Kiss of Death

‘That’s going to be the MIR,’ she said, as they walked past it.

‘Sledgehammer’s a major enquiry then?’

‘It’s pretty major for us, yes.’

Still carrying the box, Heck followed Gemma down the corridor to her office.

‘And I’ve got a new partner?’ he said. ‘As in someone from outside SCU?’

Gemma glanced back. ‘She’s just joined SCU, as it happens. She’s been trying to come to us for ages. She dropped your name half a dozen times during her last application. Don’t look so worried. You’re not being asked to puppy-walk someone. DC Honeyford’s been a fully operational detective for several years now. She’s clocked up some excellent arrests.’

‘DC Honeyford,’ Heck said slowly.

‘You ought to remember her. That time you were assigned to work down in Surrey, she was your right-hand man.’

‘Yeah, she was.’

‘She also has a rep for not taking any bullshit. Which also makes her the ideal choice to be paired up with you.’

‘Ma’am, she’s spiky as hell.’

‘Like I say, ideal.’ Gemma halted by her office door. ‘Yet, funnily enough … when I interviewed her, she said that you were the main reason she wanted to leave Surrey and come to the National Crime Group. She said that when she worked with you on the Laurel and Hardy murders, she learned more than she has from all the rest of the detectives she’s met put together.’ Gemma registered the disbelieving expression on his face. ‘I know, I kind of doubt that too. But we are where we are.’ She pushed the door open. ‘Come and say hello to her. Let’s hope she’s not died of old age waiting for you.’

Chapter 5

‘DC Honeyford,’ Gemma said, ‘DS Heckenburg apologises for his tardiness. The fact that he doesn’t look very apologetic is to be ignored. He doesn’t do apologies often or convincingly. However, on this occasion, despite all appearances to the contrary, he means it.’

Gail Honeyford looked much the way Heck remembered when he’d last seen her, which was just over two years ago: she was still slim and attractive; a cool brunette, with hair down to her shoulders, dark hazel eyes and a pale, ‘peaches and cream’ complexion. She wore a powder-blue trouser suit and blue heeled boots and was sitting in the chair facing Gemma’s desk. A raincoat was folded alongside her, and an empty coffee cup sat on the desktop.

‘Yeah,’ Heck said. ‘Sorry I’m late, DC Honeyford.’

She replied with a polite nod.

Gemma indicated that Heck could dump the box of paperwork in a corner, and slid behind her desk, which was a complex operation in itself, given how little room there was in here. Unlike some senior officers, Gemma had never been given to displays of power. Though she was commander here at Staples Corner, head of the Serial Crimes Unit and second in authority at the National Crime Group only to the director, Joe Wullerton, himself, her office was a cramped, closet-like space, half of it filled with filing cabinets, the rest overhung with shelves groaning beneath the weight of packed files and dog-eared legal manuals.

‘Right …’ She selected a beige folder from her wire basket in-tray. ‘Seeing as Operation Sledgehammer goes live at eight tomorrow morning, there isn’t a great deal of time for us to discuss the niceties of what’ll be expected of you as a Serial Crimes Unit detective.’

DC Honeyford, having realised that she was the one being addressed, sat up straight.

Gemma glanced at her. ‘Except to say that if you needed to learn anything, you wouldn’t be here. So, you’re not on probation. You understand that?’

‘Of course, ma’am,’ the new recruit replied.

‘There’s a serious job needs doing, and in SCU we do it to the best of our abilities,’ Gemma said. ‘If any one of us fouls up, and that includes me, we’re out. But it may even be worse than that.’ She sat back, watching her new charge carefully, probing her with that penetrating blue-eyed gaze. ‘In this department, we deal exclusively with violent psychopaths … that means we can’t afford any errors. Lives, including our own, DC Honeyford, may depend on it.’ She paused again. ‘And … that’s it. That’s the whole of the introductory pep talk. Sorry if it wasn’t what you were expecting, but we’re all a bit short of time at present. You’ve got exactly half a day to get settled in. Because after tomorrow morning’s briefing you’ll all be expected to hit the road straight away in pursuit of the various actions that will have been allocated to you as part of Operation Sledgehammer.‘

‘I’m ready to go now, ma’am,’ DC Honeyford said.

