by Nick Oldham
Whisper covered the gap in a movement so flowing and precise that the next thing Kovaks knew he was on his back. Whisper’s huge paw-like hands were around his throat, squeezing, and Kovaks’ eyes were bulging in their sockets.
‘ Fuckin’ liar,’ Whisper said. ‘Fuckin’ liar, fuckin’ liar…’
His breath washed into Kovaks’ nostrils. He began to smash the back of Kovaks’ head repeatedly on the hard tiled floor.
Kovaks hit Whisper as hard as he could with a fist. It connected with the left side of his head by his ear and had no effect on the big man other than to encourage him to tighten his grip.
The prison warders moved in to assist. They tried to prise Whisper off, but he shrugged them away as easily as a man removing his coat.
Kovaks’ vision began to distort. He felt faint. He knew he was going to die here. Strangled, head smashed to pieces in a fuckin’ prison. His ears throbbed. Vaguely he heard an alarm sounding somewhere — a whoop-whoop noise. There were shouts. Screams. Footsteps running. He began to lose consciousness.
Then Whisper’s head was yanked violently back.
He gave a yelp of surprise.
Kovaks’ swimming vision took in the huge form of Sue hovering above him.
A big fist slammed down like a sledgehammer into Whisper’s upturned face. His nose squelched and burst like a tomato. The fist smashed down again. Whisper released his grip on Kovaks’ throat. His hands went up to protect his face.
The door flew open and two more warders ran into the room, batons drawn.
Now, four against one, even Whisper was defeated. He was bundled off his victim in a shower of blows, punches and kicks.
‘ You pack a good punch,’ Kovaks croaked with admiration to Sue.
‘ I had to do something,’ she said modestly, ‘otherwise he’d’ve killed you. Those guards were useless.’
‘ I owe you one.’
‘ My pleasure,’ she said meekly. She looked at the swollen knuckles of her right hand. ‘I broke his nose, y’know.’
‘ You did good,’ Kovaks agreed.
They were sitting in a cubicle at the Institute’s hospital, a curtain drawn across for the sake of privacy. Kovaks had been treated and his throat had a bandage wrapped around it. No permanent damage had been done, according to the doctor. His voice was almost gone but in a few days, he was assured, everything would be fine again. Meanwhile he’d been advised not to speak too much and eat only soup and scrambled eggs.
The doctor drew the curtain back.
‘ Whisper wants to talk to you,’ he announced.
Kovaks and Sue exchanged a surprised glance.
‘ Where is he?’ she asked.
‘ We’ve just admitted him. He’s down on the ward, first bed on the left.’ The doctor pointed.
‘ How is he?’ Sue enquired.
‘ He’ll live.’
Curtains had also been drawn around Whisper’s bed, denying the other occupants of the ward a view of the prison hard man beaten to a pulp. Kovaks and Sue ducked in and stood next to the bed.
Whisper looked bad. A real mess.
Other than the facial injuries inflicted by Sue, the warders had really gone to town on him. Obviously a lot of grudges had been exorcised. His left arm, wrist and all five fingers were broken; he had several broken ribs, as well as a smashed collarbone and a shattered kneecap. His face and upper body were a mass of welts, cuts, bruises and swellings. Several of the deeper cuts had been stitched and blood dribbled out of them onto the pillow and sheets.
His eyes were closed. His left had swollen up like a boxer’s, round and big as a tennis ball, the colour purple. The other was merely bruised. He opened this one and peered sideways at his visitors.
‘ You wanted to see us,’ Kovaks managed to whisper hoarsely.
‘ Can’t hear you,’ the big man said.
Kovaks leaned forwards, his mouth close to Whisper’s ear.
‘ You wanted to see us.’
‘ Yeah… why you whisperin’?’
‘ Some bastard did my throat in.’
Whisper chuckled and winced with the pain which arced through his chest like an electric shock. When he’d reached equilibrium he said, ‘Is it true — what you said?’
‘ It’s true.’
‘ Fuck!’
