by Andy Maslen
“Don’t you worry, boss. I shall take you home in my car and you can lie down. I am also a trained first-aider.”
Frankie’s instruction-video voice was too much, and Stella burst out laughing before suppressing it with a palm clamped over her mouth. She rolled her eyes.
“Come on, then,” she gasped. “Take me home and give me some hot, sweet tea.”
At Stella’s front door, Frankie held her by both arms and looked straight at her.
“Promise me you’re just going to arrest him. Bring him in. Please, boss.” Frankie’s voice had a pleading note to it. As if she knew her request was futile. “I’ll back you up. Help you gather evidence. Do interviews. Whatever it takes.”
Stella smiled.
“I promise. Now, off you go and catch some bad guys. I’m going for a lie-down.”
Inside, she made a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table. She pulled Gordon Wade’s business card from her purse.
The secretary’s voice was businesslike, but softened by her Scottish accent.
“Assistant Chief Constable Wade’s office.”
“Hello. This is DI Stella Cole, from the Met. Is Gordon available, please?”
“Assistant Chief Constable Wade is in a meeting.”
“I’m sure he is. Tell him I’m breaking the glass.”
“I beg your pardon?”
You heard, you snotty-nosed bitch. “Please would you be so kind as to interrupt his meeting and inform Assistant Chief Constable Wade that DI Stella Cole from the Metropolitan Police is breaking the glass.”
“Really! This is very irregular. What is this all about?”
Stella inhaled, then exhaled, letting the other woman wait, and listen to her breathing. When she was calm again, she spoke.
“This is all about your telling Gordon that Stella needs to speak to him. ‘Call me any time of the day or night.’ That’s what Gordon told me when we met at his charity ball.”
One … two … three … Stella could almost hear the cogs engaging and clicking in the secretary’s brain: protect her master as she’d been trained, and risk angering him that she’d kept a friend in need away from him, or let a stranger past her guard and possibly have her master subjected to all manner of improprieties.
“Hold the line, please.”
Stella waited, worrying at a hangnail on her left index finger.
Gordon Wade’s voice was warm.
“DI Cole! Thank the Lord you called. Another minute of budget projections and I swear I’d have started shooting. Moira said you were breaking the glass, eh? What’s the emergency?”
“I need to track someone down. He’s in Scotland. If I gave you a name, would you be able to help me out? Maybe have someone do a little digging to find an address or something? Property records and so on?”
“Och, for a minute there I thought you were going to ask for something difficult. Yes, yes, of course. Fire away.”
Stella drew in a sharp little breath and spoke before she could change her mind. Wade couldn’t be part of PPM. The group had to be a London thing.
“Leonard Ramage.”
“What? Wait a moment. D’ye mean Sir Leonard Ramage?”
“The High Court judge? Yes, sir. I do.”
Wade dropped his voice. “Man’s a fucking prick! Buys a big old place up near the Cairngorms and starts treating the locals like he’s the Laird. Upset half the ghillies with his manners and pissed off the other half by diddling them out of their proper fees.”
“You know where he lives, then?”
“Aye, I do. No need for any DS to be stuck in front of a computer screen. We might fight for independence from time to time, but Scotland’s a small wee place. Some Englishman with a title comes sniffing around looking to play lords and ladies, pretty soon we all get to hear about it. Got a pen there?”
“Ready when you are.”
“Craigmackhan. That’s the name of the house. Big old Victorian stone thing with turrets. Looks like Dracula’s castle. It’s outside Blairgowrie, about half an hour north of Perth. Middle of bloody nowhere. Listen, DI Cole, or maybe I’d be better calling you Stella for now, as this is unofficial. You’re not getting yourself involved in something you’ll regret later, are you?”
“Absolutely not, sir. Just following up on something on my own time.”
“Well keep your nose clean, that’s all I’m saying. You’re a big girl, and you know your law.”
The next morning, Stella woke at 5.20.
