early – so there weren’t too many people around to interfere.

Not that folk tended to interfere with Dazzer and Deggsy.

The former was tall for his age; just under six foot, with a broad build and a neatly layered patch of straw-blond hair in the middle of his scalp, the rest of which was shaved to the bristles. If it hadn’t been for the acne covering his brutish features, you’d have thought him eighteen, nineteen, maybe twenty – instead of sixteen, which was his true age, though of course even a sixteen-year-old might clobber you these days if you had the nerve to look at him the wrong way. The second member of the tag team, Deggsy, though he wasn’t by any means the lesser in terms of villainy, looked more his age. He was shorter and thinner, weasel-faced and the proud owner of an unimpressively wispy moustache. His oily black thatch was usually covered by a grimy old baseball cap, the frontal logo of which had been erased long ago and replaced with letters written in Day-Glo orange highlighter, which read: Fuck off.

There was barely thirty years of experience between them, yet they both affected the arrogant swagger and truculent sneer of guys who believed they knew what was what, and were absolutely confident they were owed whatever they took.

It was around nine o’clock that night when they spied their first and most obvious target: a Volkswagen estate hatchback. A-reg and in poor shape generally: grubby, rusted around the arches, occasional dents in the bodywork; but it ticked all the boxes.

Posh motors were almost impossible to steal these days. All that top-of-the-range stuff was the sole province of professional crims who would make a fortune from ringing it and selling it on. No, if you were simply looking for a fun time, you had to settle for this lower quality merchandise – but that could also be an advantage, because when you went and smacked a bit of rubbish around on the streets, the coppers would tow it away afterwards but would rarely investigate. In addition, this one’s location was good. The old Volkswagen estate was sitting right in the middle of a CCTV black spot that Dazzer and Deggsy had made it their business to know about.

They watched it from a corner, eyes peeled for any sign of movement, but the dim sodium glow of a lone streetlamp illuminated only a rolling beer can and a few scraps of wastepaper flapping in the half-hearted breeze.

Still, they waited. They’d been successful several times on this patch – it was a one-lane access way running between the back doors of a row of old shops and a high brick wall, ending at three concrete bollards. No one was ever around here at night; there were no tenants in the flats above the shops, and even without the January miasma this was a dark, dingy place – but such apparent ease of opportunity only made Dazzer and Deggsy more suspicious than usual. The very fact that motors had been lifted from around here before made the presence of this one seem curious. Did people never learn? Maybe they didn’t. Though maybe there were other factors as well. The row of shops was a bit of an eyesore. Only one or two were occupied during the day, most of the others were To Let, and a couple were even boarded up as if they’d just been abandoned. God bless the Recession.

The lads ventured forth, walking boldly but stealthily, alert to the slightest unnatural sound – but no one called out, no one stepped from a darkened doorway.

The Volkswagen was locked of course, but Deggsy had his screwdriver with him, and in less than five seconds they’d forced the driver’s door open. No alarm sounded, which was just what they’d expected given the ramshackle state of the thing; another advantage of pillaging the less well-off. With rasping titters, they jumped inside, to find that the steering column had been attacked in the past – it was held together by wads of silvery duct tape. A few slashes of Dazzer’s Stanley knife and they were through it. Even in the pitch darkness, their gloved but nimble fingers found the necessary wiring, and the contact was made.

The car rumbled to life. Laughing loudly, they hit the gas.

It was Dazzer’s turn to drive today, and Deggsy’s to ride, though it didn’t make much difference – they were both as crazy as each other when they got behind the wheel. They blistered recklessly along, swerving around bends with tyres screeching, racing through red lights and stop signs. There was no initial response from the other road-using public. Opposing traffic was scant. They pulled a handbrake turn, pivoting sideways through what would ordinarily be a busy junction, the stink of burnt rubber engulfing them, hitting the gas again as they tore out of town along the A246. They had over half a tank of petrol and a very straight road in front of them. Maybe they’d make it all the way to Guildford, where they could pinch another motor to come home in. For the moment though, it was just fun fun fun. They’d probably veer off en route, and cause chaos on a few housing estates they knew, flaying the paint from any expensive jobs that unwise owners had left in plain view.

Some roadworks surged into sight just ahead. Dazzer howled as he gunned the Volkswagen through them, cones catapulting every which way – one struck the bay window of a roadside house, smashing it clean through. They mowed down a ‘keep left’ sign, taking out a set of temporary lights, which hit the deck with a detonation of sparks.

The blacktop continued to roll out ahead; they were doing eighty, ninety, almost a hundred, and were briefly mesmerised by their own fearlessness, their attention completely focused down the borehole of their headlights. When you were in that frame of mind there were almost no limits. It would have taken something quite startling to distract them from their death-defying reverie – and that came approximately seven minutes into this, their last ever journey in a stolen vehicle.

They were now out of the town and into the countryside, at which point they clipped a kerbstone at eighty-five. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but Deggsy, who’d just filched his mobile from his jacket pocket to film this latest escapade, was jolted so hard that he dropped it into the footwell.

‘Fuck!’ he squawked, scrabbling around for it. At first he couldn’t seem to locate it – there was quite a bit of junk down there – so he ripped his glove off with his teeth and went groping bare-handed. This time he found the mobile, but when he pulled his hand back he saw that he’d found something else as well.

It was clamped to his exposed wrist. Initially he thought he must have brushed his arm against an old pair of boots, which had smeared him with oil or paint. But no, now he could feel the weight of it and the multiple pinprick sensation where it had apparently gripped him. He still didn’t realise what the thing actually was, not even when he held it close to his face – but then Deggsy had only ever seen scorpions on the telly, so perhaps this was unsurprising. Mind you, even on the telly he’d never seen a scorpion with as pale and shiny a shell as this one had – it glinted like polished leather in the flickering streetlights. It was at least eight inches from nose to tail, that tail now curled to strike, and had a pair of pincers the size of crab claws that were extended upwards in the classic defensive pattern.

It couldn’t be real, he told himself distantly.

Was it a toy? It had to be a toy.

But then it stung him.

At first it shocked rather than hurt; as though a red-hot drawing pin had been driven full-length into his flesh, and into the bone underneath. But that minor pain quickly expanded, filling his suddenly frozen arm with a white fire, which in itself intensified – until Deggsy was screaming hysterically. By the time he’d knocked the eight-legged horror back into the footwell, he was writhing and thrashing in his seat, frothing at the mouth as he struggled to release his suddenly restrictive belt. At first, Dazzer thought his mate was play-acting, though he shouted warnings when Deggsy’s convulsions threatened to interfere with his driving.

And then something alighted on Dazzer’s shoulder.

Despite the wild swerving of the car, it had descended slowly, patiently – on a single silken thread – and when he turned his head to look at it, it tensed, clamping him like a hand. In the flickering hallucinogenic light, he caught brief glimpses of vivid, tiger-stripe colours and clustered demonic eyes peering at him from point-blank range.

The bite it planted on his neck was like a punch from a fist.

Dazzer’s foot jammed the accelerator to the floor as his entire body went into spasms. The actual wound quickly turned numb, but searing pain shot through the rest of him in repeated lightning strokes.

Neither lad noticed as the car mounted an embankment, engine yowling, smoke and tattered grass pouring from its tyres. It smashed through the wooden palings at the top, and then crashed down through shrubs and undergrowth, turning over and over in the process, and landing upside down in a deep-cut country lane.

For quite a few seconds there was almost no sound: the odd groan of twisted metal, steam hissing in spirals from numerous rents in mangled bodywork.

The two concussed shapes inside, while still breathing, were barely alive in any conventional sense: torn, bloodied and battered, locked in contorted paralysis. They were still aware of their surroundings, but unable to resist as various miniature forms, having ridden out the collision in niches and crevices, now re-emerged to scurry over their warm, tortured flesh. Deggsy’s jaw was fixed rigid; he could voice no complaint – neither as a mumble nor a scream – when the pale-shelled scorpion reacquainted itself with him, creeping slowly up his body on its jointed stick-legs and finally settling on his face, where, with great deliberation it seemed, it snared his nose and his left ear in its pincers, arched its tail again – and embedded its stinger deep into his goggling eyeball.

Chapter 2

Heck raced out of the kebab shop with a half-eaten doner in one hand and a carton of Coke in the other. There was a blaring of horns as Dave Jowitt swung his distinctive maroon Astra out of the far carriageway, pulled a U-turn right through the middle of the bustling evening traffic, and ground to a halt at the kerb. Heck crammed another handful of lamb and bread into his mouth, took a last slurp of Coke, and tossed his rubbish into a nearby bin before leaping into the Astra’s front passenger seat.

‘Grinton putting an arrest team together?’ he asked.

‘As we speak,’ Jowitt said, shoving a load of documentation into Heck’s grasp and hitting the gas. More horns tooted despite the spinning blue beacon on the Astra’s roof. ‘We’re hooking up with them at St Ann’s Central.’

Heck nodded, leafing through the official Nottinghamshire Police paperwork. The text he’d just received from Jowitt had consisted of thirteen words, but they’d been the most important thirteen words anyone had communicated to him for quite some time:

Hucknall murder a fit for Lady Killer

Chief suspect – Jimmy Hood

Whereabouts KNOWN

Heck, or Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, as was his official title in the National Crime Group, felt a tremor of excitement as he flipped the light on and perused the documents. Even now, after seventeen years of investigations, it seemed incredible that a case that had defied all analysis, dragging on doggedly through eight months of mind-numbing frustration, could suddenly have blown itself wide open.

‘Who’s Jimmy Hood?’ he asked.

‘A nightmare on two legs,’ Jowitt replied.

Heck had only known Jowitt for the duration of this enquiry, but they’d made a good connection on first meeting and had maintained it ever since. A local lad by birth, Dave Jowitt was a slick, clean-cut, improbably handsome black guy. At thirty, he was a tad young for DI, but what he might have lacked in experience he more than made up for with his quick wit and sharp eye. After the stress of the last few months of intense investigation, even Jowitt had started to fray around the edges, but tonight he was back on form, collar unbuttoned and tie loose, careering through the chaotic traffic with skill and speed.

‘He lived in Hucknall when he was a kid,’ Jowitt added. ‘But he spent a lot of his time back then locked up.’

‘Not just then either,’ Heck said. ‘According to this, he’s only been out of Roundhall for the last six months.’

‘Yeah, and what does that tell us?’

Heck didn’t need to reply. Roundhall was a low-security prison in the West Midlands. According to these antecedents, Jimmy Hood, now aged in his mid-thirties, had served a year and a half there before being released on licence. However, he’d originally been held at Durham after drawing fourteen years for burglary and rape. As if the details of his original crimes weren’t enough of a match for the case they were currently working, his most recent period spent outside prison put him neatly in the frame for the activities of the so-called ‘Lady Killer’.

‘He’s a bruiser now and he was a bruiser then,’ Jowitt said. ‘Six foot three by the time he was seventeen, and burly with it. Scared the crap out of everyone who knew him. Got arrested once for chucking a kitten into a cement mixer. In another incident, he led some other juveniles in an attack on a building site after the builders had given them grief for pinching tools – both builders got bricked unconscious. One needed his face reconstructing. Hood got sent down for that one.’

Heck noted from the paperwork that Hood, of whom the mugshot portrayed shaggy black hair fringing a broad, bearded face with a badly broken nose – a disturbingly similar visage to the e-fit they’d released a few days ago – had led this particular street gang, which had involved itself in serious crime in Hucknall, from the age of twelve. However, he’d only commenced sexually offending, usually during the course of burglary, when he was in his late teens.

‘So he comes out of jail and immediately picks up where he left off?’ Heck said.

‘Except that this time he murders them,’ Jowitt replied.

Heck didn’t find that much of a leap. Certain types of violent offender had no intention of rehabilitating. They were so set on their life’s work that they regarded prison time – even a prolonged stretch – as a hazard of their chosen vocation. He’d known plenty who’d gone away for a lengthy sentence, and had used it to get fit, mug up on all the latest criminal techniques, and gradually accumulate a head of steam that would erupt with devastating force once they were released. He could easily imagine this scenario applying to Jimmy Hood and, what was more, the evidence seemed to indicate it. All four of the recent murder victims had been elderly women living alone. Most of Hood’s victims when he was a teenager had been elderly women. The cause of death in all the recent cases had been physical battery with a blunt instrument, after rape. As a youth, Hood had bludgeoned his victims after indecently assaulting them.

‘Funny his name wasn’t flagged up when he first ditched his probation officer,’ Heck said.

Jowitt shrugged as he drove. ‘Easy to be wise after the event, pal.’

‘Suppose so.’ Heck recalled numerous occasions in his career when it would have paid to have a crystal ball.

On this occasion, they’d caught their break courtesy of a sharp-eyed civvie.

The four home-invasion murders they were officially investigating were congregated in the St Ann’s district, east of Nottingham city centre, and an impoverished, densely populated area, which already suffered more than its fair share of crime. The only description they’d had was that of a hulking, bearded man wearing a ragged duffel coat over shabby sports gear, which suggested that he wasn’t able to bathe or change his clothes very often and so was perhaps sleeping rough. However, only yesterday there had been a fifth murder in Hucknall, just north of the city, the details of which closely matched those in St Ann’s. There’d been no description of the perpetrator on this occasion, though earlier today a long-term Hucknall resident – who remembered Jimmy Hood well, along with his crimes – reported seeing him eating chips near the bus station there, not long after the event. He’d been wearing a duffel coat over an old tracksuit, and though he didn’t have a beard, fresh razor cuts suggested that he had recently shaved one off.

‘And he’s been lying low at this Alan Devlin’s pad?’ Heck asked.

‘Part of the time maybe,’ Jowitt said. ‘What do you think?’

‘Well … I wouldn’t have called it “whereabouts known”. But it’s a bloody good start.’

Alan Devlin, who had a long record of criminal activity as a juvenile, when he’d been part of Hood’s gang, now lived in a council flat in St Ann’s. These days he was Hood’s only known associate in central Nottingham, and the proximity of his home address to the recent murders was too big a coincidence to ignore.

‘What do we know about Devlin?’ Heck said. ‘I mean above and beyond what the paperwork says.’

‘Not a player anymore, apparently. His son Wayne’s a bit dodgy.’

‘Dodgy how?’

‘General purpose lowlife. Fighting at football matches, D and D, robbery.’

‘Robbery?’

‘Took some other kid’s bike off him after giving him a kicking. That was a few years ago.’

‘Sounds like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.’

As part of the National Crime Group, specifically the Serial Crimes Unit, Mark Heckenburg had a remit to work on murder cases across all the police areas of England and Wales. He and the other detectives in SCU (as it was abbreviated) tended to have a consultative investigating role with regard to the pursuit of repeat violent offenders, and would bring specialist knowledge and training to regional forces grappling with large or complex cases. They were usually allocated to said forces in groups of four or five, sometimes more. On this occasion, however, as the Nottinghamshire Police already had access to experienced personnel from the East Midlands Special Operations Unit, Heck had been assigned here on his own.

SCU’s presence wasn’t always welcomed by the regional forces they were assisting, some viewing the attachment of outsiders as a slight on their own abilities – though in certain cases, such as this one, SCU’s advice had been actively sought. Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper, head of SCU, had been personally contacted by Taskforce SIO Detective Chief Superintendent Matt Grinton, who was a keen student of those state-of-the-art investigations she and her team had run in previous years. He hadn’t specifically asked for Heck, but Gemma Piper, having only recently reincorporated Heck into the unit after he’d spent a brief period attached to Cumbria Crime Command, had felt it would be a good way to ease him back in – Nottinghamshire were only looking for one extra body, someone who would bring expertise and experience but who would also be part of the team, rather than a bunch of Scotland Yard men to take over the whole show.

