The Killing Club

by Paul Finch

  ‘And let me guess … killing Laycock was a diversion? It would make us think the SCU mole had been disposed of once and for all.’

  Kane grinned again and nodded. ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘Tasker thought we still had a mole. Otherwise, why bug the office?’

  Kane rolled his eyes. ‘Tasker’s one of those blue-eyed boys who always seem to rise in this job without actually ever being right. You know … one of these slimy characters who always get invited to the Commissioner’s table while the rest of us have to work that little bit extra just to get noticed. His main aim in bugging the phones was to keep you in the dark about the enquiry. It could also have netted him a mole, had I, as a senior supervisor, not been party to his plans. But if it had done, it would have been a fortunate accident – not an unusual occurrence in his career, I suspect.’

  ‘Jesus … Jesus H. Christ.’ Perhaps now wasn’t the time for Heck to feel guilty. But it was slowly striking home how horrendous his misjudgement of Jim Laycock had truly been.

  Kane seemed to sense this line of thought, and had no hesitation rubbing it in. ‘And who made it possible for big Jim to take the fall, if not you, Heck? All those nasty, unfounded allegations. I mean, come on … condemning another copper to certain death! Even by your standards, that was something of a faux-pas.’

  Heck briefly felt sick. Laycock had never been much of a copper. For him it had all been about appearances – meeting targets, massaging the figures. As long as things looked good he was happy, because that would only reflect well on him. But he’d never deserved the fate Heck had indirectly sent him to.

  Not that it was Heck who’d wielded the claw-hammer, of course.

  ‘And it wasn’t just Laycock, was it?’ Heck said. ‘You tried to dispose of me too. You set me and Gary Quinnell up in Stoke Newington.’

  Kane gave an expansive shrug. ‘I even set up the crimes you were due to investigate there.’

  ‘What …?’

  Kane chuckled again. ‘The reason Stoke Newington CID got nowhere near the Shoreditch Slasher, couldn’t track him for love nor money, is quite simple … he didn’t exist. Well, technically he did exist, but not as some malfunctioning lowlife who got his jollies ripping women’s faces … as one of the Nice Guys doing a specific job, with a bit of “sex offender” coaching from yours truly.’ Kane mused. ‘I think he quite enjoyed rearranging a few Plain Janes’ fizzogs.’

  ‘Ben … are you fucking insane! One of those girls lost her eye!’

  ‘Had to make it real, Heck. I needed some reason to get you up there, firstly to keep you occupied, but failing that, to set up some kind of ambush. And then look what happened. I gave them your exact route, your exact timings … but you proved your usual tricky self. Of course, I couldn’t send them after you once you were installed in that safehouse in the Cotswolds. If you’d been hit there, Gemma would have realised we still had a leak. It crossed my mind briefly that she might have been setting a trap – using you as bait to see if the SCU mole was still functioning despite Laycock’s death. But now I think she just wanted you out of the way. It’s not like she didn’t have good reason, is it?’

  Despite his desperate urge to jump to his feet, try to dodge the inevitable bullet and beat the living shit out of his gloating captor, Heck couldn’t help but sit there and listen. Because it sounded as if he was yet to hear the biggest revelation of the day.

  ‘So you hadn’t worked this bit out either?’ Kane laughed. ‘You’re not going to like it, Heck, you really aren’t. But the irony is … it’s all your fault. Ever since the first Nice Guys enquiry, and your incessant blabbing, Interpol and Europol have been leaning on the Home Office. They’ve got lists of their own missing women the size of phone directories, and yet in Mad Mike Silver we had the world’s only known Nice Guy prisoner. The pressure was on to get him to talk, and so as you know, Gemma and Tasker were trying to cut a deal with him. What you don’t know is that he would only play ball in exchange for his freedom. Obviously that wasn’t possible, but it was eventually proposed that, in return for chapter and verse on Nice Guys operations abroad, more comfortable accommodation – significantly more comfortable – might be found for him. He said he’d think about this – he wanted to try it out before he made up his mind. Of course, simply moving him to this new home was out of the question. The public would never have forgiven us. So it had to be done secretly. An escape was staged. Silver was given drugs …’

  Heck’s face slackened in disbelief.

