by Jake Cross
‘An investigation is underway into the circumstances of exactly what has happened but I’d appeal to anybody staying at the caravan park or who lives in the immediate vicinity, anyone who heard a commotion or witnessed anything untoward, to contact the police…’
That soundbite from a Detective Superintendent Jones from Kent’s major crime unit. Vague, though, and nothing about how they had connected him to the murder. The station DJ returned with more information, and directed listeners to the station’s website, where Nate clicked on a video link and found himself watching… himself.
He had tried to shield his face, of course, but that hadn’t worked. The camera held by the partying neighbour from the caravan next door to Starfish had captured a fine shot of Nate’s mug as he stood outside the door of the crime scene. Maybe a bloody knife in his hand might have looked worse, but not by much.
Another video, taken from someone’s shaking mobile phone, showed the entrance to the park. The gate was down, and there was a cop car blocking the road, sideways on. The cop car backed up to allow an ambulance through. There was excited chatter from off-screen as the phone’s owner gossiped with someone.
A voiceover quoted words from the Met Police, who were still searching for Barke. They now suspected he could be armed and dangerous. Call in any sightings, any information at all, the cops said, but do not approach the man.
Wow, not just dangerous, but armed and dangerous. Nate shook his head.
The voiceover had an opinion: Barke had fled the country, but had now come back because he had unfinished killing business. And it was possible he was driving a Ford Kuga, because one had been stolen from the leisure park last night, around the time of the brutal murder.
That explained the call the night before. A detective thinking he might actually have the killer on the phone, and treading carefully because of it.
The voiceover continued, ‘Police are looking into possible reasons that Barke had been at the leisure park, and hope that the dead man’s identity, which they have yet to establish, might shed some light. They haven’t yet determined a motive for the murder. The post-mortem is scheduled for later today.’
Nate’s head swam. He tried to focus on positive things: the police would scrutinise the hitman’s laptop and find out about his killer-for-hire hobby; they might find DNA other than Nate’s on the body; they might unearth another Zapruder who had, by some fantastic fluke, accidentally filmed Lazar killing the hitman and then boasted about how he’d set-up an innocent man for everything.
But he couldn’t be sure of anything. And he was now no longer sure that he could do anything to help his cause. Clearing his name was beginning to seem like a pipe dream. Mission impossible. There was only one path open to him now: trying to save Toni. It was the most pressing thing in his life right now. Maybe the only thing of importance that would ever enter the rest of his life. At least if he could do–
He stopped dead. And listened as the voiceover reported that police had arrived on the scene following a tip-off. So, the body hadn’t been discovered by nosy neighbours or some member of the park’s staff. No, no, no. Someone had phoned the cops and said they suspected a dead man was in the caravan. Nate couldn’t believe his ears, but then he could… He so could. Because that made perfect sense.
Lazar and Ryback.
When Buzzcut didn’t call in, Lazar, knowing Nate had escaped again, killed the hitman and fled the scene with his remaining henchman and Toni. And then, damned well knowing that CCTV somewhere in the park would have Nate’s face (the holidaymaker with the camera must have felt like a surprise windfall), he called the bloody cops. Plan B: make sure that Nate was truly doomed if he got arrested.
Of course, he gave Nate enough time to clear the park before they arrived, because giving him to the cops was not their primary objective. Plan A: bury Nate’s diced corpse in a shallow grave.
But that didn’t explain why Buzzcut had tried to call a police station in Watford. That was the anomaly here. It cut into Nate’s mind like a knife. He needed more answers. There was more to this.
The answers lay with Lazar, and Ryback, and maybe others. They didn’t just have answers, they had Toni, too. It was time to go get them.
Screaming woke him.
He jerked into a sitting position, full panic, but started to calm immediately. The two RAC vans had gone and the way ahead was clear, and it was daytime, and he could see loud mothers and their raucous children all over the place. The school run. Christ, he must have slept for about seven hours, which was a surprise.
