by Paul Finch
‘Mark’s said that’s happened before,’ Hazel said, appearing at Gemma’s shoulder. ‘It was designed to be a house not a police station, so the circuits get overloaded.’
‘Whatever, it’s pitch-dark and I can’t find the breakers,’ McGurk replied.
‘The breakers will be in the cellar,’ Burt Fillingham said, standing close by. ‘It’s the same all over the village. There’s a cellar underneath, and all the circuits and meters and such are down there. But if it’s anything like our house, you can’t get into it through the actual building. There’ll be a doorway around the back.’
‘Same at my place,’ Ted Haveloc agreed. ‘But it won’t be easy to find in the dark.’
‘I’ll find it,’ McGurk said. ‘Cheers …’
He backed away, but Gemma followed him out, pulling on her coat. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘It’s okay, ma’am …’
‘No, two pairs of eyes are better than one.’ She glanced at the half-open pub door, and then specifically at Hazel, who seemed the most likely to assume an effective leadership role in her absence. ‘You guys going to be alright for a couple of minutes?’
Hazel simply nodded.
The door banged closed, and Gemma and McGurk set off up Truscott Drive.
‘No disrespect, ma’am, but I don’t need babysitting,’ he muttered.
‘We’ve already lost one officer tonight. What kind of guv’nor would I be if I sent another one into a dangerous situation alone?’
‘I’m looking for a switch so I can turn the power on. Hardly gonna be dangerous.’
‘That depends on how the power was turned off, doesn’t it? How long before you realised, anyway? You look frozen.’
‘I don’t know. But I’m alright.’
She believed that, even though he did look frozen. McGurk might be a taciturn individual, but there was something vaguely elemental about him. He had granite features, a burly, apelike stance. As he walked now, he’d hunched forward, hands thrust into his pockets as if this whole late-night business at Cragwood Keld was more a personal inconvenience than a ferocious crime-spree that had claimed five lives. Presumably this owed to his past as a Royal Marine and combat veteran. In some ways it was reassuring he could be so fearless, but though he’d actually said very little since she’d first met him – that exchange at the pub door had been the first proper conversation they’d had – Gemma couldn’t help thinking there were deep, dark currents inside McGurk.
‘I’m guessing you’ve seen a bit of action?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Some.’
‘Comrades getting slotted left, right and centre?’
‘Some.’
It was difficult, if not impossible, to read anything into such determinedly monosyllabic responses.
‘Well I don’t need to remind you of all people about procedure when an offender’s carrying firearms,’ she said. ‘But let’s remember … Heggarty got shot through the head from point-blank range. This suspect is for real.’
‘We’ll see how real he is, ma’am, when I get my hands on him.’ That was the closest thing to an emotional statement she’d heard from McGurk all night, though again it was delivered in a flat monotone that was vaguely unnerving.
She remembered the unconfirmed story that McGurk had been demoted from the rank of detective sergeant for ill-treating prisoners. She thought about those numerous members of the military who’d also been disciplined for this kind of offence, and she wondered if McGurk had only been continuing a habit he’d picked up in the theatre of war. She also wondered what this kind of thing revealed about a man’s character. Did he not handle tough experiences well, or was it more a case that life in the security services gave him opportunities he wouldn’t otherwise have to do exactly what lurked in his nature?
You could never tell at first glance, especially with a laconic figure like Mick McGurk.
Chapter 28
Heck and Mary-Ellen moved through the wood for about seventy yards, though it might have been further. Mary-Ellen admitted that she’d only guessed the actual distance. The first they saw of the wrecked police car were rotating spears of misted blue light flickering through the undergrowth.
They slowed down as they approached.
The vehicle, which was about three yards off the blacktop on this side of Cragwood Road, thinly concealed by leafy branches, was exactly as Mary-Ellen had described: a Ford Focus bearing Cumbria Constabulary markings, with extra roof details to indicate it was an armed response car. It was now sitting on four flat tyres.
