Strangers

by Paul Finch

  ‘Yes … I suppose we are.’

  ‘See you around.’ And using only the fingers of his left hand, he waved her goodbye.

  Lucy felt like she ought to say something else, but he turned away from her to stare at the sea again. The interview was over.

  She walked back across the prom, feeling vaguely diminished. She hadn’t intended to let it slip that Jayne McIvar was still trying to grass people up, though no doubt McCracken would have guessed that for himself. The main thing was that Lucy clearly had a lot still to learn when it came to dealing with these major players.

  It made her feel even grumpier.

  There was no longer any sign of Shallicker, but as she approached the kerb her mother’s yellow Honda pulled up in front of her. Lucy climbed into the front passenger seat. Initially, they drove in silence, negotiating the complex Blackpool streets en route back to the M55.

  ‘Well?’ Cora asked, when they were finally free of the conurbation. ‘What did you say to him?’

  Lucy gazed sullenly ahead. ‘Told him I never want to speak to him again.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘And I never want to speak to you again either, Mum.’

  ‘Ah … still?’

  ‘Yeah. Still.’

  ‘Okay.’ Cora glanced at the dashboard clock. ‘It’ll be well after teatime when we get home. Fancy grabbing a Chinese on the way?’

  ‘Sure,’ Lucy said. ‘Why not?’

  Can’t wait for your next Paul Finch fix? Then read on for a sneak peek of his next novel, coming in Spring 2017.

  CHAPTER 1

  Barrie and Les saw customer care as an essential part of their role as porno merchants.

  Some might laugh at that notion, given pornography’s normal place in the world. It was all very well people pretending it was near enough respectable now, but the reality was that even if you used porn, you tended not to talk about it; that you weren’t generally interested in building a rapport with the providers – you just wanted to acquire your goods and go (said goods then to reside in a secret compartment in your home where hopefully no one would ever find them). No, one wouldn’t normally have thought this a business where the friendly touch would pay dividends, but Barrie and Les, who’d jointly and successfully managed their street-corner sex shop for twelve years, didn’t see it that way at all.

  Certainly Barrie didn’t, and he was the thinker of the twosome.

  In Barrie’s opinion, it was all about improving the customer’s experience so that he would happily return. Happily … that was the key. Yes, it was about providing quality material, but at the same time doing it with a smile and a quip or two, and being helpful with it – if someone requested information or advice, you actually tried to assist, you didn’t just stand there with that bored, bovine expression so common among service industry staff throughout the UK.

  This way they’d more likely buy from Sadie’s Dungeon again – it wasn’t difficult to understand. And it worked.

  Even in 2015, there was something apparently disquieting about the act of buying smut. Barrie and Les had seen every kind of person in here, from scruffy, drunken louts to well-dressed businessmen, and yet all had ventured through the front door in similar fashion: rigid around the shoulders, licks of sweat gleaming on their brows, eyes darting left and right as though fearful they were about to encounter their father-in-law – and always apparently eager to engage in an ice-breaking natter with the unexpectedly palsy guys behind the counter, though this was usually while their merchandise was being bagged; it was almost as if they were so relieved the experience was over that they suddenly felt free to gabble, to let all that pent-up tension pour out of them.

  It was probably also a relief to them that Sadie’s Dungeon was so neat and tidy. The old cliché about sex shops being seedy backstreet establishments with grubby windows and broken neon signs, populated by the dirty raincoat brigade and trading solely in well-thumbed mags and second-hand video tapes covered in suspiciously sticky fingerprints, was a thing of the past. Sadie’s Dungeon was a clean, modern boutique. Okay, its main window was blacked-out and it still announced its presence at the end of Buckeye Lane with garish, luminous lettering, but behind the dangling ribbons in the doorway, it was spacious, clean and very well-lit. There was no tacky carpet here to make you feel physically sick, no thumping rock music or lurid light show to create an air of intimidation. Perhaps more to the point, Barrie and Les were local lads, born and raised right here in Bradburn. It wasn’t a small borough as Lancashire towns went – more a sprawling post-industrial wasteland – but even for those punters who didn’t know them, at least their native accents, along with their friendly demeanour, evoked an air of familiarity. Alright, it was possible to overegg that pudding. It didn’t exactly instil what you’d call a family atmosphere in Sadie’s Dungeon, but it meant there was something a little more welcoming about it, a little more wholesome.