‘ Help us,’ Kovaks’ voice grated painfully, ‘and we can help her, Whisper. We’ll get her in a re-hab scheme, set her up somewhere else and give her some cash to start a new life with Cassie — away from Corelli. ‘
‘ Nobody gets away from Corelli,’ said Whisper, dismissing the idea. Then, ‘But she’s a good girl. She deserves a break. Will you do what you say?’
‘ I will,’ said Kovaks, nodding.
‘ If you don’t, I’ll kill you when I get out of here… after I’ve killed Corelli. ‘
‘ I said I will,’ said Kovaks, believing him.
‘ So what d’you want?’
Kovaks held out his hand. Sue gave him the photos.
‘ Who is this guy?’ Kovaks held the prints so Whisper could see them without having to move. ‘We need to know — urgently.’
Whisper looked hard at the photographs with his good eye. His breathing was painful and laboured. The analgesics were only just beginning to take effect.
‘ Why?’ he asked.
‘ We think he killed a lotta people — including a busload of kids — on Corelli’s orders.’
Whisper winced. ‘I don’t know him.’
Kovaks stood up, disappointed. ‘Shit.’
‘ I mean I don’t know him personally, but I know he’s Corelli’s top hired killer. Jimmy Hinksman, that’s his name. Corelli keeps him pretty much tucked away. Talk is he used to be Special Forces but got kicked out for some girl trouble. That’s all I know about him. Real mystery figure. Ahhh…’ He gasped as he adjusted his position slightly. He waited a moment for the pain to settle.
Someone walked down the ward and stopped near to Whisper’s bed. Kovaks heard the sounds of the doctor’s voice murmuring in muted conversation. A female voice replied — a nurse. Footsteps walked past the bed. Kovaks returned his attention to Whisper.
‘ I only seen him once and I got the evil eye when I asked who he was. Real arrogant bastard. Did he do Danny Carver?’ asked Whisper.
‘ How the hell did you know that?’ said Kovaks, taken aback.
‘ News travels fast — even in here.’
‘ Where do we find him?’
Whisper shook his head slightly. ‘In America he could be anywhere. But if he’s in England, I know somewhere you could try.’
Chapter Eight
Donaldson perched on the Allocator’s desk in the incident room, a phone cradled between his left ear and shoulder. ‘Hey, Joe,’ he was saying, ‘you done good, pal. I’m real sorry about your injuries.’
The fax machine in the corner of the room beeped into life. ‘It’s coming through now,’ Donaldson said into the phone.
At the machine, Karen Wilde and Ken McClure stood bleary-eyed.
It was 7.30 a.m. They had worked through the night interviewing the man arrested at Lytham the evening before. They had pushed to the limits allowed by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, initially denying him access to legal representation in the hope of making a quick breakthrough. They had also broken the rules during the course of the interview — by their oppressive and intimidatory conduct, but in the end they had nothing on him. His driving licence had either been lost or stolen but he didn’t know where or when. They dusted him down at 5 a.m., promised to pay for any damage caused at his home and sent him on his way without an apology. They hadn’t been in the mood to apologise to anyone.
As they packed up, the phone rang.
Kovaks.
The first sheet came off the fax. It read, With the compliments of Joe Kovaks, FBI, Miami, Florida, US. There was a little photo of him beneath the wording. Karen groaned as she saw it. Under her breath she muttered, ‘Another idiotic Yank.’
The next one came through with excruciating slowness. It was so damn slow that Karen was sure the machine had gone on the blink. She tapped her toes angrily. When the printing was complete, she grabbed the paper and read it several times before handing it to McClure.
She could hardly contain herself.
McClure read it out loud: ‘Fingerprints identified from military file as belonging to James Clarkson Hinksman.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Got the bastard.’
Page three came off the machine. It was the photo from Corelli’s file, showing the big Italian and Hinksman at a restaurant.
Page four showed an old photograph of Hinksman, passport size, dressed in a military uniform. Page five contained brief details of a military career which had come to a halt four years previously when he was dishonourably discharged following a court martial. The next four pages were an expanded summary of his service record. The last page listed all the murders of prostitutes that the fingerprints linked him with.
There was nothing else.
