Dead Man Walking (38 page)

Head-shots in all cases, Heck noted. So the killer had expected an armed response, and had acted accordingly, even allowing for the body-armour they’d be wearing. He leaned further in, resisting the temptation to open the door and interfere with yet another crime scene. Despite the half-dark, he could see empty pistol holsters. He glanced towards the boot, realising it had been jacked open. No doubt the strongbox in there, used to transport additional arms and ammunition, would also have been pillaged.

‘Funny thing,’ Mary-Ellen said, sounding subdued. ‘Me, Gemma and Hazel walked down this road only two and a half hours ago … and, well, we didn’t notice this.’

‘Would you have noticed in the dark and the fog?’ Heck wondered. ‘With the blue light switched off?’

‘Probably not if the beacon was off, no.’

‘That’ll explain it. If this ambush had happened since you came past, we’d have heard the shots.’

Unless of course, the gunman had had access to a silencer
before
he’d launched this ambush. Heck no longer knew what to think on that score. He leaned further in and assessed several of the blood dribbles down the inside of the windshield. They’d congealed to the point where they were cracking and flaking.

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘This incident happened quite a bit earlier. These lads got bushwhacked a good while ago. The car was then pushed into the bushes so they were out the way in time for you lot to walk innocently past. The beacon’s only been switched on in the last hour or so.’

‘Why?’

‘Presumably to ensure that this time we found it.’

‘Found it?’ Mary-Ellen sounded incredulous. ‘Again … why?’

Heck shook his head. ‘To let us know what our fate is going to be. And that now no one is coming to prevent it.’

Only the darkened outline of the police station was visible as McGurk and Gemma stumped towards it. They switched their torches on as they strode up the path, but with no power now to utilise, the key-pad was no longer functioning on the personnel door at the side.

‘Great, now we’re locked out of our own nick,’ Gemma said quietly.

If McGurk felt any responsibility for this, he didn’t show it. ‘They said we could get into the cellar from the outside, didn’t they?’

They followed the drive to the back of the building, the area that had once been a garden but was now an impromptu storage space for boxes, tyres and traffic cones. They searched the immediate area, but saw no entrance that might lead down to a cellar. McGurk shone his torch through an open door into the rear of the garage, which stood to the right. More bits and pieces met their gaze: a couple of rusty bicycles, and some ropes and harnesses that might be used in mountaineering, various spare parts for cars, plus several rolls of fibreglass lagging.

‘What’s all this for?’ Gemma toed the nearest roll. ‘Attic need insulating, or something?’

‘That’ll be for winter,’ McGurk replied. ‘It’s bad enough now, but get into December, January and February, ma’am, and it doesn’t get much over zero at this height. They get feet of snow as well … any time up to April.’

A row of Calor Gas bottles stood against the far wall. They were made from moulded steel and beige in colour. The stencilled lettering on each one read:

3.9 kg Propane

‘Propane?’ she said.

‘Empty, most probably.’ McGurk pushed one of the canisters over. It rolled across the garage with a series of hollow clanks. ‘Yeah. Again, they’re for winter. Pipes freeze up here, power lines come down. You can end up with no heating, so a lot of the villagers in these isolated communities keep propane cylinders for gas appliances. There’ll be more of these in the cellar. Full ones.’

‘Interesting … if we could find it.’ They wandered again into the main storage area, spearing their lights back and forth. This time, Gemma’s beam alighted on a heap of bulging bin-liners at the southwest corner of the building. They wandered over there, threw some bags aside and exposed a small, letterbox-type window at ground level, its frosted glass thick with grime. ‘At least we know there
is
a cellar,’ Gemma said. ‘Won’t be easy wriggling in though …’

‘Door’s here, ma’am.’

McGurk had worked his way past the bin-bags to find a partially concealed recess just around the corner. The cellar door was set inside that. When McGurk tested it, it wasn’t locked. Beyond it, a flight of concrete steps dropped into darkness. He shone his torch down, illuminating another single door at the bottom. This one resembled a fire door; it was made from heavy oak with rubber seals around its trims.

‘Bingo,’ Gemma said – and then she glanced once over her shoulder. It had suddenly occurred to her that, during the course of their search, they’d neglected to keep a look-out for company. But the storage yard lay as dingy and motionless as they’d found it. There was still no sound in the foggy night.

