Headhunter

by Nick Oldham

‘Are you OK?’ Molly asked, seeing the flinch.

  He eyed her. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, relenting, allowing her shoulders to wilt, ‘we can talk if you like and I’ll just deny we had a conversation – unless you start admitting you killed that Tasker guy, in which case … y’know. But don’t try anything. I still mean what I said. I’m very happy to shoot you if necessary.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  From the corridor outside came the sound of raised voices. Flynn and Molly looked towards the door.

  Molly stepped away from Flynn and her right hand came up to the holster on her hip. Her thumb flipped the release stud over the handle of the Glock as she prepared to draw it if necessary.

  The voices continued: an argument of sorts, though the actual words were mute and indistinct.

  Then came a knock on the door, then a pause, then two sharp taps.

  ‘It’s me, Molly,’ a male voice called.

  Flynn saw the tension visibly leave her face and body.

  ‘OK, open up,’ she called. From the side of her mouth, she said to Flynn, ‘My partner.’

  The door opened and the armed cop in the corridor leaned in the gap with an apologetic look on his face. He opened his mouth to explain something but was rudely barged out of the way by another man in his early thirties, who then sidestepped him and entered the room.

  ‘Alan, what the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ Molly demanded of this man. Flynn clocked she had thumbed the stud on the safety strap back into place over the butt of the Glock.

  ‘I came to see you. I had to … to explain,’ the man said dramatically.

  Behind him, Molly’s ARV partner gave a helpless shrug. To him, she said, ‘It’s OK, Robbo.’ Then she held up her right hand, palm out, into the face of the intruder who, Flynn assumed, was the aforementioned cheating, gambling love rat in Molly’s relationship scenario. Through gritted teeth, she growled, ‘You’ve no right coming in here. I’m working. This is a serious situation; you shouldn’t be here.’

  The man shot Flynn a glare of contempt. ‘Guarding a murderer.’

  ‘Yes. I’m off-duty in an hour, so just fuck off, Alan.’

  He stood his ground, instantly making Flynn dislike him. ‘Not until we talk,’ he demanded. ‘Till I explain.’

  ‘Explain shagging around? Explain blowing my money on your debts? Can’t wait for those explanations … But not here, Alan. Not now,’ Molly hissed at him.

  Flynn’s next assumption was that Alan was a cop, probably a detective, otherwise the armed officer in the corridor would surely not have risked opening the door at all. He was probably familiar with Molly’s break-up and maybe ‘Alan’ outranked him and he’d used this as a lever to bully his way past.

  ‘But babe …’ Alan reached out his arms for her. Tears welled in his eyes. ‘Babe,’ he repeated, blubbering.

  Flynn coughed. ‘May I make a suggestion?’ Both heads swivelled to him. ‘Take your fucking private lives elsewhere or I’ll summon nursey in on this.’ He held up the emergency call button. ‘And have you both ejected for jeopardizing the mental health of a patient.’

  With pleasure, Flynn saw Alan bristle. ‘Who the hell do you think you are, shit-head?’

  Flynn sighed, disliking Alan even more, though he kept quiet.

  ‘Come on, out,’ Molly said to Alan and shooed him towards the door, then through it, but not before she managed one dagger-laden scowl over her shoulder at Flynn, who returned it with a generous smile. Molly propelled Alan out and had a speedy, low-level conversation with her cop partner, who then stepped into the room and replaced her. The door closed.

  Beyond it, Flynn heard two voices in argument. He closed his eyes.

  When he next awoke, Molly was back in the room sitting on the chair by the door. Her eyes were open but she was staring moodily into space, her face set grim. Flynn hadn’t heard her return and he wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep or how long she had been out dealing with the unexpected arrival of her recent ex. It could not have been long.

  ‘Did you get rid of him?’

  She stirred out of her reverie. ‘What? Yeah, sorry about that.’ She yawned long and hard.

  ‘Whatever,’ Flynn said. ‘None of my business, but never trust a man called Alan. I take it he’s a detective? I can tell from the moustache.’

