Stalkers

by Paul Finch

  ‘I’ll make it my life’s work, I promise.’

  Her mouth curved into a smile. ‘You’re a top bloke, Heck. Just get yourself a girl too. It’s a sorry waste, you flying solo …’

  ‘Lauren, just …’

  ‘Gotta go, I think.’

  He couldn’t do anything except clutch her hand. Her eyes closed, but then flickered open again. She looked troubled. ‘Heck … we did right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s just … for my mum. I want … her to know that.’

  ‘I’ll make sure she does.’

  Lauren nodded and smiled. When her eyes flickered shut this time, they stayed shut.

  Heck held her hand for another couple of minutes, by which time he could hear Ballamara and Asquith advancing down the meadow, mumbling together. Heck was too numbed to pay attention to this; too numbed by pain, by fatigue and by catastrophic blood-loss. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t because there was barely any moisture left in his body. When Ballamara finally arrived, Heck too lay silent in the grass.

  Chapter 47

  The street was quite ordinary in character, part of a typical unassuming suburban neighbourhood. There were nice, quiet families living here. The fathers all had jobs. The children went to school on time, and when playing out in the evening were polite to adults and would keep the noise down if there were babies in bed. Newspapers were delivered. Milk floats made early morning rounds.

  No one batted an eyelid about the people who lived on this street.

  It was perhaps unusual to see nocturnal activity here. For someone to be placing bags and suitcases in the rear of a car at four o’clock in the morning was out of the ordinary, but then it was the middle of August, and people flew to Spain, Greece and the Canaries at all kinds of ungodly hours at this time of year. Even so, Mike Silver made as little noise as possible as he hobbled in and out of one particular house, ferrying various small items of luggage down the garden path and placing them in the boot of his Citroen C2. It had all been packed and ready, and waiting on the upstairs landing. Not because he’d anticipated having need of it this evening, but because it was always packed and ready.

  Once it was all stowed in the boot, he made a last trip into the house, not so much to check that everything was locked up or unplugged, as a regular holidaymaker would do, but to ensure that no items of paperwork had been left behind. In truth, there was minimum chance of this. Silver kept only small items of paperwork, and none of it in his own name. But of course, he hadn’t been the only occupant of fifty-eight, Rentoul Street, and despite the discipline he’d routinely imposed on his underlings, not everyone was always as careful about cleaning their tracks as he was — though on this occasion, thankfully, they had been.

  Satisfied, he pulled a clean anorak over his roll-neck sweater, and turned the lights off one by one. Soon only the hall light remained. The switch for that was next to the front door. He intended to flick it off as he stepped into the porch. But just as he was about to do this, he noticed someone approaching along the garden path. It was a youngish, blonde woman in a light coat, slacks and high-heeled boots. ‘Mr Hobbs?’ the woman enquired.

  ‘Hello?’ Silver replied, standing in the doorway.

  ‘I wonder if you can help us?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Silver said, noticing that a white BMW and a battered old Chevrolet parked behind his Citroen, and that a thin, older man with a scraggy grey beard was circling around it.

  ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Piper,’ the young woman said, showing a police warrant card. ‘This is Detective Inspector Palliser.’

  Silver smiled. ‘I see.’

  ‘Sorry if we’ve caught you going on holiday.’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of minutes. What can I do for you?’

  ‘How long have you lived at this address?’

  ‘Oh … all my life.’

  Gemma pondered this, wondering why he didn’t seem to have a Coventry accent, and then spotting a reddish mark on his cheek. ‘Does anyone else live here with you?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘No, I’m resolutely single.’

  Gemma glanced past him into the lighted hall, and was surprised when the man shifted sideways and drew the front door half closed, as if to prevent her seeing anything.

  ‘No one else has access?’ Gemma asked, distracted by the sound of Palliser’s mobile phone ringing and being immediately answered.

  The man shrugged. She noticed that the hand with which he clutched the door handle had knotted until its knuckles were white. ‘Erm … friends call round from time to time.’

  ‘Friends?’ Gemma said.