‘You don’t feel a bit exposed out here?’ Mary-Ellen wondered.

Heck was busy circling the firearms car, shooting as much footage with Mary-Ellen’s mobile phone as he could, both inside and out, and at the same time relaying his on-the-spot observations. He glanced around at Mary-Ellen. She was standing rigidly a couple of feet away, breathing painfully, almost wheezing – clearly it wasn’t just the revolving blue light that left her a little off-colour. Only now did it strike him that the young policewoman hadn’t attended any other of the murder scenes in the Cradle thus far. In fact, she was only twenty-three and had done about four years in the job, so she couldn’t have attended too many murder scenes during her service. Almost certainly none involving the mass slaughter of fellow officers.

Mary-Ellen prided herself on being an energetic and resourceful cop, mentally strong and physically tough. But clearly and very abruptly, she’d discovered the limit of that toughness. And she wasn’t wrong about their vulnerable position either. Standing out here in this misty woodland, bathed in bright light, talking aloud – it struck Heck that he might have got too absorbed in preserving the crime scene.

‘You’re right,’ he said, handing her the phone. ‘Time to get back, perhaps. Our pal’s a bloody lunatic, but he’s also clever. The only way out of the Cradle before daylight now is to walk, and we’re hardly likely to try that after seeing this.’

‘So not only is no help coming,’ she said, ‘we’re not getting out of here under our own steam either.’

‘No.’ He pushed on through the undergrowth, heading back the way they’d come. ‘Best go and break the bad news.’

They descended the cellar steps with McGurk at the front and Gemma following close behind. She’d entered numerous dark, dank buildings in this way, but it never ceased to amaze her how such a confined space could swallow up so much light. Both their torch-beams had retracted into brilliant dots on the closed door below them.

And yet, she didn’t think this was the reason why she suddenly felt uncomfortable. It puzzled her. If anything, she should feel good. All they had to do now was push the breakers back into line, and the job was a good ’un. Heck would be back soon, maybe the firearms team as well. Then the odds would be back in their favour.

But wasn’t all this a little too easy?

Where was the killer while these measures were being taken?

She only voiced this fear when a sudden, sour odour pricked her nostrils.

‘McGurk!’

McGurk’s nose also wrinkled – as he pushed the door at the bottom open.

‘No!’
Gemma shouted.

In the flashing torchlight, she caught a fleeting glimpse of the five or six matchboxes that had been taped together along the door-jamb. She didn’t see the two dozen matches taped to the door itself, only heard them striking as they swept over the boxes’ coarse outer surfaces.

Heck and Gemma had progressed forty yards back through the woods when they heard a dull but resounding
CRUMP
from the direction of Cragwood Keld.

They stopped short, glancing around at each other.

Heck was long enough served to know exactly what he’d just heard, while Mary-Ellen, though a junior officer compared to Heck, had seen plenty of war movies. They could both of them identify the distant tone of a powerful explosion.

Heck and Mary-Ellen threw caution to the wind as they sprinted back through the foggy woods towards Cragwood Keld. Long before they got there, even deep amid branches so tangled they managed to lose sight of each other, they could see the wavering glow of a huge fire some distance ahead.

When Heck finally staggered, panting, into Hetherby Close, he found that Hazel and the rest of the villagers had also discarded concern for their personal safety and were milling all over the pile of burning rubble where the police station had once stood.

He advanced into the chaos, goggle-eyed.

Up close, the debris mainly consisted of shattered timbers and scorched bricks, and had heaped itself around a central crater – what had once been the cellar – from out of which cloying black smoke was pouring.

‘What happened?’ Heck shouted, wafting his way back and forth. He snatched at someone. But it was dizzy old Sally O’Grady, who could only respond by shaking her head and fixing him with a fishlike stare, her cheeks blackened with soot.

‘What happened?’ he said, blundering over the hot wreckage to the next figure. This was Hazel. She too was in a state of stupefaction. He grabbed her by the wrists. ‘Hazel, what happened?’

‘I … I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘We just heard it … and now the whole building’s gone.’

‘I can bloody see that!’

‘Mark … Gemma was in there.’

‘What?’

