That was enough for Bliss. ‘Move in,’ he said, taking his first step before he’d finished giving the order.
The response was instantaneous and loud. Police officers exploded from their concealment, surrounding the three men in a flurry of arms and legs, a cacophony of warning cries telling them to stand still and raise their hands. To the fore, officers armed with tasers, their odd-looking yellow guns extended. A canine unit had been standing by barely half a mile away, and Bliss called them in now in case anyone tried to make a break for it across open ground.
Ignoring the instruction to stand still, Andy Price dropped to his knees and clasped both hands together over his head. His son froze in place, but Walker reacted with surprising speed and agility. He stepped behind Stephen Price and wrapped his truncated left arm around the man’s chest. His right hand now gripped a long, machete-type blade; it came around smoothly to rest directly over Price’s throat.
‘Stand back!’ Walker called out, his voice deep and powerful. ‘I mean it. You come any closer and I’ll drop this fucker where he stands.’
As one, the ring of officers halted their forward momentum. Bliss swore beneath his breath, realising Walker must have been carrying the weapon underneath his jacket. He sized up the situation immediately and took charge of proceedings. ‘You do that and you lose your leverage, Walker,’ he said. His voice carried well as he inched closer. He and his team had tucked themselves away behind the closest thicket of trees; now out in the open, their advance slowed but did not stop entirely.
‘And if I don’t release him, how long do you think you can keep this standoff going?’
Bliss held up a hand, palm out. ‘Haven’t you just outlined your own problem? Either you kill him now and we grab you up, or you keep the knife to his throat and eventually you’ll get tired and give up anyway. There’s no way out of this for any of you, and threatening to kill Stephen Price is no threat at all, is it?’
Walker threw his head back and howled his rage into the darkening sky like an animal. ‘How the fuck did you know?’ he spat, wild eyes bulging from their sockets.
‘We’ve had surveillance on Andy and Stephen since we informed them we were about to make an arrest.’
‘You lied to them? You lied to them and these dozy bloody idiots bought it?’
Bliss shook his head, his eyes darting everywhere. ‘We didn’t lie, Walker. We are about to make an arrest. Three, in fact.’
After a moment, in a smaller, calmer voice, Walker said, ‘Who were you expecting to turn up to meet them?’
‘You.’
‘That’s bollocks! After I gave up my hand you must have had me down as a victim.’
‘We did at first. And then we didn’t. The truth is, you screwed up: a couple of cameras caught you when you took out Freddy Swift.’ As he spoke, Bliss’s feet continued to slide forward.
‘What the… you got me on film?’
‘Yep. Starring role in your own horror movie.’ Bliss wet his lips and thought about how to keep Walker’s mind racing. ‘Tell me, why did you do that to him, Walker? Why carve him up and toss his body parts around like confetti? Your last instruction was just to kill him, I’m guessing. I doubt you were told to eviscerate the man.’
Walker glared back, snarling. His eyes bulged and a thick cord arced across his forehead. ‘Fuck him! And fuck you, too! Fuck all of you! Freddy Swift was a fucking nonce. He deserved everything he got.’
Bliss thought back to the young girl at Swift’s porn factory; it wasn’t a stretch to imagine the man taking part in a few private sessions of his own. His gaze drifted across to the man kneeling on the ground. Andy Price was completely focussed on his son and the fierce-looking blade at his throat. Bliss saw tension rippling the lines on his face.
‘Don’t even think about doing anything stupid, Andy,’ he called out, catching his attention. ‘Walker has nowhere to go. And he has no reason to finish the job on your son.’
‘No reason not to, either,’ Walker said, a crooked smile plastered across his face. He looked deranged. In fact, Bliss thought the man may now be so far beyond the edge there was no pulling him back. He had to take a risk.
‘That’s not true,’ he said. He took a step closer, both hands now raised in supplication. ‘We know all you did before you butchered Freddy Swift was abduct your old mates and drop off a few carrier bags.’
