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‘Not as quickly, ma’am. This file was sent to SCU, not the Incident Room.’
Gemma said nothing else for some time, but perused the paperwork again.
Heck stood waiting, stiff-shouldered, feeling like a convict facing a hanging judge. They weren’t in the Incident Room now but Gemma’s own office, which conveniently was only located across the corridor from it.
‘You take the bloody biscuit, Heck.’ She glanced up again. ‘Did everything I said to you back at the hospital go in one ear and trickle out the other?’
‘No,’ he assured her. ‘I absolutely guarantee it.’
She spoke on as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘And of course, much as I’d like to kick you off Operation Wandering Wolf, I can’t, can I?’ Her voice rose, that old familiar whip-crack no doubt penetrating the closed door and echoing along the main corridor. ‘Because the likelihood now is that we’ll have to go all the way up to Bradburn, and you being a Bradburn native are probably the best weapon in that fight I could possibly have!’
That explained a lot actually, Heck realised. This time she needed him for more than his ability as a detective. But also, he couldn’t help thinking that she wasn’t giving him the total third degree because this latest little white lie of his had been well meant. Even the most productive police informants could be troublesome customers. You had to play it canny with them.
‘So you want me to go up to Bradburn?’ he said.
‘I want you to sit down. We’re not making hasty decisions.’ She aimed a finger at him as he pulled up a chair. ‘And don’t think this means I’m not thoroughly pissed off with you, Heck! If it wasn’t for the fact I’ve already lost Shawna from the team today, I’d be much more inclined to kick your impertinent arse all the way back to Division.’
Heck sat down while she read again through the GMP dossier. He glanced around her office, which, while it was larger than the cubby-hole she’d occupied back at the Yard, still didn’t bespeak the rank of Detective Superintendent.
Gemma Piper was a conundrum to many who knew her: handsome and fiery, two traits that combined well when she fought her corner in this most competitive and male-dominated of environments. But at the same time she didn’t routinely favour the trappings of power. She was forceful enough to pull rank any time she felt it was necessary, her bollockings were legendary, today’s relatively painless session notwithstanding, and when she gave evidence in court or to a House of Commons Select Committee, she radiated strength and competence. But, possibly because she’d done her stint in the lower ranks, and had scrapped tooth and nail for every promotion she’d ever had, she didn’t like to paint herself as an aristocrat of the job. Hence the Spartan décor and bare furnishings in this dull little room at the top of their dull new building.
‘Four murders in Bradburn inside five weeks,’ she said. ‘Is that your hometown’s normal strike rate?’
‘Not when I lived there,’ he replied. ‘But times change.’
‘Does this surprise you?’
She dropped another glossy onto her desk. It depicted two hunks of human-shaped charcoal laid side by side on a rubber sheet. This image had been inserted at the bottom of the file. Heck had only found it several minutes after seeing the pictures of the corpses in the landfill. It depicted the remains of two Bradburn porno merchants, Barrie Briggs and Les Harris, who early last March had been cremated alive in their own sex shop.
He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘A bit, yeah.’
‘It’s pretty extreme stuff.’
‘If what you’re asking, ma’am, is: can I equate this kind of violence with the town I grew up in?… then no. We had crime. Of course we did – plenty of it, it was a rough old place. But there was a kind of moral focus in those days. At least in general terms. This is way off the scale in comparison, but I don’t think these are normal times, are they? GMP Serious reckon Briggs and Harris were the first shots fired in an underworld war. The bad boys in the landfill – Calum Price and Dean Lumley – were probably retaliation.’
Gemma read more of the attached notes, this time concentrating on the latter two victims.
‘Lots of form,’ she said. ‘Lots of it. For which they paid a very high price. Both castrated, eyes slit, tongues cut out, nipples scissored off, fingers removed with an electric saw. They finally died when a power-drill penetrated each of their brains through the left ear.’
Neither needed to give voice to what they both were already thinking: that, even given the two deaths by fire, this was a further escalation still, and to some tune.
‘Put two and two together often enough, ma’am, and sometimes you get four,’ Heck said. ‘Those two torture-killings have got Sagan written all over them, especially now we know he’s in the Manchester area. A war’s erupted up there. A real one and Sagan’s taken sides.’
‘Taken sides or hired himself to the highest bidder?’
‘Probably the latter. He doesn’t have friends. But he does have chloroform.’
She glanced up from the file. ‘Sorry?’
