by Paul Finch
At least, this was what he’d thought — but then, two days after Yvonne and Carly had embarked for the family villa in Italy, the card had arrived.
That was all it was: just a square piece of white card inside a brown envelope, delivered with the morning post. Blenkinsop’s name and address were printed on the front in a basic typeface. Not surprisingly, there’d been no return address. Junk mail, he’d presumed, and when he’d ripped it open, intending to throw it away after a single glance, he’d been right — in a way.
‘Dear Ian,’ it had said in that same standard type, ‘here is something that will interest you.’ And underneath it was that fateful line of letters and digits — which he’d identified as a web address, as a beta site.
It was a mark of how enthralled he was to the ‘thrill-seeker’ side of his personality that he’d immediately gone online to check it out. He’d known instinctively that it would be a sex site of some sort, but instead of feeling alarm that these people, whoever they were, had made contact with him at his home (he’d written that off as an inevitability of having used his credit card to join so many sites in the past), he’d been excited and rather absurdly, he now realised, he’d regarded it as the commencement of a summer of online adult adventuring that might be a little bit more interesting than usual.
Despite all that had happened since, it seemed incredible to Ian Blenkinsop that a man at his station in life could ever be described as credulous, gullible, naive. And yet … he glanced across the office to his desk, where his laptop was sitting open, its screen blank. Again, fear gnawed at his innards. There was no reason at all to assume that the person who’d been eavesdropping on his conversation in Mad Jack’s last night had been …
But of course there was reason.
There was every reason.
And there was even more reason to be afraid because of it.
He took a diary from his overcoat pocket and thumbed through its pages until he reached the back. There, sandwiched between two of his many legitimate contacts, was that string of digits; he’d destroyed the original card, and this reprint here was scribbled lightly in pencil in case he ever had need to hastily erase it. All he had to do now was go over to his desk, sit down, type these in — and he was there again. But it was a horrible prospect: seeking a meeting with them, trying to explain himself, all the time wondering what they might do to him. And just suppose they hadn’t been following him last night? Suppose that man in Mad Jack’s had been no one of consequence? If that was the case, yet now he emailed them and blabbed that he’d been drunk and depressed and hadn’t deliberately been endangering their operation — wouldn’t that have the very opposite effect of the one desired? Wouldn’t he himself be alerting them? And yet, if he did nothing, would he spend the rest of his life glancing over his shoulder?
He slumped into a chair. If only he’d never gone onto that beta site.
The Nice Guys Club.
At first there’d been nothing on screen except a poorly shot movie of a young woman with a shoulder-bag walking up and down a railway platform. By the looks of it, it had been filmed with a hand-held camera, possibly from a car parked on the other side of the tracks. She’d been a nice-looking woman, wearing a pink sweater, a short denim skirt and high heels. Then words had appeared, streaming across the bottom of the screen like the end-credits to a TV show.
They’d read: ‘Ever wondered what it would be like to do it even if she says “no”?’
Blenkinsop had sat up, his attention caught.
The image had then switched; it was another crude, home-made movie, but this time the subject was a slightly older lady clad in an indecently small bikini and splayed out on a lounger in the privacy of her back garden. This one appeared to have been shot via a zoom lens from a vantage point some distance away.
‘Who is it, we wonder?’ the words had continued. ‘Your co-worker, your neighbour, that bitch in the corner shop who always taunts you by showing her stocking tops when she climbs the step-ladder to the high shelf? Why waste time dreaming when you could be sampling the real thing?’
By this time, Blenkinsop had been captivated. What appeared to be on sale here were simulated rape films. Of course, if he’d been less engrossed it might have struck him as odd that there’d been no warnings on the website about legalities, age restrictions, or any other items that would indicate this was mainstream entertainment.
‘Join the Nice Guys now,’ it had said, the ‘now’ highlighted as a link.
So he’d done it. Not joined up as such — not there and then. But, with inhibitions blunted by excitement, he’d hit the button and entered the site properly.
More movies had followed: an attractive woman crossing a dual carriageway bridge carrying shopping bags; an Asian schoolgirl waiting at a bus stop; a lady vicar, for heaven’s sake, saying goodbye to parishioners at the church gate. One after another, they’d followed, each one occupying the screen alone but then retracting into a small thumbnail and finding its place in a vast electronic mosaic. And now, only slowly, had it begun to occur to Blenkinsop that what he was looking at here were not teasers for movies that someone had scripted, directed and performed, but fragments of reality. These were actual shots of real women going about their everyday business, in each case completely unaware they were being observed.
Another stream of words had then appeared: ‘We can arrange it for you to rape any woman, anywhere, any time.’
His hair had actually prickled at that point; his flesh had goose-bumped.
‘Age, race, creed — they’re no concern to us. It’s your choice. We only have two stipulations: a) Women only — we don’t do guys or transsexuals (though if that’s your bag, we know someone who does); b) UK only — you aren’t going to pay our travel exes, so we aren’t going abroad.’
