Читать книгу Kiss of Death - Paul Finch - Страница 9

It wasn’t always the case that suspects arrested by the Serial Crimes Unit were brought back to London for processing. As part of the National Crime Group, SCU’s remit was to cover all the police force areas of England and Wales, and as such they most commonly liaised with local forces and tended to use their facilities. But on this occasion, to Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg at least, it felt like the most sensible option. Little Milden was only fifty-eight miles from London, and only seventy-two from Finchley Road police station, where extensive adaptations had been made for the confinement and interrogation of just such highly dangerous groups as the ‘Black Chapel’.

Finchley Road was now classified as one of only two high-security police stations in London. The first one, Paddington Green, was primarily for holding suspected terrorists and as such was more like a fortress than a regular police office. Finchley Road was physically much the same, but primarily for use against organised crime. To all intents and purposes, it was a normal divisional police station in that it was nondescript and open to members of the public twenty-four/seven. But the reinforced concrete barriers around its exterior might indicate that it had other purposes too, while additional, less visible defences were also in place, such as bulletproof glass in its windows, outer doors of reinforced steel with highly complex access codes, and the presence on the premises of permanently armed personnel. It had an ordinary Custody Suite for use in day-to-day police operations, but there was also a Specialist Custody Suite on a lower level, which was completely separate from the rest of the building’s interior and hosted twenty cells and ten interview rooms, all of these viewable either through video link or two-way mirror.

It was through one such viewing port that Heck now watched as Rabbit, aka Dennis Purdham, was interviewed. Of all five suspects, he had been the most visibly distraught on arrest. Aside from their leader, Wolf, also known as Ranald Ulfskar, the others – Sherwin Lightfoot (Goat), Michael Hapwood (Toad) and Jason Renwick (Boar) – had also registered surprise and shock when the police showed up, but as with any cult, and that was what Heck felt they were dealing with here rather than a conventional criminal gang, they’d drawn strength from their leader’s stoicism, and were obediently keeping their mouths shut.

Purdham was the exception.

Like the rest of them, he’d struck Heck as an outsider: unshaved, long-haired, pockmarked. The clothing they’d seized from him mainly comprised oil-stained hunting gear and mismatched bits of army surplus wear. But, at the age of twenty-three, Purdham was much younger than his confederates, and possibly only involved in the murders as a bit player – or so his solicitor was seeking to intimate. He’d wept when they’d booked him in, and wept again when they gave him his white custody suit. As such, while the others were left to stew in their cells, it wasn’t long into Purdham’s interview before he’d begun to talk.

The interviewers were Gemma Piper and Jack Reed, who, by prior agreement, was adopting an understanding guise. It was this that Purdham had responded to, gradually regaining his confidence.

‘At the end of the day, Christians are a set of vile bastards,’ he said in broad Staffordshire. ‘Everything about them stinks. Their hypocrisy, their dishonesty … they’re a bunch of fucking control freaks too.’

‘Someone give you a hard time when you were young, Dennis?’ Reed asked. ‘A priest maybe?’

‘You mean was I kiddie-fiddled?’ Purdham shook his head. ‘Nah … never happened to me. But there are lots it did happen to, aren’t there?’

‘So, you and your friends were responding to sexual misdoings?’ Gemma said. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Purdham hesitated, unsure how to reply.

He wasn’t as stupid as he looked, Heck thought, because to admit to this would be to admit premeditation.

‘Because in case you did,’ Gemma added, ‘I can tell you that there’s never been any suspicion about those three people. Or about the Reverend Hatherton, who is the incumbent at Milden St Paul’s.’

‘That means he’s the one I stepped in for tonight,’ Reed explained.

‘Look …’ Purdham scrubbed a hand through his lank, mouse-brown hair. ‘I don’t think anyone was specifically targeted. It’s what I said before, Christians are … just shit-arses.’

‘You mean Christians in general?’ Gemma asked.

‘Lots of people agree with me on this.’ Purdham’s eyes widened; he became animated. ‘You only need to go on social media. Everyone’s always saying it.’

