by Paul Finch
‘And it would have been worth it from his point of view.’ Heck poured two generous measures of the foaming vintage. ‘Look at what he stood to lose. I mean, he started out with nothing, a despised no-mark in a part of the city that doesn’t care about its own let alone foreigners. By the sweat on his brow and the blood on his blade, he carved himself an empire. Zero to hero. And now it’s all gone … just like that.’
‘You almost sound like you admire him.’
‘I don’t admire him at all.’ Heck pushed a brimming flute across the tabletop towards her. ‘I think he’s a filthy lowlife who doesn’t deserve the leniency he’ll now be shown for handing over his so-called mates. It’s bullying, narcissistic scrotes like Manko who’ve turned inner-city Britain into a hellhole. But he’s the reason these guys over here –’ Heck stuck a thumb in the direction of the Squad members seated at the bar, a couple of whom raised their glasses in response – ‘probably the most difficult coppers in Britain to impress, think you and me are now the bee’s knees. This bubbly’s on them, by the way. And trust me, that doesn’t happen often.’
They remained in the upstairs bar for another hour or so, finishing off the champagne and sinking another couple of lagers each. During all this time more and more members of the Flying Squad arrived, having finally been released from duty at the end of a long and tumultuous shift, the noise levels rising steadily. Bob Hunter didn’t show, but that was hardly surprising – as OIC on the Snake Eye investigation he’d now be at the hub of what could be days of interviews and interrogations. But several other characters turned up who didn’t look as if they were police officers at all: shady, slimy-looking guys in cheap suits and earrings, with scars on their necks and tattoos on their hands. One wore a grubby overcoat and a trilby, an image discomfortingly reminiscent of Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie, the famous gangster executed by the Kray twins in 1967.
‘I don’t know if I’m overly fond of this place,’ Gail said, eyeing this latest newcomer as he stood at the bar, chatting chummily with Squad members.
Heck threw down the last of his lager. ‘We can get out of here, if you want. It’s late.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
They said their goodbyes and headed down the stairs to the cobbled backstreet at the rear of the club, where an open gate led to a private parking lot. Both their vehicles were now waiting there, but only Heck fished his keys out.
‘You going to drive after all that booze?’ Gail asked disapprovingly.
Heck gave this some thought, opened his car’s boot, and took out his grab bag. He closed up again and shoved the keys back into his pocket. ‘We can walk.’
They sauntered down Brixton Road side by side. It was now the ‘graveyard hour’, as Heck had used to think it when still a young constable patrolling a succession of lonely late-night beats: three o’clock in the morning to four o’clock, a time when, even in a metropolis like London, you met scarcely a soul – at least nobody who was out and about for legitimate purposes. The occasional car growled past; a couple of cats came up to them, wanting to make friends – aside from that, the streets were empty.
They spoke idly about the events of the day, Gail openly expressing amazement that she’d partaken in such a dangerous operation.
‘Is that the way you always do it?’ she wondered, as they turned into Acre Lane. ‘Just pitch yourself in, regardless of personal safety?’
‘Not always,’ he said, unsure whether she sounded impressed or was simply drunk. ‘I didn’t want the bastard to get away, though. Not when he was the main objective. That said, I didn’t think he’d get as far as he did. They ought to have boxed him in more effectively. Course, no one expected him to make his getaway in a bloody HGV.’
‘And how does your gaffer feel about that kind of bobbying?’
‘Told you it doesn’t happen all the time.’
‘That isn’t answering the question.’
‘Well … Gemma’s a straight bat. So she bollocks me for it. She won’t even like it that we’ve been hobnobbing with the Sweeney. Reckons they’re a right bunch of cowboys.’
‘Perceptive woman. How long were you seeing her for?’
‘Oh, a good while.’ He sighed wistfully. ‘Seems aeons ago now.’
‘So what happened? Is it true she ditched you when she got promoted?’
