by Michael Kerr
“Gary Proctor,” the guy replied, nervously scratching at a patch of red, flaky skin on his forehead with a black-rimmed fingernail.
“You smoke, Gary?” Ryan said in a softer voice.
“Uh, yeah.”
Ryan reached into his jerkin pocket, took out a pack of Superkings. “Here, catch,” he said, and deftly tossed the Browning with his other hand.
Gary caught the spinning gun by the butt. Looked at it with bulging eyes and dropped it onto paperwork that covered much of the desktop.
Eddie – wearing a cellophane glove – picked the gun up by the barrel, and grinned.
“W...What the fuck are you playing at?” Gary shouted as he jumped to his feet.
“Sit down and shut up,” Ryan said, fisting his hands as he walked up to Gary and looked down into his upturned face.
Gary slumped back onto the plastic chair and resumed scratching, drawing blood from the now livid, broken skin on his forehead.
“This gun was used to shoot dead four people upstairs,” Ryan said. “It now has your prints on it, Gary. And you were the only living person here when the police arrived. Plus, there is no evidence to suggest that anyone broke in. Get the picture?”
“Jesus, I was asleep. I haven’t done anything. You can’t stitch me up with this.”
Ryan shrugged. “So talk, or this gun will put you behind bars for life.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything, Gary,” Ryan said, offering him a cigarette, which he hesitantly took, put between his quivering lips and puffed on as Ryan thumbed his lighter and held it out.
“A lot of foreigners come and go,” Gary said. “And a bloke, who I think is the boss, moved in upstairs with a few other men three or four days ago. I’m not allowed up there. I spend most of my time outside in a gate hut, when I’m not patrolling the grounds.”
“You weren’t patrolling tonight, Gary,” Eddie said. “You were sleeping on the job. Right?”
Gary nodded. “Yeah. I reckon who’d want to break in and steal corrugated paper and crap like that. I check the fence once or twice a night. I’ve got a daytime driving job as well. I need to get a few hours’ shuteye.”
“I don’t think he was sleeping,” Ryan said to Eddie, going into a routine. “I think he’s pulling our chain.” And to Gary. “Who did you let in to go upstairs and gun down four men in cold blood?”
“On my daughter’s fucking life, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gary whined. Muscles were starting to twitch in his cheeks, and he was close to tears. “I did a tour of the fence, then had a cup of coffee and got my head down. Next thing I knew there was sirens, and all hell broke loose. When I opened the gate, cops dressed like Darth fucking Vader shoved guns in my face and ordered me to lay on the ground.”
Ryan grilled Gary for another fifteen minutes. It was a waste of time. He was sure that the less than proficient night-watchman was on the level.
“Okay,” Ryan said, taking his pistol back off Eddie, slamming the magazine home with the heel of his hand, and returning the weapon to his shoulder holster. “An officer will take an official statement from you. Then as far as I’m concerned, you can go. But if you think of anything else...anything at all, ask for me. I’m Detective Inspector Ryan.”
“There is one thing,” Gary said, visibly relaxing.
“Yeah?”
“You said four people were shot.”
“So?”
“I’ve seen four guys come and go. But there was a fifth. He had bandages on his face, and he was limping badly.”
Julie arrived. Eddie found a vending machine next to a water cooler in a staff room off the main factory floor. Fed it with silver and took the three plastic cups across to where Ryan and Julie were in conference with a high-ranking Drugs Squad officer, who wore his red hair too long, and was dressed like an unmade bed. The designer stubble and the overlarge gun clipped to the belt of his jeans made Eddie wince. This was a guy who had seen the wrong movies and was a legend in his own mind.
“I’m all for interdepartmental cooperation and that shit,” Detective Superintendent Cliff Barron said, looking at Ryan from an equal height, and snubbing Julie, even though he knew she was the ranking SCU officer present. “Thing is, the DB in the white T-shirt was one of mine. He’d been undercover for almost twelve months, working his way into a position of trust. We were all set to hit Gorchev at dawn, before those trucks full of H were off-loaded. So excuse me if I don’t have a lot of faith in you lot. You’ve been after this so-called Hitman for a long time, and got nowhere. Dragging your fucking heels has cost an officer his life.”
