The Killing Club

by Paul Finch

  Farthing nodded resignedly. ‘I suppose we can have another chat with him.’

  Chapter 3

  Time hadn’t made much impact on the Hendon district of east Sunderland.

  It mainly comprised rows of age-old terraced housing, scruffy high-rise apartment blocks and the odd derelict industrial unit. A notorious area in law and order terms even during its docklands heyday, now it was largely unemployed, which made things even worse. The street they pulled up in was typical; a single row of houses facing onto a low-lying stretch of overgrown spoil-land cordoned off by a rickety old fence. The house fronts were black with grime, many of their doors dented and battered. It boasted ten dwellings in total and was bookended by two corner shops, which, as far as Heck could see, contained nothing but rubbish.

  They parked Farthing’s Vauxhall Astra patrol car opposite number three, alongside the only gate in the fence. As soon as they climbed out, the September breeze took hold of them. There had been squalling rain that morning and the road was still damp, its gutters lined with puddles. Now the sun had emerged, but rags of grey, wind-tossed cloud were strewn across it, absorbing any warmth. There was no one else in sight. No curtains twitched either in the house directly facing them, or in those next to it. No lights were on.

  PC Farthing knocked on the front door and waited, while Heck stood behind him. There was no response. The interior lights remained off. Farthing knocked again. Still there was nothing; not a sound from inside.

  He glanced at Heck and shrugged. ‘Well … we tried.’

  Heck ignored that, crouching at the letter flap and pushing it open. ‘Mr Cooper!’ he shouted. ‘This is the police. Can you open up please?’

  Still there was no sound from inside. Heck tried again twice, to no avail, before straightening up.

  ‘Satisfied?’ Farthing asked.

  ‘Far from it. If you were under suspicion of murdering three gang members, and the police came round before you’d got a chance to do the rest of them, would you open the door voluntarily?’

  ‘You can’t be bloody serious … I only spoke to this fella as part of a house-to-house. To ask if he’d seen anything the day Crabtree got chased.’

  Heck dug under his jacket and produced a folded document, scanning quickly through it. ‘We’ll never know how much he saw until we check him out properly.’

  Farthing’s eyes bugged. ‘Is that … is that a warrant?’

  ‘No, it’s a beautician’s appointment. Course it’s a bloody warrant.’ Heck tested the front door with both hands, but found it unyielding. ‘This is pretty solid. Let’s try round the back.’ He set off along the pavement.

  ‘You’ve had a busy lunchtime, haven’t you?’ Farthing said, hurrying to follow.

  ‘Couldn’t have done it without you, Jerry. Told the beak about Cooper’s track record of political violence.’

  ‘Political?’

  ‘Picking on hippies and IRA supporters. Told him about that nasty knife you saw too. I’ll need a statement about that, of course.’

  ‘Jesus H … I told you that knife was an antique.’

  ‘A combat knife’s a combat knife, Jerry.’ They turned the corner at the end of the row, and entered a squalid backstreet. ‘Anyway, we’ve got the warrant now … and this is more like it.’

  The rear gate to number three was missing from its hinges, revealing a tiny paved yard. Unlike the surrounding environment, this area was cleared and well-swept. A clothes prop was leaning against the coal bunker, with a basket of pegs next to it.

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ Farthing said as they entered. There was a rear ground-floor window to the house and a rear door. Both looked to be closed and locked. ‘I don’t like forcing entry, even with a search warrant.’

  In response, Heck rapped loudly on the rear door and shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Mr Cooper … we are police officers! This is really quite important! Could you open up please!’ They waited for half a minute. Heck tried again. A further wait brought no reply. Heck glanced at Farthing. ‘The occupier was definitely at home when you called this morning?’

  ‘Aye … he let me in, gave us a brew.’

  ‘Okay … well he’s pretty clearly absent now. Would you agree?’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘Good.’ Heck put his shoulder to the rear door, and it crashed inward, its rusted lock flying off with the first impact. Inside, the house stood in sepulchral dimness.

  ‘Mr Cooper, it’s the police!’ Farthing called as they shuffled through a narrow scullery into a small, tidy kitchen. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises!’

