Kiss of Death

by Paul Finch

  On screen, the man Hodges referred to was seated on the bench in a bus stop shelter, reading a newspaper.

  ‘This is opposite the Spar?’ Gail said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hodges confirmed. ‘See …’

  The young policewoman ran the image forward, the clock in the top right-hand corner, advancing fast from 20:30 to 20:33, at which point the unmistakable figure of Nan Creeley walked quickly past as she crossed the road, wearing an anorak and clutching her handbag.

  ‘Watch,’ Hodges said.

  Another half-minute passed, before the figure rose to its feet and followed. Previously seated behind the newspaper, it had been completely indistinguishable. Even now, no face was visible, but it wore grey tracksuit bottoms and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up – which perfectly matched the description that Nan had given them.

  ‘We lose it from here, because Nan takes a cut-through between housing estates,’ Hodges said. ‘After that, she’s into Orchard Park, and there are very few cameras there anyway. Certainly none on Hellington Court. But, like you said, we can at least see where the bastard’s come from.’

  Heck nodded. ‘Go for it.’

  The policewoman ran the footage backward, and the hooded shape resumed his seat in the shelter. And there, it seemed, he’d sat for the best part of the evening. They’d scrolled back to 18:00 and he was still there, still reading his paper.

  ‘Man on a mission, isn’t he?’ Gail commented.

  ‘He was certainly determined to wait for her,’ Heck said. ‘He knows there’s a camera there too, which is why he’s holding that paper in front of his face.’

  ‘Think that means he’ll be savvy to all the other cameras?’ Hodges asked.

  Heck shrugged. ‘Just don’t expect him to take his hood down.’

  They continued to watch, and it was 17:04 before the figure rose to its feet again, and backtracked away, newspaper rolled up, retreating from frame. From here, the operator had to work some computer jiggery-pokery as she danced about between different streets and various camera angles. They caught up with him again, still hooded, as he walked backward through neighbouring housing estates, though always, it seemed, taking longer than was necessary, making odd turns, doubling back on himself, sometimes going in circles.

  ‘He took a meandering route,’ Hodges said.

  ‘Trying to ensure he’s not leaving an electric vapour trail,’ Heck replied.

  Gail snorted. ‘He seriously thought that’d work?’

  ‘It might do yet,’ the operator put in. ‘I’ve seen this before … all it takes is a couple of streets or squares with no cameras, and that’s it. They’re gone.’

  On this occasion, that didn’t happen. They’d been standing by the young policewoman’s desk a good half-hour, working their way back and forth across central Hull without any apparent rhyme and reason, when the object of their interest suddenly backed in through the front door of a high street cafeteria called Nico’s, and it swung closed.

  The clock in the corner of the screen read 16:15.

  ‘He went for his tea first,’ Gail said.

  They watched the front door of the café for a considerable time, scrolling back through the footage at high speed until 13:00, at which point there was still no sign of the suspect arriving, and Heck asked the operator to stop.

  ‘He was really there all afternoon?’ Hodges sounded more than sceptical.

  ‘What is that place?’ Heck asked.

  ‘Greek restaurant,’ Hodges said. ‘Not particularly salubrious.’

  ‘Could he really sit in there all afternoon and not draw attention to himself?’ Gail said.

  ‘We don’t know whether he drew attention to himself or not,’ Heck replied, ‘seeing as we haven’t been over there to ask. But I don’t want to go stampeding in, because there’s one other possibility. Suppose this guy is one of Nico’s staff … or Nico himself?’

  ‘Suppose he’s neither of those things,’ a gruff voice said from behind. ‘Suppose he didn’t want a sit-down dinner, he just wanted a kebab?’

  They turned and saw that Vic Mortimer had come in, with jacket draped over shoulder.

  ‘Surprised to see you,’ Heck said.

  ‘It’s under sufferance, believe me,’ Mortimer replied. ‘But I’ve no choice. From now on, it seems I’ve got to keep a beady eye on you all the time you’re here.’

  ‘What do you mean, he might have fancied a kebab?’ Gail asked.

  Mortimer nodded at the screen, where the shopfront was still frozen in place. ‘The lad who owns this place is Nico Karamanlis … or Nasty Nic, as they call him. He also runs a kebab shop on Albion Row.’