After a cigarette on the deck and then a shower to clear the fog in her head, she packed for her trip to Scotland. Into a deep tan leather holdall on her bed went jeans, grey T-shirts, charcoal-grey hoodie, bra and knickers, socks, washbag, makeup, black ski mask, running shoes, a pair of rubber gloves, little helper, claw hammer, pliers, bolt cutters, three metres of blue polypropylene rope, needle-pointed awl, blowtorch, duct tape, cable ties, I.O. Shen cleaver and Maoui Deba cook’s knife, 9mm hollow point ammunition, 12-gauge Hatton Rounds, Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol, and a piece of paper she’d spent part of the previous day filling in and stamping.
Her new birth certificate, passport and driving licence in the name of Jennifer Amy Stadden had all arrived the previous day and were bundled together with a thick, red rubber band and secure in a zipped compartment inside the holdall.
Finally, in went a padded envelope containing ten thousand pounds in cash that she’d withdrawn from her bank the previous day. The skinny woman behind the counter, looking undernourished inside her official uniform blouse and suit, had asked her what the money was for. None of your fucking business, was what Stella didn’t say, knowing the law on money laundering and the banks’ nervousness about aiding and abetting criminals, or worse, terrorists.
“New car,” she’d said with a confiding smile. “Well, new to me. I’m going to try and get a deal by flashing cash in his face.”
She’d been rewarded by a smile in return.
*
Outside, slumped behind the wheel of a beaten-up, twelve-year-old, silver Honda Accord parked twenty metres down the street, was Peter Moxey. He’d been staking out her house for the past thirty-six hours, watching her movements, planning his attack. He knew she went running in the evening, and the towpath looked like a good spot. The trouble was, it was far too popular with other runners, plus dog walkers, strolling couples on their way to the pub and lairy little shits trying to sell each other drugs.
He’d decided that if she didn’t appear in her running gear by 7.00 a.m., he’d knock on the door and do her inside. Higher risk of contaminating the crime scene, but then the people he was working for would just make all that go away. In any case, he’d be out of the country and living high on the hog by the time the local plod started oinking around with their shiny, wet snouts. Stretching, and easing the cricks out of his cramped neck muscles, he peered along the street, using the rear-view mirror. Nobody about.
Maybe this would be his lucky day.
It was.
The front door opened, and out came the woman detective, like the little old lady in his Nan’s Swiss weather clock. He’d loved that old thing. Used to spend hours watching it when he was staying with her, keeping out of the way of his father's hard hands and his mother's pawing ones. Loved how the two carved figures took turns to come out and say hello to skinny little Peter, depending on what was happening in the sky outside. Then Nan would make him his breakfast – eggs, usually, maybe a bit of bacon and fried bread – and send him off to school with a hug, careful to avoid squeezing his bruises.
He watched the detective scan the road, just like he had just done. Then she checked her watch and jogged off along the pavement, heading for the canal.
Moxey pulled the door-release catch towards him, adding a kick from his new leather boot to the Honda’s stubborn driver’s door. It gave with a creak and he straightened up. Not bothering to lock it, he strode off after the detective, his hands loose at his sides, arms swinging with simian ease. He was smiling.
*
Stella focused on her breathing, ignoring the rasp as the chill spring air seared her throat, patiently waiting for her heart and lungs to catch up with the new demands she’d placed on them. With each metre, as her cushioned Nikes rebounded from the pavement, she felt herself getting closer to that blissful state where the outside world faded, to be replaced by a contented sense of spaciousness, through which she could run for ever.
On some days, she would turn at random, letting her feet decide on the route, or perhaps being guided by the tiny shifts in weight and balance as she negotiated an obstacle in the road. Today, she wanted the familiarity and safety of ritual. There would be enough spontaneity later on. Her train was due to leave King’s Cross at 10.43 a.m. She had time for her favourite forty-five-minute run: down to the towpath, along the canal for a couple of miles, then back through a park and a narrow strip of urban woodland that had somehow escaped the notice of the developers who’d largely concreted this part of northwest London.
