Kiss of Death

by Paul Finch

‘Appear to depict?’

  ‘We’ve seen one for ourselves.’

  ‘Creeley?’

  ‘Correct. Cleghorn says there’ve been several of these. A kind of crude gladiatorial combat. Men stripped to their undies, put in a sort of arena, given street weapons, pipes, bats, chains and stuff … fighting for their lives against these human tanks in body armour. It always ends the same way … nastily.’

  ‘So, Cleghorn’s a member of a snuff movie club,’ Gemma said. ‘And he thinks we’re going to do a deal with him?’

  Heck shrugged. ‘If it means we get the people running the club and making the films … perhaps we should.’

  ‘This club’s online, presumably?’ Gwen said.

  ‘No, that’s the thing. None of this stuff is on the internet. Seems they’re quite nervous about leaving electronic trails that might lead back to them. So, it all takes place in some kind of renovated basement that they’re using as a cinema, with a projector and a big screen, and even a nice old lady to sell ice lollies at the interval …’ He shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know about the last bit, but you get the picture. Only proven members get in, and they pay handsomely for the privilege.’

  ‘How did Cleghorn get a copy of the film?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘As I say, he claims to have nicked it. When I say “projector”, I mean a laptop wired to a big widescreen telly. Seems they have a meeting every so often, and watch all these movies one after another. But Eddie Creeley’s farewell performance only got a lukewarm reception – I guess because he didn’t put up much of a fight. At the next break this particular pen drive got shoved onto a shelf with a few others. Cleghorn kept an eye on it, and as soon as no one was looking, he slipped it into his pocket. Reckons it was so unpopular with the punters, it probably hasn’t been missed even now.’

  ‘We must never disappoint the paying public,’ Gwen said wryly.

  ‘Why did he steal it?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘Simple … or so he says.’ Again, Heck delicately adjusted his position. ‘Cleghorn’s a local lad, Hull-born, and he recognised Eddie Creeley straight away. Seems our Ed used to beat him up when they were at school together, steal his lunch money, all the usual scrote stuff. And one day, when Cleghorn went round to their house with his mum, to complain, the only person there was Nan Creeley, who would never hear a bad word against her kid brother and sent them off with a flea in their ear. Cleghorn reckons he’s owed them one ever since, and this was just too good to be true.’

  Another silence ensued.

  ‘And do you believe this story?’ Gemma asked. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Like I say, ma’am, we won’t know what to believe until we get some further info. And that’s the part Cleghorn’s sitting on. We searched his house after arrest, and found these …’ He held up a transparent evidence bag containing stubs of paper. ‘Train ticket receipts … in an unemptied bin. London and back. Lots of them, over several months. So, it’s fair to say this club is based in London, but he won’t say whereabouts specifically, he won’t tell us how you gain access to it, he won’t tell us who’s running it.’

  ‘What are the other offences he’s committed?’ Gwen asked.

  Heck listed the charges pending against Cleghorn – TWOC and police assault, as he’d promised during the arrest, though he’d now added a few extra: causing grievous bodily harm, theft of a boat, leaving the scene of an RTA and driving without insurance.

  ‘The Hull copper he GBH’d is a lad called Barry Hodges,’ Heck said. ‘He’s got a broken nose and two fractured cheekbones, so I think Cleghorn’s going down … especially as he’s already got lots of form. That gives us a bit of leverage, but not enough apparently.’

  ‘If this club is based in London, wouldn’t it better if we just put our own grasses on it?’ Gemma said.

  ‘We can do that,’ Heck replied, ‘but it sounds like this thing is one of the best-kept secrets. And our clock’s ticking, isn’t it?’

  They considered the situation.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need to say it,’ Heck added, ‘but if this thing is kosher, and other folk like Eddie Creeley are dying in this home-made arena, it’s not impossible that we might find out what’s happened to more of our missing fugitives.’

  The women almost looked shocked.

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’ Gwen asked.

  ‘It’s only a theory,’ Heck replied, ‘but … no one’s getting anywhere, are they? Or so I’m told. Not even DI Reed, apparently …’

  Gemma was about to interrupt, but he carried on regardless.

