by Paul Finch
‘We’ve had you looked over. You’ll be okay.’
‘Where am I?’
‘Apparently you need a couple of days’ bed rest. So we fixed this billet up for you.’
Silver glanced around, noticing the cluttered interior of a shed or lock-up. Overhead, its sloped roof was of corrugated metal with occasional wooden lathes laying across it, these latter rotted and hung with ropes of dust-thick cobweb. Its walls were bare, mildewed brick. Aged tools dangled from rusted iron hooks.
‘Doesn’t look like much,’ the Dane said. ‘But at least you’ll be comfortable. Personally, I’d have liked to keep you on the move, but it seems that’s a no-no.’
Silver continued to glance around. Of newer manufacture was the metal pole standing next to him, from which a saline drip was suspended. Alongside that was propped the Malacca cane they’d given him in the prison.
‘Hey … Mike.’ The Dane’s mouth curved downward in a fake frown. ‘You don’t look very happy to see me.’
As his grogginess cleared, Silver felt sick to the pit of his stomach. On top of that, he had a pounding headache. ‘Kurt, the way I feel … you’re lucky I’m even acknowledging you.’
‘Now that wouldn’t be kind.’
‘In case you’ve forgotten, Kurt … I’m not.’
The Dane called Kurt chuckled. ‘You know some of these guys?’
Silver realised that other men were present. They weren’t exactly standing back in the shadows; it was simply that his vision was still adjusting to the half-light. They wore scarves, gloves, dark khaki clothing and waterproof coveralls. They also carried weapons: semi-automatics and submachine guns. But that was no more than he’d expect, and now he looked at them properly, he recognised several of their cold, hard faces.
He nodded at a squat, bullet-headed guy, with black scorpion tattoos visible on the insides of his wrists. ‘Alex.’
The man he’d addressed nodded back. ‘Mike.’
‘Bruno,’ Silver said, turning to a handsome, powerfully built black guy.
Bruno didn’t reply, merely inclined his head.
‘You know Shaun Cullen?’ Kurt wondered.
A third guy stepped into view. He was freckle-faced, with a red beard and moustache. Silver suspected that long, greasy, red locks were tucked under his pulled-down woolly cap. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Horribly killed anyone recently, Shaun?’
‘As a matter of fact, I have, Mike,’ the man called Cullen replied in an American accent. His eyes glittered, but no smile creased his lips.
‘What happened? He look at you in a way you didn’t like?’
‘Nah … this one was strictly business.’
‘So’s this … I’m guessing?’ Silver glanced questioningly from face to face.
Kurt chuckled again. ‘You think we’d come all the way over here for any other reason?’
‘I’m still in the UK then?’ Sick though he still was, Silver felt more than a little deflated by that revelation.
‘We’d like to take you home, Mike,’ Kurt said. ‘We want to go home ourselves, but we’ve got a long list of jobs we need to do first.’
Silver knew immediately what he was talking about, and it put a pang of unease through him. ‘That’s taking a big risk, Kurt.’
‘Haven’t got much choice, have we?’ Cullen replied.
‘Shaun’s right, Mike,’ Kurt said. ‘The UK’s like a wide-open back door at present. We have to close it somehow.’
‘The problem is …’ Silver tried to sit up in his bed. ‘The problem is they’re wise to us. They know who we are. They’ll be watching, waiting …’
Kurt indicated the man called Alex. ‘Corporal Mulroony here doesn’t rate your modern Brit police services much. Reckons they’re one half careerists, the other half barrack-room politicians.’
Corporal Mulroony remained stone-faced and silent, but Silver shook his head. ‘It would be an error to apply that judgement across the board. This guy Heckenburg … it took him a few months, but he ended up pulling my entire operation apart. And that was on his own, with no back-up.’
‘Yes, but Mike …’ Kurt mused. ‘The question is … was that about Heckenburg, or about you?’
‘Gimme a break, Kurt. You know I always ran a tight ship.’
‘Okay, so who is this guy … Superman?’
‘Not exactly. He has weak spots. He can be hurt and he makes mistakes. But he knows his job and he doesn’t give up. He’s also a chancer …’ Silver indicated the beaker in Kurt’s hand, and took another thankful sip; his strength was now returning, his head clearing properly. ‘He’s unpredictable too, and that’s something you’ll need to watch him for very carefully.’
