by Andy Maslen
She emerged onto Lisson Grove and turned towards Regent’s Park, settling quickly into her normal warmup pace. Her favourite Asics Gel-Cumulus running shoes didn’t so much hit the pavement as kiss it, and she felt the familiar sense of fleet-footed freedom envelop her and her heart and lungs adjusted to the new demands she placed on them.
The sun was still low, and the sky, a deep, bruised purple at the horizon, underwent a gradual transition to a pale, washed-out blue, shot through with streaks of pink. East-facing windows on the tall tower blocks flashed brilliantly in the sunlight.
She loved running early in the morning. London was never truly quiet. Ask any of the uniformed patrols and they’d confirm it. But around dawn it was at its most peaceful. You could relax. Those intent on evil-doing had mostly finished for the night. Even bad guys slept occasionally.
She nodded to an Indian man loading tables with fruit outside his grocery shop. He smiled and nodded back. He was the only other human being she saw.
Reaching a crossroads, she looked over her shoulder before running across the junction. A white transit van was following her about fifty feet back.
She chided herself. Unless it was going in the other direction, it had to drive the same way as her. It didn’t mean it was following her.
She reached the pavement on the far side and looked back. The van was gone. Proof she was starting to see conspiracies everywhere. She needed to get her head straight or the next few days were going to be impossible. There’d be reports to write and no doubt interviews with high-ups about Roisin’s death.
She turned a corner, intending to take a shortcut to the park, and found herself running towards a thickset man leaning against a lamppost about thirty yards distant.
He was smoking what she took, at first, to be a cigarette, then she smelled it and realised it was a joint. Beside him stood a white transit van, one rear wheel up on the pavement.
She thought back to the van she’d clocked a few minutes earlier. That one had been a Ford. So was this. That one had a broken headlight, giving it a lopsided look. So did this.
His head came up like a dog scenting danger. He looked in her direction: no expression on his face. Which worried her.
A tradesman would nod, or offer a smile. She scanned the road behind her. No traffic on this quiet residential road at this time of day. No other pedestrians either. And no CCTV cameras on lamp posts.
He was dressed in dirty jeans and a pale-blue hoodie. She looked at his feet. Where she’d expected to see dirty trainers, she saw heavy black boots.
At once, she knew who she was facing. Not his name. That would come later. But his job.
This was no casual encounter. And he was no random wrong ’un. They had sent him for her. Probably had her under surveillance even before she left for Stockholm. She always ran the same route. It would have been a simple enough matter for him to work it out.
She looked over her shoulder again and moved onto the road, intending to cross and run around the van. He moved into her path, spreading his meaty arms wide.
‘Bit early for a run, isn’t it?’ he asked.
Even though she could have sped up and accelerated past him and out of his reach, that wasn’t what she felt like doing. So she didn’t.
She slowed.
Close up, she could see the stubble on his jowly face.
Stopping in front of him, she put her hands on her hips.
‘I like running before everyone’s awake. It’s quiet,’ she said.
‘I like being up and around at this time, too,’ he said in a conversational tone of voice.
She noticed the way his eyes flicked down to her breasts then to her face again. Then to his van. For she was sure it was his.
Stella jerked her chin in the direction of his right hand, where the joint smouldered, sending pungent, sweet-smelling smoke coiling into the air above him.
‘You shouldn’t be doing that.’
He grinned and took a long drag. He blew out a thin stream of smoke at her.
‘What are you going to do, call the police?’ he asked derisively.
She smiled and shook her head. ‘No. But it’s bad for you. The modern strains are too powerful. Very high concentration of THCs.’
He laughed at this. Then he stretched out his right hand.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take a puff. It’ll loosen you up. You look like you could do with it.’
‘I’m good, thanks,’ she said.
She made no move to leave. Instead, keeping her stance balanced, a little more weight on her left leg, which she’d advanced half a pace, she waited for his next move.
If he’d been thoughtful, or observant, or less confident in his own physical abilities, he might have wondered why this slightly-built woman wearing nothing but a few ounces of Lycra felt no need to put more distance between them.
He did the precise opposite of what he should have done. He moved closer. The grin morphed into a leer.
‘I’ve got a mattress in the back,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Why don’t you and me get in? We could have some fun.’
He was close enough that Stella could see the blackheads on his nose, and the flakes of dry skin in his eyebrows. His eyes were a mid-brown and they were flecked with green, caught by the sun that was now slanting across the street.
She could smell him, too. A sour, unwashed reek.
He reached behind him and brought out a long-bladed knife. Sun glinted off its edge.
She smiled. ‘OK.’
His eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘I hope you’re feeling energetic, because I could give a man like you a really good seeing to.’ She pointed to the knife. ‘No need for that.’
He smiled. And he actually licked his lips. His gaze slid over her body for a second time, lingering on her breasts and the front of her shorts.
He turned away and yanked open the back doors of the van. Inside, as promised, lay a greasy-looking mattress. It was horribly stained in overlapping blotches of grey and pale brown. She saw darker marks, too.
