by Paul Finch
Chapter 22
It wasn’t long after eight in the morning when Nick Gribbins emerged yawning from the security booth, to find Heck showered and track-suited, turning sausages on a grill and cracking eggs into a pan.
‘Fry-up?’ Heck asked. ‘You may as well … you lot are paying for it.’
‘Okay,’ Gribbins said warily. He wandered into the safehouse lounge, where Steph Fowler, having come downstairs first and polished off a bowl of muesli, was dividing her attention between the TV, on which she was channel-hopping, and her laptop, which sat on the coffee table, a Skype link open to the MIR at Scotland Yard.
In the kitchen, Heck dished up two plates of sausage, bacon, egg and beans, while shoving several slices of bread into the toaster. He’d benefited from a comfortable night in the four-poster. No doubt he’d needed it – he still felt battered and weary, but this was an undeniably restful environment.
He walked through into the lounge, handing Gribbins his food, along with some cutlery and a napkin. Gribbins grunted his thanks, and commenced to eat at the coffee table. Heck stood by the door to eat his own. ‘Sorry about the hand,’ he said. ‘Seriously. I thought you were the Nice Guys.’
Gribbins shrugged. ‘You got dragged through the gutters after. Seems like we’re square.’
‘What’s the actual damage?’
‘Hairline fracture of the metacarpals. Not too serious, but it hurts.’
‘Surprised they’re letting you work.’
‘We’re totally pulled out. Every man and woman we’ve got is on this job. When I volunteered for light duties, they couldn’t very well refuse.’
‘Light duties?’ Heck said.
‘Lighter than they’d be out there … on the frontline.’
‘Well … yeah.’ Heck couldn’t argue with that, and it irked him. He too was wasting away in here whilst the real battle was being fought elsewhere.
Suddenly, Fowler hit the volume control on the television.
‘Police are playing down reports that the body of a man found this morning in the mouth of a sewer connecting with the River Thames, close to Execution Dock in Wapping, is linked with the recent spate of shootings and bombings,’ the news anchorwoman said.
The screen displayed a police launch bobbing on a mud-brown tide at the foot of a dockland wall. Police divers were clustered in the mouth of a weed-fringed vent.
‘The man, who is reported to have died by drowning, has not yet been formally identified,’ the anchorwoman added.
‘Your guy?’ Gribbins asked Heck.
‘Could be.’ Heck watched the screen, but there were no further developments on that particular story, and the scene switched to a live broadcast from the ambush site near Gull Rock. He took his crockery back through to the kitchen, slid it into the dishwasher, and returned to the lounge. ‘I’m off to check the pool,’ he said.
Gribbins shrugged as he mopped his plate.
Fowler glanced through the French windows, beyond which the day looked cool and grey. ‘In this weather? You’ll catch your death.’
‘Just having a look.’ Heck walked towards the windows. ‘If it needs scooping, I’ll scoop. Not hanging around here, catching updates on a case I’m not involved with.’
‘Those French windows are deadlocked,’ Fowler said. ‘Use the back door. It opens from the inside. The key-code to get back in is 78745.’
Heck nodded, leaving the room and heading down the hall. Behind him, Fowler took her place in the security booth, where she could no doubt watch his every move on camera. He left the house via the kitchen, and set off up the extensive garden by a paved central path. As he did, he tapped out a number on his re-energised mobile.
‘Incident Room,’ Shawna McCluskey answered.
‘It’s me,’ he said.
‘Oh great.’ She lowered her voice. ‘This is all I need.’
‘Relax … just a quick chat.’
‘That’s what I was afraid of.’
‘No one’s said I’m not allowed to talk to people.’
‘That’s what you think. Gemma reckons the more incommunicado you remain, the safer you’ll be.’
‘She doesn’t even trust you?’
‘She’s just being cautious.’
‘Fair enough … I’ll make this quick. What’s the skinny on that corpse found in the sewer at Wapping?’
‘Hellfire! I’m definitely not supposed to talk to you about the case.’
‘What … Gemma doesn’t trust me either? That’s funny, considering I’m the one who’s supposed to be in danger.’