There was a soft click in the viewing room, as a door opened. Heck turned and was surprised to see the squat, bull-necked shape of DCI Bob Hunter come furtively in. Hunter acknowledged Heck with a nod and signalled that he didn’t want to interrupt.

Heck turned back to the mirror, beyond which Gemma was in mid-reply.

‘It’s worth remembering, Dennis,’ she said, ‘that social media is an echo chamber.’

Purdham regarded her confusedly.

‘Every mother’s son on the planet uses it to sound off about stuff that bugs them. They may have genuine issues with religion, even with Christianity specifically … but just because they gob off about it online, most of them are not even so hyped about it that they stop celebrating Christmas. So, I’d say it’s a near certainty that what happened at St Winifred’s in the Marsh, for example, would be right off their agenda.’

The killing of the Catholic priest, Father John Strachan, on March 21 that year, had been the first murder in the Black Chapel case. The victim had answered a knock at the presbytery door just after 11 p.m., at his church, St Winifred’s in the Marsh, up in rural Cambridgeshire – only to receive an axe-blow to the face, which had killed him instantly.

‘Look … I’ve admitted I was there,’ Purdham said, tingeing red. ‘But … I told you, I didn’t participate.’

‘Neither did you do anything to prevent it.’

‘It happened in a flash. I didn’t even know Ranald was armed.’

As Heck listened, he thought again about Ranald Ulfskar. It was a cute name he’d given himself. In real life, he was Albert Jones from Scunthorpe. He was the spiritual leader of this weird group. At fifty, he was the oldest, and though also the scrawniest and most ragbag, he was, without doubt, the toughest and had led the most lived-in life. And yet it was through Ulfskar/Jones that Heck had first learned about the so-called Black Chapel. Ulfskar had spent several years as a roadie for a very successful black-metal band from Scandinavia called Varulv. One of his fellow roadies at the time, Jimmy ‘Snake’ Fletcher, someone not quite as besotted with Varulv’s dangerous Nordic vision, had later become one of Heck’s informants. And once it had become apparent to Fletcher that the East Anglia priest killings were a series, and that they were in synch with certain dates in the calendar, he’d got on the blower.

‘We also strongly suspect you were there at the murder of Reverend Glyn Thomas,’ Gemma said.

Purdham hung his head and said nothing.

The second cleric to die had been a Church of England minister, the Reverend Glyn Thomas. On the night of April 30 that year, he’d been alone at his church of St Oswald’s, out in the Norfolk back-country, when, just before midnight, intruders had forced entry to the vicarage. He was hauled out in his nightclothes and forced to watch as both the vicarage and the church were set alight. He was then bound, hand and foot, and had a wire noose tightened around his neck, which was attached to the tow bar of a vehicle. After this, the Reverend Thomas was dragged at high speeds along isolated country lanes for fifteen miles, before his body, or what was left of it, came loose of its own accord. It was found in a roadside ditch the next day, but only several hours after the blazing ruins of St Oswald’s had drawn the attention of early-morning farm workers.

‘And what about the murder of Michaela Hanson?’ Gemma wondered.

Purdham still said nothing.

In the case of the Reverend Michaela Hanson, it was mid-evening on June 21. She’d been alone in the Church of Our Lady on the outskirts of Shoeburyness in Essex. As with the incident at Little Milden, it was shortly after evensong, and the congregation and altar servers had gone home. Reverend Hanson was collecting the hymnals from the pews when intruders entered through the sacristy door. Her naked corpse was found the following morning, spread-eagled on the altar table. She’d been slashed across the throat with something like a billhook and pinned to the wood with a pitchfork.

‘There was even a sexual element in that one, wasn’t there?’ Reed said, referring to the fact that the Reverend Hanson’s lower body had also shown signs of being violently attacked.

‘Which at least is in keeping with this Odinist fantasy,’ Gemma said.

Purdham looked up sharply, as if to mouth a protest, but managed to restrain himself.

‘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.