Bliss left out the part where Walker had severed Harrison’s hand, hoping he would believe the police had little on him other than conspiracy prior to the killing in Epping Forest. To explain that away, he would have to concoct one hell of a story, but if he thought he had wriggle room he might just take the bait.
That hope died in Bliss a short moment later.
‘You think I didn’t know what this crazy bastard was doing with them?’ Walker yanked back on Price’s chest. His left arm, swathed in bandages at the wrist, still managed to apply impressive strength. ‘He wanted to pay them back in kind for what they did to his old lady. Told me killing them was too good for them, and way too quick. Oh, and let’s not forget my having to sever Tommy’s hand before I took it to Tower Hill, just to give these wankers an alibi. Besides, I don’t care what you say… it’s not going to make any difference now after what I did to Freddy.’
Bliss sensed an opportunity. ‘It may do if you tell me where they all are. The more you say now, the more we can do for you when it comes to sentencing. And you’re right about Swift, too. Who cares about a paedo?’
Walker shook his head. His hand was trembling and mucus dribbled from both nostrils. Sweat poured from his hairline. ‘It’s too late. They’re all dead. Burned and buried. All four of them are where they belong, roasting in Hell.’
Bliss eyed his colleagues. Those carrying tasers were not in range of Walker, though at least two of them appeared to be edging closer. He needed to buy them some time. ‘All of which makes you the clean-up man on top of what we already know. It was Stephen who took his time with them.’
‘You’re bloody right I did!’ Price cried, pulling against Walker in defiance, attempting to shrug out of his tight grip. ‘Those men debased my mother, butchered her and tossed her away like she was a piece of garbage. We had to live with that knowledge. Me, my dad, my sister. But it all got too much for Val. It wore her down. She gave it her best shot, but in the end it won. They fucking won.’
‘I’m sorry for everything you and your family went through, Stephen,’ Bliss said. ‘And there’s not a man or woman here who doesn’t sympathise with you. Many of us, me included, can also understand why you did what you did to those men. It’s human nature, and people are going to understand that.’
He neglected to mention the part about none of it mattering, that ends so depraved were never justified by even the most harrowing of beginnings. But he didn’t have to utter the words for Stephen Price to realise the consequences of his own actions; the man didn’t need to be a solicitor to be aware of the hefty punishment coming his way.
The thought snapped Bliss’s head up to full alert. He opened his mouth to call out a warning, but he was too late.
Because, at the exact same moment, Price’s hands came up to wrap around the long blade of the machete. He gripped the sharpened steel and in a single movement dragged it violently across his throat and around to the side of his neck, opening up the flesh in a deep and unforgiving gash. Blood first gurgled from the wound and then began to surge freely, spurting rhythmically with the beat of the man’s heart. Walker gasped in horror and recoiled, releasing his captive as he took a hurried step back. He stood blinking Stephen Price’s blood away from his eyes, his face and clothes already smothered in arterial spray.
Experience and training kicked in immediately as officers swept forward to take charge of the rapidly escalating situation. Andy Price had leapt to his feet, reaching for his son, a cry of terror pouring from his lips. It took three men to pul
l him off and secure him where he stood, his mouth wide open as if he were screaming at a pitch none of them could hear.
Four members of the local team crowded around Stephen Price, whose bleeding decreased with each fresh eruption. They forced him to the ground and flipped him over onto his back, at which point two officers compressed the gaping wound in his neck with their hands. A third stripped off his shirt, bundled it up and pushed it hard against the slick and tattered flesh. Urgency was manifest in every raised voice and stern command.
Meanwhile, Walker had reacted with that innate instinct for survival his predatory kind always have; with everybody’s attention diverted, he’d made a desperate bid to escape. Bliss’s own focus had become split, but he caught the man’s movement from the corner of his eye and reacted to it in an instant. Walker’s feet initially struggled to gain purchase, but he managed to stagger upright and started to run. He headed into the field, the one area Bliss had not been able to populate with officers. After a dozen or so strides, he angled left and headed for the railway line.