  Kane laughed again, loudly. ‘Yeah, that’s right, pal … we smuggled in those drugs to induce that fake heart attack. We – or rather SOCAR – were the ones set to ambush the cavalcade. Unfortunately, thanks to yours truly, the real Nice Guys learned all about this – and I mean, what a break for them! The cavalcade got bushwhacked a good ten miles before it reached the point where our ambushers were waiting. And how easy was it? Thanks to the intelligence blackout, no local forces knew anything out of the ordinary was happening. Even if word had got out at the time, they’d have been hard-pressed to respond effectively.’

  ‘How … how did you know all this?’ Heck stammered. ‘You weren’t party to those prison interviews.’

  ‘Gimme a break, Heck … I was Gemma’s deputy. I was always there, always hanging around. She may not have consciously trusted me with the top secret stuff, but it wasn’t difficult sniffing it out. I’ve got keys to her drawers, passwords to her encrypted files. But who’d have thought it, eh? DSU Piper! Britain’s top lady detective! Once the love of your life … aiding and abetting a prison break by the most reviled criminal in history. And so many lives lost in the process.’ There was a loud bleeping from his pocket. He fished out his phone. ‘Good … they’re on their way back.’

  Heck was still attempting to digest what he’d been told. It was almost inconceivable, and yet it made a grotesque kind of sense. No wonder SOCAR had tried to imprison him rather than let him join the investigation … no wonder Gemma had gone along with it. Though understanding why didn’t necessarily forgive. He doubted he’d ever be able to forgive her anything after what he’d just heard.

  ‘I told the NGs not to wander off too far,’ Kane added by way of explanation. ‘Just enough to flush you out.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell them where I was when I first rang you, so they could grab me there and then?’

  ‘Because I know you, Heck. How you don’t bother following orders. How you wouldn’t be waiting by this phone, even though I specifically instructed you to. How you’d find some covert position from where you could do your own thing. At the very least, you’d have seen them coming. In addition, I wanted to be here personally. As you may have guessed, I was already halfway up the A1 when I got your call. How else could I have made it so quickly?’

  ‘Getting jumpy, were you?’ Heck wondered. ‘All these bodies stacking up. And your name on the Nice Guys’ paperwork.’

  Kane shrugged. ‘I will admit to deciding it was time I had a face to face with Mr Klausen. See if I could persuade him to depart these shores again. It wouldn’t have been easy, even then. He always lacked Mike Silver’s wider vision … not to mention his professional control. Plus … well, I think he enjoyed it all a bit too much. I mean, all that calling card stuff. I advised against it, but he really wanted to inflict pain and fear. Wanted to leave you guys in no doubt there was a new bad boy in town. I said all along that once Silver had been removed from the picture, there was no point them staying. That their former clients were weak, frightened nobodies who couldn’t grass on anyone because they knew nothing. But Klausen’s always been one to try and kill two birds with one stone … or two dozen, come to that.’

  ‘Klausen’s the tall guy with the blond hair, I’m guessing?’

  Kane nodded. ‘Kurt Klausen. He was Mad Mike’s second-in-command in the Foreign Legion. Good soldiers by all accounts. Paratroopers, Counter-Terrorist Brigade. But as a Brit and Dane, their opportunities for promotion were limited. When Mad
Mike broke away to form a mercenary company, Klausen went with him. When he formed the Nice Guys, Klausen went with him again.’

  ‘And does Klausen run things in Europe?’

  ‘I’m not party to all these details, Heck. At the end of the day I’m just their grass. But you’d be an idiot to imagine there aren’t others like him. This octopus has many tentacles.’

  The Ford Mondeo Heck had seen earlier now approached from the northwest, cruising to a halt about fifty yards from the junction. At the same time, another vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, approached from the southwest. That too parked about fifty yards down the road.

  ‘You know what I hate most about these pals of yours?’ Heck said, noting that quite a few men had arrived in the two vehicles.

  ‘Do tell.’

  ‘Our country’s always at war. Every generation sees its young guys come home shattered. They do the best they can, but they’re never the same again. And yet these scrotes you’ve fallen in with … they don’t suffer, they don’t regret. They seem to thrive on it …’

  ‘So do you, Heck.’ Kane signalled to the figures climbing from the newly arrived vehicles. ‘Least, that’s the impression I get. Do you consider yourself a scrote? Or what is it … that old cliché? It takes a wolf to catch a wolf. Is that how you excuse yourself?’

