by Paul Finch
The interior of Heck’s mouth went dry. Fresh sweat broke on his already sodden brow. Then something happened that he didn’t expect.
The firing ceased, and Green Van Man emerged from the shadows, weapon by his side.
Clearly, he hadn’t seen Heck. It wasn’t as dark out here as under the North Circular, but it was painted in shades of grey, and Heck realised that he was probably camouflaged by the wall of the derelict church behind him. If that wasn’t enough, the bastard was still a good seventy yards off – that would make it difficult for anyone to see clearly. Hence his wary advance.
But this wasn’t the best time for Reed to start moving.
He turned to look at Heck, his face a mask of sweat, his eyes straining orbs of pain. But his teeth were set in a determined clench.
‘My leg,’ he whispered. ‘It’s my left leg …’
‘Stay where you are,’ Heck hissed. ‘Play dead.’
Reed did so, and as Green Van Man was still sixty or so yards away, he possibly hadn’t yet seen the casualty move. But Heck couldn’t take that chance.
He backed from the open gate and turned to the alley situated between the fence and the church wall. When he ran that way, he did so at top speed, at the same time drawing his Glock and firing repeatedly. He didn’t have a chance of hitting the guy, of course; the point was to draw attention away from Reed.
Which it did.
Heck only saw it peripherally, but the guy dropped to one knee, swivelling from the waist as he opened up again, his stream of lead chopping the fence down one section after another as Heck dashed past it.
‘You want this, you bastard!’ Heck shouted, holding the rucksack aloft. ‘Come and get it!’
When he reached the corner of the church, he halted and looked back.
The gunman had stopped firing and now was running, reloading on the hoof. Instead of heading towards the gate, a route that would have taken him past Reed, he crossed the compound diagonally, intent on penetrating the fence at the point where he’d shot it down. Heck pegged another wild shot at the gunman, causing him to duck, and then dashed around the corner of the church.
Another narrow passage led him forty yards, before he blundered out into open space.
The row of streetlights they’d spotted earlier still looked a considerable distance off, and clearly was on higher ground. Before that lay the vast spread of a demolition site. In the immediate foreground, it was all churned earth and muddy pools, with pieces of heavy plant dotted here and there: JCBs, diggers, bulldozers. Past those, Heck saw houses, though they were little more than empty shells, their roofs just rotted timber skeletons.
He hurried forward anyway, but when feet came clumping down the alley behind, swerved left, slogging along now rather than running, his trainers heavy with clay, half tripping through trenches carved by caterpillar tracks. The cause of these, a particularly large bulldozer, sat just ahead on the right. Heck swung towards it, looking for shelter, automatic fire blasting the ground around his feet, kicking up massive divots.
The night was now filled with police sirens, and yet the gunman was still pressing his attack.
Whatever Heck carried in that rucksack had to be pure gold. He slung it over his shoulder as he slid to a halt behind the bulldozer. He knew he’d only have a moment’s respite. It was tempting to draw his Glock, level it two-handed and simply back away. The dozer filled his vision, but as he retreated from it, it would reduce in size, and the gunman would appear either to the left or right. Heck, the readier of the two, would then pump his trigger and keep on pumping until the bastard was down.
And yet, that bastard was also likely to come around the corner blazing.
A Glock 9mm against whatever this monstrous weapon was?
It was no contest.
Heck turned again, running for the nearest houses.
They were only about twenty yards off, and no more than relics, all that remained of some old, forgotten East End neighbourhood. But they had to offer hiding places.
From over his shoulder, he heard a clatter of feet on metal.
He risked another glance.
To his surprise, the maniac wasn’t coming around the side of the dozer but had perched on top of its bonnet, eyes no doubt searching the gloom.
Heck drove himself on, trudging through quagmires.
But what lay ahead didn’t look promising.
