Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller

‘Erm … what do you, erm … what do you want?’

‘Do you want me to shout it at the top of my voice? Because I will.’

‘Erm … hang on.’

‘Never mind “hang on”,’ Heck growled. ‘Open this soddin’, piggin’ door, or I’ll kick it down.’

A chain rattled as it was removed, and the door opened. Penny Flint’s younger brother, Tyler, stood there. He was weedy, pale and with a badly spotted face, particularly around the mouth. He had a mess of dyed-orange hair, and a single earring dangling from an infected lobe. He wore pyjama trousers, dinosaur-feet slippers and a ragged jersey that was three times too large.

‘Thought it’d be you,’ he said dully.

‘Well, obviously.’ Heck shouldered his way inside. ‘No one else knows she’s here. Yet.’

The colour scheme inside the flat was grey, grey and grey, with perhaps a hint of lime-green, which had faded almost to grey. The place was a tip: bare, damp-looking walls, tatty and disordered furniture, dirty crockery and empty beer bottles on a side table. It was cold for an April morning, so the electric fire was on full blast. It was too much really, but it didn’t bother Penny Flint, who was slumped in an armchair and smoking an unfiltered cigarette, focused intently on morning TV, where Jeremy Kyle was putting a bunch of people just like her through their paces. She wore a thin dressing gown, while her long brown hair hung in ratty strands. The ashtray on her armrest was crammed with dog-ends.

In the corner, Alfie, her six-month-old son, lay snug in a rabbit romper suit, burbling to himself in his carry-cot. The baby was the only dab of real colour in the room, aside from Tyler Flint’s ludicrous fake hair. Having checked outside that Heck hadn’t been followed, Tyler had closed and locked the door again and now hovered in the background.

‘Don’t stare at me like that, Heck,’ Penny said without looking round. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘Nervous?’ Heck retorted. ‘You’re lucky I’m not dragging you down to Brixton cop-shop by your knicker-elastic.’

She turned a face on him that had once been pretty but was now haggard.

‘I’m not wearing knickers at the moment, Heck. I can’t stand the pain they cause me. Or maybe I didn’t make that clear enough the last time we spoke.’

If that was true, she was pretty scantily clad, her gown finishing above the knee and her toe- and fingernails painted their trademark shocking-green. There was even a slinky gold chain looped around her left ankle. Her injuries weren’t visible, but Heck had seen the photographs taken at the hospital, and they had spared no anatomical detail. If there was still any doubt, the pair of metal crutches propped against the back of her chair indicated that Penny didn’t even yet figure among the walking wounded. His sympathy for her in this regard hadn’t ebbed. But some things were unforgivable.

‘You realise what you’ve done?’ he asked her quietly.

‘That wasn’t what I intended,’ she said.

‘Intended or not, you tipped off two different police units about John Sagan, and you didn’t have the good grace to warn either of them there were other friendly forces in the field. What did you expect was going to happen?’

‘Look, I just wanted that bastard to go down. Wanted to make sure of it. It’s not my fault if you lot don’t talk to each other.’ She turned back to the TV screen.

‘You deceitful, self-centred cow.’

Her brother ventured forward. ‘Hey, come on. She’s been through –’

‘Sit down, Tyler!’ Heck jabbed a finger at him. ‘Just being who you are and having the life you have is enough for you to worry about. Don’t compound it by getting any more involved than you need to in a shit-storm like this.’

Mouth clamped shut, Tyler sank stiffly onto a chair.

‘It’s all right, Tyle,’ Penny said, with more than a hint of the cocky belligerence which, up until now, had got her through so many years on the streets unscathed. ‘I can handle Heck.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Heck said. ‘What you going to do, set me the same kind of trap you set for Reg Cowling?’

‘I’m sorry ’bout what happened to Cowling. I actually liked him.’

‘I sincerely doubt that, else you wouldn’t have tipped him off about Sagan but at the same time neglected to mention how dangerous the bastard could actually be.’

Penny said nothing. Just focused on the TV screen.

‘You’ve got a sodding nerve,’ Heck added. ‘Blaming us for this. My boss logged our interest in Sagan with the top brass at Organised Crime, and with most of the CID offices in Southeast London. Everyone around here who mattered knew we were watching him. So you decided to go to one of the lower ranks, didn’t you? What was it? Reg Cowling feel his days in National Crime Group were numbered? Perhaps he needed some arrests?’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Don’t give me “maybe”, Penny. Cowling was one of your official handlers at Organised Crime, wasn’t he? Don’t bother answering – I know, I checked.’