  There was no reply, but Heck glanced around. ‘Place is immaculate,’ he observed.

  ‘He’s always a well-turned-out bloke.’

  ‘Bit like a soldier, eh?’

  In the hall, a shoe rack stood close to the door, on which Heck noted two pairs of muddy trainers. A raincoat was draped over the foot of the banister. Aside from these mundane items, this part of the house also looked neat. Its linoleum floor shone, as if mopped regularly. But the real surprise came when they moved sideways into the lounge, which in the past had been knocked through into the dining room to create one large living space, the walls of which had since been completely covered with sepia-toned news cuttings.

  Fascinated, Heck’s attention flitted from one headline to the next.

  Soviets launch winter offensive

  British triumph in desert battle

  As he’d heard in the station canteen, this was World War Two. Every aspect of it. But it wasn’t like a temporary display. The thousands of carefully interlocked cuttings here had literally been turned into wallpaper, incorporated into the fabric of the house’s interior. And it was a professional job; there wasn’t a square inch of plasterboard exposed. Heck glanced into what had once been the dining room.

  Mussolini snatched from mountain redoubt

  Royal Navy enters Pacific

  Grainy images had been mounted to create maximum impact: frostbitten German troops surrendering in Russia; British tanks rolling over the sunburned plains of Alamein; U-boat survivors bobbing like driftwood in an oil-filled sea.

  In addition, there were four framed black and white snapshots on the mantelpiece, each one depicting the same toothily grinning face: a young squaddie, usually with tousled hair and dust on his cheeks. In one, he’d been photographed in what looked like a desert graveyard, and had a small mongrel dog sitting on his left shoulder. In another he was hefting a Bren gun.

  ‘I’ve heard about living in the past,’ Heck said. ‘But this …’

  ‘Fuck!’ Farthing interrupted. ‘The knife’s gone.’

  He was standing by the lounge sideboard, where other items of memorabilia were arranged. Two of these were cruciform medals done in black metal with white edging, attached to black, white and red ribbons – Heck recognised them as Iron Crosses, second class. In a glass case on the wall there was a faded red beret, with a silver badge attachment depicting an eagle clutching crossed daggers. Also fixed on the wall, as Farthing now indicated, there was a bent wooden scabbard, bound with black leather and clad at its sharpened tip with slivers of plate metal.

  Heck didn’t need to be an expert to recognise the sheath for a khukuri. Though the knife itself was absent, its two smaller cousins – the chakmak and karda, utilised for sharpening the main blade, were still in place.

  ‘He might just have taken it to get it cleaned, or something,’ Farthing said.

  ‘That in itself would be a tad suspicious, don’t you think?’

  Before Farthing could reply, a shudder passed through the house, and then another, and another. Heavy feet were descending the stairs, and at speed. Heck and Farthing both lurched to the lounge door at the same time, briefly hampering each other. When they finally burst into the hall, they caught a fleeting glimpse of a tall shape in a fawn tracksuit vanishing out through the front door, slamming it closed behind him. Heck reached the door first, but was briefly foxed by its spec
ial security lock. He twisted and turned the handle and hit the button repeatedly, all without consequence.

  ‘Here,’ Farthing said, pushing past.

  He managed to get the door open, and they blundered outside.

  The street was empty again, but two things struck them simultaneously: the front nearside tyre of the police Astra had been slashed to the ply-cord – as though someone had dealt it a passing blow with a heavy blade; and the gate in the fence opposite was now open and swinging.

  ‘Shit!’ Farthing shouted, heading across the road to his car.

  ‘What’s on the other side of that fence?’ Heck replied, going for the gate.

  Farthing was now busy filching his radio from its harness. ‘What … oh, wasteland. Industrial wasteland …’

  ‘Can you get the car round there?’

  ‘Not without changing the tyre, obviously …’

  ‘Sod the bleeding tyre!’ Heck ran through the gate. ‘And get us some support!’

