Kiss of Death

by Paul Finch

  ‘Eddie’s not here. He hasn’t been here for ages. I haven’t heard from him.’

  Silence followed. Heck glanced over his shoulder. Though it was August, the air was cool, the early-morning light a dim grey as it spilled over the motionless flats opposite.

  ‘Can you open the door please, Nanette?’ Gail said. ‘It’s getting silly, this.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you. Whatever my brother does is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Nan …’ Heck leaned against the door. ‘Cyrus Jackson is not going to help you. First of all, he can’t. He’s in police custody, and he’s unlikely to get bail. Chances are, Nan … you aren’t going to see Cyrus again. Secondly, he isn’t inclined to help you anyway. You know how I know that? Because he told me himself.’

  Another thoughtful silence followed.

  ‘Nanette …’ Gail said, ‘Cyrus Jackson may not be able to help you, but we possibly can.’

  More silence.

  ‘Up to you, love,’ Heck said. ‘But if it’s more important to you that people don’t think you a snitch than it is getting your brother out of trouble … you’re not much of a sister.’

  Metal clunked as a catch was turned, and wood thumped as a bolt was drawn back. The door opened on a dark hallway. When they stepped through, Nanette Creeley was standing just to the left, a spectral, pale-faced figure with unruly ‘bed’ hair, wearing a quilted, neck-to-floor dressing gown. She closed the door after them.

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ she said stiffly, regarding them with frightened eyes.

  ‘Nan, let’s not go through this whole rigmarole, OK?’ Heck said. ‘I’m sure you saw us in the pub the other night.’

  Her eyes bugged as a faint recognition dawned.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘We’ve been watching you for some time.’

  She contemplated this, before turning and traipsing to an open doorway. They followed, exchanging a quick, meaningful glance. They’d agreed beforehand that they wouldn’t mention the beer mats at this stage, if they needed to at all. Firstly, because they’d promised to protect Fiona Birkdale’s role in this, but also because it was always more desirable that info came voluntarily than as a result of someone being pressured.

  ‘You’re right, Nan,’ Heck said, as they entered a small neat living room. ‘To all intents and purposes, you’re a law-abiding citizen. We never expected that you’d be hiding your brother. So, we decided to look up some of his other acquaintances, and Cyrus Jackson, it seems, is not so good. When we arrested him last night, he tried to make a deal with us … he told us you’ve heard that Eddie is in trouble and that you were trying to enlist him to help.’

  ‘And like we say,’ Gail added, ‘he also told us that this was a non-starter. That he wouldn’t help you under any circumstances.’

  The woman showed no emotion as they told her this, aside from working her thin, grey lips together. She stood in front of a small television set, narrow shoulders hunched, arms folded tightly.

  ‘Whatever trouble Eddie’s in,’ Heck said, ‘he’ll be facing it on his own. Because his best mates don’t want to know him.’

  ‘He doesn’t have best mates any more.’ Nan shook her head pointedly. ‘He doesn’t have any mates. Cyrus was the closest, and he was never up to much.’ She swallowed and a brief flicker of pain crossed her face. ‘You see … you see, Eddie’s not a full shilling. He’s sick … I mean in the head.’ She looked at them pleadingly. ‘You must realise that? No one would do the things he’s done if they were sane.’

  Gail gave a gentle shrug. ‘That’s for an investigating medical authority to determine. If we can take him into custody, that may well be the outcome. He could go to a hospital rather than prison.’

  But the woman didn’t seem to be listening. ‘They called him all kinds of terrible names, those newspapers. I mean, for heaven’s sake … a poor mentally ill man.’

  ‘He may be mentally ill, Nan, but he’s a criminal too,’ Heck reminded her. ‘A very, very active one. And he’s certainly of sound enough mind to go to ground when he wants to.’

  She gazed at Heck bleakly. ‘Stealing’s one thing, but hurting people the way he did? You can’t think that’s normal?’

  ‘What I think is irrelevant. No one else is going to help Eddie, Nan, so it’s best for all of us, him included, if you tell us what’s been going on and where we can find him to assist him.’

