The Killing Club

by Paul Finch

  Things were further complicated half an hour into the first leg of the journey. The London Midland train was clean and comfortable enough, and it was only half full, so Heck was able to stretch out and relax. Now he was really feeling the pummelling his body had taken in the last few days. Muscles were aching, joints stiff, none of which was helped by the jarring and jolting of the train – but he was only seriously discomforted when another passenger entered the compartment, and for no apparent reason, sat in the seat directly facing him.

  There were three things about this that seemed odd.

  Firstly, there were several empty seating bays along the aisle, and most passengers would opt for a bit of privacy, choosing not to cram themselves in alongside or facing someone else if the alternative was available. Secondly, what had this passenger been doing for the last half-hour? He certainly hadn’t been wandering up and down the train looking for a seat, because Heck would have spotted him before now. And in any case, he would have found one. This meant he must have sat somewhere else, and then for some reason changed his mind about it. Thirdly, this passenger didn’t look like an ordinary Joe. He wore a suit, a shirt and a tie, and he immediately took a laptop from a briefcase, opened it and began to work; but before he did any of this, he removed his jacket, revealing a bullish physique – broad shoulders, a tree-trunk for a neck. He was also shaven-headed, and had a face both brutal and sly: a small slit for a mouth; pitted cheeks; apelike brows overarching tiny eyes.

  Heck watched furtively as the guy rolled his shirt sleeves back, exposing thick, powerful wrists. His hands were heavy-knuckled and bore old scars. A mauler’s hands, if Heck had ever seen them.

  Stations came and went as they proceeded north: Rugby, Coventry. The passenger continued tapping at his keyboard. At one point, Heck got up and walked past him, ostensibly to use the lavatory but in reality to glance at his screen. He had a better look on his way back. The guy was writing some kind of report. It was difficult to see what it was about but Heck caught the words ‘mortgage’ and ‘insurance’.

  Did this mean he was legit? Heck wasn’t sure, but they’d know soon enough.

  The next station, Birmingham New Street, was where he changed. It was three o’clock when they reached it. Rush hour hadn’t yet commenced, but New Street was a major crossroads on the rail network, and the platforms were bustling with commuters. Heck sidled through them, refusing to look back, either at the train he’d just vacated or those who’d disembarked with him – at least not until he had a bona fide reason to do so. That came on the main concourse, where he turned and glanced up at the departures board, and at the same time checked the passengers streaming down the corridor from the platform. There was no sign of a shaven head among them, or a brutish ape-face.

  Heck relaxed, but only a little.

  His connection to Newcastle was on time. He pivoted before climbing aboard, just to ensure the coast was still clear. But now his mind strayed back to that bag-lady in the Northampton Railway Station car park. Why hadn’t he noticed her standing there when he’d first driven in? It seemed increasingly strange. Where had she suddenly appeared from? Was it possible the Nice Guys could have tracked him all the way from Scotland Yard to the Cotswolds, and from there to here?

  The next train was more crowded than the previous one. Initially, Heck had to stand, but made sure to position himself at the end of the rearmost compartment so that he could see everyone in front of him. There was still no sign of that shaven head. Again it was a minor relief – but were a team like the Nice Guys going to put a single tail on one of their targets?

  Owing to the extra bodies, this was a hotter, stuffier ride than the previous one. The train rocked and tilted as it wound across the East Midlands and into South Yorkshire. The stations rolled by, more passengers coming aboard, more disembarking. Now there were short-haul travellers among them: gangs of kids in school uniform, office workers. However, by late afternoon considerable numbers were leaving the train, especially at Sheffield and Doncaster. Soon there was room to sit, and Heck chose a seat close to where he’d been standing. Outside, the sun slipped down in the west, and another of those long, blue dusks drew its mantle over the woods and hills. Even so, it took another hour, during which they passed York, Thirsk, Northallerton and Darlington, before Heck begin to properly unwind.

