Читать книгу Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller - Paul Finch - Страница 10

Heck skidded to a halt in the car park behind a line of Brixton shops, his tyres screeching so loud it sent several scrawny pigeons flapping from the surrounding rooftops. He jumped from his silver Megane and trotted up the outside steps to the concrete balcony serving a row of cheap and nasty flats on the upper floor. He hammered on the door to number 3.

Half a minute passed before a dull, muffled voice asked, ‘Yeah … who is it?’

‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg. Open up.’

‘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.