Ryan could usually grit his teeth and let flak go over his head. But everything about Barron rubbed him up the wrong way, and his rank was no defence.
Gripping the big-mouthed drug cop’s larynx with his right hand, Ryan used his left to grab Barron’s balls and squeeze hard as he walked him backwards and pinned him to the wall.
“Listen, you fuckwit,” Ryan said in a menacing whisper. “It’s because morons like you are so paranoid and are always looking for brownie points that information doesn’t get shared and help close cases out. You’re a cowboy, Barron. I’ve got my own dead body. I lost an officer to this killer. Tyler is the best at what he does. That’s why Gorchev and his bodyguards, including your man, are dead.”
Ryan let the other cop go. Barron coughed, sagged to his knees and massaged his sore throat and aching balls.
“That outburst will cost you your fucking pension, Ryan,” he croaked.
“What outburst?” Julie said to him. And to Eddie. “Did you see anything untoward happen here, sergeant?”
“No, ma’am,” Eddie said. “Just a difference of opinion.”
Barron looked about for witnesses to what had happened. There was no one in sight. He would have liked to draw his gun and shoot all three of the SCU officers, but got to his feet and walked past them, gingerly, in a great deal of pain, and headed for the stairs.
“You were well out of order,” Julie said to Ryan.
He shrugged. “I know, but I acted with restraint, believe me. I wanted to put the wanker in intensive care.”
“Now what?” Julie said, not pursuing the matter; perversely pleased that the full-of-shit and disrespectful superintendent had more than met his match at Ryan’s hands. “You want to wait for the pathologist to finish up?”
Ryan shook his head. “We don’t need to be here. Let’s leave Barron and everyone else to do the paperwork on this one. Tyler is long gone. We need to regroup.”
“You want this coffee?” Eddie said to Julie and Ryan.
Ryan wrinkled his nose. “No, Eddie, bin it. Let’s go find a transport café that serves a decent brew.”
Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT
Valentino gave the four bodies a cursory inspection. He had been very lucky. Had he heard anything, he would no doubt have investigated, and almost certainly have walked into a bullet. The large number of painkillers he’d taken had sedated him, and it was only the insistent pounding of his bladder that had brought him to groggy wakefulness.
After making a phone call, he dressed in a sweater, baggy cargoes, and a quilted parka. Gathered up the new driving licence, passport, credit cards and all other necessary documentation to support the new identity that Gregor had procured for him, and after revisiting the corpses to empty their wallets of ID, money, the hard copy of an e-mail, and one of the guns, he went downstairs, found a pair of wire cutters and left the factory by a rear door, to make his way to the fence and snip an exit through the galvanised wire.
The turbid fog was his ally. He limped to the back of the industrial estate, and was soon in a residential area.
A man emerge from the miasma, walking towards him, accompanied by a dog straining at its leash. He stopped at a gate fronting a small garden. There was no time to be subtle. Valentino drew his gun and aimed it at the man.
“I need for you to drive me to London,” he said. “If you do as y
ou are told, then you will not be harmed. If you try anything stupid I will shoot you.”
Peter Cowan had no aspirations to be a hero. The man who had limped towards him, and was now pointing the pistol at his chest, was sweating profusely. He seemed a little desperate. His nose was bandaged, and Peter thought that he must have been in a recent accident. Maybe he was brain-damaged. Whatever his problem, Peter was not about to argue with a gun. For all he knew it was a replica firearm, but he had no intention of doing anything to test that premise.
“Who is inside?” Valentino said as Peter opened the gate and began walking up to the front door of the semidetached house.
“No one,” Peter said. His partner, Glen, was a steward with BA, and was on a long haul stopover in San Francisco. And thank God for that. Glen was more audacious, and may well have got himself shot. “My car keys are in the house.”
