Kiss of Death

‘Why don’t we talk about that Odinist angle, Dennis?’ Reed said.

Still, Purdham held back on a response.

‘Those Vikings had a pretty violent attitude to life, didn’t they? Rape, pillage …’

‘They get misrepresented by films.’ Purdham hung his head again; he almost seemed embarrassed to be mounting a defence.

‘Maybe, but blood rites are a part of Odinism, aren’t they? I’ve been reading up on it. Normally, it was animals that got sacrificed. But certain Viking leaders, to really curry favour with the gods, used to offer humans too, didn’t they?’

Again, Purdham said nothing.

‘You have to talk to us about this bit, Dennis,’ Gemma said. ‘We’re not really interested in the mythology, or how Ranald Ulfskar managed to tie it in with some modern-day Aryan master-race gibberish. What we really want to know is what you saw happen on these awful nights, and what part you played in it.’

Still, nothing.

‘What about the dates?’ Reed said. ‘If you’re genuinely interested in the Viking religion, you must’ve known about the dates …’

‘March 21,’ Gemma reminded him. ‘April 30, June 21 … how about today, July 31?’

He glanced up weakly. ‘Look … I knew they were relevant, yes. But I didn’t know we were going to kill people.’

‘OK, let’s go with that?’ she said. ‘Let’s assume that was true the first time. But what about the second, third and fourth?’

‘Surely, you didn’t think you were just going to rough these guys up?’ Reed said. ‘Or scare them? How would that have gone down with Odin and Thor?’

‘That’s the point,’ Purdham moaned, seemingly deeply troubled. ‘It’s cruel … I know, but you can’t deny the deities. Once you’ve promised something, you’ve gotta deliver …’

Heck shook his head as he watched.

‘Deities?’ said a disbelieving voice. Bob Hunter had come forward to the mirror. ‘Odin and Thor? These twats ripping the piss, or what?’

‘Not totally,’ Heck replied. ‘Odinism was a real thing.’

‘Wouldn’t have thought there was much call for it in the twenty-first century.’

‘Where’ve you been, sir? This is the age of the hate crime.’

‘Yeah, but when it comes to white-power nutters, I thought Muslims were the hate figures of the moment.’

‘Me too,’ Heck agreed. ‘But I suppose some clowns just can’t get over that slap Sister Mary gave them when they were being cheeky to her all those years ago in Junior School. How are you anyway?’

‘I’m good.’

‘Congratulations on the promotion.’

‘Cheers.’

DCI Bob Hunter had once been DI Bob Hunter of the Serial Crimes Unit, in which capacity he and Heck had worked together on several enquiries. Ultimately though, Hunter, who had moved to SCU from the Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad, had adopted a cowboy approach to law enforcement, which its overall commander, Gemma Piper, had never been comfortable with. In due course, after one dispute too many, Hunter had returned to the Met and his beloved FS – or ‘Sweeney’, as it was known among London’s armed robbery community, whom it exclusively tackled – where he had now, much to Heck’s surprise, been promoted.

‘Listen, Heck … do you need to be in here?’ Hunter asked, seemingly conscious that several other SCU officers were also present, no doubt earwigging. ‘Or can we step outside for a minute?’

Heck threw a grudging glance through the mirror at Reed, who again was making headway with the suspect, before shrugging. ‘I don’t think they’ll miss me.’

‘Who’s Prince Charming, anyway?’ Hunter asked, noticing the object of his annoyance.

‘DI Jack Reed.’ Heck opened the door and moved out into the Custody corridor. ‘Transferred in from Hampshire about three months ago.’

Hunter followed him out. ‘What did he do down there?’

‘I don’t know. Some crap job … probably undeserving of praise.’

Hunter looked curious. ‘You’re not a fan, then?’

‘It’s nothing, I’m just being cynical.’ Heck walked through the Charge Office and tapped out a code on the door connecting to the Custody team’s Refs Room.

‘If he’s that bad how did he finish up in SCU?’

‘He used to work for Joe Wullerton in the Critical Incident Cadre.’

Hunter chuckled. ‘Bit of nepotism in the National Crime Group? Never.’

‘Nah …’ Heck shook his head glumly. ‘He’s good. I mean, he’s so clean he squeaks when he walks, but I can’t pretend he doesn’t know his job.’