‘What if he was?’

‘Let me guess … he wanted something off the record? Something he could big himself up with? And you thought, “Bollocks to Heck and SCU. They’re not making things happen fast enough. I’ll tell someone who’ll knock on Sagan’s door straight away.” But if I was a really cynical man, Pen, I’d say it was actually worse than that. I’d say you engineered this fuck-up deliberately. In the knowledge Sagan would run and bullets would fly. And that maybe, in the ensuing gunfight, he’d get zapped – by the police no less, so there’d be no comeback to you.’ He peered down at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. ‘Is that right, or is that right?’

‘How could I have engineered all that, Heck? I’m a tom, not some criminal mastermind.’

‘But you’ve got street-smarts, love. You always have had. And you knew Sagan wouldn’t come without a fight. Just like you knew Cowling and his inexperienced sidekick would do something stupid like go in feet-first. Like you knew we were on the plot, armed … and that we wouldn’t just stand by.’

‘And still you couldn’t take him,’ she sneered. ‘Two different teams and you both missed him.’

Heck shook his head. ‘You know, Pen, I wish I lived in your world. Where real shithouse behaviour is measured only by the bloody inconvenience it might cause you. Not by guilt, or remorse, or regret …’

She glanced round at him again, wryly amused. ‘You don’t wish you lived in my world, Heck. You’re quite happy in your own. Where you can go home at night and leave all this stuff behind you. Where if anything does go wrong, you’ve got an entire army one radio-call away. You really think it would satisfy me to see John Sagan in jail, in relative comfort, while me and Alfie are living on hand-outs, and the one thing that’s ever earned me anything has turned to putty?’

‘That was the deal we made.’

‘Then more fool you.’ She turned back to the television. ‘Like I’d settle for seeing Sagan get life when the alternative was getting him shot down on the street like the dog he is?’ Her smile grew tighter, thinner. ‘At least that way I’d keep my respect.’

‘Even more so if a few coppers died too, eh?’

‘Like I say, Heck, that wasn’t the plan. But if you need to take a positive from it …’

‘The positive is seeing you for the conniving little mare you are. For your info, I’m having you scrubbed off the grass register!’

She turned again. The sneering smile had faded.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Heck said. ‘I’m gonna drive you into a normal, everyday life if it kills me. And to do that, I first need to ensure that no copper in Greater London ever makes the mistake of using you as an official informant again.’

‘Well … cool. I lose half my income in one fell swoop, and now you’re taking the other half too.’

‘Try getting a proper job … you need to do that anyway if you’re gonna bring that kid up decently.’ Heck’s mobile chirped in his pocket. He checked it and saw a text from Gemma.

Shawna’s come round. Meet at KCH

‘Me – sat on a supermarket till!’ Penny scoffed. ‘You having a laugh, or what?’

‘It could be worse.’ Heck headed for the door. ‘You could be lying on an intensive care bed, like a very good friend of mine.’

‘I’ve been there.’

He glanced back. ‘Or alternatively, you could be on a slab. Like Reg Cowling. You thank your lucky stars it’s me you’re dealing with, Pen, and not some other coppers I could name. Now, I’m pretty certain John Sagan’s employers, these people whose identity you’ve so jealously protected, will already be asking lots and lots of questions about how the police discovered who the bastard was. You’ve already twigged that, else you wouldn’t be hiding out in a shithole like this. But that won’t be enough. They might have you marked as a tough chick who even gangsters shouldn’t mess with, but you’re still a flyspeck at the end of the day. So at a rough guess, love, I’d say you need to get yourself and, more importantly, your kid out of London. Right the way out. Right now.’

‘Everyone I know is down here, Heck!’ she shouted as he stepped out onto the balcony.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘Some of them might even miss you.’

‘Piss off, you flatfoot bastard!’