  ‘Detective sergeant, actually, hence how he blagged his way in.’

  ‘I remember that,’ Flynn said wistfully. ‘Pulling rank.’

  ‘You were a cop?’ she asked, slightly taken aback.

  ‘A detective, though I never, ever, had a moustache. I thought you’d know about me.’

  ‘No, never been mentioned … What, a DI? Here in Lancashire?’

  ‘Yes and no – never reached the dizzy heights of being a DI. I was a DS on drug squad. Left about twelve years ago.’

  ‘You don’t look old enough to have been a police pensioner for twelve years.’

  ‘Very kind of you to say, but I left before my time. Under a bit of a cloud.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘So what’s the big story, then? Why are you here? Why have you reached this point?’

  ‘Are we talking now?’

  ‘Suppose so, but only if I can offload on you, too.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’m off-duty soon,’ she told him while wondering why she suddenly felt compelled to talk to Flynn other than it seemed the right thing to do, murderer or not.

  ‘You first,’ he urged her.

  Flynn only half-listened to a story about a marriage gone wrong, a rotten divorce, then the failure of further relationships until Molly found someone special in Alan – also a divorcee – who she thought she could trust and make a life with … until she discovered his predilection for using his rank as a DS to lure unsuspecting but willing and ambitious young female officers into his bed. There was also the spectre of big debts, followed by a loan from Molly (to the tune of £1,000) which she never saw again, gambling and too much time spent in the company of unsavoury characters, although Alan claimed it was a detective’s job to hang around with toerags.

  Flynn was only partially taking it in because his mind was elsewhere.

  He knew he had to be free from custody – and that he had acted rashly and without foresight in taking Brian Tasker’s life. But he had been driven by crazy rage and emotion and he was glad he had done it, though on reflection he should have planned it a little better.

  There was very little wriggle room for him now.

  Once he passed through the doors of the custody office, even if he subsequently got bail, he could probably kiss away at least three very valuable days of his life while sitting in a cell, maybe more. But he knew he would not get bail, at least not straight away after being charged. It was police policy not to grant bail to people charged with murder; any bail would have to be granted by a court, possibly on a remand hearing that could be weeks down the line.

  He knew he had to be free sooner than that.

  He was in pain from his leg wound and his burst eardrum but now, having had surgery on the leg, just as long as he was relatively careful, he thought he should be able to operate.

  Trouble was his window of opportunity – the time between where he was now and a cell door slamming behind him – was closing rapidly.

  He watched Molly’s mouth moving as she spoke.

  Breaking free from her and her partner, Robbo, would entail having to hurt them both, something he did not wish to do, which reduced his options even further.

  He concentrated on her words.

  ‘I thought I was really in love with him,’ she was saying sadly, drawing things to a conclusion, ‘but on reflection I can’t have been because I don’t want to fight for him.’ She screwed up her face. ‘You know what I mean?’

  ‘I understand,’ Flynn said, liking her voice, liking the way she twitched her nose and hating the thought he might have to cause her harm. Perhaps if he could disarm her, not by hi
s charm but by snatching her Glock and locking her and Robbo in a cupboard – maybe that would work, he speculated. Flynn instinctively knew it would not happen, because something about Molly told him she would not be manoeuvred into any compromising position where the weapon could be wrested from her. She was far too canny for that.

  ‘So what about you, Steve Flynn? What brings you to this juncture?’ She looked expectantly at him: his turn.

  Flynn wasn’t really one to discuss and delve into his thoughts and feelings, but he made an effort, marshalling his thoughts. ‘I once arrested a man who was so desperate to remain at liberty he murdered his own family – wife and baby – just to do that, just to cause a diversion.’ Molly’s mouth popped open. ‘Before your time, I think,’ he said. ‘Anyway, he spent a lot of time in prison blaming me and the rest of the team who had caught him for his family’s deaths and his own misfortune. That’s how warped and twisted Brian Tasker’s mind was. He plotted a prison escape, escaped, then went after the team, linking up with an Albanian crime family to help him, a family I crossed a while ago … and they bore a serious grudge against me …’

  ‘You crossed an Albanian crime family?’ Molly interrupted. ‘How the hell did you manage that?’

