They watched it from a corner, eyes peeled for any sign of movement, but the dim sodium glow of the sparsely located streetlamps illuminated only a rolling beer can and a few scraps of wastepaper flapping in the half-hearted breeze.
Still, they waited. They’d been successful several times on this patch – it was a one-lane access way running between the back doors of a row of old shops and a high brick wall, ending at three concrete bollards. No one was ever around here at night; there were no tenants in the flats above the shops, and even without the January miasma this was a dark, dingy place – but all that such apparent ease of opportunity did was to make Dazzer and Deggsy more suspicious than usual. The very fact that motors had been lifted from around here before made the presence of this one seem curious. Did people never learn? Maybe they didn’t.
The lads ventured forth, walking boldly but stealthily, alert to the slightest unnatural sound – but no one called out, no one stepped from a darkened doorway.
The Volkswagen was locked of course, but Deggsy had his screwdriver with him, and in less than five seconds they’d forced the driver’s door open. No alarm sounded, which was just what they’d expected given the ramshackle state of the thing; another advantage of pillaging the less well-off. With rasping laughs, they jumped inside, to find that the steering column had been attacked in the past – it was held together by wads of silvery duct-tape. A few slashes of Dazzer’s Stanley knife and they were through it. Even in the pitch darkness, their gloved but nimble fingers found the necessary wiring, and the contact was made.
The car rumbled to life. Laughing loudly, they hit the gas.
It was Dazzer’s turn to drive today, and Deggsy’s to ride, though it didn’t make much difference – they were both as crazy as each other when they got behind the wheel. They blistered recklessly along, swerving around bends with tyres screeching, racing through red lights and stop signs. There was no initial response from the other road-using public. Opposing traffic was scant – another good thing about January; most folk, having spent up over Christmas, would prefer to slump in front of the telly rather than go out on the town. They pulled a handbrake turn, pivoting sideways through what would ordinarily be a busy junction, the stink of burnt rubber engulfing them, hitting the gas again as they tore out of town along the A246. They had over half a tank of petrol and a very straight road in front of them. Maybe they’d make it all the way to Guildford, where they could pinch another motor to come home in. For the moment, though, it was fun fun fun. They’d probably veer off en route, and cause chaos on a few housing estates they knew, flaying the paint from any expensive jobs that unwise owners had left in plain view.
Some roadworks surged into sight just ahead. Dazzer howled as he gunned the Volkswagen through them, cones catapulting every which way – one struck the bay window of a roadside house, smashing through it. They mowed down a ‘keep left’ sign, and took out a set of temporary lights, which hit the deck with a detonation of sparks.
The blacktop continued to roll out ahead; they were doing eighty, ninety, almost a hundred, and were briefly mesmerised by their own fearlessness, their attention completely focused down the borehole of their headlights. When you were in that frame of mind – and Dazzer and Deggsy nearly always were – there were almost no limits. It would have taken something quite startling to distract them from their death-defying reverie – and that came approximately seven minutes into this, their last ever journey in a stolen vehicle.
They clipped a kerbstone at eighty-five. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but Deggsy, who’d just filched his mobile from his jacket pocket to film this latest escapade, was jolted so hard that he dropped it into the footwell.
‘Fuck!’ he squawked, scrabbling around for it. At first he couldn’t seem to locate it, so he ripped his glove off with his teeth and went groping bare-handed. This time he found the mobile, but when he pulled his hand back he saw that he’d found something else as well.
It was clamped to his exposed wrist. Initially he thought he must have brushed his arm against an old pair of boots, which had smeared him with oil or paint. But no, now he could feel the weight of it and the multiple pinprick sensation where it had apparently gripped him. He still didn’t realise what the thing actually was, not even when he held it close to his face – but then Deggsy had only ever seen scorpions on the telly, so perhaps this was unsurprising. Mind you, even on the telly he’d never seen a scorpion with as pale and shiny a carapace as this one had – it glinted like polished leather in the flickering streetlights. Or one as big; it was at least eight inches from nose to tail, that tail now curled to strike, its menacing pair of pincers – they were the size of crab claws – extended upward in the classic defensive position.
It couldn’t be real, he told himself distantly.