Back in his car, he sat brooding. Penny had easily slipped the armed guard Gemma had posted at her flat the previous month. He’d spent the last two weeks looking for her before he’d finally learned she had a loser of a brother and had located her here in this scum-hole apartment. Cops who knew her less well than Heck might never have traced her, but the underworld would, and sooner rather than later. So it was definitely in her interest to skedaddle out of the capital as soon as possible. But if she didn’t – and she was a silly, obstinate bitch – he didn’t really intend to strike her off the grass register. Penny had long been one of his most reliable informers. He knew this indiscretion of hers had been a one-off. She’d never pulled a stunt like this before, and would be unlikely to do so again; Sagan had hurt her in a uniquely terrible way, after all – Heck understood her desire for revenge. On top of that, there might be even more she could tell him about Sagan – she clearly had her ear to the ground in the right places.

But then again, should this level of chicanery really go unpunished?

Another problem lay with the Organised Crime Division. While the Serial Crimes Unit were still officially heading up the enquiry into John Sagan – now entitled Operation Wandering Wolf – with Gemma herself as lead investigator, OC were still going ballistic about the shooting of detectives Cowling and Bishop and constantly harassing her with demands for information and requests to get involved. Gemma had resisted up until now because she didn’t want a bunch of hot-headed cowboys compromising her investigation, though OC were well connected at Scotland Yard and the pressure was growing on her daily. At present, Heck’s SCU colleagues were currently staking out Penny’s empty flat in Lewisham. The trouble was that if he revealed her new hiding place, Gemma would go by the book, dragging her in and leaning on her hard. Penny would hold out – it was inconceivable that she’d admit she’d deliberately created that confrontation at Fairfax House. Do that, and the very least she’d expect was to be charged with obstructing an enquiry, but maybe with conspiracy to commit murder as well. Most likely she’d just clam up and refuse to offer anything further.

This whole thing was a confused mess, and he was torn with indecision.

The arrival of another text broke into his thoughts. Again it was from Gemma.

ETA?

He texted back:

10

He drove east along Coldharbour Lane, eventually pulling into the visitors’ car park of King’s College Hospital. Gemma was waiting for him, leaning against her aquamarine Mercedes E-class. By pure luck, he was able to find a parking bay close by.

She straightened up, hands stuffed into her overcoat pockets.

There were few more striking figures in Heck’s life than Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper. Tall, only a couple of inches shorter than he was, athletic and good-looking in a lean, fierce, feline sort of way, she’d been a key fixture throughout his police service – as a fellow junior detective back in their days at Bethnal Green together, so many years ago now it seemed, for a brief time as his girlfriend, and more recently as his senior supervisor at the Serial Crimes Unit. She didn’t look best pleased as he approached, but she rarely looked best pleased anyway. Gemma was renowned throughout the National Crime Group for her ultra-no-nonsense attitude. Anyone getting on the wrong side of her was likely to be mown down in the ensuing tirade. This was partly the reason she was known behind her back as ‘the Lioness’ – her roar was legendary, though her famously unmanageable mane of wild ash-blonde hair was another reason for that, even if at present she was wearing it stylish and short.

‘What’ve you been up to all morning?’ she asked.

Heck pocketed his keys. ‘I had half an idea how Bishop and Cowling might have got onto Sagan.’

‘And …?’

‘Didn’t pan out.’ It cut him to lie to her, but at present he had to make a finely balanced judgement call. She pondered that as they walked towards Intensive Care.

‘Bishop’s playing schtum,’ she finally said. ‘I mean, he’s not all there at present. Still high on medication. But he reckons Cowling got the tip-off and didn’t share the source.’

‘The Devil protects his own,’ Heck murmured, wondering if Penny Flint had any clue just how much luck she was enjoying.

Chapter 5

‘Well, I got shot in the legs two years ago, along with getting my nose broken,’ Shawna McCluskey said. ‘Last year, I got suspended for serious disciplinary offences I didn’t even commit, and now I wake up to find I got my brains beaten in over three weeks ago and that I’ve been lying in a coma ever since. Am I supposed to just carry on, ma’am? Is this all supposed to be in a day’s work for me?’

Her eyebrows were still swollen and discoloured, covered by railway lines of stitching. Her nose, which had needed to be completely reconstructed, was buried under a pyramid of dressings and gauze. Her scalp had been partly shaved, so that numerous other lacerations could be sutured. She’d suffered extensive fractures to her left eye-socket and cheekbone, and in consequence a perforated left eardrum, while the blow delivered to her chest by the point-blank impact of a 9mm bullet from her own Glock pistol had broken her sternum and three ribs. She currently lay at an angle, supported in an orthopaedic framework made from bars and straps, which looked more like a medieval torture device. She was also attached to a drip, which fed her a constant supply of painkillers. This might have been the cause of her slurred, frothy voice, or on the other hand that might have been down to her broken teeth. Once she was out of intensive care, a dental surgeon was going to look at her mouth.