  He even felt torpor creeping up on him, and tried to fight it off, lurching to his feet and swaying down the aisle. The mere act of walking woke him a little, but just to be sure, he made his way to the buffet and bought a large coffee. He removed its lid on his way back, and sipped – only to halt in the middle of the next compartment.

  The shaven-headed man was there.

  He was no longer working on his laptop, but slouched down, buried in an evening paper. It was neither a disguise nor an attempt to hide, but it had been sufficient to conceal him from Heck on the outward journey to the buffet. The question was how had the guy got on the train without Heck noticing? He had to have done it covertly. Heck eyed him sidelong as he walked past. If the guy was aware of Heck, he didn’t show it.

  Heck took his seat in the next compartment, thinking furiously. When a flickering red light caught his eye, he glanced up: neon text scrolled across a glass panel.

  The next stop is Durham, 12 mins.

  How far was Durham from Sunderland? Heck had been up in the Northeast for several weeks, working the neo-Nazi murders, but he hadn’t used that time to memorise the geography. He guessed ten or fifteen miles, but it might be more. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem – except that he didn’t have much money left.

  ‘Christ’s sake!’ he said under his breath, but loud enough for the elderly lady two seats ahead to glance around disapprovingly.

  He had his credit cards of course, but he couldn’t use those to pay for a taxi. All it would take was SOCAR to put a trace on his financial transactions and it would lead them straight to the door of his destination.

  But one thing was absolutely clear. He couldn’t stay on this train.

  The shaven-headed guy was clearly tailing him. But the bastard might not be as clever as he thought. In his efforts to avoid being spotted, he’d positioned himself far up the train. From way up there, he wouldn’t necessarily see if Heck climbed off near the back – not until it was too late.

  Heck glanced at his watch. They were now ten minutes out of Durham. He gazed back along the compartment. The few people remaining were facing away from him. Even if there was more than one of them on his case – the second one in here – they weren’t observing him at present.

  He glanced at his watch again. Nine minutes.

  He stood up, stepped into the aisle and backtracked the two or three yards to the slide door connecting with the rearmost boarding area. No head turned to look at him.

  He retreated into the boarding area itself, and stepped out of sight, jamming himself against the exit door. Six minutes remained.

  Funnily enough, of all the people he’d tangled with during this investigation, including those madmen in the Underground, none had looked as tasty as this shaven-headed character. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, though in Heck’s long experience it sometimes paid to judge a book by its cover. He adjusted the Glock in his inside pocket, pushing one of its magazines further down, so the weapon was raised, its grip more easily reached.

  With laborious slowness, they pulled into Durham station.

  Still no one else entered this particular boarding area. The train came to a shuddering standstill. There was a tannoy announcement from the train manager, and the exit door slid open. Heck stepped out, immediately glancing left. Significant numbers of passengers were disembarking, while at least an equal number were waiting to climb aboard. The station’s canopy lights counteracted the dimness of the evening, but all he could see for several hundred yards was a chaotic scrum of figures.

  Heck backed away along the platform until he was level with the rear of the train. The end of the platform lay thirty yards
behind that; it terminated at a horizontal chain with a No Passengers Beyond This Point sign in the middle. Beyond the chain, the concrete ramped down to trackside gravel, where a deck of sleepers had been laid to form a footway across the lines, no doubt for station staff.

  Glancing up, he saw a red light suspended between the two railways, indicating that no train was about to come hurtling through. It was a risk, but hell, this whole thing was a risk. He stepped quickly over the chain, descended the ramp, and crossed the lines via the footway. No one shouted, no emergency lights were activated. On the other side, he ascended to the next platform and stepped over another chain – still no one seemed to notice, let alone object.

  This next platform was also busy, and Heck purposely lost himself in the crowd as they awaited their connection. The Newcastle train drew slowly out again. Heck watched warily. By the time its last carriage had passed, only a few of the passengers who’d disembarked from it remained on the opposite platform. The shaven-headed man was among them.