Kurt pondered this as he fished a fragment of paper from his jacket pocket, and unfolded it. ‘To be honest, I’m less concerned about this cop Heckenburg than I am about these two.’ He glanced at the paper. ‘Commander Frank Tasker and Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper …?’
‘What about them?’
‘Well … they’ve been talking to you recently, Mike. A lot.’
Silver shrugged. ‘They were trying to get me to blow the gaff on the rest of you guys.’
‘And?’
‘I didn’t. Obviously.’
‘What did they offer you?’
‘What could they offer me?’ Silver shrugged again. ‘I was convicted of kidnapping and murdering thirty-eight women. You think the British public would sit by and let them make some kind of deal with me?’
‘So all these interviews in Brancaster Prison … they just led nowhere?’
‘I strung ’em along … but that was to make it look like I was playing ball, maybe crank some petty privileges out of them.’
‘You were happy to spend the rest of your life in Gull Rock, Mike?’ Cullen asked doubtfully.
‘It wasn’t like I could do much about it.’ Silver had managed to draw his right hand from under the blanket and was slowly, cautiously flexing it. ‘But believe it or not, it isn’t actually so bad. I was in the Special Supervision Unit. There were only four others in there with me. A crazy old fella who dismembered his two grandkids to see how they worked. A mob enforcer with twenty kills to his name, but who’s now virtually blind thanks to getting shot in the back of the head when the screws let him out to attend his brother’s funeral. A rape-strangler who specialised in teenage prostitutes. And a fifty-year-old social reject who still relied for everything on his octogenarian mum, and got his kicks setting fire to old folks’ homes. Now you tell me … who do you think was running that wing?’
‘Congratulations on being king of a pretty goddamn pathetic castle,’ Cullen said.
‘Hey, it could’ve been worse. If I was outside the SSU and in with the general population, it might’ve turned nasty very quickly.’
‘Is that what they threatened you with if you didn’t cooperate?’ Kurt wondered.
‘Once or twice.’
‘You had no legal recourse?’
‘I may have had. I don’t know … we never got that far. Like I say, I kept stringing them along.’
Kurt mulled this over. ‘The main thing is you never talked to them about us?’
‘In truth, there wouldn’t have been a lot I could tell them, would there? I mean, I know who you guys are, I know roughly where your respective centres of operation are … but I haven’t been abroad for quite a few years now. And you’d be damn stupid if you didn’t keep moving things around, mixing personnel, switching IDs …’
‘Like you did, you mean?’ Cullen said. ‘When one cop on his own pulled your entire crew apart.’
Silver regarded him coolly. ‘You might show a little fucking respect, Shaun. I brought you into this line, remember?’
‘Yeah, you did,’ Cullen said. ‘And I’m grateful, Mike, I really am. But let’s face it … law enforcement bodies all over the world have infiltrated organised crime, international terrorism, dissident political groups. They’ve even penetrated each other’s networks. Everyon
e out there knows what everyone else is doing. Except us. We’ve always stayed under the radar.’
‘Until now,’ Kurt added. ‘When we’ve suddenly got this great big hole in our security wall … called Great Britain.’
‘I’m aware we fucked up over here, Kurt,’ Silver said. ‘But we paid the price. It wasn’t just me getting slammed inside. Eric Ezekial got blown to kingdom come. You knew Deke, didn’t you, Alex?’
‘I did, aye,’ Corporal Mulroony replied in his Glaswegian brogue. ‘Good man.’
‘Yeah, well you can thank Heckenburg personally for that one. Sonny Kilmor was shot in the back by some shit-arse London gangster. Tommy Hobbs got his neck broken.’
‘Shot in the back?’ the black guy called Bruno said, sounding disappointed.
‘You knew Trooper Kilmor?’ Silver asked.
Bruno nodded. ‘He was a legend in 3-Para.’
‘There you fucking go. We paid the price, Kurt.’
‘You may have done, Mike,’ the Dane replied. ‘But like I say, you left the back door open.’
‘Then close it … if you must.’
‘We’re in the process of that.’ Kurt patted the patient’s knee and stood up. ‘But we’ve gotta be sure we close it properly. And for good.’