She pounded along, through the early morning streets, heading for the river.
Down by the canal was her favourite place to run. The greenish water smelled of silt and the diesel leaking from the old wooden barges. With her feet landing lightly on the compacted earth where the tarmac had worn away near a tunnel under the railway, she let her mind drift to the work ahead, because…
… he’ll whine at first.
Please, he’ll beg. Please don’t hurt me.
She’ll remove the first finger with the bolt cutters.
No! This will be a scream, unnervingly high-pitched, although in her time as a cop she’s learned that the noises men emit in extremis can be every bit as unsettling as those of women.
The blowtorch has a yellow flame. But when she twists the collar around the nozzle it colour-shifts to a vibrant turquoise with an invisible central cone fringed with violet. It roars quietly, though this harsh sound is drowned out by his wail of terror as the tip of the blue spear traces a boiling route across the skin of his chest. The flesh reddens, the skin blackens and bubbles, before cracking open. And the screams go on and on.
Stella works methodically. She has nowhere else to be, nothing else scheduled. She talks from time to time, reminding the man just why he is here, trussed and tied.
Because you killed them. Because you killed Richard. Because you killed Lola. Especially because you killed Lola.
His eyes are wide, popping, the whites visible all the way round his deep-brown irises.
The mouth works, but no sound comes out from between those cracked lips. She offers him the plastic bottle and he drinks, greedily, sucking at the threaded neck. Then he gags, and retches before vomiting the petrol back up and into his lap.
Stella moves the nozzle of the blowtorch down towards the mixture of saliva and petrol pooling around his exposed genitals. She…
… hears footsteps behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
One Down
HE WAS SMILING. That was the first thing Stella noticed about the man following her. It was a very unpleasant expression. It was the smile of a predator. It was a smile that said, “I’m higher up the food chain than you are.” A smile that said its wearer took pleasure in inflicting great pain.
He looked fit and strong. He wasn’t that much taller than her, but he had that look. The look hardened men of violence acquire or generate. Appraising eyes. Relaxed facial muscles. Lips uncompressed.
The next thing she noticed was the long knife he carried in his right hand.
By rights, she should have screamed and run. Briefly, she considered it. But Stella’s screaming-and-running days were behind her. A long way behind her. As the man came closer – no more than ten metres now – she darted into the tunnel mouth she’d just passed. It stank of piss, the harshly alcoholic smell of high-octane blended British “wine” and the sweet lingering aroma of marijuana smoke.
His footsteps echoed from her position inside the brick-lined arch of the tunnel. They weren’t picking up speed, though. He was confident. Stella looked around on the glass-strewn floor. Saw what she wanted and picked it up.
The light at the tunnel’s arched entrance dimmed as the man turned left and entered. His arms hung loosely, not straight down but spread away from his torso. Too much time with the free weights, Stella thought. That’s going to slow you down, friend. Time slowed down to a crawl as he came closer. Stella waited, balanced on the balls of her feet. Ready to practise.
The smile had changed to a grin. The knife was pointing at her throat. Then the man spoke.
“Powerful people want you dead, little missy. Rape-murder, they said. You’re my meal ticket. Foxy Moxey’s going to–”
Stella didn’t wait to find out what Foxy Moxey was going to do to her. She got her retaliation in first, which the law was more than happy for citizens to do. Pre-emptive action, it was called. Basically, if you saw a man coming towards you with a bloody great butcher knife, you didn’t have to wait until he stabbed you before fighting back. You could act with reasonable force to defend yourself. Stella knew her law, as every good DI did. However, the level of force she planned to use was more in the nature of being unreasonable.
Even in soft, air-sprung running shoes, her feet were vicious weapons, thanks to Rocky’s teaching. She leapt forward, knee raised, and stamped with all her might on the side of Moxey’s right knee with a full-throated yell of aggression. Screaming, he toppled over as his cruciate ligaments sheared with the sound of bubble-wrap crackling.