  He stood rigid, his briefcase clutched under one brawny arm as he looked left and right. Heck backed away, almost knocking a woman over. He apologised profusely before stepping behind a stanchion. When he risked another peek, the shaven-headed guy’s back was turned. He’d spun on his heel, as though to shield whatever he was doing – but it was quite clear that he was talking into a mobile phone.

  Heck made a beeline for an exit stair, his eyes riveted on his opponent, who was so engrossed in his call that he only glanced once over his shoulder, and by then Heck was out of his eye-line, already descending.

  He reached the bottom of the stair quickly, finding himself in a white-tiled corridor, which led only to the right, crossing underneath the two railway lines and passing the bottom of the stair from the other platform. Heck ventured towards this, but before he got there he heard trudging footfalls coming down.

  He froze. Two options remained: the stair leading back to the platform he’d just left – though in truth there probably wasn’t enough time to reach it; or, much closer, the door to the Gents. He took the second, as there might be a staff door connecting from that to another section of the station.

  But there wasn’t.

  He entered the room through two back-to-back doors, to find it spacious but horseshoe-shaped, an island of washbasins and mirrors down the middle, a condom machine fastened to the stanchion at one end, a chewing-gum machine at the other. The urinals stood on the left, the cubicles on the right. There was nobody in there, and nowhere else to go.

  With a thud, someone pushed against the outer door. Heck darted around the island and ducked into the middle cubicle, closing it behind him and locking it. As an afterthought – and just as a second thud signalled that someone had barged the inner door open – he clambered onto the toilet. There he waited, helpless, barely seeing the obscene graffiti scrawled on the walls around him, hardly noticing the stench rising from the unflushed mess in the bowl between his feet.

  Feet clipped loudly across the lavatories, halting somewhere else in the room. Heck wasn’t sure where, but he heard no water trickling, either from a running tap or a voiding bladder. Sweat seething on his brow, he eased out the Glock.

  The flat wooden door in front of him was mesmerising in its blankness. As he tried to picture what was happening on the other side of it, he slowly extended his arm, staring down the pistol barrel. His thoughts whirled with nightmarish imagery: Austin Ledburn forced to swallow a gallon of petrol before he was set alight; Jim Laycock, his skull and bones shattered by the frenzied blows of a dozen claw-hammers; Mike Silver – choked and squealing as his own walking-stick was thrust down his gargling oesophagus. There were no further footsteps, but Heck was convinced his opponent had now focused on the only toilet cubicle that happened to be closed.

  That wretched door – less than an inch of hardboard, and it was all that protected him. Some chance against a hail of bullets. His hair prickled as he heard a low, dragging sound – seemingly drawing closer. He imagined the shaven-headed man, gun in hand – a Tavor? a Chang Feng? a SIG-Sauer? – crawling forward on his knees to check under the panel.

  Did Heck fire first? Drill the cubicle door from the inside, in the vague hope he’d catch his enemy off-guard? But what if it was some innocent person?

  Sweat dripped from the end of his nose. He knew it was impossible that his hoarse breathing would go unheard. And then he heard humming. It was nothing he recognised – some distorted version of a modern ditty.

  But humming?

  The Nice Guy was humming?

  That didn’t compute.

  Heck let out a slow exhalation of breath.

  The dragging sound seemed further away. The humming ceased as someone hawked phlegm and spat. It was impossible to imagine the person Heck thought it was being so … casual. Stealthily, he slipped the pistol under his coat, stepped down from the toilet and planted his ear against the door.

  The humming resumed briefly, transforming into a low, tuneless singing.

  Whoever that was, they thought they were here alone.

  Suddenly, Heck had to get out of this upright coffin. He disengaged the lock. The door opened silently as he peeked around it.

  It was something of a surprise, perhaps a worry, that he couldn’t see anyone at all – and he didn’t notice the singing/humming had stopped until he’d come out into the middle of the room.

  He froze. What the devil … had he been tricked?