Almost immediately an answer to one of Heck’s earlier questions struck him. Why had the killer not used a silencer before? Maybe because he hadn’t been able to – until a police firearms unit had provided him with all the additional kit he needed.
As with most of the other vehicles, the car’s tyres looked as if they’d been repeatedly sliced, reducing them to ribbons, negating any possibility it could be driven anywhere else.
Up close, Heck noticed the front passenger window had been powered down. Someone had probably appeared on the verge, waving to the vehicle as it had cruised through the fog. It had braked alongside them. Down went the panel as the firearms lads sought an explanation. Bang bang bang went the assassin’s gun.
Heck stuck his head inside.
It was another abattoir, blood and brain spatter streaking the dashboard, the upholstery, the insides of all the windows, even the ceiling. The officer in the passenger seat, a youngish, stocky guy with a shaven head, had taken one in the left temple and one in the throat. The officer behind the wheel looked about the same age, but was slimmer; his face was unrecognisable because most of it had been blown away. There was one other officer in the back, an older man with a mop of iron-grey hair. He’d taken one in the forehead and one through the cheek.
Head-shots in all cases, Heck noted. So the killer had expected an armed response, and had acted accordingly, even allowing for the body-armour they’d be wearing. He leaned further in, resisting the temptation to open the door and interfere with yet another crime scene. Despite the half-dark, he could see empty pistol holsters. He glanced towards the boot, realising it had been jacked open. No doubt the strongbox in there, used to transport additional arms and ammunition, would also have been pillaged.
‘Funny thing,’ Mary-Ellen said, sounding subdued. ‘Me, Gemma and Hazel walked down this road only two and a half hours ago … and, well, we didn’t notice this.’
‘Would you have noticed in the dark and the fog?’ Heck wondered. ‘With the blue light switched off?’
‘Probably not if the beacon was off, no.’
‘That’ll explain it. If this ambush had happened since you came past, we’d have heard the shots.’
Unless of course, the gunman had had access to a silencer before he’d launched this ambush. Heck no longer knew what to think on that score. He leaned further in and assessed several of the blood dribbles down the inside of the windshield. They’d congealed to the point where they were cracking and flaking.
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘This incident happened quite a bit earlier. These lads got bushwhacked a good while ago. The car was then pushed into the bushes so they were out the way in time for you lot to walk innocently past. The beacon’s only been switched on in the last hour or so.’
‘Why?’
‘Presumably to ensure that this time we found it.’
‘Found it?’ Mary-Ellen sounded incredulous. ‘Again … why?’
Heck shook his head. ‘To let us know what our fate is going to be. And that now no one is coming to prevent it.’
Only the darkened outline of the police station was visible as McGurk and Gemma stumped towards it. They switched their torches on as they strode up the path, but with no power now to utilise, the key-pad was no longer functioning on the personnel door at the side.
‘Great, now we’re locked out of our own nick,’ Gemma said quietly.
If McGurk felt any responsibility for this
, he didn’t show it. ‘They said we could get into the cellar from the outside, didn’t they?’
They followed the drive to the back of the building, the area that had once been a garden but was now an impromptu storage space for boxes, tyres and traffic cones. They searched the immediate area, but saw no entrance that might lead down to a cellar. McGurk shone his torch through an open door into the rear of the garage, which stood to the right. More bits and pieces met their gaze: a couple of rusty bicycles, and some ropes and harnesses that might be used in mountaineering, various spare parts for cars, plus several rolls of fibreglass lagging.
‘What’s all this for?’ Gemma toed the nearest roll. ‘Attic need insulating, or something?’
‘That’ll be for winter,’ McGurk replied. ‘It’s bad enough now, but get into December, January and February, ma’am, and it doesn’t get much over zero at this height. They get feet of snow as well … any time up to April.’
A row of Calor Gas bottles stood against the far wall. They were made from moulded steel and beige in colour. The stencilled lettering on each one read:
3.9 kg Propane
‘Propane?’ she said.
