Kiss of Death

by Paul Finch

  Spencer had slapped at his brow, as if he could actually remove any such cherry-red speck by wiping it away, before realising the ridiculousness of the action.

  ‘Look, man … I don’t know what this is, yeah?’ He tried to keep the despair from his voice, but he was out on his feet here, lost, frightened, sick. ‘But if you wanted to pop me, you’d have done it already, yeah!’

  ‘Sure of that, Spence?’ the voice wondered. ‘Maybe I want to mentally torture you first.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, man!’

  ‘How’s it feel, Spencer … being the one at the other end of the firearm?’

  ‘I know that feeling, man … that’s the way we live.’

  The voice chuckled again. ‘And if you didn’t have the Toreadors to fall back on, would you still live that way? Even if you did, it’d be a piss-easier option than working for a living.’

  More chuckles; in fact, open laughter, which seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  ‘Shock horror, Spence … imagine that? Having to go out and break your back every day to put food on the table for the kids, maybe buy a prezzie for your woman now and then. Naw … I can’t see it, either. You’d rather be Spencer the Big I Am, eh? Spencer the Bullet Boy.’

  ‘I’m no camp-follower, man!’ Spencer shouted, stung. ‘The rest of the bluds respect me.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, Spencer. They may have once. May have. But they sure as shit don’t now. They’ve denied even knowing you, though I suppose when Operation Trident get them up against a wall and it’s a case of them or you, what do you think’ll happen next?’

  ‘Fuck you, man, yeah?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter anyway, does it? I mean, you’ve achieved national infamy. Your face is on every TV screen. You know that lady you gunned down on Tottenham High Road was pregnant. So that’s three innocent lives you took that day.’

  ‘What you doing, man?’ Spencer all but screamed. ‘If you’re the Five-Oh, just take me the fuck in, yeah!’

  ‘The Five-Oh? You been watching American telly down here, Spence?’

  ‘Just fucking pack it in!’

  ‘You may not actually believe this, Spencer … but I reckon I can help you.’

  ‘What …?’ At first, Spencer thought he’d misheard. ‘What you say?’

  ‘I don’t like to think of a guy like you eking out what’s left of his life down here. I mean, don’t the rats and roaches of London have enough troubles of their own?’

  Spencer didn’t answer. Sweat stood on his brow in globules as his eyes strained at the rancid darkness. But he was listening too.

  ‘So, here’s the thing,’ the voice said. ‘I’m proposing to get you out of here. And not only that. I’m going to take you to the coast, smuggle you onto a boat, and ship you overseas to a safe haven. How’s that sound, Spence?’

  ‘You offering a deal, or something?’

  ‘Deals are where I live, pal.’

  ‘That’s fucked, man. No one can get me out of this shit.’ But, deep down, Spencer felt his first surge of hope since the Dante Brown disaster – and that now seemed like a lifetime ago.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Hey man, fuck you, yeah!’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Spence,’ the voice said. ‘As far as I’m really concerned, you can die down here. But I’m going to try to be nice one more time just on the off-chance I might otherwise miss out on a potential earner. No one you know gives a flying fuck about you any more. Your family’s disowned you, the Toreadors think you’re the biggest prick that’s ever walked the streets of Tottenham, and that’s saying something, isn’t it? There was a girl in your life, wasn’t there?… Amazingly enough. Chantelle something or other. Well, you won’t believe this … she’s sold her story to the gutter press. Sixty grand just to tell them what a total wanker you are. All that slapping her around if she so much as looked at other fellas … it’s backfired a bit now, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Get me the fuck out!’ Spencer shrieked.

  ‘Sure.’ There was a brief pause. ‘But it’ll cost you a hundred grand.’

  Again, Spencer thought he must’ve misheard. ‘You smoking crack, man?’

  ‘You seriously telling me you can’t get a hundred grand, Spence?’

  ‘I’m living in a fucking sewer.’

  ‘Get it off the Toreadors.’

  ‘You wavey, man? You think they’ll just give it to me?’