He quickly climbed into the driver’s seat because he knew it looked more suspicious for a lone guy to be sitting in the back seat of a car. He kept his head down and a hand on his forehead as he pulled Toni’s phone and typed a street in Watford into the Traveller app. Not excessive caution, yet he felt silly doing it. What, some four-year-old still trying to learn his own name was going to point and say, Mummy, there’s that missing vehicle that the constabulary seeks to apprehend?
The street in Watford was eleven miles away. The route would put him on the M1 for a time, which was good. No traffic lights, no jams, no cops on foot. Much less chance of getting his face spotted. The car, though? He must have still been suffering the effects of the drug last night, because taking a second stolen Kuga had been a terrible idea. Sure, the registration and the colour were different, but the public wouldn’t have that in their minds this morning. They’d just know that a suspected double-killer was using a Ford Kuga, and they’d wonder about each one they saw. But he’d been lucky to steal a car at all. He didn’t fancy his chances of doing so again, so he would have to stick by the Kuga.
Forty minutes later, the Kuga turned onto a street a few hundred metres east of West Hertfordshire Sports Ground. Tall, white houses on one side and tiny shops in a terrace facing them across the road. Neighbouring the terrace was an old hotel, a gap of seven feet between them. Nate drew up near the alleyway. It was the only way into the centre of a big square created by four connected streets. Four years ago, the walls of the alleyway had been lined with rubber foam to a height of six feet because vehicles often scraped their flanks along the brickwork, creating more work for the body shop they were headed for. Now, the foam was gone and the gouges beneath had been smothered by new paintwork. The cobblestone road had been transformed into shiny new tarmac. A wooden gate with ‘HyperX Customs’ graffitied upon it was now a wrought-iron affair with a security camera and no clue as to what lay beyond. He got the feeling HyperX was gone. Vanished. History. Erased like a stain on the land.
He turned in the road, not wanting to seem as if he were lingering, and studied the gate as he performed the manoeuvre. There were no bolts or handles, but there was a quarter-moon track in the tarmac, so he guessed the gate was automatic. He couldn’t see much beyond because the alleyway curved slightly out of sight behind the terrace. But the gate looked like the sort an affluent homeowner might buy, so maybe the land in the centre of the square had become some rich soul’s house and garden. Nate wondered if the lethal history of the building that had once stood there would have knocked the price up or down.
Nate parked a short distance down the road and selected a newsagents. He needed answers.
Behind the counter, a middle-aged man in a crisp blue shirt, black trousers and a large white turban. He had a thick beard and healthy eyes, and teeth just as shiny. Genuine smile, maybe because he owned the place and wasn’t paid hourly for his customer service.
Four years ago HyperX had been a fairly big local news story and maybe this guy, if he’d been manning the counter back then, had had to deal with reporters and morbid crime fans popping into his shop to ask questions. Nate hoped that meant the guy wouldn’t be suspicious if Nate asked a few now. But as he stepped into the shop, he was confronted by a rack of newspapers, and at least four of them, including one national, had his mug right on the front page. Images of the Night Stalker hit him like shots of adrenaline. His legs nearly gave out.
<
br /> A blitz of bad words jumped out at him, including ‘killer, fugitive, dangerous’. Here it came, any second now: a scream from the shopkeeper and a frenzied chase through the streets of Watford, then violent capture by angry vigilantes, then a prison cell for the next–
‘Can I help you, sir?’ the guy said. He was staring right at Nate, but his demeanour didn’t suggest that he thought Nate was a dangerous, fugitive killer. Nate relaxed a jot, telling himself that nobody expected some wild madman they’d seen in the papers to confront them. That always happened to someone else. He stepped up, but couldn’t meet the guy’s eyes, and he rubbed his nose as he spoke, just to cover his face.
‘I was looking to get my car fixed up. Apparently there’s a customs place round here?’
He pulled some cash out and picked up a chocolate bar, just to soften the guy a bit.
‘It’s gone, sir,’ the guy said as he rang in the chocolate bar. ‘It was back behind us, but it closed a few years ago. It’s been turned into a private house now. There was a robbery, and the owners just closed it down afterwards. I think there’s a place about a mile away that way.’