‘No.’ Heck smiled to himself. It was amazing how often this subject came up; folk wondering if Gemma suddenly decided she couldn’t rocket off into law enforcement superstardom with an anchor like him still attached. But that wasn’t how it had happened at all. ‘Things went on. I got a tad concerned about some of the risks she was taking, and that pissed her off a bit … started the ball rolling, so to speak. She was still happy for us to stay an item, but, well, when she first got promoted she wanted to cool things a little. Stop sneaking off to the locker room together whenever we got a spare minute on shift, live in our own apartments – that sort of stuff.’
‘You mean make it respectable?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘And lemme guess: you didn’t like that?’
‘Idiot that I am.’ He shrugged. ‘I got vexed because I felt she was moving away from me anyway. Took it all as a big slight, told her to sling her hook.’
‘Oh, smart move …’
‘There are things I’ve done in my life that I regret more, Gail. But not many.’
‘And how does she feel about it?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s face it, she’s a super – it’s not like I can just ask her.’
‘Best to get on with your life, eh?’
‘That’s what I keep telling myself.’
She put her arm through his as they strolled, in what was almost a consoling gesture. He certainly didn’t assume there was anything else there, except perhaps that it was the middle of the night and maybe it afforded her a sense of security. She even leaned against him as they walked, her female curves melding into his body. Gail was a good-looking girl with a trim, pert figure that was strangely enhanced by her rough street garb, which, now that he thought about it – the jeans in particular – fitted her like a glove.
The bed and breakfast where he’d booked in overlooked Clapham Common from The Avenue. It was a pub called the Green Dragon, and his room was on its second floor. The pub was now closed and in darkness, but Heck had a key to the back door. They stumbled up an unlit stair one behind the other, Gail’s hands gripping him by the hips. The room had its own en suite and was newly furnished and done in blue pastel shades, with walnut panelling around the bed’s headboard. The one and a half sized bed was covered by a fresh, plump duvet, but Gail still stopped short at the sight of it.
‘Okay,’ she said from the doorway. ‘So where do I sleep?’
‘Don’t worry.’ He stripped off his Wrangler and kicked off his trainers as he headed to an armchair in a corner. ‘I sleep just as well sitting. This’ll do me.’
‘You sure?’ She sounded uncertain – perhaps wondering if she was being patronised again, though not convinced the alternative would be any better.
Heck set the alarm on his watch. ‘We’ve got to get up early anyway so we can have a piece of Manko’s mob before the Flying Squad start charging them.’ Without further ado, he unbuttoned his jeans and, wearing only his T-shirt and a pair of boxers, settled down on the chair, closing his eyes. Gail moved to the light and switched it off before she too undressed. He tried to arrange himself comfortably as he listened to the gentle rustles of clothing, and then the soft creak of bedsprings.
A minute or so passed before her voice said from the darkness: ‘Heck … what are you doing over there?’
‘Sorry, am I snoring?’ He tried to change position.
‘No, you’re not snoring. And you know damn well you’re not. You got cut up today. You can’t be comfortable.’
‘This chair’s fine.’
‘This bed’s better. And there’s plenty of room.’
‘You don’t think we’d should try a
nd get some sleep?’ he said. ‘We’re up first thing.’
‘You cheeky sod. Don’t be so bloody presumptuous.’
‘Anything you say.’ He groped his way over there. A dim light penetrated the curtain from the street beyond, and when he got close this was sufficient to show her lying on top of the duvet, propped up on a single elbow. It glimmered delectably on her smooth, naked form.
Chapter 25
As so often was his way, unless he’d been drinking the night before, Vincent Budd was up with the dawn. It had been an excellent summer thus far, each morning arriving to the choral singing of myriad birds and in a haze of rose-tinged mist, before the sun itself peeked over Leith Hill and poked its golden fingers through the dense tracts of coppice enclosing Carpham village.
This morning in particular was finer than most, the heat rising steadily, a pearlescent sky glimmering through the thick green canopy. Vinnie unzipped his khaki coat and slung it over his shoulder as he trudged his secret woodland trails, moving from one snare to the next, bagging his game: four rabbits, two quail, and a partridge. Not a bad haul by any standards.