‘ At least now we know who we’re looking for,’ said Karen, ‘although we haven’t got a clue where he is. He may no longer be in this country.’
‘ Perhaps we should get his mug splattered all over the media,’ McClure suggested.
‘ We will.’ Karen turned to Donaldson. He was still on the phone, scribbling something on a scrap of paper.
‘ Thank your colleague for me,’ she said. ‘He’s done a fantastic job.’
Donaldson finished writing. ‘My new boss says thanks, Joe. Me too.
Great job.’
He hung up and, smiling broadly, picked up the fax of Corelli and Hinksman. ‘I knew I’d seen that face before. We have literally thousands of photos of Corelli but I remembered this one. I think I did quite well.’
‘ I do too,’ Karen conceded with more warmth than she intended.
‘ So, we’ve got a real top hit man on our hands. Now, what’s all this nonsense about not knowing where our Mr Hinksman is?’ He held up his scrap of paper. ‘He’s on vacation in Blackpool.’ He attempted a poor Lancashire accent. ‘Land of cloth caps, donkey rides and mucky postcards, tha’ knows, lass.’
‘ Give me that!’ laughed Karen. She snatched the paper. She read it and punched the air with a fist. ‘Yes, YES, YES!’
Joe Kovaks leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers behind his head. He chuckled in disbelief, but consoled himself that even the best brains sometimes failed to see simple solutions to complex problems. He couldn’t believe they’d never checked the military file, yet all it had taken was the press of a button on Damian’s magic fingerprint machine and — hey presto! Mr James Clarkson Hinksman, Mafia killer extraordinary, was exposed. Jeez, how could they all have been so dumb, he thought. That bastard could have been fried over a year ago. If that harpy Lisa Want ever got hold of this, she’d have a field day exposing the inefficiency of the FBI.
He sighed at the stupidity, but wasn’t too upset because it wasn’t normal procedure to cross-check the military files.
Just then, Sue appeared in the doorway, virtually filling it. She’d just showered in the ladies’ rest-room and changed into a jogging outfit which she kept in her locker. At least she would smell all right for a while, Kovaks thought cruelly, but then regretted it. She’d more than proved her worth today.
‘ Good result,’ he said pleasantly, his voice carefully low.
‘ Yep,’ she agreed.
‘ Good ole Damian. Workaholic, that guy.’
‘ I like him,’ she admitted.
Kovaks took a deep breath and consulted his watch. ‘Look, I know it’s late and all that, but would you like a drink on the way home? Just a quickie, by way of celebration.’
‘ I’d love one,’ Sue said, ‘but… I’ve made other arrangements.’ As if on cue, Damian appeared at the office door. Hair combed, jacket brushed, tie straight. Like a nervous teenager on a first date.
‘ Damian’s offered to take me home,’ Sue said apologetically.
‘ Raincheck?’
Relieved somewhat, Kovaks nodded. ‘Raincheck.’
Sue danced as lightly as was possible towards Damian, breasts bouncing uncontrollably, lighting up Damian’s eyes with lust. She gave Kovaks a salacious wink, then disappeared with the slightly built fingerprint expert, arm threaded through his.
‘ Rather you than me, pal,’ Kovaks said under his breath.
As he pulled on his jacket the phone chirped. It was the switchboard operator. ‘Joe?’
‘ I’m just on my way home.’
‘ Dade County Correctional Institute left a message for you. You went to see one of the inmates earlier.’
‘ Yeah?’ Kovaks’ stomach dropped.
‘ He’s been knifed to death.’
It was 11 a.m.
The unmarked police car raced at 120 mph down the motorway towards Blackpool. The driver was a PC from the motor driving school. McClure and Donaldson sat silently in the back of the car rereading the faxes from America. Karen Wilde sat in the front passenger seat, brooding, staring intently ahead. Angry.
The confrontation she’d recently undergone with Crosby and Fanshaw-Bayley had set the whole thing back several hours, although in the end she’d got her own way and a firearms team had been deployed to Blackpool for a briefing.
After receiving the information from America, Karen had decided to see Crosby face to face to ask for a team this time. She walked straight into his office. Fanshaw-Bayley was also there.