‘Well … this is all very interesting, but how about that chat?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

They went into the Refs Room, which currently was empty, and got themselves a coffee from the vending machine in the corner.

‘Sounds like everything’s peachy in the Flying Squad,’ Heck said.

‘To be honest,’ Hunter replied, ‘when I rejoined, I didn’t think I had much of a future.’

‘I always thought it was your natural home.’

‘Yeah, but sometimes it isn’t a plan to go back where you started, is it? Not that Gemma bloody Piper left me much choice. No offence, by the way.’

‘None taken,’ Heck said.

It had been well over a decade since he and Gemma had been an item, and had even, briefly, set up home together; they’d been young detective constables at the time, working divisional CID at Bethnal Green. But much fire and water had gone under the bridge since then, not to mention Gemma’s meteoric rise through the ranks. On first arrival at the Serial Crimes Unit, Heck had never expected to find himself subservient to his former girlfriend. They’d worked together ever since, almost eleven years now, but not always cosily.

‘The Squad’s been good to me, though, as it’s turned out,’ Hunter added. ‘It always has. I mean, it’s not fucking perfect …’

‘Give over, Bob.’ Heck sipped his coffee. ‘What’re you moaning about? There are lads all over the Met who’d kill to get into the Sweeney.’

‘How about you, Heck? Are you one of them?’

Heck snorted. ‘Not in the Met any more, am I?’

‘Jesus, so what? You’ve swapped forces at least three times already to my knowledge. And it’s not like NCG’s got a great future.’

Heck couldn’t deny that. In this age of austerity, the police services of the UK were taking a real hammering. It would only be a matter of time before specialist squads started to feel the pinch as well, and rumours were now rife at Scotland Yard, where the National Crime Group’s HQ was located.

‘And the Flying Squad has?’ Heck wondered.

Hunter barked a laugh. ‘Come off it. We’ve survived everything from machine-gun attacks to corruption charges. A few cutbacks aren’t gonna do for us.’

‘Bob …?’ For the first time, Heck wondered where this conversation was leading. ‘Are you offering me a job, or something?’

‘You’ve surely heard that we’ve got a vacancy for a new DI?’

‘And it’s down to you to find someone to fill it?’

‘I’m running Squad North-East now. There have to be some perks.’

‘There’s one problem with this. You’re looking for a DI … I’m a DS.’

‘Come on, Heck … I think we can make that happen.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Yeah, just like that.’ Hunter laughed again. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, pal. With your record, you’ve got credit in the bank. Or have you still got this daft, self-defeating ideal about not wanting to join the brass because you’d rather be a soldier?’

Heck had been offered promotions in the past but had rarely given them a second thought, always insisting that he preferred the front line, and that he’d rather be an investigator than an administrator – though, deep down, and Gemma had once mentioned this to him, he couldn’t help wondering, being the ‘rogue angel’ he was (again, Gemma’s phrase, not his), if it was more a case that he simply didn’t fancy the extra responsibility of DI.

Times changed, of course. And so did attitudes and ambitions.

As he sipped more coffee, he thought again about how comfy the handsome, debonair Jack Reed was in his new role as DI at SCU, which in effect made him Gemma’s deputy. And how comfy Gemma apparently was to have him there.

And it wasn’t as if the Flying Squad itself wasn’t appealing. Heck had worked Tower Hamlets Robbery once, though that had been a smaller role – mainly he’d found himself going after muggers and other street bandits. The Sweeney pursued the big boys. For that reason, there’d always been a certain glamour about it – they were regularly in the press and on TV. Their reputation for being wideboys, just a bit too close in spirit to the East End villains they often investigated, had always put him off in the past.

But again, things changed.

‘Not that Squad DIs don’t do a bit of soldiering themselves from time to time,’ Hunter added. ‘Just think, you can make your ultimate fantasy real … you’ll be Regan Mark II, a displaced Manchester lad working over the blaggers of London.’

‘Who’d I be replacing?’ Heck asked him.

‘Ray Marciano.’

‘Come again …?’

Hunter shrugged. ‘He’s left us, Heck.’

Heck was astounded. ‘Ray Marciano’s left the Flying Squad?’

‘Not just the Squad, pal. The job.’

