The Killing Club

by Paul Finch

  The Police Scotland Eurocopter had brought both she and Frank Tasker back from Clashnessie to Glasgow City Heliport, at which point they’d parted ways. The original plan would have seen both of them continuing by chopper to Edinburgh, if a message hadn’t been waiting for them at the police office at Glasgow City. This was from Detective Constable Charlie Finnegan, the officer she’d assigned to check the body found in Yorkshire. Far from giving it the once-over and dismissing it from the enquiry straight away – which is what they’d expected given there was no writing on or anywhere near it – Finnegan had felt some immediate concerns and now wanted supervisory back-up. As there was no one from Bronze Command even close to North Yorkshire, Tasker had opted to continue to Edinburgh alone, leaving Gemma under orders to head back to the MIR in London, visiting North Yorks en route to see what the problem was.

  Gemma had thus waited by the Glasgow helipad for another hour after Tasker had lofted away in the Scottish chopper, before transferring to the North East Air Support unit’s own Eurocopter. Now she was back in the air, traversing more barren summits, thick forests and rolling moors. Like those north of the border, they stretched on interminably. It didn’t help that she hadn’t been able to speak directly to any of her team all day – she was still very much out of range – but at least this break was giving her a chance to sift through the facts and try to gain a little perspective on an investigation which, like so many others SCU had become embroiled in, appeared to be expanding in every direction at an exponential rate. Her attention flirted between a personal notebook crammed with handwritten observations, and her iPad, which was equally crammed with page after page of information: statements, reports, data of every type, though none of it made for encouraging reading.

  The rate at which the Nice Guys were hitting their victims was the most unique and unsettling aspect of all this. Their efficiency was a big worry too. Despite adopting the cowboy approach this time around, they still weren’t leaving much physical evidence. Usable prints and DNA samples were non-existent at every crime scene. Incredible though it seemed, they were almost invisible and yet at the same time happy to leave their crazy calling card, not to mention the bodies of their victims on show like grim totems of their power. Of course, this had been the Nice Guys’ business from the outset, as former commandos and mercenaries – professional practitioners of homicidal violence. The skills of the hunt and the ability to melt unnoticed into whichever community they’d infiltrated were ingrained into them. It was no wonder they could come and go like ghosts.

  The chopper put down on a moorland car park seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Sweeps of rough, tussocky pasture undulated away in all directions, rising in the west to sheer limestone scarps. According to the pilot, this was a popular tourist spot; hikers, walkers, bird-spotters and the like tended to park here, though there was no other vehicle present now, save a Vauxhall Astra with North Yorkshire Police markings.

  The driver, a stocky, dark-haired uniform, Sergeant Lisa Manfredi, introduced herself and said she was at Gemma’s disposal for the rest of her shift.

  ‘When does your shift end, Sergeant Manfredi?’ Gemma asked as she stowed her bag in the rear foot-well and climbed into the front passenger seat.

  ‘Ten o’clock tonight, ma’am.’

  ‘Well … hopefully I won’t need to keep you that long. Once I’ve made an assessment of the body at Ripon, I could do with visiting your HQ at Northallerton.’

  ‘No problem on that, ma’am. DSU Benford, from the Northeast Regional Organised Crime Unit’s expecting you. Your man on the spot seems to think this might be one of yours.’

  ‘We mustn’t jump to any conclusions, Sergeant Manfredi.’

  ‘Course not, ma’am.’

  ‘If this body was found ninety feet down a sink-hole, that suggests the perpetrators, or perpetrator, was trying to conceal it,’ Gemma explained. ‘That would be quite a divergence from the pattern that’s emerged so far. Makes it more likely, at least to my mind, that it belongs to another case entirely. What do we actually know about the victim?’

  ‘We’ve no name as yet, ma’am. I mean, he was severely beaten and then burned with an accelerant – probably petrol. It cost him all his fingerprints apparently. But he was a white male, somewhere in his late thirties or early forties.’

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘Bunch of cavers. Bad luck on the killers’ part.’