  ‘Long story.’

  A few things began to slot into place for Molly at that point. ‘DCI Alford’s murder?’ she said.

  ‘He was the team leader in the operation against Tasker …’

  ‘And his poor family … and Jerry Tope?’ She gasped. ‘Oh, God, he was lovely.’

  ‘Also one of the team.’

  ‘He was found dead in Preston docks … it was horrific.’

  ‘Yeah, Tasker’s hit list – the team that constituted Operation Ambush.’

  ‘And your girlfriend? How does she fit into all this?’

  ‘Tasker and the Albanians were in cahoots … I’m the link that straddles the two. Tasker wanted me dead, the Albanians wanted me dead plus anyone close to me, hence Maria … She was murdered and then it was going to be me, but Rik Dean kicked down the door before Tasker could kill me.’

  ‘He put a firearms team together at short notice. I missed the call,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Happens.’

  There was a pause. Flynn rubbed his features with his free hand.

  ‘Now maybe you see where I’m coming from.’

  Molly was about to respond when the door opened and Rik Dean stepped in.

  Viktor Bashkim listened coldly to Niko, whose voice quavered slightly as he recounted the little chunks of information he had pieced together from a series of increasingly frantic phone calls, many of which had been unanswered or clicked straight to voicemail.

  ‘I tried to call Agron and Besim and Gjon,’ he explained to Viktor, who watched his grandson squirm under his sea-grey gaze. ‘None of the useless bastards came back to me,’ Niko whined.

  ‘And what did that tell you?’ Viktor said quietly.

  Niko could not look the old man in the eye. ‘That things are not going well?’ he ventured.

  ‘That things are not going well,’ Viktor mimicked him with irony. ‘Because?’

  ‘Because they are all usually good in replying, answering phones?’

  ‘Exactly. All three are good men … So what have you gleaned?’

  Niko swallowed. ‘Agron and Besim are in the custody of the police in Blackpool.’

  Viktor nodded his head at this news. ‘And Gjon?’

  ‘Still at large … It’s him I spoke to, eventually.’

  Viktor waited.

  Niko’s toes curled in his silk slippers. ‘Agron and Besim were with Tasker when armed police burst in and managed to stop Tasker from killing Steve Flynn. All three were arrested. Gjon had been the lookout but hadn’t been able to warn them of the approach of the police, who came very quickly.’

  ‘So that is where we’re up to? Three arrests?’

  Niko hesitated. ‘Not quite.’

  Rik Dean sat down heavily, wearily. His facial injuries were maturing, looking darker and uglier the more tired he became.

  Once again, he dismissed Molly curtly.

  Or at least he attempted to until Flynn intervened. ‘She can stay as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘What is this? Some kind of counselling session?’ Rik snorted.

  ‘She can stay. I just don’t mind, is all.’

  Rik shrugged his shoulders, too exhausted to argue the point. He made her stand by the door and took her seat from her, then gathered himself.

  Flynn saw the inner wrestling match and said, ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘The police in Gran Canaria have been back to me,’ he said. ‘They’ve moved pretty quickly on this. They would, I suppose, Maria being one of theirs. Security camera footage at the airport shows her returning to the island from the UK, passing through immigration, flashing her passport then getting into a taxi outside the terminal. The cab looks to have been forced off the road between the airport and Puerto Rico. The driver is dead – shot through the head – and there was no sign of Maria at the scene. A team of officers entered yours and her apartment in Puerto Rico a short while later.’

  He stopped talking.

  Flynn waited, not making it easy for him.

  ‘They found her body,’ Rik said.

  Flynn cringed, then nodded, and saw even more reluctance to speak on Rik’s part.

  ‘She’d been decapitated.’

  So it was all real. The images that Brian Tasker had been torturing Flynn with, beamed via the Internet from the apartment in the Canary Islands, were not a trick or an optical illusion.