Bliss responded swiftly, setting off in pursuit. He looked beyond the fleeing figure of Walker and spotted a train heading in their direction. Summoning up whatever his tired body still had, he immediately realised that if Walker made it across the tracks ahead of the train and nobody else did, it might be enough to buy him all the time and distance he needed to get away.
‘Get those dogs here!’ he cried out. ‘Get those bloody dogs here!’
His legs pounding up and down like rusty pistons, Bliss called out across comms to the team of surveillance officers who had observed all three suspects entering the plot. If Walker evaded his own chase, maybe they would be able to head him off.
Up ahead, he saw Walker labouring just as much as he was. The man was lean and fit for his age, but the years were against him in this situation. Fear would be constricting his windpipe, and he’d be struggling to draw in deep enough breaths to keep up the pace he’d set. Bliss could tell he was gaining on the man, but still Walker was closer to the rails and the train pounding towards them.
He wasted no breath demanding that Walker stop; the man was locked on escape and only physical force could prevent it from happening. Bliss felt a jagged spike of pain in his sides, and his own breathing became ragged. It was laughable; two ageing men attempting to recapture their youth.
Now only twenty yards from the tracks, Walker closed in on an embankment whose steep incline would slow him further. The train had curved around into the long straight length of track and was now bearing down on them, but Bliss thought their suspect would make it across the line before two hundred tons of thrashing steel and glass became a temporary barrier. For one awful moment, Bliss pictured himself, Walker and the train reaching the same spot on the tracks at precisely the same instant.
Desperate now, he called upon his last reserves of strength and energy and put in one final burst. Walker was slowing all the while, and Bliss was gaining on him with every stride. The clattering of the train wheels over joins in the track was impossibly loud, and Bliss imagined he could feel the beast’s heat. Walker’s feet started to slither on gravel rather than turf as he reached the plateau, which told Bliss time was up: if he wanted to stop Walker escaping, it was now or never. In a last desperate bid, he lunged forward and dived, arms outstretched. He felt one sweeping hand connect with something solid. When he saw Walker stumble, he realised he’d grasped the man’s shoe but the foot had popped right out of it.
Now Bliss was down, but Walker was somehow managing to carry on scurrying away even as he fought to regain his stability. As Bliss’s chest hit the gravel with a thump that knocked the remaining air from his lungs, his face smashed into the small, sharp stones. Bright starbursts of light exploded like fireworks in his eyes, obscuring his vision. He felt rapid movement on both sides of his prostrate body, and a second later he looked up to see Gul Ansari rush by in a blur of arms and legs, closely followed by a uniformed officer. DC Ansari moved with astonishing speed across the large stones and hurled herself at Walker like a missile, grabbing him by the waist and bringing him down in a spray of stones and pebbles barely a split second before the passing train thundered past, three feet from his head.
Bliss raised himself up on his elbows, coughing up stones and dirt and dust. Walker wasn’t done attempting to wrestle himself free, but he was no match for Ansari and the uniformed man as they swarmed all over him. Within seconds they had their suspect’s arms pinned to his back, and Walker let out a yelp of pain and bitter frustration. By now the dogs had reached them and were jumping around and growling, adding to the mayhem. Bliss forced out a sigh of relief when he saw handcuffs glimmering softly in the fading light. The chase was over. He slumped to the ground once more, panting and gasping.
By the time he had struggled to his feet on unsteady legs, Walker was being led away. Bliss’s remaining colleagues had caught up and now surrounded him, throwing all kinds of questions at him. After reassuring them that he was only winded, he turned to survey the scene they had left behind. Secured by four officers, a sobbing Andy Price had been allowed to remain close by while they fought for his son’s life.
Bliss felt a rush of heat swarm over his chest, into his throat and up to his face. He blinked away the giddiness and focussed on the man now receiving emergency first aid. He had not anticipated Stephen Price’s ultimate capitulation; the man who was in many ways both victim and perpetrator settling for a quick death rather than a lengthy jail sentence. That possibility had never entered the equation, not during any stage of the planning.