  On the other side, a beaten earth path wove crazily down a shallow slope, looping between dense stands of Indian Balsam, their September seedpods now loaded to capacity and exploding as Heck barged against them. The path unfurled ahead of him for dozens of yards, but there was no sign of Cooper, which was disconcerting, given that he was in his fifties. Though what was it they’d said about him – that he’d formerly been an athlete? Heck swore under his breath. He’d known fitness fanatic coppers who were still ripped and energetic in their mid-sixties.

  He fished his own radio from his pocket as he circled a thicket of hogweed and found himself following a rusty wrought-iron fence. Thirty yards ahead, there was a gap in this; on the other side of that, a muddy lane led beneath a dripping black railway arch. Heck kept running, doing his damnedest not to slip and slide in his leather lace-up shoes.

  ‘Alpha-Echo control from DS Heckenburg, Operation Bulldog, over?’

  ‘DS Heckenburg?’

  ‘I’m pursuing a suspect in the neo-Nazi murders. I could use some back-up, and some geographical guidance, over?’

  It was several seconds before he received a response, which was no surprise as the passage under the arch ran forty yards at least. When he re-emerged into the open, Heck found himself on a dirt track strewn with bricks and twists of wire, which led past a broken-down gate onto the forecourt of a nondescript derelict building.

  ‘Excuse me, sarge … can you confirm that you’re pursuing a suspect in the Hendon murders, over?’

  ‘That’s affirmative. His name is Ernest Cooper, male IC1, tall, six-two or six-three, late fifties, over.’

  ‘Whereabouts are you, over?’

  ‘That’s the problem. I don’t bloody know.’ Heck could have beaten himself up at that moment. He hadn’t even memorised Ernest Cooper’s address, and he’d dropped the warrant back in the house, so he had no point of reference at all. All he knew was that he was somewhere in Sunderland’s East End.

  ‘Can you contact PC Jerry Farthing?’ Heck hadn’t memorised Farthing’s collar number either, which was another black mark against him. ‘He’ll tell you where we are, over.’

  ‘Affirmative. Stand by.’

  ‘I can hardly stand by,’ Heck said under his breath, as he jogged through the gate onto a broad, cindery parking area. About thirty yards ahead, the scabrous edifice of the main building was visible. Its upper windows were yawning cavities. A protruding lattice of rusted metalwork ran along the front, about fifteen feet up; the relic of a canopy, beneath which wagons would have idled. Fragments of mildewed signage remained, but were unreadable.

  Heck hesitated to go further. Was it feasible that Cooper, fit as he was, could have got this far ahead? The problem was there didn’t seem to have been anywhere else he could run to. It was all a bit worrying, of course, because if Cooper was the perp, and it now seemed highly likely he was, there were only three reasons why he’d run like this: either there was somewhere else he could go, some bolthole where he could lie low; his personal liberty was less important to him than finishing off the work he’d set himself, eliminating Nathan Crabtree’s gang; or both of the above.

  In no doubt that he needed to catch this guy right now, Heck advanced towards the building, scanning it for any identifying marks he could pass to Comms. Most of its ground-floor entrances were covered by wooden hoardings, but the most central one had collapsed, exposing black emptiness.

  He stepped through this, ultra-warily.

  Total darkness enclosed him – but only for a second. Very rapidly, dimmer light sources became apparent, and his eyes attuned to an area that was like a small lobby, half-flooded with water, crammed with broken bricks and masonry. Anyone attempting to dash through here would likely have fractured an ankle. Instead, Heck tip-toed through it, balancing on planks and fallen joists. A secondary door led into a cavernous inner chamber, the entrance to which was only accessible at the end of sixty yards of cage-like corridor, lagging and bits of cable hanging down through its mesh ceiling.

  Again, Heck halted. Going further on his own was asking for trouble. Cooper had the khukuri knife – and he was clearly a dab hand at using it. With a single blow, he’d disabled a police car. Speaking of which – Heck gritted his teeth with fury at Jerry Farthing. Any bobby with his experience ought to have known that checking damage to a company vehicle was of less importance than apprehending a suspect. In fact, he would have known it. The reason Jerry had refused to join the chase was a lack of motivation. Whether that was down to fear or laziness, Heck wasn’t entirely sure, but the bastard was clearly past his best.

  Then, to his surprise, he heard the chugging of an engine outside.