  ‘Gary Quinnell’s hit a dead end in Shropshire. Same seems to have happened to Andy Rawlins and Burt Cunliffe in Nottingham. In both cases, local informants told them it’s weird … like the targets have just vanished.’

  ‘Of course they’ve vanished,’ Gwen said. ‘They’re facing full-life jail terms. It’s a miracle they didn’t vanish years ago.’

  ‘You’d certainly think that,’ Heck replied. ‘But, for whatever reason, this particular bunch have been dumb enough to hang around in the UK, in some cases for years … until the last few months, when suddenly they’ve all started disappearing.’

  There was a brief, contemplative silence.

  ‘But as I say,’ he added, ‘it’s only a theory. The main thing, if this lead’s a goer, is that we might have cracked a vigilante firm who are organising gladiatorial combat to the death. How effective will our respective outfits look then? Especially when we make sure the dailies get the story first.’

  ‘And the price of this win-win is that we don’t connect Cleghorn in any way to this cinema club, or to any of the murders?’ Gemma said, still sounding unimpressed.

  Heck nodded. ‘That’s about the strength of it. Says he’ll give us everything we need to close them down. If we can offer him protection, he’ll even witness for us. Give us a full statement, offer testimony in court, the lot.’

  ‘What do the local brass think?’ Gwen asked.

  ‘Well … DCI Bateson’s blazing about the injury to one of his detectives. I get the impression he’s the sort of bloke who blazes quite a lot, but on this occasion with some justification. And CPS are doing what they usually do, sitting there like lemons, unsure. But if one of you two was to have a word …?’

  Neither of the SIOs initially responded.

  ‘I take it Cleghorn’s got full legal representation?’ Gwen eventually said.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Heck said. ‘His solicitor’s onside. The idea probably came from him. He knows his dipshit client could finish up in big trouble here.’

  ‘We need to tell Cleghorn and his solicitor that he’s not out of the woods yet,’ Gwen said. ‘If this snuff club turns out to be fantasy, for any reason … I mean, even if it was there once but isn’t there any more because someone involved has got wind that we’re onto them, that won’t be good enough.’

  ‘I can tell them that, ma’am, but I think it’d be better coming from you.’

  Gwen nodded. ‘That’s OK. Do we actually need to come up there?’

  ‘I don’t think so. If you get what you want on the phone, me and Gail will probably be coming down to you.’

  ‘I’d say excellent work, Heck …’ she shifted her chair backward, ‘but first of all, I want to see how big those roof-repair bills are.’ And she left the conference.

  ‘Upon which subject,’ Gemma said, ‘despite the bloody rudeness of the way you said it, you can submit the claim for your suit, and I’ll give it due consideration. But if this turns out to be another wildman caper, Heck … I mean it, you can pay for the damn thing yourself.’

  ‘I’ll pay for it, ma`am,’ Heck said sourly, ‘… on the day I see a receipt proving that Jack Reed paid for his dog collar.’

  Then, he too left the conference.

  Heck found Gail in the canteen. It was mid-evening, so she sat there alone, sipping coffee.

  ‘You’re going to get us both canned, Heck,’ was all she said.

  ‘What do you mean
?’

  ‘Talking to the Deputy SIO like that.’

  He sloped to the vending machine. ‘Listening in, were you?’

  ‘Firstly, I could hardly fail to hear as you were only in the next room. Secondly, I wasn’t aware it was supposed to be a private conversation. It’s not like it doesn’t involve me.’

  He returned with a coffee for himself. ‘You are aware we’ve just broken the case?’

  Gail sat back. ‘I’m aware of no such thing. We’ve made ground, yeah … and we’ve made two very good arrests, but at least one of them has got nothing to do with the enquiry and might still have negative consequences for us.’

  ‘We’re not going to get canned, OK?’ Heck slumped down on the other side of the table. ‘We’re well on.’

  Gail mulled this over, and said: ‘What is it with you and her, anyway?’

  ‘Now what are you talking about?’

  ‘Gemma. I get it that you two were together once, but that was ages back, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly was.’