‘You know what it’s like. If these Nice Guy bastards get hold of you …’
‘You mean if they grab me and torture me, I won’t be able to tell them anything? So they’ll just keep torturing and torturing … until I expire? At which point they’ll have learned precisely nothing.’
She hesitated. ‘That’s the gist of it, I suppose.’
‘That doesn’t sound remotely like Gemma, and you know it. What’s going on, Shawna? At least tell me about the body.’
She lowered her voice even more. ‘We’re pretty sure it belongs to one of those blokes who bushwhacked you yesterday. The one who fell off the gantry.’
‘Black fella? Big bugger, well built?’
‘Correct.’
‘Wearing a leather jacket and jeans?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s him. What’ve you found out?’
‘Nothing so far. We’re running his prints and his DNA. Failing that, we’ll go for facial recognition.’
‘He had no ID?’ Heck asked.
‘A few bits of sodden paper stuffed in one of his pockets, which don’t make any sense. But no wallet, no driving licence … if he did have that stuff, he lost it while he was being washed through the sewers.’
‘Get back to me as soon as you know something, yeah?’
‘Heck … I can’t.’
‘Shawna, this is bullshit. I’m hardly going to blab my mouth off! I just want to know what’s going on. I think you guys owe me that much.’
‘My job could be on the line here.’
‘If anything happens, I’ll put my hand up … I’ll take the fall for it.’
‘Oh yeah. If you fell in a barrel of monkey shit, you’d come out clean.’
‘I’ll sort it, I promise you. Just call me back, yeah?’
‘Maybe …’ She sounded unsure. ‘If I get the chance.’
She hung up, leaving him perplexed. He’d always liked to think he and Shawna enjoyed a special relationship. Originally officers in the Greater Manchester Police, they’d known each other from the earliest days of their careers, and after finding their way to London and the Serial Crimes Unit by different routes, had renewed that friendship fiercely. A fellow child of the industrial Northwest, Shawna shared many of Heck’s blue-collar traits: she was a roughneck but she looked good; she was streetwise but witty; she also knew her job inside-out and she didn’t get fazed or upset. But she was running scared at present, and Heck felt he detected SOCAR behind that rather than Gemma.
This whole thing had a whiff of the extraordinary. How much power had SOCAR been given? They had Gemma, one of the most respected senior managers in the entire National Crime Group, running around at their beck and call, imposing draconian measures she’d never have countenanced were she in control herself.
He’d now drifted almost the entire length of the garden, passing greenhouses and potting sheds, and finally found himself opening a gate and entering a patio area, about fifty yards by forty and set against the rear wall of the property, which, like the others, was comprised of a ten-foot barbed wire fence and then a twelve-foot brick perimeter with spikes and electrical wiring. In the middle of the patio lay a rectangular swimming pool, about twenty yards long.
Heck strolled forward. Unlike everything else here, which was either new or renovated, the pool was a relic of the past – a leftover from whenever this place had been a working farm or a holiday home. It was
uncovered, its surface clear and still, but its tiled walls were mottled with algae, its depths greenish and gloomy, filled with several years’ worth of autumn leaves. At the south end, there was a wooden storage shed, presumably crammed with tools and the usual poolside junk, at the north end a two-stage diving tower. This was a relic too, a mass of creaky scaffolding, thick with rust. Its lower and upper diving boards, located at about six and twelve feet up respectively, were wooden, but damp with mildew. Still distracted by thoughts of Shawna, Heck leaned against it, and the entire structure lurched to the left – it was mounted on a broad, square base with a wheel in each corner. There was a plastic foot-break over the right rear-wheel, but when he tried to apply this, it snapped.
‘Bloody death trap,’ he muttered.
He was about to head back to the house when the patio gate creaked open and Steph Fowler came through it. The look on her face was ice-cold.
‘Something wrong?’ he asked.
‘Yeah … you.’ She held out her hand. ‘Give me your phone.’
Heck shoved the mobile into his pocket. ‘I was told I could keep my phone.’
‘That privilege has been revoked.’
‘Privilege?’