SIO Grinton was a big man with silver hair, a distinguished young/old face, and a penchant for sharp-cut suits, though his most distinctive feature was the patch he wore over his left eye socket, having lost the eye to flying glass during a drive-by shooting fifteen years earlier. He was now holding court under the hard halogen glow of the car park lights at the rear of St Ann’s Central. Uniforms clad in full anti-riot gear and detectives with stab vests under their jackets and coats stood around him in attentive groups.

‘So that’s the state of play,’ Grinton said. ‘We’re moving on this quickly rather than waiting till the crack of dawn tomorrow, firstly because the obbo at Devlin’s address tells us he’s currently home, secondly because if Jimmy Hood is our man there’s been a shorter cooling-off period between each attack, which means that he’s going crazier by the minute. For all we know, he could have done two or three more by tomorrow morning. We’ve got to catch him tonight, and Alan Devlin is the best lead we’ve had thus far. Just remember … for all that he’s a hoodlum from way back, Devlin is a witness, not a suspect. We’re more likely to get his help if we go in as friends.’

There were nods of understanding. Mouths were set firm as it dawned on the Taskforce members just how high the stakes now were. Every man and woman present knew their job, but it was vital that no one made an error.

‘One thing, sir, if you don’t mind,’ Heck spoke up. ‘I strongly recommend that we take anything Alan Devlin tells us with a pinch of salt.’

‘Any particular reason?’ Grinton asked.

Heck waved Devlin’s sheet. ‘He hasn’t been convicted of any crime since he was a juvenile, but he wasn’t shy about getting his hands dirty back in the day – he was Jimmy Hood’s right-hand man when they were terrorising housing estates around Hucknall. Now his son Wayne is halfway to repeating that pattern here in St Ann’s. Try as I may, I can’t view Alan Devlin as an upstanding citizen.’

‘You think he’d cover for a killer?’ Jowitt said doubtfully.

Heck shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir. Assuming Hood is the killer – and from what we know, I think he probably is – I find it odd that Devlin, who knows him better than anyone, hasn’t already come to the same conclusion and got in touch with us voluntarily.’

‘Maybe he’s scared?’ someone suggested.

Heck tried not to look as sceptical about that as he felt. ‘Hood’s a thug, but he’s in breach of licence conditions that strictly prohibit him from returning to Nottingham. That means he’s keeping his head down and moving from place to place. He’s only got one change of clothes, he’s on his own, he’s cold, damp, and dining on scraps in bus stations. Does he really pose much of a threat to a bloke like Devlin, who’s got form for violence himself, has a grown-up hooligan for a son and, though he’s not officially a player anymore, is probably well respected on his home patch and can call a few faces if he needs help?’

The team pondered, taking this on board.

‘We’ll see what happens,’ Grinton said, zipping his anorak. ‘If Devlin plays it dumb, we’ll let him know that Hood’s mugshot is appearing on the ten o’clock news tonight, and all it’s going to take is a couple of local residents to recognise him as someone they’ve seen hanging around Devlin’s address. The Lady Killer is going down for the rest of this century, ladies and gents. Devlin may still have a rep to think of, but he won’t want a piece of that action. Odds are he’ll start talking.’

They drove to the address in question in five unmarked vehicles; one of them Heck’s maroon Peugeot 308, and one a plain-clothes APC. They did it discreetly and without fanfare. St Ann’s wasn’t an out-of-control neighbourhood, but it wasn’t the sort of place where excessive police activity would go unnoticed, and mobs could form quickly if word got out that ‘one of the boys’ was in trouble. In physical terms, it was a rabbit warren of crumbling council blocks, networked with dingy footways, which at night were a mugger’s paradise. To heighten its atmosphere of menace, a winter gloom had descended, filling the narrow passages with cloying vapour.

Arriving at 41 Lakeside View, they found a boxy, redbrick structure, accessible by a short cement ramp with a rusty wrought-iron railing, and a single corridor running through from one side to the other, to which various apartment doors – 41a, 41b, 41c and 41d – connected.

Heck, Grinton and Jowitt regarded it from a short distance away. Only the arched entry was visible in the evening murk, illuminated at its apex by a single dull lamp; the rest of the building was a gaunt outline. A clutch of detectives and armour-clad uniforms were waiting a few yards behind them, while the troop carrier with its complement of reinforcements was about fifty yards further back, parked in the nearest cul-de-sac. Everyone observed a strict silence.

Grinton finally turned round, keeping his voice low. ‘Okay … listen up. Roberts, Atherton … you’re staying with us. The rest of you … round the other side. Any ground-floor windows, any fire doors, block ’em off. Grab anyone who tries to come out.’

There were nods of understanding as the group, minus two uniforms, shuffled away into the mist. Grinton checked his watch to give them five minutes to get in place, then glanced at Heck and Jowitt and nodded. They detached themselves from the alley mouth, ascended the ramp, and entered the brick passage, which was poorly lit by two faltering bulbs and defaced end to end with obscene, spray-painted slogans. The same graffiti covered three of its four doors. The only one that hadn’t been vandalised was 41c – the home of Alan Devlin.

There was no bell, so Grinton rapped on the door with his fist. Several seconds passed before there was a fumbling on the other side. The door opened as far as its short safety chain would allow. The face beyond was aged in its mid-thirties, but pudgy and pockmarked, one eyebrow bisected by an old scar. It unmistakably belonged to one-time hardman Alan Devlin, though these days he was squat and pot-bellied, with a shaved head. He’d answered the door in a grubby T-shirt and purple Y-fronts, but even through the narrow gap they spotted neck-chains and cheap, tacky rings on nicotine-yellow fingers. He didn’t look hostile so much as puzzled, probably because the first thing he saw was Grinton’s eye patch. He put on a pair of thick-lensed, steel-rimmed glasses, so that he could scrutinise it less myopically.

‘Alan Devlin?’ the chief superintendent asked.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

Grinton introduced himself, displaying his warrant card. ‘This is Detective Inspector Jowitt and this is Detective Sergeant Heckenburg.’

‘Suppose I’m honoured,’ Devlin grunted, looking anything but.

‘Can we come in?’ Grinton said.

‘What’s it about?’

‘You don’t know?’ Jowitt asked him.

Devlin threw him an ironic glance. ‘Yeah … I just wondered if you did.’

Heck observed the householder with interest. Though clearly irritated that his evening had been disturbed, his relaxed body language suggested that he wasn’t overly concerned. Either Devlin had nothing to hide or he was a competent performer. The latter was easily possible, as he’d had plenty of opportunity to hone such a talent while still a youth.

‘Jimmy Hood,’ Grinton explained. ‘That name ring a bell?’

Devlin continued to regard them indifferently, but for several seconds longer than was perhaps normal. Then he removed the safety chain and opened the door.

Heck glanced at the two uniforms behind them. ‘Wait out here, eh? No sense crowding him in his own pad.’ They nodded and remained in the outer passage, while the three detectives entered a dimly lit hall strewn with litter and cluttered with piles of musty, unwashed clothes. An internal door stood open on a lamp-lit room from which the sound of a television emanated. There was a strong, noxious odour of chips and ketchup.

Devlin faced them square-on, adjusting his bottle-lens specs. ‘Suppose you want to know where he is?’

‘Not only that,’ Grinton said, ‘we want to know where he’s been.’

There was a sudden thunder of feet from overhead – the sound of someone running. Heck tensed by instinct. He spun to face the foot of a dark stairwell – just as a figure exploded down it. But it wasn’t the brutish giant, Jimmy Hood; it was a kid – seventeen at the most with a mop of mouse-brown hair and a thin moustache. He was only clad in shorts, which revealed a lean, muscular torso sporting several lurid tattoos – and he was carrying a baseball bat.

‘What the fucking hell?’ He advanced fiercely, closing down the officers’ space.

‘Easy, lad,’ Devlin said, smiling. ‘Just a few questions, and they’ll be gone.’

‘What fucking questions?’

Jowitt pointed a finger. ‘Put the bat down, sonny.’

‘You gonna make me?’ The youth’s expression was taut, his gaze intense.

‘You want to make this worse for your old fella than it already is?’ Grinton asked calmly.

There was a short, breathless silence. The youth glanced from one to the other, determinedly unimpressed by the phalanx of officialdom, though clearly unused to folk not running when he came at them tooled up. ‘There’s more of these twats outside, Dad. Sneaking around, thinking no one can see ’em.’

His father snorted. ‘All this cos Jimbo breached his parole?’

‘It’s a bit more serious than that, Mr Devlin,’ Jowitt said. ‘So serious that I really don’t think you want to be obstructing us like this.’

‘I’m not obstructing you … I’ve just invited you in.’

Which was quite a smart move, Heck realised.

‘We’ll see.’ Grinton walked towards the living room. ‘Let’s talk.’

Devlin gave a sneering grin and followed. Jowitt went too. Heck turned to Wayne Devlin. ‘Your dad wants to make it look like he’s cooperating, son. Wafting that offensive weapon around isn’t going to help him.’

Scowling, though now looking a little helpless – as if having other men in here chucking their weight about was such a challenge to his masculinity that he knew no adequate way to respond – the lad finally slung the baseball bat against the stair-post, which it struck with a deafening thwack!, before shouldering past Heck into the living room. When Heck got in there, it was no less a bombsite than the hall: magazines were scattered – one lay open on a gynaecological centre-spread; empty beer cans and dirty crockery cluttered the tabletops; overflowing ashtrays teetered on the mantel. The stench of ketchup was enriched by the lingering aroma of stale cigarettes.

‘Let’s cut to the chase,’ Grinton said. ‘Is Hood staying here now?’

‘No,’ Devlin replied, still cool.

He’s very relaxed about this, Heck thought. Unnaturally so.

‘So if I come back here with a search warrant and go through this place with a fine-tooth comb, Mr Devlin, I definitely won’t find him?’ Grinton said.

Devlin shrugged. ‘If you thought you had grounds you’d already have a warrant. But it doesn’t matter. You’ve got my permission to search anyway.’

‘In which case I’m guessing there’s no need, but we might as well look.’ Grinton nodded to Heck, who went back outside and brought the two uniforms in. Their heavy boots thudded on the stair treads as they lumbered to the upper floor.

‘How often has Jimmy Hood stayed here?’ Jowitt asked. ‘I mean recently?’

Devlin shrugged. ‘On and off. Crashed on the couch.’

‘And you didn’t report it?’

‘He’s an old mate trying to get back on his feet. I’m not dobbing him in for that.’

‘When did he last stay?’ Heck asked.

‘Few days ago.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘What he always wears … trackie bottoms, sweat-top, duffel coat. Poor bastard’s living out of a placky bag.’

The detectives avoided exchanging glances. They’d agreed beforehand that there’d be no disclosure of their real purpose here until Grinton deemed it necessary; if Devlin had known what was happening and had still harboured his old pal, that made him an accessory to these murders – and it would help them build a case against him if he revealed knowledge without being prompted.

‘When do you expect him back?’ Heck asked.

Devlin looked amused by the inanity of such a question (again false, Heck sensed). ‘How do I know? I’m not his fucking keeper. He knows he can come here anytime, but he never wants to outstay his welcome.’

‘Has he got a phone, so you can contact him?’ Jowitt wondered.

‘He hasn’t got anything.’

‘Does he ever come here late at night?’ Grinton said. ‘As in … unusually late.’

‘What sort of bullshit questions are these?’ Wayne Devlin demanded, increasingly agitated by the sounds of violent activity upstairs.

Grinton eyed him. ‘The sort that need straight answers, son … else you and your dad are going to find yourselves deeper in it than whale shit.’ He glanced back at Devlin. ‘So … any late-night calls?’

‘Sometimes,’ Devlin admitted.

‘When?’

‘I don’t keep a fucking diary.’

‘Did he ever look flustered?’ Jowitt asked.

‘When didn’t he? He’s on the lam.’

‘How about bloodstained?’ Grinton said.

At first Devlin seemed puzzled, but now, slowly – very slowly – his face lengthened. ‘You’re not … you’re not talking about this Lady Killer business?’

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding!’ Wayne Devlin blurted, looking stunned.

‘Interesting thought, Wayne?’ Heck said to him. ‘Is that your bat out there – or Jimmy Hood’s?’

The lad’s mouth dropped open. Suddenly he was less the teen tough-guy and more an alarmed kid. ‘It’s … it’s mine, but that doesn’t mean …’

‘So if we confiscate it for forensic examination and find blood, it’s you we need to come for, not Jimmy?’

‘That won’t work, copper,’ the older Devlin said, though for the first time there was colour in his cheek – it perhaps hadn’t occurred to him that his son might end up carrying the can for something. ‘You’re not scaring us.’

Despite that, the younger Devlin did look scared. ‘You won’t find any blood on it. It’s been under my bed for months. Jimbo never touched it. Dad, tell ’em what they want to fucking know.’

‘Like I said, Jimbo’s only been here a couple of times,’ Devlin drawled. (Still playing it calm, Heck thought.) ‘Never settles down for long.’

‘And it didn’t enter your head that he might be involved in these murders?’ Grinton said.

‘Or are you just in denial?’ Jowitt asked.

‘He was a good mate …’

‘So you are in denial? Can’t see the judge being impressed by that.’

‘It may have occurred to me once or twice,’ Devlin retorted. ‘But you don’t want to believe it of a mate …’

‘Even though he’s done it before?’ Grinton said.

‘Nothing this bad.’

‘Bad enough.’

‘You should get over to his auntie’s!’ Wayne Devlin interjected.

That comment stopped them dead. They gazed at him curiously; he gazed back, flat-eyed, cheeks flaming.

‘What are you talking about?’ Heck asked.

‘He was always ranting about his Auntie Mavis …’

‘Wayne!’ the older Devlin snapped.

‘If Jimbo’s up to something dodgy, Dad, we don’t want any part in it.’

These two are good, Heck thought. These two are really good.

‘Something you want to tell us, Mr Devlin?’ Grinton asked.

Devlin averted his eyes to the floor, teeth bared. He yanked his glasses off and rubbed them vigorously on his stained vest – as though torn with indecision, as though angry at having been put in this position, but not necessarily angry at the police.

‘Wayne may be right,’ he finally said. ‘Perhaps you should get over there. Her name’s Mavis Cutler. Before you ask, I don’t know much else. She’s not his real auntie. Some old bitch who fostered Jimbo when he was a kid. Seventy-odd now, at least. I don’t know what went on – he never said, but I think she gave him a dog’s life.’

So Hood was attacking his wicked auntie every time he attacked one of these other women, Heck reasoned, remembering his basic forensic psychology. It’s a plausible explanation. Although a tad too plausible, of course.

‘And why do we need to get over there quick?’ Jowitt wondered.

Devlin hung his head properly, his shoulders sagging as if he was suddenly glad to get a weight off them. ‘When … when Jimbo first showed up a few months ago, he said he was back in Nottingham to see her. And when he said “see her”, I didn’t get the feeling it was for a family reunion if you know what I mean.’

‘So why’s it taken him this long?’ Jowitt asked.

‘He couldn’t find her at first. I think he may have gone up to Hucknall yesterday, looking. That’s where they lived when he was a kid.’

Cleverer and cleverer, Heck thought. Devlin’s using real events to make it believable.

‘Someone up there probably told him,’ Devlin added.

‘Told him what?’

‘That she lives in Matlock now. I don’t know where exactly.’

Matlock in Derbyshire. Twenty-five miles away.

‘How do you know all this?’ Grinton sounded suspicious.

Devlin shrugged. ‘He rang me today – from a payphone. Said he was leaving town tonight, and that I probably wouldn’t be seeing him again.’