  She sniffled. ‘I think he’s maybe beyond any assistance now.’

  ‘Why don’t you let us decide that?’ Gail said.

  The woman’s face was a picture of pain as she assessed them.

  ‘Nanette, whatever trouble your Eddie’s in,’ Gail said, ‘I can tell it’s serious, because if it wasn’t, I doubt you’d have endangered him by speaking to anyone, even Cyrus Jackson. We are the only hope he’s got.’

  The woman didn’t reply, just moved to the mantelpiece, took something off it and threw it down on the carpet. It was small and bright green, and it looked like a pen drive.

  The cops glanced at each other again, and then at Nan, who stood back against the mantel, shuddering, as if this was as close as she dared to get to it.

  ‘That came through the front door the other day,’ she said.

  ‘You mean like a letter,’ Heck said, ‘in an envelope with a stamp?’

  ‘No. Just like that. Someone stuck it through the letter box.’

  ‘OK … who?’

  ‘I …’ Her voice fell to a near whisper. ‘I didn’t see his face.’

  ‘Just tell us what happened,’ Gail coaxed her.

  So, Nan did, the whole thing – from the moment she left the Spar a week and a half ago, the mysterious hooded figure following her all the way home, to her waking up in the middle of the night, only to find this object on her doormat.

  ‘If that man who followed me wasn’t the one who delivered this,’ she said, face even whiter than before, eyes now red and moist, ‘it’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  Heck crouched alongside the pen drive, but he hadn’t yet touched it. ‘You’ve obviously opened this thing, Nan?’

  ‘Oh yes …’ She swallowed hard, as though her mouth was full of bile. ‘I opened it.’

  ‘OK … what’s on it?’

  ‘You should look for yourself.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea to do that here,’ Gail said. ‘We need the techs for that. I mean, it could carry a virus, or something.’

  ‘You should look at it,’ the woman insisted.

  Heck stared at the object. ‘This fella who came after you … was he following you like he wanted to catch up with you?’

  ‘He was coming fast,’ she confirmed.

  ‘So, he could have been trying to put this thing in your hand?’ Gail said.

  ‘Why would he do that? Wouldn’t I have seen who he was?’

  Heck straightened up again. ‘Why do you think he was following you, Nan?’

  ‘Why else … to find out where I lived. So he could deliver this later on that night.’

  Heck pulled a disposable glove from his pocket. ‘Who else has touched it since it arrived?’

  ‘No one. Only me.’

  ‘Nanette … tell us what’s on it,’ Gail said.

  The woman shook her head, dumbly. Tears surged into her eyes.

  ‘Whatever it is, don’t be frightened … even if it’s a demand for money or something. We’ll find this man who followed you. And even if he isn’t the one who delivered this, we’ll have a good old word with him.’

  ‘For … God’s sake!’ Colour flooded the woman’s wizened cheeks. ‘You need to do more than have a word. You watch what’s on that drive! I mean now! Here!’ She bent to a shelf underneath the television and brought out a laptop. ‘Do it with this.’

  Gail glanced at Heck uncomfortably.

  ‘I’m not telling you what’s on there,’ the woman reiterated firmly. ‘You have to look for yourselves.’

  Heck pondered this, an
d then took the laptop from the woman’s hands. As he stepped back around the pen drive, Gail leaned to his ear.

  ‘Heck … if we damage vital evidence by doing this …’

  ‘You want to risk plugging some killer virus into the Humberside Police computer system?’ he replied. ‘We’re not their favourite people, as it is.’

  He handed her the computer and reached down for the drive.

  ‘I’m not watching it again,’ Nan Creeley said, crossing the room. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’

  Heck sat alongside Gail on the couch. She rested the laptop on her knees and switched it on. Heck inserted the drive, careful to handle it only with his gloved hand and making contact with it only at either tip.

  Neither commented when the ‘Devil’s Messenger’ file appeared, though that alone felt ominous. Gail moved the cursor and activated it.

  At first, it wasn’t entirely clear what they were seeing. The laptop didn’t possess a large screen, and the image was typically grey and grainy, the figures moving around in it little more than an indistinct blur.

