No Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  COMING SOON FROM JONATHAN WOOD AND TITAN BOOKS

  Yesterday’s Hero (September 2014)

  Anti-Hero (May 2015)

  NO

  HERO

  JONATHAN WOOD

  TITAN BOOKS

  NO HERO

  Print edition ISBN: 9781781168066

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781781168134

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: March 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Jonathan Wood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2011, 2014 Jonathan Wood

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  TITANBOOKS.COM

  For Tami, Charlie, and Emma,

  who asked me to tell them stories

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

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  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

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  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  About the Author

  1

  It’s the pretty blond that completes the scene. No question. Pressed up against the side of a building? Check. Life-anddeath situation? Check. Significantly more sweat running down my back than really seems appropriate? Big check for that one. And yes, against all likelihood, there’s a pretty blond by my side. Check.

  Because now, after years of paperwork, after years of trawling through minutia, police work is finally fulfilling the promise Tango and Cash made to my impressionable teenage self.

  It is time for action.

  Except that, in the heat of the moment, my heart beating a sharp tattoo against my ribcage, I rather wish that Kurt Russell had taken the time to turn to the camera and explain the sheer bowel-loosening terror involved in doing this sort of thing. Because right now, even with a killer so close, even with a life on the line, paperwork has never seemed so appealing.

  SIX MONTHS EARLIER

  The office block is under construction—still in the skeletal stages—so it’s the stairs for Sergeant Swann and me. She just transferred in from Peterborough, lured by the Dreaming Spires, or by dreams of reprimanding drunk students, or some such, but it’s most definitely their loss. I’m huffing a bit by the time we reach the top, which is hardly likely to impress a pretty girl, but so far the most flirtatious thing I’ve managed to say to her is, “Good work, Swann,” so it’s not like I’ve got chances to damage.

  Plus, seriously, she’s not even thirty, so it’s about an eight-year age difference or something. And I’m her boss, and that sort of thing is totally frowned upon. And she is far too pretty to be the sort of thing that happens to someone like me.

  So, in conclusion, buying Starbucks and staring at corpses are likely to be the main activities we share together.

  Anyway, today’s corpse is lying in the middle of the concrete floor five stories up in the air. He’s in more parts than normal. Everything’s business as usual right up until his eyebrows, where someone’s given him a rather extreme haircut. Diagonal slice down through his skull. The scalp lies a few yards away. There’s quite a lot of blood.

  First off I think about how I’m quite glad I missed my alarm and therefore my breakfast this morning. Then I think about how, as crime scenes go, this one is actually pretty cool. Then I go back to my first thought because that’s a horrible thought to have when it’s real life. Then I think about how I really need to watch fewer movies.

  “Top o’ the morning to you both.” Doc O’Meaney is poking at the scrap of scalp with a ballpoint pen. He looks up and waves as we come up the stairs.

  Bit of a strange fish, Doc O’Meaney. We both joined Oxford police force around the same time and back then he had a cockney accent and no “O” in front of his name. Then there was a rather fateful trip to Ireland and he came back... well I heard someone call him born-again Irish. Right now he’s wearing a shamrock pin through his blue coveralls. Still, he’s a nice enough chap and handy with a scalpel, so it’s probably best not to mess with him too much.

  “So.” Swann looks at the body. “Heart attack, was it?”

  I laugh. Possibly too loudly.

  “Not so much the cause of death that’s a stumper on this one,” says the doc, “but more the cause of the cause of death, if you catch my drift.”

  “Come again?” I raise both my eyebrows. Never learned the trick of just lifting one.

  “Well.” Doc O’Meaney scratches the back of his head. “See it’s just the one slice we’ve got. Comes right through the ear—” he traces a line “—and through the hindbrain. Hits all the important lizard brain bits that control your heart and your lungs. All that good keeping-you-alive stuff.” He shrugs. “Insta-death. Just add machete.”

  “A machete?” Quite an exotic weapon of choice for a sleepy university town like Oxford.

  “Might have been. Might have been.” Doc O’Meaney chews his lip. “But, well, if it was... I just can’t imagine how it was done, see? I mean, the skull is tough cookie. And this was just one blow to cut through it. I mean, that’s a hell of a lot of force. Mucho newtons. More than a person could manage, I should think. And it’s a downward slice, so that means they’re taller than him, or above him.” He indicates the empty expanse of floor. “Best I can come up with is something mechanical. A machete and an industrial strength spring, perhaps. But...” He indicates the empty space.