  Yet another chuckle. ‘I’m not talking about asking them for it, pal. But it’s your call. If you don’t think you can manage it …’

  ‘Wait … wait, for Jesus’s sake …’

  But there was only silence now, and that steady drip-drip of the underground realm, that faint skitter of rat paws, that distant rumble of tube trains.

  ‘Wait …’ the kid almost wept. ‘Anything, man … just don’t …’

  ‘Something I can do for you, Spencer?’ the voice asked.

  ‘I can get it, yeah. If you can really get me out of this …’

  ‘Already told you, didn’t I? Pay your way, and the only thing you’ll have to worry about is the Far East or the Caribbean or the Middle East?’

  ‘The fuck, man …?’

  ‘Take your pick, Spence. You’ve got the beaches and palm trees of the Dominican Republic. You’ve got the hot sun of Bahrain and Kuwait. You’ve got the big cities with all the mod cons of South Korea, Japan. None of those countries have extradition treaties, you see. So, you get a chance to start afresh. Get a job as a barman or waiter, or something. Then, in due course, when you inevitably fuck up, we’ll have to go through this whole fucking thing again. But in the meantime, the heat will be off.’

  ‘Yeah, man …’ Spencer nodded eagerly, desperately. ‘Let’s … let’s do this, yeah!’

  ‘Sure. But not till you bring the cash.’

  ‘I’ll get it … I’ve said I’ll get it …’

  ‘OK, Spence … it’s a deal.’ The voice was already diminishing, as if its owner was moving away through the tunnels.

  ‘Hey man, I ain’t even seen you!’

  ‘You’ll see me on the day.’ It was now very distant.

  ‘When? And where’m I gonna find you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Spence … I’ll find you.’ Spencer could only just hear him. ‘Wherever you are, I’ll find you.’

  Chapter 23

  It was difficult to tell what the building on Deercot Road had once been. Some kind of a minor office block, perhaps, but with workshop premises downstairs, as indicated by the unloading bays at the front and the wagon-sized entrance doors with roll-down steel shutters. These days, superficially at least, it was nothing, litter and scraps of last year’s leaf-fall blowing about in the parking bays, and dust on the insides of the windows. The properties both to the left and right – one a small industrial unit, the other a storage facility – were in a less neglected state, but were not exactly hives of activity.

  ‘So … there’re only two ways in and out,’ Heck said, as they cruised past in his Megane. ‘One midway along the entry …’ he nodded to a passage running down the side of the empty building, ‘… which is basically the front door. And a fire exit round the back. Apparently, there’s no access to the rest of the building from the cellar … which is where we’re reliably informed this cinema is.’

  Gary Quinnell who was in the front passenger seat, nodded but said nothing.

  ‘You all right?’ Heck asked.

  Quinnell nodded again.

  ‘Sure you’re up for this?’

  The big Welshman shot him a sideways glance. ‘Always, boyo, if it’s doing God’s work.’

  They rounded a corner and rejoined the heavy rush-hour traffic on Putney High Street.

  ‘Yeah, well just remember,’ Heck said, ‘heaven helps those who help themselves. So, when you’re down there, you keep your wits about you and your back to the nearest wall.’

  ‘No worries,’ Quinnell replied.

  ‘Wish we could arm you, but they’re
bound to search you when you first go in.’

  ‘Do I look like the kind of bloke who needs to be armed?’

  ‘Just stay sharp, OK?’

  ‘Will do. Stop pestering.’

  ‘On which subject …’ Heck checked his phone to see if he’d maybe missed a call, but there was nothing, ‘don’t suppose you’ve seen Gail Honeyford today?’

  ‘Can’t say I have.’

  ‘Don’t know what the bloody hell she’s playing at. Hope she’s in time for the briefing.’

  ‘Well …’ Quinnell shrugged, ‘if she doesn’t show, at least we’ll have Jack Reed.’

  A red light approached, but Heck hit the brake harder than he’d intended to. ‘Reed? Since when?’

  ‘Since last night … when he locked his suspect up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s right. Patrick Hallahan, he was after. The McDonald’s shooter from Slough.’

