Angel of Death

by Ben Cheetham

  As she spoke, a figure with a hood pulled tight around their face emerged from the building and advanced rapidly towards them. ‘She’s got a gun!’ Jim shouted, recognising the woman from the CCTV footage.

  ‘You get your hands up!’ ordered Angel, her voice trembling. As Jim obeyed, she aimed the Glock at Amy. ‘And you get out of the car!’

  Amy rose to her feet, hands spread.

  ‘Grace Kirby?’ Jim’s voice was uncertain. It was the woman from the CCTV, he didn’t doubt that, but curiously her eyes were brown, not blue.

  ‘Shut your mouth!’

  ‘You’re Grace Kirby, aren’t you?’

  Angel jerked the gun back towards Jim. ‘I said fucking shut it.’

  ‘Put the gun down,’ said Amy, her voice calm and forceful. ‘We’re police officers.’

  ‘I’m warning you. One more word!’ Angel pointed at the car. ‘Get the keys and the radio receiver.’ Once Amy had done so, she continued, ‘Put them on the bonnet, along with your mobile phones.’

  Again, Jim and Amy complied. With the gun, Angel motioned them to a spot where she could get on the motorbike without taking her eyes off them. She put their things in her handbag, unhooked the helmet from the handlebars and tossed it aside, then felt for the ignition keys. Finding that they were missing, she hissed, ‘Which of you has got the keys?’

  Jim opened his hand to reveal them. ‘I know what Stephen Baxley and the Winstanleys did to you, Grace. I’ve seen the film they made.’

  Angel gave him a narrow-eyed look. ‘You’re the copper who called me yesterday, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I want to help you. Together we can catch the others involved.’

  ‘If you’ve really seen the film, you know as much about them as me.’

  ‘Their faces were hidden. That’s why we need you.’

  Shaking her head, Angel echoed Jim’s earlier words to Amy. ‘Even if I could tell you their names, it wouldn’t make any difference. They’re beyond your reach. But not mine.’

  ‘Listen to him, Grace,’ said Amy. ‘You can get these guys, but killing them isn’t the way to do—’

  ‘No!’ cut in Angel, a dark light kindling in her eyes. ‘There’s no other way. Now throw me the keys. I don’t want to hurt you, but believe me I will if I have to.’

  Jim tossed the keys to her.

  ‘Get on your faces.’

  Once Jim and Amy were lying down, Angel swung her leg over the bike. For an instant, she was forced to lower her gaze to insert the key into the ignition. Amy started to move into a pouncing position, but Jim caught hold of her wrist. The bike’s engine roared into life and Angel accelerated away, speeding towards the city’s outskirts.

  Amy yanked her wrist out of Jim’s grip. ‘I could’ve taken her down.’

  ‘Got yourself killed, more like.’

  Amy dismissed his words with a snort. ‘And what the hell was all that about you calling her? Have you totally lost your mind?’

  ‘I was just trying to reach out to her. Let her know there was help available.’

  ‘Oh you helped her alright. I can’t think of a better way to give someone a heads-up that we’re on their arse. No wonder she was wearing fake fucking contact lenses.’

  ‘And what if she’d listened to me? The Winstanleys would still be alive.’

  ‘I bet you’d be jumping for joy if that was the case, wouldn’t you?’ Amy’s tone was laced with sarcasm.

  A frown added to the creases carved into Jim’s rugged face. ‘Are you suggesting I helped her murder the Winstanleys?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. But let’s face it, Jim, you won’t exactly be mourning their deaths.’

  ‘Will you?’ Now it was Jim’s turn to raise his voice. ‘Christ knows how many kids have fallen victim to those perverts. Well, they won’t be hurting anyone now. Am I really supposed to mourn that?’

  ‘You’re supposed to do your job!’

  ‘I am doing my fucking job, the same as I’ve been doing it since you were still in nappies.’ Jim took a breath and continued more calmly. ‘You’re right, I was bang out of order phoning Grace. But you seem to be forgetting that at the time I didn’t know what had gone down in Middlesbrough. How could I possibly have any idea what she intended to do?’