‘We’re not discussing this.’ She reached under her pinstriped jacket, and drew her Glock from its holster. ‘Just give me the fucking phone.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘Are you? Do you think we’re deaf and dumb, or what?’
‘You were listening in to that last call, weren’t you? Of all the sneaky little …’
‘You can spare me the pseudo-morality!’ She pointed the pistol at him. ‘Give me the phone … right now!’
‘Or what? You’re going to shoot me?’
A look of doubt etched her face, as if drawing her weapon so soon had been a mistake.
‘Kind of defeats the object of me being here, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Or does it?’
‘The phone!’
‘Are you seriously telling me you’ve bugged the phones in the MIR? Frank Tasker’s put wire-taps on his own team? How much power has this bloody guy got?’
‘It’s a reasonable precaution. The last time the Nice Guys were investigated, more women died because a mole on the police force was providing inside information.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Heck said, ‘that mole is dead! Remember Jim Laycock? Remember him getting battered to a pulp?’
Now Gribbins appeared, looking rumpled and sallow-faced. He tucked his shirt into his belt at the same time as drawing his Glock. ‘The phone, Heckenburg.’
Seeing no gain in being relentlessly awkward, Heck handed his phone over.
Gribbins took it – and slung it into the deep end of the swimming pool. ‘Let’s hope no one needs you urgently,’ he chuckled.
Heck gazed at him blankly, and then at the pool.
‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Fowler warned him.
‘Anything else stupid,’ Gribbins corrected her.
‘You mean as stupid as that?’ Heck wondered. ‘Throwing away my personal property!’
‘Oooh …’ Gribbins pulled a face. ‘I’m really scared.’
‘We’re under orders to keep you incommunicado from here on,’ Fowler said, re-holstering her firearm. ‘Back to the house please.’
Gribbins dressed his weapon down, but didn’t put it away. When Heck sloped across the patio, Gribbins took him by the scruff of his neck and frogmarched him.
‘Even if your gaffer has a genuine concern about security,’ Heck said, ‘where was the harm in me talking to Shawna McCluskey?’ They made no response. ‘Look … she only confirmed what I already knew. What we all of us already knew.’
‘Nice try,’ Gribbins said. ‘But your mate has already had the bollocking of her life and been sent home pending formal disciplinary procedures.’
Heck stiffened as he walked. ‘That’s bloody ridiculous!’ When they reached the back door, Fowler tapped in the security code. The door clicked open. ‘Just answer me one question,’ Heck said. ‘Is this a safehouse or a sodding prison?’
‘It’s a safehouse,’ Fowler said as Gribbins shoved him inside. ‘You’ve still got full freedom of movement … indoors.’
‘I can’t go out to play in the garden anymore?’
‘After that trick with the phone?’ Gribbins scoffed.
‘Not without supervision,’ Fowler said. ‘You know why? Because you’ve just proved that you can’t be trusted.’
‘If it’s a safehouse I can walk out of that front door and go home any time I want!’
She shook her head. ‘Not if it’s likely to impede the enquiry. For the same reason, you’re now being denied access to the internet as well.’
‘Hey, how can I live without my daily fix of Stormtroopers in Stockings?’
‘These are the new rules, Heckenburg,’ she said. ‘Attempt to break them and we’ll arrest you for obstructing an enquiry. And then it’ll all get done the hard way.’
‘Which we’re that close to already,’ Gribbins added. ‘If for no other reason than this latest kerfuffle has disturbed my beauty sleep.’
‘It shows,’ Heck grunted.
‘And here was us, finally starting to think you were alright.’
‘Well, they told me you were anyone’s for a fry-up.’
‘Just keep that smart-mouth going, pal!’ Gribbins said. ‘And you’ll spend the rest of your time here handcuffed to the radiator.’
They might be playing it heavy, Heck realised, but they looked twitchy too. He was giving them a hard time: sending them mixed messages, winding them up – but it was more than that. They were operating well beyond the realms of normality here. DS Fowler had just given him the rules – rules they were making up on the hoof, rules that were unlikely ever to see him brought in front of a disciplinary, let alone a court.
For all that, it was another ten minutes before Heck would decide he’d had enough.
