The only thing that was missing was women, he decided, and half-wished they’d stopped in Stafford and picked some up.
Getting women was easy for the Devil’s Disciples.
Some of them came to the camp more than willing, some had to be cajoled or even lied to. It didn’t matter how they got there, because once they were there, the Disciples would put them to work, making them perform acts that even a hardened prostitute might have baulked at.
They were trash, these bitches – even the ones who sobbed their hearts out as they were forced through their paces – and once they had satisfied every need, they could, like any other trash, be discarded without a second’s thought.
Badger wondered if it was too late to send a couple of the lads out scouting for girls – and then realized he wouldn’t have to, because a slim woman in a very large purple wig and a very short skirt was walking across the camp towards him, apparently oblivious to the rest of the gang.
She’d become aware of them soon enough, he thought, for though the other Devil’s Disciples were letting her pass unobstructed, they were following directly in her wake, so that by the time she reached him, she would have the whole gang behind her – and there would be no escape until she had done exactly what each and every one of them wanted her to do.
Meadows could sense the growing tension and excitement just behind her, but it didn’t bother her at all. She was used to getting that sort of reaction from all kinds of men, and anyway, she had a big – and really rather unpleasant – surprise in store for them.
She came to a halt in front of Badger, who was still sitting on the ground – taking his time, savouring the moment.
‘I’m Zelda,’ she said.
Badger licked his lips. ‘And you’ve come here for a good time, have you?’ he asked.
Meadows smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve come here for information.’
‘Not much in the tit line, but you’ve got nice legs,’ Badger told her. ‘Take off your kit and show us the goods.’
He saw himself as a hard man, Meadows thought, and the Devil’s Disciples standing behind her thought they were hard, too.
They were wrong.
They might be brave, they might be ruthless, they might be willing to withstand any amount of pain – but that still didn’t make them hard. They had probably never even met any really hard men – men with iron in their souls – but they were about to.
The quiet tension was suddenly shattered by the roar of powerful engines, and a score of new motor bikes drove through the trees and rapidly formed a semicircle around the Devil’s Disciples who were themselves forming a semicircle around Meadows.
‘Rules numbers one and two of running a successful gang – never concentrate all your forces in one area, and always keep one eye on your boundaries,’ Meadows said.
The new arrivals were all mounted on Harley Davidsons, a fact which would have drawn gasps of admiration and envy from the Devil’s Disciples, had not all their eyes been focused instead on the sawn-off shotguns that the riders were holding in their hands.
‘What the bloody hell is this?’ Badger asked, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.
‘This,’ said Meadows, ‘is my friends, the Pagans.’
‘Jesus!’ Badger gasped.
Meadows smiled again. ‘I take it from your reaction that their reputation precedes them,’ she said.
The leader of the Pagans, Doc, got off his bike and walked towards Meadows and Badger.
‘Back off,’ he ordered the Devil’s Disciples who were behind Meadows, and both his words and his shotgun said he meant it.
Looked at from treetop level, the scene might be reminiscent of a small intimate theatre, Meadows thought, with herself, Badger and Doc at centre stage, the Devil’s Disciples in the stalls, and the Pagans in the circle.
On the ground, it didn’t seem like that at all – on the ground, it felt like an overcrowded rat trap.
She knew she was the focus of attention, and that everyone else was waiting for her to speak.
If Monika Paniatowski had been in this situation, she would have seized the opportunity to find out what part the Devil’s Disciples had played in Terry Lewis’ murder, Meadows told herself – except that with that attitude, she would never have had the opportunity to find out, because the Pagans would have sussed her as a cop long ago, and she would already be dead.
She wasn’t about to make that kind of mistake herself. She would ignore the information that DS Meadows might have wanted, and would find out only what Zelda needed to know.
‘Last night, three of your gang raped a woman in the grounds of Stamford Hall,’ she said. ‘That woman is my sister, so what I want to do now is to have a word with those three heroes. All right?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Badger snarled.
Meadows sighed. ‘You know – and I know – that none of these tossers here could rape a woman without bragging about it to anybody who’d listen,’ she said. ‘I want those names.’
Badger said nothing.
‘The nicely-nicely approach isn’t working out, Doc,’ Meadows said to the big Pagan, ‘so I suppose we’ll just have to show them how serious we are.’
Doc turned to face the Devil’s Disciples, who had moved some way back but were now effectively penned in by the motorbike-mounted, shotgun-wielding Pagans. He lowered his own weapon, and seemed to be aiming it at the ground. Then he pulled the trigger, and the right foot of one of the Devil’s Disciples closest to him exploded in a cascade of leather and blood.
The wounded man screamed and fell to the ground, as the other Devil’s Disciples instinctively backed away to give him space.
Doc reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of bandage, and threw it down beside the fallen Disciple.
‘If you want to stop him bleeding to death, you should wrap that tightly round the wound,’ he said indifferently.
Two of the other Devil’s Disciples knelt down beside their wounded comrade, and while one of them cut through the remains of his boot, the other first stuck a rag in his mouth and then held him down.