  “Too empty,” Swann says.

&nb
sp; I nod. “No reason to come here. Off the beaten track. It was a Sunday, so no workmen.”

  “Someone looking for a quiet place?” says Swann.

  “To...?” I don’t have answers. I don’t have any vital clues. I don’t have a German with a suspicious accent and a bald cat standing in the corner of the room.

  “Meet someone? Avoid someone?” Swann’s guessing. It’s all just guessing now. Even if it’s the right guess we won’t know for a long time. Interviews. Statements. Forensics. The dreary machinery of detection.

  “Could have been a meeting,” says Doc O’Meaney, nodding at Swann.

  And it could be the right guess. Except... “Can’t really see a chap standing there,” I say, “while someone lines up the blow. Can you?”

  NOW

  Couldn’t see it then. Couldn’t see it for another six months. There were five more bodies to work with in that time, and I couldn’t see it once. No signs of restraint. No signs of drugs in the system. For a while we toyed with the idea that maybe the victim had been led there and hypnotized. Except... well, it was a bloody stupid idea really.

  Still, I can’t help but wonder now if it was a failure of imagination on my part. Because now a life may be on the line and all I can do is imagine things: great tracts of machinery hastily assembled; a gleaming machete blade, tarnished by only a few traces of blood; a few hacked-at hairs; a coiled spring; a trip wire; me sneaking around this corner and the sharp tug of it on my ankle; a snag, a stumble, a swish... Swann screams. Or... well, maybe she just shrugs and thinks she always knew her bloody awful boss would come to a sticky end.

  I’m frozen. I can’t move for the imagined possibilities. I’ve become the inverse of my dreams—a man of inaction.

  Insta-death. Jesus.

  Behind me I hear Swann shifting her weight. “You planning on moving any time soon, Boss?” she whispers. “I sort of had plans that didn’t involve standing around and freezing my tits off quite so much.”

  THREE HOURS AGO

  “One more time,” I say.

  Swann sighs loudly.

  “You don’t have to stay,” I say. Everyone else buggered off down the pub a few hours ago. It’s Friday night. The weekend beckons. “No need for you to suffer just because I have police officer OCD.”

  I open a folder, start leafing through notes. Bank records. School reports. Employment certificates. Coroner’s report. Minutia. Details. And the devil is hiding in them somewhere. Just need to find him and arrest him.

  “Nah.” Swann picks up the next folder in the pile. “One more time.”

  I smile. She’s a good cop.

  “Six victims,” she says, shutting down my grin. “Six months. No pattern that we can see. Time between killings varies from ten days to five and a half weeks. Both male and female victims. Still no pattern. Ages spread between twenty-eight—”

  My eyes flick up to the whiteboard, to the photo of that first man we found, back before his head became a two-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  “—to sixty-three.”

  My eyes travel to another photo—a serious-looking woman, all perm and pearls.

  “That leaves us with two links.” There’s a tiredness in her voice as she says it. Because both are bloody useless. “One—they’re all newcomers to Oxford. Two—they’re all independently wealthy. Minimum bank balance of...” She consults a Post-it note.

  “Eight hundred and thirty-seven thousand pounds,” I quote.

  “Eight hundred and thirty-seven thousand pounds,” she confirms. She looks at me. “Good chance you need to get out a little more, Boss.”

  I shrug. I’d defend myself except she’s got a point. Details. Always with the details.

  She smiles, but maybe that’s just to soften the blow.

  “So,” I say, “rich bastard, newcomers.”

  “Money scam,” she says. “Got to be money.”

  “Except there’s no angle,” I say. “No profit.”

  “A very bad financial scam?”

  “Worst scammer ever.” I smile.

  Swann is serious though. “So he doesn’t like rich people,” she says. “Some chip on his shoulder.”

  “Whole bag of chips.” Still no smile. “What else do we know about the killer?” I ask.

  “Fuck all.” Swann turns her back on me, fists curled. Sharp white knuckles on delicate hands.

  I’m wandering off-topic...

  So I stand there, watch her frustration, trying to think of something to say, to diffuse it all. Except she’s totally justified. Hers is the reasonable reaction.

  “Go home,” I say after a while. She pushes her hands through her hair. “Sleep on it. Do the sensible thing.”

  “We should both go home,” she says.

  For a second I almost ask if she means together.

  She doesn’t mean together.

  She...?

  She picks the folder back up. “He always kills them on construction sites,” she says.

  My hopes fade. Well, my hopes take a kick in the nuts and fall over.