  ‘Ma’am!’ Palliser shouted, hurrying up the path, his face graven in stone. She turned to face him. ‘Heck’s been shot!’

  Gemma swung back round to the man, but the front door was already closing. She threw herself forward, smashing it open with her shoulder before the lock could engage. The man staggered up the hall, limping badly, but Gemma followed and brought him down with a tackle that would have made a rugby three-quarter proud.

  ‘You bitch!’ he bellowed. ‘You can’t do this! You’ve got nothing on me …’

  ‘We’ve got that to start with,’ Gemma retorted, indicating a white shirt and a blazer hanging at the foot of the stairs. Both were liberally stained with blood.

  Palliser barged into the house behind her. ‘Apparently he’s alive … just.’

  Gemma nodded, before twisting the man’s hands behind his back and saying: ‘Now Mr Hobbs, or whoever you really are, I’m arresting you on suspicion of attempting to murder a police officer. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say …’

  ‘You spunk-breathed whore! You’ll be next!’

  ‘… will be given in evidence.’ Gemma leaned next to his ear. ‘Starting with that!’

  Chapter 48

  Detective Superintendent Piper and Detective Inspector Palliser were in morose mood as they watched the television in Palliser’s office. On the screen, a Devon amp; Cornwall Police launch was backing into a rain-swept dock in Plymouth harbour. Visible on board, three prone shapes lay side by side on the deck, covered by tarpaulins. Underwater Recovery officers, still in their wetsuits and oxygen tanks, stood alongside them.

  ‘So how many does that make?’ Gemma asked.

  Palliser checked his notes. ‘Six bodies recovered from Plymouth Sound. Three from the mouth of the Wash. Searches are also commencing off Holy Island in the northeast, off Blackpool and Anglesey.’

  ‘All areas where these maniacs chartered offshore craft?’

  Palliser nodded solemnly.

  Beyond the glazed partition, the entire rest of the squad, who’d all been called back from their various assignments, scrambled madly between telephones and computer terminals. There was a hubbub of noise; paperwork was being flung everywhere.

  ‘Any IDs yet?’ Gemma asked.

  ‘None yet, but I don’t think we’ll need to look any further than that.’

  He nodded out into the main office, at the far end of which a large placard had been set up. The array of mugshots on it, and the accompanying sheaves of notes, had all been removed from the makeshift incident room in Heck’s flat.

  ‘What about the suspects?’

  He consulted his notes again. ‘Sonny Kilmor and Tommy Hobbs. Both formerly of the British Army. Exemplary records, bizarrely. Both saw a lot of action, and were decorated many times for bravery. Much involvement with special ops. Believed to have gone freelance about the same time as each other — 2007-ish. Tommy Hobbs actually owned fifty-eight, Rentoul Street. Seems like the rest of the gang used it as a base or a safehouse whenever they were up in the Midlands …’

  ‘The rest of the gang being who exactly?’

  ‘Tommy’s younger brother, Brian, who was already a registered sex offender when he was a juvenile. Spent his adulthood in and out of institutio
ns. Probably where he hooked up with Shane Klim. Birds of a feather, and all that. Heck’s suspicions were right about those two. Looks like they were only brought into the firm when it relocated to the UK. Klim broke out of Rotherwood to hook up with them permanently.’

  ‘If you can’t get quality at least get loyalty, eh?’ a voice said from the doorway.

  They were astonished to see Heck standing there. He wore only trousers and slippers, and was bare-chested under his jacket, which was draped over his shoulders. His entire right arm was encased in plaster and fixed at a right angle, with a sling to hold it in position and a steel bar bracing it across the joint. He was pasty-white in colour, but black and blue with bruising. Much of his hair had been shaved off to accommodate the tram-lines of stitching in his scalp.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Gemma said.

  He hobbled in. ‘I discharged myself early.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  Palliser dragged a seat forward and Heck lowered himself into it.

  ‘Lauren Wraxford, who saved my arse countless times last week, is dead,’ he said. ‘The very least I owe her is not to waste time lying on my back while her murderer refuses to cooperate.’

  ‘You think I’m going to let you speak to him?’ Gemma said.