  ‘Fucking shit!’ Les snarled from his stool behind the till. ‘Bastard!’

  ‘What’s up?’ Barrie said, only half hearing.

  ‘Fucking takings are crap again.’

  ‘Yeah …?’ Barrie was distracted by the adjustments he was making to the Christmas display.

  It was early December, and though it might seem incongruous for a sex shop to stick holly over its autographed porn-star wall-posters, and even stand a large Christmas tree in one of its corners (hung with miniature sex toys instead of ornaments), Barrie held a different view. As far as he could see, hardly anyone believed in God anymore, but that didn’t stop the entire population of the town getting embarrassingly pissed on Christmas Eve, unwrapping a pile of prezzies on Christmas morning, and stuffing themselves to the gills with turkey and plum duff at Christmas teatime. How was this any more hypocritical? Besides, Barrie thought this particular display one of the better ones he’d constructed. It was located right at the front of the shop, at the top end of the central aisle so that it would strike the punters as soon as they walked in. It consisted of a life-size cardboard cut-out muscle man, laughing and naked, with a fake white beard glued on, and a metal peg pushed through at his groin, over the top of which a Santa hat had been draped to create the impression it was concealing an upright member. At his feet, a large red bag trimmed with white fur spilled out a heap of newly-imported American DVDs, all at special holiday prices. Above the muscle man’s head hung a bunch of mistletoe, and over the top of that a row of flashing fairly-lit letters read:

  CHECK OUT SANTA’S SACK

  Of course, Les had a point. Even the rapid approach of Christmas was no real consolation when the shop’s takings were consistently poorer than they’d used to be. When Sadie’s Dungeon had first opened, sales had initially been great, but ever since then – thanks mainly to the internet, and despite the lads’ conscientious customer care routine – business had declined.

  ‘We’re not beaten yet,’ Barrie replied, determinedly relaxed about it. ‘The new rules will level the playing-field a little. Let’s just see how it all pans out.’

  He was referring to recent legislation aimed at internet porn producers, which abolished the depiction online of certain ‘extreme’ sexual activities, and thus pulled them into line with those BBFC prohibitions already in force where DVDs were concerned, so though porn fans the country over were outraged that their private recreation was yet again being meddled with by government, it was actually a positive where the shop-counter trade was concerned,

  Or so Barrie said. And though Les wasn’t entirely sure the benefits from this would feed through any time soon, he tended to listen to Barrie, who was undoubtedly the brains behind Sadie’s Dungeon, and in Les’s eyes a very smart cookie. He was also a grafter, getting stuck in wherever needed. Even now, though it was past seven o’clock, Barrie wasn’t finished. All across the shop, the product was marked and racked in easy-to-find sections: Bangin’ Babes, Horny Housewives, Glamour Grans, Tearaway Teens – Barrie sidled from one to the next, fastidiously check
ing that everything was as it should be after the usual day’s fingering and fondling by the customers, and swiftly rearranging stuff where it wasn’t.

  ‘Sonja, we’re almost done!’ Les shouted down the corridor behind the counter.

  ‘’Kay … getting dressed,’ came a female voice.

  Which was when the bell rang as the shop’s outer door was opened. The icy December breeze set the ribbons fluttering as a bulky shape backed in, lugging something heavy behind him.

  ‘Sorry, sir … we’re closing,’ Les called.

  The customer halted but didn’t turn around; he bent down slightly as if what he was dragging was cumbersome as well as heavy. They now noticed that under his massive, silvery coat, he wore steel-shod boots and baggy, shapeless trousers made from some thick, dark material.

  ‘Sir, we’re closed,’ Barrie said, approaching along the right-hand aisle.

  Where Les was short, stocky and shaven-headed, Barrie was six-three and, though rangy of build with a mop of dark hair and good looks, his background was not the best – he knew how to use his height, how to impose himself. ‘Hey, excuse me … hey mate!’