‘You’ll note from the post-mortem reports, ma’am, that both Price and Lumley’s bodies contained traces of chloroform. Penny Flint told me that was how Sagan subdued her when she tried to fight back inside his caravan.’
‘So chloroform’s his signature?’
‘One of them, yeah. Though this one, I’d argue, is the smoking gun. It makes sense that he would use it too. According to Penny, he’s punished a lot of wayward underworld guys in the past. Some of them will have been pretty handy, and John Sagan’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chloroform would have helped him overpower them. Plus, it’s not a long-lasting anaesthetic – would give him just enough time to strap them down, and then they wake up bang in time for the fun to start.’
‘OK.’ She spread out more paperwork. ‘So what do you know about this guy?’
These particular notes originated from the GMP Local Intelligence Office, and referred to one Vic Ship, a notorious Manchester gangster who had been an associate of Briggs and Harris. GMP now believed him to be engaged in a power-struggle with the smaller Bradburn faction with whom Price and Lumley were connected. If Sagan had signed on for anyone up there, it was most likely to be Ship given that he was the bigger fish. Ship’s mugshot in the file portrayed an overweight, brutal-looking guy in his mid-fifties, with pudgy, pock-marked cheeks, a small mouth and piggy eyes. His grey hair had thinned to the point where he was almost bald, and yet it was long enough to be greased back to his collar and fastened there with an elastic band. Distinguishing marks included a tattoo of a gorgon’s head on the left side of his neck, and a jagged scar across the bridge of his nose.
‘Never had dealings with Ship personally, ma’am,’ Heck said. ‘But way back when I was in GMP it was said he’d buried more bones than you’d find in the average brontosaurus room. And just skimming these notes, you can see that for yourself. Born in Whalley Range, which is Gangster Central. Lots of known previous for armed robbery, attempted murder, demanding money with menaces, supplying, you name it. He’s the real deal. Likes violence and highly placed. By any standards, a player.’
‘If Ship’s genuinely the big time, why’s he involved in an undignified scrap with a bunch of street-punks in a nowhere place like Bradburn?’ Gemma asked. ‘No disrespect to your hometown, Heck, but it’s hardly Chicago or south-central Los Angeles.’
‘True. But like most other nowhere towns in that part of the world, they’ll have a voracious appetite for drugs, sex and contraband booze. Besides, Bradburn’s probably only the battlefield-of-the-moment. I suspect what this is really about is Ship trying to firm up his control across the whole of the Northwest, which is a massive market. Other local elements will try to resist him in due course.’
Gemma scoured the documentation. ‘Penny Flint … have we got everything out of her we can?’
‘Sorry, ma’am. I just don’t know.’
‘If she’s so keen to see Sagan go down, why didn’t she volunteer the information about Manchester in the first place without you having to pressurise her?’
Heck had been wondering about this too. ‘My reading is that she tried the police route first, but we blew it. This time I think she was hoping that whatever he’s got himself into up north, that’d be the death of him in due course. She reckons prison’s too good for Sagan. She wants him dead. That’s why she tried to engineer that shoot-out.’
‘And this is the person whose info we’re basing a whole new line of enquiry on?’
Heck shrugged.
‘These torture-murders?’ Gemma said. ‘Price and Lumley? How much was publicised?’
‘Only the bare bones, as far as I can see. Names of the victims, confirmation there are sus circs. GMP Serious are sitting on the detail.’
‘But people are not stupid, Heck. These fellas were known hoodlums, so it won’t take long for the public to work out that these are tit-for-tat killings – probably in response to the fire-attack on the sex shop.’
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but nothing was given to the press about the use of chloroform or the extreme torture. So if what’s concerning you is that Penny might have read all this in the papers and decided to spin us a line about Sagan to send us in the wrong direction, I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s happened.’
‘Obviously we’re going to have to go up there.’ She dragged a pad from a drawer and started jotting notes. ‘We’ll keep the MIR here for the time being. But we need to liaise with GMP Serious, possibly about opening a subsidiary office in Bradburn.’
A former Greater Manchester Police officer himself, and knowing the macho culture that persisted in that corner – GMP were one police force whose approach to crime and criminals was proactive to say the least – Heck didn’t think this would be quite so easy.
‘I think we’ll have to bring GMP in on it, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It was simple enough fending off the OC, but that was because their foul-up allowed all this to happen in the first place. Greater Manchester’s Serious Crimes Division will be a different matter, and they’ll consider it a right liberty if we just barge in and try to take over.’
‘Story of our life, isn’t it?’ Gemma muttered.
