Dead Heat hc-7

by Nick Oldham

  Dead Heat

  ( Henry Christie - 7 )

  Nick Oldham

  Nick Oldham

  Dead Heat

  Prologue

  He had just rolled the body into the shallow grave when the headlights hit him. The main beam sliced through the trees like a strobe, catching him in their glare, then moved on. Initially he froze, spade in hand. Then as the lights passed him he dropped quickly into the grave on top of the body.

  He knelt on the dead man’s stomach, keeping low and peering over the edge of the grave. The body hissed, groaned and twisted underneath the weight of his knees and something glugged obscenely out of its mouth. But this did not affect Verner. After all, he had killed the man in the first place and brought him to this deserted spot, where his intention was to quicklime and bury the body.

  Yet now it transpired that it was not such a deserted spot after all.

  Verner cursed, keeping his head down, annoyed with himself for not having heard the vehicle approach in the first place. But, to be fair, he had been digging hard — concentrating, sweating, his heart and ears pounding with the physical exertion of that — having just dragged the body of a fully grown man twenty metres through the trees before depositing it into the newly prepared resting place. His mind had been fixed on the task in hand, so it was not impossible for a car to sneak up without him knowing until the last moment. It was something he would have to think about for the future. It had never happened before and he was damned if it would ever happen again.

  The vehicle, which had a quiet engine, was on the hard-packed track which curved through the forest. It was being driven some fifty metres into the trees beyond where Verner was hiding on top of the corpse. It moved slowly and Verner caught the occasional glimpse of its bodywork reflecting light from the half-moon hanging up in the clear night sky. The headlights were doused and the car slowed to a halt, then the engine was killed. Silence returned to the forest. Nothing seemed to be moving.

  At first, when the headlights surprised him, Verner assumed that the appearance of the car was just a rotten coincidence. Someone else was up in the woods, up to something. That was all. A courting couple, maybe. Possibly poachers.

  But as the car stayed parked there on the track, Verner began to feel differently about it. He blinked and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Instinct was now telling him he had been followed, or perhaps the man on whose corpse he was now balanced had been followed. Whoever was in the car was either looking for him, or the dead man, or both.

  Car doors opened, were closed quietly. Voices shushed and whispered to each other. A torch beam came on, went off.

  Two men, Verner worked out. His hand gripped the spade tighter. He slightly adjusted his position on the body, causing wind to be passed. Verner screwed up his nose and wafted the smell away with distaste. Then he regained control of his breathing and heart rate.

  At least whoever it was had not spotted him in the headlights, that much was obvious. They did not know where he was and that gave him the advantage. Then he remembered his own car parked deep amongst the trees to his left, about a hundred metres away from where the intruding car and its occupants had stopped. Verner knew that a quick search would easily reveal the spot where he had driven off the track, then the car would soon be discovered. They would see the blood mess inside it, where much of the dead man’s brains were still splodged on the passenger door and window. It would be an easy further step to find the drag marks made by the dead man’s heels all the way to the grave. If they had anything about them, Verner knew they would soon be here.

  His mind whizzed as it weighed up the options.

  He could slide off into the woods and get away. That would be an easy enough thing to do, but it was not something he could realistically think of doing. His job had only been half-completed. There were too many forensic links left behind in the vehicle. His fingerprints were all over it. No doubt there was some DNA lurking in there too. Very messy and unprofessional. Not Verner’s scene at all. He was paid good money to get jobs done — to kill people and dispose of them without them ever being found again — and, just as importantly, without him ever being connected to the disappearance.

  Shit. This was not a good situation to be in.

  Suddenly he was feeling quite vulnerable.

  One of the men called out, ‘Let’s wander this way.’

  Verner expected a male response — but it was a woman’s voice which replied.

  ‘OK.’

  So — not two men after all. Verner had been wrong. Perhaps it was a courting couple after all and all they wanted was somewhere to consummate their relationship. Verner did not allow himself to relax, though.

  He fidgeted on the dead man’s stomach, causing the corpse to burp quite loudly into the night. Verner touched a finger to the man’s lips, shushing him gently.

  Torch beams played down the track as the two people walked along it. Occasionally their lights flashed into the trees. They were now almost at where Verner had driven his 4x4 offroad into the trees.

  He held his breath.

  They stopped, drew close to each other and whispered. Verner could not hear what was being said, but their words seemed to be urgent, rushed. Verner’s eyebrows knitted together. One of the two people broke away and jogged back to their car, opened it, reached in and then returned to their companion down the track.

  Verner heard the next words as clear as a bell.

  It was the woman speaking. ‘DC Coniston to Control. . DC Coniston to Control. . receiving?’ There was a pause whilst a reply was awaited. Then she said the words once more. ‘DC Coniston to Control. .’ Still nothing came back. ‘Shit, the bloody things are still not working properly,’ she said, ‘or this must be a real blackspot here.’

  Only then did Verner exhale as he said to himself, You’d better believe it, babe. This is a real blackspot for you.

  So they were cops. And they could not radio for assistance. Aah, poor little mites. How very sad. All alone in the spooky dark forest with a big bad wolf watching them hungrily.

