Sacrifice

by Paul Finch

  The message had been printed by a modern desk-jet of some sort. It read:

  Ho Ho Ho

  Ernshaw’s short-cropped hair prickled. This sign could easily be more empty-headed idiocy from the local scrotes. But there was something about it – probably the fact that it was clearly a recent addition to this neglected pile – that made him think it might be significant. He stepped backward, examining the wall again. It had definitely been constructed more recently than the rest of the building. At its base, two lumps of tapered black wood protruded through a tiny gap under the bricks; some builder’s device, no doubt, to keep the whole thing level.

  A hand tapped his shoulder.

  Ernshaw spun around like a dervish. ‘Fuck me!’ he hissed.

  ‘What’s this?’ Rodwell asked.

  ‘Will you stop sneaking up on people!’ Ernshaw handed him the notice. ‘Dunno. Found it pinned to the wall.’

  Rodwell stared at the wall first. ‘This brickwork’s new.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Well … they’ll have done all sorts of jobs over the years, to keep the place serviceable, won’t they?’

  ‘Not in the last twenty.’ Rodwell glanced at the notice, then back at the wall again. ‘This is a chimney breast. Or it was. Probably connected to one of the outer flues.’

  ‘Okay, it’s a chimney,’ Ernshaw said. ‘Bricking up an old chimney isn’t much of a criminal offence these days, is it?’

  Rodwell read the notice a second time.

  Ho Ho Ho

  ‘Jesus … Christ,’ he breathed slowly. ‘Jesus Christ almighty!’

  Moving faster than Ernshaw had ever seen him, Rodwell threw the paper aside and dropped to one knee to examine the two wooden stubs protruding below the brickwork. Ernshaw leaned down to look as well – and suddenly realised what he was actually seeing; the scuffed toes of a pair of boots.

  Rodwell grabbed the pick and Ernshaw the hammer.

  They went at the new wall as hard as they could, and at first it resisted their efforts – but they pounded fiercely, Rodwell stopping only to call for supervision and an ambulance, Ernshaw to unzip his anorak and throw off his hat. After several minutes grunting and sweating, mortar was bursting out with every impact – then they were loosening bricks, extricating them with their fingers, guarding their eyes against flying chips. Piece by piece, the wall came down, gradually exposing what stood behind it – though the aroma hit them first.

  Ernshaw gagged, clamping a hand to his nose and mouth. Rodwell worked all the harder, smashing away the last vestiges of brickwork.

  They stood back panting, wafting at the dust, retching at the stink.

  ‘Good God!’ Rodwell said as he focused on what they’d uncovered.

  Though it stood upright, this was only because it had been suspended by the wrists from two manacles fixed above its head. It had reached that stage of early putrefaction where it could either have been a shrivelled corpse or a wax dummy, its complexion somewhere between sickly yellow and maggoty green. It had once been an elderly man – that much was evident from the scraggly white beard on its skullish jaw, plus it was bone-thin, an impression only enhanced by its baggy, extremely dirty garb. This consisted of a red tunic hanging in foul-smelling folds, trimmed with dirt-grey fur, and red pantaloons, the front of them thick with frozen urine, their cuffs tucked into a pair of oversized wellingtons.

  It was not an unusual experience, even for relatively new bobbies like Ernshaw, to discover corpses in a state of corruption. Not everyone handled it well, though Ernshaw usually had – until now.

  He laughed. Bizarrely. It was almost a cackle.

  ‘S-Santa,’ he stuttered.

  Rodwell glanced at him, distracted.

  ‘Fucking Santa!’ Ernshaw continued to cackle, though his glazed expression contained no mirth. ‘Looks like there was no one nice waiting for him at the bottom of this chimney. Only naughty …’

  Rodwell glanced back at the corpse as he recalled the words on the sign – Ho Ho Ho. He noticed that a red hood with a filthy fur trim had been pulled up over the wizened, hairless cranium.

  ‘Christ save us,’ he whispered. The corpse wore a tortured expression, its eyes bugging like marbles in a face twisted into a rigid, grimacing death-mask. ‘This poor bastard was walled up in here alive.’