‘Seriously, ma’am. We’re only after Sagan, but they’ve got this whole gangster war thing going on. They’ll have wider priorities.’
Gemma stopped writing and tapped her pen on the table as she thought it through.
‘Well, organised crime is not our specific field,’ she conceded. ‘So any help would be appreciated, I suppose. But like I say, Sagan’s our case and I’m not relinquishing it. I’ll go up there myself. See what I can sort out. In the meantime, Heck, you only need to think about convicting Charlie Wheeler. Join us in Bradburn when it’s over.’
‘Ma’am.’ He nodded and stood up to leave.
‘Unless that’s a problem, of course?’
He glanced back from the door. ‘Sorry?’
‘You hate Bradburn, Heck. You can’t stand going back there. You’ve told me a dozen times if you’ve told me once. It’s got nothing but bad memories for you. You don’t even like anyone who lives there.’
‘I’ve probably mellowed a bit over the years.’
‘Mellowed?’ She smiled without humour. ‘Heck, no one else in the job carries grudges as long as you do. Don’t get me wrong – on one hand I agree that if we set up a new enquiry team in Bradburn, you should be in it for your local knowledge. But on the other, given your history with that place, perhaps it would be better if you were nowhere near.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘We don’t do emotions in SCU, as you know perfectly well … or we try not to.’
‘Ma’am,’ he replied, ‘if tomorrow morning someone was to detonate a dirty bomb in the centre of Bradburn, the only reason I’d lose sleep is because it would prevent us getting our hands on John Sagan. My desire to bring to book a bloke who hurts people as his business is much stronger than any lingering dislike I may have for the hometown that shat on me.’
‘That’s fair enough, but is this something you actually want to do? And I’m asking you that as a friend, not your boss … maybe even as your ex. We could be up there quite a while. Do you think you could stand that? It’s not like there isn’t lots you can be doing down here.’
‘I’ll be fine. The past is gone.’
‘If you say so.’ She only seemed vaguely satisfied, though she rarely gave a more positive response than this to any of Heck’s glib assurances.
He opened the door. ‘Any message for Penny Flint, in case she gets in touch?’
‘Yes,’ Gemma said distractedly, writing notes again. ‘Tell her she’s a bitch and she deserves locking up. And tell her that if she ever meets me again she needs to tread warily, because it might still happen.’
Chapter 8 (#ulink_c0b04e44-0cc2-56cf-95a6-28007cfe9bd5)
April was supposed to be a spring month, Danny reminded himself as he plodded down the dank alleys of the Blackhall ward, heavy feet tramping the wet black cobbles. And, while it wasn’t what you’d call bitter, it was a tad colder than it should be at this time of year, even late at night. His breath misted out in front of him as he stumped his way along. Danny hated cold weather, but then it didn’t care much for him. A gangling six-foot-three and bone-thin, he felt it more than most, and his ragged denims and oily old military coat did little to help with that.
Of course, cold or hot, rain or shine, business was business – and it didn’t stop for anything.
Not that Danny Hollister looked much like a businessman, or even someone who might be carrying money. And that was to his advantage at this time of night, though he always had a roll of cash on him and a stash of gear in his pocket.
He reached his normal pitch just after eleven. It was halfway down a narrow brick entry between two derelict warehouses alongside the Leeds–Liverpool Canal, whose water lay black and motionless under a thin film of oil.
Clapping his gloved hands together, Danny waited patiently beneath the decayed stoop of a side entrance. It was a good position. He wasn’t exactly hidden from the world; those who wanted to find him would do so easily. But the canal lay forty yards to his right, and an open cobbled backstreet forty yards to his left; if a patrolling cop turned in from either of those directions all he had to do was back out of sight and beat a retreat through the burned-out innards of the industrial ruin. But in all honesty, what were the chances of a patrolling cop showing up here? It was well known that they were understaffed to an epic degree. Course, if the Drug Squad came sniffing around, that would be more of a problem. But there was an open drain just to the left. Everything could go down there at a second’s notice if it needed to. It was all cellophane-wrapped anyway, and Danny knew where it washed out again. He didn’t see it’d be a problem. Such cops as were available these days surely had more important things to do. OK, Danny traded in crack and heroin as well as grass, not to mention a bit of China. It wasn’t what the average Joe would call small potatoes, but for safety purposes he never carried massive amounts of the stuff. And Danny was a user as much as a dealer. If the time ever arrived, he’d shrug his stick-thin shoulders and say: ‘I only shift enough to feed my own habit.’ And he’d be absolutely sincere.
