by Paul Finch
Copyright
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015
Copyright © Paul Finch 2015
Cover photographs © Arcangel Images / Trevillion Images
Cover design © Andrew Smith 2015
Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007492336
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007492343
Version: 2015-02-04
Dedication
For my lovely wife, Catherine, whose selfless and unswerving support has been the bedrock on whichI’ve built my career.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Keep Reading ...
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Dazzer and Deggsy didn’t give a shit about anyone. At least, that was the sort of thing they said if they were bragging to mates at parties, or if the coppers caught them and tried to lay a guilt trip on them.
They did what they did. They didn’t go out looking to hurt anyone, but if people got in the way, tough fucking shit. They pinched motors and had a laugh in ’em. That was their thing. And they were gonna keep doing it, because it was the best laugh ever. No one was gonna stop them, and if some geezer ever got pissed off because he’d just seen his pride and joy totalled, so what? Dazzer and Deggsy didn’t give a shit.
Tonight was a particularly good night for it.
All right, it wasn’t perishing cold, which was a shame. Incredible though it seemed to Dazzer and Deggsy, some numbskulls actually came outside, saw a bit of ice and snow and left their motors running for five minutes with the key in the ignition while they went back indoors for a cuppa; all you had to do was jump in the saddle and ride away, whooping. But if nothing else, it was dank and misty, and with it being the tail end of January, it got dark early – so there weren’t too many people around to interfere.
Not that folk tended to interfere with Dazzer and Deggsy.
The former was tall for his age; just under six foot, with a broad build and a neatly layered patch of straw-blond hair in the middle of his scalp, the rest of which was shaved to the bristles. If it hadn’t been for the acne covering his brutish features, you’d have thought him eighteen, nineteen, maybe twenty – instead of sixteen, which was his true age, though of course even a sixteen-year-old might clobber you these days if you had the nerve to look at him the wrong way. The second member of the tag team, Deggsy, though he wasn’t by any means the lesser in terms of villainy, looked more his age. He was shorter and thinner, weasel-faced and the proud owner of an unimpressively wispy moustache. His oily black thatch was usually covered by a grimy old baseball cap, the frontal logo of which had been erased long ago and replaced with letters written in Day-Glo orange highlighter, which read: Fuck off.
There was barely thirty years of experience between them, yet they both affected the arrogant swagger and truculent sneer of guys who believed they knew what was what, and were absolutely confident they were owed whatever they took.
It was around nine o’clock that night when they spied their first and most obvious target: a Volkswagen estate hatchback. A-reg and in poor shape generally: grubby, rusted around the arches, occasional dents in the bodywork; but it ticked all the boxes.
Posh motors were almost impossible to steal these days. All that top-of-the-range stuff was the sole province of professional crims who would make a fortune from ringing it and selling it on. No, if you were simply looking for a fun time, you had to settle for this lower quality merchandise – but that could also be an advantage, because when you went and smacked a bit of rubbish around on the streets, the coppers would tow it away afterwards but would rarely investigate. In addition, this one’s location was good. The old Volkswagen estate was sitting right in the middle of a CCTV black spot that Dazzer and Deggsy had made it their business to know about.
They watched it from a corner, eyes peeled for any sign of movement, but the dim sodium glow of a lone streetlamp illuminated only a rolling beer can and a few scraps of wastepaper flapping in the half-hearted breeze.
Still, they waited. They’d been successful several times on this patch – it was a one-lane access way running between the back doors of a row of old shops and a high brick wall, ending at three concrete bollards. No one was ever around here at night; there were no tenants in the flats above the shops, and even without the January miasma this was a dark, dingy place – but such apparent ease of opportunity only made Dazzer and Deggsy more suspicious than usual. The very fact that motors had been lifted from around here before made the presence of this one seem curious. Did people never learn? Maybe they didn’t. Though maybe there were other factors as well. The row of shops was a bit of an eyesore. Only one or two were occupied during the day, most of the others were To Let, and a couple were even boarded up as if they’d just been abandoned. God bless the Recession.
The lads ventured forth, walking boldly but stealthily, alert to the slightest unnatural sound – but no one called out, no one stepped from a darkened doorway.