  The figure continued to back into the shop, the door jammed open behind him, letting in a steady waft of wintry air. When he straightened up, they saw that he was wearing a motorcycle helmet.

  ‘Shit!’ Les yanked open a drawer and snatched out a homemade cosh, a chunk of iron cable with cloth wrapped around it.

  Barrie might have reacted violently too, except that as the figure pivoted around, the sight froze him where he stood. He wasn’t sure what fixated him more, the extended, gold-tinted welder’s visor riveted to the front of the intruder’s helmet, completely concealing the features beneath, or the charred-black steel muzzle now pointing at him, the rubber pipe attachment to which snaked back around the guy’s body to a wheeled tank at his rear.

  Les shouted hoarsely as he lifted the counter hatch, but it was too late.

  A gloved finger depressed a trigger, and a fireball exploded outward, immersing Barrie head to foot. As he tottered backward, screeching and burning, it abruptly shut off, swirling oil-black smoke filling the void. The intruder advanced, a second discharge following, the gushing jet of flame expanding across the shop in a ballooning cloud, sweeping sideways as he slowly turned, engulfing everything in its path: the muscle guy with the peg penis; the orderly rows of DVDs, the shelves lined with books and magazines, the displays of skimpy undies. Les flung his cosh, missing by a mile, and then ran across the back of the shop, stumbling for the exit. But the intruder followed, weapon levelled, squirting out a fresh torrent of fire, dousing him thoroughly as he hung helplessly onto the escape bar.

  The Christmas tree, already a glowing skeleton, collapsed in the corner. The suspended ceiling crashed downward, its warping tiles exposing hissing pipework and sparking electrics. But the intruder held his ground, a featureless rock-like horror, hulking, gold-faced, armoured against the debris raining down from above, insulated against the heat and flames. Slowly, systematically, he swivelled, pumping out further jets of blazing fuel, bathing everything he saw until the inferno raged wall to wall, until the room was a crematorium, the screaming howl of which drowned out even those shrieks of the two shop-managers as they tottered and wilted and sagged in the heart of it, a pair of melting human candles …

  CHAPTER 2

  The quarter of Peckham where Fairfax House stood was not the most salubrious. To be fair, this whole district of South London had once been renowned for its desolate tower blocks, maze-like alleys and soaring crime rates. That wasn’t the whole story these days. It was, as so many internet articles liked to boast, ‘looking to the future’, and its various regeneration projects were ‘well under way’. But there were still some pockets here which time had left behind.

  Like the Fairfax estate, the centrepiece of which was Fairfax House.

  A twelve-storey residential block, a literal edifice of urban decay, it stood amid a confusion of glass-strewn lots and shadowy underpasses. Much was once made in the popular press of the menacing gangs that liked to prowl this neighbourhood, or the lone figures who would loiter on its corners after dark, looking either to mug you or sell you some weed, or maybe both, but the sadder reality was the sense of hopelessness here. Nobody lived here, or even visited here, if they could avoid it. Several entire apartment houses were now hollow ruins, boarded up, vandalised and awaiting demolition.

  At least Fairfax House had been spared that indignity. Darkness had now fallen, and various lights showed from its grotty façade, indicating the presence of a few occupants. There were several cars parked on the litter-strewn cul-de-sac out front, and even a small sandpit and a set of swings on the grass nearby, fenced off by the residents to keep it free from condoms and crack phials. Even so, this wasn’t the sort of place one might have expected to find John Sagan.

  A high-earning criminal, or so the story went, Sagan would certainly value his anonymity. Unaffiliated to any gang or syndicate, he was the archetypical loner. He wasn’t married as far as the Local Intelligence Unit knew; he didn’t even have a girlfriend, or boyfriend for that matter. In looks – at least, from the photographic evidence provided to the surveillance teams – he was a bespectacled, mousy-looking man who worked by day as an office admin assistant, and as such seemed to lead a conventional nine-’til-five existence. This, presumably, was the main reason he’d flown beneath the police radar for as long as he had. But even so, it was a hell of a place he’d found to bury himself in. It wouldn’t appeal to the average man in the street. But then, contrary to appearances, there was nothing average about John Sagan. At least, not according to the detailed statement Heck had recently taken from a certain Penny Flint, a local streetwalker of his acquaintance.