He coughed harshly. It hurt, the air rasping in his sunken chest. His head ached too – he always seemed to have a headache these days. And a cold. Snot spooled out from his sore-encrusted left nostril, and he wiped it with his skinny wrist.
An engine rumbled somewhere close by.
Danny stepped back into the recess, crooking his head right and left. There was no sign of anyone on the towpath, but the other way he saw that a vehicle had pulled up on the cobbled space beyond the entry. By instinct, his left hand burrowed more deeply into his pocket, fingers caressing the folded switchblade he kept down there.
The vehicle at the end of the alley had turned its lights off, but remained motionless. Danny watched it irritably. This happened on occasion. Middle-class kids looking to score would come down here nervously. Not wanting to get jumped on these mean streets, they’d get as close as they could in the car and then, ignorant of the protocol, would sit there waiting, engine chugging. With every passing minute, it was more likely they’d draw attention to themselves. The narrow backstreet they were parked on might feel like it was in the middle of nowhere, but actually it wasn’t. A couple of hundred yards further up, another old warehouse had been changed into a nightclub. OK, it was only open on Fridays and Saturdays; there was no one there on weekday nights, but there was a small car park in front of it, and on the other side of that a grotty little pool bar which sometimes entertained midweek custom.
The fact the car was grey, or looked grey in the dimness, would reduce this risk a little. But even so, its occupants were clearly not for venturing down the alley.
Danny swore under his breath. He could picture them. A twenty-something couple. Probably both doing jobs they loved and at the same time earning good money. They’d have put street-gear on to come down here. Stonewashed jeans or Army Surplus, maybe hoodie tops, perhaps a baseball cap for the guy. But everything would be crisp and clean, with designer branding.
Danny loathed middle-class phoneys, but he could never allow himself to show it. Whatever their pretensions in life, they were still dopers, and dopers were his lifeblood.
But still the car sat at the end of the alley, swimming in a smog of its own exhaust.
‘Shit,’ he said.
These really would be silly little rich kids. They might not intend it, they possibly didn’t even realise it, but it clearly came natural to them to get served. Well, this once – just this once, to get rid of the dickless fool and his bint before they attracted the entire town – Danny would wander down there. But once business was concluded, he’d give them some advice, spiced with a few choice swear-words of his own.
He ambled along the passage, hands in his coat pockets. Even when he reached the end, he couldn’t tell for sure what kind of motor it was. It surprised him actually – it was an estate car, but it looked a bit grubby and beaten-up; not what he’d expected. Though perhaps this was the family spare; something they felt safer in down on the Blackhall ward, a bit more incognito. As he approached, its front passenger window scrolled down. Most likely this would be the guy. The girl would be behind the wheel, because he wouldn’t want her dealing face to face with a criminal. Obviously not.
But then it all turned a bit unreal.
The window had reached the bottom of the frame, and yet no bearded or handsomely chiselled face appeared there. Instead, Danny saw a circular steel muzzle – a broad one, at least three inches in diameter. His mouth dropped open.
A bulky figure was visible behind the muzzle, hunched over from the driving seat. There was no one else in there, quite clearly. To operate this mechanism, one man was enough.
A fountain of white-hot flame spewed out.
One minute Danny’s tall, thin body was uncomfortably cold, the next every part of him was ablaze with agony. He stumbled backward with such force that he bounced from the warehouse wall. At first, he was so agonised that he was unable to make a sound. But as his clothes fell away in charring tatters, taking much of the flaming, adhesive fuel with them, he found his voice – in long, braying screeches. Only for a second jet to engulf him, lighting him head to foot, eating immediately into his scorched and vitreous flesh.
Danny tottered around like a burning mannequin. He blundered back into the dark alleyway, thrusting his way headlong, the dancing firelight shooting ahead of him and up the brick walls, his arms weaving glittering patterns. He didn’t just feel the heat all over him, but inside him – inside his head even. Along with a pain he’d never known, a pain that clawed through his muscles and nerves and bones, shredding his very sanity it was so unbearable, and yet somehow he kept going, one unsteady foot following another, until he’d passed his normal pitch and was out at the other end, on the cinder towpath.
And now, in the reeling, tortured inferno of his mind, he realised why he had done this.
His brain was malfunctioning, but his body had made the decision for him.
He sensed the canal in front.
Staggering another few yards, he pitched down face-first into the water, a hissing cloud erupting behind him.
