by Andy Maslen
He exited the car, pulling a black baseball cap down low over his eyes. Crossing the road, he looked both ways, an unbreakable habit of caution even though the street was deserted. Or not precisely deserted. At the far end, where it formed a T-junction, he saw an urban fox, a scrawny thing looking grey under the yellow sodium lamplight, trotting across the road with a fast-food carton in its jaws. It paused to look at him, then disappeared between two parked cars. On crepe-soled shoes, he crept along the pavement until he was outside the house – her house – the only noise from his passage the sleeves of his black nylon jacket whishing against his sides.
His heart jerked in his chest.
The bike was back.
He looked up and down the street again and darted into the tiny space behind the hedge where the black machine was parked. Crouching, he laid his palm on the exhaust. It was warm.
After taking a quick look in through the bay window, which revealed nothing but a dark sitting room, he re-crossed the road and made his way back to the Audi. He took a deep breath. Here was a window of opportunity. He pulled away from the curb, found another parking spot a couple of streets away and called Ferenczy.
“It’s late, Adam. This better be good. Your last intelligence,” heavy sarcasm on this word, “was complete shit.”
“She’s here.”
“Where?”
“At her house.”
“You are sure?”
“Her bike’s here. The engine’s warm.”
“Forgive me, but that’s not proof. Her bike’s there. OK, all that means is her bike’s there. It doesn’t mean she’s there.”
Collier could feel a ball of anger threatening to burst in his chest. He suppressed the urge to shout.
“Listen, I don’t have time for amateur philosophy. Her bike is here. That means she is here. It’s three forty-five in the fucking morning. What? You think she parked the bike and then went out for a stroll or something?”
Ferenczy laughed. A humourless sound.
“Why not? You did. Maybe she’s round at your house right now, slitting your wife’s throat with a boning knife. That’s what I would do to someone who murdered my family.”
Collier clamped his teeth together to prevent himself from saying anything that would lose him a key ally. He breathed deeply, in and out, before trusting himself to speak again.
“Fine. You have a point. So here’s my suggestion. Get one of your men over here to relieve me. Then have him follow her. You can’t kill her here without raising too much interest. The moment she leaves London, take her, kill her and get rid of the body. Then we’ll talk about your bid for the McTiernans’ territory.”
“OK, my friend. That sounds like a plan. I’ll call you when my boy is in place.”
Collier ended the call then sat in the Audi’s luxurious cabin, staring at a streetlamp fifty yards down the road and wondering how it had come to this, conspiring with Albanian gangsters to murder a serving, if off-the-leash, police officer. Pro Patria Mori had noble beginnings, of that he was sure. Still sure, despite everything that had happened. Despite the best efforts of ambitious human-rights lawyers and their hand-wringing supporters in the media, justice had been done to people who really, really deserved it. Paedophiles, psychopaths, rapists, murderers and terrorists were now rotting underground, being picked apart by crabs and fishes, or swirling as clouds of combustion products in the stratosphere where they could harm nobody. Hitting Richard Drinkwater had been a mistake, he reflected. Compounded by the collateral damage of his, and DI Cole’s, daughter. They should have tried something less final to begin with. Blackmail, maybe, or bribery. Every man has his price, they say, and Drinkwater was a man, ergo he had to have had his price, too.
He sighed. “Too fucking late now, though, isn’t it?” he asked the empty street ahead of him.
A loud bang on the side window startled him. He jerked his head around to see a stubbled face leering in at him. Ferenczy’s man. Either that or a drunk about to get the surprise of his life. He buzzed the window down.
“Tamit sent me,” the man said, in heavily accented English.
Collier reared back from a tide of foul-smelling breath that swirled into the Audi’s leather-scented interior.
“Get in,” he said, resolving to have a word with Ferenczy about the appearance and personal hygiene of his hirelings.
He drove back the way he had come, pulling in at the end of Ulysses Street. With his hand on the door handle, the man turned in his seat to face Collier.
“What is house number?”
“Thirty-eight. Did Tamit give you my instructions?”
The man nodded and smiled, revealing large incisors stained by tobacco or maybe red wine.
“Follow woman. Wait until she is out of London. Capture her. Kill her.”
“You think you can manage that?”
“Better than you, I think.”
Then he pulled the chromed handle inwards and was out and slouching away from the car, another urban fox after a kill.
Collier pulled away and passed Ferenczy’s man, who waved nonchalantly, before turning right at the far end of the street and heading for home. His stomach was knotted with tension.
37
Vigilante
Stella hadn’t intended to return to Ulysses Road. Her plan was to leave things to Jason. She’d emailed him asking him to find a house-clearance firm. They could pack and sell everything inside the house. She had no need of it, still less any desire to keep it. Then she was seized with a powerful urge, a pull in her gut, telling her to go back for one final night. She’d already packed and stored everything she wanted, so it wasn’t about possessions. It was more about letting go. About saying goodbye to the life she’d had, and the life she’d imagined she’d had before that terrible night when Other Stella had spoken to her from beyond the wardrobe mirror and forced her to confront the reality of Lola’s death.