  Chapter 2

  M1 MANIAC

  LATEST

  –

  POLICE ADMIT

  FEW LEADS

  If it was possible for a newsagent billboard to shriek, this one did.

  Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg observed it through the driver’s window of his Fiat while he waited at a traffic light. Homeward-bound commuters darted across the road in front of him, muffled against the February evening. Much of the heavy winter snow had cleared, but dirty, frozen lumps of it lingered in the gutters.

  Heck eased his Fiat forward, glancing continually at his sat-nav. Milton Keynes was a big place; it comprised about two hundred thousand citizens, and like most of the so-called ‘new towns’ – purpose-built conurbation designed to accommodate the overspill population after World War II left so many British cities in smoking rubble – its suburbs seemed to drag on interminably. After half an hour, the entrance to Wilberforce Drive appeared on his left. He rounded its corner and cruised along a quiet, middle-class street – though, in the current climate of terror, all these streets were quiet after nightfall, particularly in towns like Milton Keynes, so close to the M1 motorway.

  The houses were semi-detached, nestling behind low brick walls or privet fences. All had front gardens and neatly paved driveways. In the majority of cases, cars were already parked there, curtains drawn. When he reached number eighteen, Heck halted on the opposite side of the road and turned his engine off.

  Then he waited. It would soon get cold, so he zipped up his leather jacket and pulled on his gloves. Eighteen, Wilberforce Drive seemed almost impossibly innocent. A snug pink light issued through its downstairs window. A child’s skateboard was propped against its garage door. There was even the relic of a snowman on its front lawn.

  Heck took his notes from the glove-box and checked through them. Yes – eighteen, Wilberforce Drive, the home of Jordan Savage, thirty-three years old, a married man who managed the local garden centre for a living. The homely environs made it altogether less menacing a scene than Heck had expected. It would be easier than usual to walk up the path and rap on the door here – this wasn’t the sort of place where cops normally got their teeth knocked out. But Heck was still nervous that he might be on the wrong track.

  Not that he would ever know sitting behind his steering wheel. But before he could open the car door, another door opened – the front door to number eighteen. The man who stepped out could only be Jordan Savage: his solid build and six-foot-two inches made him unmistakable; likewise his shock of red, spiky hair. No doubt, up close, those penetrating blue eyes of his would be another give-away.

  Savage was wearing jeans, a sweater and a heavy waxed jacket. As Heck watched, he moved the skateboard aside, took a key from his pocket and opened the garage door. There was a vehicle inside; a green Mondeo Sport. The registration mark checked out as well. It was the same car the Traffic patrol had become suspicious of and had stopped that dank October night. The Mondeo’s engine rumbled to life, its headlights snapped on and Savage eased it down the drive. If he noticed Heck seated in the car opposite, he gave no indication, but turned right along Wilberforce Drive, heading for the junction with the main road. When Savage was a hundred yards ahead, Heck switched his own engine on and followed.

  Tailing a suspect was never easy, especially when you were doing it unofficially – but Heck had performed this task dozens of times. Once they were on the main road, he stayed about three cars behind – not too close to attract attention, but close enough to keep a careful eye on his target. Even so, after two and a half miles, when the Mondeo suddenly veered left onto what looked like another housing estate, he was taken by surp
rise.

  This neighbourhood was less salubrious than the previous one. Its houses were council stock, some terraced with communal passages between them, some with front gates hanging from broken hinges. But its central artery was called Boroughbridge Avenue, and that rang a bell of familiarity. Heck didn’t need to rifle through his notes this time to know that this was where Jason Savage, Jordan’s twin brother, lived.

  The Mondeo stopped outside a two-flat maisonette. Jordan Savage didn’t get out, but sat there, his exhaust pumping winter fog. Heck slowed to a halt as well – just as a glint of light revealed that a door to the upstairs flat had opened and closed. A figure trotted down a narrow flight of cement steps.