For a big man and an elderly man – okay, at sixty he perhaps wasn’t old, but he was no longer an athlete, as his unsuccessful flight from the police five days ago had proved – he had good endurance. It wasn’t uncommon for him to cover eight miles or more during his dawn rambles, and all of that along twisty, unmade tracks, clambering over culverts and fences, traversing heath and hedgerow. The confidence of a lifetime spent in the great outdoors enabled this. But he wasn’t healthy. After he’d left the police station the other day he’d felt absolutely terrible – legs shaking, unable to get his breath for long periods. That was why this morning he was taking it easy. No running, climbing or jumping – just a nice, steady walk – and why he would now have to be extra careful as he crossed Lord Astbury’s spread. This was a large shooting estate, 2,000 acres at least, comprising twenty-five drives and extensive woodland; a poacher’s paradise had it not been for Tommy Slugton, the head keeper here, aka Old Sludger.
Sludger wasn’t a young man either, but he was a former paratrooper who’d seen action in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, as he never ceased to tell people while in his cups down in the village pubs. He had an iron core of fitness, and a mean-as-sin attitude. He hadn’t laid hands on Vinnie yet, but he had on most of the district’s other poachers and, according to the stories, he’d given several of them a good kicking before marching them off to the cop shop. Sludger had proclaimed it a personal ambition to bring Vinnie to book. They’d exchanged words to this effect in various taprooms late on Saturday nights.
‘Just you keep trying,’ had been the keeper’s parting shot the last time they’d encountered each other. ‘Just keep trying, my lad, and one of these mornings I’ll be waiting for you.’
Vinnie wasn’t here on Lord Astbury’s estate now because of that. He didn’t believe in silly dares or challenges. Taking game was his profession, and personal pride didn’t come into it. In fact, Old Sludger’s threats might well have dissuaded him from ever coming here had the estate not lain across his normal route home. He certainly wasn’t going to circumnavigate it, though as usual he took care to stick to the thickest belts of trees: Amberly Wood, Dunstan’s Hollow, Woodhatch Bottom, Shawcross Spinney. It was down there, in a dense grove of birch and willow, when he was perhaps farthest from prying eyes, where Vinnie checked a few more of his traps – because yes, though he rarely made it his goal to specifically poach in these woods, they were on his regular round, so why not try his luck now and then? It wasn’t as if it couldn’t be rewarding – grouse and woodcock often strayed down here. All he needed to do was roll himself a few cones from twine and bark, smear their interiors with gluey resin, conceal them in the undergrowth, and lay trails of seeds up and into them. It was as easy as blinking. Using this simple, traditional method, he’d once trapped himself a brace of pheasant. Mind, it didn’t look as if he’d been quite so fortunate on this occasion. The birds often sat still once they were caught, but today the undergrowth looked particularly motionless. Vinnie dumped his coat and game bag and rummaged through, just to check.
With a clash of steel, something like a guillotine snapped on his right wrist.
Vinnie’s first response was numbing shock that such blinding pain was possible.
His second was dull realisation that he’d almost certainly broken his arm.
His third was utter disbelief, because he’d now attempted to drag his hand back out of the leafage, to find it held fast in what could only be described as a mantrap: two serrated steel blades bound in an iron frame, chained and padlocked to the bole of a tree some three or four feet away. Never in his career had Vinnie used an implement like this. Certainly not of this size – because this thing had to have been designed to catch something large, like a wolf or bear, of which there were precious few in Shawcross Spinney.
He gazed at it, goggle-eyed. His arm had been trapped just above the wrist joint, the razor-tipped teeth having sliced through the flesh and dug deep into the fractured bone. His hand had already gone cold – there was no sensation – and was slowly turning blue. Thick, hot blood welled out. Slowly, as Vinnie knelt there, the pain spread up past his shoulder and down through his torso. Vainly, he tried to grapple with the trap with his other hand; but he couldn’t even find the release catch, let alone activate it. So feeble were his attempts to pry the brutal jaws apart that they might as well have locked.
‘Sludger,’ Vinnie said through a mouthful of froth.
He was going dizzy, his heart pounding again. Had Sludger done this? Had he found Vinnie’s cones and put something else there instead? The question was answered for him by an amused but slightly muffled voice.
‘Well, well Mr Budd … how clumsy of you.’
Vinnie looked dazedly up. Two figures advanced idly down the treed slope.