Hazel’s red-rimmed eyes filled with tears. ‘And PC McGurk.’

‘Gemma …?’

‘There was a power cut at the station, and they came up here to try and fix it.’

At first Heck played it cool, determined to show no obvious distress. And that wasn’t difficult because Gemma wouldn’t have been in there, she couldn’t have been. There was no way Gemma would have been … in
there
.

‘Mark!’
Hazel shrieked as he tore himself away.

He flung himself up and over the nearest embankment. His throat was too raw from the smoke for him to scream Gemma’s name as he staggered down into the pit at the heart of the conflagration. More rubble lay scattered, though very little was identifiable. A few warped fragments of blistered metal were all that remained of the propane tanks, but there were puddles of fire between them, which Heck knew defied the laws of nature – unless they were eating up the remnants of spilled petrol.

The propane canisters
and
petrol.

Someone had done a number on them this time, alright.

‘Gemma!’ he cried, meandering through the flames, the intense heat drying the sweat on his face, searing his skin, the smoke filling his lungs, causing him to retch. ‘Gemma! Christ almighty, don’t you dare do a runner on me …’

A muffled moan sounded in response.

He spun around. ‘Gemma …?’

‘Heck,’ a voice croaked. It was breathless, pained beyond belief.

He spun again, and fleetingly, through billows of smoke, spied two pillars of blackened concrete in the far southwest corner; all that was left of the cellar’s reinforced door-frame.

Heck scooted over there, kicking flaming planks aside.

Beyond the gateposts, a concrete stair led upward. There was no roof above it anymore, no walls to either side; most of the stair itself was buried in bricks and masonry. But right at the foot of it lay the smouldering hulk of a heavy oaken door. More to the point, it was shifting slightly, as if something was pinned underneath.

Heck took hold of the wood. Its edges were ragged, glowing embers, and his fingers were scalded even through his gloves, but the strength of desperation was a potent force. Shoulders straining, he heaved the door up and tossed it behind him. But his gut lurched when he saw what lay underneath it: a hideous mess of broken limbs and charred flesh.

A choked whimper escaped from him. But his eyes were attuning fast to the dense smoke and crimson firelight, and as he blinked away tears, what at first had looked like a single person reduced to a mangled, faceless horror, slowly resolved itself into two people, both thick with dust and debris; one lying over the top of the other, back turned upward – which explained the lack of face. The POLICE insignia stencilled into the partially melted hi-viz slicker revealed that this was McGurk.

If the burly Scot had been wearing his hat at the time, he no longer was now – his bull-neck and the back of his head were not just singed black, they were thickly bloodied. Presumably they’d taken the brunt of the impact as the door flew from its hinges. Heck hunkered down and felt at the side of the PC’s neck. There was a pulse, but the injured cop was lifeless, a deadweight. It didn’t stop Heck hauling him off to get to the person underneath. This one was equally coated in dust and dirt, but more animated, coughing and writhing as she struggled to breathe.

‘Thank God,’ he said, slumping down onto his knees. ‘Oh, thank God …’

‘Oh hell, Heck …’ Gemma coughed again, hawking out wads of gritty saliva. Her face too was a mask of dirt and blood, but her focused gaze indicated full consciousness.

‘Don’t try to move,’ he advised.

‘I’m … I’m alright.’ She tried to get up.

‘Yeah, but just be careful …’

‘Ow, shit …
I’m not alright!
’ She stiffened in agony. ‘My back …’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Just a bang, I think.’ She wriggled where she lay, grimacing again, and then eased herself up into an awkward sitting posture. ‘Hell of a bang …’

‘This whole thing went with a hell of a bang. Must have slammed you back onto those concrete steps like a bundle of laundry.’

‘McGurk?’ Gemma asked.

Heck turned to the dusty figure lying motionless alongside them. ‘He’s alive. And it’s a bloody miracle. Good job this was a heavy door.’

Gemma mopped a sleeve of grimy sweat from her brow. ‘Propane, yeah?’

‘Yeah. Some maniac must have opened the valves on all the cylinders.’ Heck glanced around. Treacly-black smoke still snaked from several pools of liquid fire, wreathing into the mist topside to create a hellish, stinking smog. ‘Looks like he doused the floor with petrol as well. Turned the whole nick into a time-bomb.’