‘And you still didn’t inform us?’ Jowitt’s voice was thick with disgust.

‘I’m informing you now, aren’t I?’

‘It might be too late, you stupid moron!’ Jowitt dashed out into the hall, calling the two uniforms from upstairs.

‘Look, he never specifically said he was going to do that old bird,’ Devlin protested to Grinton. ‘He might not even be going to Matlock. He might be fleeing the fucking country for all I know! This is just guesswork!’

And you can’t be prosecuted for guessing, Heck thought. You’re a cute one.

‘Don’t do anything stupid, Mr Devlin,’ Grinton said, indicating to Heck that it was time to leave. ‘Like warning Jimmy we’re coming. Any phone we find on Hood with calls traceable back to you are all we’ll need to nick you as an accomplice.’

Out in the entry passage, Jowitt was already shouting into his radio. ‘I don’t care how indisposed they are – get them to check the voters’ rolls and phone directories. Find every woman in Matlock called Mavis bloody Cutler … over and out!’ He turned to Grinton and Heck. ‘We should lock that bastard Devlin up.’

Grinton shook his head, ignoring the door to 41c as it slammed closed behind them. ‘He might end up witnessing for us. Let’s not chuck away what little leverage we’ve currently got.’

‘What if he absconds?’

‘We’ll sit someone on him.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ Heck said. ‘But I won’t be coming over to Matlock with you.’

Grinton looked surprised. ‘All this groundwork and you don’t want to be in on the pinch?’

Heck shrugged. ‘I’ll be honest, sir: good show Devlin put on in there, but I don’t think Hood has any intention of going to Derbyshire. I reckon we’re being sent on a wild goose chase.’

Jowitt looked puzzled. ‘Why would Devlin do that?’

‘It’s a hunch, sir, but it’s got legs. Despite the serious crimes Jimmy Hood was last convicted for, Alan Devlin let him sleep on his couch. Not once, but several times. This guy is not too picky to associate with sex offenders.’

‘Come on, Heck,’ Jowitt said. ‘Devlin’s in enough hot water as it is – he’s not going to aid and abet a multiple killer as well.’

‘He’s in lukewarm water, sir. Apart from assisting an offender, what else has he admitted to? Even if it turns out he’s sending us the wrong way, he’s covered. It’s all “I’m not sure about this, I’m only guessing that” – there aren’t even grounds to charge him with obstructing an enquiry.’

‘We can’t not act on what he’s told us,’ Grinton argued.

‘I agree, sir. But while you’re off to Matlock, I’m going to chase a few leads of my own. If that’s okay?’

‘No problem … just make sure you log them all.’

While Grinton arranged for a couple of his plain-clothes officers to maintain covert obs on Lakeside View, the rest of them returned to their vehicles and mounted up for a rapid ride over to the next county. Jowitt was back on the blower again, putting Derbyshire Comms in the picture as he jumped into his car. Heck remained on the pavement while he too made a quick call – in his case it was to the DIU at St Ann’s Central. As intelligence offices went, this one was pretty efficient.

‘Heck?’ came the hearty voice of PC Marge Propper, a chunky uniformed lass whose fast, accurate research capabilities had already proved invaluable to the Lady Killer Taskforce.

‘Marge – am I right in thinking that, apart from Alan Devlin, Jimmy Hood has no other known associates in the inner Nottingham area?’

‘Correct.’

‘Okay … I want to try something different. Can you contact Roundhall Prison in Coventry? Find out who’s been visiting Hood this last year and a half. Any regular names that haven’t already cropped up in this enquiry, I’d like to know about them.’

‘Wilco, Heck – might take a few minutes to get a response at this hour.’

‘No worries. Call me back when you can.’

He paused before climbing into his Peugeot. The other mobile units had driven away, leaving a dull, dead silence in their wake. The surrounding buildings were little more than blurred, angular outlines, broken by the odd faint square of window-light, most of which leached into the gloom without making any impression. The passage leading towards Lakeside View was a black rectangle, which bade no one re-enter it.

Heck climbed into his car and switched the engine on.

It was impossible to say whether or not they were on the right track, but it felt right. He still didn’t trust Alan Devlin, but the guy’s partial admissions had revealed that Jimmy Hood had been in this district as well as Hucknall – which put Hood close to all the identified murder scenes and in roughly the right timeframe. Of course, with the knowledge of hindsight, it was all so predictable and sordid. As Heck drove out of the cul-de-sac it struck him that this decayed environment, with its broken glass and graffiti-covered maze of soulless brick alleys, seemed painfully familiar. So many of his cases had brought him to blighted places like this.

His phone rang and he slammed it to his ear. ‘Yeah, Heckenburg!’

‘We could have something here, Heck,’ Marge Propper said. ‘In his last year at Roundhall, Jimmy Hood was visited nine times by a certain Sian Collier.’

‘That name doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘No; she hasn’t been on our radar up to now, though she’s got minor form for possession and shoplifting. She’s white, thirty-two years old and a local by birth. Her last conviction was over five years ago, so she may have cleaned up her act.’

‘Apart from the bit where she gets mixed up with sex killers?’

‘Yeah …’

Heck fiddled with his sat nav. ‘Where does she live?’

‘Mountjoy Height, number eighteen – that’s in Bulwell.’

‘I know it.’

‘Heck, if you’re going over there, you might want to speak to Division first. It’s a lively place.’

‘Thanks for the warning, Marge. But I’m only spying out the land. Anyway, I’ve got my radio.’

The murkiness of the winter night was now to Heck’s advantage – mainly because it meant the roads were empty of traffic, but also because, once he arrived in Bulwell, he was able to cruise its foggy, run-down streets without attracting attention.

When he finally located Mountjoy Height, it was a row of pebble-dashed two-storey maisonettes on raised ground overlooking yet another labyrinthine housing estate. First, he made a drive-by at the front, seeing patches of muddy grass serving as communal front gardens, with wheelie bins dotted across them and rubbish strewn haphazardly. There were only a couple of other vehicles present, but lights were on in most of the maisonette windows. After that, he explored at the rear, working his way down into a lower, winding alley, which ran past several garages. Some of these stood open, some closed. The garage to number eighteen didn’t have a door attached, but was of particular interest because a large, good-looking motorcycle was parked inside it.

Heck glided to a halt and turned his engine off.

He climbed out, listening carefully; somewhere close by voices bickered. They were muffled and indistinct, but it sounded like a couple of adults; he wasn’t initially sure where it was coming from – possibly number eighteen itself, which towered behind the garage in the gloom and was accessible by a narrow flight of steps.

He assessed the motorbike through the entrance, and despite the darkness was able to identify it as a new model Suzuki GSX; an expensive make for this neck of the woods.

‘DS Heckenburg to Charlie Six,’ he said into his radio. ‘PNC check, please?’

‘DS Heckenburg?’ came the crackly response.

‘Anything on a black Suzuki GSX motorcycle, index Juliet-Zulu-seven-three-Bravo-Foxtrot-Alpha, over?’

‘Stand by.’

Heck moved to the side of the garage and glanced up the steps. The monolithic structure overhead was wreathed in vapour, but lights still burned inside it and the argument raged on; in fact it sounded as if it had intensified. Glass shattered, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – it might grant him the right to force entry.

‘DS Heckenburg from PNC?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Black Suzuki GSX motorcycle, index Juliet-Zulu-seven-three-Bravo-Foxtrot-Alpha, reported stolen from Hucknall late last night, over.’

‘Received, thanks for that. What were the circumstances of the theft, over?’

‘Fairly serious, Sarge. It’s being treated as robbery. A motorcycle courier got a bottle broken over his head outside a newsagent, and then had his helmet stolen as well as his ride. He’s currently in IC. No description of the offender as yet.’

Heck pondered. This sounded more like Jimmy Hood by the minute. On the basis that he was now looking to make an arrest for a serious offence, Heck had the power to enter the garage – which he duly did, finding masses of junk littered in its oily shadows: boxes crammed with bric-a-brac; broken, dirty household appliances; even a pile of chains, several of which were wrapped round an upright steel girder supporting the garage roof.

‘DS Heckenburg … are you saying you’ve found this vehicle, over?’

‘That’s affirmative,’ Heck replied, pulling his gloves on as he mooched around. ‘In an open garage at the rear of eighteen, Mountjoy Height, Bulwell. The suspect, who I believe to be inside the address, is Jimmy Hood. White male, early thirties, six foot three inches and built like a brick shithouse. Hood, who has form for extreme violence, is also a suspect in the Lady Killer murders. So I need backup ASAP. Silent approach, over.’

‘Received Sarge … support units en route. ETA five.’

Heck shoved his radio back into his jacket and worked his way through the garage to a rear door, which swung open at his touch. He followed a paved side path along the base of a steep, muddy slope, eventually joining with the flight of steps leading up to the maisonette. When he ascended, he did so warily. Realistically, all he needed to do now was wait until the cavalry arrived – but then something else happened.

And it was a game-changer.

The shouting and screaming indoors had risen to a crescendo. Household items exploded as they were flung around. This was just about tolerable, given that it probably wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in this neighbourhood. Heck reasoned that he could still wait it out – until he got close to the rear of the building, and heard a baby crying.

Not just crying.

Howling.

Hysterical with pain or fear.

‘DS Heckenburg to Charlie Six, urgent message!’ He dashed up the remaining steps, and took an entry leading to the front of the maisonette. ‘Please expedite that support – I can hear violence inside the property and a child in distress, over!’

He halted under the stoop. Light shafted through the frosted panel in the front door, yet little was visible on the other side – except for brief flurries of indistinct movement. Angry shouts still echoed from within.

Heck zipped his jacket and knocked loudly. ‘Police officer! Can you open up please?’

There was instantaneous silence – apart from the baby, whose sobbing had diminished to a low, feeble keening.

Heck knocked again. ‘This is the police – I need you to open up!’ He glimpsed further hurried motion behind the distorted glass.

When he next struck the door, he led with his shoulder.

It required three heavy buffets to crash the woodwork inwards, splinters flying, bolts and hinges catapulting loose. As the door fell in front of him Heck saw a narrow, wreckage-strewn corridor leading into a small kitchen, where a tall male in a duffel coat was in the process of exiting the property via a back door. Heck charged down the corridor. As he did, a woman emerged from a side room, bruised and tear-stained, hair disorderly, mascara streaking her cheeks. She wore a ragged orange dressing gown and clutched a baby to her breast, its face a livid, blotchy red.

‘What do you want?’ she screeched, blocking Heck’s passage. ‘You can’t barge in here!’

Heck stepped around her. ‘Out the way please, miss!’

‘But he’s not done nothing!’ She grabbed Heck’s collar, her sharp fingernails raking the skin on his neck. ‘Can’t you bastards stop harassing him!’

Heck had to pull hard to extricate himself. ‘Hasn’t he just beaten you up?’

‘That’s cos I didn’t want him to leave …’

‘He’s a bloody nutter, love!’

‘It’s nothing … I don’t mind it.’

‘Others do!’ Heck yanked himself free – to renewed wailing from the woman and child – and continued into the kitchen and out through the back door, emerging onto a toy-strewn patio just as a burly outline loped down the steps towards the garage, only a few yards in front of him. The guy had something in his hand, which Heck at first took for a bag; then he realised that it was a motorbike helmet. ‘Jimmy Hood!’ he shouted, scrambling down the steps in pursuit. ‘Police officer – stay where you are!’

Hood’s response was to leap the remaining three or four steps, pulling the helmet on and battering his way through the garage’s rear door. Heck jumped the last steps as well, sliding and tumbling on the earthen slope, but reaching the garage doorway only seconds behind his quarry. He shouldered it open to find Hood seated on the Suzuki, kicking it to life. Its glaring headlight sprang across the alley. The roars of its engine filled the gutted structure.

‘Don’t be a bloody fool!’ Heck bellowed.

Hood glanced round – just long enough to flip Heck the finger and hit the gas, the Suzuki bucking forward, almost pulling a wheelie it accelerated with such speed.

But the fugitive only made it ten yards, at which point, with a terrific BANG, the bike’s rear wheel was jerked back beneath him. He somersaulted over the handlebars, slamming upside down against another garage door before flopping onto the cobblestones, where he lay twisted and groaning. The bike came to rest a few yards away, chugging loudly, smoke pouring from its shattered exhaust.

‘Bit remiss of you, Jimmy,’ Heck said, emerging into the alley, toeing at the length of chain still pulled taut between the buckled rear wheel and the upright girder inside the garage. ‘Not checking that something hadn’t got mysteriously wrapped round your rear axle.’

Flickering blue lights appeared as local patrol cars turned into view at either end of the alley, slowly wending their way forward. Hood managed to roll over onto his back, but could do nothing except lie there, glaring with glassy, soulless eyes through the aperture where his visor had been smashed away.

Heck dug handcuffs from his back pocket and suspended them in full view. ‘Either way, pal, you don’t have to say anything. But it may harm your defence …’

Chapter 3

It took a near-death experience to make Harold Lansing realise that he needed to start enjoying life more. Of course, those who didn’t know him would have been startled to learn that he wasn’t leading a very full and pleasurable existence in the first place.

A 45-year-old multi-millionaire bachelor, he was exceptionally handsome – sun-bronzed, with a shock of crisp, grey hair – always fashionably dressed even in casuals, and the owner of two nifty motors, a Bentley Continental V8 and a Hyundai Veloster sport, so it seemed highly unlikely that he wasn’t already one of the most contented men in Britain. He also owned three sumptuous properties: a villa on the Côte d’Azur, where he spent the odd three-day break, a flash apartment in Swiss Cottage, purpose-bought as a crashpad from which to take in the London scene, and his ‘rural retreat’, as he referred to it, though it was actually his regular residence: a palatial, eight-bedroom former farmhouse in the Surrey countryside called Rosewood Grange. With 300 acres of verdant gardens attached, a private tennis court and croquet lawn, its own indoor swimming pool and the near-obligatory complement of priceless artworks and antiques, you’d have expected Rosewood Grange to be the jewel in a party king’s crown, the epicentre of a lavish, playboy lifestyle, where all the best people, including the most glamorous and connected women, came every weekend to get off their face.

Except that it didn’t serve that purpose, and it never really had.

Looks could be deceptive.

Aside from the occasional round of golf and a few restful hours spent angling on the River Mole, Lansing dedicated more energy towards supporting charitable causes than he did his own leisure. In addition, he was a workaholic. He ran several computer companies from his private office in Reigate, and had made the bulk of his money selling software products in the United States and the Far East. He also owned a chain of country inns and hotels aimed at a wealthy clientele. What was more, he liked to stay hands-on with all these interests – not because he didn’t trust his carefully appointed underlings, but more because he couldn’t conceive of a lifestyle spent, to use one of his own phrases, twiddling his thumbs all day.

However, now maybe – just maybe – thanks to a recent accident and a subsequent two-week sojourn in hospital, several days of which he’d spent hooked to a bank of ‘vital signs’ monitors in Intensive Care, he was beginning to readdress things.

As he threw his briefcase into the back of his Bentley that beautiful July morning, he paused briefly to admire the lush, sun-dappled greenery enclosing his home, and to breathe the seductive scents of the English woodland: rosebud, honeysuckle, fresh mint. Quite an improvement on the starch, bleach, and liberally applied antiseptics of the hospital.

Good Lord, it was great to be alive. But how much of a life was he actually living?