  But then, very quickly, they resolved themselves into greater clarity.

  The footage looked to have been shot from above and to the side, which actually gave a good, clear view of three men: one in the middle, and two others circling around him belligerently. The man in the middle wore only a pair of Y-fronts, and was grubby and lean – unhealthily lean, as if slightly emaciated. He wore a grizzled beard and moustache and a mop of stringy, dark hair. He was also armed with a baseball bat, which he gripped with both hands and hefted to his shoulder, as though to ward off an attack.

  More important than any of this, though – he was recognisable.

  ‘Is that …?’ Gail stuttered. ‘Good Lord, that looks like Eddie Creeley.’

  The other two men in the film were much burlier, though this may have been down to the body armour they were wearing. They sported black, heavy-duty breastplates, shoulder pads, shin and forearm guards and thick padded gloves. They also wore black ballistic helmets, with opaque, mesh-covered visors pulled down. They too carried weapons.

  The taller of the two had a chain in his left hand, with a heavy padlock on the end of it, and in his right, something like a lug wrench. The other one held what looked like a football sock, which extended down from his hand because there were weights inside – Heck remembered the old snooker balls routine – and an upgraded cat-o’-nine-tails, literally a stiff-handled whip, with nine leather straps attached, each one embedded with nuts and bolts. If that wasn’t enough, the duo also wore body harnesses, in which other weapons were installed. Even though the figures were moving quickly, Heck saw a knife hilt and the vicious head of a claw hammer.

  For all this, it was Creeley who got in the first shot. Taking a full two-handed swing with his bat, he caught the shorter of his two opponents across the side of the helmet with what would ordinarily have been shattering force. But the helmet was clearly solid, because though the shorter guy tottered and reeled away, he remained on his feet. However, in making the first move, Creeley had left an opening, which allowed the taller one to counterattack. He struck at Creeley’s exposed ribs with his wrench, the meaty smack of which penetrated through the poor sound-system, as did Creeley’s choked squeal of agony. He flopped down like a puppet with its strings cut, but to his credit, he wasn’t falling entirely through injury – it was mainly to make a getaway. He tumbled head over heels to evade the follow-up swipe with the chain and padlock. And just about managed it.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Gail stammered. ‘Is this for real?’

  Heck couldn’t answer; on the screen there were no clues to help. The floor of the fighting area looked as if it was made of coarse metal and the encircling walls, only glimpsed fleetingly by the jerkily moving camera, of some corrugated material, but because the image was black and white, it was impossible to be sure in either case.

  Creeley was now back on his feet, but clearly hurt, inclining to one side as he tried to back away from his tormentors, still hefting his bat. They stalked after him, maintaining a good distance between themselves, which meant that he could only go for one at a time.

  Perhaps Creeley was gambling on the one he had hit already being groggy with pain, or maybe he was just drunk on it himself. But he lurched awkwardly towards the same guy, barely thinking about defending his rear. The bat came up and over his head, in an arcing downward smash. His intended target raised an armoured forearm. It didn’t totally absorb the blow, which bounced off it, deflected down onto the guy’s shoulder, though that was well-padded too.

  In the meantime, the taller opponent swept down with the weighted chain, lassoing Creeley’s extended left leg, wrapping it tight, the padlock cracking against the side of his kneecap – and yanked it from under him.

  Creeley landed chest-down on the metal floor, with such force that he dropped the bat.

  Despite the horrible pain, some instinct for survival kept him going. He tried to crawl away, but his left leg was still snared, and he was hauled backward by the taller guy, which left his entire body unguarded. The other one now let loose on the naked, flailing figure on the floor, using his weighted sock and his cat-o’-nine-tails alternately. Smacking impacts again sounded across Nan Creeley’s living room, along with semi-muffled howls of agony. With the fourth or fifth blow, the sock exploded, scattering what looked like batteries over the steel floor. No doubt it had already smashed several ribs and maybe vertebrae. But the cat-o’-nine-tails was still wreaking havoc, rending flesh and muscle to bloody ribbons.