Nate pocketed his change and the confectionary. And then feigned shock. ‘A robbery? Someone stealing old cars? What’s that all about?’
‘Not sure. I didn’t really follow the story. My father was ill at the time. The police knocked on our doors, but they didn’t tell us much. Someone was shot and he died, I do know that. But it was three or four years ago and crime hasn’t exactly been on the wane around here since.’
‘Wow? What else do you know about it?’
‘That’s it, really.’
Nate didn’t think a guy seeking a body shop would push the questions. ‘Let me be honest with you, sir. I’m a reporter doing a follow-up story. I need to know as much as possible about what happened that day, and if there’s anyone around here showing an interest in that story.’
The shopkeeper rubbed his beard as he thought. Nate unwrapped the chocolate, just to give his clammy hands something to do and to put his eyes elsewhere. He heard a scrape and looked up to see the guy rooting in a drawer under the counter. Out came a dog-eared wallet, bloated almost into a cylinder with cards and receipts. Nate chewed chocolate and wafer. The guy rifled through the cards. Nate swallowed caramel. The guy handed him a card.
‘The police handed these out. You could call this gentleman. I don’t know anything else, I’m afraid.’
Nate thanked the man and left quickly. He didn’t look at the business card until he was safely ensconced in the Kuga.
It was a card for a Detective Inspector David Jubbs, with an office number and a mobile number. This guy had probably been the senior investigating officer on the HyperX case. He didn’t recognise the name. His interview had been conducted in Wandsworth, by Wandsworth detectives seconded to the case. Nate’s eyes locked onto the landline.
The same number Buzzcut had given him.
Had Buzzcut been about to call DI Jubbs? Was the HyperX investigation still active? What was going on?
Then he spotted something else, and it all became clear. Below the DI’s name, in smaller print, was another. The guy’s right-hand man, a detective sergeant.
Detective Sergeant Richard Lazar.
He took a detour. Not far northeast of the Olympic Stadium, Stratford, he parked down a residential street where three guys were working on a souped-up Vauxhall Corsa in a garden.
They looked up because he was blocking the gate. One guy waved him away. Nate got out and held up the keys.
‘Five-year-old Ford Kuga, guys. Worth ten grand. Yours for half an hour’s work.’
They looked at him like he was funny in the head. One guy approached. Looked like he had the Kuga’s worth in ink on his arms and neck. The guy stood at the gate and eyed the car.
‘You want me to suck your dick for half an hour?’
Said in jest. But Nate wondered. He told the guy what he wanted. And then he drove northeast to Westfield Stratford City shopping centre. Nate’s choice to pick the London town statistically noted as the crime hotspot of England had clearly been a good one.
Thirty-four minutes after lying up in car park B, recipient of a Park Mark Safer Parking Award, the three guys drew up next to the stolen Kuga in a stolen 1995 Ford Mondeo with a smashed front bumper and a bonnet that was a different shade of green to the rest of the vehicle.
He swapped the Kuga’s keys for the Mondeo’s. And he kept his hand on the revolver in his jacket in case the bozos tried something cheeky. They didn’t. It was a very professional illegal deal. Maybe they were just as wary of Nate as he was of them.
For the second time, one of the guys asked him why he wanted to get rid of his car. Nate gave the same answer as before: wife shagged my best mate in the back. And told the guy he’d find the logbook and other documents in the back. He knew the guy wouldn’t make a hasty check to make sure it was all in order. The car would be in pieces and spread far and wide within the day.
‘If this car comes back to bite me on the ass, I’ll have yours,’ said the guy two seconds before all three tore away in their new vehicle. A strange thing to say, given that he’d just stolen a car to swap for it.
‘It’ll come swallow you whole, dickhead,’ Nate said as he waved the Kuga away.
He sat in his new car and pulled out DI Jubbs’s business card. He stared at Lazar’s name.