  ‘Reed’s bagged him already?’ Heck couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Sounds like it. Bastard’s coughed to it, too. Press were all over Staples Corner this morning. Gwen was doubly happy we’re signing on at Putney. Which makes me think … could it be Gail doesn’t know about that? Putney, I mean? Green, mate …’

  Heck was so startled by this that at first nothing else computed.

  Quinnell nudged him. ‘It’s on green.’

  Tooting horns from the ever-impatient London traffic bottling up behind them finally caught Heck’s attention. He knocked the Megane into gear and they moved forward.

  ‘I emailed Gail last night, to remind her,’ he said. ‘Gaz … you’re saying Reed’s nicked Patrick Hallahan, and he’s already got a full confession?’

  ‘That’s what I heard.’

  The briefing commenced at six o’clock that evening and was held in the spare parade room at Putney Bridge Road police station.

  From the outset, it had the air of a rough-and-ready affair. Only a handful of Sledgehammer personnel were present – Heck, Reed and Quinnell, the latter only available because his own Shropshire-based enquiry into the whereabouts of John Stroud was making such little progress that it had seemed neither here nor there if he diverted from it for a couple of days. The rest of the team, some twenty officers in total, had been seconded from local uniformed staff and the Territorial Support Group and were now convened in full crowd-control wear, including fireproof overalls, stab vests and shin and elbow pads. Those seated had their helmets on the tables in front of them, those standing carried them under their arms. Even Gwen Straker, who was hosting the event, wore a padded blue anorak over her plain clothes, with POLICE stencilled on the back in hi-vis white lettering.

  ‘OK, listen up everyone!’ she shouted.

  The buzz of conversation died.

  ‘First of all, I’d like to thank Inspector Takuma, for making this facility and his uniformed staff available to us today.’ She nodded to a corner, where Cyril Takuma, a short, bespectacled officer of Nigerian origin, who, despite being duty officer here at Putney Bridge Road, was also padded up in armour and carried a riot helmet under his arm. ‘Quite a few members of Operation Sledgehammer are still otherwise engaged,’ she added, ‘so we’re reliant on local forces today – and they’ve really come through for us.’

  Again, Heck checked his phone to see if Gail had returned at least one of his several calls. Still, there was nothing.

  ‘Now … I’m sure we know what’s going on here,’ Gwen said, ‘but let me refresh a few memories. One week ago, Detective Sergeant Heckenburg arrested a known criminal on Humberside.’

  Heck remained inexpressive as various heads turned his way.

  ‘The person concerned is one Timothy Cleghorn.’ Gwen stepped aside so that everyone could see the large-screen television and opened her laptop. Tapping her keyboard, she brought up the most recent mugshot of Cleghorn. ‘Mr Cleghorn was bang to rights on various offences that are likely to send him to jail. However, to minimise this, he’s supplied us with some intel which could well lead us to this man …’

  The next image, another mugshot, depicted Eddie Creeley.

  ‘Eddie Creeley. Bank robber extraordinaire and two-time murderer. Those of you who’ve had a chance to scan the video notes you’ve all been provided with will know that he’s high on Operation Sledgehammer’s list of the twenty Most Wanted. Now … this was a good catch for all kinds of reasons, not least because last night, DI Reed here arrested another face on our list, Patrick Hallahan.’

  Reed, who was standing alongside Heck, nodded as they glanced at him.

  ‘Hallahan’s already made a full confession and is prepared to take his punishment,’ Gwen added. ‘Which, needless to say, will spare the relatives of his victims any further grief, will save the taxpayer some money and spare the police service a load of extra work. So … if we play this thing properly today, ladies and gents, this week could be a very good one for British law enforcement.

  ‘Back to Creeley … as you’re aware, we strongly suspect that he’s dead. Of course, we have no clue at this stage what the events leading up to his death involved. However, we are certainly going to investigate, because we also have reason to believe that he may not be the only person to die in these violent circumstances. They may even have accounted for several more of the fugitives on our wanted list.’

  There were mumbles around the room at this, and even a snort of approval.

  ‘Doing our job for us, ma’am,’ a podgy constable chirped up in the front row.

  Gwen gave him a long, appraising look. ‘And is that OK, PC …?’

  ‘Erm, Bunting, ma’am.’