The houses were located in a man-made canyon, with high, industrial-age walls hemming it in to the north and south. At the eastern end, on a high parapet, he again saw that row of streetlights; they were at least fifty feet up – so high that they didn’t cast much light into the shadow-filled ruins below, though it was enough to show that what remained of this old housing development was a cul-de-sac.
Heck slid to a stop, looking back one final time.
His pursuer was silhouetted against the London sky. His weapon still hung by his side, as though he was done using it.
But there was no guarantee of that. It might simply be that the guy had lost track of his prey – so if Heck returned fire now, and missed, which was entirely possible over this distance and in this dimness, he’d be revealing his position again.
He ran on, ducking through the first open door he came to and entering a front room with bare boards underfoot and mildewed strips on the walls. Panting, he moved to the window – and had to narrow his eyes to focus on what he was seeing.
Because Green Van Man, it seemed, had now become Bulldozer Man.
He’d climbed into the cab and bent down, presumably to twist and manipulate the requisite wires under the dash.
With a gut-thumping rumble, the machine shuddered to life. The yellow beacon on its roof began spinning and diesel fumes blasted into the night. Its headlights came on, dazzling in their brilliance, as gears clanked and groaned, shifting it awkwardly back and forth, gradually bringing it around ninety degrees until facing the houses. With an immense roar, its caterpillar tracks commenced rolling, projecting it forward. Noisily and jerkily, but at surprising and increasing speed.
The driver played again with his gears and levers, adjusting the height and angle of the colossal steel blade, tilting it slightly backward, so that its razor teeth jutted forward.
Heck backed across the room, stunned. The madman hadn’t lost the trail after all; he’d simply changed weapons to something more appropriate.
Heck ran again, fleeing clean through the house, exiting via an empty frame where the back door used to be and scrambling to the top of a mound of rubble, from where, even in the half-dark, he had a reasonable view of his surroundings. The few houses left here had been constructed in no obvious pattern. What had once been narrow access roads snaked between them, most now churned and broken and clogged with further mountains of bricks and girders.
Though it was even clearer from here that he was in a cul-de-sac, the towering walls of derelict factories to left and right, he knew that his only chance lay in pressing on, putting as many obstacles between himself and the dozer as possible. He scrambled down the other side of the mound and ran along an entry. But when he got through that, he saw that only one building remained. This looked more like a small industrial unit: three storeys high and flat-roofed, with a corrugated metal fence encircling it.
Behind him, the dozer came on, not even slowing as it reached the buildings, their ancient, decayed structures collapsing in front of it. Dust filled the air, masonry cascading as the mighty blade sliced through one obstruction after another. The mechanical beast rose and fell as it ploughed over and through the resulting debris, crushing everything beneath its tracks.
Heck retreated slowly, ejecting his spent magazine, inserting a fresh one and squinting along the barrel of his Glock. But only when the last wall came down, did he realise the true peril of his position. The dozer’s blade was at half-mast and angled forward, shielding the front of the driving cab. He pinged shot after shot at the approaching mechanism, trying for its windshield and headlights, but eve
ry shell rebounded from the heavy, dirt-encrusted steel.
When he was six shots down and the bulldozer was thirty yards away, there was a grind and clank of gears, and it sped forward at a velocity he’d never known possible.
Heck turned and charged at the corrugated metal fence.
He struck it shoulder-first. It looked flimsy, but it only bowed and didn’t collapse. With the bulldozer revving up behind, Heck had only seconds to work out that it was braced on the other side by a horizontal crossbar. He jammed his gun at the relevant point and fired three rapid shots.
The thin metal was smashed through and so was the timber joist.
When he threw himself at it this time, the whole thing fell flat.
Heck tumbled across it, jumped to his feet and, with the mechanical monster filling the entire world at his back, staggered on through the yawning doorway to the old workshop.
The dozer ploughed in after him, its massive blade tilting upward to pummel the brickwork above the door, which fell en masse, the caterpillar tracks carrying it up and over the resulting landslide of wreckage.