‘Good. That means you can spend the rest of the day familiarising yourself with this.’ Gemma pushed the beige folder across the desk. ‘Consider that a welcome-to-your-new-job present. It’s a perk of sorts … no one else will know what case they’re being allocated until tomorrow morning.’

At last, Heck understood why they were being deployed in twos.

There were clearly several investigations that needed working on at the same time, most likely of historical significance rather than dating to the here and now. So that was Operation Sledgehammer: it sounded dramatic, as if it was something right up SCU’s street, but in actual fact one of the most experienced and productive special investigations units in the British police service was being used to adjust the clean-up rates.

‘And, Heck,’ Gemma said, interrupting his thoughts, ‘let’s make this thing work.’

He nodded, trying not to look as half-hearted about it as he felt.

‘OK … off you go.’ She waggled them away with her fingers.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ DC Honeyford said, standing and tucking the file under her arm.

Heck dawdled after she’d left the room, edging the door closed behind her.

When he spoke, it was quietly. ‘Ma’am, I—’

She halted him with a raised palm. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘Look, there’s something you may not know …’

‘I said I don’t want to hear it.’

She’d already opened her emails, her manicured fingers rattling on the keyboard.

‘Gemma … come on!’

Two things you never did with Gemma Piper was raise your voice or lose your temper. Even though Heck felt that, on occasion, he might have earned the right, he hadn’t intended it to slip out quite so abrasively. But rather to his surprise, her reaction was mild.

‘Don’t get too cocky, Sergeant.’ Her voice remained level; she didn’t even look up. ‘You may find this thing more of a challenge than you think.’

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he muttered, leaving the room and half-blundering into Jack Reed outside.

‘Sorry, Heck,’ Reed said. ‘My fault. Don’t worry, I wasn’t eavesdropping.’

Heck had never known such politeness in the police environment as he routinely heard from Reed, especially not from a supervisor to an underling. It surely had its origins in the Officers’ Mess, though Heck had never enquired about the DI’s background, and never would – as that would imply that he was interested in getting to know the guy.

‘It’s OK, sir,’ Heck grunted. ‘Nothing to hear anyway.’

‘I’ve told you, mate … it’s “Jack”. I don’t do formalities.’

‘Yeah, no probs.’

Gail Honeyford was waiting a few yards along the corridor, picking through the folder’s contents. He stumped towards her. Behind him, he heard Reed tap on Gemma’s door.

‘Busy!’ she called out. ‘Unless it’s exceedingly important.’

‘It’s me, ma’am,’ Reed replied. ‘Can I come in?’

Heck was now too far away to hear her muffled response, but whatever it was, Reed went in.

‘You don’t look very pleased to see me,’ Gail said, as they walked side by side down to the detectives’ office.

‘I’m not displeased.’ Heck tried not to sound tetchy, though it was a struggle. The truth was that he rated Gail as a police officer. How could he not when he owed his life to her? But there were other issues here, which, frankly, he didn’t think he could deal with at this moment. ‘I’m just … surprised.’

‘I gave you a heads-up that I was going to try and join SCU,’ she said. ‘Roughly around the same time you said you’d try to give me a leg-up. Just because I didn’t hear anything else from you, that doesn’t mean I didn’t stick with my ambition.’

‘In a way, I did give you a leg-up,’ he said. ‘You name-dropped me during your interview.’

‘Yeah, funny that. When I reminded DSU Piper that I’d worked with you before and that we got on well together, she said something to the effect of: “Ordinarily, that would be a reason for me not to appoint you.” What do you think she meant by that?’

‘She plays games,’ he grunted. ‘Likes to keep us on our toes.’

‘I hear they call her “the Lioness”.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Why?’

‘Muck up this enquiry, and you’ll find out.’

Gail nodded as she pondered this.

‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Why did she?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She told you that “ordinarily” she wouldn’t have appointed you. What changed her mind?’

‘Oh … she also noted that aside from that one case you and me worked together, my career’s been pretty straight-laced and that I’ve had some good results, all of them by the book. She added that she was certain the experience of this, plus the passage of time, would probably ensure that I’ve got over any bad habits I might have picked up from you.’

‘Might have picked up from you, Sergeant,’ he corrected her.

‘Sorry, yes … Sergeant,’ she agreed primly.