‘Empty, most probably.’ McGurk pushed one of the canisters over. It rolled across the garage with a series of hollow clanks. ‘Yeah. Again, they’re for winter. Pipes freeze up here, power lines come down. You can end up with no heating, so a lot of the villagers in these isolated communities keep propane cylinders for gas appliances. There’ll be more of these in the cellar. Full ones.’
‘Interesting … if we could find it.’ They wandered again into the main storage area, spearing their lights back and forth. This time, Gemma’s beam alighted on a heap of bulging bin-liners at the southwest corner of the building. They wandered over there, threw some bags aside and exposed a small, letterbox-type window at ground level, its frosted glass thick with grime. ‘At least we know there is a cellar,’ Gemma said. ‘Won’t be easy wriggling in though …’
‘Door’s here, ma’am.’
McGurk had worked his way past the bin-bags to find a partially concealed recess just around the corner. The cellar door was set inside that. When McGurk tested it, it wasn’t locked. Beyond it, a flight of concrete steps dropped into darkness. He shone his torch down, illuminating another single door at the bottom. This one resembled a fire door; it was made from heavy oak with rubber seals around its trims.
‘Bingo,’ Gemma said – and then she glanced once over her shoulder. It had suddenly occurred to her that, during the course of their search, they’d neglected to keep a look-out for company. But the storage yard lay as dingy and motionless as they’d found it. There was still no sound in the foggy night.
‘You don’t feel a bit exposed out here?’ Mary-Ellen wondered.
Heck was busy circling the firearms car, shooting as much footage with Mary-Ellen’s mobile phone as he could, both inside and out, and at the same time relaying his on-the-spot observations. He glanced around at Mary-Ellen. She was standing rigidly a couple of feet away, breathing painfully, almost wheezing – clearly it wasn’t just the revolving blue light that left her a little off-colour. Only now did it strike him that the young policewoman hadn’t attended any other of the murder scenes in the Cradle thus far. In fact, she was only twenty-three and had done about four years in the job, so she couldn’t have attended too many murder scenes during her service. Almost certainly none involving the mass slaughter of fellow officers.
Mary-Ellen prided herself on being an energetic and resourceful cop, mentally strong and physically tough. But clearly and very abruptly, she’d discovered the limit of that toughness. And she wasn’t wrong about their vulnerable position either. Standing out here in this misty woodland, bathed in bright light, talking aloud – it struck Heck that he might have got too absorbed in preserving the crime scene.
‘You’re right,’ he said, handing her the phone. ‘Time to get back, perhaps. Our pal’s a bloody lunatic, but he’s also clever. The only way out of the Cradle before daylight now is to walk, and we’re hardly likely to try that after seeing this.’
‘So not only is no help coming,’ she said, ‘we’re not getting out of here under our own steam either.’
‘No.’ He pushed on through the undergrowth, heading back the way they’d come. ‘Best go and break the bad news.’
They descended the cellar steps with McGurk at the front and Gemma following close behind. She’d entered numerous dark, dank buildings in this way, but it never ceased to amaze her how such a confined space could swallow up so much light. Both their torch-beams had retracted into brilliant dots on the closed door below them.
And yet, she didn’t think this was the reason why she suddenly felt uncomfortable. It puzzled her. If anything, she should feel good. All they had to do now was push the breakers back into line, and the job was a good ’un. Heck would be back soon, maybe the firearms team as well. Then the odds would be back in their favour.
But wasn’t all this a little too easy?
Where was the killer while these measures were being taken?
She only voiced this fear when a sudden, sour odour pricked her nostrils.
‘McGurk!’
McGurk’s nose also wrinkled – as he pushed the door at the bottom open.
‘No!’ Gemma shouted.
In the flashing torchlight, she caught a fleeting glimpse of the five or six matchboxes that had been taped together along the door-jamb. She didn’t see the two dozen matches taped to the door itself, only heard them striking as they swept over the boxes’ coarse outer surfaces.
Heck and Gemma had progressed forty yards back through the woods when they heard a dull but resounding CRUMP from the direction of Cragwood Keld.