Was it a toy? It had to be toy.
But then it stung him.
At first it shocked rather than hurt; as though a red hot drawing pin had been driven full length into his flesh and into the bone underneath. But that minor pain quickly expanded, filling his suddenly frozen arm with a white fire, which in itself intensified, until Deggsy was screaming hysterically. By the time he’d knocked the eight-legged horror back into the footwell, he was writhing and thrashing in his seat, frothing at the mouth as he struggled to release his suddenly restrictive belt. At first, Dazzer thought his mate was play-acting, though he shouted warnings when Deggsy’s convulsions threatened to interfere with his driving.
And then something alighted on Dazzer’s shoulder.
Despite the wild swerving of the car, it had descended slowly, patiently – on a single silken thread, and when he turned his head to look at it, it tensed, clamping him like a hand. In the flickering hallucinogenic light, he caught brief glimpses of vivid, tiger-stripe colours and clustered demonic eyes peering at him from point-blank.
The bite it planted on his neck was like a punch from a fist.
Dazzer’s foot jammed the accelerator to the floor as his entire body went into spasms. The actual wound quickly turned numb, but searing pain shot through the rest of his body in repeated lightning strokes.
Neither lad noticed as the car mounted an embankment, engine yowling, smoke and tattered grass pouring from its tyres. It smashed through the wooden palings at the top, and then crashed downward through shrubs and undergrowth, turning over and over in the process, and landing upside down in a deep-cut country lane.
For quite a few seconds there was almost no sound: the odd groan of twisted metal, steam hissing in spirals from numerous rents in mangled bodywork.
The two concussed shapes inside, while still breathing, were barely alive in any conventional sense: torn, bloodied and battered, locked in contorted paralysis. They were still aware of their surroundings, but unable to resist as various miniature forms, having ridden out the collision in niches and crevices, now re-emerged to scurry over their warm, tortured flesh. Deggsy’s jaw was fixed rigid; he could voice no complaint – neither as a mumble nor a scream – when the pale-shelled scorpion re-acquainted itself with him, creeping slowly up his body on its jointed stick-legs and finally settling on his face, where, with great deliberation it seemed, it snared his nose and his left ear in its pincers, then arched its tail again – and embedded its stinger deep into his goggling eyeball.
Heck raced out of the kebab shop with a half-eaten doner in one hand and a can of Coke in the other. There was a blaring of horns as Dave Strickland swung his distinctive maroon Astra out of the far carriageway, pulled a U-turn right through the middle of the bustling evening traffic, and ground to a halt at the kerb. Heck crammed another handful of lamb and bread into his mouth, took a last slurp of Coke and tossed his rubbish into a nearby bin, before leaping into the Astra’s front passenger seat.
‘Grinton putting an arrest team together?’ he asked.
‘As we speak,’ Strickland said, shoving a load of documentation into Heck’s grasp, and hitting the gas. More horns tooted despite the spinning blue beacon on the Astra’s roof. ‘We’re hooking up with them at St Ann’s Central.’
Heck nodded, leafing through the official Nottinghamshire Police paperwork. The text he’d just received from Strickland had consisted of thirteen words, but they’d been the most important thirteen words anyone had communicated to him in several months:
Hucknall murder a fit for Lady Killer
Chief suspect – Jimmy Hood
Whereabouts KNOWN
Heck, or Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg, as was his official title at Scotland Yard, felt a tremor of excitement as he flipped the light on and perused the documents. Even now, after seventeen years of investigations, during so many of which shocking twists and turns had been commonplace, it seemed incredible that a case that had defied all analysis, dragging on doggedly through eight months of mind-numbing frustration, could suddenly have blown itself wide open.
‘Who’s Jimmy Hood?’ he asked.
‘A nightmare on two legs,’ Strickland replied.
Heck had only known Strickland for the duration of this enquiry, but they’d made a good connection on first meeting and had maintained it ever since. A local lad by birth, Dave Strickland was a slick, clean-cut, improbably handsome black guy; at thirty, a tad young for DI, but what he may have lacked in experience he more than made up for with his quick wits and sharp eye. After the stress of the last few months, even Strickland had started to fray around the edges; ‘frazzled’ would have been one way to describe him, but tonight he was back on form, collar unbuttoned and tie loose, careering through the chaotic traffic with skill and speed.
