Any woman he’d wanted. All he’d had to do was name her and pay the cash.
Any
woman – no matter who she was. Imagine that!
Once the ball was rolling, he’d never gone back to the Nice Guys website, as per their strict instructions. All further
information, very carefully worded so as to be non-incrim
inating – would be delivered to him from email addresses that would immediately be negated afterwards, or via snail-mail. But whatever happened, he should stay away from the website. That was their explicit command. He wasn’t sure why or how this might affect their security. Presumably the site existed on a machine located in a banana republic somewhere, or was being run from some completely innocent person’s computer, which had been hacked and, unbeknown to its owner, was now being used as the host – again he had no technical know-how where this was concerned, but even a layman like him had sufficient understanding of how it might be done and how it could therefore be protected.
He walked across the office and stared at his laptop screen.
Under no circumstances, they’d said. The website was for first contact only (in other words the bait, he thought bitterly). From that point on,
they’d
be in charge of communications. Of course, the situation had radically altered now, and as he hadn’t been given a customer-care number – he laughed at the very thought – this was the only way he knew to contact them.
He sat at his desk. The muscles tightened in his neck and down the middle of his back. There was a slow pounding in the base of his skull that he knew would soon become a full-blown headache.
He assessed the stream of pencil-drawn gobbledygook in his diary. Then he reached out, typed it in – and hit ‘send’.
Nothing happened.
The address was not found.
He tried again, to make sure that he hadn’t mis-keyed.
It was the same result, nothing. Frantic, he tried to Google it. Immediately, hundreds of other beta sites were listed for him, and below many there were all kinds of disgusting hints about what they might contain: ‘Scat, farm sex, amputee fun day, teen smokes donkey dick …’ But none of them struck a bell of familiarity.
The back of Blenkinsop’s throat had gone so dry that it was hurting him. The tension in his neck intensified to the point of no return, detonating inside his skull in a fiery migraine, but even this was of no immediate concern. Lines of irrational thought began to scramble in his mind.
Had they disbanded, ceased to exist? For a few seconds he was ludicrously hopeful.
But then he realised that they’d simply changed the address, as they no doubt did every time they snared a new customer. It was a simple but foolproof way to prevent him causing trouble for them in the future. Whereas they, of course, from their position of complete anonymity, could cause an awful lot of trouble for him.
They drove at increasing speed along the A57, swinging south down the A5063 and crossing the Ship Canal at the swing-bridge. Trafford, the next borough, was a massive complex of industrial estates and lorry parks, so there was a bit of a slowdown there. But they finally got out of it via the A518, and headed south again, steadily picking up speed. It was now mid-morning so the traffic was at low tide and, by the time they entered Sale, they were belting along.
‘Where’s the fire?’ Lauren asked.
‘Behind us,’ Heck replied. ‘You mean you hadn’t noticed?’
‘We got away.’
‘Yeah … for how long?’ They hurtled into Altrincham, where the M56 motorway would hook them up with the M6. ‘We’ve got to get back to London pronto. At least then we’ll be on home turf. And I can ditch the car.’
‘Why do you want to ditch the car?’
‘Because Salford CID will have the registration mark by midday today.’ She shook her head, clearly not believing him, but he was adamant. ‘From this point on, Lauren, don’t use your mobile. In fact, keep it switched off. Mine is. If you must make a call, use a landline, a payphone.’
‘Heck, much as you applaud your own craft, you’re surely not serious that your lot are going to be onto us so quickly?’
‘I’m certain of it. An expert has created this fit-up. Someone who won’t have left anything to chance. If the police don’t draw the correct conclusions from what they’ve already got, he’ll just drop them another clue.’
She checked the dashboard clock. It was ten-thirty; on a good day they’d be back in London by two. But Heck now stated that he didn’t intend to stay on the motorway for long. If an APB was put out, there’d be traffic patrols on the bridges, looking out for them. South of Birmingham, he intended to use the back roads.
Lauren groaned. ‘This is a serious overreaction.’
‘Have I been wrong once so far?’
‘I’m not sure you’ve been right once.’