An email address had followed, something embedded in a bogus website somewhere — Blenkinsop knew that much about the internet. So he’d mailed to it. Why not? He’d been left alone here while everyone else was on holiday; why couldn’t he have some fun? Damn his fucking rule about never doing this kind of thing at home. Why not, if it was all safe and secure? He’d felt no guilt as he’d made contact, only keen anticipation. And, almost immediately, they’d replied with answers to his questions, and strong reassurances about his privacy should he decide to do business with them.
Looking back on it, how ridiculously easy it had been for something so heinous.
But he mustn’t email them again, they’d told him. They would email him, but only after checking him out. After that, it had been plain sailing. The following day they’d contacted him from a different email address — and this time had given him the works, the whole picture. All he had to do was name the woman he wanted and state where she was to be found. It was that easy. They would do all the hard work and take all the risks. The only pain for him would be coughing up seventy-five grand, payable to a certain Swiss bank account, the details of which he’d receive in due course. But was that a problem when such a prize was in the offing?
Blenkinsop had been hooked, dazzled by the ease with which something so desirable could so quickly be his. The mere recollection of it, and its ultimate terrible outcome, made him sick with self-repugnance — and of course with terror as well. How was it possible for such an organisation to exist online? Yet it happened all the time. Terrorists used the internet to recruit, poisoners to advertise their wares and services, and then there was the kiddie porn network — he hadn’t thought there could be anything worse than that. But this took his breath away.
Any woman he’d wanted. All he’d had to do was name her and pay the cash.
Any woman — no matter who she was. Imagine that!
Once the ball was rolling, he’d never gone back to the Nice Guys website, as per their strict instructions. All further information, very carefully worded so as to be non-incriminating — would be delivered to him from email addresses that would immediately be negated afterwards, or via snail-mail. But whatever
happened, he should stay away from the website. That was their explicit command. He wasn’t sure why or how this might affect their security. Presumably the site existed on a machine located in a banana republic somewhere, or was being run from some completely innocent person’s computer, which had been hacked and, unbeknown to its owner, was now being used as the host — again he had no technical know-how where this was concerned, but even a layman like him had sufficient understanding of how it might be done and how it could therefore be protected.
He walked across the office and stared at his laptop screen.
Under no circumstances, they’d said. The website was for first contact only (in other words the bait, he thought bitterly). From that point on, they’d be in charge of communications. Of course, the situation had radically altered now, and as he hadn’t been given a customer-care number — he laughed at the very thought — this was the only way he knew to contact them.
He sat at his desk. The muscles tightened in his neck and down the middle of his back. There was a slow pounding in the base of his skull that he knew would soon become a full-blown headache.
He assessed the stream of pencil-drawn gobbledygook in his diary. Then he reached out, typed it in — and hit ‘send’.
Nothing happened.
The address was not found.
He tried again, to make sure that he hadn’t mis-keyed.
It was the same result, nothing. Frantic, he tried to Google it. Immediately, hundreds of other beta sites were listed for him, and below many there were all kinds of disgusting hints about what they might contain: ‘Scat, farm sex, amputee fun day, teen smokes donkey dick …’ But none of them struck a bell of familiarity.
The back of Blenkinsop’s throat had gone so dry that it was hurting him. The tension in his neck intensified to the point of no return, detonating inside his skull in a fiery migraine, but even this was of no immediate concern. Lines of irrational thought began to scramble in his mind.
Had they disbanded, ceased to exist? For a few seconds he was ludicrously hopeful.
But then he realised that they’d simply changed the address, as they no doubt did every time they snared a new customer. It was a simple but foolproof way to prevent him causing trouble for them in the future. Whereas they, of course, from their position of complete anonymity, could cause an awful lot of trouble for him.
Chapter 20
They drove at increasing speed along the A57, swinging south down the A5063 and crossing the Ship Canal at the swing-bridge. Trafford, the next borough, was a massive complex of industrial estates and lorry parks, so there was a bit of a slowdown there. But they finally got out of it via the A518, and headed south again, steadily picking up speed. It was now mid-morning so the traffic was at low tide and, by the time they entered Sale, they were belting along.
‘Where’s the fire?’ Lauren asked.
‘Behind us,’ Heck replied. ‘You mean you hadn’t noticed?’
‘We got away.’
‘Yeah … for how long?’ They hurtled into Altrincham, where the M56 motorway would hook them up with the M6. ‘We’ve got to get back to London pronto. At least then we’ll be on home turf. And I can ditch the car.’
‘Why do you want to ditch the car?’
‘Because Salford CID will have the registration mark by midday today.’ She shook her head, clearly not believing him, but he was adamant. ‘From this point on, Lauren, don’t use your mobile. In fact, keep it switched off. Mine is. If you must make a call, use a landline, a payphone.’
‘Heck, much as you applaud your own craft, you’re surely not serious that your lot are going to be onto us so quickly?’
‘I’m certain of it. An expert has created this fit-up. Someone who won’t have left anything to chance. If the police don’t draw the correct conclusions from what they’ve already got, he’ll just drop them another clue.’