She pushed him aside and hopped into the noisome space which was lit by a pair of overhead courtesy lights. Moving to the back, she turned and crooked a finger.
‘Come on, then? What are you waiting for?’
44
London
She watched him lever his bulk into the back and close the doors behind him with a screech from an unoiled lock. He turned around.
And she kicked him hard in the centre of his face.
The crack as his nose broke was sharp in the metal box. He howled, clutching the flattened bulb of flesh. Blood spurted from between his fingers, soaking the front of his hoodie.
Before he could inhale again, Stella leaped at him and drove another kick into his groin. With no more breath left for a scream he buckled, falling sideways onto the mattress.
Stella punched him twice, once in the throat, once in the solar plexus, driving his wind out.
She grabbed the knife from the mattress where he’d dropped it. Kneeling beside him, she pushed the tip against the soft tissue of his neck where the major blood vessels ran.
Sensing a chance to tilt the scales in her favour beyond the confines of the van, she got her phone out and started a video recording.
‘Who are you?’ she growled.
‘What?’ he mumbled through his fingers. ‘You broke my fucking nose, you cunt.’
Stella paused the recording. ‘Call me a cunt again and I’ll castrate you like the pig you are.’
She tapped the red circle again and restarted the video.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Dave.’
‘Dave, what?’
‘Hoyle.’
‘For the tape, Dave Hoyle, who sent you to kill me?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She pushed the knife a little harder. The tip broke the skin on his throat and a thin stream of blood trickled sideways onto the mattress.
‘Last c
hance,’ she said.
She removed the knife from his throat, reached back with it and pressed the tip hard into his groin, not caring about the precise point of contact. He wheezed out a thin, terrified cry.
‘All right, all right. Stop! I’ll tell you.’ She increased the pressure on the knife. ‘It’s a cop. In Scotland.’
Stella’s heart rate doubled.
‘Name.’
‘Spring. Alec Spring. He’s this really fucking senior guy. Brass.’
Holding the phone as steady as she could manage, Stella pressed on.
‘Did he tell you why?’
‘No. He said best not ask too many questions. Said to fuck you up properly then kill you. Make it look like one of those creeps who get off on it. Rape you first if I wanted to.’
‘Where did he find you?’
‘I’m an ex-cop. I got kicked out for brutality. I got a call from a former CI. Said this brass wanted to see me. There was money in it.’
‘How much?’
‘Five grand.’
Was that all they thought her life was worth? Stella almost laughed. She made a split-second decision. She ended the recording and pocketed her phone. She climbed off him, keeping the knife within striking distance of his face.
‘I could kill you right here. I’ve done it before. But I’m going to let you go. You’re going to disappear,’ she said. ‘You don’t report back and you don’t get in my way again. If you do—’
He sprang at her – ‘Fuck you! Cunt!’ – straight into her outstretched fist.
She caught him in the throat again. He fell backwards onto the mattress, clutching his neck and heaving out strange cracked noises.
Rearing up, he clawed at her face. She jerked her head back out of range of his fingers. He kicked out and caught her on the point of her right knee, which exploded in pain.
As she toppled sideways, he grabbed her throat with both hands and started squeezing. His teeth were bared in a feral snarl. Stars flickered around the edge of Stella’s vision.
Then she struck. At first his hands stayed locked around her neck. But the shock and pain registered in his eyes. She saw it. Knew that though the van would shortly contain a dead body, it wouldn’t be hers.
His grip slackened. His mouth dropped open and he looked down at his belly. Dark-red blood flooded out, drenching the lower part of his hoodie and the front of his jeans.
He looked back at her, a puzzled expression on his face: brows knitted, eyes questioning, mouth half-open.
‘It’s because you’re dying,’ she said, pulling the blade out of his stomach.
Then she grabbed a fistful of lank, greasy hair and jerked his head down, folding him double. She drew the blade swiftly under his chin, left to right.
He’d looked after the knife. The edge was as keen as the point was sharp. His thick neck offered little resistance as the blade parted skin, fat, muscle, sinew, artery, vein and cartilage.
A great deal of blood issued from the rent in his throat. The air escaping his lungs hissed and bubbled.
Stella stood back to avoid the blood. The arterial spray was contained by the fold of his neck. Most soaked into the mattress.
When the bleeding stopped, she moved closer and wrapped his right hand tightly around the handle of the knife. Once again, she thanked dear, sweet, heroin-addicted Yiannis Terzi for removing her prints.
She opened the rear door and peered out. The road was still empty. She climbed out and shut it behind her.
She took his baseball cap and pulled it on and down to cover her face, then she got out and went round to the driver’s seat. When she started the engine, she was pleased to see the van had a three-quarters full petrol tank.
Checking the mirror, she indicated right and pulled away, feathering the throttle to make as little noise as possible. She didn’t want to disturb anyone’s last hour of sleep.
As she drove down to the south coast, keeping the van to a steady seventy, Stella let her mind wander. She didn’t feel at all strange to be transporting a corpse in a stolen transit van. It wasn’t as if she’d never done something like it before. And the killing had been completely justified.