  ‘OK, so …? I mean, she’s the Lioness. She’s got a rep for eating mouthy male officers for breakfast. But somehow, with you she’s … well, “tolerant” would be one word.’

  He shrugged and sipped his drink. ‘She knows I get results, that’s all.’

  ‘That is such a fucking cliché, Heck.’

  ‘Clichés are clichés because they tend to be true.’

  ‘Clichés are clichés because people trot them out without thinking too hard.’

  ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I don’t know what the explanation is. Gemma probably feels she’s had her claws pruned by being made second fiddle to Gwen Straker.’

  ‘Well, if that’s true it makes you a pathetic bully, doesn’t it?’

  He stared at her, askance, the mere thought that anyone could believe Gemma Piper was capable of being bullied leaving him dumbfounded. ‘Sorry … what?’

  ‘She’s had her confidence knocked, and your response is to stick the boot in. That’s particularly despicable.’

  Heck didn’t initially reply. Was it conceivable? That Gemma – supercool, super-efficient Gemma, so used to being in command – was now so shaken to see her normal SIO role usurped by an older, more senior officer, that she was losing her roar?

  ‘So, what is it?’ Gail asked him again.

  ‘I said I don’t know. Look …’ he tried to wave it away, ‘… we’ve known each other a long time, and we’re having problems. It happens.’

  ‘No, you’re having problems.’ Gail stood up. ‘I’m not dumb, Heck. You’ve got to sort your head out where DSU Piper’s concerned, all right?’ She marched from the canteen, but half a second later came marching back in. ‘And for God’s sake, Jack Reed has got no relevance to our case. So, stop bringing him up.’

  ‘He’s all show, you know.’

  ‘I don’t bloody believe this.’

  ‘Gemma’s not being forthcoming about it, but he’s chasing a case in the Home Counties, and it sounds to me like he’s getting nowhere.’

  Gail leaned down. ‘You know, if she fancies him … she fancies him. That’s just tough shit, and you’d better deal with it, Heck, because getting into SCU was my dream, and I’m not seeing it screwed up because you’ve got a schoolboy beef with someone who’s probably destined to rise twenty ranks higher than you whatever happens with Operation Sledgehammer.’

  She marched out again.

  Heck knew that he should go with her, so they could get on with interviewing a prisoner who was allegedly ready to sing like a canary. But for a moment or two, he sat alone, pondering the events of recent days.

  It ought to be easy to shrug off this thing that was relentlessly bugging him. To admit, even if only to himself, that Jack Reed’s presence wasn’t that big a deal, and that Gemma Piper was a grown woman, and a singleton – she could tap off with whoever she wanted to.

  But he couldn’t shake his mystification that, all these years down the line, she never had.

  Ever since their own break-up, Heck had never known or heard of her dating anyone else. He hadn’t even known her get especially friendly with anyone. He’d always put this down to the steely thing she’d become over so many challenging years; to her wilful, hard-headed nature; to her turbocharged policewoman persona. Not many blokes outside the job would go for that, though with Gemma’s looks she still should have been able to take her pick.

  Was there a deeper reason, then?

  She wasn’t the one who’d wanted to break up, after all. Or so she’d said. Was it conceivable that, even after so long, she still carried a minuscule flame for him, and that, deep down, he’d always known this?

  He gulped his coffee and stood up, determined to shake that idea off.

  Unrealistic hopes were the bane of so many men’s lives.

  For all kinds of reasons, a romantic entanglement wouldn’t work between them these days, the biggest of all being that they didn’t dovetail professionally.

  But even so, when he tried to tell himself that he didn’t care, when he snorted dismissively and decided that he was merely irritated by Jack Reed’s effortless charisma, was it anything more than bravado?

  Maybe that knot of tension inside him was all about fear.

  Fear that the door was finally closing.

  Fear that when Reed eventually popped the question, even if it was something as chaste and demure as ‘fancy coming out for a drink’, Gemma would say ‘yes’ …

  ‘Bollocks!’ he said, throwing his cup into the bin and setting off down through the station towards Custody.

  Let them go for a drink. Sod it … let them hit the sack and shag like demons. It was nothing to do with him.