  Verner watched their torches progress down the track, then they stopped again. He knew they had found the point where he had driven off, where the grass had been flattened and his tyre tracks disappeared into the woods. This, he thought, is where things will turn interesting. But he knew that whatever happened from this moment on, the two cops could not be allowed to live.

  Earlier that same day. .

  The surveillance had not gone well that evening. It was one of those jobs when it seemed that if anything could go wrong, it did.

  The team came on duty at 4 p.m., less than a day after another surveillance operation which had lasted four solid days and taken them from one end of the country and back again. So they were all, if not exhausted, pretty well worn out and in need of a longer break. . which was not a good start in itself.

  Not one of the team moaned or complained though. They all loved the job they did. It was exciting and rewarding at its best, though more often than not they were faced with hours or even days of tedium when nothing was happening, when targets were not moving. But even during these periods, it was fun because they made it so.

  They assembled at the small, discreet office they used as their base on a business park in Prestwich, Greater Manchester. Each grabbed their personal-issue body radio and that was when the first problem of the tour manifested itself. As they tested the radios, they crackled with static and sometimes just stayed plain dead. There were a few frowns within the team, but no one really thought anything of it. They assumed that when they got out on the road, the radio signal would probably be OK.

  There were six police officers making up the team. Five were dressed in casual-to-scruffy clothing, not one of them remotely res
embling a cop. Even the ones who looked like cops when they first joined the unit no longer looked anything like. They had grown and developed into their roles, become cool, laid back, able to melt into any background.

  The sixth member of the team was in his motorcycle leathers.

  Detective Constable Jo Coniston was the newest member of the surveillance unit, two months into the job following many weeks of extensive training. She sat at the table in the briefing room, mug of black coffee in hand, a tiny smirk of satisfaction playing on her lips.

  She was ecstatically happy.

  She had been a police officer for just over four years, all that time spent as a uniformed bobby on the beat. It had been a tough, exciting time at the sharpest end of policing imaginable, working the cauldron that was Moss Side, Manchester. The posting had opened Jo’s eyes to a world she had only ever imagined existed in horror nightmares. A world in which a shooting occurred almost daily, where drugs, violence and intimidation ruled a frightened community and where the police could only hope to keep a lid on things — on a good day.

  She had been first on the scene of four murders, two of which had been innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. She had administered first aid at six other shootings and stabbings and had made one arrest for murder during which the suspect assaulted her remorselessly with a hammer in his attempt to escape. But she held on tight until assistance came. She received a Chief Constable’s Commendation for that effort, plus four days in hospital suffering from concussion and a broken wrist.

  Four solid years of it made her crave for a change of scene. When she got wind that the Surveillance Branch were looking for female applicants, she put in a report and, following a tough initial test, she was accepted as a member.

  Jo sat quietly at the table, listening to the quiet banter of her teammates, content in her choice of career move. A couple of years following villains around the country would do her very nicely, thank you, she thought. Then she would apply for a job on CID after she had taken her Sergeant’s promotion examination. Professionally, the next few years were pretty much mapped out in her mind. It had been a good decision to join the police and she was forever thankful that her mother had dragged her to a careers convention where her imagination had been fired up by a detective on the police stand. His lurid tales of life as a cop had totally won her over.

  In personal terms, though, she was not as clear. A slight frown came on her face as she thought about her most recently ditched boyfriend. Then she shrugged it off and the smile returned to her pretty face. She looked up from her brew as the team leader, Sergeant Al Major breezed into the room, a set of brown files under his arm and a big smile on his face.

  ‘Hi, people,’ he said as brightly as his personality. ‘Everyone well?’

  The small talk had ceased on Major’s arrival. The team focused on him and the job in hand.

  ‘You may be surprised to learn,’ Major announced, ‘that today we are back on the trail of our old friend and foe, Andy Turner.’

  A groan chorused from the team.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Major said, holding his hands up in defeat, ‘but one day we’re gonna get this bastard bang-to-rights, if you young-uns will pardon the rather traditional turn of phrase.’ Major began to pass out the folders, one to each team member. Jo took hers eagerly and opened it. Yes! she thought. She had been itching to get involved in an operation which targeted Andy Turner, a man who boasted that the law would never touch him as long as he lived.

  As ever, Al Major’s briefing was precise and detailed. It took half an hour, gave some of the past history of their target, Andy Turner, and brought the team up to date with the latest intelligence available on him.

  Turner was only a young man, twenty-five years old, yet he had established himself in certain parts of Manchester and Lancashire as a ruthless operator, very wild and unpredictable in his approach; a man with no conscience whatsoever. He was no master criminal in that he was not discreet with his actions or lifestyle, nor was he particularly wary of the law. Cops did not frighten him. Courts did not even make him think twice. He had tried to mow down one policeman who tried to arrest him a few years earlier, had gone on the run and been arrested in Spain when he tried the same with a Spanish cop. On his subsequent extradition he had been jailed for two years and let it be known at his trial that he would gladly kill any cop who got in his way. On his release from prison, the Crown Court judge who had sentenced him had been killed in a hit-and-run car accident. It was never proved, though it was strongly suspected, that Turner had murdered him.