  Amy stared at Jim, her eyebrows knotted. She heaved a sigh. ‘OK, look, I’m sorry for saying what I did. But you can hardly blame me after what you said earlier.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. But maybe one day, when you’ve been doing this job for as long as I have, you’ll understand why I said what I did.’

  ‘I really hope not.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Garrett?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Why? What good would it do?’

  Amy pursed her lips in indecision. ‘Our responsibility, our only responsibility, is to arrest Grace Kirby. You’ve got to get your head straight about that.’

  Jim released a leaden sigh. ‘I know.’

  ‘Then I’ll keep it to myself.’ Amy paused, before adding meaningfully, ‘For now.’

  The wail of fast-approaching sirens drew their attention. Three police cars and a van sped into view. Amy flagged them down. She gave the occupants of the foremost car a description of Grace and pointed them in the direction she’d gone. Two of the cars raced off in pursuit. The van and remaining car blocked off the road in both directions. As a team of six firearms officers geared up to check there was no one else in the building, Amy radioed district headquarters. ‘This is Detective Inspector Sheridan. I need a GPS triangulation on a mobile phone.’ She gave her phone number and waited for a response.

  After a brief pause, she heard, ‘GPS indicates suspect vehicle is moving north-east in the area of the Ecclesall Road.’

  Amy relayed the information to the cars in pursuit. Then she turned to Jim. ‘Well, it shouldn’t be long now before we catch up with Grace again.’

  ‘Nice work, Detective.’

  ‘At least say it like you mean it.’

  ‘I do mean it.’ With heavy-lidded eyes, Jim watched the firearms officers move in on the building. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. Very, very tired.’

  14

  As soon as she was out of sight of the detectives, Angel turned onto a street that cut back towards the city centre. Again, she almost skidded off the motorbike. She forced herself to slow down and take a moment to orient herself. The street descended towards a dark patch in the city, which she guessed was the Botanical Gardens. At that point, she could turn left and skirt along the edge of the park towards the Hallamshire Hospital or right towards the Ecclesall Road. Either route would bring her, after a couple of miles, to the city centre. Over the motorbike’s engine and the blood hammering in her ears, she caught a thin whine of sirens away to her left. That made her mind up for her. At the end of the street she turned right.

  The pubs, bars and restaurants of the Ecclesall Road were packed with customers, many of them sitting at tables on the pavement. Angel felt too visible. She half expected people to jump to their feet, pointing and shouting, That’s her!

  She turned off the Ecclesall Road and worked her way towards the city centre through a tangle of quiet terraced streets. Houses soon gave way to blocks of flats, shops and office buildings. After negotiating a busy roundabout, she slowed almost to a stop, twisting her head from side to side. Spotting a boarded-up shop, she mounted the pavement and cut the engine. She wheeled the bike round to the back of the shop and stashed it behind two large metal bins. She pulled off her hooded top and threw it in one of the bins, along with the contact lenses. There was every possibility that her description was already being circulated to the city’s hotels, pubs, nightclubs, taxi drivers and the like. She figured the fact that she’d cut and dyed her hair should give her a few hours’ breathing space to get her head together and plan her next move.

  Angel headed for the hotel, walking fast but trying not to look suspicious. She smiled at the receptionist as she passed through the lob
by. The man cast a disinterested glance at her, before returning his attention to the newspaper he was reading. She silently congratulated herself on her choice of lodgings. In a more intimate or upmarket establishment, her appearance alone might have been enough to land her in trouble – her hair was pasted to her forehead with sweat; one leg of her jeans was ripped at the knee; and there were bloody scabs on her elbows.

  She caught the lift up to her room and took a long drink of water at the sink. After cleaning and tying a towel around a deep gash on her knee, she removed the carrier-bag containing the tools of her addiction from the toilet cistern. She lay on the bed, staring at the bag, her tongue flicking hungrily for its contents. The heroin itch was almost unbearable, but she knew she couldn’t afford to scratch it. She needed a clear head in case she had to make a sudden departure from the hotel. Even more than that, she needed to think. But only one thought kept hammering in her brain – You did it! You killed the bastards. Now you deserve a little reward, a little treat.