  ‘That’s the next street over,’ Hodges said.

  Mortimer shrugged. ‘Yeah, but all these old buildings are interconnected. There’s a passage through to the other side, so the proprietor can move back and forth between them.’

  ‘Punters can walk through it as well?’ Heck asked.

  ‘Not normally, because it goes through the kitchen. But if someone knows Nico well enough to ask, don’t see why not. Nothing too suspicious, if it’s your mate. Quick shortcut from A to B.’

  ‘So, you’re saying he could have entered the premises through the kebab shop, and then exited via the restaurant?’ Gail said.

  Again, Mortimer shrugged.

  ‘That’d be one way to lose the surveillance,’ Heck mused.

  He turned to the young policewoman, but she was already two steps ahead and had pulled Albion Row onto the screen. When she scrolled to around 16:12 on the same day, they almost immediately caught an image of the same figure as he entered the kebab shop. He was dressed as before in grey tracksuit trousers and black tracksuit top. The only difference this time was that the tracksuit top’s hood was down.

  They watched in silence as the operator again tracked the suspect’s progress back, freeze-framing on a street corner, where his face was fleetingly visible between a red beard and longish, greasy red hair.

  ‘Shit … don’t know him,’ Hodges muttered.

  ‘Yeah, but I do.’ Mortimer chuckled. ‘Who’d have thought it … Tim Cleghorn. Don’t know what his connection to all this is, but he’s got plenty form. Mainly for indecency.’

  ‘Bad?’ Gail asked.

  ‘He’s done time, yeah.’

  She glanced at Heck. ‘Perhaps the pen drive didn’t come from him? Maybe when he followed Nan Creeley home, he was planning to attack her?’

  ‘Only one way to find out, isn’t there?’ Heck turned to Mortimer. ‘Does he work?’

  ‘He wasn’t working that Monday, was he? It’d surprise me if he ever worked, shithead like him.’

  ‘Good.’ Heck shrugged his jacket on. ‘That makes it easier.’

  ‘Easier?’ Gail said.

  ‘Yep. It’s grabbing time.’

  Chapter 20

  Tim Cleghorn lived at 33, Trafalgar Road, a terraced street just east of the town centre and perhaps half a mile from the riverfront. This was an area that had seen better days; some of the houses were boarded up, but others were occupied and, here and there, cars sat along the kerb. It was mid-afternoon, and while the rest of the city was humming with life, this particular nook lay quiet, though that was perfect from Heck’s point of view. Deprived inner-city neighbourhoods weren’t always the easiest location for police operations: the misguided belief that the denizens of these districts were all in the shit together and shared a common foe in law enforcement could often lead to interference with arrests, or, at the very least, warnings being shouted beforehand. That wasn’t the case across the board, but the mere fact that it could happen meant you had to approach with caution.

  As such, Heck didn’t request any uniformed close-support, merely informed the afternoon shift what they were doing, and advised that neither he, Gail, Mortimer nor Hodges wear any kind of identifying insignia: no high-profile windbreakers or chequer-banded caps, no radios in hand or visible appointments like handcuffs and batons.

  Th
ey made the approach just after two o’clock, Heck and Hodges approaching No. 33 from the front, Gail and Mortimer working their way into the alley at the rear.

  The house was in a poor state, the front door scabby and flaking, ragged, dingy curtains drawn behind dusty windows. From all accounts, Cleghorn had once lived here with his wife and baby daughter, but the marriage had ended after his most recent conviction for indecent assault.

  Heck knocked loudly, and almost immediately the curtain in the bay window alongside them twitched open. The figure behind it was male and in his early forties. He was clad in black tracksuit bottoms and a ragged green jumper, the sleeves pushed back to the elbows, exposing thin but tattoo-covered forearms. As Heck had seen on the close-circuit video, Cleghorn wore a scraggy red beard and a mop of collar-length, dirty red hair. Hodges flashed his warrant card and pointed at the front door, to which Cleghorn’s response was to dash out of sight.

  Heck threw his shoulder at the door; it was a bruising impact, but the woodwork resisted.