That was one bad habit she’d dispensed with, he noted. The previous incarnation of Gail had bridled at the merest hint that she was under someone else’s control, especially a male’s. This was explainable by the tough time she’d had with some of the idiot men in her life, but it hadn’t been likely to do her any good in the long run. At the end of the day, rank was rank.

They went into the detectives’ office – or ‘DO’ as it was known – to find the place reorganised in terms of its furniture. Heck’s own desk had been moved several feet from its south-facing window and turned around ninety degrees. Another desk, previously empty, had been drawn up to face it. It wasn’t hugely inconvenient. All Heck’s electricals were still plugged in and he could still reach his shelves and filing cabinet. But the fact that everything had been shifted around, without his even being consulted, was the last thing he needed on a day like today.

The bloke responsible was still in the middle of it.

Approaching his late fifties, DS Eric Fisher had outlived his usefulness to SCU as an outdoors man, and if his age hadn’t been against him, his colossal girth could have done the job on its own. But as an analyst, intelligence officer and now the unit’s official account manager for HOLMES 2 – the latest IT system used by UK police forces for the investigation of serious crime – Fisher was second to none. In case that wasn’t quite enough in this new age of extreme cost-efficiency, Gemma also had him double-hatting as a kind of unofficial office manager – a role he was currently occupying comfortably, as he issued orders to DCs Quinnell, Rawlins, Cunliffe and Finnegan, who, with much clattering of tables and scraping of chair legs, were trying to pair up their own furniture.

‘What’s all this?’ Heck demanded.

Fisher scratched his beard. ‘We’re working Sledgehammer in pairs. Haven’t you heard?’

‘Yeah, I heard.’ Heck toed irritably at his desk. ‘But, given the option, I might have wanted to do things slightly differently.’

‘Fair enough.’ Fisher pushed his glasses back up his sweat-greased nose. ‘How many permutations of two desks do you want me to go through before you settle on one you like?’

‘I’m sure this’ll be all right,’ Gail said, throwing her coat, bag and the Sledgehammer file onto the empty desk facing Heck’s.

Fisher turned to Heck and arched his caterpillar-thick eyebrows.

‘It’ll do for the moment,’ Heck grumbled. He cleared his throat and raised his voice. ‘Everyone … listen up. Meet our newest recruit, DC Gail Honeyford.’

The rest of the men – and they were exclusively men at present – gathered, grinning, catching as much of an eyeful as they dared in the twenty-first century. A lot had changed in British policing, even during Gail’s relatively short service, but boys would always be boys.

‘DS Eric Fisher,’ Heck said, sticking a thumb towards the big man.

‘Please to meet you, love,’ Fisher nodded genially, which belied his barbaric appearance.

‘DC Gary Quinnell,’ Heck said. ‘He’s our conscience.’

Quinnell nodded too. Gail nodded back.

Heck then went through the rest of them: Andy Rawlins, who was short, tubby, balding on top and possessed of a beard as scraggy as Eric Fisher’s – he smiled shyly; Burt Cunliffe, who was squat and solid, with a grey buzz cut and a tan that indicated he’d recently been abroad for his holidays; and Charlie Finnegan, who was lean, with black, slicked hair and an odd foxy look about him.

‘There are a few more of us, of course,’ Heck said. ‘Out on the job, scattered around the building. We have actually got a few other women on the plot. You’ve met Gemma. DI Ronni James is on leave. Up to last year, we had DC Shawna McCluskey …’

‘Big shoes to fill there, girl,’ Quinnell interrupted; he’d been a particularly close friend of Shawna’s, even more so than Heck.

‘Promoted?’ Gail wondered.

‘Shot,’ Charlie Finnegan said matter-of-factly. ‘And savagely beaten.’

Gail glanced at Heck. ‘Fatality? Only I didn’t hear anything …’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But she went on a full medical. She’s OK. The Federation looked after her.’

‘Yep,’ Finnegan said. ‘There’s always that consolation. If you catch a few bullets … the Federation will look after you.’

‘There but for the grace of God go all of us,’ Gail said, pointedly unfazed by his sneery smile.

‘Sounding like my kind of girl already,’ Quinnell guffawed, slapping her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, though … I’m already spoken for.’

The others laughed and continued to straighten the new-look office. But when Gail went into the adjoining room to find the locker Eric Fisher had allocated her, Finnegan slid over.

‘Lucky bastard,’ he said to Heck. ‘Don’t know how you fucking do it.’