‘He lived in Hucknall when he was a kid,’ Strickland added. ‘But he spent a lot of his time back then locked up.’
‘Not just then either,’ Heck said. ‘According to this, he’s only been out of Roundhall for the last six months.’
‘Yeah, and what does that tell us?’
Heck didn’t need to reply. Roundhall was a low security prison in the West Midlands. According to these antecedents, Jimmy Hood, now in his early thirties, had served a year and a half there before being released on license. However, he’d originally been held at Durham after drawing fourteen years for burglary and rape. As if the details of his original crimes weren’t enough of a match for the case they were currently working, his time back in the community put him neatly in the frame for the activities of the so-called ‘Lady Killer’.
‘He’s a bruiser now and he was a bruiser then,’ Strickland said. ‘Six-foot-three by the time he was seventeen, and burly with it. Scared the crap out of everyone who knew him. Got arrested once for chucking a kitten into a cement mixer. Him and his mates did time for bricking a couple of builders who’d given them grief for pinching tools. Both workmen were knocked cold; one needed his face reconstructing.’
Heck noted from the paperwork that Hood, whose mug-shot portrayed shaggy black hair fringing a broad, bearded face with a badly broken nose – a disturbingly similar visage to the e-fit they’d released a few days ago – had led a juvenile street-gang that had involved itself in serious crime in Hucknall, from the age of twelve. However, he’d only commenced sexually offending, usually during the course of burglary, when he was in his late teens.
‘So he comes out of jail and immediately picks up where he left off?’ Heck said.
‘Except that this time he murders them,’ Strickland replied.
Heck didn’t find that much of a leap. Certain types of violent offender had no intention of rehabilitating. They were so set on their life’s work that they regarded prison time – even prolonged prison time – as a hazard of their chosen vocation. He’d known plenty who’d gone away for a lengthy stretch, and had used it to get fit, mug up on all the latest criminal techniques, and gradually accumulate a head of steam that would erupt with devastating force once they were released, and he could easily imagine this scenario applying to Jimmy Hood. What was more, the evidence seemed to indicate it. All four of the recent murder victims had been elderly women living alone. Most of Hood’s victims when he was a teenager had been elderly women. The cause of death in all the recent cases had been physical battery with a blunt instrument, after rape. As a youth, Hood had bludgeoned his victims after indecently assaulting them.
‘Funny his name wasn’t flagged up when he first ditched his probation officer,’ Heck said.
Strickland shrugged as he drove. ‘Easy to be wise after the event, pal.’
‘Suppose so.’ On reflection, Heck recalled numerous occasions in his career when it would have paid to have a crystal ball.
On this occasion, they’d caught their break courtesy of a sharp-eyed civvie.
The four home-invasion murders they were officially investigating were congregated in the St Ann’s district, east of Nottingham city centre – an impoverished, densely populated area, which already suffered more than its fair share of crime. The only description of a suspect they’d had was that of a hulking, bearded man wearing a duffel coat over shabby sports gear, who ‘smelt bad’ – suggesting that he wasn’t able to bathe or change his clothes very often and so was perhaps sleeping rough.
Only yesterday there had been a fifth murder in Hucknall, just north of the city, the details of which closely matched those in St Ann’s. There’d been no description of the perpetrator on this occasion, though earlier today a long-term Hucknall resident – who remembered Jimmy Hood well, along with his crimes – reported seeing him eating chips near the bus station there, not long after the event. He’d been wearing a duffel coat over an old tracksuit, and though he didn’t have a beard, fresh razor cuts suggested that he had recently shaved one off.
‘And he’s been lying low at this Alan Devlin’s pad?’ Heck asked.
‘Part of the time maybe,’ Strickland said. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well … I wouldn’t have called it “whereabouts known.” But it’s a bloody good start.’
Alan Devlin, who had a long record of criminal activity as a juvenile, when he’d been part of Hood’s gang, now lived in a council flat in St Ann’s. These days he was Hood’s only known associate in central Nottingham, and the proximity of his home address to the recent murders was too big a coincidence to ignore.