‘DS Fowler or DS Gribbins please!’ came an impatient voice as they filed into the lounge. Detective Inspector O’Dowd was on the Skype link. His tie was loose, his shirt scruffy, his jowly, hangdog face offset by preposterously short, neat, dark hair, which, though it wasn’t actually a toupee, had always resembled one.
‘Here sir,’ Fowler said, sitting in front of the camera.
‘What’s been going on?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘Heckenburg?’
‘All under control, sir.’
‘You got that message from the boss?’
‘We did, yes.’
‘He went batshit when he found out Heckenburg has been ringing people.’
‘It’s okay sir. We won’t take our eyes off him from now on.’
‘Don’t let him pull a fast one.’
‘It’s okay, sir … he’s settling down now.’
‘Yeah,’ Heck said from the doorway. ‘With my pacifier and rattle.’
‘Good,’ O’Dowd said, either not hearing Heck or ignoring him. ‘Because the wheels are coming off here. We’ve had three more suspicious deaths in the last twenty-four hours. A drowning up in Scotland, a hit-and-run in Portsmouth – bloke got run over seven times by the same vehicle – and now we learn some poor sod in Yorkshire got choked to death on his own Malacca cane.’
‘Malacca cane?’ Heck blurted, crossing the room.
‘Only after he’d been beaten and burned first,’ O’Dowd added. ‘Poor bastard’s totally unrecognisable. Didn’t help that he then got dumped ninety feet down a pothole. That info’s just come in … it was up on the North Yorks moors, near Whernside.’
‘Sounds like they didn’t want that one found,’ Heck said, puzzled. ‘Did we get more of these Greek signatures, sir?’
‘Apparently we did in Portsmouth. It was painted on the road in blood. We got something similar in Scotland, we think … nothing in Yorkshire that I’ve been informed about …’ O’Dowd suddenly seemed to realise that Heck was standing b
ehind Fowler. ‘What the devil, Heckenburg? Why am I talking to you? Was he earwigging all this time? Get him away from there!’
Gribbins approached, but Heck moved away of his own accord.
‘Haven’t heard about these other murders on the news, sir,’ Fowler said.
‘The boss has been talking to the press, and they’ve agreed an embargo – from ten o’clock this morning. The public were starting to get jittery.’
Heck strode back to the laptop. ‘Can you just clarify, sir … this bloke who was murdered in Yorkshire, the one who wasn’t marked with the BDEL sign. You say he was beaten and burned before they shoved a Malacca cane down his throat?’
‘Heckenburg, this has nothing to do with you, okay? You’re off duty.’
‘So they gave him a going-over first,’ Heck murmured.
‘What are you driving at?’ Fowler asked.
‘If I had my way, he wouldn’t even be driving a patrol car,’ O’Dowd interrupted. ‘He’d be on foot again in a tall hat. Don’t tell him anything. If he gets shirty, lock him in his fucking bedroom. That’s it for now. Just remember, you two have one job to do down there and one job only. Don’t screw it up.’
He hit a button, and the laptop screen went blank.
There was a prolonged, tingling silence. At least, that was the way it seemed to Heck as he turned to Gribbins and Fowler, who for some reason were regarding him expectantly. His thoughts were so scattered that it took him several seconds to get them in order, but one thing was suddenly glaringly clear – one thing he now could not do was reveal what he had just realised: namely that the Nice Guys hadn’t rescued Mike Silver six days ago; they’d abducted him. And now they had murdered him.
Piece by piece, it was slowly dawning on Heck.
First of all, the mere fact the Nice Guys had known those prison interviews were underway was worrying. But it was even more worrying they’d learned some kind of progress was being made – so much progress they’d suddenly felt it necessary to intervene. On the face of it, one of three things had happened: Silver himself had let it slip to a fellow inmate that some kind of deal was in the offing – which was impossible to imagine given the danger that would put him in; or Gemma had let it slip in SCU – which was equally difficult to imagine, because if a secret had to be kept for strict professional purposes, Gemma would keep it; or Frank Tasker had let it slip in SOCAR – this was also hard to believe, considering Tasker’s obsessive concerns about security. The only other possibility was that they had yet another mole on board.
