by Paul Finch
Alex stepped away from it, baffled. A fizz of radio static caught her attention. It came from beyond a door at the rear of the office. She opened it and peeked through into another part of the annex; a smaller, narrower room occupied by a large radio set on a desk. Alex entered, even more baffled. She didn’t know anything about the mechanics of these things, but she could tell that this was state-of-the-art gear. Even as she watched, lights flashed and messages crackled back and forth between various police patrols. There was a telephone in here as well – a modern one, with a screen and a speed-dial facility. When she put this one to her ear, it was working perfectly, though prodding at it solved nothing – it was too complex; she would need PC Holloway to show her how to operate it, though speaking to PC Holloway now seemed the very last thing she ought to be doing. Why had the woman lied about the radio communications here? They looked to be working fine. Why had she pretended to speak to someone on the other phone?
From overhead, there was a slow, purposeful movement of feet.
Alex gazed pale-faced at the ceiling, her matted hair prickling again. Another light came on up there; Alex saw it through the annex rear window, reflected on the lawn. She looked outside properly – and almost collapsed with shock.
Despite everything else that had happened that night, despite the murder she’d witnessed and the bullet she’d felt drone past her face, what she was now looking at seemed the most surreal thing of all.
The door beside the window was locked, but a key was inserted; all she needed to do was turn it and then she was outside – in the cool night air. Slowly, as though drunk, she crossed the lawn to the far side of the station-house, where an open garage sat at the end of the drive. As she’d seen from inside the annex, a police Range Rover was parked there, but when the light had come on upstairs it had illuminated a second vehicle parked behind this. It was half in and half out of the garage, so Alex may never have spotted that it was a familiar metallic green colour. Neither would she have noticed that it wasn’t actually parked, in fact that its fender was still linked to the tow-bar of the Range Rover.
Before she sidled her way around the police vehicle, the bonnet of which was warm, she knew the Corsa hatchback in the garage was hers. There were telltale gashes along its front nearside; the passenger window was broken; tufts of leafage protruded from its radiator grille.
She glanced back towards the house, frightened but furious as well.
It scarcely seemed feasible that she could walk into the lion’s den twice in one night. But she’d now learned that simply bemoaning her fate was no solution. Nor screaming, nor crying, nor running. So she did none of these things. She held her ground, watching the house carefully. It all made sense now, albeit in a crazy, unlikely fashion: the super-powerful torch with which ‘he’ had chased her; the ease with which ‘he’ had been knocked back by the barn door.
A female shadow moved behind one of the upstairs curtains, putting clothes on.
‘Okay,’ Alex said. ‘That buys us a little time at least.’
She slid past the busted bodywork of her vehicle into the dimness of the garage, where she was able to open the rear nearside door sufficiently to slot herself through and grope in the footwells again. Her mobile phone was here somewhere, but even with the interior light on, it proved elusive; it was all shadow down there. While fumbling beneath the driver’s seat, she found her Smartpen. Fresh sweat stippled her brow as she examined the high-tech gadget. She tucked it into her waistband and continued searching, even going through the two or three boxes on the backseat – until it suddenly occurred to her that maybe, when the phone had jerked out of her hand, it had bounced over the backseat into the actual boot.
She clambered out of the car. This was an unpleasant possibility. While some of her junk from the conference occupied the backseat, most of it was stowed in the boot. So the phone could have slipped into any one of a number of niches. Finding it here was made even more difficult by the immediate proximity of a vehicle that had already been parked in the garage when the Corsa was reversed in. She gazed at the Audi from the lay-by. It was no surprise to see it; in fact in some ways this was a good thing. If she could get in touch with someone now, everything she needed to prove her story was right here.
She lifted the hatchback lid. A clutter of boxes, bags and scattered spare clothing greeted her. She rummaged through it, discarding one item after another. One container in particular should not even be open, she realised, chiding herself. It was filled with sales samples: prescribed meds, treatment room utensils. It had been sealed for the journey down, but she hadn’t got around to resealing it for the return trip. Not that she could worry about that now.