The term ‘living legend’ was often overused in police circles, but Ray Marciano, the Flying Squad’s quietly spoken detective inspector from Sevenoaks, Kent, had proved to be the exception to that rule. For the last nineteen years, he’d led one successful campaign after another against the capital’s legion of bank robbers, taking down more firms than anyone else before him, securing hundreds of years’ worth of convictions for major-league faces. He wasn’t just considered a brilliant detective, he was also better connected and therefore better informed than almost anyone else in the Met, which was all the more remarkable given that he wasn’t a London boy by origin. There was scarcely a snout in the city he didn’t have a working relationship with, barely a villain who didn’t know him well. In fact, it was gang leader, Don Parry, whom Marciano had arrested in connection with the Millennium Dome raid and sent down for twenty years, who had christened him, with a degree of grudging respect, ‘Thief-Taker No. 1’.

‘Would you believe he’s gone working for a defence solicitor?’ Hunter said.

Heck was vaguely aware that his jaw had dropped. ‘You’re telling me Ray Marciano hasn’t just chucked it in, he’s chucked it in to go and be a case worker for a brief?’

‘Not just any brief. It’s Morgan Robbins.’

‘Robbins …’ Heck tried to recall; the name sounded familiar.

‘He’s the one who got Milena Misanyan off,’ Hunter said.

Heck did remember it. Last year, the City of London Police had charged some female oligarch from Turkey or somewhere, who was newly settled in the UK, with various highfalutin white-collar offences: embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, that kind of thing. Apparently, they’d done months of work on her before striking, only to see her defence, organised by Morgan Robbins, take them on at every turn and defeat them. It had been all over the papers for several months.

Heck seemed to recollect a photo of Misanyan on the cover of Time magazine: it was a portrait of an archetypical eastern beauty, complete with dark eyes, thick lashes and ruby lips, a fetching silk scarf woven around her head, her expression a bland but enigmatic smile. That item had come well before the recent court battles; he thought it had been in celebration of her joining the ranks of the world’s female billionaires – the headline had been something like From Hell to Heaven – but he hadn’t bothered reading the story.

‘Thanks to the Misanyan case, Robbins is no ordinary lawyer these days,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s a big fish, a real whopper.’

‘Even so …’ Heck shook his head. ‘Hearing that Ray Marciano would rather be a case worker than a cop is like hearing Kim Jong-un’s up for Man of the Year. It doesn’t compute.’

‘He’s not really a case worker, is he? More like their lead investigator. Look … don’t be surprised, Heck. Ray’s still doing what he loves, only now there’ll be no more pissing around with Met politics, no having to cover his back all day, no having to mind his Ps and Qs or watch what he says in case he upsets some fucking snowflake back in the office. On top of that, he’ll be on massive money. Way more than we can afford to pay.’

Heck arched an eyebrow. ‘You’re not exactly selling the Squad to me, Bob.’

‘Look, Heck … we’re all pig-sick of the changes in the job. Everyone’s pissed off about their pensions. We’ve had lads slogging their guts out for twenty years, waiting for promotion, only to see chinless wonders brought in from Civvy Street as direct-entry superintendents. It’s not just us, it’s you lot in NCG too … I know you’re feeling it. But there are still some oases of common sense here and there, even in London.’

They were alone in the Refs Room, but Hunter lowered his voice conspiratorially.

‘Heck, you know that with me as your guv’nor, you’d get a lot more leeway than you do under Her Ladyship. And I’m only answerable to Al Easterbrook, which basically means I’m answerable to no one.’

Alan Easterbrook was Senior Commander of the Flying Squad, a man once famed but now with a reputation for being a distant, remote figure, whose main ambition in life was to get through each day without any underlings bothering him with details.

‘Until Easterbrook retires,’ Heck said.

‘Why would he retire?’ Hunter replied. ‘They want us all to stay on. And he’s got the cushiest number ever. It’s me who does the donkey work. He just gets the credit for it.’

‘Look, Bob …’ Heck threw his half-empty cup into a bin. ‘I don’t know if I’m even qualified to replace Ray Marciano.’

‘You must be joking, pal. Ray never did anything you don’t. You’re bang on for it.’

Before Heck could argue further, the door swung open and Gemma came in, followed by Jack Reed. They headed to the vending machine, deep in conversation about how to pitch the next interview, though Gemma was visibly distracted by the sight of Heck and Bob Hunter, particularly Hunter.