They stopped short, glancing around at each other.
Heck was long enough served to know exactly what he’d just heard, while Mary-Ellen, though a junior officer compared to Heck, had seen plenty of war movies. They could both of them identify the distant tone of a powerful explosion.
Chapter 29
Heck and Mary-Ellen threw caution to the wind as they sprinted back through the foggy woods towards Cragwood Keld. Long before they got there, even deep amid branches so tangled they managed to lose sight of each other, they could see the wavering glow of a huge fire some distance ahead.
When Heck finally staggered, panting, into Hetherby Close, he found that Hazel and the rest of the villagers had also discarded concern for their personal safety and were milling all over the pile of burning rubble where the police station had once stood.
He advanced into the chaos, goggle-eyed.
Up close, the debris mainly consisted of shattered timbers and scorched bricks, and had heaped itself around a central crater – what had once been the cellar – from out of which cloying black smoke was pouring.
‘What happened?’ Heck shouted, wafting his way back and forth. He snatched at someone. But it was dizzy old Sally O’Grady, who could only respond by shaking her head and fixing him with a fishlike stare, her cheeks blackened with soot.
‘What happened?’ he said, blundering over the hot wreckage to the next figure. This was Hazel. She too was in a state of stupefaction. He grabbed her by the wrists. ‘Hazel, what happened?’
‘I … I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘We just heard it … and now the whole building’s gone.’
‘I can bloody see that!’
‘Mark … Gemma was in there.’
‘What?’
Hazel’s red-rimmed eyes filled with tears. ‘And PC McGurk.’
‘Gemma …?’
‘There was a power cut at the station, and they came up here to try and fix it.’
At first Heck played it cool, determined to show no obvious distress. And that wasn’t difficult because Gemma wouldn’t have been in there, she couldn’t have been. There was no way Gemma would have been … in there.
‘Mark!’ Hazel shrieked as he tore himself away.
He flung himself up and ov
er the nearest embankment. His throat was too raw from the smoke for him to scream Gemma’s name as he staggered down into the pit at the heart of the conflagration. More rubble lay scattered, though very little was identifiable. A few warped fragments of blistered metal were all that remained of the propane tanks, but there were puddles of fire between them, which Heck knew defied the laws of nature – unless they were eating up the remnants of spilled petrol.
The propane canisters and petrol.
Someone had done a number on them this time, alright.
‘Gemma!’ he cried, meandering through the flames, the intense heat drying the sweat on his face, searing his skin, the smoke filling his lungs, causing him to retch. ‘Gemma! Christ almighty, don’t you dare do a runner on me …’
A muffled moan sounded in response.
He spun around. ‘Gemma …?’
‘Heck,’ a voice croaked. It was breathless, pained beyond belief.
He spun again, and fleetingly, through billows of smoke, spied two pillars of blackened concrete in the far southwest corner; all that was left of the cellar’s reinforced door-frame.
Heck scooted over there, kicking flaming planks aside.
Beyond the gateposts, a concrete stair led upward. There was no roof above it anymore, no walls to either side; most of the stair itself was buried in bricks and masonry. But right at the foot of it lay the smouldering hulk of a heavy oaken door. More to the point, it was shifting slightly, as if something was pinned underneath.
Heck took hold of the wood. Its edges were ragged, glowing embers, and his fingers were scalded even through his gloves, but the strength of desperation was a potent force. Shoulders straining, he heaved the door up and tossed it behind him. But his gut lurched when he saw what lay underneath it: a hideous mess of broken limbs and charred flesh.
A choked whimper escaped from him. But his eyes were attuning fast to the dense smoke and crimson firelight, and as he blinked away tears, what at first had looked like a single person reduced to a mangled, faceless horror, slowly resolved itself into two people, both thick with dust and debris; one lying over the top of the other, back turned upward – which explained the lack of face. The POLICE insignia stencilled into the partially melted hi-viz slicker revealed that this was McGurk.