  It was the taller one who put a final end to it. Striding forward, he raised his lug wrench in both hands and brought it down with tremendous force on the back of Creeley’s skull.

  The crunching impact was horrifically audible, and Heck felt Gail jerk with shock.

  It had lasted less than a minute, and yet the two victors had put so much effort into their combined assault that their chests and shoulders heaved as they stood there surveying the pulped and ruined form. Finally, they slotted what weapons they had left into their respective harnesses, casually high-fived each other and strode off-camera.

  What remained of Eddie Creeley didn’t so much as twitch. At which point, the film cut out.

  ‘I should be sick after watching that,’ Gail said, her cheeks ashen. ‘But I’m too numb.’

  Heck stood up. ‘Not exactly a fair fight, was it?’

  Gail closed the laptop, pulled out a latex glove of her own and extracted the pen drive.

  Heck went through to the kitchen.

  Nan Creeley was waiting at the far side of the small room, braced between two worktops. She watched him intently, lips quivering, eyes still brimming with unshed tears.

  ‘Nan,’ he said, ‘that’s your brother on that film, yeah?’

  ‘Was my brother,’ she corrected him.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’

  A single tear snaked down her right cheek. ‘You’re asking me if I don’t know my own brother?’

  ‘He looked different from all the pictures we have of him.’

  ‘Course he did. He’s been on the run two years. That means roughing it, hiding God knows where, eating one meal a day if he’s lucky.’

  Gail now appeared. ‘Nanette,’ she said softly. ‘None of us really knows what it is we’ve just watched. For all we’re aware, it might not have been your brother … just someone who looked like him.’

  ‘I know my own brother,’ the woman repeated.

  ‘We can’t be sure he’s dead …’

  ‘Then why did whoever sent me that thing call themselves the Devil’s Messenger? Answer me that.’ Nan’s voice rose to a despairing wail. ‘I mean, where else do lads like our Eddie go when they’re dead … except to the Devil?’

  Chapter 19

  ‘Yeah, we’re watching it now,’ Gemma said.

  ‘OK,’ Heck replied, having to press the mobile to his ear, to block out the noise of the Humberside Central Control R
oom. ‘And?’

  ‘Heck … you have considered the possibility that this horror show has been staged?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what DCI Bateson up here at Humberside said.’

  But though the DCI may indeed have said that, and though he’d additionally blown his top at Heck because DI Warnock had been in his ear too about the ‘Cyrus Jackson fuck-up’, it still hadn’t prevented him authorising Heck and Gail’s entry to this electronic hub of Humberside Police operations, so that they could avail themselves of the city’s CCTV.

  It was a busy unit, both uniforms and civilian staff beavering away at monitors, phones ringing constantly, live feeds from all over the city hitting the big screens overhead. A few yards away, Gail and Barry Hodges shifted back and forth between the three operators they had permission to exclusively use that morning.

  ‘It’s a valid argument, Heck,’ Gemma said. ‘There are people out there who are good at this sort of thing. And if Eddie Creeley’s recruited them to make it look as if he’s been killed, and has sent the footage to his sister, knowing full well it would eventually end up in our hands … that would work very well in his favour.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, ma’am. But if that’s the case, it makes it even more important that we catch his delivery boy, this Devil’s Messenger character …’

  ‘Whoa!’ Barry Hodges shouted. ‘Think we’ve got something here.’

  Heck told Gemma, and she replied that he should get on with it. He cut the call and joined Hodges and Gail, who were now leaning over one particular VDU, a young policewoman controlling the flow of imagery on it, which consisted entirely of material recorded on the night of Monday 7 August.

  ‘I think this is our man,’ Hodges said.

  Initially, he hadn’t been optimistic that the town’s CCTV would have caught anything useful, primarily because Nan Creeley’s run-down home neighbourhood wasn’t massively endowed with cameras. However, Heck had suggested they locate the moment their suspect commenced the pursuit – there was surely camera coverage on the forecourt in front of the Spar? – and run it backward, to find out where he’d come from.