Kiss of Death

by Paul Finch

  Times changed, of course. And so did attitudes and ambitions.

  As he sipped more coffee, he thought again about how comfy the handsome, debonair Jack Reed was in his new role as DI at SCU, which in effect made him Gemma’s deputy. And how comfy Gemma apparently was to have him there.

  And it wasn’t as if the Flying Squad itself wasn’t appealing. Heck had worked Tower Hamlets Robbery once, though that had been a smaller role – mainly he’d found himself going after muggers and other street bandits. The Sweeney pursued the big boys. For that reason, there’d always been a certain glamour about it – they were regularly in the press and on TV. Their reputation for being wideboys, just a bit too close in spirit to the East End villains they often investigated, had always put him off in the past.

  But again, things changed.

  ‘Not that Squad DIs don’t do a bit of soldiering themselves from time to time,’ Hunter added. ‘Just think, you can make your ultimate fantasy real … you’ll be Regan Mark II, a displaced Manchester lad working over the blaggers of London.’

  ‘Who’d I be replacing?’ Heck asked him.

  ‘Ray Marciano.’

  ‘Come again …?’

  Hunter shrugged. ‘He’s left us, Heck.’

  Heck was astounded. ‘Ray Marciano’s left the Flying Squad?’

  ‘Not just the Squad, pal. The job.’

  The term ‘living legend’ was often overused in police circles, but Ray Marciano, the Flying Squad’s quietly spoken detective inspector from Sevenoaks, Kent, had proved to be the exception to that rule. For the last nineteen years, he’d led one successful campaign after another against the capital’s legion of bank robbers, taking down more firms than anyone else before him, securing hundreds of years’ worth of convictions for major-league faces. He wasn’t just considered a brilliant detective, he was also better connected and therefore better informed than almost anyone else in the Met, which was all the more remarkable given that he wasn’t a London boy by origin. There was scarcely a snout in the city he didn’t have a working relationship with, barely a villain who didn’t know him well. In fact, it was gang leader, Don Parry, whom Marciano had arrested in connection with the Millennium Dome raid and sent down for twenty years, who had christened him, with a degree of grudging respect, ‘Thief-Taker No. 1’.

  ‘Would you believe he’s gone working for a defence solicitor?’ Hunter said.

  Heck was vaguely aware that his jaw had dropped. ‘You’re telling me Ray Marciano hasn’t just chucked it in, he’s chucked it in to go and be a case worker for a brief?’

  ‘Not just any brief. It’s Morgan Robbins.’

  ‘Robbins …’ Heck tried to recall; the name sounded familiar.

  ‘He’s the one who got Milena Misanyan off,’ Hunter said.

  Heck did remember it. Last year, the City of London Police had charged some female oligarch from Turkey or somewhere, who was newly settled in the UK, with various highfalutin white-collar offences: embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, that kind of thing. Apparently, they’d done months of work on her before striking, only to see her defence, organised by Morgan Robbins, take them on at every turn and defeat them. It had been all over the papers for several months.

  Heck seemed to recollect a photo of Misanyan on the cover of Time magazine: it was a portrait of an archetypical eastern beauty, complete with dark eyes, thick lashes and ruby lips, a fetching silk scarf woven around her head, her expression a bland but enigmatic smile. That item had come well before the recent court battles; he thought it had been in celebration of her joining the ranks of the world’s female billionaires – the headline had been something like From Hell to Heaven – but he hadn’t bothered reading the story.

  ‘Thanks to the Misanyan case, Robbins is no ordinary lawyer these days,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s a big fish, a real whopper.’

  ‘Even so …’ Heck shook his head. ‘Hearing that Ray Marciano would rather be a case worker than a cop is like hearing Kim Jong-un’s up for Man of the Year. It doesn’t compute.’

  ‘He’s not really a case worker, is he? More like their lead investigator. Look … don’t be surprised, Heck. Ray’s still doing what he loves, only now there’ll be no more pissing around with Met politics, no having to cover his back all day, no having to mind his Ps and Qs or watch what he says in case he upsets some fucking snowflake back in the office. On top of that, he’ll be on massive money. Way more than we can afford to pay.’