  Heck, as his colleagues knew him – real title Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg – was currently ensconced in Fairfax House himself, though in his case lolling on a damp, badly-sprung sofa on the lower section of a split-level corridor on the third floor. Immediately facing him was the tarnished metal door to a lift that had malfunctioned so long ago even the Out of Order notice had fallen off. On his right stood a pair of fire-doors, complete with glass panels so grimy you could barely see through them; on the other side of those was the building’s man stairwell. It was a cold, dank position, only partly lit because most of the bulbs on this level were out. No doubt, the ghastly hunk of furniture Heck was slouched upon would be flea-infested – who knew who’d thrown it out, or why – but it was December now, the barometer hovering just above zero, and most likely every bug in London was frozen to immobility.

  Heck certainly was, or near to that.

  He’d been here the best part of the afternoon, with only a patched-up jumper, a pair of scruffy jeans, a raggedy old combat jacket and a woolly hat to protect him against the cold. He didn’t even have fingers in his gloves, or socks inside his rotted, toeless trainers. Of course, just in case all that failed to create the impression he was a hopeless wino, he hadn’t shaved for a week or combed his hair in several days, and the half-full bottle of water tinted purple to look like Meths hanging from his pocket wasn’t so wrapped in greasy newspaper that it wouldn’t be spotted.

  The guise had worked thus far. Several of the gaunt individuals who inhabited the building had been and gone during the course of the day, and hadn’t given him a second glance. But of John Sagan there’d been no sign. Heck knew that because, from where he was slumped, he had a good vantage along the passage, and number 36, the door to Sagan’s flat, which stood on the right-hand side, hadn’t opened once since he’d come on duty that lunchtime. The team knew he was in there – officers on the previous shift had made casual walk-bys, and had heard him moving around. But he was yet to emerge.

  Heck knew he would recognise the guy, having studied the photographs carefully beforehand. Purely in terms of looks, Sagan really was the everyday Joe: somewhere in his mid-forties, about five-eight, of medium build, with a pudgy face and thinning, clos
e-cropped fair hair. He usually wore a pair of round-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles, but otherwise had no distinguishing features; no tattoos, no scars. And yet, ironically, it was this workaday clothing that was most likely to make him stand out. In his efforts to look the part-time clerk he actually was, Sagan favoured suits, shirts, ties and leather shoes, and if it was cold or raining outside, an overcoat. But that wasn’t the regular costume in this neck of the woods. Far from it.

  And yet this was only one of many contradictions in the curious character that was John Sagan.

  For example, who would have guessed that his real profession was torturer-for-hire? Who would have known from his outward appearance that he was a vicious sadist who loaned his talents to the underworld’s highest bidders, and performed his unspeakable skill all over the country?

  Heck wouldn’t have believed it himself – especially as the Serial Crimes Unit had never heard about John Sagan before – had the intel not come from Penny Flint, who was one of his more trustworthy informants. She’d even told Heck that Sagan had a specially adapted caravan called the ‘Punishment Room’, which he took with him on every job. Apparently, this was a mobile torture chamber, kitted on the inside with all kinds of specialist devices, ranging from clamps, manacles and cat o’nine tails, to pliers, drills, surgical saws, electrodes, knives, needles and, exclusively for use on male victims, a pair of nutcrackers. To make things worse, and apparently to increase the sense of horror for those taken inside there, its whole interior was spattered with dried bloodstains, which Sagan purposely never cleaned off.

  Penny Flint knew all this because, having offended some underworld bigwig, she herself had recently survived a session in the Punishment Room – if you could all it surviving; when Heck had gone to see her in her Brixton flat, she’d been on crutches and looked to have aged thirty years. She’d advised him that there were even medical manuals on shelves in the Punishment Room to aid Sagan in his quest to apply the maximum torment, while its central fixture was a horizontal X-shaped cross, on which the victims would be secured with belts and straps. Video feeds of each session played live on a screen positioned on the ceiling overhead, so the victim could watch in close detail as they were brutalised.