Had it been possible for his racing blood to run cold, it doubtless would have done. One of the figures was tall, one short. Both wore grey industrial overalls and, as he’d seen before, masks. The taller one bore the face of Oliver Hardy, the shorter one the beaming visage of Stan Laurel. It was Hardy who had spoken. Now he spoke again.
‘What an unlikely accident. An experienced woodsman like you caught in one of your own traps.’
‘I never …’ Vinnie stuttered. ‘I don’t ever …’
‘Amazing, truly. Though doubtless the anti-blood sports lobby would regard it as poetically just.’
‘Please, I never spoke … I never said nothing …’ Words briefly failed Vinnie. The pain in his arm was too much; the drumming of his heart was overwhelming him.
They stood there motionless, hands on hips.
‘I told the coppers nothing,’ he managed to add. ‘Didn’t tell ’em …’
‘If only we could take your word for that, Mr Budd.’
Vinnie regarded them mouth agape, the breath wheezing from his lungs. The pain was easing slightly, but only because his entire arm was deadened to all sensation. Blood still dripped from his crooked wrist.
‘I didn’t report no names. Didn’t see no faces.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ Hardy said. ‘But that’s because we don’t take chances, not because you believe in keeping your mouth shut. It really is a foolish thing, though – to have any kind of dealings with the police. I mean really, Mr Budd. A man in your profession? Can you seriously afford to lose the little respect you’ve got left?’
Vinnie hung his head, his bush hat dropping to the ground. Fronds of thinning red hair, saturated with sweat, hung over his face. ‘You’ve got to help me – gemme out of this.’
‘Perhaps.’ Hardy pondered. ‘But first a few precautions.’
Vinnie could do nothing but kneel there, his heavy body slumped forward as Laurel crouched next to him and, with rubber-gloved hands, commenced a thorough search, feeling first through Vinnie’s discarded coat and game bag and then moving to his trousers, burrowing into every pock
et and pouch, yanking out hooks, nets, balls of twine, even taking the razor-edged hunting knife from its sheath, and then lifting the cuffs of his trousers to peek down the sides of his boots – at the end of which mission he glanced up, shook his head, and gave an eerie high-pitched chuckle.
‘No mobile phone?’ Hardy said. ‘How unprofessional of you. What would happen if you’d suffered a real accident out here?’
Vinnie couldn’t answer. He’d never felt as sick in his life, or as weak.
Hardy shook his head with disapproval, even when his smaller compatriot handed him the hunting knife. He examined it before adding: ‘Even this wouldn’t have been much good to you. That trap, which was imported all the way from Siberia, was designed to hold a thousand-pound bear. No human could break it open, and of course we’ve jammed the release, as you’ve doubtless realised.’
He handed the knife back to his accomplice, then hunkered down, gloved hands steepled in front of him. That terrible plastic smile, once a source of joy to millions, now made an image of evil that Vinnie knew would haunt him for the rest of his life.
‘I’ll tell you what I think, Mr Budd: you’re a self-sufficient kind of chap, aren’t you? And I reckon you’d go to any length to avoid being caught somewhere you shouldn’t. Am I right? And even if some malicious old keeper had been very sneaky and had set this trap for you – which he didn’t by the way, as I’m sure you know, though it’s highly possible that’s how it’ll be explained – the last thing you’d want to do is admit he’d outwitted you. You’d do anything, wouldn’t you, to get away from here without other folk knowing what’s happened. Go on, admit it.’
‘Please,’ Vinnie burbled; his relentless heart was agony against his ribs. ‘I beg you—’
‘Oh no.’ Hardy sounded disappointed. ‘Such a big chap. Who by all accounts has been in and out of prison, who’s drunk pubs full of young buckos under the table. “Please … I beg you”? It would be sad if it wasn’t so pathetic. Anyway, not to worry, Mr Budd.’ Hardy stood upright again. ‘Because we’re going to do exactly what you want. We’re going to get you out of this trap. Not only that, we’re going to ensure that our role is kept secret. That’s right, Vinnie. It’s going to look like it was all your own work. Your friends, if you had any, would be so impressed.’