‘For two minutes back there I was technically dead,’ she added. ‘If Heck hadn’t given me the kiss of life …’

Heck shrugged. ‘I knew it was the only way I’d ever get any action with you.’

But the patient didn’t smile.

‘If you really want to collect your ticket, Shawna,’ Gemma replied, ‘I’m not going to try and talk you out of it. But I don’t think you should make this decision hastily.’

‘I love this job, ma’am … it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. But at present, I’ve not got much choice. I’ve no feeling at all in my left arm and left leg, much less any movement.’

‘But if they’ve told you that’ll be OK eventually …?’ Heck offered.

‘Eventually, yeah. But when’s eventually? No one can say.’

‘Shawna, come on …’

‘Heck, I’m tired of getting hurt!’ She said this with such force that it brought a cringe of pain to what remained of her pretty face. ‘Seriously, Heck … ma’am. Me and Todd were looking to get married next year. He’s now wondering if he’ll be standing at the altar next to someone in callipers and a body-brace.’

‘Why don’t you look for a transfer?’ Gemma said. ‘Just take yourself off the frontline for a bit?’

‘Yeah,’ Heck said. ‘Something with a community brief maybe.’

‘At present, I’m not even fit to make cuppas for little old ladies,’ Shawna replied. ‘Mind you, might be a welcome change – going into a nice person’s house to say hello and have a chat, instead of picking over their mutilated corpse.’ If it was possible with a face as black and blue as hers, Shawna blushed, turned sheepish. ‘Sorry, ma’am … feel like I’m letting you down.’

‘Why would you feel that?’ Gemma asked.

‘For not being tough enough to carry on.’

‘Shawna, you’ve been with SCU what – seven, eight years? In that time, you’ve logged an impressive number of arrests and secured the convictions of some very nasty people. You’ve done your bit. So don’t worry. If you really want to finish on a medical, it won’t be a problem. I’ll put the paperwork through and make any phone-calls necessary. But I recommend you think about it first.’

‘I’ve already thought about it …’

‘How long for?’ Heck wondered. ‘You’ve only been conscious half an hour.’

Shawna glowered at him, only for a fresh stab of pain to bring new tears to her bloodshot eyes. ‘Half … an hour was long enough. Because if I took any longer, I might change my mind. And that’d be no good for me or Todd.’

Suddenly Heck wanted to ask if Todd Martindale was hanging around in the hospital somewhere, and perhaps if he’d visited Shawna before they had. Could he be the one who’d put her up to this? Heck didn’t know the guy too well, only that Shawna had hooked up with him through a dating site a year and a half ago, and had finally, in her own words, found happiness. He certainly sounded the real deal. A divorced middle manager at a sports retail company, he was safe, stable and apparently considerate to her in every way. Hell, why shouldn’t the guy raise questions about what Shawna did for a living? If he genuinely loved her, he’d be worried for her safety every day she spent in an outfit like SCU. Having initially felt hostile towards Todd, Heck now found himself warming to the guy even without having met him.

‘The light duties option doesn’t appeal?’ Gemma asked. ‘There’s no such thing as a job for life in the cops any more, but with your record, Shawna, I’m sure I can swing something.’

‘Permanent light duties, ma’am?’ Shawna said. ‘After SCU? That’d be even more likely to kill me.’

Heck understood that part of it, at least.

‘It’s better if I just make a clean break,’ she added.

Gemma nodded understandingly. ‘In the meantime, what work have you got outstanding?’

‘Nothing that can’t be picked up by someone else.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Heck said. ‘I’m at the Old Bailey for a couple of days from tomorrow, but I can sort it after that. Don’t fret.’

‘Shawna?’ Gemma asked again. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’

Shawna took a deep, painful breath, and nodded.

‘OK … well, it’s your call. When you due to get out of here?’

‘I’ve not asked, ma’am.’ Shawna’s eyelids fluttered, as if fatigue was overtaking her – as well it might, given the cocktail of drugs she was on. ‘And I’m not bothered. Thanks for coming to see me, though. Sorry I’ve nothing better to tell you.’