She checked the dashboard clock. It was ten-thirty; on a good day they’d be back in London by two. But Heck now stated that he didn’t intend to stay on the motorway for long. If an APB was put out, there’d be traffic patrols on the bridges, looking out for them. South of Birmingham, he intended to use the back roads.
Lauren groaned. ‘This is a serious overreaction.’
‘Have I been wrong once so far?’
‘I’m not sure you’ve been right once.’
‘You think people like Ron O’Hoorigan get killed that way every day?’
She had no immediate answer for that. It was probable that scrotes like O’Hoorigan got bumped off more regularly than normal people. But in that particular fashion? It seemed unlikely.
‘And doesn’t it seem a hell of a coincidence that it happened as soon as we made contact with him?’ Heck added.
Lauren had to admit that it did.
‘On the subject of which,’ Heck said, ‘you mentioned something about seeing a similar murder in Iraq.’
‘That’s true.’
‘So?’
‘I’m breaking the Official Secrets Act, if I tell you.’
‘It’s about time you justified your presence on this enquiry, so bloody break it!’
She glanced uneasily at him, though this was more to do with the memory of the incident than the breach in protocol. ‘Three guys had been killed, all in identical fashion to the one we saw this morning. They’d been hung upside down and gutted while they were still alive. I was in the patrol that found them …’
She hesitated to continue. Even now, several years later, the stench re-assailed her. It had been much worse than that at Gallows Hill because southern Iraq’s oven-like heat had commenced the putrefaction process more quickly. The buzzing of flies had been so loud as to deafen even ears like hers, which had become accustomed to the roar of artillery. Just thinking about it again made her gorge rise.
‘It was in a ruined town on the outskirts of Basra. Initially, it was assumed to be the work of sectarian Iraqis. But later on evidence suggested the victims were insurgents and that occupation forces might be responsible. Like I said, no one was ever prosecuted.’
They drove on in silence, both wondering how these things might be connected. To Heck it seemed doubtful. Exemplary punishments were enacted in criminal circles in every corner of the globe. There were numerous overlaps in style and method.
‘Why did you refer to him as an expert?’ Lauren asked.
‘Who?’
‘Whoever’s supposed to have set us up.’
‘Because he clearly knows what he’s doing.’
‘You think he could be ex-military?’
‘What are you driving at?’
She sat up straight, a new idea taking root. ‘You think this guy Deke is the one, yeah?’
‘For the moment. He certainly fought in that bar as though he’d been trained.’
‘You noticed he was wearing leather wrist-bands?’
‘Sure.’
‘Were they an affectation, do you think, or to cover something up? Because when I was in Iraq, there was this shadowy group we used to hear about. A British commando outfit called the Special Desert Reconnaissance unit. They carried out covert operations, sabotage, counter-terrorism, that sort of thing. They also had a rep for being ultra-ruthless. I mean — these hanging-disembowelments, they’d have been typical of the SDR.’
‘Were they investigated over the Iraq killings?’
‘I don’t know. That would have been classified. But the main thing is … their nickname was “Scorpion Company”.’
‘Cool. But how does that help us?’
‘It was vanity on their part, a kind of tradition of the outfit since World War Two. SDR troops always had a scorpion tattooed on the inside of each wrist.’
‘And that’s what the wrist-bands were concealing?’ Heck said.
‘They could have been.’
They were now passing through Bowdon, two or three minutes from the motorway junction. Heck eased his foot off the pedal, pulling away down a narrow side street.
&
nbsp; ‘What’re we doing now?’ Lauren asked.
‘Just a quick diversion.’
‘What happened to us getting back to London?’
‘We will do. But you can’t beat good intel.’
They parked in a lot attached to a small, prefabricated building, which looked like an annexe to a suburban infant school but was actually the local library.
‘You want me to come in with you?’ Lauren asked.
‘Best if you don’t.’
‘Danger round every corner here as well, hey?’
‘No, but local plod will be looking for you too by now.’
‘Me?’ she said, surprised.
‘You’re ex-services, Lauren. They’ll have your prints on file.’
‘I didn’t leave any prints at that crime scene. I made sure of it.’
‘But you might have done during the bar fight.’
‘Heck, this is ridiculous …’
He opened his door. ‘Don’t underestimate cops, Lauren. It’s easy these days to read the newspapers and believe they’re a bunch of politically correct do-gooders, who spend every shift at diversity seminars rather than fighting crime. But that isn’t the case. They’re as smart and efficient as they ever were. If they’re looking for me, they’ll very likely be looking for the black chick who’s with me. Better if you stay here.’
‘Alright.’
‘There’s one thing you could do for me.’
‘What?’
‘Got any spare change?’
‘Change?’
‘Yeah, you know … as in shrapnel, cash?’
She handed him all the silver she had, and waited in the vehicle while he sloped across the car park to the library entrance. Inside, there was a photocopier/fax machine, which the librarian — a curt lady with glasses on a chain — said he could use so long as he paid twenty pence per sheet. Outside the main room, in the lobby, he found a payphone and put a call through to the CID Admin office at Deptford Green Police Station. To his relief Paula Clark answered.