‘You don’t have to decide now, pal,’ Hunter said quietly, when the other two had resumed their discussion. ‘But I’ll have to make a decision in the next few weeks. Can’t leave a vacant DI desk for too long. Not with all the bloody nutters we’ve got lining up to do jobs.’

Heck pondered. The offer had come from left-field and, even if other things hadn’t been preoccupying him, would have left him a little dazed, not to say doubtful. It wasn’t just the personal ties he had at SCU, he’d been with the unit eleven years now. In some ways, he’d almost become institutionalised. It was difficult to imagine being anywhere else.

‘I’ll get back to you, Bob,’ he said.

‘Give it some serious thought.’ Hunter leaned again into his personal space. ‘SCU’s a good gig, but anyone who stays in the same place for too long gets stale. Plus, I’ll say it again … National Crime Group’s on rocky ground. You don’t believe me … wait around and see.’

He glided away, leaving the Refs Room without a backward glance.

‘What’s Bob Hunter doing here?’ Gemma wondered, coming over.

‘Dunno,’ Heck replied. ‘Suppose he’s got some case in.’

‘Thought his new patch was the East End?’

‘Flying Squad, ma’am. If anyone makes good use of this nick, it’s them.’

By the look on her face, she didn’t believe this for one second, but decided to let it pass.

‘Purdham given us a full confession yet?’ he asked.

‘In the end,’ she said. ‘I actually believe him … somehow or other, they railroaded him into participating in these crimes. It’s amazing what you’ll do to become part of a club. But yeah, to answer your question … if Ulfskar and his cronies don’t get thirty years apiece, no one ever will. Once we get the forensics in play, it’s over for them.’

She walked from the room with coffee in hand.

‘OK, Heck?’ Reed asked, edging after her.

‘Fine, sir,’ Heck replied stiffly. ‘You?’

‘Never better. You can call me Jack, you know.’

‘That’s all right, sir. I always think we’ve got to earn the right to use first names.’

Reed smiled as he left. ‘No one’s earned that right more than you.’

‘Who’s talking about me?’ Heck said under his breath.

Chapter 3

The impending threat to the National Crime Group felt as if it might be real. Heck was in no position to judge, or even voice opinions on the matter – but there was rarely smoke without fire, and there was an awful lot of smoke at present.

Almost certainly, there’d be pay and recruitment freezes, people would be expected to work longer hours for less, resources would likely be slashed, and maybe staff too. If the worst came to the worst – and certain folk were saying that the crisis was actually this bad – entire departments could be disbanded, and all personnel reassigned. On the face of it, the latter would seem unlikely, but it would be a sure way to make an awful lot of savings in one fell swoop. And in that regard, the National Crime Group, thus far untouched by the cutbacks, had to be a prime target.

It comprised three specialist branches: the Kidnap Squad, the Organised Crime Division and the Serial Crimes Unit. In the eyes of many, these were all luxuries the British police could ill afford, as they monopolised manpower and funds for relatively small gain. Even Heck had to admit that it didn’t look good in the stats when an SCU detective made maybe only four or five arrests per year. What matter that these were nearly always repeat serious offenders – serial murderers, rapists and the like – who may already have ruined countless lives and had the potential to continue doing exactly that? It was still only four or five villains off the street each year, compared to the forty or fifty that a divisional detective might account for, never mind the hundred or so claimed by the average uniform.

He tried to put it from his mind as he worked his Megane through the heavy mid-morning traffic in Dagenham, but it frustrated him no end. Several days had passed since the Black Chapel sting and yet the ominous stories about the unit’s potential fate continued, seemingly unaffected by these recent positive results. In the words of DS Eric Fisher, SCU’s main intel man, ‘Why should we expect preferential treatment just because we do our job?’ Heck supposed that Fisher had a point, but it was a job that few others could do.

Again though, he tried to dismiss it all. He’d always sought to ignore the internal politics of the police, especially high-end politics like this, mainly because it was hardly the sort of thing you’d expect of a ‘rogue angel’.