Okay, he’d made a kind of resolution while he was in hospital to take more holidays, to travel more regularly and extensively, maybe even to hook up with Monica again. And yet here he was, the first morning of his officially being ‘fit for work’, and he was already heading for the office at seven sharp. It was as though nothing had happened to disrupt his regular-as-clockwork routine. But it wasn’t like it would be difficult to make changes to this; Lansing was the boss after all – the only pressure he ever felt was the pressure he applied to himself. But he would still only get home after eight p.m., and as usual would dine alone on whatever collation Mrs Beetham, his housekeeper, had set out for him – except that no, Mrs Beetham was currently on holiday with Mr Beetham, Lansing’s gardener, so he would actually dine alone on whatever morsel of fast food, most likely a greasy fish and chip supper, he remembered to pick up on the way. His main viewing that night would be the business news, and his bedtime reading the financial press. This was his normal weekday schedule – and he was used to it and satisfied with it. But it was hardly a life in the true sense of the word.

A solitary individual with few real interests outside work, golf and fishing, Lansing had no yearning to ‘go out and do stuff’ as Monica had once tried to persuade him – not long before they broke up, in fact – but the incident on the river had made him realise that unforeseen disaster could be lurking around any corner, and that there were probably quite a few things he had yet to experience that would undoubtedly enrich his time on Earth. The mere memory of the roiling green water thundering in his ears as he was swept over the weir – the weight of it bearing down on top of him, pummelling his body, slamming him again and again on the slimy brickwork at the bottom of the plunge-pool, pinning him deep in that airless, icy void – was enough to set him quaking. How easy to recall the horrific realisation that this was it; that without expectation, anticipation, or even a hint of warning, it was all suddenly, irreversibly over. Everything. The whole show. There would be no goodbyes, no sorting out of affairs, no time to fix the things that needed fixing. This was simply it. His allotted time had run out. Gone. Zip.

Almost in reflex, Lansing stripped off his blue silk tie.

It wasn’t necessarily a rebellion against the regimented world in which he’d so long been immersed. It didn’t mean that he was suddenly casting his sights further afield – looking out for a good time when he’d normally be assessing the markets. But it was a start, he supposed. Monica would certainly be surprised. He’d try and Skype with her later on, and gauge her reaction – and not just to the missing tie, perhaps to an on-the-hoof dinner invitation for whenever she was next in the UK.

Lansing tossed the tie into the back seat of his Bentley as he climbed behind the wheel. With a few deft strokes, he brought the magnificent machine’s six-litre twin-turbocharged engine purring to life. The dulcet strains of Vivaldi filled its leather interior. He eased it down his white gravel drive, increasingly enthused by his new outlook on life, by his determination to have some fun for a change. At the end of the day, why not? The nearby woods were thick with summer leaf, filled with birdcalls. The sun speared through the overhead canopy. When he looked beyond his desk, this world – which had so very nearly been snatched away from him – really was a glorious and invigorating place.

A short distance from the house, he slowed as he approached the drive entrance. The road beyond was only a B road, but it ran in a more or less direct line between Crawley and Dorking, and passed for long, straight stretches through gentle forest and farmland. As such, it was popular with boy racers, even at this early hour – idiots who’d left it too late to set out for work; idiots who were in danger of missing their flights from Gatwick; idiots who were trying to get home before the day began, so they could try to convince their wives or girlfriends that they hadn’t stayed out all night. But even without such a crowd of jackanapeses on the road, the point where Lansing’s drive connected with it was a bad one; right on a blind bend. To compensate, he’d had a large convex mirror fixed on the twisted oak trunk opposite, giving him excellent vantage in both directions for a considerable distance, and right now the way was clear.

As the ‘Spring’ harpsichord kicked in, he thumbed the volume control on the steering column. Lansing loved classical music, but he particularly loved the pastoral pieces, especially while driving through lush countryside on summer mornings. He checked the mirror opposite one final time – the road was still empty in both directions – and casually cruised out between the tall redbrick obelisks that served as his gateposts.

The sound of his collision with the Porsche Carrera was like a volcanic eruption.

When the sports car struck his front nearside it was doing over seventy miles an hour, and it catapulted over the top of him, flipping end over end through the air, turning into a fireball when it hit the road again some forty yards further on, from which point it continued to crash and roll, setting alight every bush and thicket along the verge, before wrapping itself round a hornbeam, which was almost uprooted by the impact.

In comparison to that, Lansing didn’t come off half badly.

His own vehicle, which was also dragged out and flung on its roof along the scorched tarmac, was of course reduced to mangled scrap, but though he was slammed brutally against his belt and airbag, and his legs twisted torturously as the Bentley’s entire chassis was buckled out of shape, he survived.

For what seemed like ages afterwards, he hung upside down, dazed to a near-stupor. The only thought that worked its way through his head was: The mirror … the road was clear, I saw it. He cursed himself as a damn fool for having played the music in his car at such volume that he’d failed to hear the howl of the approaching engine. But that shouldn’t have mattered, because the road was clear. I saw it with my own eyes.

And then another thought occurred to him: about the smell that was rapidly filling his nostrils, and the warm fluid running down his face – which he’d at first assumed was blood. He touched his wet cheek with his fingertips. When he brought them away again, they were shiny and slippery.

Dear God!

The petrol tank had ruptured. Its contents were already seeping in rivulets through the shattered vehicle’s interior. And outside on the road of course, though Lansing’s vision was fogged by pain and shock, pools of flame were burning, some of them in perilous proximity.

Though nauseated and shivering, head banging with concussion, he fought wildly with his seatbelt clip. When it finally came loose, he still didn’t drop, but was held fast by the legs, the agony of which infused his entire lower body.

‘Bloody broken legs,’ he burbled through a mouth seething with saliva.

He could still get out. He had to.

So he wriggled and he writhed, and he grunted aloud, biting down on shrieks of pain as he finally shifted his contorted lower limbs sufficiently to fall like a stone, landing heavily on his shoulders and upper back, but still managing to lurch around and worm his way out through his side window. Even as he slid onto the glass-strewn tarmac, there was movement in the corner of his eye. He spied glistening fuel winding treacherously away towards the burning vegetation on the verge.

Crawling on his elbows, teeth gritted on blinding pain, Lansing dragged himself further and further away. When the car blew behind him, it didn’t go with a BANG as much as a WUMP. He imagined fire ballooning above it in a miniature atom cloud, engulfing the branches overhead. Searing heat washed over him. But heat didn’t hurt you, flame did. And flame didn’t follow.

Realising he was safe, Lansing slumped face down on his folded arms, tears squeezing from eyes already reddened by smoke and fumes. Somewhere nearby he heard the approach of another car, but this one was slowing down. Tyres crunched on a road surface littered with wreckage; an engine groaned to a halt; a handbrake was applied; doors opened; what sounded like two pairs of booted feet clumped on the tarmac. Though it took him a stupefying effort, Lansing rolled over onto his back.

At first, he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing. When its fuel tank had exploded, the twisted, blazing hulk of his Bentley had righted itself with the force, landing on its wheels again. But more important than this, a heavy vehicle of some sort – green in colour, like a jeep or Land Rover – had parked about ten yards behind it, and two men had climbed out, both dressed in what looked like grey overalls. Instead of coming over to check if Lansing was okay, the first of these two men, the taller one, was standing with hands in pockets, surveying the burning wreck. The other had walked round to the far side of it and, through the flickering orange haze, seemed to be attempting to remove the mirror from the tree trunk.

‘H-hey!’ Lansing stammered. ‘Hey … I’m over here …’

The one with his hands in his pockets casually looked round. Despite the momentous events of that morning, despite the delayed shock that was running through Lansing’s broken body like an icy drug, he was so startled by the face he now beheld, and so horrified at the same time, that he cried out incoherently.

The shorter chap meanwhile was still fiddling with the mirror – not trying to remove it, as Lansing had first thought, but trying to remove something that had been laid over it. Or at least, laid over its glass. Was that a picture? A large, circular picture fitted inside the mirror’s frame?

Good God …

With slow, purposeful steps, the tall one with the face that Lansing couldn’t believe walked across the road towards him.

‘You surely are the luckiest bastard alive, Mr Lansing.’ His voice was muffled, though the words were perfectly clear. ‘But sadly no one’s luck lasts forever.’

‘I’m … I’m hurt,’ Lansing stuttered.

‘I can see that.’

‘Please … get me an ambulance.’

Now the other one came across the road; the one carrying the circular picture he’d torn away from the mirror. His face too brought an astonished croak from Lansing’s throat, but no more so than the picture did – it was a still photograph of this very road, albeit empty, free of oncoming traffic.

‘Look,’ he burbled, ‘this isn’t a game. I’m badly hurt.’

‘Not badly enough, I’m afraid,’ the taller of the two men said. ‘But don’t worry – we can take care of that for you.’

They picked him up, one at either end.

Lansing fought back. Of course he fought back; he knew they weren’t trying to help him. But despite his struggles, they carried him around his vehicle like a sack of meal. At this point he bit one of them; the shorter one, whose latex-covered hand had taken a tight grip on his sweaty, petrol-soaked shirt. He sank his teeth deep, almost through to the knuckle. The assailant yelped and tried to yank his hand free, but Lansing – a dog with a bone, because he knew his life depended on it – wouldn’t let go.

They remained calm, even as they rained blows on his face to try and loosen his clenched teeth. Each impact resounded through Lansing’s skull. His nose went first; then his cheekbones and eye sockets; finally his jaw.

Though his vision was filmed by a sticky crimson caul, he was still aware they were carrying him. The heat of his vehicle washed over him as they halted in front of it.

‘Pleeeaaath,’ he mumbled through his shredded lips. ‘Pleeeaaathe … no …’

‘Think of this as a favour, Mr Lansing,’ the taller one said. ‘You’ve always been a handsome fella. Would you really want to carry on looking the way you do now? Anyway, hypothetical question. A-one, a-two, a-three …’

As they swung him between them his burbled pleas became gurgled wails, which rose to a peak of intensity when they released him and he bounced across the blistered bonnet and clean through the jagged maw of the windscreen into the white-hot furnace beyond.

Even then, it wasn’t over.

Lansing’s clothes burned away in blackened tatters, along with his skin and the thick fatty tissue beneath. Yet he still found sufficient strength to scramble out through an aperture where the driver’s door had once been – to amazed but amused chuckles.

‘This bloke, I’m telling you,’ the taller one said, as they again hefted Lansing by his wrists and ankles, unconcerned at the flambéd flesh coming away in their grasp in slimy layers. As before, they transported his twitching form to the front of the vehicle and launched him across its bonnet, back through its flame-filled windscreen.

Chapter 4

At Nottingham Crown Court, the presiding judge, Mr Percival Shears, thought long and hard before passing sentence.

‘James Hood,’ he finally said, ‘you have been found guilty of murdering five elderly women in this city. Women of good repute, who were never known to have hurt or offended against any person. Not only that, you murdered them in the most heinous circumstances, forcing entry to their homes and subjecting them to sustained and hideous abuse before ending their lives … and for no apparent purpose other than to gratify your perverted lusts. So grotesque are the details of these crimes that, were this another time and another place, and were it within my power, I would have no hesitation whatsoever in sending you to the gallows.’

There was an amazed hissing and cursing from one end of the public gallery, where a small clutch of Hood’s supporters had installed themselves. For his own part, the prisoner – still a hulking brute, though for once looking presentable in a suit and tie, with his beard trimmed and black hair cut very short – was motionless in the dock, staring directly ahead, making eye contact with nobody.

‘Of course,’ the judge added, ‘thanks to the efforts of men and women vastly more civilised than you, such a course is no longer open to us. Instead, it falls upon me to impose the mandatory life sentence. But in my judgement, to meet the seriousness of this case, I recommend that you never be eligible for parole. Yours is to be a whole-life term. After such dreadful deeds, it is perfectly fitting that you spend the rest of your days under lock and key.’

There was tearful applause from the other end of the gallery, where the relatives of the victims were gathered. Down below, Detective Chief Superintendent Grinton turned to the bench behind and shook hands with DI Jowitt and Heck.

‘Job done,’ he said.

Heck watched as Hood was taken from the dock, glancing neither right nor left as he was escorted down the stairs to the holding cells. This was the last time he would ever be seen in public, but his body language registered no emotion. Like so many of these guys, he’d always probably suspected this was the destiny awaiting him.

Outside in the lobby, the detectives and the prosecution team were mobbed by jostling reporters, flashbulbs glaring, voices shouting excited questions.

‘The full-life tariff is exactly what Jimmy Hood deserves,’ Grinton told a local news anchorwoman. ‘I can’t say it makes me happy to see anyone receive that ultimate sanction, but this is the future he chose for himself. In any case, it won’t bring back Amelia Taft, Donna Broughton, Joan Waddington, Dora Kent or Mandy Burke. Their families are also serving a full-life sentence, and even this result today, satisfying though it is for those involved in the investigation, will be no consolation to them.’

‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg,’ Heck was asked, ‘as the arresting officer in this case, given that five women still died before you brought Jimmy Hood to justice, do you really feel a celebration is justified?’

‘I don’t think anyone’s celebrating, are they?’ Heck replied. ‘Like Chief Superintendent Grinton said, several lives have been lost. Another life is totally wasted. The whole thing’s a tragedy.’

‘How do you respond to accusations that it was a lucky arrest?’

‘We got one lucky break for sure, and for that we ought to thank a vigilant member of the public. But you have to be on the right track to take advantage of stuff like that. The case still had to be made, and there was a lot of legwork involved. Everyone did their bit.’

‘No one did their bloody bit!’ came a harsh Nottinghamshire voice. ‘That’s the trouble!’

An alley cleared through the throng as Alan and Wayne Devlin, and a handful of similarly shady-looking characters, having descended the stair from the public gallery, now forced their way across the lobby.

‘I hope you’re proud, Heckenburg!’ Devlin shouted, spittle flying from his lips. He and his minions were dressed in suits – Devlin was in his steel-rimmed specs again – yet they made no less menacing a picture. All the hallmarks were there: the tattoos, the facial scars, the cheap jewellery. The one or two women they had with them were blowzy types: overly made-up, chewing gum. ‘You bastards betrayed Jimbo right from the start!’

‘Who are you saying betrayed him, sir?’ a reporter asked.

‘This lot … the authorities.’ Devlin waved a general hand at the detectives. ‘Jimbo never stood a chance. As a kid it was obvious he was off his trolley, but the system kept letting him down. He was in and out of mental wards. Even though he kept telling people he was sick, that he was gonna do someone, they kept letting him go. If he’d been taken care of properly, none of this would have happened. Them poor women would be alive.’

Conscious that cameras and microphones were still on him, Heck merely shrugged. ‘I’m not qualified to comment on any offender’s mental health. All I do is catch them.’

‘He’s bloody lucky you only caught him,’ Devlin retorted. ‘He could have died coming off that bike.’

‘Accidents happen,’ Heck said, sidling towards the entrance doors.

‘You lying shit!’ Devlin and his cohort lurched forward en masse, and suddenly there was pushing and shoving, uniformed officers having to insert themselves into the crowd, hustling the opposing groups apart.

‘And the worst accident of Jimmy Hood’s life was meeting you!’ Heck snarled, briefly losing it, pointing at Devlin’s face. There was further hustling back and forth. ‘You and your mates encouraged him plenty!’

‘Yeah, blame us – the only ones who cared about him! You lying pig!’

‘You should be up for perverting the course of justice,’ Heck replied.

‘You should be up for attempted murder.’

‘If we’d been able to trace that phone call …’

‘What phone call? Eh? What fucking phone call?’

Heck clamped his mouth shut, though the heat had risen in his cheeks until it was boiling. DI Jowitt’s touch on his shoulder prevented him saying something he might totally regret. As Hood’s legal team ushered Devlin and his pals away the bespectacled oaf grinned at Heck in stupid but triumphant fashion, as if merely goading the police was some kind of victory – which it was, of course, for those of a certain mentality.