He slashed the knife at Stella's legs. The serrated blade whished past her left shin.
Stella swung her right hand out, so that the discarded Thunderbird bottle she held by its neck smashed against the slimy green Victorian brickwork.
Without pausing, she reversed the swing, swiping it down at Moxey’s knife-hand with another battle-cry, knocking the weapon from his grasp and cutting through two fingers altogether, which spurted blood in jetting arcs from the tiny arteries she’d just severed.
He screamed again, struggling to get to his feet, swinging at Stella with his undamaged hand.
She stood, waiting, and as he straightened, she took her head back a little way then snapped it forward, ramming her forehead straight onto the point of his nose.
“Bitch!” he yelled – it came out Bish! – as the thin bones inside his nose smashed and blood jetted from his nostrils. He crumpled to his knees, screaming more obscenities at her.
The bottle was in motion again. Stella was stabbing it down at his face. Up and down the jagged crown of glass leapt, twice, straight towards his eyes. His bloodied mouth emitted a low moan.
“Oh, you cunt! Foxy Moxey don’t take that from a bitch like you.”
He was wiping at his eyes with both palms, trying to clear the blood sheeting across them from the circles of deep, jagged-edged wounds in his forehead and cheekbones. The finger-stumps were still bleeding profusely, though adrenaline had constricted the blood vessels, choking off the squirting.
That was when Stella bent, ducking under a roundhouse punch from the tautly muscled right arm, and retrieved the knife from the tunnel floor.
Dancing back from another swing, she moved behind Moxey and slashed the back of his right thigh, cutting deeply into his hamstring.
Another scream, gurgling with the blood he’d just swallowed.
As Moxey sank to the ground, she sat astride him and jabbed the knife underneath the point of his jaw. Reaching back she punched down hard into his groin, twice, riding him as he bucked and twisted with the pain.
A push of the knife sent the tip half an inch into the soft tissue between the wings of his jawbone. Blood pooled around the blade and trickled downwards past Moxey’s ears.
“Answer me, or the rest goes in,” Stella said, panting. “Who sent you?”
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
She pushed another inch of steel into the stubbled skin below Moxey’s jaw. He ground his teeth together, but a
groan still escaped from his pulled-back lips.
“Who?” she barked.
“Fuck you, bitch!” he said, though the tip of the knife protruding into his mouth below the root of his tongue made it sound like, Huck oo, gish!
She placed the wicked points of glass from the Thunderbird bottle against his staring eyes.
“They killed my husband, you know. And they killed my baby. They sent you to kill me too. But the story doesn’t end that way.”
She pushed down hard on the bottle, gripping it around the neck so tightly her knuckles turned bone-white as she twisted. Over Moxey’s high-pitched scream, and the grating of glass on bone, she murmured to him:
“Tell them, I’m coming. I’m coming for all of them.”
She levered herself off Moxey’s writhing form and shook herself like a dog trying to dislodge a troublesome fly. Picked Moxey’s bloodied head up by the ears and slammed it down onto the concrete, putting out the lights. She stripped the black running vest off, wiped her face and arms with it, and turned it inside out, which hid most of the blood. Then she walked back to the canal, tossed the bottle and the crimsoned knife into the middle of the turbid stream and ran off towards home.
“Clever of you not to kill him,” other-Stella said while Stella showered. “No body, no forensics. He’ll find a way to get patched up and disappear.”
Stella shrugged as she washed the blood off her hands. “Doesn’t matter either way. Stella Cole is already dead.”
“Fair enough. Ready to adopt your nom de guerre?”
Stella dried herself and dressed. Jeans, hoodie, denim jacket and her bike boots.
From a shelf in her wardrobe she lifted down a carrier bag, which she emptied onto the bed. A blonde wig, coloured contact lenses in a tiny transparent plastic case and a tube of theatrical spirit gum tumbled out.
“Twenty minutes in front of the mirror and voila! I’m Jennifer Amy Stadden, born January fifth, 1978.”