  ‘You could do worse. I hear he’s defying all analysis?’

  Palliser sighed. ‘We still haven’t got a clue who he actually is. Not only is he saying nothing … we’ve gone back through military records for the last twenty years, and there’s no trace of any British serviceman, commissioned officer or otherwise, name of Michael Silver. CrimInt’s got nothing either, nor SOCA, nor SIS. Likewise, there are no comparisons in prints or DNA. We’ve circulated his mugshot throughout agencies abroad, but no hits so far.’

  ‘We should check the security consultants Goldstein amp; Hoff use when they send their execs overseas,’ Heck said.

  ‘Already have done,’ Palliser replied. ‘And it’s no dice. They’re all clean. Seems like Ian Blenkinsop made extra arrangements once he got to the Gulf.’

  ‘What about paperwork?’

  ‘We’ve found no personal documentation.’

  ‘Come on, Des … the bastard had access to different vehicles, different properties!’

  ‘All in the names of his men. Same goes for the boat hire.’

  ‘At least tell me Interpol and Europol are looking into the foreign angle.’

  ‘As much as they can, but there isn’t much to go on.’

  ‘How much do they need? Blenkinsop mentioned American colleagues, French, Russian …’

  ‘But he made no statement to that effect, and now he’s dead.’

  ‘Shit!’ Heck swore. ‘Silver knows! He didn’t just hint at it, he fucking boasted — said there were other Nice Guys operating overseas. Damn it, we should make him talk!’

  ‘And then you’d be just like him,’ Gemma said primly. ‘A sadistic criminal, a torturer, a psychopath. Look Heck, the main thing is he’s going down. If absolutely everything else fails, at least he’s bang to rights for the murder of Lauren Wraxford — we got her blood from under his fingernails and from his clothes. His dabs are all over the murder weapon.’

  ‘On the subject of Lauren, has anyone been to visit her mother?’ Heck asked.

  Gemma nodded. ‘I did.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, subdued. ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘So did she, I think. She sent you this letter.’ Gemma handed him a sealed envelope. ‘She wanted to express her gratitude personally.’

  ‘Her gratitude?’

  ‘For finding out what happened to Genene. And for providing Lauren with a friend when she needed one.’

  Heck took the envelope almost gingerly. He didn’t think he could face opening it now. ‘Never been thanked before for getting someone killed.’

  ‘You didn’t strike the blow, Heck,’ Palliser said.

  ‘Why do I feel like this then … survivor guilt?’

  Palliser was about to respond when a detective constable beckoned him through the glass partition. He excused himself and slipped out, leaving the other two alone.

  ‘I’m still waiting for my apology, by the way,’ Gemma said, folding her arms. ‘Just in case you were wondering.’

  ‘I know,’ Heck replied. ‘And I’m sorry.’

  ‘Heck … I don’t actually mind that you broke almost every law you joined the police to uphold while pursuing these people. But what I do mind — what I absolutely revile — is that you lied to me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to you.’

  ‘You promised to keep me in the loop, and you cut me out at the first opportunity.’

  ‘I only left you out when I learned they had someone on the inside.’

  ‘You could at least have told me that much.’

  ‘Would you have believed me?’

  ‘You want the truth, I’m not sure I believe you now.’

  ‘Really?’ He laughed. ‘You mean we coppers are too good to become clients of the Nice Guys? How else did they get to McCulkin, our confidential informant?’

  ‘Look, if this guy Eric Ezekial had been shadowing your investigation, he might have seen you setting up meetings with McCulkin about other things.’

  ‘All respect, ma’am, he still must have been getting inside info. Once the Nice Guys learned I was looking hard at Klim — courtesy of their insider — they sent Deke to sit on O’Hoorigan. Obviously they had O’Hoorigan fingered as a weak link. Klim had told him all about this outfit while they were in Rotherwood together, and they couldn’t trust him not to tell us if he ever got lifted for something. Deke was shadowing O’Hoorigan rather than me, but when I turned up in Salford he had to act quickly. O’Hoorigan had to go and so did I.’