  ‘We know that,’ Flynn said mutedly.

  Rik closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘What?’ Flynn probed, sensing even more to come.

  ‘Like I said, they found her body … but … but there was no …’ Rik struggled with the words, then he went for it. ‘There was no trace of her head. Whoever did this to her took her head with them.’

  Viktor Bashkim looked up at the knock on his cabin door and placed his iPad down. He’d been skimming through the family photographs of his dead son Aleksander and also his dead grandsons, Pavli and Dardan.

  ‘Yes?’

  The door opened and Niko sidled in, now wearing jogging pants and a tracksuit top, both items speckled with blood.

  ‘Grandpa, we’re ready for you.’

  Viktor stood up, taking hold of the pickaxe handle propped up next to his chair.

  It was time to dissipate some of his fury.

  There was a very long silence.

  Flynn stared into space, deeply shocked by what Rik Dean, who had just left, had just told him, beginning to wonder if he himself was going slightly insane.

  It was appalling enough that Maria had been executed in such an horrific manner, but then to learn that a trophy had been taken – because that is what Flynn imagined this to be, some sick prize that would end up on a spike somewhere for someone to gloat over, and just maybe that would also have been his own fate if Brian Tasker had managed to kill him and get away with it.

  Molly touched his cuffed hand. She said nothing but was sharing some of the horror with him, her imagination running riot.

  He brought his eyes back into focus and looked at her.

  ‘I thought you were going off-duty?’

  ‘I am. Soon.’

  ‘In that case, we may never see each other again,’ he said. ‘I hope you sort your shit out.’

  ‘I will … but we will also see each other, I’m certain of it.’

  The door opened and her replacement entered the room, a burly male officer with a gun strapped low and cocky on his waist. Flynn knew he would not get along with this guy at all.

  On Viktor’s instructions, Halcyon had quietly slipped her moorings and left Zante harbour twenty minutes earlier, so smoothly that none of his guests on board – who were all either asleep or still indulging in the pleasures of the flesh – noticed until they were roused or inter
rupted by Niko and ushered to the lower rear deck to find the boat was now anchored about a mile south down the coast, holding steady on a gentle swell.

  They were taken on deck, where one of the guests was already waiting for them.

  His name was Michel Barkin, a French gangster and one of the Bashkim family’s major partners who was responsible for most of the drug- and people-trafficking supply lines used by the family across the length and breadth of Europe. He was a man trusted with huge amounts of money and drugs valued in the millions. His own private yacht almost, but not quite, rivalled Viktor’s.

  His relationship with Viktor could be traced back many years and together they had built up efficient and flexible routes across the Continent. Unknown to Viktor, however, Barkin had also been putting his own systems into place alongside the joint enterprise and had been slowly, carefully channelling funds, drugs and people into them, progressively skimming Viktor’s pot to the tune of about eight million per year.

  It was relatively small change for Viktor, who made a hundred times that each year. The older man – Viktor was twenty years Barkin’s senior – was philosophical about some losses. They were inevitable and, when identified, Viktor usually took some form of retribution from the offender: a hand chopped off or maybe a crippling bullet in a kneecap, occasionally two slugs in the head. These punishments were mainly for piddling amounts but substantial skimming on an industrial scale, such as Barkin’s, had to be dealt with by issuing a message that could not be misinterpreted by anyone thinking of doing the same.

  Hence why Michel Barkin was hanging by his feet from a hook on the on-deck crane, his ankles tethered, his wrists bound behind his back, the crown of his head swaying gently, just inches above the polythene sheet laid out to protect the deck.

  He was also naked, having been stripped by Niko, who’d had to subdue him first, rendering him unconscious by smashing his nose flat against his face with a powerful punch as he had been unwilling to accompany Viktor’s one remaining grandson out on to the deck. He’d had a fairly good idea where this was going.

  Blood dripped from his badly injured face, down across his eyes and forehead, pooling on the plastic sheet. He had given up struggling against the fastenings of duct tape.