‘Get someone,’ Ballamara told him.
Asquith nodded and moved away, slipping his own phone from his pocket.
‘There were only two of them?’ Ballamara said.
‘There’s one back on the canal boat, too,’ Heck grunted. ‘He’s dead as well.’
‘Hey!’ Lauren suddenly shouted, stumbling to her feet. ‘What about Silver?’
Ballamara looked mystified. ‘Silver?’
‘Their gaffer!’
‘Lauren, wait!’ Heck said.
But Lauren had already grabbed up the Uzi, pushed past Asquith and staggered out through the front door.
‘Lauren, you’re in no fit state …’
‘He’s not getting away!’ came Lauren’s fading voice.
‘Help me,’ Heck gasped.
Reluctantly, gingerly – as there was barely a part of Heck that wasn’t sopping with blood – Ballamara offered him a hand, and pulled him to his feet.
‘You’re telling me there’s another one left?’ the gangster said.
Heck didn’t answer. Nauseated with pain and shock, he had to grit his teeth and was only able to get out through the farmhouse door and along the side of the building by leaning on the wall. When he reached its northwest corner, he peered down the moonlit slope, and saw Lauren hobbling after a stocky shape waddling along by the aid of a stick towards a silver-grey vehicle parked behind a low stone wall.
‘Lauren,’ he breathed, watching intently.
There was a rattle of gunfire and a strobe-like flash as she fired into the air. ‘Stop where you are!’ she called. ‘Stop or you’re dead!’
Heck held his breath as he watched the figure in front of her come to a stumbling halt a few yards short of the wall. Lauren fired into the air again. The figure slowly turned. Even from this distance, Heck fancied he could see that its arms were raised.
Theoretically, there’d be no problem. Lauren was also an ex-combat soldier. She had a gun in her hand, and even if she hadn’t, even with that flesh-wound, she ought to be more than a match for this crippled opponent. But there was something about Mad Mike Silver … they barely knew him, yet Heck felt instinctively that he was evil to his bones, and clever with it.
‘Lauren!’ Heck tried to stagger after her, but even cautious progress sent him dizzy.
The two distant figures were now very close to each other. Heck heard Lauren shouting further instructions – instructions with which Silver apparently wasn’t complying. Lauren shouted again; a different tone. Heck’s hair prickled as he saw the two shapes suddenly slam together in a fearsome tussle. There was a
smack
of fist on bone, only to be followed by what sounded like a
ripping
of flesh and a piping, half-choked squeal. Desperation gave Heck extra strength. He was halfway down the slope, picking up speed. But one of the two shapes had now slumped to the ground.
‘Lauren!’ he sobbed.
The other figure climbed over the wall, rounded the vehicle to its driver’s door and slid inside. The engine rumbled to life. The headlights came on, spearing along the darkened road. As Heck approached, it rumbled away, dust swirling behind it.
Lauren was seated on the grass, her back against the wall. He dropped to one knee beside her. She smiled at him feebly. One bloodstained hand was clasped to her chest.
‘Missed … missed the fucker,’ she mumbled.
‘Don’t talk,’ he said, moving her hand aside.
Beneath it, a gleaming, fist-sized bauble was visible against the fabric of her bloodied vest, apparently fixed in place. With a thrill of horror, Heck recognised it as the skull head of Mike Silver’s walking stick. By the looks of it, it was actually a sword-stick, about a foot in length. The bastard had drawn it and run her clean through with it.
‘I thought you said we weren’t the ones who are going to die,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t talk, just try and relax.’ Heck turned and screamed: ‘
Ballamara!’
‘Relax? … that’s a good one. I can’t move anyway.’
‘Lauren …’
‘We got most of them, at least? Those bastards who hurt Genene …’
Heck nodded, helpless. The light in her eyes was fading even as he watched.
‘You’re going to get that last one, Heck?’
‘I’ll make it my life’s work, I promise.’
Her mouth curved into a smile. ‘You’re a top bloke, Heck. Just get yourself a girl too. It’s a sorry waste, you flying solo …’
‘Lauren, just …’
‘Gotta go, I think.’
He couldn’t do anything except clutch her hand. Her eyes closed, but then flickered open again. She looked troubled. ‘Heck … we did right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s just … for my mum. I want … her to know that.’