  ‘Or ignorance,’ Gemma said. ‘If, for some reason, they didn’t know this is potholing country.’ And given that the majority of the Nice Guys – as far as the police knew – were foreigners, that was not a pleasing thought.

  They arrived at Ripon Community Hospital half an hour later, pulling into an empty bay in the personnel car park, close to the mortuary entrance. Charlie Finnegan was already waiting there, pacing up and down. He was a lean, peevish-looking man with slick black hair.

  ‘Ma’am,’ he said with the semi-exasperated air of someone who’d been kept waiting an unnecessary length of time.

  ‘What’ve we got, Charlie?’

  He checked his notes as they headed across the car park. ‘Male IC1, around forty years old. Suffered multiple injuries consistent with severe and protracted torture, but according to the local examiner, the eventual cause of death was asphyxia.’

  ‘Asphyxia?’

  ‘He was choked on a stick. They shoved it down his throat.’

  ‘Good God …’

  ‘After that he was doused in petrol and set alight.’

  ‘That was definitely post mortem?’

  ‘Apparently so.’ They entered the hospital together, Finnegan leading the way along a white-tiled corridor smelling strongly of disinfectant. ‘The aim seems to have been to destroy any distinguishing features, which it more or less did.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a Nice Guys’ hit.’

  ‘That’s what I thought before I got here, ma’am … but I’ve spoken to the examiner, and to be honest … this guy wasn’t just beaten up. They gave him a real going-over. Over a period of hours. We’re talking pliers, razor blades …’

  Gemma glanced sidelong at him.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That guy Culbrook down in Kent. That was a Nice Guys’ hit, wasn’t it? And they used pliers and razor blades in that case.’

  ‘There was definitely no calling card?’

  ‘None on the body or clothing. I’ve even been looking down the cave, which wasn’t easy, I can tell you, and there was nothing there either. Ma’am … there’s another matter. I’ve had SOCAR bending my ear all day about Heck.’

  ‘Who at SOCAR?’

  ‘An Inspector O’Dowd.’

  ‘Oh yeah … why was he bending your ear?’

  Finnegan shrugged. ‘I’m guessing because he knew I’d be seeing you.’

  ‘Why didn’t he ring me personally? He’s got my number.’

  ‘Reckons he’d been trying, but you were out of range. So was Commander Tasker.’

  ‘And?’ she said.

  ‘Well he wants to know what we’re going to do about Heck. Apparently one of their lads got a real kicking.’

  ‘So will Heck, don’t worry … metaphorically speaking, of course.’

  ‘Can you call O’Dowd back?’

  ‘All in good time, Charlie.’ They turned into the mortuary. ‘We’re investigating a murder here. It’s about priorities.’

  The mortuary examination room was not busy. The majority of the porcelain slabs had been mopped down recently; the tiled floor was sparkling clean under the big fluorescent lights. It was the kind of place Gemma and her crew visited often, yet when she set eyes on the single body lying there, it stunned her into silence. She walked slowly forward, and said nothing for several seconds – before turning and walking stiffly out again, even vacating the outer corridor, only stopping when she was back in the car park.

  Finnegan glanced down the passage after her, puzzled, before re-entering the examination room. He gazed blankly at the corpse, which w
as gruesomely burned, its entire epidermis missing, the organs and musculature crisply flambéed. It was no pretty sight, especially the way its head had jack-knifed backwards on a neck rendered stiff by the charred Malacca cane jammed so deeply down its gullet that only its handle protruded from the melted orifice that had once been a mouth. But even then her reaction had been a surprise.

  ‘Funny,’ he said to the attendant. ‘She’s seen hundreds of these. Thought she had a stronger stomach than that.’

  Outside, Gemma hastily produced her phone and was about to stab in Tasker’s number, but managed to stop herself in time. Only now were the possible repercussions of what she’d just seen dawning on her.