After shutting Pickwick – his and Glen’s beloved Dalmatian – in the kitchen, Peter picked up his car keys and led his captor back out to the garage.
With roof lights flashing and sirens whooping, several police cars hurtled by in the direction Peter had driven from. He had no idea where they were heading, but was in no doubt that the apparently injured gunman would be responsible for their presence.
Valentino directed Peter to where he wanted to be. Told him to stop behind a black Carlton on Copse Hill at the southern fringe of Wimbledon Common. When he complied, Valentino pressed the muzzle of the gun up against his chest and put a bullet through his heart.
“Thank you for the ride, my friend,” he said to the corpse, whose only crime had been to walk his dog at the wrong time.
Levering himself awkwardly out of the car, Valentino walked up to the Carlton. The near side rear door opened and he climbed in.
Back inside the farmhouse at Chesham, Andy and Faith drank most of the mature malt whisky he had taken from Gorchev’s bar. Leaving a trail of clothes behind them, they helped each other up the stairs, to indulge in a bout of drunken lovemaking
“That was unbelievable,” Faith said. “I love you, John Kelly.”
“And you know how much I care for you, babe,” Andy said, leaning over to kiss her on the tip of her nose.
She traced the outline of the cross that was tattooed on his left shoulder.
“I want the same tattoo,” she said. “On the small of my back.”
“I’ve decided that we should leave the country in a few days. When we get to Miami, we’ll stopover, and you can have it done there. How does that sound?”
“Perfect, my love.”
They fell asleep, naked and uncovered. Faith woke at dawn, shivering. Went to the toilet, then climbed back in bed. She pulled the sheet and duvet up over them both; snuggled up close to Andy and placed her arm around his waist. For just a second or two she had the feeling that everything was going to end badly; a presentiment of approaching doom. She shook it off and thought of the imminent trip to the Caribbean, and of how glorious a future with John in it might be.
Vinnie Gomez held up the phone. “Boss, it’s CCS for you.”
Ryan went over and took the phone. “Ryan.”
“This is DS Terry Chaplin, Computer Crime Section, guv. I’ve managed to retrieve some stuff from the Muswell Hill p.c. You might want to come down and look at it.”
“Give me a clue, Terry. What have you got?”
“The contents of a file that lists the names and addresses of a dozen women who I believe Tyler was on the ICQ with.”
“ICQ?”
“ ‘I…seek…you’. It’s a sub network of the Internet, used for private conversations by way of messaging. Thing is, there are details of the woman who was attacked in Rickmansworth.”
“Emily Simmons?”
“Yes, guv.”
“I’m on my way.”
Terry hung up and went back to chewing at his nails and worrying. When he had heard the news that Gorchev and Kirov were dead, he had initially punched the air and felt a great load lift from his mind. But the feeling had almost instantly been replaced by trepidation. His name might be on the Russian gangster’s computer. All he could hope for was, that if a file existed with the details of cops on the take, that he would get the chance to deal with the computer, to find and delete any reference to himself. He would either be in the clear and out from under the cosh, or would end up doing serious time. There was nothing to do but cross everything and hope he got a break.
In CCS, Ryan thumbed through the hard copy that Terry had printed out. Tyler had compiled detailed biographies of each subject: Name, address, age, status, background, likes, dislikes, hobbies, and anything relevant, with a note of their sexual fantasies and desires, plus picture attachments; some of which were totally explicit, if out of focus, showing in the main, middle-aged women spreading their cellulite-laden thighs, or fondling sagging breasts with rouge enhanced nipples together.
“Thanks, Terry,” Ryan said to the bespectacled computer anorak.
Terry gave him a wan smile. “I hope it helps, guv. Sorry it took so long. The guy knows his way around computers. His security programme was one of the most sophisticated I’ve ever cracked.”
Ryan went up to Julie’s office. She was on the phone, so he poured himself coffee while she told some prick upstairs that she was expecting to make significant progress with the Tyler case.
“How do you propose to make significant progress, Julie?” Ryan said when she hung up and gave the phone a middle finger.