After leaving Jason and Elle, she’d ridden halfway to her hotel before making a full circuit of a roundabout and riding back into London, heading for Park Lane and the Edgware Road. Turning off, she rode carefully through a network of narrow streets to the little Victorian terrace house in West Hampstead.
She’d bought a takeaway pizza and a bottle of wine and consumed both sitting in the room she’d made her own personal CID office. Finally tired enough to consider sleep, she’d gone to bed in the room she’d formerly imagined was Lola’s, when its only occupant was the teddy bear nicknamed Mr Jenkins. Now it was five in the morning and she slept, curled into a foetal position in the single bed next to the empty cot. She whimpered in her sleep, her legs jerking spasmodically as if trying to run.
Before her was a lineup of suspects, backed by a white wall, spattered with arcs of blood droplets. Each suspect held up a white card, marked with a number.
Accompanied by Frankie O’Meara, her ever-loyal DS, she made her way along the line, looking each suspect in the face.
The first man she came to was an ugly brute, his mouth set in a thin line of hate. His gaze was intense, coming from icy blue eyes floating in ravaged and bloody sockets. The flesh around them was sliced and torn, and flaps hung down revealing pink-tinged bone beneath.
“You killed me, you cunt,” he hissed, from between stretched lips. “But Foxy Moxey ain’t done with you yet, little missy.”
He pulled a wicked-looking knife from his belt, its shining bade serrated along its upper edge, and shoved it hard against her belly. The warmth as its tip slid into her was startling rather than painful and she smiled at him as she placed her hand over his and withdrew the blade from her gut.
“Not last time, Moxey,” she said. “And not this.” She stabbed down with the knife, embedding its tip in the top of his shaved skull, drawing a high-pitched, wheezing cry from his stretched lips.
“Next one, boss,” Frankie whispered, taking her elbow and guiding her away from Moxey’s crumpling form.
Suspect number two glared at Stella, her flattened fea
tures makeup free and as pale as a waterlogged corpse.
“Look what you did,” she said, pointing down at her foot.
Stella followed the pointing finger, her gaze arrested by the tattered flesh flopping from the blown-open boot.
“You were going to kill me. You’re lucky I didn’t repay the favour.”
“You’re no better than them. At least they go after evil people. I’m police.”
Stella felt tears welling up.
“So am I! And they were going to murder me just like they murdered my family.”
“But you are a murderer. You murdered the judge.”
A male voice, its upper-class tones overlaid with the crackle of scorching meat, interrupted.
“Indeed you did, Detective Inspector Cole. Though not before torturing me.”
“I’m afraid he’s right, boss,” Frankie said, her brow crinkled. “Look at the state of him.”
Stella didn’t want to look, but Frankie’s hands were gripping her head, one on each temple, and they forced her to confront suspect number three.
There he stood: The Right Honourable Mister Justice Sir Leonard Ramage, High Court judge, Pro Patria Mori vigilante, hit-and-run driver, husband killer and child murderer. His number placard was slung round his neck by a length of something smooth, wet and scarlet, his arms rendered useless by the bullet wounds through both biceps.
“Look!” he shouted. “Look what you did to me!”
Now Stella did look.
A cleaver stuck out from his left knee. With his right hand, he gripped a pair of pliers, their jaws clamped onto a bloody incisor.
Ramage leered at her, revealing the ragged gum where the tooth had been.
Before she could frame an answer, he hissed at her once more.
“They’re coming for you, Stella. Be ready.” Then his face blackened, and the charred skin peeled back around his mouth until all she could see was a bone-white grin with a long, red tongue snaking from between the teeth. “Give us a kiss!” he said and lurched towards her, grabbing her face with his blood-slicked hands.
Screaming, Stella sat upright in the narrow bed, weeping and dragging at her face with clawed hands.
She went downstairs to the kitchen and made a cup of instant coffee. She sniffed experimentally at a bottle of milk from the fridge and reared back, gagging, as its sour, cheesy smell hit the back of her throat. Black, then. Taking her coffee into the garden, she swigged at the scalding liquid, wincing as it seared her lips. The cigarette she lit didn’t help much, adding its own rough caress to her sandy tongue. She drew deeply and blew out the smoke in a thin stream. Somewhere a blackbird was trilling, and she paused a moment to close her eyes and listen. A rough scrape made her open her eyes again. It had come from the side of the house, where a narrow passage ran between the pavement and the back garden. The only security was a wooden gate with a basic Yale lock.
Placing her coffee on a bench beside the kitchen door, she walked soundlessly on the balls of her feet, closing her hands into fists and wishing she’d brought the Glock down from her bedroom. And that she was wearing more than knickers and a T-shirt.
Despite the lightening sky shot through by streaks of pink and a weird, unearthly green, the passageway was dark. An overhanging tree blocked out most of the light even at midday; now it threw deep shadows. Stella looked up at the top of the gate. She could see two whitish forms along the top edge, about a foot part. She took another two quick steps closer and saw that the forms were hands, curled over the top edge.
She looked around her, searching for a weapon. And found one. A short-handled spade she’d bought to clear the snow from her front garden path. She grabbed it, took three more steps and swung the flat of it down on the intruder’s left hand.