  With a hard shake of her head, Angel shoved the bag under a pillow. Herbert and Marisa were a start, a biopsy before the main operation, that’s all. She took out the little black book and started reading the names aloud to herself, fixing them in her memory. ‘Thomas Villiers, Sebastian Dawson-Cromer, Rupert Hartwell…’ Her voice dissolved into a sigh. There was page after page of names. The sickness, it seemed, went deeper than she’d ever imagined. She was going to need more bullets – lots more.

  The first job was to identify the two men still alive from that night in the Winstanleys’ basement. But how? Her gaze continued to skim over the names, until she came to one with a Sheffield phone number and address below it. ‘Henry Reeve.’

  The name meant nothing to Angel. She repeated it softly to herself, summoning up an image of her abusers, wondering how she could find out if it belonged to either of them. She considered phoning the number and seeing if she recognised the voice, but the idea didn’t appeal. It would be like holding up a warning sign that said, I’m on your arse! An idea occurred to her. She took the detectives’ phones out of her handbag. One was an old-fashioned phone with a basic camera. The other was an iPhone. She navigated to Google on the iPhone and did a search for Henry Reeve, Sheffield. ‘Dr Henry Reeve, Clinical Psychiatrist’ appeared at the top of the hit list. The link led to a chunk of text that read, ‘Dr Reeve is a Chartered Clinical Psychiatrist with over twenty-five years’ experience working in Child and Family Services. Since setting up in private practice in 2002, Dr Reeve has continued to work with young people. He has particular expertise in treating low self-esteem, depression and bipolar disorders.’

  Next to the bio was a head-and-shoulders photo of a late-middle-aged man with short silver-grey hair and a matching beard, chiselled features and the confident eyes of a man used to being listened to. Angel unconsciously curled her fingers into a fist. She knew those eyes. For years she’d seen them in her dreams, leering down at her, swollen with lust and arrogance. Even now, if she closed her eyes, she could recall with chilling vividness the feel of his hand on the back of her neck, forcing her head towards Mark Baxley. She ground her teeth at the thought of him working with young people, wondering how many others had been subjected to similar treatment. Expertise in treating low self-esteem. A nauseous rage swept over her at the perverse irony of it. Doctor Reeve’s particular brand of therapy had obliterated what little remained of her self-esteem and driven her to the brink of suicide.

  At the top of the screen was a ‘Contact’ link. It took Angel to a webpage with an email address and the instructions, ‘To contact Dr Henry Reeve, use the link below. Please include your name, contact number and the nature of your query.’ A sardonic smile lifted Angel’s mouth at the thought of emailing the doctor something along the lines of, ‘Please can we arrange an appointment for me to come over and blow your brains out.’

  According to Herbert’s book, the good doctor lived on Whirlowdale Road. Angel looked up the address on Google Maps and zoomed in on the house. It was a large detached property, backing onto woods. Reflecting that it should be easy enough to approach the house unobserved, she scrolled the map to her present location.

  Very pleased with her bit of investigative work, Angel imagined the satisfaction she would feel at wiping the arrogance off Doctor Reeve’s face forever. The need for vengeance throbbed in her veins more powerfully even than the desire to shoot up. As dog-tired as she was, if it hadn’t been for the police forcing her to lie low, she would have headed over to his house that very moment.

  Angel flinched at the sound of her phone ringing. Warily, as if it might burn her, she took it out of her handbag. A number she didn’t know showed on its screen. She frowned at the phone for a moment, before putting it to her ear. A familiar voice came down the line.

  ****

  Torch beams flickered in the building’s windows as the team of AFOs moved rapidly from room to room, shouting for anyone hiding to come out. Jim leant against the van, smoking a cigarette and listening to Amy help coordinate the search for Grace over the two-way radio. GPS tracking indicated she was now stationary somewhere in the region of Charter Row, Wellington Street and Furnival Gate – an area of the city centre where there were dozens of pubs, bars, nightclubs, restaurants, a hotel or two and a homeless hostel. It would take a while to check out all the possible hiding places, but even so it was only a matter of time before Grace was found.