‘You wouldn’t want to work with Gail, Charlie,’ Heck replied. ‘She’d be too much of a distraction. You know how hard you have to focus just to get the basics right.’

‘Aha,’ Fisher interrupted, leafing through the Sledgehammer file Gail had left on her desk. ‘So, you two are going after Creeley.’

‘Don’t know,’ Heck replied. ‘Haven’t looked at it yet.’

‘Eddie Creeley. He’s a rough customer, I’ll tell you.’

Heck seemed to remember hearing something about him. If recollection served, Eddie Creeley was an offender from the North-East suspected of armed robbery and murder.

‘I don’t know much about Sledgehammer yet,’ he admitted.

‘A new initiative,’ Fisher explained. ‘We’ve received a list of bad guys who’ve so far eluded arrest and, thanks to info provided by Interpol, are still believed to be in the UK. We’re the ones who are charged with rounding them up.’

‘Us and Cold Case?’

‘Well … they’re mostly older cases, so the Coldies are providing intel and back-up.’

Heck took the file and glanced through it himself. Immediately, he was struck by a mugshot of Eddie Creeley, who’d probably been somewhere in his early thirties when the pic was taken. He was an archetype: not a bruiser as such, but cold, cruel, with a lean, aquiline face, greased-back black hair, black sideburns and small, dark eyes. Just flicking through a few more documents, the huge extent and heinous nature of the crimes he was suspected of became clear. He was perhaps most well-known in connection with a violent £7 million armed robbery at a security company in Newark-on-Trent, during which he’d taken two employees hostage, handcuffed them and injected them with drain cleaner to disable them – one later dying and the other suffering permanent brain damage. But more recently for a home invasion, wherein he took two civilian hostages; the female occupant died after she too was injected with a toxic substance, while her husband, though he survived, was shot twice.

‘Everyone’s drawn cards of a similarly nasty ilk,’ Fisher commented. ‘There are no small-time offenders on the Sledgehammer list.’

‘Two of us for each one,’ Heck mused. ‘How much actual support are we going to get?’

Fisher shrugged. ‘As many PSOs as you can scrounge out of whichever force area you end up working in. But that’ll be down to you.’

Heck glanced at him. ‘For real?’

‘Yeah. Times are hard all over, pal. The word is the UK can’t afford coppers any more.’

They turned and saw that Gail had reappeared and had been listening to the conversation.

‘No pressure then,’ she said.

Chapter 6

It always struck Nan as odd that August, which so many folk thought of as the height of summer, was actually more like its end. OK, the schools were closed and people went away, and it was generally the warmest, driest month in the calendar, but the hours of daylight were noticeably shorter than they were in June, when the official midsummer fell.

It particularly took her by surprise that evening, when she opted to walk home from the Spar, having just worked the back shift, and pick up a fish-and-chip tea on the way. It was only half past eight when she left the building by the side door, but already it was going dark. Unnerved, she followed the side passage to the shop’s small forecourt, where she encountered another problem: that irritating bunch of school-age hooligans who always hung out here in the evenings. Yes, they were only kids, and Nan was forty-eight, but she wasn’t a particularly tall or powerfully built woman, and the age gap counted for so little these days. During her own childhood, adults had ruled the roost, way more than was even remotely reasonable. But it still felt wrong that she should be frightened of these youngsters, even if it was inevitable given their rat-like faces and their habit of using obscene words every other sentence with no fear of consequence.

The profanity didn’t bother her, if she was honest. Not after the youthful home life she’d led. And anyway, you couldn’t really blame them for that when it was so routine. Every new movie was full of it; comedians on TV used it to get laughs instead of actually being funny. No, it wasn’t the bad language that she hated; it was the name-calling.

‘Oy, Toothless Mary!’ one of them shouted as she walked away, huddled inside her anorak, clutching her handbag tightly.

Cackles of heartless laughter sounded from the rest of them.

She’d hoped that with it being dusk, they wouldn’t have noticed her. No such luck.

‘Oy, Toothless!’ one of them called again, as she crossed the road towards the chippie.

Nan was determined not to cry, reminding herself that this was entirely her own fault. Last February, it had been. It was wet, miserable, bitterly cold – and she’d had the sniffles. How ridiculous of her, though, to hit a sneezing fit just after she’d finished work. How even more ridiculous that she hadn’t fixed her dentures properly, four of them shooting out of her mouth and scattering across the pavement the very second she’d entered the forecourt.