‘ Ahhh,’ said Crosby looking up from his desk. ‘I was just about to summon you, miss.’
‘ I need authorisation for a firearms team,’ she began breathlessly.
‘ We think we’ve located-’
Crosby slashed his right hand through the air as if he was executing a karate chop, stopping her in mid-sentence.
‘ You deliberately disobeyed my orders yesterday, miss, and now you want me to sanction another team?’
‘ What d’you mean, sir?’
‘ I said “No” to your request yesterday.’
‘ You did, yes.’
‘ Yet you utilised the Blackpool ARV,’ he stated.
Her mind whizzed. What was going on here? ‘It was a compromise,’ she said defensively.
‘ It was disobedience of a direct order,’ he shouted. ‘Implicit in my “No” was the fact that you were not, repeat not, to use armed officers for your little fiasco.’
She looked quickly at FB who smirked, enjoying her discomfort.
‘ I didn’t use a team,’ she said, trying to regain her composure. ‘You used armed officers!’
‘ Yes,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I used the ARV. They are on twenty-four-hour cover in every division and can be used for day-to-day jobs just like any other patrol in the county. They were there as insurance. They didn’t draw their weapons, neither did they get involved in the raid. It was a sensible move, if you ask me.’
‘ No one’s fucking asking you! You disobeyed my orders, pure and simple.’ His face was red with rage; he was screaming in classic Scouse.
‘ I protected my men,’ she insisted. There was no way she was going to back down and admit she was wrong — particularly with FB looking on.
‘ And it wasn’t even the man you were after, just some poor innocent bloke…’
‘ Whose driving licence was used by the biggest mass murderer since Lockerbie.’
Crosby wasn’t to be diverted now. He was in full flow. ‘You used excessive force in entering his house and now I believe we’re faced with a huge bill for trashing the place.’
‘ Trashing is not the term I would use. Damage was caused, yes, but it was minimal. The cost of repair will be relatively small.’
‘ I am tempted to have you disciplined for this,’ Crosby growled.
‘ What? So you can have your investigation back? Because your beloved CID aren’t running the show? Grow up, Mr Crosby… I know you don’t like me, or the fact that I’ve got this job, but I’m doing
it to the best of my ability and I’m that far off getting a result.’ She held up her thumb and forefinger with just a sliver of daylight between them. ‘And I won’t be browbeaten or bullied by the likes of dinosaurs like you two…’
‘ Dinosaurs!’ he blasted.
‘ If you want to sulk, then do so. But if you hinder the investigation, so help me God, I’ll bring you down — and you, FB.’ She pointed a finger at Fanshaw-Bayley.
‘ So what’s it going to be?’ she demanded. Her mouth was a tight angry line. Her eyes had large bags under them the colour of prunes and she’d been wearing the same outfit for a long twenty hours. Her hair felt like straw and she needed a bath followed by twelve hours’ sleep. What she didn’t need was this shit!
‘ The answer’s no,’ Crosby said.
She wheeled round and marched out of the office.
Two minutes later the tension that had been welling up inside Crosby’s chest reached a climax. It burned up through his arteries like razor blades on fire, from his heart to his left arm and up the side of his face.
He clutched himself.
Then keeled over off his chair onto the floor with a crash, taking the contents of his desk with him.
FB looked on bemused for a moment before he realised what was happening.
His boss was having a major heart attack.
Whisper had been moved to a side ward, but other than that no one had touched him. He still lay on the hospital bed in his dying position: head lolling to one side, arms hanging loosely off the bed. The nurse who’d discovered him had tried to save him. She’d ripped the bedclothes off him and torn open his pyjamas, but it had been too late for Whisper. Despite all his gurgling and blowing of bubbles of blood through his nose and mouth, he was already dead.
Kovaks’ weary but sharp eyes gazed at the wounds. There were at least twelve punctures in the chest around the heart and innumerable ones in his face and neck. One of his eyes had been gouged out, an ear sliced off and his cheek carved open. Kovaks could see Whisper’s teeth through that particular wound.