  ‘Whoa!’ Hodges protested. ‘Shouldn’t we give him a chance to open it?’

  A loud thud resounded from inside.

  ‘That’s the back door, isn’t it?’ Heck said.

  Hodges’ face fell. ‘Yeah … shit!’

  Heck rammed the front door again. ‘Get onto Gail and Mortimer … warn them.’

  Hodges put his radio to his lips, as Heck battered the door. It crashed inward on the fourth impact, the jamb flying apart in fragments.

  They were confronted by a dim, foul-smelling hallway, its crumb-impacted carpet strewn with discarded underwear. Directly ahead, the hall opened into a kitchen, at the far side of which a back door stood wide open. Gail and Mortimer were visible through it, out in the rubbish-filled yard, but encroaching at speed. Cleghorn, who’d now run back into the house, slid to a halt at the sight of Heck and Hodges.

  They advanced two-abreast.

  ‘Easy, Cleghorn,’ Heck warned him. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  But even Heck was surprised by what happened next.

  The felon reached left and, from an ironing board standing out of sight, hefted an iron, which he flung overarm along the hall towards them. It tumbled through the air, striking Hodges in the face with a massive clank. For a split second it was like something from Tom and Jerry, Heck half-expecting the flat appliance to leave an equally flat visage underneath. But there was nothing comical about the way Hodges, his nose now mashed to a froth of blood and cartilage, fell into a lifeless heap.

  ‘You bloody maniac!’ Heck dropped to one knee, checking the carotid artery in Hodges’ neck. The pulse was normal, but the young cop lay out cold. ‘DS Heckenburg, Serial Crimes Unit,’ Heck shouted into his radio, jumping back up. ‘Urgent message. Ambulance required at 33, Trafalgar Road. Police officer injured and in a collapsed state, over.’

  Cleghorn, meanwhile, veered right and vanished, his heavy feet clumping away up a staircase.

  Heck pursued, still jabbering into his radio. ‘The injured officer is DC Barry Hodges. He’s out for the count, but he’s breathing and his pulse appears normal. Get someone here quick. And send us some support units. Suspect, Tim Cleghorn, is resisting arrest with extreme force, over.’

  ‘Heck!’ Gail shouted from the kitchen, but Heck was already mounting the narrow stair.

  ‘One of you needs to stay with Bazzer!’ he called back.

  He was halfway up when Cleghorn reappeared at the top. He had what looked like a portable television in his hands. Heck halted, stunned, before the heavy device came spinning and crashing down, tubes and circuitry flirting in all directions. He flattened himself against a wall as it somersaulted past, only just evading it, and continued ascending.

  Cleghorn had already vanished again, so when Heck got up there, he found himself with two immediate choices: go left, into a bleak bedroom with no curtains or furniture; or right, along a short, narrow passage to a bathroom and another bedroom. But on second glance the decision was taken for him: what looked like a full-size Welsh dresser sat in the middle of the passage, and above it, a skylight yawned in a slanted section of ceiling.

  When Heck climbed onto it, the dresser was every bit as heavy as it looked; Cleghorn could not have dragged it out in the last minute or so. It clearly lived in this corridor.

  ‘Bastard’s ready to skip at the first sign,’ he said out loud, as he reached for the edges of the skylight and, standing on tiptoes, poked his head through.

  A tilting hillside of roof slates ranged off in both directions, broken at even points by TV aerials and chimney pillars. Amazingly, Cleghorn, who’d gone right, was already two or three houses away. He ran awkwardly, his right foot landing higher up than his left, so he constantly had to brace himself against the roof with his right hand. All the time, slates broke beneath his feet, smashing into the guttering eight or nine feet below, or into the street, twenty feet below that.

  Even so, he made a rapidly dwindling figure.

  Heck put his radio to his lips again. ‘Suspect in the police assault at Trafalgar Road is Tim Cleghorn. Male, IC1, red hair and beard. About six foot tall, well known to us. Currently making his getaway along the roofs on the north side of Trafalgar Road, heading in an easterly direction. In pursuit, over.’

  Heck had expected what followed to be difficult, but it was actually much worse.