Briefly, they stood looking at him. Their expressions weren’t exactly hostile, but they were blank, unreadable – and that was never a good sign. Silver’s scalp began to prickle.
‘You don’t trust me, do you?’ he said slowly.
‘We’ve gotta be absolutely sure, Mike,’ Kurt reiterated.
‘And my word’s not good enough?’
‘There was a time when you were the best liar I knew. That suited us then.’
‘But now things have changed,’ Cullen added, the left side of his mouth hitching into a lopsided smile. The American was an ultra-reliable operative; a professional through and through. But there were some aspects of his work he enjoyed more than others.
‘You bastard, Shaun,’ Silver said, a sense of dread knotting his lower belly. ‘All the favours I’ve done you …’
‘Well … you made me number three in this outfit. I owe you for that.’
‘I can make you number two. Just say the word.’
‘But I’m already number two. And I’ve got Kurt to thank for that.’
Silver switched his attention to the Dane. ‘Come on, Kurt. You know me … we’re friends.’
Kurt shrugged. ‘You just offered my job to Shaun. Is that how you treat friends?’
‘You fucking snake-in-the-grass!’
‘Despite that, I’m not going to make this personal.’ Behind Kurt, a dingy drape was drawn over the single window; dimness flooded in. ‘All we want, Mike, is the truth.’
‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it sank its teeth into your bollocks and twisted them off. You’re a fucking caveman, Kurt … and you’ll lead these guys to disaster.’
Cullen snorted. ‘Says the one who’s endangered our entire operation.’
Silver glared at him. ‘You’d better do what you’ve got to do, Shaun … but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t lead anywhere.’
‘I sure hope it doesn’t,’ Cullen said with apparent sincerity as he unzipped his combat jacket. ‘Whatever today’s outcome, I always kind of liked you.’
Chapter 12
‘Laycock hadn’t taken his demotion well,’ Shawna McCluskey said. ‘He got the idea he’d washed up in some hellhole, surrounded by society’s worst.’
Heck sipped his coffee. ‘Wembley, a hellhole? I’ve seen a lot worse.’
‘Exactly. Sounds like he’d lost it.’
Heck contemplated this as they sat together in the National Crime Group canteen. It was lunchtime on the day after his arrest, three days after the attack on the prison cavalcade, and the place was busier than usual, mainly due to the extra bodies brought in from SOCAR.
‘Are we absolutely sure some local posse wasn’t responsible for this?’ Heck wondered. ‘Maybe some minor players Laycock had been winding up?’
‘Wembley CID reckon he was winding no one up but them. Ever since he arrived there, he was drinking. Occasionally while he was on duty. Came up with loads of ideas, but nothing workable. Spent most of his time signing off other people’s paperwork.’
Heck snorted. ‘Just like when he was here. Or not signing it off, in my case.’
‘Whatever else he was, Heck, he didn’t deserve to get his brains hammered out.’
‘I can introduce you to thirty-eight sets of grieving parents who’d give you an argument on that. It’s accurate he was found in a burnt-out van in Hornsey?’
‘Yeah. In the grounds of an abandoned house. BDEL had been carved on its door.’
‘That seems weird,’ Heck said. ‘Doesn’t fit the former pattern. I mean, the Nice Guys never left a signature before. What about Laycock … much left of him for the lab-rats?’
‘Enough. He was pretty badly burned but they reckon he was dead before the fire was lit. Blunt force trauma all over his body.’
Heck contemplated this. Laycock had been a policeman, but it was a struggle to feel pity for him. The guy had come to a grisly end, but so had a good number of others – and in their case Heck still felt certain Laycock had been partly responsible. Whenever he viewed the gruesome leftovers of criminals who’d been turned on by their own, it filled him with revulsion – the sight of mutilated flesh always did – but no real sadness.
‘Any witnesses?’
‘Only the CCTV at the side of the pub. It caught the van leaving.’
‘The van was a knocker, you say?’
Shawna nodded. ‘Stolen from Southall early yesterday morning.’
‘More than one assailant, I assume?’
She shrugged. ‘One assailant in the pub toilet, they think … probably someone else driving the van. Maybe a couple of others to help chuck him into it.’