Meadows waited until the bandage had been wound around the damaged foot, then said, ‘That’s what happens to people who don’t cross us – so you can imagine what could happen to the people who do.’
‘I …’ Badger gasped.
‘I want those three names from you,’ Meadows snapped, ‘and I want them now!’
‘I can’t tell you,’ Badger said. He was slowly getting over the initial shock, and his voice was starting to sound firmer now. ‘We’re a band of brothers, bound by blood, and we don’t betray each other. So kill me if you want to – but you’ll get nothing out of me.’
He meant it, Meadows thought. If he gave her names now, he was finished, and within the twisted code which governed his existence, death was preferable to dishonour. And his death, in many ways, would be the crowning achievement of his life. It would bring with it a kind of immortality, and he would die happy, knowing that he was already on the way to becoming a legend.
She scanned the faces of the other Devil’s Disciples, and found the same kind of resolve there – so it was just as well, wasn’t it, that she had a fall-back plan which involved a fate worse than death?
‘Phase two, Doc,’ she said to the massive Pagan.
Doc nodded. ‘Get your clothes off, scumbags. Do it now, or somebody else will lose a foot.’
None of the Devil’s Disciples moved.
‘You,’ Doc said, pointing his shotgun at one of the younger Disciples, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Cobra!’ the boy said defiantly.
‘Cobra!’ Doc repeated, with derision. ‘Cobra! All right, Cobra, I’d really appreciate it if you’d show the rest of your mates how it’s done.’
Slowly and reluctantly, Cobra lifted his tee-shirt over his head.
‘Have you got the idea now?’ Doc asked the other Devil’s Disciples. ‘What we’re goi
ng to have now is a race to get naked – and the last one over the line gets kneecapped.’
The Devil’s Disciples began to strip, doing their best to give the impression they were in no hurry, but all the while watching the others to make sure no one was getting too far ahead of them.
There was a rumbling sound in the distance, and then, through the trees, the Devil’s Disciples could see a bus pulling up.
‘Don’t worry, that’s ours,’ Meadows said. ‘Pagan Transportation, at your service.’
‘What do you need a bus for?’
‘We need it because we’re going to take you into town.’
‘What … why would you …?’ Badger asked – and though he had no idea what was coming next, he was already frightened of it.
Meadows smiled. ‘Didn’t I mention the next part of the plan to you?’ she asked innocently.
‘No.’
‘Well, when you’re all bollock naked, we’re going to paint your arses yellow, whisk you into Stafford, and chain you to lamp posts all around town.’
Hands stopped undoing belt buckles, fingers ceased to pull down zips. The Devil’s Disciples had frozen.
‘The race is still on – and the prize is still the same for last man over the finishing line,’ Doc reminded them.
A dramatic, heroic death was one thing, but to be chained to a lamp post – to be laughed at and humiliated by the very people who should live in fear of you – was quite another, the looks on the Devil’s Disciples’ faces said.
And it would happen – because you couldn’t prevent it happening when your foot had disintegrated or your kneecap had been blown away.
‘Give her the names,’ Chainsaw said.
And all around him, other Devil’s Disciples started to shout out the same thing – ‘Give her the names … give her the names.’
‘You give her the names!’ Badger challenged him.
And when Chainsaw did just that – croaking the words in the voice of a Judas who had been pulled down from the tree only half-hanged – there was an almost general feeling of relief.
Though, it had to be admitted, that relief was not shared by Slash, Knuckles and Wolfman.
Spike had been on the road ever since he’d ridden away from Stamford Hall the previous day. He had been driving at high speeds – at dangerous speeds – for most of that time. By rights, he should have crashed – and died – at least half a dozen times. Yet it hadn’t happened. That same cruel god who had loved his ancestors for their arrogance – and who hated him for his lack of it – had looked down on him and decided it would be a good joke to let him carry on living.
He had no idea where he had been, and only the vaguest memories of catching a few hours uneasy sleep under a tree. He hadn’t eaten at all, but the great emptiness in the pit of his stomach had nothing to do with hunger.
He saw the police station up ahead of him – its illuminated sign a beacon in the dark night of his soul – and he knew immediately what he had to do.
When he got off his bike, he did not put it on its stand, but instead simply let it fall to the ground, because he had no use for it any more.
As he walked towards the main entrance of the police station, the voices of the past were playing in his head.
‘You’re not half the man your father was,’ said his housemaster, as he wielded his cane with a gleeful ferocity, before slashing it across Spike’s backside. ‘Not a quarter of the man!’
‘Your father would have horsewhipped any man who didn’t show him sufficient respect,’ his mother had said. ‘But you let other people walk all over you. What kind of man does that make you?’
No kind of man at all, Mother, he thought.
But the worst of his tormentors had been his father himself.
‘I find it almost impossible to believe that, coming from such good stock, you have turned out as you have. Is that my fault, do you think?’
No, Father, the fault is mine, and mine alone.
He had thought he had finally found his home – his own place in the universe – with the Devil’s Disciples, and in order to sustain that illusion he had excused or explained away anything the Disciples had done which he really knew – deep within himself – was wrong.