Buzzcut, in drug-fuelled confusion and without his phone, and thus without the first seven digits of the mobile number he was meant to call, must have opted to try to contact Lazar the only way he knew how: by calling the Watford station where he worked.
Detective Richard Lazar, who had worked on the HyperX case.
Things were falling into place, finally. Nobody had been punished for the HyperX fiasco, and at least two people felt the sting of that quite badly. Had a businessman who lost money and a cop who couldn’t catch a bad guy, joined forces and decided that, in the absence of the real culprits, they would seek revenge against the security team that failed so badly and thus, in their opinion, caused it all?
Their mission of vengeance was almost complete. Pete and Kaushal, and probably Webber – dead. Agar – a sitting duck for the next hitman. And Nate himself – drawn finally into their net. He had an hour to go until the twelve o’clock appointment and couldn’t shake the feeling that this would all be over very soon. Clearing his name, of course, would mean a new investigation once the police had the truth, and that would be a lengthy process – so why did he have the entrenched belief that things were spiralling ever faster to a conclusion?
Because he was no longer in this to clear his name. Like Toni, he was under the control of an irresistible force.
This was now all about revenge for him, too.
Half an hour later he found a parking space – at least, he found a spot the car would fit into, and dumped it. It was hot, and he wouldn’t ever see it again. But at least when the cops found it, they wouldn’t connect it to Nate, at least not until they had spoken to the three idiots now driving around in a Ford that homicide detectives dearly wished to trace, if the old couple had reported it stolen. He left the keys in the ignition and the door open, hoping someone would steal it and take it a hundred miles away. Better if there was no evidence that he had been here.
Here was St George’s Wharf in Nine Elms, which was an area undergoing a massive commercial and residential facelift with nearly two dozen interlinked redevelopment schemes bubbling away, as evidenced by swathes of open land teeming with heavy machinery and tall cranes that poked high into the sky, and unfinished skyscrapers wrapped like presents, as if they’d been delivered whole by gods. Almost thirty-five thousand new homes were planned and Pete had often said he would love one, primarily in Vauxhall Tower or overlooking the Thames. He’d shown Nate artists’ impressions on the Internet of how the finished project would look, utterly impressed by the way London was breathing new life into derelict industrial land… reinventing itself… lookin
g to the future – blah, blah, blah. Nate had never cared and didn’t now as he passed the Vauxhall Tower, inaugural nominee for the Carbuncle Cup and twice voted worst building in the world by Architects’ Journal – Nate recalled using these facts, sucked from the Internet also, to try to shut Pete up. Pete was shut up forever now. Nate kept his head down while others looked up and walked on.
A couple of minutes later he was on Riverside Walk, a walled pathway running alongside the Thames. He walked quickly and stared at the river and tried to keep Pete out of his mind.
At some point he became aware that he had passed out of Lambeth and into Wandsworth. Home. Home? Not really. If anything, it was now the most hostile place on earth, because if he was going to be recognised by anyone, it would probably be here, even in such an anonymous city as London.
And immediately, as if Wandsworth itself wanted to remind him that he was unwelcome here, it happened.
A woman in a dress suit, dragging a suitcase on wheels, watched him walk towards her, and he couldn’t help but watch her, because something in her look told him what was coming.
‘You’re that guy,’ she said. She stopped, but he didn’t. He gave a wry shake of the head, hoping the gesture might look like that of a man now getting a bit annoyed by people constantly likening him to someone else. Then he was past, and he didn’t look back. He didn’t know if his act had persuaded her she was wrong, that she’d made the same mistake others had, but he heard no shout from her. Thirty seconds later he looked behind, half expecting her to be talking to a growing crowd and pointing at him. Those damned images of the Night Stalker chased by vigilantes again. He was ready to leap into the Thames and swim if that happened. But it didn’t. The woman had her back to him and was walking on. Maybe that guy had been a busker who’d impressed her with street theatre.
Toni’s phone said it was ten past twelve. He didn’t worry. It wasn’t a job interview. What were they going to do if he was late? Ask him to phone their secretary and reschedule?