  ‘And how do you excuse yourself, Ben?’

  ‘I’m a survivor, that’s all. I’m not fond of my indiscretions. But I dare say we all have sexual tastes we’d be ashamed to admit in public.’

  ‘Except that in most cases they don’t amount to rape and murder.’

  ‘Then you’re very fortunate you have no uncontrollable chemical imbalance that’s likely to ruin your life should word about it get out.’

  ‘What are you saying … it’s not your fault?’ Heck tried to scoff, but was uncomfortably aware of the Nice Guys – nine of them in total, five from one car, four from the other – encroaching on foot along the adjoining roads.

  ‘I’m saying I’m not going to prison for a sexual preference I have no control over,’ Kane said. ‘Not at all. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to keep me alive and functioning in this world. I don’t believe there’s an afterlife …’

  ‘Good thing, given what you’ll be facing if there is!’

  ‘This is the only time I’ve got, Heck. And I don’t intend to waste it.’

  ‘You’re still gonna pay for this, Kane.’

  ‘But you first. Stand up.’

  Heck clambered to his feet, nausea gripping his guts as the two groups of figures came together at the crossroads, and then, with the man called Klausen at their centre, spread out like a clutch of Wild West outlaws, drawing various firearms from under their coats and jackets. Kane kept the Glock trained on Heck, but took several steps backwards until he was alongside his Discovery.

  The only Nice Guy who didn’t draw a weapon was Klausen himself. He stood with arms folded, an odd fixed grin on his handsome yet scarred face. ‘Well … Sergeant Heckenburg,’ he said in his distinctive accent. ‘You really are quite a guy. In London, I sent three of our best men after you. Only two came back, one with a smashed nose, the other with a fractured kneecap.’

  ‘The pleasure was all mine,’ Heck replied.

  ‘Wiseass fucker, ain’t he?’ came an American voice, and Heck focused on the figure to Klausen’s right; he had a shaved-down flat-top and a limp. Up close, there was something particularly disturbing about this character. He was ashen-cheeked with freckles, almost boyish – he didn’t look old enough or mean enough to be involved with this crew. And yet his glittery grey eyes were the closest organic things to broken glass Heck had ever seen.

  ‘Give my regards to your Aussie pal,’ Heck said. ‘Pity he’s not the handsome devil he once was, eh?’

  ‘He’ll sure be sorry he missed you.’

  As though at some unspoken command, the Nice Guys raised their weapons. Heck’s spine went rigid, but it was half a second before he realised the roaring in his ears was not the blood rushing into his head, but the fast approach of an engine.

  Despite the narrowness of the northwest road, the blue Chevrolet came hurtling around its bend, swerving past the parked Mondeo with a speed beyond reckless. An attempted handbrake turn saw it skid sideways into the junction, all four tyres smoking, the Nice Guys scattering. Heck dived out of the way too, and rolled as it slewed past him and hit Kane’s Discovery with jarring force – WHAM! – spinning around in the middle of the crossroads. Kane’s car was buffeted onto the verge, shattering the telephone booth, and slamming into its owner side-on. Kane half-somersaulted, the tarmac smacking him in the back like a sledgehammer, the Glock skittering away.

  That was the first thing Heck went for, at the same time taking cover behind the Chevrolet. With a crunch of crumpled metal, its driver’s door burst open.

  ‘Heck … get in!’ Farthing shrieked.

  But Heck was still scrabbling after the gun, and that half-second was all the Nice Guys needed. Their training initially had them going to ground, but they still opened up on the intruding vehicle. Heck hit the road surface, Farthing falling out alongside him as an Amazon of lead ripped through his pride and joy, its windows and bodywork exploding.

  One of the bastards, thinking them cowed, ran around the front end of the Chevrolet, boots slamming the tarmac. ‘Hold your fire, boys!’ he shouted in loud, brash Cockney. ‘I got ’em!’ He was tall and lean, with an oval, eerily skullish face split crosswise by a deranged grin. He hefted a Steyr TMP, taking careful aim.

  But Heck was already shooting.