  He made for the door, lurching around the pillar with the condom machine – only to find a man waiting on the other side. Heck whipped out his Glock, aiming it squarely at the man’s face.

  The man, who was wearing dirty green overalls and aged somewhere in his late sixties, gazed back through big bottle-lensed glasses. He was leaning on a broad-bottomed broom and in the process of unwrapping the foil from a stick of gum. His mouth dropped open.

  ‘Sorry … mate,’ Heck stuttered. ‘Erm …’ He thrust the gun away and fished out his warrant card. ‘Police officer. Don’t worry … nothing to be alarmed about.’

  He brushed past the gaping functionary, and shouldered his way out into the corridor. Cheeks burning, he hurried up the stairs to the ticket hall, straight to the outer doors and then down onto the station approach.

  Full darkness had fallen, but the place was well-lit. Behind the wall directly facing the station, there were deep thickets of trees. Cars and taxis were coming and going, collecting or dropping off, and he could hear the distant sounds of the city. Thirty yards to his right, tucked half out of sight behind a corner, there was a bus stop. No one was waiting there, but a notice board was fixed to its post. He walked towards it, knowing he’d be met by a wall of information; place-names and bus route numbers which meant absolutely nothing to him.

  The shaven-headed man stepped into his path.

  Heck was midway between pavements when the burly figure appeared alongside the bus stop. His mouth was fixed in a feral smile, his eyes almost luminous as they locked with Heck’s.

  Heck half-stumbled; his mouth dried. His hand itched to pull the Glock, but the shaven-headed guy already had his right hand in his jacket pocket. What if his sidearm was already primed and pointed? A vehicle screeched up at Heck’s back, its doors bursting open.

  The shaven-headed man advanced, his smile a broad grin.

  Heck still reached for his gun. He didn’t care that this was a public place. He wasn’t drinking a gallon of petrol, or being hung upside down and sliced …

  ‘Dadd-eee!’ the two children shrieked, as they charged past him – into the arms of the shaven-headed man, who crouched to hug them.

  Heck was a hapless spectator as the man handed one of the children his briefcase – the little tot insisted on carrying it for him – and continued to hug them both as they all strolled forward together. Heck turned stiffly, watching as they passed and climbed into a chugging Mini Cooper, behind whose steering wheel an attractive, dark-haired woman was sitting, smiling. The Mini’s doors s
lammed closed and it circled around Heck, rumbling down the approach road in a swirl of exhaust.

  Chapter 26

  PC Jerry Farthing had long been aware that his small two-up-two-down in Southwick had never been much to look at: another anonymous unit in a decrepit redbrick terrace, with a tiny yard at the rear.

  A low-rent district from way back, it wasn’t perhaps an ideal place for a policeman to be living. You might have expected him to be pestered to death by his neighbours, either looking for help or looking to cause trouble. But Farthing had managed to keep it quiet that he was a copper, primarily by having no interaction with those around him, and by never leaving or returning to the house in uniform. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to live, but at least the place hadn’t cost him much. His parents had owned this house originally, and by the time Farthing had come to inherit it, the mortgage was paid in full, so if nothing else it was cheap. But as he sat up late that night watching the footy in his darkened lounge, he was finally wondering if he should get out of here, maybe head for the suburbs. There were all sorts of romantic myths about the old working-class north. About how the houses might be ancient and rotten, but how their occupants were good-natured, generous and always looking out for each other. Well that might be true, though with the best will in the world, what use were good-natured neighbours against a man with a gun?

  It was an easier thing to say than to fully comprehend, but Farthing’s day-to-day existence had been ruined by the incident with Ernest Cooper. Okay, it was unlikely he’d ever come up against a maniac like that again. But those pale blue eyes, that bland, emotionless exterior … they were burned indelibly into his thoughts. In his younger days, Farthing would have hated himself for the lack of innate courage this exposed, but he was long enough in the tooth now to know that bravery was for suckers. Over the last few years, he’d seen far too many fellow bobbies get severely hurt by going up against impossible odds.