  Heck arched an eyebrow. ‘You’re not exactly selling the Squad to me, Bob.’

  ‘Look, Heck … we’re all pig-sick of the changes in the job. Everyone’s pissed off about their pensions. We’ve had lads slogging their guts out for twenty years, waiting for promotion, only to see chinless wonders brought in from Civvy Street as direct-entry superintendents. It’s not just us, it’s you lot in NCG too … I know you’re feeling it. But there are still some oases of common sense here and there, even in London.’

  They were alone in the Refs Room, but Hunter lowered his voice conspiratorially.

  ‘Heck, you know that with me as your guv’nor, you’d get a lot more leeway than you do under Her Ladyship. And I’m only answerable to Al Easterbrook, which basically means I’m answerable to no one.’

  Alan Easterbrook was Senior Commander of the Flying Squad, a man once famed but now with a reputation for being a distant, remote figure, whose main ambition in life was to get through each day without any underlings bothering him with details.

  ‘Until Easterbrook retires,’ Heck said.

  ‘Why would he retire?’ Hunter replied. ‘They want us all to stay on. And he’s got the cushiest number ever. It’s me who does the donkey work. He just gets the credit for it.’

  ‘Look, Bob …’ Heck threw his half-empty cup into a bin. ‘I don’t know if I’m even qualified to replace Ray Marciano.’

  ‘You must be joking, pal. Ray never did anything you don’t. You’re bang on for it.’

  Before Heck could argue further, the door swung open and Gemma came in, followed by Jack Reed. They headed to the vending machine, deep in conversation about how to pitch the next interview, though Gemma was visibly distracted by the sight of Heck and Bob Hunter, particularly Hunter.

  ‘You don’t have to decide now, pal,’ Hunter said quietly, when the other two had resumed their discussion. ‘But I’ll have to make a decision in the next few weeks. Can’t leave a vacant DI desk for too long. Not with all the bloody nutters we’ve got lining up to do jobs.’

  Heck pondered. The offer had come from left-field and, even if other things hadn’t been preoccupying him, would have left him a little dazed, not to say doubtful. It wasn’t just the personal ties he had at SCU, he’d been with the unit eleven years now. In some ways, he’d almost become institutionalised. It was difficult to imagine being anywhere else.

  ‘I’ll get back to you, Bob,’ he said.

  ‘Give it some serious thought.’ Hunter leaned again into his personal space. ‘SCU’s a good gig, but anyone who stays in the same place for too long gets stale. Plus, I’ll say it again … National Crime Group’s on rocky ground. You don’t believe me … wait around and see.’

  He glided away, leaving the Refs Room without a backward glance.

  ‘What’s Bob Hunter doing here?’ Gemma wondered, coming over.

  ‘Dunno,’ Heck replied. ‘Suppose he’s got some case in.’

  ‘Thought his new patch was the East End?’

  ‘Flying Squad, ma’am. If anyone makes good use of this nick, it’s them.’

  By the look on her face, she didn’t believe this for one second, but decided to let it pass.

  ‘Purdham given us a full confession yet?’ he asked.

  ‘In the end,’ she said. ‘I actually believe him … somehow or other, they railroaded him into participating in these crimes. It’s amazing what you’ll do to become part of a club. But yeah, to answer your question … if Ulfskar and his cronies don’t get thirty years apiece, no one ever will. Onc
e we get the forensics in play, it’s over for them.’

  She walked from the room with coffee in hand.

  ‘OK, Heck?’ Reed asked, edging after her.

  ‘Fine, sir,’ Heck replied stiffly. ‘You?’

  ‘Never better. You can call me Jack, you know.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. I always think we’ve got to earn the right to use first names.’

  Reed smiled as he left. ‘No one’s earned that right more than you.’

  ‘Who’s talking about me?’ Heck said under his breath.