Heck backed away as dust engulfed him, his breath wheezing, sweat soaking his aching body. When he entered what had to be the last room and came up against a heavy, square pillar, all he could do was slide around it and continue to retreat, but he knew there’d be no further escape – this workshop had been located at the rear end of the gully. Nothing lay behind it but soil and rock.
When he came to the back of the premises, a bare wall barred further progress.
He flattened himself against it, coughing, his attention fixed on the vast, shadowy goliath as it thundered its way forward into sight, engine roars reverberating, rubble raining on all sides. Almost nonchalantly, its blade struck the pillar, which fractured midway and fell aside as the dozer bullocked past.
With a grinding of chains and cylinders, it adjusted its blade to the vertical, so that its serrated steel teeth were directly in line with Heck’s chest. He dropped into a ball and wrapped his arms around his head. The driver lowered his blade, intent on squishing him. Heck screwed his eyes shut …
And so didn’t see what happened when the ceiling fell in.
The pillar so casually flattened had been supporting everything above, which now came down in an all-consuming deluge of bricks, steel and timber.
Even over the engine howl, the earthquake-like cacophony grabbed Heck’s attention.
He glanced up, and as the avalanche broke through, scuttled forward under the dozer’s blade. There was only two or three feet of clearance, but it was enough.
The guy in the driving cab wasn’t so lucky. He too had heard the explosion overhead, but though he brought the vehicle to an immediate halt, he had no time to do anything else – before several tonnes of debris struck the roof of his cab.
Almost five minutes had passed after the fog of dust settled before Heck was able to kick his way out from beneath the dozer’s blade. He flat-footed bricks away but had to corkscrew completely around in the small, almost airless space he’d found for himself and grapple manfully with several fallen joists, before he could twist them loose and push them back.
Coated in dust, still coughing hard, he clambered wearily out, dragging the rucksack after him. He straightened up and spent another minute leaning against the now silent machine, which sat crumpled and half-buried beneath a massif of bricks and beams. The blade itself, though tilted at an angle, looked to contain at least a quarter of a tonne of rubble.
The dozer’s cab was completely submerged, not just under bricks and masonry but huge slabs of roofing stone. Of the driver, Heck saw only a left arm, broken and bloody, and jammed outward at a grisly angle.
A buzzing sound drew his attention to his pocket. He took his phone out, and saw that he’d missed about twenty calls, all from Gemma. This one, he answered.
‘Thank God!’ she exclaimed, sounding genuinely relieved. ‘Gwen’s on her way down there right now.’
‘I’ll be waiting for her, ma’am.’
‘You all right?’
‘Think so. Jack’s OK too. Or he was when I last saw him. He’s going to need an ambulance, though. In fact, we’re going to need several ambulances.’
‘So … what happened? All we heard was there’d been shots fired.’
‘There were, yeah.’
‘What about the man in the van?’
‘He may be useful to us …’ Heck unbuckled the dust-caked rucksack and found that it was crammed with what looked like documents and photographs. He glanced into the cab. ‘But he isn’t going to be answering any questions.’
Chapter 32
Heck went straight to East Ham police station for a hot debrief with Gwen Straker, during the course of which the chief super put on a brave face at the sight of her battered, bedraggled detective and adopted a ‘purely business’ approach. She advised him that the firearms chief, Renshaw, had been pronounced dead at the scene, while three other officers, Jack Reed included, were being treated for gunshot wounds. She then elicited the facts as he knew them. After that, she left for the hospital where the casualties were being treated, leaving Heck with the East Ham duty officer, now acting as Post Incident Manager.
Professional Standards duly arrived, and the whole Post Incident Procedure kicked in properly, Heck handing his weapon over for forensic examination – the ‘fast draw’ holster raising one or two eyebrows, but no particularly hostile comments – and then, after being seen by the FMO, producing his initial personal statement. As none of the shots he’d fired were deemed to have injured any person, much less killed them, no requirement was made for him to hand over his clothes, and he was ordered to go home and grab some much-needed sleep.