‘You think people like Ron O’Hoorigan get killed that way every day?’
She had no immediate answer for that. It was probable that scrotes like O’Hoorigan got bumped off more regularly than normal people. But in that particular fashion? It seemed unlikely.
‘And doesn’t it seem a hell of a coincidence that it happened as soon as we made contact with him?’ Heck added.
Lauren had to admit that it did.
‘On the subject of which,’ Heck said, ‘you mentioned something about seeing a similar murder in Iraq.’
‘That’s true.’
‘So?’
‘I’m breaking the Official Secrets Act, if I tell you.’
‘It’s about time you justified your presence on this enquiry, so bloody break it!’
She glanced uneasily at him, though this was more to do with the memory of the incident than the breach in protocol. ‘Three guys had been killed, all in identical fashion to the one we saw this morning. They’d been hung upside down and gutted while they were still alive. I was in the patrol that found them …’
She hesitated to continue. Even now, several years later, the stench re-assailed her. It had been much worse than that at Gallows Hill because southern Iraq’s oven-like heat had commenced the putrefaction process more quickly. The buzzing of flies had been so loud as to deafen even ears like hers, which had become accustomed to the roar of artillery. Just thinking about it again made her gorge rise.
‘It was in a ruined town on the outskirts of Basra. Initially, it was assumed to be the work of sectarian Iraqis. But later on evidence suggested the victims were insurgents and that occupation forces might be responsible. Like I said, no one was ever prosecuted.’
They drove on in silence, both wondering how these things might be connected. To Heck it seemed doubtful. Exemplary punishments were enacted in criminal circles in every corner of the globe. There were numerous overlaps in style and method.
‘Why did you refer to him as an
expert
?’ Lauren asked.
‘Who?’
‘Whoever’s supposed to have set us up.’
‘Because he clearly knows what he’s doing.’
‘You think he could be ex-military?’
‘What are you driving at?’
She sat up straight, a new idea taking root. ‘You think this guy Deke is the one, yeah?’
‘For the moment. He certainly fought in that bar as though he’d been trained.’
‘You noticed he was wearing leather wrist-bands?’
‘Sure.’
‘Were they an affectation, do you think, or to cover something up? Because when I was in Iraq, there was this shadowy group we used to hear about. A British commando outfit called the Special Desert Reconnaissance unit. They carried out covert operations, sabotage, counter-terrorism, that sort of thing. They also had a rep for being ultra-ruthless. I mean – these hanging-disembowelments, they’d have been typical of the SDR.’
‘Were they investigated over the Iraq killings?’
‘I don’t know. That would have been classified. But the main thing is … their nickname was “Scorpion Company”.’
‘Cool. But how does that help us?’
‘It was vanity on their part, a kind of tradition of the outfit since World War Two. SDR troops always had a scorpion tattooed on the inside of each wrist.’
‘And that’s what the wrist-bands were concealing?’ Heck said.
‘They could have been.’
They were now passing through Bowdon, two or three minutes from the motorway junction. Heck eased his foot off the pedal, pulling away down a narrow side street.
‘What’re we doing now?’ Lauren asked.
‘Just a quick diversion.’
‘What happened to us getting back to London?’
‘We will do. But you can’t beat good intel.’
They parked in a lot attached to a small, prefabricated building, which looked like an annexe to a suburban infant school but was actually the local library.
‘You want me to come in with you?’ Lauren asked.
‘Best if you don’t.’
‘Danger round every corner here as well, hey?’
‘No, but local plod will be looking for you too by now.’
‘Me?’ she said, surprised.
‘You’re ex-services, Lauren. They’ll have your prints on file.’
‘I didn’t leave any prints at that crime scene. I made sure of it.’
‘But you might have done during the bar fight.’
‘Heck, this is ridiculous …’
He opened his door. ‘Don’t underestimate cops, Lauren. It’s easy these days to read the newspapers and believe they’re a bunch of politically correct do-gooders, who spend every shift at diversity seminars rather than fighting crime. But that isn’t the case. They’re as smart and efficient as they ever were. If they’re looking for me, they’ll very likely be looking for the black chick who’s with me. Better if you stay here.’