  “Always at night. Always...” Her hand rises unconsciously to the back of her head. She makes a face.

  “No physical evidence. Never the same site twice.” I sit down. Put my head down. Think. I need to bloody think.

  “Money and construction sites,” Swann says. “Got to be the money.”

  And something clicks in my head. Something about absolutes that I’ve learned to distrust. “What if it’s not?” I say.

  “Come again?” says Swann.

  “Well...” Gears are beginning to churn in my brain. “We’ve pretty much cavity-searched cash as a motive. Nothing doing. But what if it’s the construction sites?”

  “But that doesn’t even make any sense, Boss.”

  Which is a fair point really. But... “What else have we got at this point?” I ask.

  “Sod it,” she says.

  We hit the paperwork. And an hour later I’ve got it. Right there in my hands. The devil himself. Hiding right where I knew he’d be.

  “Electricity,” I say. “They were all having the electricity put in.” And it feels like electricity, running right through me. An actual bloody break. And it may be a tedious job sometimes, but in moments like this it’s worth it.

  “Someone in city planning?” Swann asks.

  “Let’s stick with the sites for now,” I say. “Time to make calls. Find out where the electric is being put in, and if there’s nowhere, where the next place is.”

  Finding out at eight on a Friday night which construction site is having the electric put in is not the easiest thing in the world. Swann ends up on the phone with a lot of drunk foremen making a lot of wrong assumptions about why an unknown lady might be calling them. One of them kindly offers to put her electric in. Still, the words “Police” and “Department” stop him before he goes too far.

  Finally, at ten-thirty, we have it. A growing business park to the east end of Cowley Road. Started putting the wires in on Wednesday.

  We stare at each other.

  “We should call someone,” Swann says.

  She’s right. I know she’s right. But suddenly this is it. This is the moment. I can almost hear the wheels of a car squealing. I can almost hear the synthesizer start to play. The guitar solo begin. This is a chance. To be a man of action. To do something I can be proud of.

  “There’s no time,” I say. It feels like an out-of-body experience as I say the words. This is it. “Let’s get the car.”

  NOW

  I’m an idiot. I’m a little man kneeling out in the cold, gripping a baton. No hero.

  Swann makes an irritated noise behind me. The pretty blond. And she may not be in a cocktail dress. She may not have a hairstyle two decades out of fashion. But it’s as close as I’m ever going to get. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to heroism. And suddenly that is enough for me to put one foot forward.

  I wince as I do it. I wait for the trip-wire’s line of pressure, for the blade, f
or death.

  “What are you waiting for?” Swann is losing patience with me.

  Another step. Another. And still nothing. I’m still alive. A fact that brings a small amount of confidence with it. More steps. We’re in.

  I sweep my flashlight round in a broad arc. I hold it out wide. No need to advertise the location of my vital organs. The light picks out architecture that’s become familiar—a concrete framework, interior walls sketched out in plumbing and nascent electrical work. Round and round I go. My baton is sweat-slick in my hand.

  Nothing. No movement.

  I flick my flashlight at the stairs. Swann’s light follows mine. Up we go. One of us on each side of the wall. At the top we go wide. Another sweep. Stepping lightly toward shadowed corners.

  Still nothing.

  Another flight of steps. Another empty floor. My heart is beating heavy and hard. My breath is shallow. I have to stop from jumping at the shadows I’m making. Swann is steely-eyed, her flashlight gripped like a pistol.

  And then... I hold up a hand for Swann to be still. I want to be sure. I close my eyes, try to calm my breathing. And yes. There it is again. I hear it again. A sound from above. Like metal across concrete.

  I look at Swann. And she’s heard it too. We move together. Tight and fast. Fourth floor. And the noise is still above us. More definite now. More certain. We move to the steps. A definite clang. Metal on metal.

  I pause. Swann, already a step above me, turns, looks at me.

  “What?” she mouths.

  I’m thinking. My imagination at work again. He’s got someone up there. He’s setting something up. Some part of his ritual. And when he’s disturbed... He will not go gentle into that good night. He’ll resist. And he’s fast and he’s strong. He has to be. Or he has a gun. Probably a gun. And Swann is the obvious target. Take out the girl, make the escape.

  No. It shouldn’t go down like that.

  “I go first,” I whisper. “You stay down here. If he gets past me, he thinks he’s home free. But you’re here. You get the drop on him if I can’t.”

  She hesitates, her face slowly curling up. “Wait...” she says. “I don’t think...”