The Burning Man

by Paul Finch

  ‘Bit of a mess,’ he said, thinking aloud.

  ‘Yeah, but we’ve got you here now, haven’t we?’ She beamed at him as she finished her cocktail.

  What exactly does she think I’m capable of? he wondered.

  As if sensing what he was thinking, she winked and added: ‘No pressure, Mark, eh?’

  ‘Let’s just say that Operation Wandering Wolf is a big one,’ he said, ‘and that we won’t be going anywhere else until we’ve closed these people down.’

  ‘To be honest, you’d be doing us more of a favour if you gunned them down.’ She snapped her handbag closed and stood up. ‘The whole lot of them.’

  Heck was initially unsure how to respond. That had been a fleeting comment, a throwaway, but again she’d packed it with intense feeling.

  ‘That’s … that’s not really the way we work these days,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ She circled around the table and headed away across the bar. ‘Worse luck though, eh, Mark? Worse luck.’

  It might have been an optical illusion created by the firelight, but fleetingly he’d fancied there were tears sparkling in her lashes.

  He watched her carefully as she sashayed towards the Ladies. The reservations he’d started feeling about this dalliance were now coming thick and fast. Kayla clearly had lots of baggage. It wouldn’t be unusual for persons of a certain age. But from what he was seeing here, she was having trouble controlling it – and that didn’t bode well.

  On reflection, there’d been something vaguely forced and desperate in her attitude ever since they’d become reacquainted. It had been odd, almost eerie, the intensity with which she listened when he’d spoken about his recent cases; the way she’d hung onto his every word. What was she seeing here? he wondered – the Mark Heckenburg she’d known and dated or some ludicrous fantasy version of that, the errant knight finally returned to sweep all her troubles away?

  She’d lost a succession of close ones, including Jess – a peaches-and-cream junior-school girl when Heck had last seen her, a sweet, innocent kid who’d adored her older sister. What story lay there he couldn’t imagine, but it must have been a monumental blow to the recently divorced, recently orphaned Kayla. No wonder she’d found religion. Though maybe even religion hadn’t been enough in this circumstance – and that could be the problem.

  If what Kayla needed was a crutch, he wasn’t the one to help her. He had his own issues, plus a job that had killed almost every relationship he’d ever had.

  It wasn’t the case that he was being selfish … Heck smiled broadly as she came prettily back across the room towards him. No, he definitely wasn’t being selfish. It was simply that he could never be right for her. His uncle’s thinly veiled warning outside The Coal Hole last Thursday night now made perfect sense.

  When she sat down again, he ordered them another round of drinks, non-alcoholic this time as they were both of them driving, and from here on he kept his body language stiff and neutral. Their chatter remained affectionate and fond, but Heck maintained as much coolness and distance as was possible while still being polite, refusing to laugh too loudly at her jokes, failing to explore the more emotional depths of their memories. What was more, Kayla seemed to sense this and even reciprocate, slowly adjusting her position so that she was facing him rather than sitting alongside him, steering clear of any subject with a softer or more personal edge. When ten o’clock came, and Heck decided that he was ready to go, she apparently felt the same.

  She allowed him to get her coat and put it on her. They walked outside arm in arm but in platonic fashion. Heck escorted her to a neat little Ford Fiesta parked in a nearby side-street. Here, she gave him a quick cuddle, pecked his cheek and produced her car key.

  ‘We need to see each other again while you’re up here,’ she chided him. ‘We’ve always been friends, and friends are a good thing – even old friends who you haven’t seen for ages. You can’t live a full and normal life without friends, no matter how much you think you can.’

  ‘Who says I think I can?’ he replied.

  ‘You can’t fool me, Mark Heckenburg. I know a lonely soul when I see one. Someone who’s buried themselves in their job to hide from all the other bits of their life. I’m an expert on that.’

  She kissed him again, lightly – another friendly peck. And then climbed into her car and closed the door. He stood back and watched as it rumbled to life, backed out of its parking space and drove away, wafts of exhaust billowing behind it.