  To start with, while his quarry was wearing trainers with rubber grips, Heck was in leather, lace-up shoes. He slipped constantly as he scampered along, and at least twice, he found himself sliding towards the precipice below with nothing to gain a purchase on, save more slates, which were often slick with moss. In addition, there was the damage Cleghorn had done. Several times, Heck encountered areas of roof where patches of slates had already gone. These presented real pitfalls, because all that remained was lagging and skeletal joists.

  A couple of times as he proceeded along, muffled roars sounded from the buildings underneath him. None of the householders knew what was going on, of course, though police sirens now approached from several directions, and there were shouts in the street. Meanwhile, the much-diminished form of Tim Cleghorn kept looking back as he fled, and when he saw Heck chasing, seemed to run even faster and more recklessly. One particular bound appeared to carry him several feet. Even with his trainers on, he went slithering downward on a raft of broken slates when he landed, though again he managed to stabilise himself and scramble on.

  Heck understood why, when he reached the same point.

  There was a gap in the terraced row. He dropped to a crouch, peering down into a weed-filled passage.

  When a diminutive voice called his name, Heck realised it was the radio in his jacket pocket – they wanted to know his status. But he wasn’t going fishing for the device now.

  He backed away and rose to full height. It was a five-to-six-yard gap. He’d no doubt that, with a proper run-up on a flat surface, he could clear that distance easily. But when the stakes were as high as this …?

  He looked up again, fixing on the distant Cleghorn, little more now than a toy man.

  Heck’s breath hissed through clenched teeth.

  Then he lunged forward, taking long, rash strides.

  When he launched into mid-air, it took less than a second to cross the gap. Halfway over, he knew that he was going to make it. The only problem was that there was nothing to land on. Cleghorn had already bludgeoned a dozen slates loose, and Heck crashed straight into the resulting hole. A green waterproof sheet exploded beneath him, dust and filth filling his eyes and lungs. He’d have gone clean through into the loft, had a sturdy wooden joist not caught in his right armpit, but it was a sickening blow.

  He hung from the joist in a fog of pain, before swinging his legs up, finding another joist with his left hand and levering himself out of the hole. Then he was off again, pummelling the rooftops.

  The distant shape of Cleghorn stopped again and looked back.

  The figure visibly sagged, as if unabl
e to believe that the chase was still on. But then, to Heck’s bemusement, it crouched, and, inch by inch, disappeared from sight. The bastard was climbing down something …

  Again, Heck skidded and tumbled as he ran, a couple of times sliding almost to the bottom of the slope, nothing but the old guttering to prevent him going clean over the edge. And yet, somehow, limping and battered, he made it to the end of the row. He was now well aware of the chaos caused by the pursuit. Blues and twos filled the entire street, though its epicentre, he felt, was some distance behind. In front of him, meanwhile, a long way down, was what looked like a builder’s yard. Stacks of bricks alternated with piles of timber, and a couple of cement mixers stood against a single-storey prefab office. Two or three vehicles spattered with dry mud were parked against a high brick wall separating the yard from Trafalgar Road.

  It was along the top of this wall that Cleghorn was executing the latest part of his escape.

  The wall connected to the gable of the last house. It was a good fifteen feet below Heck’s perch, though Cleghorn’s means of descending to it was self-evident: a bundle of cables snaked down like vines; no doubt, it had once been fixed to the brickwork with brackets, but the weight of the climber had torn them loose.

  Heck wasn’t sure how loose, but he had no option but to chance it.

  He turned, got a firm grip on the thickest of the cables, lowered his body over the edge and, hand over hand, began to descend. Whatever he was anchored to above, it didn’t hold for long. With a thunk, something snapped free, and Heck was falling at what felt like light speed – only to jerk to a halt again as a mass of twisted, broken aerial overhead snagged. It was only a few feet from here to the top of the wall, so he dropped the final distance – though even then he almost fell off, having to windmill his arms to rebalance himself.

  Breathless, he pivoted around and tightrope-walked his way forward.

  Cleghorn was only about thirty yards ahead. Clearly, he was a less confident customer on this wall than he had been on the roof. He glanced over his shoulder again, almost by chance, and was visibly astounded to see Heck as close as he was.