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‘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 (#uf630308b-9f48-5e3d-84ad-6a1e3811f601)
‘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?’