A male voice yelped with pain from the other side of the gate then uttered a string of oaths in a language she didn’t recognise. She heard the sound of running feet.
“Try that again and I’ll do a proper job!” she yelled after them. Then, to herself, “Shit!”
She put the spade down and tested the gate. It was locked. But no barrier at all to a determined, or even half-determined, attacker.
“Well that was close.” Other Stella was waiting for her on the deck, arms folded across her chest. “And it might be worth dressing next time. I feel like a right tit, standing here in my scanties. Who do you think he was?”
“Someone from PPM. Or hired muscle. He wasn’t English, so probably the latter.”
“Time to go, don’t you think? They know you’re here.”
Stella nodded.
She went inside, showered, dressed, ate a handful of stale biscuits, washed them down with the remains of her coffee, and readied herself to leave the house for the final time. On the kitchen table, she laid out everything she was taking with her. It was a small collection. Apart from the items she’d brought with her – the pistol, some ammunition, her little helper and her real and fake passports – there was a packet of photographs, her will, and a thick A4 envelope stuffed with the remaining financial documents she needed.
After a last look around the house, trailing her fingers along the walls in what she’d mistakenly thought of as Lola’s room, she closed the front door behind her, double-locked it, then zipped the keys into her bike jacket. The street was coming to life, and there were a few familiar faces making their way to the tube station or heading for their cars. But they were all too intent on their journeys to work to notice Stella, who, in any case, was virtually unrecognisable thanks to her new hairdo. She’d removed the port-wine stain before going to bed, but her face still bore a faint pink echo of its presence; it made her look as though she’d been slapped or had suffered from a skin infection of some kind. She walked down to the end of the short front path and peered out between the hedges bordering the gate, but of her early morning visitor there was no sign.
Helmeted, gloved, and with her messenger bag strapped securely across her body, she thumbed the starter button, gave the throttle a little flick as the engine fired, then eased the rumbling Triumph out from its berth, across the pavement and between two cars, and away from the last vestige of her previous life as a wife and mother.
There was a word for what she had become. She didn’t mind it. Even if PPM might share it.
She was coming for them.
She was a vigilante.
38
Driving Without Due Care and Attention
Free of London’s traffic, which was mainly flowing into the capital, Stella opened the bike up and roared along the M4 motorway. Howarth was next on her list, but she needed to regroup at the hotel before her next foray into the city. Since seeing Jason and Elle, and especially Polly, she’d realised she needed to sort out her affairs. God, she thought, it sounds like I’m dying.
“Well, I’m not!” she shouted into the chin-bar of her helmet.
Ervin stayed several cars back from the motorbike being ridden by the cop. He knew how to tail someone in a car without being spotted. And the fact the BMW’s engine had been tuned up by Tamit’s car guy gave him extra reassurance that he could catch her if he needed to. After his fuckup in Wales, he was determined to see this kill through without any mistakes. Even if Tamit was his brother, there were limits to his patience.
She hunkered down over the handlebars and opened the throttle wide. The engine roared its approval as it drew in great gulps of petrol and air. Stella swept along in the outside lane, flashing her headlight at slow-witted car drivers too wrapped up in their own worlds to notice the menacing black-clad rider looming in their rearview mirrors. When a black Jaguar resolutely ignored her, trundling along at a complacent eighty and even giving her the finger, she dropped down a gear and swerved round it on the inside, forcing a white van to brake sharply. The Triumph’s exhaust note formed a discordant two-tone wail with the van’s horn, which the driver had clearly decided to use as an armrest. Back in front of the Jaguar, Stella returned the driver’s gesture before tearing off down the o
utside lane in search of her next target.
Her thoughts ran on, working through each element of her plan to take down Howarth, accompanied by the thrum of the bike’s engine. In this semi-hypnotised state, Stella took the exit from the motorway and headed south towards her hotel. Had she been paying more attention, she might have noticed a silver BMW following her off the M4. But then, who notices a standard exec-mobile in the fast lane of a motorway? Just another sales rep eager to make their next meeting. A sales rep who had matched Stella’s speed and occasionally suicidal lane discipline to keep pace with her, albeit a handful of cars back.
The final stretch of her journey wound along a country road bordered on both sides by trees whose branches almost met above its centre, creating a green tunnel. She eased off on the power and cruised along at sixty, taking a moment to raise her eyes from the road ahead to take in the grandeur of the arching roof overhead and the green cast its filtered sunlight gave her world.
Ervin had spent most of the drive singing along to a playlist of hits by Era Istrefi. The others teased him about her, but he was immovable. She was the real deal. Talented, and so beautiful. He’d marry her if he could. Earn enough money working for Tamit and then who knows? Those pop stars love the glamour and the high life. He had a collection of pictures of the 22-year-old Albanian on his phone. He liked the ones of her where her long blonde braids were partly obscured by a huge, pink, fur hood.
Singing the chorus of Bonbon along with his dream girl, he closed with the cop’s motorbike. She’d not once looked behind her and if she’d noticed him in her mirrors, she clearly wasn’t worried. Dumb bitch. Now she’d notice him, all right. Death for her, bonus for him. One step closer to meeting Era.