The Volkswagen was locked of course, but Deggsy had his screwdriver with him, and in less than five seconds they’d forced the driver’s door open. No alarm sounded, which was just what they’d expected given the ramshackle state of the thing; another advantage of pillaging the less well-off. With rasping titters, they jumped inside, to find that the steering column had been attacked in the past – it was held together by wads of silvery duct tape. A few slashes of Dazzer’s Stanley knife and they were through it. Even in the pitch darkness, their gloved but nimble
fingers found the necessary wiring, and the contact was made.
The car rumbled to life. Laughing loudly, they hit the gas.
It was Dazzer’s turn to drive today, and Deggsy’s to ride, though it didn’t make much difference – they were both as crazy as each other when they got behind the wheel. They blistered recklessly along, swerving around bends with tyres screeching, racing through red lights and stop signs. There was no initial response from the other road-using public. Opposing traffic was scant. They pulled a handbrake turn, pivoting sideways through what would ordinarily be a busy junction, the stink of burnt rubber engulfing them, hitting the gas again as they tore out of town along the A246. They had over half a tank of petrol and a very straight road in front of them. Maybe they’d make it all the way to Guildford, where they could pinch another motor to come home in. For the moment though, it was just fun fun fun. They’d probably veer off en route, and cause chaos on a few housing estates they knew, flaying the paint from any expensive jobs that unwise owners had left in plain view.
Some roadworks surged into sight just ahead. Dazzer howled as he gunned the Volkswagen through them, cones catapulting every which way – one struck the bay window of a roadside house, smashing it clean through. They mowed down a ‘keep left’ sign, taking out a set of temporary lights, which hit the deck with a detonation of sparks.
The blacktop continued to roll out ahead; they were doing eighty, ninety, almost a hundred, and were briefly mesmerised by their own fearlessness, their attention completely focused down the borehole of their headlights. When you were in that frame of mind there were almost no limits. It would have taken something quite startling to distract them from their death-defying reverie – and that came approximately seven minutes into this, their last ever journey in a stolen vehicle.
They were now out of the town and into the countryside, at which point they clipped a kerbstone at eighty-five. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but Deggsy, who’d just filched his mobile from his jacket pocket to film this latest escapade, was jolted so hard that he dropped it into the footwell.
‘Fuck!’ he squawked, scrabbling around for it. At first he couldn’t seem to locate it – there was quite a bit of junk down there – so he ripped his glove off with his teeth and went groping bare-handed. This time he found the mobile, but when he pulled his hand back he saw that he’d found something else as well.
It was clamped to his exposed wrist. Initially he thought he must have brushed his arm against an old pair of boots, which had smeared him with oil or paint. But no, now he could feel the weight of it and the multiple pinprick sensation where it had apparently gripped him. He still didn’t realise what the thing actually was, not even when he held it close to his face – but then Deggsy had only ever seen scorpions on the telly, so perhaps this was unsurprising. Mind you, even on the telly he’d never seen a scorpion with as pale and shiny a shell as this one had – it glinted like polished leather in the flickering streetlights. It was at least eight inches from nose to tail, that tail now curled to strike, and had a pair of pincers the size of crab claws that were extended upwards in the classic defensive pattern.
It couldn’t be real, he told himself distantly.
Was it a toy? It had to be a toy.
But then it stung him.
At first it shocked rather than hurt; as though a red-hot drawing pin had been driven full-length into his flesh, and into the bone underneath. But that minor pain quickly expanded, filling his suddenly frozen arm with a white fire, which in itself intensified – until Deggsy was screaming hysterically. By the time he’d knocked the eight-legged horror back into the footwell, he was writhing and thrashing in his seat, frothing at the mouth as he struggled to release his suddenly restrictive belt. At first, Dazzer thought his mate was play-acting, though he shouted warnings when Deggsy’s convulsions threatened to interfere with his driving.
And then something alighted on Dazzer’s shoulder.
Despite the wild swerving of the car, it had descended slowly, patiently – on a single silken thread – and when he turned his head to look at it, it tensed, clamping him like a hand. In the flickering hallucinogenic light, he caught brief glimpses of vivid, tiger-stripe colours and clustered demonic eyes peering at him from point-blank range.
The bite it planted on his neck was like a punch from a fist.
Dazzer’s foot jammed the accelerator to the floor as his entire body went into spasms. The actual wound quickly turned numb, but searing pain shot through the rest of him in repeated lightning strokes.
Neither lad noticed as the car mounted an embankment, engine yowling, smoke and tattered grass pouring from its tyres. It smashed through the wooden palings at the top, and then crashed down through shrubs and undergrowth, turning over and over in the process, and landing upside down in a deep-cut country lane.