Heck fought his way into the gents, where he had to throw water on his face to calm down. He didn’t, as a rule, let himself get worked up by the crimes he investigated, no matter how brutal or revolting – but this particular case had been a little more stressful than usual, mainly because of its resemblance to a dreadful ordeal that had destroyed his family life when he was still very young. It wasn’t something he talked about much these days, and in truth it had all happened an awful long time ago, but some wounds, it seemed, could never heal; they merely festered.

The face that stared back at him from the mirror looked a little more lived-in than maybe it should for a man in his late thirties: it was scarred, nicked, but not unfanciable or so he’d once been told, ‘in a rugged, rugby player sort of way’. At least there was still no grey in his mop of dark hair, though that was probably a miracle in itself.

Heck straightened his collar, tightened his tie, and slipped out of the gents, leaving the chaotic court lobby via a side entrance, from where he rounded the corner into the car park – stopping short at the sight of Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper leaning against his Peugeot. Her own aquamarine Mercedes E-class was parked alongside it.

She folded her arms as he warily approached. ‘By “that phone call”, I take it you meant the one that warned Hood the Taskforce were onto him?’

‘Erm, yeah,’ he replied. ‘Sian Collier received it about twenty minutes before I got there. Hood panicked big time, which is why he was legging it when I arrived.’

She chewed her lip as she pondered this. Gemma Piper was Heck’s senior supervisor at the Serial Crimes Unit, and just about the most handsome policewoman he’d ever met – her intense blue eyes, strong, even features and famously unmanageable mop of ash-blonde hair (currently worn up, which matched her smart grey trouser suit no end) – gave her ‘pin-up’ appeal, although she was notoriously tough and determined. Her fierce nature meant that she was known throughout Scotland Yard as ‘the Lioness’. And when she roared, window blinds shuddered in every department.

At present, however, even Gemma Piper seemed a little unsure how to play it where Heck was concerned. His ex-girlfriend from many years earlier, when they’d both been divisional detective constables, she and he had spent much of their careers alongside each other, but had often disagreed over procedure. As recently as last autumn, a colossal falling-out between them had resulted in Heck leaving SCU altogether and spending a short time at a remote posting up in the Lake District. He’d only returned to SCU at the end of last year at Gemma’s urging, after a case they’d ended up working together in the Lakes had come to a successful conclusion. But even now, after they’d been back on the same team for several months, both of them were still wondering if their relationship would ever be the same again.

‘Remind me why you couldn’t trace that call back to Devlin?’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘It was made on a throwaway phone. And before you ask, ma’am, we searched his pad high and low after, with a warrant … we found nothing.’

‘Well … some you win, some you lose.’ Which was an uncharacte‌ristically mild response given Gemma’s normal perfectionist nature.

‘Were you in the court lobby?’ he asked. ‘Only, I didn’t see you.’

‘Listened on the car radio. Live news feed.’

‘Ah …’ He gave a wry smile. Heck knew Gemma’s moods better than anyone, and he knew she wouldn’t be impressed that his brief explosion had been broadcast to the nation. Having seen SCU’s work in the past badly hampered by press intrusion, she was now ultra-sensitive about the way her team was portrayed in public; she much preferred her officers to remain cool and tightlipped under pressure. However, she still seemed to be giving him leeway, consciously trying to avoid a row.

‘It won’t do us any harm,’ he added. ‘Hood’s barrister has already announced that they’re examining grounds for an appeal. I’d say there were considerably less after Devlin’s little outburst in there. Indirectly or not, he basically confirmed that Hood is guilty as charged.’

‘One of the braindead, eh?’

‘One of the many.’

Heck ran the events in the lobby through his mind, and was surprised to feel dispirited by them rather than aggravated. Even after years of murder investigations, it still astonished him that so many folk would aggressively rally around killers, rapists, and other dangerous offenders, attempting to defend the indefensible simply because the accused was ‘their mate’, at the same time fully convinced that they themselves held no responsibility for the development of such monsters. It wasn’t even as if they could all use pig-ignorance as an excuse. Alan Devlin was no dullard, for one; he’d engineered an opportunity for Hood to escape the police and at the same time had skilfully manoeuvred himself into a position where he could be accused of nothing.

‘Not to worry,’ Gemma said. ‘You got the main result. We can’t really ask for more than that.’

Heck eyed her curiously. ‘You’ve come all the way from London just to tell me that?’

‘No, I’ve come to buy you lunch.’

‘Come again?’

She took the car keys from her jacket pocket. ‘To congratulate you. You’ve put in a lot of hours on this job, and it’s paid off.’

‘No disrespect, ma’am, but I always put in a lot of hours.’

‘Heck … I’m offering you lunch, not a knighthood. Plus I want a little chat. So get in your car and follow me. I’ve already reserved us a table, but they’re not going to hold it indefinitely.’

Chapter 5

‘Matt Grinton was on the phone last night,’ Gemma said over her Caesar salad. ‘Whatever today’s outcome was going to be, you still got his vote. He praised, and I quote, “your work ethic, your attention to detail, your willingness to think outside the box, your all-round professionalism and, above all, the trust you place in your instincts”.’

Heck paused over his chicken pie and chips. Around them, the lunchtime clientele in the country inn murmured as they ate and drank. Summer sunshine poured through the tall glazed panels of the conservatory annexe in which they were seated. He took a sip of Diet Coke. ‘My instinct that Alan Devlin was lying to us was a fifty-fifty gamble. It could easily have gone the other way.’

‘But it didn’t. And that’s the trick. If Hood had left Nottingham, Christ knows where he’d have washed up. We’d have had another spate of old lady murders in some other part of the country, which would have meant starting the whole thing from scratch.’

‘We’ll have to start another one from scratch again at some point, ma’am. There always seems to be someone out there with an irresistible urge to kill and kill.’

Gemma watched him eat. She’d suspected all the way through that Heck had willingly taken the Nottingham assignment because of events involving his deceased brother many, many years ago. Tom Heckenburg had been wrongly convicted of robbing and brutalising a number of OAPs while Heck was still a schoolboy. Though Tom was later exonerated, this only came after he’d committed suicide in prison. Not only had the nightmare experience driven Heck to join the police – ‘clearly the bastards needed someone to show them how the job should be done,’ as he’d once told her while drunk, a policy he’d followed to the letter ever since – but it had given him a particular bee in his bonnet about hoodlums who targeted the elderly and frail. Not that he ever lost control while investigating these kinds of crimes. Oh, Heck was a wild card; he was fully capable of ‘going off on one’ as they said in his native Lancashire, but in Gemma’s opinion this gave him an edge that many of her other detectives lacked. He was also meticulous and thorough, but more important than any of that, he got results.

‘The bigger picture,’ she said, ‘is that things have recently gone SCU’s way. This last one’s a bit of a cherry on the cake. At least two television companies, one of them American, have enquired about putting us on film in a warts and all documentary. Joe Wullerton’s said no.’

‘Good,’ Heck replied.

‘For the time being.’

‘Ah …’

‘No one’s sharpening their knives for us at present, Heck, but we never know when funds will get tight again. Under those circs, a bit of positive free publicity would do us no harm.’

‘And what if there are too many warts?’

‘There wouldn’t be. I’d keep your antics well away from the cameras.’

He half smiled as he finished off his meal.

‘I say that because I don’t want to give the impression that you’re some kind of man of the moment,’ she added.

‘Perish the thought, ma’am.’

‘Hell of a job on the Lady Killer, but that’s the total of it … work is work. There’s no reward coming; except this lunch.’ Fleetingly, she looked embarrassed. ‘My little thank-you. Just so you don’t feel completely under-appreciated.’

He pushed his empty dish and cutlery aside. ‘Sooner have a bit of nice grub than an empty promotion, ma’am.’

‘Most coppers wouldn’t consider any kind of promotion “empty”,’ she said. ‘You’re saying you still wouldn’t accept one even if it was available?’

He shrugged. ‘You know I wouldn’t know what to do with an office of my own. And that I’d get bored sitting behind a desk all day, even a posh one. That said, the pay rise wouldn’t go amiss.’

‘We’re all frozen in time on that score, Heck – which you know perfectly well.’

‘In which case the free lunch will have to suffice.’

‘It was the least I could do,’ she said. ‘Especially as I need a favour.’

He feigned shock. ‘Ulterior motives, ma’am?’

‘Just something I’d like your opinion on.’

‘As I’m not laughing all the way to the bank this afternoon, I suppose I’ll just have to sit here and listen.’

‘It’s an accident investigation.’

Heck raised an eyebrow. ‘Not usually our department.’

‘I’m not totally sure about that.’ Gemma dabbed her lips with a napkin. ‘But essentially you’re right. In this first instance, we’re just giving it the once-over. You know my mother’s a member of a golf club down in Surrey?’

Heck’s smile turned crooked. ‘So we’re actually doing a favour for your mum?’

Gemma reddened slightly. ‘It’s not just that. There may be something in this for us. If there is, you’ll be the man to find it … won’t you? That’s Mum’s opinion, I should add.’

Heck smiled all the more. Gemma’s mother, Mel Piper, was a strikingly attractive and very personable lady in her late fifties; an older version of her daughter, minus the adversarial edge. She’d taken it hard when Heck and Gemma had split up while still in their mid-twenties. ‘She asked for me specifically?’ he said.

‘You know she likes you a lot. I can’t think why.’

‘Okay, go on: this golf club?’

‘It’s just outside Reigate. Pretty exclusive, to be honest. Mum’s only a member through her role as chair of the local WI. It seems that one of the other members, some bloke called Harold Lansing, wealthy local businessman, has died in a road accident right outside his own house.’

‘Did your mum know him well?’ Heck asked.

‘Reasonably well, but not to the point where she’s grieving. The puzzle is the manner of his death. Some spoiled brat in a Porsche – kid called Dean Torbert, nineteen but with half a dozen traffic violations to his name already – ran into Lansing while he was pulling out onto the main road. Before you ask, Torbert was killed too. It was a nasty smash, very high speed. The first weird thing is that Lansing, or so my mother says, was a careful driver. He’d even fitted a safety mirror onto the tree trunk opposite his drive entrance so that he could check it was clear before pulling out. Apparently it gave good vantage in both directions. Well over a hundred yards.’

‘Perhaps it was suicide?’

‘If so, he didn’t leave a note. Plus no one who knew him felt he had any personal issues of that magnitude.’

‘What have Surrey Traffic said?’

‘Fatal RTA. No witnesses, no evidence to suggest third party involvement. No sus circs. Coroner ruled death by misadventure.’

‘Okay …’ Heck considered this. ‘So what’s the second weird thing?’

‘This is the one that really got me thinking. A couple of weeks earlier, Lansing closely survived another accident.’

‘Maybe he was a worse driver than people realised?’

‘This one wasn’t on the road. Seems that Lansing was a keen angler. It was a Saturday afternoon and he was fishing at his favourite spot on the River Mole when a radio-controlled model plane from the nearby flying club swooped on him.’

Heck frowned. ‘Actually swooped on him?’

‘Well …’ Gemma became thoughtful. ‘It’s difficult to say. Apparently it came down from a significant height, and it was big, not some toy – and it got close enough to knock him into the river and send him over the weir.’

‘Bloody hell …’

‘Only the vigilance of another angler saved his life. Local plod investigated the incident, but the plane was never recovered – presumably that went over the weir too and got washed away. To date, no member of the flying club will admit either responsibility or having seen anything, even though all were out in force that day in the next field.’

‘Could be a coincidence.’

She arched an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

‘Well, real-life coincidences are few and far between, I suppose. Certainly when they’re that extreme.’

‘My thoughts too,’ she said.

‘Did the local lads do a thorough job?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

‘What made your mum so suspicious? I mean there must be more than that.’

‘Nothing solid. It was a gut feeling, apparently.’ Gemma made a vague gesture. ‘Sometimes she’s a bit oversensitive to this sort of thing. All those years married to a copper, I suppose. She reckons Harold Lansing was strangely … well, to use her words, “carefree and innocent for a guy with so much dosh”. He didn’t have a driver, for example, or any professional security. Used to go fishing on his own, lived out in the sticks on his own – all that stuff. Sort of unintentionally made himself a target.’

‘But he wasn’t robbed?’

‘Not as far as we’re aware.’

Heck gave it some thought. ‘It’s a mystery for sure.’

‘Which is why I’d like you to pop down there and check it out. Just cast your eye over it. See if anything strikes you as odd.’

‘Okay.’ He nodded as a waitress handed them two dessert menus. ‘Thanks for lunch anyway.’

‘Like I say, it’s the least I can do,’ Gemma said. ‘Is Grinton having a party to celebrate the Hood conviction?’

‘There’ll be a few drinks. Low-key. I’ve told him I’ll give it a miss.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘Yeah.’ Deciding against a slice of delicious-sounding banoffee pie, he closed the menu and laid it on the table. ‘I need to catch up on some sleep.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t find the Surrey job too stressful. This time there’ll be no ticking clock.’

‘Let’s hope not.’

‘No … seriously.’ She signalled to the waitress for the bill. ‘Seems like a straight-up case. Someone had it in for Harold Lansing.’

‘We think …’

She eyed him guardedly. ‘Those instincts of yours again?’

‘And yours, ma’am. I know you of old – whatever favour your mum asked, you wouldn’t be sending me down to Surrey if something about it didn’t make you twitchy.’

Chapter 6

If there was one county where Heck’s investigations hadn’t taken him before, it was Surrey. Violent crime wasn’t, and never had been, an exclusively urban problem, but if there were any common denominators they tended to be deprivation and despair, and though Surrey wasn’t free of these, it had deservedly earned its reputation as the English county that had ‘made it’.

Though it boasted a green, leafy landscape with much agriculture, it was still densely populated; the lion’s share of this concentrated in suburban villages and affluent commuter towns servicing London. It had naturally beautiful rural features such as the North Downs, Greensand Ridge and the Devil’s Punch Bowl, but it was also home to numerous multinationals – Esso, Toyota, Nikon and Philips – and had the highest GDP per capita of any county in the UK. Heck was sure he’d once heard it said that Surrey claimed to have more millionaires than anywhere else in the whole of Great Britain.

But even by those standards, the district he followed the map to was a verdant haven, unbroken vistas of meadow and common alternating with beech groves and scenic tracts of rolling, flower-filled woodland. The occasional houses were rambling, timber-framed affairs – Tudor or Jacobean in style – usually located amid lush, landscaped parks. The house he was actually looking for, Rosewood Grange, stood alone in woodland but was a touch more modern – Georgian apparently, which only made it 300 years old – but he couldn’t see much of it when he arrived as it stood back from the road, only its upper portions, its curly gables and even rows of tall, redbrick chimneys, showing above the yew hedge and thick shrubbery standing in front of it.

According to the thirty-page accident report, there was one entrance/exit to Rosewood Grange, a single driveway, which emerged about fifty yards further on between two tall brick gateposts. Though there was no actual gate, this gateway was located at a gentle but awkward crook in the road, which would have made it quite dangerous for anyone leaving the property by car, as they’d be blinded to oncoming traffic from either direction. That said, the circular convex mirror, which Heck saw fitted on a tree trunk opposite, about seven feet up from the ground, should have been more than adequate to show whether or not the way was clear. He parked on the verge, climbed out, and took in the air. It was another warm day, billows of fleecy cloud static in a pebble-blue sky. In either direction, the sun-dappled road dwindled off beneath natural arches formed by interwoven branches. Birds twittered and insects hummed, but aside from that there was peace and quiet. He had the immediate, strong impression that traffic around here was scarce.

Despite all this, it wasn’t difficult to see where the collision had occurred, or just how catastrophic it had been.