  It was only a five-minute walk to the spot where Heck had left his own car. He was still pondering the fentanyl business as he trekked around a corner and approached his Megane – it would definitely be worth a note in the policy file – when he spotted the shadowy outlines of several figures standing by the nearest wall to the vehicle. His advance slowed as more and more of them emerged, deliberately stepping out into the pavement.

  At this late hour, the Sunday evening streets were all but deserted, but there were twelve of these guys at least, maybe more. One by one, they turned to face him – slowly fanning into a line that didn’t just cover the pavement but most of the narrow side-road as well, and of course blocked all access to his car.

  Heck halted ten yards short of them. The dim streetlighting was adequate to show him a bunch of faces he wouldn’t have wanted to meet during the day let alone late at night: hard, angular faces; faces that were cut, scarred, grizzled; that were scuffed like shoe-leather; that had been hammered on anvils. Faces that could be aged anywhere between thirty and sixty, they were so graven by time and violence. If their faces didn’t say enough, the weapons they now produced from under their hoodie tops or leather jackets or dark-khaki combat gear, did: pipes, bats, belts, chains, wrenches. Heck spotted one particularly ghastly implement – something that looked like a Rambo knife, a guarded hilt and nine or so inches of thick, shiny steel, its glinting razor-edge partly serrated. It was clamped in the hand of an outlandish-looking individual who strolled forward like some kind of unofficial foreman. He was of average-to-strong build and stood just under six feet, but bizarrely, given the distinct chill in the air, was bare-chested under a fleece-lined denim doublet, his naked arms long, apelike and muscular and covered with black cobweb tattoos which ran all the way down from his brawny shoulders to a pair of black leather gloves, and extended across the whole of his exposed torso. His hair was shaved into a skull-cap on top of his odd, bean-shaped head. His eyes were small and far apart, his nose broad and flat. When he smiled, a big wet mouth split him ear to ear, revealing the jumbled blades of shovel-like teeth.

  ‘So … Detective Heckenburg comes out to play, uh?’ he said in a strong Russian accent, which at first was tough to decipher. ‘You been a bad boy, detective. Now we deal with you.’

  Heck turned and ran, digging into his pocket for his phone. In a storm of stomping footfalls, the gang charged. He crossed King’s Parade at full speed. It was lined with pubs, bars and clubs, but most of them were now empty, others in the process of closing; there was no guarantee he’d find safety in one of those anyway – he’d seen enough barroom beatings in his time.

  A lone car had to swerve to avoid him, its horn yowling like a siren. Even then Heck’s phone proved elusive. He ran on. Directly ahead stood the entrance to a black alleyway. He didn’t break pace as he galloped down it.

  Vic Ship’s crew had finally arrived, and that posed two immediate questions.

  First of all, what did they want with him? Secondly, just how badly did they want it?

  That second question was answered in short order by the cacophonous echo of booted feet as they entered the passage in pursuit, bats raised, chains twirling. The fact they weren’t shouting and bawling was not encouraging. It meant they didn’t want anyone else to know they were here, and that, whether he stopped or not, his ass was most likely grass.

  Some fifty yards along, the alley ended in two gates facing each other. The one on the left was wooden and about seven feet tall. It looked as if it wa
s closed and locked. The other was a similar height, but made from metal bars. That might be locked too, but at least he could climb it.

  Heck leapt, slamming his hands, knees and shins into the iron lattice – only for the gate, which was old and corroded, to swing open. He jumped off again, dashed through and kicked it closed behind him – just as the first of the hoodlums reached out for him. It wasn’t the tattooed Russian, but a younger guy, nineteen at the most with a broad, athletic frame. The gate’s upper horizontal bar smashed into the bridge of his nose. The crack of cartilage was like a gunshot. The kid howled, gloved hands clasping a bloody fountain as he tumbled back among the feet of his confederates, one after another of whom fell on top of him.