  A mass of conflicting emotions seethed inside Jim. He knew he should feel pleased at a job well done. But he didn’t. He kept thinking about the DVD. Assuming Stephen Baxley was operating the video camera and there was no one else present off-screen, that meant two of the perpetrators were still alive. Two men. Gut police instinct told him that one of those men was Bryan Reynolds. He didn’t have a clue as to the other man’s identity. But even if he had, it would have made little difference. As things stood, there simply wasn’t the evidence to charge anyone. It twisted him up inside to think of Grace going down for life while her abusers remained free to continue their depravity. Especially Reynolds. That scum-sucking piece of filth deserved to be thrown into the deepest darkest hole imaginable. Other evidence will surface, he told himself over and again. But each time he did, another voice rose from some remote corner of his mind. What if it doesn’t? What then?

  A firearms officer appeared at the front door and shouted that the building was clear. ‘I’ll check out Winstanley’s office,’ Jim said to Amy.

  Flicking away his cigarette, he wearily made his way to the office. He knelt at the side of the desk to peer into the empty secret drawer, noting that it was big enough to hold a small book. He glanced around the room. His gaze came to rest on a phone. He stared at it for a moment, a fierce frown on his forehead, a shadow of conflict clouding his eyes. ‘Do your job and do it properly,’ he muttered under his breath, but there was a hollow ring to his voice.

  Jim left the office. He was alone in the building, except for a constable stationed at the front door. He headed upstairs. The door to the office of the solicitor’s firm that shared the premises with Winstanley Accountants and Business Advisors had been broken into. He closed it firmly behind himself and approached a desk with a telephone on it. He took out his notepad and found Grace’s number. Hesitantly, he reached for the phone. He started to punch in the number, but returned the handset to its base with a shake of his head, murmuring, ‘What the fuck are you doing, Jim?’

  Again, the sickening images from the DVD flashed through his mind, followed by Reynolds’s smug, scarred face. He snatched up the phone and dialled. His knuckles showed white as he gripped the handset. One ring. Two. Three. Part of him prayed that Grace didn’t answer. Four rings. Five. She’s not going to pick up, he thought, releasing a breath that was part relief and part disappointment. He was moving the phone away from his ear when the ringing stopped. For a few seconds there was dead silence, punctuated only by the thud of his heart. Then he heard a voice that was his own, but that sounded strange and
distant, as if he was listening to someone else speaking. ‘We know you’re in the city centre near Furnival Gate. We’re tracking the iPhone’s GPS. You haven’t got long before we find you. You need to move now.’

  Another moment of silence passed. Then Grace’s voice came down the line, tentative, suspicious. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  Jim opened his mouth, but no answer came out. He hung up and looked at his hand. For the first time in as long as he could remember, it was shaking. He put it to his eyes, concealing a sadness that went deeper than any bullet could have done.

  ****

  Angel sprang to her feet, swearing at herself for her stupidity. Deano had always been careful to use phones that weren’t GPS enabled. She yanked on her old sweatshirt and jeans, dislodging the towel tied around her knee. She didn’t understand why Detective Monahan had warned her, but neither did she doubt that he was telling the truth. There’d been no lie in his voice, just a kind of haunted need. She’d heard that need before in the voices of men betraying their wives. Parting the curtains a finger’s breadth, she saw that half a dozen police cars were cruising silently towards the hotel. She grabbed her handbag and the bag of Mexican brown and started towards the door. Almost as an afterthought, she snatched up the iPhone.

  She sprinted down a flight of stairs at the rear of the hotel. A fire-exit led to a car park that was accessed from a backstreet with a couple of busy bars and restaurants on it. A group of men emerged from one of the bars. She pulled up her hood. Feigning drunkenness, she staggered into one of the men and flung her arms around him to keep from falling. ‘Whoa, easy there, love, I’m a married man,’ he laughed.

  ‘Sorry,’ slurred Angel, hurrying on her way in the opposite direction to the group. Her heart lurched as the sound of sirens suddenly flared. She ducked into a shop porch, hiding in its shadows until the sirens began to fade. She peered both ways along the high street, then darted across it into an alleyway. Avoiding busy, well-lit streets, she worked her way towards the side of the city she knew best – the north side. Twice she was forced to fling herself out of the sight of passing police cars.