Some ten yards along the road from the drive entrance there were swathes of torn and blackened vegetation on the opposing verge. Even now, over two weeks later, chips of paint and glass, and slivers of twisted metal, were visible along the roadside. Thirty yards beyond that, several feet past the kerb, a partially uprooted hornbeam sagged backwards into the meadow behind. Its trunk was badly charred but also extensively gashed, as though by a colossal impact. This, it seemed, was where the flying Porsche had come to rest. Heck pivoted around, surveying as much of the scene as he could. The Traffic unit who’d investigated this RTA would have done a thorough job – of that there was no question. Except that, as far as they were concerned what had happened here was an accident, not a homicide. In addition, whatever they’d discovered, whoever they’d eventually deemed to be at fault, there was no one left alive to prosecute – so how much care and attention would they really have exercised?

Heck glanced at his watch. It was just past noon, and his appointment with DCI Will Royton at Reigate Hall Police Station wasn’t due until two – which perhaps gave him enough time to make a few quick enquiries of his own.

It was a dry day with no rain forecast, and Heck was only wearing casuals – jeans, a T-shirt and training shoes. But just to be on the safe side, in case someone came along and felt like asking questions, he donned a yellow/green high visibility doublet with the word POLICE stencilled on the back before trudging between the gateposts and up the drive. He’d been informed that there was no point calling at the house as there’d be nobody there. Apparently Lansing had lived alone; he’d employed the Beethams, an elderly couple, as housekeeper and gardener, who – very conveniently, perhaps too conveniently – had been away together on holiday on the day of his accident, and both of whom were now presumably looking for jobs elsewhere. But it couldn’t do any harm to check.

He walked along the front of the house, which was very well concealed from the road by the near-impenetrable hedge, the net effect of which was to create a real air of privacy. It had five large downstairs windows, suggesting a spacious interior, though all their curtains had been drawn, which was perhaps understandable with the lord of the manor recently deceased. The front door was a huge slab of varnished oak studded with brass nail-heads, and was firmly closed. To one side of it a slate plaque bore the legend Rosewood Grange, and underneath that there was a brass button. Heck pushed it, the bell sounding deep inside the house; a dull, reverberating jangle, as though great pieces of hollow metal were knocking together – but it brought no response.

Eventually he continued along the front of the building and around to one side, where the drive became a parking space large enough to accommodate as many as four or five vehicles. From here, a paved path led him onto a lawn the size of a junior football pitch and dotted with white wrought-iron garden furniture. On the right of that, a newly built annexe was attached to the rear of the house, with a row of circular portals instead of full-sized windows. When Heck glanced through one of these, he saw an indoor swimming pool, a blue rubber sheet resting on its undisturbed surface. The rest of the pool area – the tiled walkways around it, the frescoes of dolphins and mermaids on the walls, the additional pieces of furniture – lay in silent dimness.

Heck turned to check out the rest of the rear garden, which was even more expansive than he’d expected. Beyond the lawn lay flowerbeds and topiary, through the midst of which a central walk led away beneath a trellis roof woven with leafy vines, presumably to connect with other lawns, maybe with one of those ornamental lakes or fish ponds. Overall, it was a majestic scene; the evergreens handsomely pruned, the blooms in full summer profusion. Yet the stillness that pervaded this place, and the quiet – it was almost as if the birds themselves were observing a reverential silence – gave it a melancholic air. It could be quite a while before anyone else enjoyed the late Mr Lansing’s garden, and who knew what condition it would be in by then.

From somewhere nearby came an echoing clank.

Another sound followed on its heels: a splintering crack, like timber breaking.

Heck glanced around, expecting to see someone working – the gardener perhaps, putting in one last shift before sloping off to his new life. There was no one in sight, but now Heck spied the entrance to another wooded walk. This one was in the far corner of the garden, behind a wicker gate, which for some reason hung open. Thinking this off-kilter with the overwhelming neatness of everything else on show here, Heck strode over to it. When he reached the gate he peered along a grassy, rutted side path, which meandered through a clutch of shadowy thickets. Curious about the sound he’d just heard, he stepped through. It was amazing how, once he was amid the foliage on the other side, the sunlight was blotted out and yet the air remained warm, turning muggy. Insects droned; spiders’ webs dangled between the intertwining branches. About thirty yards ahead stood a small wooden structure, like a shed. The door to this also hung partly open.

Heck walked towards it, feeling, for no good reason he could explain, increasingly wary. The small structure was ancient, lopsided with dilapidation. Its door jamb was visibly broken – all that remained of its latch were a few rusty scraps hanging from loose screws. But it might have been broken for years; such damage didn’t necessarily need to be recent. He glanced inside, seeing nothing more than an old workbench and a few garden tools. A personal planner of some sort hung dog-eared on one of the walls. Alongside it there was a single window, its pane so thick with grime that scarcely any light passed in through it.

Heck stepped back and closed the door. Beyond the shed lay more open space, though no grass grew here thanks to the high branches interlacing overhead. Instead, it was beaten earth covered with pine needles. On its right sat a massive compost heap. So far so normal, he supposed, except that a few yards further on there was a second shed; larger than the first and in better condition. But this hung open too.

When Heck advanced now, he did so quickly. Even from a distance it was clear that this door had also been forced, but in this case the padlock hanging from its twisted hinge looked shiny and new. Wondering if he was about to make his first arrest in Surrey (criminal damage to a garden shed, of all things), he yanked the door open. Again, there was nobody in there, and nothing of apparent value: a few more tools, an oil can, a coil of hosepipe, a few tubs of weedkiller.

A second passed before he stepped back, closing the door, glancing around.

Deep clumps of rhododendrons ringed this area, further tracts of shady woodland lying beyond them. He listened, ears attempting to attune to the breathy rural stillness. When you were isolated on foreign soil it was all too easy to imagine you were being watched, so even though this was exactly how Heck now felt, he paid it no heed. The outline of the house was vaguely visible through the foliage. It was no more than a couple of hundred yards away, and yet suddenly that seemed quite a distance. He turned again, scanning the crooked avenues between the trees. He wasn’t a woodsman. If there was someone else here, he wouldn’t necessarily know about it. But the chances were there was no one. This was the countryside. Odd noises were commonplace.

A fierce clatter split the silence, like something fragile impacting on stone.

Heck spun, gazing deeper into the encircling undergrowth – and spying something he found a little reassuring. The upper section of another manmade structure stood beyond the rhododendrons; by the looks of it, a greenhouse. Was it possible the gardener was here after all?

He pushed further into the underbrush, catching his arms and hands on thorns, but coming out alongside the greenhouse, which he now saw was extensive, maybe forty yards in length, but in a poor state of repair; its windows were cracked and grubby, the basic ironwork from which it was constructed rotted and furred with moss. However, it was still in use. When he entered, he gazed down a central concrete aisle, to either side of which thick jungles of luxuriant plants grew from trays of black soil mounted on waist-high metal shelving. Down at the far end, transverse to the central aisle, stood another rack of steel shelving, this one taller than those on either side, rising to about head height and crammed with garden breakables; plant pots and the like, even a few figurines like gnomes and elves.

There was no one down there that Heck could see. He strolled forward – only to forcibly stop himself after several yards. Okay, he’d heard something. But did it really matter? Someone was working nearby. That was all it was. In any case, time was short; he’d come here to assess the accident scene, not flog his way through the surrounding woods, freezing like a scared rabbit at the slightest irregularity. Whether he liked it or not, it was time to return to the crash site. But as he swung round to head back, a flicker of movement caught his eye.

He glanced sharply to the far end of the aisle.

And saw it again.

It was one of the figurines on the upper shelf; definitely a gnome or elf, one of those trashy little objects which, in truth, he’d never have expected to find on a stylish estate like this – and it had just moved.

Of its own accord.

Heck stared in astonishment, trying to laugh it off as a bizarre optical illusion. But now it moved again – just slightly, the merest quiver. Again of its own accord.

Slowly, disbelievingly, he walked down towards it. ‘You’re losing it, pal,’ he said to himself. ‘You’ve got to be …’

The figurine quivered again, more violently, bringing Heck to a dead halt.

A few moments passed as man and manikin stared at each other, Heck’s neck hairs prickling. This time the thing remained stationary, even when he advanced again and came up close to it. It was exactly what he’d thought it was: a garden gnome, complete with beard, pointed nose, pointed ears, and pointed hat. It was about a foot and a half in height, and its once-garish colours had mostly weathered away. And yet it was hideous – so much so that he grimaced as he lifted it down from the shelf.

Where each of its eyes had once been, a black X had been etched, first gouged with a blade, and then filled in with black pen. Its mouth was a thin red line, with red trickles added to either side to create a vampire effect. Either the original paint job had run, or someone else had been handy with a different-coloured pen. For all his revulsion, Heck turned it several times in his hands, but could find nothing out of the ordinary. It was no more than a lump of sculpted, slightly mouldy plaster. He placed it back on the shelf and stepped back. Bewildered.

And then the disfigured gnome leaped at him.

Literally launched itself from its perch, and descended to the concrete floor. Its head broke off with the impact, rolling towards Heck’s feet, where it came to a rest, gazing up at him with those unblinking, crossed-out eyes.

Heck was at first too stunned to react. He gazed back down at it, then at the rack – just as another object, a plant pot, also made a suicidal leap, exploding into a thousand fragments. A second pot followed from the other end of the shelf, and then another. Heck backed away involuntarily, hair prickling again, the sweat chilling on his neck and chest. A fifth object hurtled down; another gnome – this one landed upright and didn’t shatter, but stood rocking back and forth as if the moment it regained its balance it would come toddling towards him. A sixth object went, and a seventh – more plant pots, all exploding on impact. Heck’s hair was now standing on end, but then he spotted the culprit – the sleek brown form and whipping tail of a rat as it scuttled back and forth in the recess at the rear.

Heck sagged with absurd relief; he had to lean forward to get his breath.

When he looked again, the rat had fully emerged. It bounded to the floor and bolted away beneath the shelving on the left.

‘You get a move on, lad,’ Heck said under his breath, thanking God that none of the local officers he was shortly to be ‘advising’ had been around to witness that little pantomime. ‘There’s no wasting time in your game …’

He walked back along the aisle to the greenhouse entrance, heading through the rhododendrons, bypassing the compost heap and the two wooden sheds, and lurching down the path between the thickets. Even on reaching the front of the house, it was several seconds before he felt his heart rate begin to slow. He took a couple of deep breaths in order to regain full composure. He hadn’t discovered the source of the metallic clattering, of course, but again – did that really matter? It wasn’t like he didn’t have any real work to do.

He walked on down the drive and returned to the road, where he dug a fresh pair of latex gloves from the pockets of his doublet and snapped them into place. A fingertip search was just the thing to concentrate his mind.

Inch by painful inch, sometimes on his knees, he worked his way along the verge on the side where the undergrowth had been torched, initially focusing on the glistening debris that had been swept into the gutter by passing vehicles but then scanning further afield as well. There was nothing instantly noticeable, which wasn’t entirely surprising as he didn’t really know what he was searching for, and was still a little distracted – he couldn’t help but keep throwing glances over his shoulder at the silent, locked-up house. He still felt as if he hadn’t been quite alone over there, but about ten minutes into his search something else caught his attention, something a lot more tangible: a tiny white object gleaming amid the charcoaled roughage.

He poked at it with a pair of tweezers, attempting to tease it into view.

It was a tooth – and by the looks of it human, a molar in fact. What was more it had recently been removed from its owner’s jaw, because though several of its roots had been snapped, a couple had been wrenched out in full, and tiny threads of reddish-brown tissue were still attached. He fed it into a small sterile evidence sack, which he then sealed. When he held it up to the sunlight, the tooth’s underside was crusted reddish-brown. More blood – which was explainable, because this was an adult-sized molar, and adult molars didn’t come out easily.

Heck pocketed it, marked the spot of its discovery with an evidence flag, and continued his search, but nothing else of consequence emerged in the next hour, at the end of which he took some pegs and fluorescent tape from the boot of his car and cordoned off several areas. It irked him that this crime scene – and he already had a strong feeling that this was what the accident site was – had not been preserved for more detailed forensic examination. Of course that could still be arranged, though it might already be too late.

Reigate Hall was an unusually attractive building for a police station, built from eroded Georgian brick with a lopsided roof of crabby, moss-covered slates. It looked more like a moot hall or village almshouse than a focal point of modern day law enforcement, and faced onto a pleasant open green, at one end of which stood an old parish church, and at the other a timbered, ivy-clad pub called the Ploughman’s Rest, which was where Heck’s room had been booked. The green was surrounded on its other sides by whitewashed terraced cottages, craft shops, and village stores.

Detective Chief Inspector Will Royton appeared to suit this benign environment perfectly. He was a tall, well-built man in his late forties, with a bald pate and salt-and-pepper tufts behind his ears. He had an amiable air and a friendly face, and he greeted Heck in his office with a smile and a firm handshake.

‘You found us all right?’ he said, wasting no time in heading off down the adjacent corridor.

Heck followed. ‘No problem, sir.’

‘Only I’m a bit puzzled …’ Royton glanced back as he walked. ‘I mean about why the Serial Crimes Unit wants to look at the Lansing incident. Wouldn’t have thought it’d be your cup of tea at all?’

Heck shrugged. ‘There may be nothing in it for us, sir, but, I don’t know, something about it caught my guv’nor’s attention. I won’t be in your way for long.’

At the end of the passage, a pair of glazed double doors gave through into the main CID office. Here, Royton paused to think. ‘You mean caught her attention on the basis that it may actually have been a double homicide?’

‘Too early to say, sir.’

‘On the basis that it may be part of a series of homicides?’

‘That would really be running before the horse to market.’

‘Nevertheless … you wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t a possibility.’

‘It’s a very remote possibility.’

‘A possibility is a possibility, Sergeant. For what it’s worth, if something that serious is occurring on our patch, I’m glad you’re on board. We can always use someone with expertise.’

They pushed through into the detectives’ office, or DO as it was usually known, a modern, spacious area lined with desks, chairs, and computer terminals, but only occupied by one or two individuals at present, all of whom were beavering away at their desks. Royton led Heck to its farthest corner, where a large window half-covered by Venetian blinds gave out onto the village green. In front of this, two desks directly faced each other. A young woman was seated at the one on the right, tapping at a keyboard. She didn’t look up as they approached.

‘But I have to tell you,’ Royton added, ‘you’re not the only one who found this event suspicious. DS Heckenburg, meet DC Gail Honeyford.’

The woman glanced round. She was even younger than Heck had first thought; in her mid-twenties at most, her lithe, youthful form accentuated by a tight blue skirt and blue silk blouse and scarf, her brunette tresses tied in a single ponytail. A pair of fashionable shades were perched above her fringe.

‘Erm … hello,’ Heck said, mildly confused.

‘That’s your desk.’ Royton indicated the empty workstation. ‘You’ve got a telephone line, computer link, everything you need. I thought this would be an appropriate place to put you, as you two will be working together.’

‘Sir?’

‘Gail’s already on the Lansing case,’ Royton explained.

Heck tried not to look as perplexed by that as he felt.

‘Divisional CID here at Reigate Hall thought it a curious incident too,’ DC Honeyford said. ‘Before Scotland Yard did, in fact.’

‘Okay …’

‘Something wrong?’ Royton asked him.

‘No sir, it’s fine,’ Heck said. ‘Only no one told me.’

‘Perhaps you should have asked?’ DC Honeyford said. ‘Just a thought.’

This is going to be great, Heck told himself.

‘As long as we have an interest in this too, it seemed an obvious thing to put you two together,’ Royton added. ‘Create a two-man taskforce. You wouldn’t want to do it all on your own, would you?’

‘Well … as I say, sir, I’m only really here to see if this case fulfils the criteria for an SCU enquiry.’