  Heck shouldered the gate back into its frame, and yanked down on a stack of crated bottles standing to the left, which collapsed like a building, filling the gateway, glass exploding. Panting, he backed away. The gang drove their bodies forward like human battering-rams, slowly shoving the portal open again. Still, fleetingly, they were held back.

  Heck spun around. He was in some kind of pub yard. In the darkness he could just about discern its dimensions: it was small and triangular in shape. Pulling his phone out, he hit the reading light: paving stones glimmered wetly; a door led into the pub, but this too was closed. If he banged on it and yammered, help might come, but probably not in time. The only avenue of escape was the rear wall. It was ten feet up at least, but more crates were stacked against it, forming steps. With a grinding of wreckage, the gate behind him was forced open further. Still not having phoned for help, Heck spun back to face them. One had now got into the yard. He saw a cap tugged down on a spiky red thatch, red sideburns, a beak-like hatchet nose – and a blag-handle flying through the air. He dodged; it missed him by millimetres.

  They grappled, Heck driving a knee into the guy’s groin, clasping both fists together and slamming them down hard onto the back of his neck. In the process, his phone flirted off somewhere, its light instantly deactivated.

  ‘Shit!’ he swore.

  Another one came at him. Taller than the first, heavier set, with a walleye and horribly scarred cheeks. His weapon of choice was a chain, which he swept down from on high. Heck threw a defensive arm up. The chain wrapped around it. Heck used it to haul himself forward and head-butt the bastard in the teeth. But the chain-man barely wobbled, hitting Heck in the side of the neck with a forearm that felt like a sledgehammer. Heck replied with his right fist, bursting his opponent’s nose wide open. Still the guy came on, his good eye glistening like a silver coin as he drew a long, curved blade from under his coat.

  ‘Do it!’ a Russian voice hissed from the bodies pressed behind the gate. ‘Do him, kill him … gut him like a fish! A fucking fish, but leave some for the rest of us, da!’

  The chain-man – minus chain but armed with his blade – lurched forward again. Heck backed away, grabbed another crate of bottles and hefted it. It connected full with the guy’s blood-drenched visage, more glass breaking, wood exploding, dropping him in a heap. As the guy fell, Heck spun, clambered with speed up the teetering stacks and vaulted clean over the top of the high rear wall.

  Chapter 21

  The ten-foot distance between the top of the wall and the floor seemed further dropping down the other side than it had done climbing up.

  Heck hit dank flagstones, landing hard and awkwardly, the force of it driving his knees up into his diaphragm, which smashed the air from his body as though from a bellows. All he could do was roll there groggily, nauseated. But the shouting and swearing on the other side of the wall, and a clatter of heavy feet on bottle-filled crates, brought him back to reality. Swaying upright, he found himself in another dismal alley. He staggered along it, passing more gates and yards, further piles of bottles and cans, skips filled with rancid wrappers and waste food. Occasional security bulbs flared to life as he passed beneath them, but most often he was in near-darkness. The pursuing pack had got themselves under control to a degree, clamping down on the shouting and swearing, though the rumble of their feet suggested they were close behind, their chains and bats jingling and clunking on the flags.

  The thought encouraged him that if they’d wanted him dead, they’d have come with guns. But who said they hadn’t? And even if they didn’t want him dead, that wasn’t necessarily good news.

  In the depths of the urban night, there were plenty things worse than death.

  Ahead, he heard the rhythmic rattle and clank of a locomotive in motion, then the toot of a siren. He rounded a corner onto a cinder path, the left side of which was bounded by a high mesh fence. Beyond that lay railway lines.

  Bradburn North station was about four hundred yards ahead. He could see the lights and the distant, squat outline of its trackside buildings. The dark form of a freight train trundled slowly out of sight. But this path didn’t lead there. If Heck’s memory served, it headed in roughly that direction, before swinging back towards clubland, passing through an arched entry and connecting with another street, which at this time of night would be deserted. If Ship’s men were the professionals they reputedly were, they might already know about that and could have sent a posse to block that route. The most obvious way to throw them off was to cross the railway lines. Beyond those lay one or two additional nightclubs, but many of the plots over there were ‘awaiting redevelopment’, in other words empty industrial units whose former use was forgotten. There’d be trash-crammed alleys, broken-down doors, derelict rooms – hiding places galore. But getting over there wouldn’t be easy.