  Chapter 3

  The impending threat to the National Crime Group felt as if it might be real. Heck was in no position to judge, or even voice opinions on the matter – but there was rarely smoke without fire, and there was an awful lot of smoke at present.

  Almost certainly, there’d be pay and recruitment freezes, people would be expected to work longer hours for less, resources would likely be slashed, and maybe staff too. If the worst came to the worst – and certain folk were saying that the crisis was actually this bad – entire departments could be disbanded, and all personnel reassigned. On the face of it, the latter would seem unlikely, but it would be a sure way to make an awful lot of savings in one fell swoop. And in that regard, the National Crime Group, thus far untouched by the cutbacks, had to be a prime target.

  It comprised three specialist branches: the Kidnap Squad, the Organised Crime Division and the Serial Crimes Unit. In the eyes of many, these were all luxuries the British police could ill afford, as they monopolised manpower and funds for relatively small gain. Even Heck had to admit that it didn’t look good in the stats when an SCU detective made maybe only four or five arrests per year. What matter that these were nearly always repeat serious offenders – serial murderers, rapists and the like – who may already have ruined countless lives and had the potential to continue doing exactly that? It was still only four or five villains off the street each year, compared to the forty or fifty that a divisional detective might account for, never mind the hundred or so claimed by the average uniform.

  He tried to put it from his mind as he worked his Megane through the heavy mid-morning traffic in Dagenham, but it frustrated him no end. Several days had passed since the Black Chapel sting and yet the ominous stories about the unit’s potential fate continued, seemingly unaffected by these recent positive results. In the words of DS Eric Fisher, SCU’s main intel man, ‘Why should we expect preferential treatment just because we do our job?’ Heck supposed that Fisher had a point, but it was a job that few others could do.

  Again though, he tried to dismiss it all. He’d always sought to ignore the internal politics of the police, especially high-end politics like this, mainly because it was hardly the sort of thing you’d expect of a ‘rogue angel’.

  This unusual status referred to the roving commission Heck was often accorded during SCU enquiries. Another name for it, again of Gemma Piper’s invention, was ‘Minister Without Portfolio’. In a nutshell, this meant that he was rarely attached to any specific part of the investigation but instead was authorised to develop and chase down his own leads. This was a privilege he’d earned over many years, on the basis of having felt numerous quality collars on the back of his own analysis and intuition. But whether it would have happened under any other supervisor than Gemma was questionable.

  Not that Gemma was his best friend at present, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason why. It was certain that the menacing sounds from the top floor had put her on edge. She’d been brusque and indifferent with him recently, if not downright vexed. Neutral observers might argue that this was their normal relationship – there’d been many times in the past when it felt like they were at daggers drawn, but this was usually because of procedural disputes, not as a matter of course. Lately, she’d been actively and protractedly cold with him, much more than was normal, and much, much more than she was with anyone else.

  Heck puzzled over it as he left the A13 and joined the Heathway.

  He hadn’t done anything especially wrong, as far as he knew. Quite the opposite, in fact. His own intel had laid the Black Chapel on a plate for them, for which he’d received minimal gratitude. He wondered if it could be down to his lack of enthusiasm for the recently appointed DI Reed, though on that front Gemma was more than making up for it herself.

  He shook that thought from his head, aggravated in ways he couldn’t explain.

  He was now on the edge of the Rimmington Hall estate and, inevitably, his mind moved to other things. St Agatha’s Roman Catholic Church was easy enough to find. It faced onto Rimmington Avenue from behind a tall wire-mesh fence. There’d be a car park behind it somewhere, but as this was August and the junior school next door was closed, there was nothing to stop him parking on the main road at the front.

  St Agatha’s was an industrial-age structure, stark and functional, its brickwork ingrained with the smoke and soot of generations. After recent investigations, especially the pursuit of the Black Chapel, Heck felt as if he’d been spending a lot of time in and around churches. But the lichen-clad tombstones and ivy-hung chancels of rural Suffolk were a world away from this place. Not that St Agatha’s grim appearance made it seem any less incongruous that Jimmy ‘Snake’ Fletcher now hung out here, though it wouldn’t have been the first time in Heck’s experience that a half-hearted soul had only needed to be exposed once to the full viciousness of his chosen team before he went scuttling off to join the opposition.