In law, yes. She doubted there was a jury in the land who’d convict her for murder. Reasonable force in the face of a terrifying adversary who’d snatched her off the street with the intent to rape and murder her? She thought so.
But it was also justified because, with backers like Spring, Hoyle would never see the inside of a courtroom.
That was her own, personal code. She believed in the law. Still. Despite everything. But she could also detect when the law lacked the teeth to deliver justice. Did that make her a vigilante? On the whole, she thought not. But if it did, so be it. Even the most liberal-minded citizen could hardly claim the man they’d sent to kill her was innocent.
As she left the outskirts of Brighton, heading east towards Lewes, she rolled her head on her shoulders. Her muscles ached and the pain in her knee had settled into a steady throb.
She reached Beachy Head and drove as close to the edge of the cliff as she dared. So close she could hear the waves crashing sixty or more yards below. She killed the engine and yanked on the handbrake.
A dog walker, or an early morning jogger, would be the first to see the abandoned van. But how long would it take for the smell or a trickle of blood to alert somebody to the truth? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. They’d call the local cops and they’d force the rear doors and find him. A suicide in the back of a van.
Obvious conclusion: he’d gone to Beachy Head intending to drive over the edge. Bottled it and did himself in with his own knife instead. Maybe eyebrows would be raised at the severity of his self-inflicted wounds, but it wasn’t unprecedented. People intent on suicide were capable of unimaginable acts against their own bodies. Every cop knew that.
CSIs would find no fingerprints on the knife but his. None on the door handle but his, and those of the careless local plod. Any CCTV would pick up a lone driver wearing his cap.
The cap!
Stella inspected it carefully, removing two of her own hairs but leaving plenty belonging to the dead man. She left it on the passenger seat. She checked her appearance in the mirror. No obvious blood spatter but she’d clean up at the railway station.
She checked the wing mirrors. Nobody around. So she climbed out and, as if the intervening two and a half hours had been a particularly nasty dream, continued her morning run.
She reached Eastbourne town centre in eighteen minutes, a good time, but by no means her best for a three-mile run.
She had time to wash her face and hands before catching the next train to London Victoria. Her outfit, unconventional for a commuter train, drew a few curious stares from suited business types. But they quickly returned to their phones, laptops and iPads. Nobody read on trains anymore, she thought incongruously.
A tube ride and another short jog later and she was inside her flat in Lisson Grove and locking the door behind her.
She stripped off her running clothes, sports bra and knickers and put them straight into the washing machine on its hottest cycle. The shoes might never be the same again. She shrugged. Who was? They’d be sacrificed the evening before the dustmen came.
Under a scalding shower she scrubbed every inch of her skin until she felt clean again. She used two palmfuls of shampoo, creating so much lather around her feet that she laughed.
She laughed harder. And louder. She could feel herself tipping over into hysteria. She clapped her palm over her mouth. No! It mustn’t happen again. She couldn’t lose her shit like before.
She closed her eyes and while the water drummed down on her skull listened out for the voice. That voice. The mocking, sardonic voice of Other Stella.
Her head was quiet. What she’d just done she’d done herself. Unaided.
And then another thought intruded. I need an insurance policy. She got dressed and called Vicky.
Vicky made them both a coffee then join
ed Stella at her kitchen table.
‘Last time I saw you, you said you had an idea how you could protect me,’ Stella said. ‘I think we need to move on that quickly.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘You remember how I told you PPM sent that psychopath to try to kill me?’
Vicky nodded. ‘Moxey?’
‘That’s right. Well, it just happened again.’
Vickey’s eyebrows shot up towards her hairline. She put her mug down. ‘What?’
Stella recounted the story. Before Vicky could respond to her latest confession, Stella started the video she’d recorded in the scuzzy transit van.
The quality was better than she’d hoped for at the time. His face was clear, and so was every word of what he said. Vicky made Stella play it through a second time.
When she looked up at Stella, her face was pale. Not everyone would cope with their best friend turning up and showing them a snuff movie. But then, not everyone had Stella Cole for a bestie.
Her face was pale, but, in her eyes, Stella saw the kind of resolve she herself felt. Vicky had been exposed to the true evil of which people in power were capable when PPM had sent a gunman to murder her beloved godparents. Ever since, she’d shown a steelier side to her character.
‘I wrote up a dossier on everything you told me about PPM,’ Vicky said. ‘I added some other stuff I researched on my own.’
‘Which we will copy and distribute to a few trusted sources.’
Stella nodded. Vicky’s plan chimed with her own. The plan that she’d been sorting out in her mind over the previous couple of weeks. The plan that her recent encounter with Dave had brought into sharp focus.
She explained how she thought it could be made to work in a way that would protect both of them.
At 1.00 p.m. the following day, Stella and Vicky were seated at Callie’s meeting table, positioned so that the opening door would hide them from view. Callie came in, talking over her shoulder.
‘Thanks for coming down, Gordon, I really appreciate you making the time.’
‘You really didn’t give me much choice, Callie. Now I’m here, maybe we can drop the cloak and dagger business, eh?’