And then another thought occurred to her – an exciting thought, but dangerous.
She pondered the array of restricted products, wondering if she dared take such action. She had to be mad even to contemplate it, but of course she wasn’t the only mad one out and about tonight. Slowly, patiently, she began opening cartons, ripping sterile packets, flipping lids. It was a delicate process and she had to be careful, but though she’d been ten years out of nursing, she’d spent the ten before that on the wards – and she knew what she was doing.
‘I can easily believe Rod Henderson tried to coerce you into sex,’ said a voice.
Alex jerked upright, almost dropping everything she was holding.
PC Holloway was standing in the garage entrance, on the same side of the cars as Alex. She was silhouetted against the lights of the house, so her expression was indistinguishable, but her tone was cold, businesslike. She was wearing familiar black clothes, now identifiable as police waterproofs with the insignia removed. They gleamed wetly; she’d been in the process of washing them when Alex had first arrived.
‘Do you know why I believe?’ Holloway said. ‘Because he was that kind of guy.’ She held something up – it was the zipper-mouthed rapist mask. ‘This was his, not mine. He had a whole box of fancy dress like this. Not to mention a few toys as well. Cheeky bastard kept them here … for whenever he happened to call. Which was increasingly rarely these last few months. He sees us as toys too. Women, I mean. You and me, Alexa … in some ways we’re quite alike.’
‘Listen,’ Alex said, trying to slide across the back of the Corsa to its offside, though there was insufficient space between the Corsa and the Audi to allow this.
‘Stay where you are!’ Holloway’s voice wasn’t exactly a whip-crack, but there was great authority there. It also helped that she’d produced a pistol; a chunky, snub-nosed revolver, which she pointed across the Corsa’s roof. ‘And lower the boot lid, so I can see you properly.’
Alex did as instructed, though it was difficult with both hands full. ‘Look … you don’t have to do this,’ she said slowly.
‘Unfortunately I do.’ Holloway’s voice remained steady; it was almost unnatural, a monotone. In the dimness, the eyes in her milk-pale face were blots of tar. ‘You see, it’s bad enough being loved and left, if you could call it ‘loving’, by a five-timing toe-rag like Rod Henderson. Especially when I was just feeling good about myself … but then you come along as well. At just the right time, typically. With your blonde hair, and your baby blues, and your better body than mine even though you must be fifty at least.’
Cheeky bitch …
Holloway shook her head. ‘But I’ve worked too hard at my career to see it all taken away by a pair of clichés like you and Rod …’
‘You said we were all victims together,’ Alex pleaded. ‘You said we were ‘toys’.’
‘Some of us lend ourselves more easily to that metaphor than others. But at the end of the day, Alexa, this is about necessity, not jealousy …’
‘PC Holloway, this won’t save you! Think about it. You’ve been shooting that gun all over the countryside. You’ve left evidence everywhere.’
‘And you’re an expert on that stuff, are you?’
‘I’m no expert, but your colleagues will be.’
Hollow
ay half-smiled. ‘I know them better than you and, sadly, I beg to differ.’
Alex swallowed saliva. She knew the conversation was coming to an end. Her shoulders tensed as she thumbed the Smartpen’s buttons. ‘You … you just won’t get away with this.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says him!’ Alex shouted, pointing, and at the same time dropping the Smartpen and kicking it under the car into the far corner of the garage.
‘I meet so many ladies in need of company,’ came Rod Henderson’s slimy voice. Holloway spun around, eyes goggling, weapon trained on empty shadow. ‘My heart bleeds for them. I just can’t help it …’
She never saw Alex rush past the car towards her, five uncapped syringes clutched above her head. At the last second she whirled back, but it was too late. Alex drove the needles down, ramming them full length into the gun-arm, hitting all five plungers at the same time, expelling two hundred and fifty millilitres of insulin into the policewoman’s bloodstream.