  There was no mistaking who that was in there. They’d need forensic confirmation of course – for anyone who didn’t know him well, he’d be unrecognisable. But she’d sat face to face across prison interview-room tables too many times with Peter Rochester, aka Mad Mike Silver, to make such a basic error. In fact it was all too easy – horribly easy – for her to superimpose those sneering, arrogant features over the burned mask of the atrocity in the mortuary. If that hadn’t been enough, she would never have failed to recognise the distinctive Malacca cane that Silver had been given by the prison medical wing. She’d likely have made that link earlier if she’d known the actual cause of death, but thanks to her flitting about all over the North Highlands she’d been too far off the grid for the full details – including any specific reference to a Malacca cane – to be passed on in advance.

  All that aside, it was the import of this that frightened her most.

  Silver had not been rescued after all. He’d been abducted, tortured and murdered. More importantly, they’d tried to commit this crime quietly rather than publicly, leaving no signature – because if this body was ever found it would have revealed that they knew she’d been wearing him down in the interviews, that there was a danger he’d soon talk.

  Suddenly it all made a terrible kind of sense. Why else would the Nice Guys make their move to nab Silver now, two years into his sentence, only to kill him? Why go to all that trouble, expense and risk – if not for their somehow knowing that he was very close to spilling the beans on their overseas operation? And of course there was only one way they could have known that, just as there was only one way they could have known in advance that Silver was being moved to hospital … It was clear they had another informer in the higher echelons of the investigation team, someone who’d been watching every move the police made and reporting it back. Or maybe it wasn’t another informer; maybe it was the same one who’d hamstrung Heck’s original enquiry into the Nice Guys two years ago, which narrowed the list of suspects down dramatically … a list which, for rather obvious reasons, no longer contained Jim Laycock.

  It took a minute or so before Gemma could compose herself enough to make a phone call that would sound sufficiently normal. She knew she couldn’t make a song and dance about this. If she let it out that she was now aware the Nice Guys’ former boss had not been sprung from custody by his old mates, but in fact had been kidnapped and murdered because they knew he was close to turning evidence on them, the Nice Guys would also expect her to have realised she had a mole in her ranks – a mole she’d probably find quickly – and in response they’d simply bolt for cover. She’d lose any chance of arresting them.

  She had to be careful how she played this – she had to be so careful. Which wouldn’t be easy, as she was still fizzing like a bottle of pop.

  There was no answer on the number she initially rang, so she then tried Eric Fisher at SCU. He answered in his usual gruff manner. But when she told Fisher which officer she wanted to speak to, he replied in a perplexed tone that he hadn’t seen that person for most of the day. No one had, in fact. And Fisher was at a loss to explain this.

  ‘Thanks very much, Eric,’ she replied, cutting the call.

  Somewhat sheepishly, Charlie Finnegan reappeared in the hospital doorway. Hands in pockets, he ventured across the car park.

  ‘You alright, ma’am?’

  ‘I’m alright, thank you, Charlie,’ she said. Despite her best efforts, she knew she still looked shaken. But could she trust Finnegan with the information she’d just uncovered? It was probably best not to, though it would only, in truth, be a matter of time before they all found out.

  ‘Sorry if that caught you by surprise,’ he said. ‘I should have warned you it was bad.’

  ‘It’s okay … I’m fine.’

  ‘Erm … don’t want to harp on about this, ma’am. But what about Heck?’

  ‘Heck?’

  ‘What I said earlier.’

  ‘Oh yeah … Heck.’

  ‘SOCAR have been trying to trace his movements. They actually reckon he was heading up this way, to the Northeast.’

  ‘How convenient,’ she said, still distracted. ‘Or how inconvenient, depending on your perspective.’

  ‘Ma’am …?’

  ‘Just humour me a minute, Charlie.’

  ‘Yeah sure, but … well, they reckon it’s a real problem. According to the SOCAR detail who lost him, Heck’s … well, quote, “behaving like a fucking maniac”.’

  ‘Is he?’ Gemma almost laughed. ‘You’d better get onto SOCAR … tell them they ain’t seen nothing yet.’

  Chapter 32

  ‘I’m going to kill you slowly,’ Heck said through gritted teeth. ‘And I’m going to kill you last … so you know exactly what’s coming to you.’