  Even from fifty yards away, the similarities between the two men were startling. Jason Savage, who was a mechanic by trade, wore an old donkey jacket over what looked like black coveralls, but he too was about six-foot-two and had a thatch of bristly red hair. He climbed into the Mondeo’s front passenger seat, and it drew away from the kerb. Heck remained where he was, wondering if they were about to make a three-point turn, though apparently there was another exit from this estate – the Mondeo drove on ahead until it rounded a bend and vanished.

  Heck nosed forward. This was better than he’d hoped for, but it could also mean nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time that two brothers had spent an evening playing darts together. That said, when he swung around the bend and found himself at a deserted T-junction, he briefly panicked.

  Trusting to luck, he swung his car right and got his foot down. Leafless trees closed from either side as he passed through public woodland – this didn’t look promising, but then it gave way to the high fencing of an industrial park, and about fifty yards ahead a red traffic light was showing, a lone vehicle waiting there. Heck accelerated and, to his relief, recognised the Mondeo. He’d be directly behind them now, but he couldn’t afford to worry about that. His police instinct – the ‘hunch’ honed through so many criminal investigations (or alternatively, ‘his imagination’, as Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper called it), told him he was onto something.

  The light turned to green as he pulled up behind the Mondeo, and it swung left. Heck followed, but decelerated a little. They were on another main road, with houses to either side, followed by shops and pubs. More and more vehicles joined the traffic flow. Heck slowed down further to allow a couple to push in front of him. Jordan Savage worked his way across the centre of Milton Keynes, negotiating roundabouts and one-way systems as if he could do it blindfolded. Heck, who wasn’t a local and in fact had never even been to Milton Keynes until he’d arrived here as part of the enquiry team some six months earlier, found it more difficult, though thankfully that ultimate bugbear of the covert tail – a traffic light or stop-sign separating him from his target – never occurred. It almost did as they approached a bustling intersection, but Jordan Savage halted at the white line even though, if he’d floored his pedal, he could probably have made it through the break in traffic.

  Heck was only one car behind Savage at this stage. He too slowed and stopped, by chance underneath a large Crimestoppers noticeboard. As well as various telephone numbers, including the hotline to the Main Incident Room at Milton Keynes Central, it carried a massive e-fit of the so-called ‘M1 Maniac’, a frightful figure with hunched, gorilla-like shoulders, wearing a black hood pulled down almost to his eyes, which in turn were half-covered by a fringe of lank hair, and a collar zipped up to his nose. It was impossible to tell in the yellowish glow of the streetlamps, but in normal daylight those eyes would be a startling blue and that fringe a vivid red. To emphasise this, the artist who’d constructed the e-fit had only colourised those sections; the rest of it was in black and white.

  Heck followed as the Mondeo advanced through the intersection. The vehicles between them peeled off left, but the Mondeo headed straight on, taking a narrow street between industrial units surrounded by high walls. Past these lay shabby apartment blocks: broken glass strewed their forecourts, ramshackle cars cluttered the parking bays. Heck slowed to a crawl, but still managed to keep the Mondeo in sight. It was about a hundred yards ahead when it turned right, appearing to descend a ramp.

  He cruised forward another fifty yards, then pulled up and stopped. He grabbed the radio from his dashboard, switched its volume down and shoved it under his jacket, before climbing out and walking the rest of the way.

  The ramp swerved down beneath a monolithic tower block, which, from a rusted nameplate, was called Fairwood House. As Heck ventured down, he kept close to the wall on his right. When he reached the bottom, he halted, waiting until his eyes adjusted. A labyrinthine underground car park swam slowly into view. Unlit alleyways wound between concrete stanchions, or led off along narrow alleys between rows of padlocked timber doors. There was no immediate sign of the Mondeo.

  Heck walked back up the ramp and climbed into his Fiat, releasing the handbrake. It was tempting to freewheel down there with his headlights off, but if he did encounter the Savage brothers, that would look suspicious in the extreme. Instead, he behaved as normally as possible, switching the engine on and driving down as if he was just looking for a parking space. Once below, he casually prowled, turning corner after corner. There were other exits, he noticed – some were caged off, others stood wide open. It occurred to him that his targets might have exited the place altogether; perhaps they’d sensed they were being followed and had used this car park as a diversion. But then, as he cruised another gallery between rows of padlocked garage doors, he saw orange, flickering light ahead.