  But then he thought about swimming out into the Humber, those filthy, ice-cold waters, to save Tim Cleghorn, a piece of trash whose sole facility was perhaps that he might put them onto Eddie Creeley’s killers.

  That was a mystery too.

  They kept using phrases like ‘the clock is ticking’, but it wasn’t like there was a real urgency about this case. It wasn’t as if the lives of anyone Heck cared about depended on it … or the lives of anyone society cared about, if he was frank.

  So why would he put his life on the line in that way?

  Why the hell was he running around like a blue-arsed fly, headbutting posts, climbing roofs, disrupting other police operations … pushing himself and his partner to the maximum limit?

  In truth, he knew the answer without needing to say it.

  In truth, he’d known it for some time.

  ‘Damn it, Gemma, you’re a torment,’ he said under his breath. ‘But any chance, no matter how bloody small, is better than none.’

  Chapter 22

  ‘So, Spencer?’ the voice said from the darkness. ‘What’s the story?’

  At first, Spencer Taylor thought he’d been dreaming. Exhausted and hungry, he was certainly half-asleep. But then he realised that someone was actually here and talking to him.

  ‘The fuck!’ he shouted, jumping up from the mound of dirt that had served as his backrest. He pulled the Bulldog from under his ragged jacket and swung it around in both hands. ‘I’m fucking packing, man!’

  To his amazement, there was nobody there. The subterranean water-junction, which for eight days now had been his sanctuary, looked as it always did: arched brick passageways leading off in various directions, filth and bodily waste flowing along each one. More vile fluids dripping from overhead. Rats scurrying. After so long taking refuge in this hidden place, emerging only when he needed to find something to eat, his eyes had finally attuned to a darkness which, at first, had seemed opaque. Though even now he couldn’t see everything.

  Certainly not whoever it was who’d just spoken.

  ‘Tell you, man, I’m packing!’ he warned again, in his distinctive Jafaican patois.

  ‘Oh, I know you are, Bullet Boy,’ the disembodied voice replied.

  Spencer spun frantically, Bulldog cocked.

  ‘Is
that what we should call you from now on? Bullet Boy?’

  ‘The fuck!’ Spencer shrieked.

  ‘You’ve got a great vocabulary, Spencer. I’m surprised …’

  ‘Fuck you, yeah!’

  ‘I thought you street guys were supposed to be inventive in your dialogue. Or is that just how middle-class academics like to portray you?’

  ‘Don’t know who the fuck you are, man, but I’m not taking no shit.’

  ‘Wooo …’ the voice tittered.

  Spencer desperately scanned his underground refuge. The voice was weird, tinny. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and yet nowhere. Whoever the guy was, he had to be close. But Spencer needed to know for sure. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes; not when he only had one round left.

  ‘Big bad Spencer and his terrifying .44,’ the voice said, still amused. ‘What I always wonder, though, is how baby gangbangers like you would get on if you weren’t armed?’

  ‘The fuck are you, man?’

  ‘Seriously, what do you think? How would you get on in the world if you didn’t have a gun to stick in people’s faces?’

  Suddenly, Spencer couldn’t reply. He was too busy gasping for breath. He’d only managed to grab bits of food in the last few days, and the odd mouthful of water. It was summer, so it wasn’t cold, and yet it staggered him how tired and ill he was feeling after a week outdoors – if you could call this verminous underground hole the actual outdoors.

  ‘Not so good,’ the voice said, ‘by the looks of it.’

  ‘Hey, fuck you, man!’

  ‘It’s funny, actually. The press are calling you Public Enemy Number 1. Apparently, you’re the most hated and feared gang-member in London. But me and you know the truth of it, eh? You’re just a punk kid who’s scared of his own shadow.’

  ‘Step out here, man!’ Spencer retorted. ‘You’re a gutless piece of shit … you won’t show yourself, neither.’

  ‘Oh, you’re right there. You see … I think a little frightened kid with a big gun can still be dangerous. But what would you say, Spencer, if I told you I had a bead on you right now? That there’s an infrared lens over here in the shadows and the crosshairs are right on your sweaty little forehead?’