‘So you’re not actually here to investigate the crash,’ DC Honeyford said. It was an observation rather than a question.

‘I was under the impression that had already been done.’

‘Oh, this is superb.’ She sat back as if her worst suspicions were confirmed. ‘You’re gonna be a load of help.’

‘I’ll do my best.’ Heck fished the evidence sack from his pocket and tossed it onto her desk. ‘Perhaps, while I’m getting my stuff from the car, you can log this in for DNA analysis?’

She peered down at it with distaste. ‘That’s a tooth.’

‘Yep. Found it at the crash site.’

She glanced up. ‘What were you doing there?’

‘Nothing too strenuous.’ Heck backed towards the door. ‘Just my job.’

Chapter 7

It soon became evident to Heck that, while there were no obvious serial elements attached to the two attempts on Harold Lansing’s life (if that was what they were), there was something vaguely weird about both. The fatal crash could conceivably have been an accident, though it was difficult to see how a man like Lansing, who had suffered no previous mishap on the roads and had no driving convictions, could have pulled out at such a dangerous spot without consulting the safety mirror first.

The previous incident was even more puzzling.

Lansing had owned a small fishing beat on a quiet stretch of the River Mole between Brockham and Sidlow; the rather unfortunately named Deadman’s Reach. He was in the habit of spending several hours here each weekend, coarse fishing for barbel, bream, and chub. Not a particularly dangerous pastime, one might have thought, except that on the afternoon of Saturday 21 June a large(ish) model aeroplane, which Lansing only caught a fleeting glimpse of but later described as ‘World War One style, and bluey-yellow’, nosedived him from a considerable height. Lansing, who at the time was in his usual spot, standing with rod in hand on a small stone quay on the west bank, tried to dodge away, lost his footing, and fell into the river, which was running swift and deep. Some eighty yards further down, he was swept over a weir. Had it not been for another angler, who spotted him struggling under the surface and by pure good fortune happened to be a strong swimmer, Lansing would have died there and then.

But a model plane as a murder weapon?

Heck had never heard of such a thing.

Apparently a local flying club, the Doversgreen Aviators, had been using a meadow just behind Deadman’s Reach at the time. All the club members who’d been present that day had been interviewed since, and all had insisted that the stringent safety regulations built into their sport had been strictly observed. None would admit to having lost control of their model aircraft, or even to having owned any model matching the description given. Lansing, though he’d half drowned and had been kept in hospital for quite a few days afterwards, had later told the police that he’d thought the plane, which had struck his arm as he’d tried to evade it, leaving a massive bruise, had then gone spinning out of control and landed in the water alongside him. The riverbank had later been searched but no such model was recovered.

Like the incident at Rosewood Grange, this whole thing read like an ultra-freakish accident, but two such events in two weeks – happening to the same person?

Heck pondered these unsatisfying facts later that afternoon as he parked his Peugeot in a car park to the rear of the Ploughman’s Rest, booked himself in, and took a single heavy travel bag up to the room he’d been allocated, which was small, cosy, and neatly furnished, its lattice-paned, ivy-fringed window overlooking the green.

When he came back downstairs, he spotted Gail Honeyford in the snug. A smart suit jacket was draped over the back of her chair and a glass of what looked like iced lemonade sat on the table alongside her, but again she was tapping away on her laptop. He hadn’t seen much of her after they’d been introduced that afternoon. Vacating the office for the pub was not unusual in CID circles when there was someone new in the team who needed ‘breaking in’, but it wasn’t often the case that you fled to the pub to try and get some work done. Had she felt she was more likely to make progress with whatever she was doing if she didn’t have to keep updating the new guy?

Heck wandered towards her, hands tucked into his jeans pockets. She watched him from the corner of her eye, but her facial language remained neutral.

‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked.

‘Suppose it’s a free country.’

‘Was when I last checked.’ She glanced at him fleetingly, unamused by the quip. He pulled up a chair. ‘That was supposed to be a joke, by the way.’

‘Hilarious.’ She got on with her work.

‘We’ve really started on the wrong foot, haven’t we? Can I get you a drink maybe?’

‘No thanks.’

‘DC Honeyford … you ever heard the phrase “work with me”? I’m trying to be friendly here.’

‘Yeah, I appreciate that, and look …’ She sat back, her expression softening – which suited her. On closer inspection, she was peaches-and-cream pretty with fetching hazel eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve come over a little brusque. But you aren’t going to be around here very long, so I don’t see the point in us developing a relationship. Professional or otherwise.’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we supposed to be forming a taskforce?’

‘That was the boss’s idea, not mine. I’ve already got this case covered.’

‘Okay, fine. In the meantime, you sure you don’t want that drink?’

‘I’m sure. Thanks.’

Heck strolled to the bar, where the landlord, a jovial, beefy-cheeked local man with a frenzy of ginger hair was happy to serve him a pint of Best. When Heck sat down again, DC Honeyford clucked with barely disguised annoyance.

‘Problem with the laptop?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Good; perhaps we can get on then. What’s the hypothesis?’

She glanced up. ‘Pardon?’

‘You’ve obviously done a lot of work on this, and I respect that massively. So what’s your main theory?’

‘If you must know, this is a murder – and it’s almost certainly connected to Lansing’s business affairs.’

‘You’re sure Lansing was the target, and not Dean Torbert?’

She glanced at him again, as if he was some kind of buffoon. ‘If it wasn’t Lansing, that model aeroplane attack was a hell of a coincidence.’

‘Coincidences sometimes happen.’

‘Torbert was a first-year university student. He hadn’t lived long enough to upset anyone that badly.’

‘How do we know he wasn’t the one with the grudge? Perhaps it was Torbert who tried to run Lansing off the road, and it all went horribly wrong.’

‘I’ve looked into that. They didn’t even know each other, let alone have a grudge.’

‘What’s the background on Torbert?’

She shrugged. ‘Spoilt little rich kid, boy racer … take your pick.’

‘How did he come to own a Porsche?’

‘Mummy and Daddy are both wealthy, and separated. Sounds like he bounced between them like a shuttlecock. They rivalled each other buying him expensive presents.’

‘A Porsche?’

‘Look – this is Surrey, stockbroker country.’

‘Where did Torbert actually live?’

DC Honeyford sighed, not remotely afraid to show how frustrated the persistent questions were making her. ‘With his mother. In a millionaire pad in Guildford.’

‘I’m not a native, but that’s nowhere near Reigate, is it?’

‘It’s not too far away, but I agree; it seems odd Torbert was over in that neck of the woods at such an early hour. No one knows what he was doing there. But it’s no crime to drive around the county, is it? I mean, he may have had a girl this way – or even a boy. Who knows?’

Heck mulled this over. If Dean Torbert had simply been another bored youth who got his kicks tearing up and down the country lanes in his latest souped-up toy, it reinforced the impression that his involvement in this incident was no more than a bit of tragic misfortune. In fact, it would have been odd from Torbert’s perspective if some kind of accident hadn’t occurred. As a uniformed bobby up in Manchester, where, as a rule, idle young men did not get high-powered cars for Christmas, Heck had still watched on numerous occasions as their mutilated corpses were cut from heaps of twisted wreckage after a night spent blistering the blacktop.

‘Torbert was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ DC Honeyford added, clearly hoping to bring the conversation to an end.

‘But overall, you still think this was murder?’

‘Of course it was. But whoever did it lured Lansing out into the oncoming traffic to try and make it look like an accident. Any speeding road user would have done the job. Look, DS Heckenburg …’ She seemed genuinely exasperated by his sudden appearance in her life, and had to take a second to compose herself. ‘This thing must be connected to Lansing’s professional life. He ran a chain of multi-million-pound companies. He’s worth a fortune, but his finances are a tangled web. I’ve been trying to penetrate them for the last three days.’

‘Who would stand to gain most from his death?’ Heck asked.

‘Why are you even interested? I thought you were only here to see if this was part of a series?’

Heck shrugged. ‘If you can prove to me that it isn’t, I’ll happily go home. Then I won’t have to stand here looking over your shoulder.’

‘You won’t be looking over my shoulder anyway!’ she replied, her cheeks colouring. ‘I can assure you of that!’

‘Ahhh, so that’s it. You’re worried I’m going to steal your thunder.’

‘No, of course I’m—’ She paused, regarding him for a long time. Then, with slow, careful deliberation, she closed her laptop. ‘Yes, if you want the truth. That’s exactly what it is. Listen, DS Heckenburg …’

‘Call me “Heck”. All my friends do.’

‘DS Heckenburg. I made CID in three years by showing nous and initiative. That’s what I do. That’s my thing. If I get a sniff of something, I chase it down. I work hard. I don’t give up on it. The fact is, I wasn’t at all happy when I heard the coroner’s verdict on the Lansing case. But no one would listen to me. In fact, they said I was barmy.’

‘That’s because the gaffers don’t like unsolved murders. Doesn’t look good on the crime stats.’

She waved a hand, uninterested in his opinion. ‘Will Royton only okayed me to look at this again because he’s a decent bloke.’

‘Not because he trusts your judgement?’

‘Er … maybe a bit of that, but I had to badger him for two or three days before he was persuaded. Course, the truth is he’s not even persuaded now. That’s why I think he’s happy to see you here. He hopes you’ll swan in, some big shot from the Smoke, and wrap this whole thing up in a single day. Then I can get back to my routine duties and there’ll be no more discussion. Well sorry, but that isn’t going to happen.’

Heck sipped at his pint. ‘Sounds to me like you want Harold Lansing to have been murdered?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Neither did I. I mean you want your instinct to have been proved right.’

‘And that’s somehow incorrect of me?’

‘Not at all. Look.’ Heck put his drink down. ‘I’m here for a similar reason. Another officer looked at this case and felt the same way as you. You’ve been very honest, Gail, so I’ll be honest too – I can call you “Gail”? Feels less formal than DC Honeyford.’

‘Whatever.’

‘I’m only actually in Surrey as a favour to my guv’nor, who’s doing a favour for someone else. As soon as it becomes evident there’s nothing in this case for SCU, I’ll head home. I promise you. You’ll have a clear run at it without any interference from the Yard. But for the moment it can only help if we work on this together. You’ve already gone out on a limb. I appreciate you’re an independent-minded detective, but you must have felt pretty alone on this so far.’

She watched him warily. ‘Just so long as you know I’m not your gofer.’

‘Course not.’

‘I know you work for a specialist outfit and all that, but I’m good at my job too.’

‘I totally believe that.’

‘I’m not going to be bossed around or made to feel like an office junior.’

Heck displayed empty palms. ‘Not my style at all.’

‘Someone else surrendering to your charms, Gail?’ came a gruff but amused voice.

A man had approached them, unnoticed. He was tall, with a big, angular frame, clad in a rumpled brown suit and an open-necked green shirt. He had longish, sandy hair, pale blue eyes, and gruesomely pockmarked cheeks – as if he’d ploughed his fingernails through rampant acne while still a juvenile. He’d wandered over uninvited and now stood so close that Heck could smell his rank combination of cigarette smoke and cologne.

‘What do you want, Ron?’ Gail asked in a patient tone.

‘Me?’ He feigned hurt. ‘Nothing … just a quick pleasantry.’

‘That’d be a first.’

He chortled. ‘Still wasting your time chasing ghosts at Rosewood Grange?’

Gail flicked her gaze to Heck. ‘This is DS Pavey. Street Thefts.’

Heck glanced up at him. ‘How are you?’ he said, nodding.

‘And who’s this?’ Pavey asked her, not bothering to respond to or even acknowledge Heck’s question.

‘This is DS Heckenburg. Serial Crimes, New Scotland Yard.’

Pavey gave a low whistle, and finally deigned to look round at Heck. ‘Am I supposed to be impressed?’

‘Up to you, I guess,’ Heck replied.

Pavey turned back to Gail; evidently that question had been addressed to her too. ‘You two working on something?’

‘What’s it to you, Ron?’ she wondered.

Pavey smiled to himself before sauntering away to the bar. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, DS Heckenburg.’

‘Dare I ask?’ Heck said, watching him rejoin a group of several other suited men, presumably fellow detectives gathering for an end-of-shift drink.

Gail sipped her lemonade, though she’d flushed a noticeable shade of pink. The ice maiden wasn’t perhaps as cool as she’d have him believe. ‘Do you really need to?’ she said.

‘Idiot from the past, eh?’

‘Not long enough in the past. Don’t worry about it. He’s gone.’

But several times over the next fifteen minutes, Heck caught DS Pavey stealing irritable peeks in their direction. From the expression on his ugly, notched face, it didn’t look as if he’d gone very far.

Chapter 8

‘So who arranged Lansing’s funeral?’ Heck asked.

‘His former girlfriend,’ Gail replied as she gunned her canary-yellow Fiat Punto along the twisting Surrey lanes. ‘Monica Chatreaux.’

Heck glanced up from the paperwork littered across his lap. ‘As in Monica Chatreaux the supermodel?’

‘Correct.’

Heck mused on this. He was seated in the front passenger seat. Beyond the windows, woods and farmland skimmed past in sunny shimmers of green and gold.

‘And was she really his former girlfriend … or just his friend?’

‘Girlfriend apparently.’

‘So he wasn’t gay?’

Gail shook her head. ‘I considered that possibility – bloke of his age living alone, but apparently not.’

Heck glanced again through the documentation. ‘Death occurred on 6 July, funeral held on 16 July. Not a lot of time between the two.’

‘Week and a half is about normal where I come from.’

‘When there are sus circs?’

‘Once the coroner had delivered his verdict, it was a bit difficult hanging on to the body.’

‘So was Lansing cremated or buried?’

‘Buried. Banstead Municipal Cemetery.’

‘Good.’

She fired a glance at him. ‘Good?’

‘Yeah … if we need to dig him up again, we can.’

Gail shook her head at the mere thought, and returned her attention to the road, though at this early hour on a Saturday morning it was unlikely they’d meet much other traffic. In truth, Heck wasn’t keen on the idea of exhumation either. He’d been present at several in his time, and it never failed to knock him sick. Lord alone knew what condition Lansing’s body would be in by now. It was bad enough in the photos taken on first arrival at the mortuary. He flipped through them again, one after another.

The poor guy had effectively been chargrilled. All five layers of his epidermis had vanished. In its place lay a coating of crispy fat and melted muscle tissue. Here and there, nubs of bone gleamed amid the glutinous, oil-yellow pulp. Worst of all was Lansing’s face. No distinctive features had remained. Most of the flesh was gone; the grey orbs of his eyes had sunk into their sockets like ruptured grapes; the bones themselves sagged inward, fragmented, reduced to a jigsaw puzzle.

‘Died as a result of fourth-degree burns,’ Heck noted, scanning the details of the postmortem. ‘Yet it’s interesting that his corpse displayed other significant traumas too.’

‘Yeah, but all consistent with him having experienced a high-speed impact.’

‘Was he wearing his seatbelt?’

‘Difficult to say. The interior of the car was reduced to ashes. We think the airbag deployed.’

‘And yet he still suffered extensive facial injuries?’

‘I wondered about that too,’ Gail said. ‘Especially as it wasn’t a head-on collision.’

‘What’s even odder is that this is a guy with no prior driving convictions and no previous insurance claims. He’s as conscientious as they come, and yet we’re expected to believe that he pulled out onto a main road without checking it was clear.’

She glanced at him again. ‘When you say “we’re expected to believe”, what other choice do we have? That’s evidently what he did?’

‘And no drugs or alcohol in his system either,’ Heck mused. ‘I see he lost several teeth in the accident.’

‘Most were discovered in his stomach.’

‘Most but not all.’