  He was seated on the floor, propped up against the Discovery’s wheel-arch. But even though his eyes had only just fluttered open and his head still thumped, he was struggling to get to grips with the sight of his captor. ‘You know why I’m going to do that, Ben?’ he said. ‘Quite simply, because you deserve nothing less.’

  DCI Ben Kane chuckled, but noticeably kept the Glock trained squarely on his prisoner, while at the same time stuffing the Nice Guys’ client list and their iPhone into his jacket pocket. ‘Codswallop, Heck. You’re the one who’s operating outside the law … again. You’re the one who’s here when you should be in custody; you’re the one who stole a police vehicle and a police firearm. On which subject, thanks for this. It would have been difficult me leaving the office and for no good reason drawing a pistol on the way. You’ve solved that problem for me.’

  Heck could still hardly believe it. There had never been a second mole. There’d only ever been one – and they’d even got his identity wrong. ‘Just for clarity’s sake, Ben, does this seriously mean you were the Nice Guys’ insider all along?’

  Kane chuckled again. ‘You mean you hadn’t worked that out? Perhaps I blew my cover too soon.’

  ‘I thought their original snout was Jim Laycock.’

  ‘Laycock was certainly guilty … but in his case of arrogance and incompetence. I’m a cannier operator.’

  ‘No … no, just let me get this straight,’ Heck said. ‘You’re telling me Jim Laycock had nothing to do with the Nice Guys?’

  ‘Nothing whatsoever. He was never their client, never their snitch.’ Kane’s grin widened, the eyes strained and glassy behind his spectacle lenses. ‘Talk about getting things arse-about-tit, Heck. You genuinely never thought it might be me? An unmarried bloke of my age … who never spoke to anyone about the women in his life, never brought a girlfriend to a Christmas do?’

  Heck shook his head, at first too appalled to reply, not just by the critical error he’d made, but also embarrassed at how easily Ben Kane – studious, scholarly ‘Mr Prissy’ Ben Kane – had pulled the wool over all their eyes.

  ‘How the world changes, eh?’ Kane said. ‘Twenty years ago it would have been “Shirt-lifter Ben”, not “Schoolmaster Ben”. But of course they’d have been wrong then too. I prefer women, but I prefer them subservient. Very subservient. Hey, don’t look so stunned, Heck … you’re the arch psycho-hunter. You ought to know deep in your gut by now that it’s – what’s that phrase? – always the quiet ones.’

  ‘I’m more surprise
d they even took you on,’ Heck replied. ‘One look at you, Ben, and most crims piss themselves laughing.’

  Kane’s grin tightened. ‘I think you’ll find the Nice Guys knew my capabilities from an early stage. I first fell in with them as a paying customer. Made contact with them through connections I had in Vice. Word had got out, you see – to a select bunch of pimps and traffickers, that I could be greased. I mean, I wasn’t the only one, was I, Heck? I’m not the only one now. Though my price-tag was a bit different from the norm – and ultimately, only Mad Mike Silver and the Nice Guys could meet it. Of course, their price was a bit different too. You see, I was very well placed to keep them advised about various missing persons enquiries – about the progress being made, or lack of it – and later on, about the somewhat more insightful investigation being run by a certain bolshy young DS in the Serial Crimes Unit.’

  Even Heck found trouble providing a snappy response to this. It almost defied logic that Ben Kane was the reason the Nice Guys had been one step ahead these last few weeks; that he was the reason they’d been one step ahead the first time; that he was the one who’d spirited away their original list of clients. Though at least it explained how the killers had been so proficient in tracking and assassinating their recent targets. They’d had the list longer than Heck had thought – months, maybe years.

  ‘I knew my name was on that client list when it first showed up in London,’ Kane explained cheerily. ‘So, seriously … what would you have done other than make it disappear?’

  ‘In which case why was Laycock murdered and not you?’ Heck asked.

  ‘Well … duh!’ Again Kane looked amused, but also surprised at how little Heck knew. ‘Why would they kill their own super-grass? They need me now for the same reason they’ve always needed me. I’m their all-hearing ear. I especially won brownie points with them when I let them know Silver was getting close to spilling the beans during those prison interviews with Gemma. That was what finally brought them back to Blighty.’