‘I’ll make sure she does.’
Lauren nodded and smiled. When her eyes flickered shut this time, they stayed shut.
Heck held her hand for another couple of minutes, by which time he could hear Ballamara and Asquith advancing down the meadow, mumbling together. Heck was too numbed to pay attention to this; too numbed by pain, by fatigue and by catastrophic blood-loss. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t because there was barely any moisture left in his body. When Ballamara finally arrived, Heck too lay silent in the grass.
The street was quite ordinary in character, part of a typical unassuming suburban neighbourhood. There were nice, quiet families living here. The fathers all had jobs. The children went to school on time, and when playing out in the evening were polite to adults and would keep the noise down if there were babies in bed. Newspapers were delivered. Milk floats made early morning rounds.
No one batted an eyelid about the people who lived on this street.
It was perhaps unusual to see nocturnal activity here. For someone to be placing bags and suitcases in the rear of a car at four o’clock in the morning was out of the ordinary, but then it was the middle of August, and people flew to Spain, Greece and the Canaries at all kinds of ungodly hours at this time of year. Even so, Mike Silver made as little noise as possible as he hobbled in and out of one particular house, ferrying various small items of luggage down the garden path and placing them in the boot of his Citro
ë
n C2. It had all been packed and ready, and waiting on the upstairs landing. Not because he’d anticipated having need of it this evening, but because it was
always
packed and ready.
Once it was all stowed in the boot, he made a last trip into the house, not so much to check that everything was locked up or unplugged, as a regular holidaymaker would do, but to ensure that no items of paperwork had been left behind. In truth, there was minimum chance of this. Silver kept only small items of paperwork, and none of it in his own name. But of course, he hadn’t been the only occupant of fifty-eight, Rentoul Street, and despite the discipline he’d routinely imposed on his underlings, not everyone was always as careful about cleaning their tracks as he was – though on this occasion, thankfully, they had been.
Satisfied, he pulled a clean anorak over his roll-neck sweater, and turned the lights off one by one. Soon only the hall light remained. The switch for that was next to the front door. He intended to flick it off as he stepped into the porch. But just as he was about to do this, he noticed someone approaching along the garden path. It was a youngish, blonde woman in a light coat, slacks and high-heeled boots. ‘Mr Hobbs?’ the woman enquired.
‘Hello?’ Silver replied, standing in the doorway.
‘I wonder if you can help us?’
‘I’ll try,’ Silver said, noticing that a white BMW and a battered old Chevrolet parked behind his Citro
ë
n, and that a thin, older man with a scraggy grey beard was circling around it.
‘I’m Detective Superintendent Piper,’ the young woman said, showing a police warrant card. ‘This is Detective Inspector Palliser.’
Silver smiled. ‘I see.’
‘Sorry if we’ve caught you going on holiday.’
‘I’ve got a couple of minutes. What can I do for you?’
‘How long have you lived at this address?’
‘Oh … all my life.’
Gemma pondered this, wondering why he didn’t seem to have a Coventry accent, and then spotting a reddish mark on his cheek. ‘Does anyone else live here with you?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘No, I’m resolutely single.’
Gemma glanced past him into the lighted hall, and was surprised when the man shifted sideways and drew the front door half closed, as if to prevent her seeing anything.
‘No one else has access?’ Gemma asked, distracted by the sound of Palliser’s mobile phone ringing and being immediately answered.
The man shrugged. She noticed that the hand with which he clutched the door handle had knotted until its knuckles were white. ‘Erm … friends call round from time to time.’
‘Friends?’ Gemma said.
‘Ma’am!’ Palliser shouted, hurrying up the path, his face graven in stone. She turned to face him. ‘Heck’s been shot!’
Gemma swung back round to the man, but the front door was already closing. She threw herself forward, smashing it open with her shoulder before the lock could engage. The man staggered up the hall, limping badly, but Gemma followed and brought him down with a tackle that would have made a rugby three-quarter proud.
‘You bitch!’ he bellowed. ‘You can’t do this! You’ve got nothing on me …’
‘We’ve got that to start with,’ Gemma retorted, indicating a white shirt and a blazer hanging at the foot of the stairs. Both were liberally stained with blood.