  Firelight?

  He proceeded for forty yards, before parking and creeping the rest of the distance on foot. The firelight was reflecting on a wall beyond the next T-junction. When he edged forward the last few feet and peeked around to the right, he spied a parking bay in which a couple of ragged, elderly men were burning rubbish in an oil-drum. They were bearded and grizzled; one glanced around – his face was weasel-thin, his mouth a toothless maw.

  Heck swore.

  He went doggedly back to his Fiat. Somehow or other the bastards had eluded him. He slotted his key into the ignition – and bright illumination fell over him. In his rear-view mirror, two powerful headlamps approached from behind.

  Heck sank down so low that he couldn’t see the vehicle as it passed him slowly by. But when he peered after it, it was the Mondeo. It reached the end of the drag, turning left. Heck jumped out, running back to the T-junction. The Mondeo was now making a second left-hand turn. He chased after it, sweat stippling his brow. From the next corner he saw that it had stopped some thirty yards ahead, alongside another row of lock-ups. The Savage brothers climbed out, conversing quietly.

  Heck flattened himself against the concrete wall to listen. He fancied he heard them use the word ‘van’, at which his hand unconsciously stole to his radio, though he managed to restrain himself from grabbing it. He risked another peek. Jason Savage clambered into the Mondeo’s driving seat, switching its engine back on. Meanwhile, Jordan Savage approached the nearest lock-up, produced a key and, opening its narrow side-panel, stepped through into darkness.

  Heck felt a massive tremor of anticipation.

  It was several minutes before Jordan Savage reappeared, but when he did he had changed into black waterproof trousers and a black hooded anorak. He handed something to his brother through the window of the Mondeo – it looked like a pistol. Heck couldn’t quite identify it, but a Ruger Mark II had been used in all eight killings to date.

  Jordan Savage stepped back inside the lock-up and closed the side-panel behind him, while the Mondeo pulled forward about twenty yards. The lock-up’s main door was then lifted laboriously from within. Headlamp beams shot out as a second vehicle emerged. Heck clutched the concrete corner with such force that it almost drew blood from his fingernails. When a white transit van rolled into view, he jerked backwards, retreating quickly, fishing his radio from his jacket and easing up its volume.

  ‘DS Heckenburg on
Taskforce, to Sierra Six … over?’

  ‘DS Heckenburg?’ came a chirpy response.

  ‘Urgent message. Immediate support required. Underground car park at Fairwood House. Send as many units as possible, block off all exits … but silent approach. I also want a Trojan unit, over.’

  ‘Could you repeat the latter, sarge?’

  Heck tried to keep his voice low. ‘Get me a Trojan unit pronto! And get me supervision … DI Hunter and Chief Superintendent Humphreys. I’m sitting on two targets I believe to be the M1 murderers, so I need that back-up ASAP, over and out!’

  He turned the volume down again as the message went rapid-fire across the airwaves. Lurching back to his car, he unlocked the steering, knocked the handbrake off and pushed the vehicle forward. As he reached the end of the drag, he yanked the handbrake on and crept to the corner, where he risked another glance at the suspect vehicles.

  The white van sat behind the Mondeo, both chugging fumes, while the two twins talked. Jason Savage had removed his donkey jacket and put on a similar black hooded anorak to his brother.

  If they would just keep the conflab going until firearms support arrived …

  ‘Any change today, sur?’ someone asked loudly.

  Heck twirled. One of the tramps had come stumbling around the corner and was standing out in the open with hand cupped. Grey locks hung in matted strands over his semi-glazed eyes.

  Heck glanced back towards the Savage brothers, who were suddenly staring in his direction. A piercing light sprang forward as one of them switched on a torch. Heck jumped back around the corner, but the tramp didn’t move, except to shield his eyes.