  He scrambled back through the brick-strewn lobby, and felt a vague pang of guilt at the sight of Farthing’s Astra wallowing to an unsteady halt on the forecourt, its front nearside tyre hanging in ribbons. He walked quickly over there. ‘Have you put Comms in the picture? I wasn’t able to …’ His words petered out.

  Farthing, white-faced and sweating, climbed slowly from the driver’s side, while someone else climbed from the passenger side. The newcomer was slim but tall, about six-foot-three. He was in his late fifties, with lean, angular features and pale blue eyes. He had grey hair cut so short that it was really no more than a circular patch on top of his head, and a clipped grey moustache. He wore a fawn tracksuit, and a khaki belt, into the left-hand side of which the khukuri knife was tucked. This was a truly admirable object – its blade shone wickedly and there was a carved steel lion’s head at its pommel. But he also wielded a firearm: a Luger nine-millimetre, that most iconic weapon of the Third Reich, which he now trained squarely on Farthing’s head.

  They’d been fooled, Heck realised. He’d gone straight through that gate in the fence without considering that their quarry might be somewhere closer to home – hiding under the police car perhaps, or squatting around the back of it.

  ‘Please tell me you managed to get a call out first?’ Heck said to Farthing.

  But Farthing was too busy jabbering to his captor. ‘Mr Cooper … this is ridiculous. You’re not going to shoot us. I mean, come on, you can’t …’

  ‘Shut up,’ Cooper said, quietly but curtly.

  ‘Look, we were only here to ask you a couple of questions …’

  ‘I said shut up!’

  ‘Jesus, man … you can’t just fucking shoot us!’

  ‘Don’t do anything rash, Mr Cooper,’ Heck advised.

  ‘Rash implies unnecessary, pointless, futile.’ Cooper’s accent was noticeably Sunderland, but more refined than most. He waggled with his pistol, indicating that Farthing should walk over and stand alongside Heck, which he duly did. ‘I assure you, Sergeant Heckenburg … the action I take here today will be none of those things. Now empty your pockets, please. Every weapon you’re carrying, every communication device. I want them placed on the ground. When you’ve done that, put your hands up.’

  Heck stooped, laying down his radio, mobile phone and handcuffs. Cooper watched him in
tently and yet unemotionally. His pale blue eyes were like teddy bear buttons; it was quite the most unnatural colour Heck had ever seen.

  ‘That looks like an original 1940s Luger to me, Mr Cooper,’ Heck said. ‘Another spoil of war?’

  ‘Inside!’ Cooper indicated the yawning doorway behind them.

  Heck held his ground, fingers flexing. He glanced around. There wasn’t a building overlooking them. The only high points in sight were the towering hulks of disused cranes. Directly overhead, the sun had gone in, tumbleweeds of cloud scudding through a colourless sky.

  Cooper pointed the Luger directly at Heck’s face. ‘I said move.’

  Heck turned, hands raised. Farthing did the same, half-stumbling, the eyes bulging in his sweaty, froglike face.

  ‘I’m guessing you haven’t tried to fire that before?’ Heck said over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s fully loaded, I assure you,’ Cooper replied.

  ‘Yeah, but what do you think’ll happen if you fire it now … for the first time in seventy years?’

  ‘Keep walking,’ Cooper instructed.

  Farthing whimpered as the dark entrance loomed in front of them. Heck glanced sideways; tears had appeared on the chubby cop’s milk-pale cheeks.

  ‘You still need a way out of this, Mr Cooper,’ Heck said. ‘Shoot us now, and what happens next?’

  ‘That hardly matters to you.’

  ‘But what about you? Won’t be much chance of getting the rest of Crabtree’s gang if you’re sitting in jail. It might be the other way around. Crabtree’s lot will have friends on the inside …’ Bricks and other rubble clattered under their feet as they stumbled into the mildew-scented interior.

  ‘If I feared retaliation, I’d never have embarked on this course,’ Cooper said.

  ‘And what course was that?’ Heck wondered. ‘Bumping off some Nazis? Carrying on your father’s good work?’

  ‘Father was the finest of the fine. During this nation’s darkest hour, fighting men like him shone.’