  ‘Well, as both Deke and O’Hoorigan are dead, we can hardly prove that.’

  ‘And what about Dana, how did they find out about her unless some bent bastard in our department told them?’

  ‘Heck, are you seriously saying that one of our lot can afford to lay out seventy-five grand every time he wants a sex-service?’

  In a low, wary voice, he replied: ‘Someone at the very top could.’

  At first she was baffled as to who he could mean. And then it clicked. ‘Oh no … no, no, no, Heck. No, we’re not even going there.’

  ‘Someone who did everything in his power to close this enquiry down.’

  ‘Don’t you say it!’

  ‘Someone who was once in the military himself. Perhaps that’s how he got to know them in the first place?’

  ‘Heck, I’m warning you …’

  ‘They used his exact terminology when referring to me!’

  ‘I’m not listening to this …’

  But Heck was now in full flow. ‘Ma’am, you told me that Commander Laycock found out I was still investigating when that detective super from Manchester contacted him the morning after those GMP officers got hurt at the Salford hospital … but that it was a full day before Laycock came to see you about it. Why a full day? So he could pass on everything new to the Nice Guys first? So he could tell them who Lauren was — I don’t see how else Deke could have known she was Genene Wraxford’s sister. How about so that Deke could get to us before you did? … that was the same day we got lured out to Blacksand Tower, remember.’

  Gemma regarded him incredulously, as if for a moment his crazy assertions were making a kind of sense to her. Then Palliser came back in, and the spell was broken. ‘Forget it!’ She waved the whole notion away. ‘I’m not listening to any of that.’

  Heck shrugged. ‘You don’t have to listen to me. Whoever their insider was, his details will be in that filing cabinet in Eric Ezekial’s attic.’

  Gemma glanced uncomfortably at Palliser.

  Heck noticed this. ‘What?’

  ‘You haven’t heard about that then?’ Palliser said.

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘Well …’ Palliser cleared his throat. ‘Owing to the … shall we say confuse
d issue of what exactly happened to Mr Ezekial …’

  ‘I fully explained that,’ Heck said.

  ‘Yes well, it wasn’t as easy explaining it to a magistrate. However, we finally managed it, and the search-warrant for Ezekial’s premises was issued this morning.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The filing cabinet in the attic is empty.’

  Heck rose slowly to his feet. ‘You are joking?’

  ‘Sit down, Heck,’ Gemma said, ‘before you fall down.’

  ‘What do you mean it’s empty?’

  ‘All these files you described, with the names and coded reference numbers. They’ve gone.’

  Heck slumped back into his chair. ‘That proves there’s some bastard on the inside.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Gemma argued. ‘If there are any more of these Nice Guys knocking around …’

  ‘Why would they take the risk of going there?’ Heck said. ‘They’re going to prison for life, whatever happens. The only people those files would have implicated are the dozens and dozens of men who used their services. If we wanted to know who their grass was inside this department, his details would’ve been right there. So naturally he’s got there ahead of us, and pinched them.’

  Palliser’s doleful expression suggested that he didn’t disagree.

  Gemma pondered. ‘Wasn’t there a security camera inside the house?’

  ‘Yes,’ Palliser said, ‘but Ezekial’s hard drive has also been removed. If the camera was still recording at the time of the burglary, it was uploading onto nothing.’

  ‘So let’s get this straight,’ Heck put in. ‘Just so we’re absolutely clear on the matter. You’re telling me that the details of maybe a hundred men guilty of rape and murder, currently living in Britain — have disappeared? Right from under our noses?’

  Palliser made a helpless gesture.

  Heck banged his one good hand down on the desk, though it wasn’t quite that good, and he grimaced in pain.

  ‘Chill out, Heck,’ Gemma said. ‘This is still a major result.’

  ‘You know something, you’re right.’ Heck got to his feet and lurched towards the door. ‘I should have kept you fully informed … all the way, about every single thing. Then you could have pulled me off the job the first time you got nervous, and we’d have got nowhere near the Nice Guys. So at least now we wouldn’t know what we’d lost.’