  That said, Fletcher was still lucky that the local parish priest had been sympathetic.

  Heck didn’t bother trying the front door but walked down a side passage into a small yard at the back. On one side here stood the entrance to the presbytery; on the other stood St Agatha’s Church Hall.

  The latter was a free-standing building, a single-storey with a prefab roof, and walls coated in white stucco. It was in regular use, and in fact its main entrance stood open now, so Heck ventured inside. Here, a door on the right led into the hall itself, an open space of bare floorboards and scattered school chairs. A door on the left revealed a short corridor with signposts for toilets. A whitewashed brick arch stood directly in front and, beyond that, a stairwell dropped out of view.

  Heck descended. At the first turn in the stair, he saw a startling piece of graffiti on the facing wall. Some vandal had used venom-green paint to daub the words:

  Abandon hope, all ye who enter here …

  And underneath it:

  … if you had any in the fucking first place

  Heck understood the meaning of this when he looked right, to where the final flight of steps descended three or four feet, before connecting with a corridor built from bare brick and smelling strongly of mildew. Exposed piping, unlagged but dangling with cobwebs, ran the full length of it. Heck could just about see this thanks to the illumination provided by a series of grimy light bulbs mounted every ten yards in wire-mesh cages crusted with limescale. Some forty yards ahead, a pair of doorways led off opposite each other, and a little way beyond those, at the corridor’s far end, stood a closed door made of what looked like solid steel.

  Heck walked forward, footsteps clicking on damp cement.

  On reaching the facing doorways, he glanced into two squat brick rooms, in which massive cisterns churned quietly. He strode on towards the steel door. It was heavy, full of rivets and had no visible handle.

  Just as he reached it, it slid open on its greased runner.

  Snake Fletcher stood there, the eyes inscrutable behind the bottle-thick lenses of his heavy-framed glasses.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said.

  ‘Some welcome,’ Heck replied. ‘What’s wrong with the pub, or a park bench?’

  ‘I told you, Heck … I’m not going topside at the mo.’

  ‘Never had you down as the sort who scares easily.’

  ‘Then you don’t know me as well as you think, eh?’

  That was most likely true, Heck conceded, as Snake withdrew into
the dank chamber beyond the heavy door.

  Some informants were interested in one thing only: the money they earned off the scalps of those fellow criminals they sent to their doom. Others were trying to pay off scores or remove rivals. But Snake didn’t seem to tick any of those boxes. And that had always troubled Heck about this case. If you couldn’t work someone out from the word ‘go’, if you’d never been able to fathom their purpose … how could you really trust them?

  He’d first encountered the guy while working in Tower Hamlets Robbery. He’d pulled in a desperate youngster, Billy Fletcher, Snake’s little brother, for participating in a string of corner-shop stick-ups. There wasn’t much down for Billy at the time, but Heck had managed to persuade his colleagues that the young idiot had been drawn into the crimes through his heroin addiction. He’d also persuaded Billy to turn evidence, thus saving himself both from prison and underworld retribution. Snake hadn’t seen his brother for fifteen years now, as he was safely inside a witness protection scheme, but that didn’t matter to him. At least, the kid was still alive. And after that, Snake had always felt that Heck, of all the coppers in London, was someone he could trust.

  But still … you could never afford to be totally sure of an informant’s motives.

  It wasn’t as if Snake Fletcher was the most prepossessing-looking bloke.

  The first time Heck had seen him, he’d made him for an over-the-hill metalhead: early forties, bespectacled, ratty hair and beard, faded tats on his gangling arms, ragged, oily denims. Now, fifteen years later, his image hadn’t changed much, except that he was thinner and greyer and had ditched the proto-biker gear for a set of dingy caretaker’s overalls. For all that, he still smelled strongly of cig smoke and sweat.

  ‘You having a cuppa, or what?’ he asked.