“I didn’t say I would. Only that I expected to. There’s a vast difference.”
“Maybe Christmas has come early. Look at these,” Ryan said, placing the wad of loose sheets in front of her.
Julie squared the pile off and started to work quickly through the pages. Ryan sipped his coffee and watched the pink tip of her tongue flick back and forth over her bottom lip. Her brow knitted as she gave the new information her total concentration. After reading through approximately half of the material, Julie sat back and gave Ryan a quizzical look. “Apart from being sure that no professional photographer took any of the tacky photos, why do you suppose that any of this is going to help us find Tyler?”
Ryan pulled up an antiquated straight back chair, turned it round and dropped into it á la Christine Keeler. He held the mug in both hands and smiled.
“Cut the suspense, Detective,” Julie said. “Share whatever you suppose will lead us to him.”
“It’s supposition,” Ryan said. “What we know for a fact is, that Tyler moved from Muswell Hill to the flat at Snaresbrook. He had a new ID and address in place, in case he had to disappear in a hurry. Right?”
“Go on.”
“I don’t believe that he would have expected to have to move again so soon. The chances of him having a third property or alias is remote. It might have been something he would have done if Gorchev’s goons hadn’t found him so quickly. So the question is, where would he go? He isn’t the type to hide out in the woods, and he wouldn’t have risked trying to leave the country so soon.”
“You think he’s with one of these women?”
“Bingo. These were all prospects. Single, divorced or widowed women who were looking for companionship, sex, or both on the Internet. He no doubt intended to pay them a visit, like he did with Emily Simmons. They’re all potential victims. He’s probably spent a lot of time grooming them. He knows that they live alone, and are lonely. It was a woman who spoke to Eddie on the phone and told him that Gorchev was dead. I think if we check them out, we’ll find him shacked-up with a woman who will be grateful to have Tyler as a bed mate, and who is willingly being manipulated by him.”
“We need to set up surveillance on all,”...Julie flipped through the sheets, “twelve addresses. One thing we do know is that he is armed and highly dangerous. From what David Wilde has told us, he won’t give up. And if he is with one of these women, I don’t want her to wind up as collateral damage.”
“So if we locate him, we better have a sniper ready to b
low him away, Julie. Because he isn’t going to give some hostage negotiator the time of day. You want to save whoever is with him, then you’ll have to give the green light to waste him. Start making contact, and all we do is give him the chance to react.”
“I can’t sanction shooting a man down, unless he starts waving a gun about and refuses to disarm.”
He isn’t a man, Julie. Tyler is a homicidal predator who just happens to look human. Don’t lose sight of that fact.”
Eight of the women were contacted at their place of employment, and each of their homes was entered and searched. Another two turned out to be pensioners in their late sixties, who had professed to be at least thirty years younger when messaging Tyler.
“That leaves two,” Ryan said to the assembled team. “A twenty-eight-year-old single woman, Michele Avery, who runs a dress shop at Welham Green, and a fifty-one-year-old widow, Faith Conway, who lives at Beck Hall Farm near Chesham. The properties are being watched, but we have no sighting of a man at either. We have probable cause to forego niceties and force entry, if necessary. Due to it being more than likely that one of these women is in danger, I plan to use other tactics. You will be assigned specific tasks. And remember what happened to Angie. This guy is a professional and highly competent killer. Any questions?”
Phil Newton got up off the corner of the desk he had been perched on. “Yeah, boss. How do you intend to get inside, if he’s armed and trigger happy?”
“We wait till tomorrow morning, Phil. When the dress shop in Welham Green opens for business, a female officer will play customer, and if possible, get the Avery woman out and away from the immediate area. Then we go in.”
“What about the farm, boss?” Vinnie Gomez said.
“I’m informed that the postman delivers between nine and nine-thirty a.m. each weekday morning. I reckon you’d look the part in a postie’s uniform. You can knock with a parcel that needs signing for. If Faith Conway answers the door, you can snatch her out of harm’s way.”