‘I always want to give them a second chance,’ Henderson’s voice intoned. ‘Of course, some of them are too dumb even to take that.’
Holloway clutched at Alex’s blouse as she sank to her knees, eyes bulging, froth bubbling between clamped lips.
‘But it’s your choice,’ he added. ‘The alternative is you go it your own way … and pay the price.’
Alex stood there, eyes closed, fighting down nausea for what seemed like minutes, as the policewoman’s grip slowly weakened, the twitching hand sliding down her body by increments. At last, still unwilling to look, Alex stepped over the shuddering, prostrate form and walked forward, veering off the drive and into the middle of the lawn, where she dropped to her knees and was violently sick. When she’d emptied her stomach, she dry-heaved a couple of times just for good measure, before finally, exhaustedly, falling on her face.
Behind her, she could hear her own voice cutting Rod Henderson down to size. That ‘Scouse gob’ running wild again. Only this time it had saved her; if she’d been in the car with him, in the backseat …? It didn’t bear thinking about.
She rolled over onto her back, though she had so little energy left that it took a monumental effort, and regarded the infinite pattern of stars. It was so light up there compared to the darkness down here. She could sense its celestial power, could feel it imbuing her body. She wasn’t cold anymore, she wasn’t stiff; she wasn’t even hurting. She’d just killed someone, but for the moment at least she didn’t care. All she wanted to do now was rest, sleep maybe. She’d earned it, hadn’t she?
Don’t get too comfy, girl. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do.
It was true. Two coppers were dead. And she was the only witness. Maybe they’d accuse her, arrest her, interrogate the crap out of her. But so what?
She was alive.
Read on for the thrilling opening chapters of Paul Finch’s new book, The Killing Club.
You won’t be able to put it down …
Chapter 1
Gull Rock was just about the last place on Earth.
Situated on a bleak headland south of that vast tidal inlet called ‘the Wash’, it was far removed from any kind of civilisation, and battered constantly by furious elements. Even on England’s east coast, no place was lonelier, drearier, nor more intimidating in terms of its sheer isolation. Though ultimately this was a good thing, for Gull Rock Prison (aka HM Prison Brancaster) held the very worst of the worst. And this was no exaggeration even by the standards of ‘Category A’. None of Gull Rock’s inmates was serving less than ten years, and they included in their number some of the most depraved murderers, most violent robbers and most relentless rapists in Britain, not to mention gangsters, terrorists and urban street-hoodlums for whom the word ‘deranged’ could have been invented.
When Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper drove onto its visitor car park that dull morning, her aquamarine Mercedes E-class was the only vehicle there, but this was no surprise. Visits to inmates at Gull Rock were strictly limited.
She climbed out and regarded the distant concrete edifice. It was early September, but this was an exposed location; a stiff breeze gusted in across the North Sea, driving uncountable white-caps ahead of it, lofting hundreds of raucous seabirds skyward, and ruffling her tangle of ash-blonde hair. She buttoned up her raincoat and adjusted the bundle of plastic-wrapped folders under her arm.
Another vehicle now rumbled off the approach road, and pulled into a parking bay alongside her: a white Toyota GT.
She ignored it, staring at the outline of the prison. In keeping with its ‘special security’ status, it was noticeably lacking in windows. The grey walls of its various residential blocks were faceless and sheer, any connecting passages between them running underground. A towering outer wall, topped with barbed wire, encircled these soulless inner structures, the only gate in it a massive slab of reinforced steel, while outside it lay concentric rings of electrified fencing.
The occupant of the Toyota climbed out. His tall, athletic form was fitted snugly into a tailored Armani suit. A head of close-cropped white curls revealed his advancing years – he was close on fifty – but he had a lean, bronzed visage on which his semi-permanent frown was at once both dangerous and attractive. He was Commander Frank Tasker of Scotland Yard, and he too had a heap of paperwork with him zipped into plastic folders.