  ‘Is that OK, PC Bunting? That a crime syndicate, whose gig seems to be making real-life snuff movies, are doing our job for us?’

  Bunting’s plump face tinged red. ‘No, ma’am.’

  She addressed the rest of the room. ‘For what it’s worth, I actually sympathise with the sly satisfaction some of you are possibly feeling about what may have happened to Eddie Creeley. I’ve made no bones about it that the names on our list are basically the scum of the earth. But as Senior Investigating Officer in this case, I personally resent not being the one to get my hands on them first. Do we all at least agree with that?’

  Mutters of ‘yes ma’am’ echoed around the room.

  ‘Relax, Bunting,’ she said, spotting that his cheeks still burned. ‘We all let our hearts rule our mouths from time to time. But we can’t afford to do that today. On with the show.’

  Two further images were called onto the screen. They were surveillance shots, grainy black-and-white blow-ups of a man and a woman, both of whom had been photographed while leaving the empty premises on Deercot Road. The woman, who was somewhere in her late forties, looked attractive even in the poor-quality picture, wearing a long but lightweight raincoat, the hood drawn up, dark masses of curls framing a sensual face. The man, who wore an open-necked shirt, was older, around fifty, but nevertheless had a big chest, big shoulders and a thick neck. He had chiselled good looks, a deep tan and short grey hair.

  ‘This is Margot Frith, and her husband, Lance,’ Gwen said. ‘As they are now. However, this was them back in their pomp …’

  More images of the twosome were called up. In these, a decades-younger Margot Frith wore a flowing platinum-blonde wig, bright lipstick, massive eyelashes, fishnet stockings and a black leather basque, which did little to conceal her colossal bust; she was in the process of peeling off a long, silky black glove. Lance Frith, meanwhile, who thankfully had only been screen-captured from the waist up, was bare-chested and even more deeply tanned and muscular than now, his hair hanging backward in a permed but sweat-soaked, blond mop as he reared like a stallion, eyes tightly closed, evidently in the process of reaching orgasm.

  ‘They’re both former sex workers, as if you can’t tell,’ Gwen said. ‘Primarily, that involved acting in porn movies. Lance Frith was known as “Lance Alot” … yeah, I know, you can’t beat the imaginative touch. While Margot was “Miss Whiplash�
��.’

  There was a lack of reaction from the police audience, who were clearly fascinated to know what was coming next.

  ‘All this was years ago,’ Gwen said. ‘As far as we’re aware, they don’t perform any more, but for the last decade at least, they’ve been involved in the production and distribution of legal pornography. On the illegal side – and here’s where you guys come in – they would also appear to be running this snuff club … or at least we assume they are, because they own the building where it’s located, and we’ve now observed them several times, both arriving and leaving on the Wednesday nights when the film shows are said to be held.’

  The next image portrayed the supposedly empty building on Deercot Road.

  ‘The club’s got no name, of course,’ Gwen said. ‘It doesn’t exist in any official capacity. The building isn’t used for anything else, and the cinema, if you want to call it that, is located in the basement. It’s strictly members-only, and though it seems that, at one time, obtaining such membership was only possible through a site on the Dark Web, that site was short-lived, only existing for a few weeks. Potential new members must now be presented to the Friths in person by an existing and trusted member. And that’s going to be our way in … and DC Quinnell here is the lucky lad.’

  Gwen turned to Quinnell, the only one of the detectives present not wearing a hi-vis jacket over his scruffs.

  ‘We’ve chosen him for two reasons,’ Gwen said. ‘Firstly, because though Gary has been in SCU for quite a few years now, he’s former South Wales Police and so isn’t as well-known around London as someone like DS Heckenburg, who is former Met. Secondly, DC Quinnell, as you can see, is a bloke who knows how to handle himself.’

  There were chuckles all round.

  ‘And that may be necessary,’ she said, ‘because the moment he’s seen enough to call the rest of us in, it’s going to kick off in that basement. Now, the punters, I suspect, and probably the Friths as well, will try to get away. But we’re expecting most trouble from these two … the establishment’s so-called security personnel, who are always present on screening nights.’