They would never let her forget it.

No, she wasn’t going to cry. But she wasn’t sticking around either. Through the smeary rectangle of the chip shop window, she saw there was nobody waiting at the counter. On one hand, that might mean that Nan would get served quickly, but on the other it might mean that, at this time of evening, nearly everything had gone. If that was the case, they might have to fry her a new piece of cod, and that could take ten minutes. There’d be nothing to stop one of those callous young brutes traipsing across the road to amuse himself even more at her expense. It was better just to vacate the district, she decided. She’d have some bread and butter when she got home.

As it was now mid-evening, and full darkness was falling, she wouldn’t normally have taken the wooded footpath known locally as the Strode, which led between the small shopping centre where she worked and her home housing estate. In truth, it sounded a bit melodramatic to call it a ‘wooded footpath’. That gave the impression of a track in a forest, but it was nothing like that really; more like two hundred yards of beaten grit with a narrow belt of trees separating it from the council playing fields on the right and a wall of shrubbery on the left, with privately owned houses beyond that. Not that this made much difference in the dark, because the Strode was only served by two streetlamps, one at either end, which didn’t do much to light it. As such, Nan wasn’t always keen to use it even during the day. But on this occasion, she didn’t think twice. She just wanted to get home, and this was the quickest route.

She pressed hurriedly on down the path. The tree trunks on her right were stanchions in deep shadow, the playing fields already invisible. The dull glow of house lamps filtering from behind drawn curtains only minimally penetrated the bulwark of vegetation on her left.

Though the end of the Strode was still a good hundred yards distant, Nan told herself that there was nothing to be frightened of. But she was undeniably alone – all she could hear was her own breathing and the steady crunch of her feet on the grit. Nervously, she peeked backward over her shoulder.

There was a figure about sixty yards to her rear.

Silhouetted against the distant glow of the streetlight, it was no more than a black, hunched outline, walking not running.

She had to look again, just to be sure.

Yes, it was only walking – though at faster-than-average speed.

Nan increased her own pace. Her breath came short and quick.

It occurred to her, somewhat belatedly, that it might be a police officer. There’d been a few of them around recently. But she couldn’t see any reason why this would be a copper. Coppers usually did one of two things: they watched from a place of concealment, or they came and knocked on your door.

They didn’t do this: follow you round at night, trying to frighten you.

She glanced over her shoulder again, walking even faster, wishing she had longer legs. Even without running, this guy might catch up before she reached the main road. However, he wasn’t significantly closer. She faced forward again and saw that she only had another fifty yards to go. Unless he started running at the last minute, she ought to make it – and he surely wasn’t going to do that, otherwise he’d already have done it. As she approached the end of the pathway, she looked back one more time. He was still forty yards off and still no more than a silhouette.

With a sense of relief, she emerged onto the pavement, into the yellow radiance of the streetlights. She made a sharp right and continued on her way.

Just ahead, on the other side of Orchard Park Road, there was another cut-through, ‘the Ginnel’ as they knew this one, which passed between the rear fences of houses before opening onto her estate. In daylight hours, it was an easy and safe shortcut home. But she certainly wasn’t chancing it now; she would stay on the main road.

There wasn’t a great deal of traffic about. But it didn’t matter. Nothing would happen to her while there were occasional cars flitting by. She felt certain of that. You heard some bad stories, of course. If she was honest, this wasn’t the best part of town to live in. But it was only at the godforsaken times of night when people Nan knew had been mugged.

Assuming that was what this was.

She’d almost given up on the idea that it could be one of those stupid kids from the Spar. If it was, he’d come an awful long way simply to laugh at her again.

She glanced back, now seeing no one on either side of the road. A break occurred in the intermittent traffic, so she crossed over. The entrance to the Ginnel was about ten or twenty yards behind her, but thirty yards beyond that, the mouth to the Strode stood in the shadow of several sycamore trees. The man could be waiting there, watching her, and she wouldn’t know it. It was difficult to see where else he could have gone. Even if he hadn’t been following her, shouldn’t he be out here on the main road somewhere? She put the question from her mind. There was no point puzzling over something when you didn’t have all the facts. He could live close by and have already gone indoors for all Nan knew.