  Heck scaled the fence, the sound of multiple feet in the adjacent passage giving him added impetus. He swung his aching body over the top and all but dropped the full distance to the ground on the other side. But there his real problems began.

  Bradburn North was on the West Coast Mainline, but it wasn’t just a wayside stop. It functioned as a gateway station to the northern half of Britain. Various other railways converged on it. So there were eight sets of tracks between here and the other side. Crossing two high-speed rail links in the dark would be risky enough … but eight?

  A voice hissed behind him.

  Before he could turn, a gloved hand snatched his collar. Heck was yanked back against the mesh. Mustering all his strength, he lugged himself away, breaking the hold and turning. He saw crazy eyes in a gore-dabbled face; it was the kid whose nose he’d flattened earlier.

  He flattened it again, driving his fist through a gap in the mesh, making full contact.

  The kid was propelled backward. Meanwhile the rest of his friends rounded the corner, the cobweb-covered Russian leading the charge to the fence. Heck loped away across the tracks, looking neither left nor right. Behind him, the crew landed one by one from the fence-top and gave immediate chase, shouting again.

  The first train appeared when Heck was halfway over – right in front of him. Almost simultaneously, another appeared directly behind, heading in the opposite direction.

  Stunned by the cacophony of noise and light, the kaleidoscopic flicker of rushing windows, the glaring flash of sparking cables overhead, he flung himself down on the strip of oily gravel, a hot vortex of wind blasting over him and all along the perilously narrow passage. When both trains had gone, he rose dizzily to his feet, risking a backward glance as he stumbled on.

  The pursuing horde was spread out as they crossed over – a row of black lupine shapes coming on at full speed.

  The next train shot through as Heck approached the last of the railway lines, but again he barely saw it, just stopping short, his feet carving furrows in the grit. He threw himself down in a ball, more thunder and lightning filling his head, the roar of the siren fit to burst his eardrums. It hurtled past, carriage after carriage; the London to Glasgow Express maybe, or the Caledonian Sleeper, in which case it would take an age to clear, and all the time those bastards behind were getting closer. He turned and gazed across the strobe-lit tracks, to see that they too had been cut off by a train. It howled the other way
at astonishing speed, its piercing cry filling the night.

  Heck blinked hard. He’d so totally lost sight of his pursuers that for a hopeful second he fancied it had mowed them down, but then, through the blur of its wheels, he saw a forest of legs as the crew waited helpless on the other side.

  But, if nothing else, it had bought him extra time.

  He leaped up again, tottered on across the last line and blundered down an embankment choked with tangles of weed. At the bottom there was a brick wall – not especially high, about five feet, which after the previous obstacles was nothing whatsoever. He threw himself up and over it. There was more of a drop on the other side – about seven feet. Again he landed heavily; again he winded himself. But no pain no gain. He staggered down an alley beside another massive warehouse. It rose sheer into the darkness, yet Heck knew it from old. Formerly a siding depot for the old North West Railway company, it had been adapted into a nightclub in the 1980s, still functioned in that role and was known as the Uptown Emporium.

  If Heck had his geography right, he was on the north side of it. The so-called Iron Bridge lay on the south. This was a footbridge made completely from iron, with slatted sides. It spanned a low-lying car park, but on the other side of that multiple passages led off among flats and houses. If he could make it that far, he’d be home and away.

  He sidled around the vast structure, finally reaching its south side. A long, straight alley yawned in front of him, hemmed on the right by the club, but open to the elements on the left. He could follow this all the way – a distance of about a hundred yards – to the nightclub’s front doors. But long before, if he turned sharp left, he’d be onto the Iron Bridge.