Heck sat back. ‘The more of them the better … less chance they’ll have got away without leaving something at the scene.’
‘Gemma’s not expecting the forensics will do us much good … if this crew have come in from abroad, the chances are they won’t be in the system.’
‘It’ll do us good if we manage to get our mitts on a couple of them,’ Heck said.
‘You won’t be getting your mitts on anyone,’ a voice interrupted.
Nick Gribbins had approached them, unseen. His right wrist was in a cast, but not in a sling, and by his formal attire he was still on duty. He no longer regarded Heck with suspicion – Heck’s story about visiting a takeaway on the night in question had checked out, while a woman living on the other side of the railway from his flat had confirmed she’d seen the light in his bedroom and had spotted him moving around at about half-past midnight, which made his involvement in Laycock’s abduction impossible. But they’d hardly hit things off. The SOCAR sergeant’s gaze was still an icy shade of grey.
‘You’re wanted downstairs, Heckenburg … now.’
Heck indicated the dregs of his coffee. ‘Gotta finish this first. Might take a while.’
‘It isn’t a fucking request!’
‘Perhaps it should have been. That may have been where you went wrong.’
‘You really are an obnoxious prat, aren’t you?’
‘And you couldn’t raise a wank in a warm bath … and that was before I busted your hand.’
‘You want to see how busted it really is?’
Heck jumped to his feet, but now Shawna McCluskey intervened. ‘Hey!’ She rounded the table. ‘What’s all this testosterone crap? This is a sodding canteen … people are trying to have a quiet cuppa in here!’
The men continued to eyeball each other.
‘It’s your own DSU who wants you downstairs,’ Gribbins said tightly. ‘I don’t know why … I just said I’d deliver the message. But she didn’t bloody request either.’
He turned on his heel, and strode to the service counter. Heck glanced at Shawna, who looked vaguely disa
ppointed in him.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Oh … nothing.’ She grabbed her jacket. ‘I just wondered if it ever occurred to you that laying into bystanders because the real bastards are out of reach might be counter-productive?’
‘Come on, Shawna. You heard him …’
‘Yeah, I heard you too. You’re like a kid sometimes.’
‘You’re like a kid, sergeant,’ he corrected her, but she only half-smiled. ‘Hey, DC McCluskey … they turned my flat inside out!’
‘Like anyone’d notice,’ she replied. ‘The point is, we’re all on the same side.’
‘When you’ve got a sec, remind SOCAR of that.’
Heck headed out of the door, and walked downstairs in a huff. But in truth, her words had made an impact. His original investigation into the Nice Guys, into the kidnap, rape, torture and murder of thirty-eight women – thirty-eight at least, he reminded himself – had been the worst experience of his professional life. On top of that, he himself had been beaten and shot. Lauren Wraxford, a civilian he’d formed a real attachment with, had been stabbed through the heart. The perpetrators, a bunch of mercenary scum, had been plying their filthy trade for years in distant lands – and there’d been nothing insane about them, nothing sick, nothing beyond the scope of human responsibility. The acquisition of wealth was their sole concern, and they didn’t care who died in unimaginable terror, agony and despair as a result. Only when they’d brought their business to Britain under Mad Mike Silver had they finally fallen foul of law enforcement, but they hadn’t fallen foul of it nearly enough for Heck’s taste. Even though several of them had died and Silver had received a full life sentence, Heck had long suspected there were more of them out there – and now he knew it for a fact. He wasn’t sure how he’d react if those remaining ever came under his hand; they’d just better hope he didn’t have a weapon in it. He’d often been criticised in his career for being too obsessive, too extreme. But it was difficult in the case of the Nice Guys to imagine there could be any other way. And it wasn’t as if his worst fears hadn’t, at least to some extent, been justified. He ought to have realised there was no prison in Britain secure enough for a bastard like Mad Mike. The notion that he was out again, free to do anything he wanted – and God alone knew what that might be – was more than Heck could stomach. And yet each time he thought along these lines, or even attempted to justify in his own mind the hatred he felt for Silver and that gang of nameless, faceless killers, it reminded him more and more why he shouldn’t be involved. And as Shawna had said, taking his frustrations out on those who were would hardly help.