‘You’re going to need some first aid, boss,’ Ansari said, her eyes narrowed as she walked by with her prisoner. ‘Some of that gravel opened you up.’
‘I’m fine,’ Bliss insisted, though he felt anything but. He waved away her obvious distress and brushed himself down, feeling the nagging after-effects of the chase spreading an ache throughout his body in a single concussive wave. He tried pulling in deeper breaths, but each one felt like a punch to his chest.
‘Gul!’ he called out, looking up. When she turned, he raised a thumb and gave a single nod of congratulations.
Ansari broke into a wide grin and she nodded back at him. By her side, Walker dragged his feet, head bowed, the fight driven from him. Bliss looked on, pride swelling inside him over his young DC’s heroics.
Then Bishop stepped into his line of vision, concern in his eyes. ‘You still need to get yourself checked out, boss. You hit the ground hard, and you’re bleeding.’
Bliss shook his head, more at the scene they had left behind than in response to his DS. ‘What a bloody mess,’ he said, his voice a harsh rasp.
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Bishop said in his ear, little more than a whisper.
Bliss continued to focus his attention straight ahead. There was nothing they could do now but look on and ask themselves how it had gone so badly wrong.
‘No, I couldn’t, Bish,’ Bliss said eventually. ‘But that doesn’t change a damn thing.’
Forty-Three
It was shortly after midnight when the task force next met, and at that point they agreed to postpone the planned interrogations. Their decision meant the investigation would have no issues with PACE, while at the same time allowing everyone involved to regroup. Their prisoners had subsequently been given time to eat and rest, to be checked and cleared by a doctor, and offered legal representation.
Bliss was feeling the benefit of the delay, having had time to get cleaned up and change his clothes. After holding off and observing while others went hard at both men, getting nowhere with either one, finally it was his turn. He’d been happy enough to take a back seat so far throughout the morning, but having keenly watched the interviews he realised the odds were stacked against him.
Bliss went with Walker first, hoping to elicit information he could later use against Andy Price, but he didn’t rate his chances. Nei
ther Warburton nor Conway had budged Walker since the arrest, his implacable stare and disinclination to speak grating on Bliss’s raw nerve endings.
To everyone’s surprise, Walker had not demanded a solicitor. Bliss couldn’t decide if the decision was a sign of overconfidence, if the man was wary of allowing the depths of his depravity to be known by an outsider, or if he had merely accepted the magnitude of his crimes and the likely consequences. His expression gave nothing away as Bliss and Chandler entered the interview room and sat down at a small table pressed up against the wall opposite the door. The dull green tiles seemed not to reflect anything from the recessed tube lighting in the ceiling.
Bliss began by outlining the salient information he and the JTFO had gleaned so far. He opened up with the murder of Geraldine Price and then walked the case through, including everything the police had overheard by the lake the day before; he ended his opening salvo with the man’s unsolicited confessions. Walker eyed him throughout, tilting his head this way and that as if studying his inquisitor in the hope of picking up his own read. He said nothing. Bliss got no further when it came to questioning him. Judging by Phil Walker’s previous form and the lack of charges brought against him, his man-of-stone performance was no act.
After forty minutes of spinning plates and seeing them all crash to the floor one after the other, Bliss took his final shot. ‘I have to say I’m surprised you don’t want to drop Andy Price in it up to his neck. We suspect him of being both an advocate and an accomplice to everything you and his son did, but with what we have on him at the moment, he stands every chance of walking away from this with barely a scratch on his reputation. It’ll all fall on his son’s shoulders. And yours. Surely that’s got to hurt?’
Walker’s expression altered slightly; reflected in his eyes, sculpted by a shift in his body. He continued to stare back mutely, but although the change had been subtle, Bliss thought he had an idea regarding the man’s refusal to talk.
Slow Slicing (DI Bliss Book 7) Page 31