This unusual status referred to the roving commission Heck was often accorded during SCU enquiries. Another name for it, again of Gemma Piper’s invention, was ‘Minister Without Portfolio’. In a nutshell, this meant that he was rarely attached to any specific part of the investigation but instead was authorised to develop and chase down his own leads. This was a privilege he’d earned over many years, on the basis of having felt numerous quality collars on the back of his own analysis and intuition. But whether it would have happened under any other supervisor than Gemma was questionable.

Not that Gemma was his best friend at present, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason why. It was certain that the menacing sounds from the top floor had put her on edge. She’d been brusque and indifferent with him recently, if not downright vexed. Neutral observers might argue that this was their normal relationship – there’d been many times in the past when it felt like they were at daggers drawn, but this was usually because of procedural disputes, not as a matter of course. Lately, she’d been actively and protractedly cold with him, much more than was normal, and much, much more than she was with anyone else.

Heck puzzled over it as he left the A13 and joined the Heathway.

He hadn’t done anything especially wrong, as far as he knew. Quite the opposite, in fact. His own intel had laid the Black Chapel on a plate for them, for which he’d received minimal gratitude. He wondered if it could be down to his lack of enthusiasm for the recently appointed DI Reed, though on that front Gemma was more than making up for it herself.

He shook that thought from his head, aggravated in ways he couldn’t explain.

He was now on the edge of the Rimmington Hall estate and, inevitably, his mind moved to other things. St Agatha’s Roman Catholic Church was easy enough to find. It faced onto Rimmington Avenue from behind a tall wire-mesh fence. There’d be a car park behind it somewhere, but as this was August and the junior school next door was closed, there was nothing to stop him parking on the main road at the front.

St Agatha’s was an industrial-age structure, stark and functional, its brickwork ingrained with the smoke and soot of generations. After recent investigations, especially the pursuit of the Black Chapel, Heck felt as if he’d been spending a lot of time in and around churches. But the lichen-clad tombstones and ivy-hung chancels of rural Suffolk were a world away from this place. Not that St Agatha’s grim appearance made it seem any less incongruous that Jimmy ‘Snake’ Fletcher now hung out here, though it wouldn’t have been the first time in Heck’s experience that a half-hearted soul had only needed to be exposed once to the full viciousness of his chosen team before he went scuttling off to join the opposition.

That said, Fletcher was still lucky that the local parish priest had been sympathetic.

Heck didn’t bother trying the front door but walked down a side passage into a small yard at the back. On one side here stood the entrance to the presbytery; on the other stood St Agatha’s Church Hall.

The latter was a free-standing building, a single-storey with a prefab roof, and walls coated in white stucco. It was in regular use, and in fact its main entrance stood open now, so Heck ventured inside. Here, a door on the right led into the hall itself, an open space of bare floorboards and scattered school chairs. A door on the left revealed a short corridor with signposts for toilets. A whitewashed brick arch stood directly in front and, beyond that, a stairwell dropped out of view.

Heck descended. At the first turn in the stair, he saw a startling piece of graffiti on the facing wall. Some vandal had used venom-green paint to daub the words:

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here …

And underneath it:

… if you had any in the fucking first place

Heck understood the meaning of this when he looked right, to where the final flight of steps descended three or four feet, before connecting with a corridor built from bare brick and smelling strongly of mildew. Exposed piping, unlagged but dangling with cobwebs, ran the full length of it. Heck could just about see this thanks to the illumination provided by a series of grimy light bulbs mounted every ten yards in wire-mesh cages crusted with limescale. Some forty yards ahead, a pair of doorways led off opposite each other, and a little way beyond those, at the corridor’s far end, stood a closed door made of what looked like solid steel.

Heck walked forward, footsteps clicking on damp cement.

On reaching the facing doorways, he glanced into two squat brick rooms, in which massive cisterns churned quietly. He strode on towards the steel door. It was heavy, full of rivets and had no visible handle.

Just as he reached it, it slid open on its greased runner.

Snake Fletcher stood there, the eyes inscrutable behind the bottle-thick lenses of his heavy-framed glasses.

‘Welcome,’ he said.

‘Some welcome,’ Heck replied. ‘What’s wrong with the pub, or a park bench?’

‘I told you, Heck … I’m not going topside at the mo.’

‘Never had you down as the sort who scares easily.’

‘Then you don’t know me as well as you think, eh?’

That was most likely true, Heck conceded, as Snake withdrew into the dank chamber beyond the heavy door.