  He had laid low for some time following this and intelligence reports had him dotted around Europe, particularly in Spain and Portugal, establishing contacts and dealing drugs and guns. He disappeared from that scene after a German drug dealer was found dead with two bullets in his brain. Again, Turner was suspected, but there was no actual evidence to link him to the crime.

  And now he was back on home turf, beginning to expand a drug-dealing network in north Manchester and into Lancashire.

  His methods were brutal, but such was his cold-blooded reputation, that no one would ever challenge or testify against him and very few would risk informing on him to the cops.

  The police wanted to nail him — badly.

  He was very surveillance-conscious though. All previous operations had been binned, but now they were going for him again with the intention of building up a conspiracy case against him.

  ‘OK, guys ’n’ gals,’ Al Major said as his briefing drew to a close, ‘that’s about the long and short of it. Let me reiterate: this man is very, very dangerous. He could well be carrying a firearm. At the very least he’ll have a flick-knife on him and if something goes wrong and you’re unfortunate enough to come face to face to face with him and he makes you as a cop, he’ll have a go at you. Be wary,’ he finished.

  Jo Coniston went into the admin office and picked up a set of keys for the battered Nissan she and her partner would be using that evening.

  ‘Hey — got there before me,’ a voice exclaimed behind her. It was her partner, Dale O’Brien, another newish member of the Surveillance Branch. Jo liked him well enough, but she did not really believe he had what it took to be a good surveillance officer. He seemed to have very little patience, did not enjoy ‘sitting’ on things, always wanted to be on the move, delving and probing. Jo gave him another couple of months before he decided to transfer into something more appropriate, such as pro-active CID work.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, teasing him by dangling them, then whisking the keys out of the flexing grasp of his long fingers. ‘I’ll drive — at least for the first few hours.’ She almost said, ‘The first half of the tour of duty,’ but checked herself because these days a normal tour of duty was not eight, ten or even twelve hours. Fourteen was the usual length and there was no way she wanted to drive for seven solid hours.

  O’Brien shrugged happily. ‘OK.’ He spun out of the office, nearly colliding with Al Major, who was on his way in. ‘Oops, sorry, Sarge,’ he said, twisting away and curling out through the door.

  Major watched him go with a paternal shake of the head. Then he looked at Jo.

  She coughed and made to leave behind her partner. Major’s hand shot across in front of her. His fingers gripped the doorjamb tightly, preventing her from leaving. His face, usually bright and open, darkened like a hurricane. His mouth tightened.

  Jo’s heart rate upped dramatically at the same time as her stomach sank. She had wanted to avoid this.

  ‘Let me out, please,’ she said quietly, her voice quavering.

  ‘Bitch,’ he hissed. He checked over his shoulder. No one was close by. ‘You shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Alan, please.’

  Major said nothing, but stared dangerously at her. For a moment she thought he was going to hit her. She knew that if they had been anywhere else than on police premises, he would have done.

&nb
sp; ‘Excuse me, boss.’ Dale O’Brien had returned unexpectedly. He ducked under Major’s arm-barrier. ‘Forgot my notepad.’ He came into the office and Major’s face returned to it’s normal, affable self.

  ‘. . So,’ Major said, as though he and Jo were having a work-related conversation, ‘any problems on that point, let’s chat.’ He winked at her in a friendly way and made his way down the corridor to the supervisor’s office.

  Jo exhaled a lungful of air.

  ‘You ready yet?’ O’Brien demanded of her.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ She pulled herself together. ‘Here.’ She tossed him the car keys, which he caught against his chest. ‘You drive. I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘Oh brill,’ he said with a wide grin.

  One of the reasons why people were terrified of Andrew Turner was that he believed in sorting things out himself. He described the drug barons or top-class criminals who hired goons to do their dirty work for them as ‘shitless wonders’, holding such people in contempt. They had no real bottle or courage. Not like him. Turner had the ‘real shit’ to do things himself, to get his hands bloodied and, where necessary, put his own forefinger around a trigger and pull the thing backwards and make a big bang. That was why he believed he stood apart from all the others, all the so-called hardmen.

  Andy Turner had the ‘shit’.

  And that evening he was on his way to show someone just how powerful his shit was.

  Turner had recently moved out of Manchester to docklands in Preston. He owned an apartment overlooking King George Dock, now a marina full of yachts, pleasure boats and retail outlets. The move out to the sticks was not through any personal fear on his behalf, because Turner was afraid of no one, but just through a bit of common sense. Cop-wise the innards of the city of Manchester were becoming a little too hot for him. He needed somewhere cool where he could chill, and Preston suited him fine. He could be on the motorway within minutes and in Manchester in just over half an hour, so he now commuted as and when required. Quite often he did not go into the city for days on end, doing much of his wheeling and dealing over mobile phones and arranging his meetings at pubs, restaurants and hotels outside the environs of Manchester. He tried to keep his visits to the city to a minimum because he knew that if the cops sighted him, he would either be harassed or surveilled.