‘I’ve put a request through to have that one you found on the roadside fast-tracked. Don’t see how it could have ended up out there when he was still in the car.’

‘Neither do I.’ Heck looked up as they entered the outskirts of Horsham. ‘Course, it’s not necessarily Lansing’s tooth.’

‘Don’t fret, once we find the motive we’ll find the method.’ Gail spoke with an air of confidence. ‘And that won’t be difficult. Lansing was filthy rich. What better reason to knock someone off?’

‘It depends. I asked you yesterday who his main beneficiaries are. We got distracted before you could answer.’

‘His will was straightforward enough,’ she replied. ‘Written some time ago, with no suggestion that it’s been altered since. He has no dependants, no relatives. Quite a bit of his estate was to be divided up between the various charities he supported. They’re all squeaky clean, I’ve checked them. Monica Chatreaux’s in for a cut. She gets Rosewood Grange …’

Heck assessed a shot of the 38-year-old supermodel which had once adorned the cover of Vogue: doe eyes and Cupid lips set beneath a glorious mop of tawny tresses.

‘Interviewed her yet?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. Bear in mind she’s a wealthy woman in her own right. She could probably have given Lansing a run for his money.’

‘Just because you’ve already got a lot, that doesn’t mean you don’t want more.’

‘Plus she’s been out of the country for the last three months, doing fashion shoots in the States. She only came back for Lansing’s funeral, and now she’s gone over there again.’

‘She could have hired someone to do the dirty deed.’

‘I don’t know …’ Gail looked unconvinced. ‘She and Lansing hadn’t been an item for quite some time when it happened. They stopped dating about eleven months ago. Broke it off by mutual consent. No acrimony, no spat. Think she’s dated someone else since.’

‘How did she behave at the funeral?’

‘With dignity. No histrionics.’

‘But there were tears?’

‘Yep.’

‘You were there, you saw that?’

Gail nodded, but looked distracted as she negotiated the narrow streets around the pedestrianised square called the Carfax, in the centre of Horsham’s shopping district.

‘You don’t fancy her for this, do you?’ Heck said.

‘She’s a suspect; she has to be. But something in my gut tells me this is more to do with Lansing’s finances.’

Heck glanced at another photo. This one had been lifted from a company website and portrayed a heavy-set man, thinning on top but nevertheless handsome and rather decorous. Rich white curls grew down both of his cheeks; he wore a navy-blue blazer over a white silk shirt and blue-striped tie. His name was Tim Baker, and he was the same age as Lansing – forty-five, which would be about right as they’d been chums since they’d schooled together at Eton. But whereas Gail had her doubts about the involvement of Monica Chatreaux, Heck had similar doubts about the involvement of Tim Baker.

Baker was a ‘sleeping partner’ in many of Lansing’s enterprises, owning 40 per cent of the shares to Lansing’s 60, but he’d not been involved in their day-to-day operation because, as an investment banker, he had his own professional affairs to conduct. Given that Lansing’s shares would now go to those recipients stipulated in his will, it would make the running of said companies a complex, time-consuming process. Hardly something Baker would have sought. It might even mean that several of those companies might now go under, so Baker stood to lose out even more.

Heck couldn’t help but voice these doubts. ‘Unless there’s something we don’t know, Tim Baker has everything to lose by Harold Lansing’s death, and nothing to gain.’

‘I’m sure there’s quite a lot we don’t know,’ Gail replied.

They met Tim Baker in the hedged rear garden of his large Victorian townhouse in the suburb of Southwater. The lawn was expansive and bordered by deep beds of flowers. The banker, who looked older and more tired than in the photograph they’d seen online, was wearing slacks and a polo shirt, and hosted them at a small wrought-iron table set out in the middle of the grass.

Gail sat facing him, while Baker’s rotund wife, a pleasant woman called Milly, provided them with beakers and a pitcher of orange squash filled with ice cubes and slices of real fruit. Heck preferred to stand, but accepted a beaker of juice.

Baker shook his head solemnly. ‘Harold … well, he just wasn’t into anything strange.’

‘You seem very sure of that, Mr Baker,’ Gail said.

‘I ought to be. Every idea he ever had, he bounced off me first.’

‘Every idea?’

Baker gave this some thought. ‘Obviously I can’t say every single idea; but, well, Harold was a straight bat. All his career – and I was there for most of it – there was never a hint of impropriety or shady dealing.’

‘I understand he had various offshore bank accounts,’ Gail said.

‘My dear, that’s not unusual. It’s just to take advantage of different tax regimes. There’s nothing illegal about it if it’s all declared. I’m sure if you consult your financial intelligence people, you’ll find there’s never been anything in Harold’s business past to arouse suspicion.’

‘What were you doing on the morning of 6 July, Mr Baker?’ Heck asked him.

‘Ahhh … I might have thought I’d be a suspect.’

‘I’m sorry we have to ask this.’

‘No it’s all right. I completely understand.’ Baker fingered his brow. ‘I was on holiday with Milly. We were on a month-long cruise, the Caribbean and American East Coast. We had no idea Harold had even had his first accident, let alone the second one. Only got back a couple of days before he was due to be buried. I must say …’ He eyed them warily. ‘I’m rather surprised by these enquiries. I mean with Harold in his grave. Everyone was under the impression it was all just ghastly misfortune.’

‘We’re not ruling out anything at this stage,’ Gail said.

‘But you suspect foul play?’

‘We just don’t know,’ Heck replied.

Baker blew out a sigh. ‘Well you obviously have to cover every possibility. It’s unbelievable, to be honest. Harold was a genuine good egg. If you look at some of the things he did in his spare time … he was a governor of the local grammar school, he sat on several church committees, put money into numerous charities. Why on earth would anyone want to hurt him, let alone kill him?’

‘Could it be a disgruntled ex-employee?’ Heck wondered.

‘Harold was always popular with his staff. He was a good leader, a firm decision-maker. He respected them as individuals, he was concerned for their welfare, he took responsibility during a crisis.’

‘Because you see, Mr Baker,’ Heck watched him carefully, ‘it’s occurred to me that if someone was trying to get even with Mr Lansing for some past grievance – maybe an imagined grievance – they might want to get even with you as well.’

‘Oh, Sergeant …’ Baker sighed again, as if this was a minor concern. ‘No face or name springs to mind in that regard, not even from the mists of time.’

If nothing else, Heck thought, this guy is not frightened. He’s telling me what he believes to be the truth.

Baker shook his head. ‘I can’t think of a single person who Harold and I might have upset so much that he would resort to vengeance on this scale.’

‘Lansing’s too good to be true, isn’t he?’ Gail said as they drove back towards Reigate.

Heck glanced round at her. ‘How do you mean?’

‘All that “holy Joe” stuff,’ she said cynically. ‘I don’t know why they don’t just give him a sainthood.’

‘There are good people in the world you know.’

‘You really believe that?’ She chuckled. ‘After some of the cases the Serial Crimes Unit’s investigated? I’ve looked you up, in case you were wondering. The Nice Guys Club, the Desecrator killings … that business up in the Lake District? And you still have idealistic notions about human nature?’

Heck didn’t reply. Fleetingly he was lost in thought.

‘This is a different ballgame, of course,’ she added. ‘These white-collar criminals – they’re not drooling nutters running around with meat cleavers. They’re clever. They can squirrel all sorts of important stuff away where it won’t be found. I can see you have doubts about that, Heck, and you must do whatever you feel is necessary; but I intend to go through Lansing’s business transactions with a magnifying-glass. Let’s see who gets to the bottom of it first, eh?’

That final comment caught his attention. ‘You mean like we’re in a contest together?’

‘Well, not exactly a contest …’

‘I should hope not. We’re on the job, in case you’d forgotten. Not playing stupid bloody games!’

‘All right, take it easy!’

‘You know …’ Heck forcibly moderated his tone, not wanting to pull rank so quickly when he’d promised that he wouldn’t. ‘Gail, if you want to follow that line, be my guest. But good luck to you. I’ve no experience investigating white-collar crime, if that’s what you want to call it, and I’ve been a detective fifteen years. To start with, you’ll have to liaise with FIU, the Serious Fraud Office, probably the City of London Police – and on the basis of what? Unfounded conjecture. On top of that, you’re going to attract a lot of publicity you don’t want.’

‘Like I care about bad publicity.’

‘Think about this, Gail. Harold Lansing is the victim, possibly of a catastrophic accident, but more likely of a skilfully stage-managed murder. Either way, it resulted in him being burned alive. And you’re trying to uncover evidence of criminality in his past.’

‘It’s only a means to an end.’

‘You’d better hope there is an end. Because you blacken the name of a pillar of the community like Harold Lansing, someone with high-powered friends all over the county, and it’s not inconceivable that your career, which I have a feeling you are very concerned about, might suddenly hit the buffers.’

Gail drove for several minutes without speaking. ‘Okay. So what’s your theory?’

‘I don’t have one yet. But I think we need to go back to the beginning.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Back to where it all kicked off. Let’s try to understand exactly what’s happened.’

Chapter 9

The River Mole was one of the most scenic waterways in southern England, snaking eighty miles from its headwaters near Gatwick Airport in West Sussex across the rolling Surrey Weald to its confluence with the River Thames close to Hampton Court. It boasted an abundant diversity of wildlife, from water voles, herons and kingfishers on its banks to all types of game fish – eels, brown trout, lamprey and pike – in its cool green depths.

There were several rapids along the Mole, but Deadman’s Reach, which Heck and Gail finally located after leaving the Punto in a National Trust car park and walking several hundred yards along a well-trodden towpath, was located in a broad, shallow valley through which the river meandered at a sedate pace, though Heck felt this was probably deceptive. He’d researched the Mole the previous night, and had learned that its flow rate was highly responsive to rainfall. Though this past June and July had largely been warm and dry, there’d been heavy rain in April and May, which might suggest why Harold Lansing had so easily been swept away.

The Reach itself was a jutting promontory of aged brickwork, a quayside in the past, though with hunks of rusted metal where mooring ropes had once been tied and tufts of weed growing around its footings there was no sign it was used for that purpose now. Some eighty yards to the north-west, the river plunged over the lip of a weir into a flat rocky basin before curving away through lower lying water meadows.

Heck halted and glanced around, wafting at midges. Both to east and west, the gentle slopes of the valley were thinly wooded. Immediately beyond the footpath, thick stands of gorse ascended to the skyline. He weaved his way up through these, Gail following, until they reached a stile, beyond which lay level pasture land. This was most likely the spot where the Doversgreen Aviators flew their model planes, though there was nobody here at present.

Heck shielded his eyes against the sun. Several hundred yards to the west, occasional vehicles flashed by along a main road. A similar distance to the north-east, more sporadic traffic passed over a bridge with iron latticework sides which crossed the river, running west to east. Satisfied, he turned back to the stile and, rather to Gail’s irritation, commenced a slow, cautious descent back to the riverbank. It wasn’t easy for either of them, he in his suit and lace-up leather shoes, she in her skirt.

At the bottom, Heck leafed through their sheaf of paperwork. ‘This guy who saved Lansing after he fell in … Gary Edwards. Where was he exactly?’

‘That headland.’ Gail pointed past the weir to a bend in the river about fifty yards short of the iron bridge.

‘But he didn’t actually see Lansing fall into the river?’

‘No. Nor the plane as it made contact. Apparently Lansing screamed for help as he was going over the weir. That’s when Edwards noticed he was in trouble. He told me he’d seen the model planes buzzing around overhead, but hadn’t thought much about them. He said they’re here every other weekend, usually too high up to pose any kind of problem for walkers or anglers.’

Heck read through Gary Edwards’s statement. Edwards was young, only twenty-five, but fit; apparently he played football for a local amateur club. ‘How high is too high?’

‘About sixty to seventy feet.’

‘And what do we know about Edwards?’

‘He’s clean. Well, he’s not in the system.’

Heck thought about this. ‘That meadow where they fly these planes is … what would you say, fifty, sixty yards in that direction?’ She nodded. He mused again. ‘Only a stone’s throw. Wouldn’t be difficult for the odd one or two planes to stray over this way.’

‘Gary Edwards said he’s seen that occasionally, but he’s never seen any of them come down to ground level. I think there are rules governing that.’

Heck nodded. ‘There are. It’s a code of conduct laid down in the Air Navigation Order. The main elements of it, for our purposes, stipulate that the fly zone must be unobstructed, the model craft must at all times be a safe distance from persons, vessels, vehicles and structures, and – this is the really important bit – must never leave the sight of the operator at any time.’

‘I see …’

‘I saw that online, just in case you were thinking I’m a bottomless pit of knowledge.’

She shrugged. ‘The main thing is I’ve already taken statements from the Doversgreen Aviators.’

‘Yeah, I’ve read them. They’re not having it, are they?’

‘Not a single one will admit responsibility.’

‘Surely that doesn’t surprise you?’ Heck walked back along the towpath. ‘Even if it was an honest accident, it could lead to prosecution by the Civil Aviation Authority.’

‘Okay, so where are we going now?’

‘For a pint.’

‘Come again?’

‘You know a pub called the Ring O’Bells?’

‘Sure. It’s next to the local parish church.’

‘Good – that’s where they’re meeting us.’

‘Who is?’

‘The Doversgreen Aviators.’ Heck checked his watch. ‘In approximately twenty-five minutes.’

‘And when did you arrange that?’

‘I rang their club chairman last night. Wasn’t difficult, his details are on the website. I said I wanted them at their usual watering hole at two this afternoon. It’s Saturday, so there shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘And he agreed, did he?’ She sounded amused. ‘Just like that?’

‘Yep.’

‘Or so he said.’

‘I told him I didn’t need every member there; just the eighteen who were present at the meeting on 21 June.’

‘Some chance.’

‘Chance won’t come into it.’ Heck diverted from the path up a gravel track to the car park. ‘I told their chairman the alternative was that we visit them all at home, with search warrants and a view to seizing their model aircraft for forensic examination. I made sure he understood that anyone whose craft shows signs of recent damage, or recent immersion in water, or maybe has threads of unexplained fabric connected to it, no matter how microscopic, may have to answer questions under caution.’

They’d now reached Gail’s Punto. She regarded him over its roof as she unlocked the driver’s door. ‘Bit heavy-handed, don’t you think?’

‘What was that phrase you used – means to an end?’

The vault of the Ring O’Bells was a small side chamber into which only a corner of the bar protruded. Its low, smoke-browned ceiling was supported by heavy oak beams. Its handsome original features served to create the aura of a confined space, as did the double doors to the beer garden when they were closed – as they were now.

The eighteen members of the Doversgreen Aviators were crammed in like so many sardines, sitting along the benches, standing in corners, clustered around the brass-topped tables. They were exclusively male, but every group was represented, from teenagers to the husky middle-aged. Most looked like countrymen – weather-beaten faces, wild hair, patched woollen jumpers, but there were also shirts and dicky bows on view, even the occasional walking stick.

Not one of them had ordered a drink. Instead they sat or stood perfectly still, regarding Heck in silence as he leaned against the bar. He’d already checked, and found that none of the nervous faces in front of him had a criminal record. That was perhaps to be expected, as he didn’t actually believe that any of these weekend recreationists would be a regular offender.

‘Okay …’ He cleared his throat.

They listened with rapt attention.

He glanced at Gail, who was standing in front of the double doors, equally fascinated to know what was coming next.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Heckenburg from the Serial Crimes Unit. You already know Detective Constable Honeyford, as you’ve all given statements to her in the recent past. Statements in which you acquit yourselves and your fellow club members of any wrongdoing. Which is unfortunate, because I have to tell you that I’m not at all satisfied by that … not least because this sad affair is looking like it may turn into a murder enquiry. I don’t mean it possibly will, I mean it probably

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