  The Cockney’s visage exploded as five rounds hammered through the middle of it, the sixth smacking him on the left temple, his blood and brains ejecting every which way as he tottered backwards.

  ‘How’s that for a rearranged fizzog?’ Heck said under his breath, continuing firing, hitting the bastard four times more before he crash-landed – though in retrospect that had been a mistake. He only had seventeen shots in this clip, while the others were still in his coat, which was out of reach.

  The fallen Nice Guy had his Steyr of course, but that had clattered a few yards across the road towards Ben Kane, who had recovered sufficiently to go lumbering after it. Heck pegged a shot at him, punching it through his left shoulder, spinning him like a toy. Twirling back, he spotted another Nice Guy peeking around the rear end of the Land Rover. Heck pegged two shots at him as well, forcing him to retreat.

  By luck rather than design, he and Farthing had finished up in a defensible position. The two half-wrecked vehicles had created a chevron across the junction, blocking off the southeast exit, thus providing them with a retreat but at the same time creating a barricade – though the Nice Guys were now giving it all they’d got, systematically shooting the two vehicles to pieces. Fleetingly, Farthing’s face came into Heck’s eye-line: white, sweat-drenched, but not haggard the way it had been in Sunderland, not sickly with fear. The dumpy copper was kneeling, cringing, but his jaw was set, his mouth clamped with determination.

  Another flicker of movement caught Heck’s eye. He spun, seeing Nice Guys attempting to flank them through undergrowth on the west side. He blasted wild shots in their general direction, again forcing them to cover. In the same motion, he hunkered down, scuttled after the Steyr and tossed it at Farthing, who caught it smartly.

  More Nice Guys sidled to the rear of the Range Rover, only to fall back as Farthing, still kneeling, sprayed lead at them. Heck meanwhile, crawled over to Ben Kane, who lay on his back, his glasses skewwhiff; blood seeped copiously from the back of his shoulder, and he writhed slowly – as though only semi-conscious. When Heck began rifling his pockets, he tried to speak, but a swift head-butt to the mouth put him out for the count. Heck continued searching, finding first the list and then mobile phone, both of which he shoved into his own pockets.

  He turned back. The crossroads was now a battlefield, thick with the stink of gun-smoke, wreckage and shell-casings littered everywhere. Farthing had
moved closer to the narrow gap between the two car-wrecks, still returning fire as the Nice Guys scampered across the road, but now in short, sharp bursts. Heck fired a couple more shots in support of him, emptying his clip.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Farthing shouted over his shoulder.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you’ve got what you need, whatever you came for … just go!’

  Heck hovered there, helpless. To leave Farthing behind was the last thing he wanted, but it was all true. He had everything he needed to take the Nice Guys down for good. But he wouldn’t have it long if he stayed here. And they wouldn’t be able to fight it out much longer, either. Heck was out of ammo. Farthing couldn’t be far off the end.

  ‘Go!’ Farthing shouted again. ‘While the coast’s clear.’

  Heck went, running low along the southeast road, diverting into the southern line of underbrush about forty yards along, discarding his empty pistol en route.

  PC Jerry Farthing wasn’t quite sure what it was that had possessed him.

  Something about being a coward, being a failure, being a loser. Something about being forty-five years old, with nothing but a lifetime of daytime telly to look forward to – if he was lucky. More important than that, it was something about his dad: the genial giant, the working-class hero, the iron man with the heart of gold, who’d been so proud that day of his son’s passing-out parade at Durham, when Jerry had emerged into the world as a young policeman, that he’d taken the lad and his mum for dinner, a meal they couldn’t really afford, in honour of ‘the first among us to really make something of himself’.

  For all that, it was still a bit of a dream; Farthing’s body deadened, his hair standing on end, the Steyr jerking in his hands, its heat embracing him.

  ‘Bastards!’ he howled, horrified and delighted at the ease with which these notorious killers were driven to cover. Allegedly, there were more than a few combat soldiers among them, experienced guys. But they’d been professional bully boys for the last few years. Maybe they’d forgotten what it was like to take fire in return. He was so absorbed that he never really saw Ben Kane come lurching up at his rear, stooping to pick up a broken strut of steel from the flattened telephone booth. Farthing glanced around at the last second, just as his weapon ran dry – but it was too late. The impact on his skull was a bomb going off.