They left, walking without speaking back to the hospital exit.

‘You know she doesn’t really want to leave?’ Heck said when they arrived in the car park. ‘She’s probably just in shock.’

‘Sometimes when you’re in shock you get greater clarity of vision,’ Gemma replied.

‘I thought Sagan had killed her for sure. If he hadn’t been panicking himself, he would have. He’d have put that bullet straight between her eyes.’

‘Most normal folk would have thought they’d done enough damage cracking her skull open.’

‘I think we can safely say there’s nothing normal about John Sagan, ma’am.’

Gemma eyed him sidelong as they strode, appraising his pale, tense features, his taut body-language.

‘We’re going to handle this investigation professionally, aren’t we?’ she asked.

‘As always.’

‘We’re not going to go looking for payback?’

‘Do I ever, ma’am?’

‘It’s just that you seem, I dunno … edgy?’

‘What can I say, ma’am. It’s been a disappointing morning. For all sorts of reasons.’

‘We’re not thinking of going solo on this, are we?’

She halted and probed him with those penetrating blue eyes of hers. Heck smiled in response, which, from her expression, didn’t look as if it reassured her much. Heck and Gemma had clashed several times in the recent past over his preference for working on his own, though he’d often argued that this stemmed from his either mistrusting those around him or finding them inadequate – he’d argued this point unsuccessfully, it had to be said.

‘No chance.’ He shrugged, walking on, as if it was ridiculous that she’d have any doubts. ‘Shawna’ll pull through. Plus, this time we’re frying a much bigger fish. It isn’t personal.’

‘And I’ve told you not to. That would be even more of a reason, wouldn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘Lots of motivation to keep this one by the book.’

Gemma still looked unconvinced. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d soft-soaped her to try and buy himself extra leg-room. She knew perfectly well that Heck and Shawna were more than just work colleagues. They’d never been lovers, but they’d known each other virtually since the commencement of their two careers, and that was a huge thing in cop terms; on top of that, as fellow natives of the Northwest exiled in London, they’d drawn additional strength and comfort from each other’s presence in that curious, indefinable way that only those of close heritage did when thrown together as strangers in a strange land.

‘That’s as long as the Organised Crime Division don’t muscle their way in,’ he felt it necessary to add, though immediately he could have kicked himself for saying this. Whatever your inner turmoil, you didn’t give Gemma Piper conditions. It could literally be a red rag to a bull. But on this occasion – despite working her lips together tightly, as if she was strongly tempted to say something sharp in response – her reply was cool and measured.

‘They won’t. They’re making a lot of noise at present, but they’re also a bit shamefaced about blundering in on our operation. They know they’re walking on thin ice.’

‘Who’s doing the shouting?’

‘DSU Garrickson.’

‘Garrickson, eh. For a minute then I thought it’d be some clueless, inept tosser.’

She glanced sidelong at him, and he raised his hands.

‘I know, ma’am, I know. It’s completely wrong and unforgivable to discuss a senior officer in such irreverent terms. But wasn’t Mike Garrickson the one you spoke to when you first logged with OC that we were looking into syndicate activity in Peckham?’ Gemma’s lack of response implied that it was. ‘And it somehow slipped his mind to inform the rest of his team?’

‘I expect he assumed that if they had any leads on new cases they’d have come to him before acting on them,’ she said. ‘And with some justification. Reg Cowling was out of order, Heck. He’s the one who blew that obbo. No one else.’ They stopped beside Gemma’s Merc. ‘Mind you –’ she remained cool, but frustration lay visible underneath ‘– it would have helped if all I’d had to do was walk upstairs and tell them. Like I used to be able to.’

There was a time when all departments of the National Crime Group had been based in the same building at Scotland Yard, and very convenient it had been. As Gemma said, it was certainly easier back then to exchange intel. But cost-saving changes were under way all across the British police service. Though both squads still came under the umbrella of the National Crime Group, Organised Crime had been moved to new, state-of-the-art offices at London Bridge, while the Serial Crimes Unit had relocated to a somewhat less remarkable building at Staples Corner in Brent Cross. SCU had only been in place there a couple of months, and it still felt a long way from anywhere, though, situated at the heart of the North London transport infrastructure, it was actually well placed to house a national investigation team.