Palliser barged into the house behind her. ‘Apparently he’s alive … just.’
Gemma nodded, before twisting the man’s hands behind his back and saying: ‘Now Mr Hobbs, or whoever you really are, I’m arresting you on suspicion of attempting to murder a police officer. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say …’
‘You spunk-breathed whore! You’ll be next!’
‘… will be given in evidence.’ Gemma leaned next to his ear. ‘Starting with that!’
Detective Superintendent Piper and Detective Inspector Palliser were in morose mood as they watched the television in Palliser’s office. On the screen, a Devon & Cornwall Police launch was backing into a rain-swept dock in Plymouth harbour. Visible on board, three prone shapes lay side by side on the deck, covered by tarpaulins. Underwater Recovery officers, still in their wetsuits and oxygen tanks, stood alongside them.
‘So how many does that make?’ Gemma asked.
Palliser checked his notes. ‘Six bodies recovered from Plymouth Sound. Three from the mouth of the Wash. Searches are also commencing off Holy Island in the northeast, off Blackpool and Anglesey.’
‘All areas where these maniacs chartered offshore craft?’
Palliser nodded solemnly.
Beyond the glazed partition, the entire rest of the squad, who’d all been called back from their various assignments, scrambled madly between telephones and computer terminals. There was a hubbub of noise; paperwork was being flung everywhere.
‘Any IDs yet?’ Gemma asked.
‘None yet, but I don’t think we’ll need to look any further than
that
.’
He nodded out into the main office, at the far end of which a large placard had been set up. The array of mugshots on it, and the accompanying sheaves of notes, had all been removed from the makeshift incident room in Heck’s flat.
‘What about the suspects?’
He consulted his notes again. ‘Sonny Kilmor and Tommy Hobbs. Both formerly of the British Army. Exemplary records, bizarrely. Both saw a lot of action, and were decorated many times for bravery. Much involvement with special ops. Believed to have gone freelance about the same time as each other – 2007-ish. Tommy Hobbs actually owned fifty-eight, Rentoul Street. Seems like the rest of the gang used it as a base or a safehouse whenever they were up in the Midlands …’
‘The rest of the gang being who exactly?’
‘Tommy’s younger brother, Brian, who was already a registered sex offender when he was a juvenile. Spent his adulthood in and out of institutions. Probably where he hooked up with Shane Klim. Birds of a feather, and all that. Heck’s suspicions were right about those two. Looks like they were only brought into the firm when it relocated to the UK. Klim broke out of Rotherwood to hook up with them permanently.’
‘If you can’t get quality at least get loyalty, eh?’ a voice said from the doorway.
They were astonished to see Heck standing there. He wore only trousers and slippers, and was bare-chested under his jacket, which was draped over his shoulders. His entire right arm was encased in plaster and fixed at a right angle, with a sling to hold it in position and a steel bar bracing it across the joint. He was pasty-white in colour, but black and blue with bruising. Much of his hair had been shaved off to accommodate the tram-lines of stitching in his scalp.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Gemma said.
He hobbled in. ‘I discharged myself early.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’
Palliser dragged a seat forward and Heck lowered himself into it.
‘Lauren Wraxford, who saved my arse countless times last week, is dead,’ he said. ‘The very least I owe her is not to waste time lying on my back while her murderer refuses to cooperate.’
‘You think I’m going to let
you
speak to him?’ Gemma said.
‘You could do worse. I hear he’s defying all analysis?’
Palliser sighed. ‘We still haven’t got a clue who he actually is. Not only is he saying nothing … we’ve gone back through military records for the last twenty years, and there’s no trace of any British serviceman, commissioned officer or otherwise, name of Michael Silver. CrimInt’s got nothing either, nor SOCA, nor SIS. Likewise, there are no comparisons in prints or DNA. We’ve circulated his mugshot throughout agencies abroad, but no hits so far.’
‘We should check the security consultants Goldstein & Hoff use when they send their execs overseas,’ Heck said.
‘Already have done,’ Palliser replied. ‘And it’s no dice. They’re all clean. Seems like Ian Blenkinsop made extra arrangements once he got to the Gulf.’