‘Alright.’
‘There’s one thing you could do for me.’
‘What?’
‘Got any spare change?’
‘Change?’
‘Yeah, you know … as in shrapnel, cash?’
She handed him all the silver she had, and waited in the vehicle while he sloped across the car park to the library entrance. Inside, there was a photocopier/fax machine, which the librarian – a curt lady with glasses on a chain – said he could use so long as he paid twenty pence per sheet. Outside the main room, in the lobby, he found a payphone and put a call through to the CID Admin office at Deptford Green Police Station. To his relief Paula Clark answered.
‘It’s Heck,’ he told her nervously – not sure what kind of reaction he would get.
‘Oh hi,’ she replied. Clearly she wasn’t yet aware that anything was amiss. ‘I thought you were on leave?’
‘I am, sort of. I want to clean up some paperwork first.’
‘Okay, well … what can I do for you?’
‘If you’ve got a spare minute, I’d like you to access CrimInt for me. Just to check someone out.’
‘Can’t you do that yourself?’
‘Not at this moment, no.’
In fact, Heck could have. The library also had a computer with an internet connection, but if he’d accessed the Metropolitan Police’s main criminal intelligence network with his own password, they’d trace it back to the terminal he’d used, and that would be another clue to his whereabouts.
‘Is this important, Heck?’ Paula asked. ‘Only I’m a bit busy.’
She’d never been the most cooperative woman, even when officially his secretary. Well aware where her responsibilities began and finished, she rarely did anything beyond those limits, so it was probably expecting a lot of her to help him now.
‘It would be really useful to me if you could do it,’ he pleaded.
‘The thing is I can’t. Can you call me back a bit later?’
Heck bit his lip. There was never any point antagonising civilian employees. They could make your life hell. Unimpressed by your police status because they worked alongside you every day, to them you were just someone else in the office. In addition, they always seemed to have the ear of the top brass, especially if they were female (usually this was because the top brass in question, who were nearly always male, thought they might get a bit in return).
‘Paula,’ Heck said, in his most insipid voice, ‘I would take it as a personal favour if you could do this for me.’
‘I’ve told you I can’t.’
He knew full well that she could. She could access the CrimInt network via the computer that was sitting right in front of her. It was a couple of button pushes away. At the most, this request would take two or three minutes out of her day.
‘Look, please … I’m trying to progress something. And I can’t get any further unless you help me out with this.’
‘I thought you were clearing up paperwork?’
‘I am. You know what a pain that can be.’
She’d agree with that. Even civilian employees in the police were overwhelmed by paperwork these days.
She sighed melodramatically. ‘Okay, okay. What is it?’
‘I want a quick search on any faces we might know who served in the British army during the last ten years, specifically with the Special Desert Reconnaissance unit. There shouldn’t be too many.’
He waited, listening to her manicured fingernails tapping the keyboard. It went on for several seconds, before she said: ‘We’ve got a hit.’
‘Just the one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That’s all I need.’
Lauren had been alone in the car less than five minutes when Heck returned. He crossed the lot quickly, several sheets of paper in his hand.
‘Check these out,’ he said, jumping in.
He handed her the sheets, which were faxed copies of a computer print-out. The mugshot at the top of the first was very grainy, but it clearly depicted the guy who’d helped them in the bar. She read through the accompanying text.
Heck chattered on: ‘That’s all the info we’ve got on a certain Eric Ezekial, thirty years old and, before you ask, a particularly nasty individual. He’s got form for assault, demanding money with menaces and threatening to kill. He’s also ex-army, a paratrooper who served with Scorpion Company for three years, which included two tours of Iraq and one of Afghanistan. His service record is full of incident, but we’d have to go to the MOD to get that. All we need to know is that he was dismissed from the service three years ago on grounds of mental instability.’
‘“Eric Ezekial”,’ Lauren said, reading aloud. ‘“AKA … Deke”.’
Heck put the car in gear. ‘We’ve got him.’