For quite a few seconds there was almost no sound: the odd groan of twisted metal, steam hissing in spirals from numerous rents in mangled bodywork.
The two concussed shapes inside, while still breathing, were barely alive in any conventional sense: torn, bloodied and battered, locked in contorted paralysis. They were still aware of their surroundings, but unable to resist as various miniature forms, having ridden out the collision in niches and crevices, now re-emerged to scurry over their warm, tortured flesh. Deggsy’s jaw was fixed rigid; he could voice no complaint – neither as a mumble nor a scream – when the pale-shelled scorpion reacquainted itself with him, creeping slowly up his body on its jointed stick-legs and finally settling on his face, where, with great deliberation it seemed, it snared his nose and his left ear in its pincers, arched its tail again – and embedded its stinger deep into his goggling eyeball.
Chapter 2
Heck raced out of the kebab shop with a half-eaten doner in one hand and a carton of Coke in the other. There was a blaring of horns as Dave Jowitt swung his distinctive maroon Astra out of the far carriageway, pulled a U-turn right through the middle of the bustling evening traffic, and ground to a halt at the kerb. Heck crammed another handful of lamb and bread into his mouth, took a last slurp of Coke, and tossed his rubbish into a nearby bin before leaping into the Astra’s front passenger seat.
‘Grinton putting an arrest team together?’ he asked.
‘As we speak,’ Jowitt said, shoving a load of documentation into Heck’s grasp and hitting the gas. More horns tooted despite the spinning blue beacon on the Astra’s roof. ‘We’re hooking up with them at St Ann’s Central.’
Heck nodded, leafing through the official Nottinghamshire Police paperwork. The text he’d just received from Jowitt had consisted of thirteen words, but they’d been the most important thirteen words anyone had communicated to him for quite some time:
Hucknall murder a fit for Lady Killer
Chief suspect – Jimmy Hood
Whereabouts KNOWN
Heck, or Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, as was his official title in the National Crime Group, felt a tremor of excitement as he flipped the light on and perused the documents. Even now, after seventeen years of investigations, it seemed incredible that a case that had defied all analysis, dragging on doggedly through eight months of mind-numbing frustration, could suddenly have blown itself wide open.
‘Who’s Jimmy Hood?’ he asked.
‘A nightmare on two legs,’ Jowitt replied.
Heck had only known Jowitt for the duration of this enquiry, but they’d made a good connection on first meeting and had maintained it ever since. A local lad by birth, Dave Jowitt was a slick, clean-cut, improbably handsome black guy. At thirty, he was a tad young for DI, but what he might have lacked in experience he more than made up for with his quick wit and sharp eye. After the stress of the last few months of intense investigation, even Jowitt had started to fray around the edges, but tonight he was back on form, collar unbuttoned and tie loose, careering through the chaotic traffic with skill and speed.
‘He lived in Hucknall when he was a kid,’ Jowitt added. �
�But he spent a lot of his time back then locked up.’
‘Not just then either,’ Heck said. ‘According to this, he’s only been out of Roundhall for the last six months.’
‘Yeah, and what does that tell us?’
Heck didn’t need to reply. Roundhall was a low-security prison in the West Midlands. According to these antecedents, Jimmy Hood, now aged in his mid-thirties, had served a year and a half there before being released on licence. However, he’d originally been held at Durham after drawing fourteen years for burglary and rape. As if the details of his original crimes weren’t enough of a match for the case they were currently working, his most recent period spent outside prison put him neatly in the frame for the activities of the so-called ‘Lady Killer’.
‘He’s a bruiser now and he was a bruiser then,’ Jowitt said. ‘Six foot three by the time he was seventeen, and burly with it. Scared the crap out of everyone who knew him. Got arrested once for chucking a kitten into a cement mixer. In another incident, he led some other juveniles in an attack on a building site after the builders had given them grief for pinching tools – both builders got bricked unconscious. One needed his face reconstructing. Hood got sent down for that one.’
Heck noted from the paperwork that Hood, of whom the mugshot portrayed shaggy black hair fringing a broad, bearded face with a badly broken nose – a disturbingly similar visage to the e-fit they’d released a few days ago – had led this particular street gang, which had involved itself in serious crime in Hucknall, from the age of twelve. However, he’d only commenced sexually offending, usually during the course of burglary, when he was in his late teens.