But there were some things which even his desperate desire for that illusion could not sustain. He had admired Badger because he needed to – but how could he still admire a man who sold death in a syringe?
He entered the police station, and walked up to the desk.
The desk sergeant, who had been happily reading his evening newspaper, looked up.
‘Yes?’ he said, in a bored, disinterested voice.
‘I want to report a crime,’ Spike said.
The sergeant sighed, and pulled out a form from under the desk.
‘Name?’ he asked, his pen poised over the form.
‘Spike.’
The sergeant sighed again. ‘Not your nickname, lad, your proper bloody name.’
‘The Honourable Sebastian de Courtney,’ Spike said.
The sergeant put his pen down on the counter.
‘Are you taking the piss?’ he demanded.
‘No,’ Spike said, handing the sergeant his driving license.
The sergeant examined the license, then looked up at Spike again with an entirely new expression on his face.
‘Well, bugger me!’ he said.
The same woods, a different clearing.
Eight people – four Pagans armed with sawn-off shotguns; three half-naked Devil’s Disciples with their hands tied behind their backs; and one sadomasochistic police officer who was playing the role of Zelda, her alter ego, for all that she was worth.
It was Doc who dominated the scene, just as he dominated the scene wherever he was, Meadows thought. Despite the way he was dressed – in tattered jeans and greasy jacket – there was something almost godlike about him.
Back in the old days, he would have killed her if he’d ever found out she was an undercover police woman, and even now – when she was no longer in a position to harm the Pagans – her membership of the force would have been enough to justify her death.
But he hadn’t known then, and he still didn’t know, and when she had appeared out of the blue – just as she had disappeared into the blue, three years earlier – it had been the woman he had once ridden with that he saw. And when she had begged a favour, he had granted her request in a heartbeat.
‘Listen, we want to pay you for the fun we had with your sister,’ Knuckles said.
‘That’s exactly why we’re here in these woods – to even up the score,’ Meadows replied.
‘No, I don’t mean pay like that,’ Knuckles babbled. ‘I mean, we’ll pay with money. We’ve got six thousand quid between us. You can have it all.’
‘Six thousand pounds is a lot of money. Where did it come from?’ Meadows asked curiously, as, despite what she’d promised herself, the detective sergeant in her temporarily nudged Zelda to one side.
‘We’ve … we’ve been saving it up,’ Knuckles said.
Meadows turned to Doc. ‘Do you think he’s telling the truth?’
Doc shook his massive head. ‘Not a chance.’
‘Where did the money come from?’ Meadows repeated.
‘We dealt some heroin at that rock festival.’
‘And where did you get the heroin from?’
‘That feller fixed it for us.’
‘He must think I’m bleeding psychic or something,’ Meadows said to Doc. She turned back to Knuckles. ‘Which feller, Bonehead?’
‘The bald feller – the one that hired us as security.’
A few of the pieces of the puzzle were finally starting to click into place, Meadows thought.
‘The bald feller!’ she repeated, disbelievingly. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘It’s true, he …’
‘So what else can you tell me about him, apart from the fact that he was bald? Did he have duck feathers sprouting out of his arse?’
‘No, he …’
‘You’re making him up, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not. I swear I’m not,’ Knuckles said. ‘I think … I think I heard Badger call him Elton.’
‘So you got the six thousand pounds from selling the heroin that this feller Elton got for you?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.’
‘Doc?’ Meadows asked.
‘Even in a crap outfit like the Devil’s Disciples, it’ll be the boss that keeps all the money,’ Doc said.
‘Last chance,’ Meadows told Knuckles. ‘Where did you get the bloody money from?’
‘We got it for beating up that posh tart at the Hall.’
That posh tart?
The countess?
‘Who paid you to beat her up?’ she demanded.
Knuckles told her – and as incredible as it seemed – she thought she believed him.
‘I don’t want your money, and neither does the … does my sister,’ Meadows said. ‘What we’re looking for is revenge. Now we could blow a kneecap off each of you, or …’
She paused, and turned towards Doc, and when the Devil’s Disciples did the same, they could see the thin scalpel in his hand, glinting in the moonlight.
‘No,’ Knuckles screamed, sinking to his knees. ‘Please, not that. Blow off a kneecap. I don’t care. But not that!’
On either side of him, his two companions had followed suit, and were blubbering like babies.
The detective sergeant had all she needed – or at least, all she was likely to get from this man – and she made her graceful exit, leaving the front of Meadows’ brain free for Zelda to run wild.
‘Hmm, kneecapping you does have its appeal,’ she conceded, ‘but given the nature of your crime, I think the other option would be much more appropriate.’
SEVENTEEN
10th August
It wasn’t until she was walking up the main steps of Whitebridge Police Headquarters that Meadows remembered she still had the ‘souvenirs’ of the previous evening’s work.
Doc had presented them to her – or rather to Zelda – with a great show of ceremony, and she had felt she had no choice but to accept them in the spirit in which they’d been offered.
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