‘I don’t mean to tell you how do to your job, Gemma,’ Tasker said, pulling on his waterproof. ‘But we’ve got to start making headway on this soon.’
Gemma nodded. ‘I understand that, sir. But everything’s on schedule.’
‘I wish I was as sure about that as you. We’ve interviewed him six times now. Is he going to crack, or isn’t he?’
‘Guys like Peter Rochester don’t crack, sir,’ she replied. ‘It’s a case of wearing them down slowly but surely.’
‘The time factor …’
‘Has been taken into consideration. I promise you, sir … we’re getting there.’
Tasker sniffed. ‘I don’t know who he thinks he’s being loyal to. I mean, they didn’t give a shit about him … why should he give a shit about them?’
‘Probably a military thing,’ she said. ‘Rochester reached the rank of Adjudant-Chef. You don’t manage that in the Foreign Legion if you’re a non-French national … not without really impressing people. Plus they say he commanded total loyalty from his men. And that continued when he was a merc. You don’t carry that off either unless you give a bit back.’
‘You’re saying Rochester’s lot like each other?’
‘Yes, but that’s only one of several differences between them and the run-of-the-mill mobs we usually have to deal with.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not going to argue with that. You’ve done most of the homework on this case. The original question stands, though … how long?’
‘Couple more sessions. I think we’re almost there.’
‘And you’ve borne in mind what I told you about DS Heckenburg?’
She half-smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘We don’t want him anywhere near this, Gemma?’
‘He isn’t.’
‘He’s a loose cannon at the best of times, but he could really screw this up for us.’
‘It’s alright, sir.’
‘I’m surprised he hasn’t at least been asking questions.’
‘Well … he has.’
Tasker looked distracted by that. ‘And?’
‘I’m his guv’nor. When I tell him it’s off limits, he accepts it.’
‘Does he know how many times you’ve interviewed Rochester?’
‘He’s been too busy recently. I’ve made sure of it.
Tasker assessed their surroundings as he pondered this. Continents of storm-cloud approached over the sea, drawing palls of misty gloom beneath them. Plumes of colourless sand blew up around the car park’s edges. The hard net fencing droned in the wind. In the midst of it all, the prison stood stark and silent, an eternal rock on this windswept point, nothing
beyond it but rolling, breaking waves.
‘Hellhole, that place,’ Tasker said with a shudder. ‘I mean, it’s clean enough … even sterile. But you really feel you’ve reached the end of the line when you’re in there. Particularly that Special Supervision Unit. Talk about a box inside a box.’
He glanced uneasily over his shoulder.
‘Something wrong, sir?’ Gemma asked.
‘Call me paranoid, but I keep expecting Heckenburg to show up.’
‘I’ve told you, Heck’s busy.’
‘How busy?’
‘Up-to-his-eyebrows busy,’ she said. ‘In one of the nastiest cases I’ve seen for quite some time. Don’t worry … we’ve got Mad Mike Silver and whatever’s left of the Nice Guys Club all to ourselves.’
Chapter 2
In a strange way, Greg Matthews looked the way his name seemed to imply he should. Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, or ‘Heck’ as his colleagues knew him, couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something forceful and energetic about that name – Greg Matthews. As if this was a guy who didn’t waste time dilly-dallying. There was also something ‘Middle England’ about it, something educated, something well-heeled. And these were definitely the combined impressions Heck had of the man himself, as he watched the video-feed from the interview room at Gillbridge Avenue police station in Sunderland.
Matthews was somewhere in his early thirties, stockily-built, with ashen features and wiry, copper-coloured hair. When first arrested he’d been clad in designer ‘urban combat’ gear: a padded green flak-jacket and a grey hoodie, stonewashed jeans and bovver boots, as they’d once been known. All of that had now been taken away from him, of course, as he was clad for custody in clean white paper, though he’d been allowed to retain his round-lensed ‘John Lennon’ spectacles, as apparently he was blind as a mole without them.
None of this had dampened the prisoner’s passion.