At first it was so frigid that it was like passing out of reality, and yet as well as quenching the flames, it served to numb him – to an extreme degree, to a point where he was able to flounder across the channel like a crazed fish. The semi-liquid flesh unravelled from his twisted limbs, but he threw himself forward until he reached the far side, where, with eyeballs seared beyond use, he thudded into a wall of bricks hung with tufts of rank vegetation. His blistered hands groped left and found an upright ladder, rusted and rotted in its moorings, but just about capable of holding his weight as he hauled his agonised form to the top of it, and there flopped wheezing onto another cinder path.
Danny’s tongue had melted to a molten stub in the scalded cave of his mouth, so he couldn’t even sob let alone scream. His nose had gone, along with his eardrums and eyelids. He had minimal senses left with which to detect the armoured, helmeted figure that had clumped steadily after him down the warehouse alley, petrol tank sloshing in the harness on its back, and now came over the canal as well, footfalls louder on the metal footbridge some twenty yards to the left.
Even when the hulking, pitiless form came and stood right over him, the shuddering, mewling wreck that had once been Danny Hollister didn’t know it was there. Thus it met no opposition, not even a protest, as it trained its weapon down, and from point-blank range blasted him with flame again, and again, and again.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_01f05cbd-831f-5d6b-a4bd-b6f766dc6ee9)
Heck didn’t hang around at court to celebrate the conviction of three-times-rapist Charlie Wheeler, despite the bastard receiving the severe but appropriate penalty of three life sentences including a judge’s recommendation that he serve no less than 45 years. While DI Dave Brunwick, who’d officially headed the Wimbledon enquiry, spoke to a bank of microphones and news cameras outside the front of the Old Bailey, Heck left via a rear door and hurried off back to Staples Corner, arriving there just around lunchtime, where he grabbed a quick sandwich before hitting the motorway.
Three days had now passed since Gemma had taken several other SCU detectives north to liaise with the Greater Manchester Police in Bradburn, but plenty more had happened since. To start with, there’d been another fatal fire-attack in the town. This time it was a drugs dealer called Daniel Hollister, another goon believed to have been on Vic Ship’s payroll, and the modus operandi had been near enough exactly the same as that used in the sex-shop attack: the victim sprayed with some combustible accelerant, most likely petrol, while the delivery mechanism – quite literally a flamethrower – had been clearly identified on this occasion because the armoured and helmeted killer had got caught in the act on CCTV, though the footage wasn’t of the best quality. Only yesterday, Gemma, in company with DI Katie Hayes of the Greater Manchester Serious Crimes Division, had held a joint press conference at Bradburn Central police station to announce that a pre-existing investigative SCU taskforce, Operation Wandering Wolf, had now been expanded to tackle in full the escalating underworld war in the town.
Already feeling left behind by these events, Heck initially sped along the M1, not that he was looking forward to reaching his destination. As Gemma had intimated, there was no love lost between Heck and Bradburn, though in some ways it was quite illogical. Back in his youth, a major domestic crisis – not unconnected to his embarking on a career in the police – had put a deep rift between himself and his immediate family, which hadn’t been easily bridged.
In truth, it hadn’t properly been bridged even now, though Heck and his sole surviving close relative, his older sister Dana, were in regular contact and the tone was friendly enough. Dana’s only daughter, Sarah, knew Heck simply as ‘Uncle Mark’ and though she hadn’t been around in the bad old days and with luck had never been informed about them, she hadn’t seen him often enough to forge any kind of real emotional bond with him.
So … no, Heck didn’t particularly enjoy going back to Bradburn, but this would never stop him. It was true what he’d told Gemma: the past was the past as far as he was concerned; it was time to let bygones be bygones. In any case, he’d now lived almost as long in London as he had in Lancashire, having voluntarily transferred from the Greater Manchester Police to the Metropolitan Police at the age of twenty, shortly after joining the force. He didn’t consider himself a Bradburn native any more. So why should it matter? More important than any of that was finding John Sagan, though it already sounded as if Gemma had succumbed to the inevitable and, to avoid putting out any GMP noses, had made her team available to launch a full-scale assault against all the mobsters who were making life such a misery up there.
By mid-afternoon, the traffic flow had increased, worsening noticeably when Heck hit the M6, forcing him to divert onto the toll-road at Coleshill. From there, the driving was easier so he was able to take a guilt-free break at Norton Canes Services.
Over a coffee, he perused the latest batch of paperwork emailed down that morning by the admin staff on Wandering Wolf.