Heck headed off, but en route, diverted back to Staples Corner, where he intended to log the rucksack and the paperwork it contained into evidence. However, by the time he reached the SCU base, it was already after three in the morning. It felt pointless heading home to Fulham now, when he’d only have to come back here in a few hours’ time. They had a rec room attached to the canteen, where there were one or two comfortable armchairs, but, despite being physically exhausted, he knew that sleep wouldn’t come easily.
The Serial Crimes Unit was deserted and lay in half-darkness as he wandered around it.
Which was all to the good.
He didn’t bother turning the lights on as he rummaged around in the supplies room, finally extricating a forensics examination sheet and a fresh pair of disposable gloves. When he ascended to the MIR, the lights up there had been turned low and it was only manned by a couple of sleepy-looking support staff, but that was two too many, plus the room was in its inevitable state of mid-investigation disorder. Instead of setting up in there and no doubt having to deal with bored questions which he couldn’t be bothered answering, he mooched around some of the other offices, and finding that Gemma’s was the one with the cleanest desk, he opted for that. Clearing away her PC and keyboard, he gloved up and spread the forensics sheet on the desktop. Inserting each sheet of paperwork from the rucksack into a separate plastic envelope, he laid them out in orderly rows before switching on Gemma’s anglepoise lamp and standing back to assess them.
He was clearly more tired than he’d thought, because he couldn’t initially make head nor tail of what he was seeing: to his bleary, achy eyes, it was nothing more than a mass of what looked like personal documentation, along with both black-and-white and colour photographs – all that, and a single blue pen drive with a crimson stripe at the point where its lid detached, which had been lying at the very bottom of the rucksack.
But then, after he’d peeled off his anorak, got himself a cup of coffee and looked more closely, certain names began registering, and it became apparent that a number of the photos were blow-ups of official police mugshots.
When he leaned down to examine each separate sheet in close detail, an astonishing tale unfolded, one he’d already suspected awaited them somewhere down the line, but which, when
presented like this, in words and pictures, had an enormous impact on him.
He’d gradually been succumbing to bone-deep fatigue, but the intelligence arrayed in front of him had a sharp reviving effect, so much so that he was able to peruse it for at least another couple of hours. But it was only when he plugged the pen drive into Gemma’s office laptop and watched the three films uploaded there, that he came fully awake.
‘Heck!’ Gemma exclaimed wearily. ‘What are you doing?’
Heck jerked awake, to find her standing in the doorway to her office, her raincoat draped over one arm, her handbag over the other, sunlight streaming in behind her. He sat up awkwardly, painfully, his bruises from the previous night stiffening. He rubbed at his forehead, which throbbed through lack of proper sleep.
‘Sorry, ma’am.’ Spotting the clock on the wall, he saw that it was just before seven. ‘Didn’t seem to be much point in going home last night.’
She bustled in, closing the door behind her. Then she noticed his grubby clothes, his dirty hands and face, his mussed hair; her nostrils wrinkled at his rank, sweaty aroma.
‘Couldn’t you even have had a shower before you slept in my chair?’
She picked his filthy anorak off the floor and tossed it on top of the filing cabinets.
‘I’m afraid not.’ He stood up, arched his back and pointed at the table. ‘I needed to get stuck into this lot.’
‘And what is that?’ She hadn’t noticed the spread of paperwork yet; she was busy looking at something else. ‘Why are you wearing a non-issue gun harness?’
‘Oh …’ Heck felt at his armpit; he’d forgotten that he was still wearing the holster. ‘It’s an American rig. I got it off the internet.’
‘Please don’t tell me you were wearing that last night?’
‘I didn’t shoot anyone … so it doesn’t matter.’
She shook her head as if this was too much to process. ‘How many rounds did you discharge?’