Paul Finch - Stalkers

When they got to it, they saw that this door too had been removed — there was no sign of it, either in the doorway itself or amid the soaked trash that littered the passage. Like all the others, this flat was pitch dark inside.

Initially they flattened themselves against the wall and waited. But they heard nothing. Heck glanced into Lauren’s face. In the dim light, her brow shone with sweat, but her lips were set in a defiant frown. There was no denying it; he was glad to have her with him at this moment.

‘You ready?’ he mouthed.

She nodded.

He counted down in his head — three — two — one. Then he hefted the cudgel, and spun around, going straight through the entrance. Lauren followed.

If it ever had been a proper squat, it didn’t appear to be being used for that purpose now. The central corridor was cluttered with masses of shattered crockery and clumps of soggy plaster, which had dropped from the ceiling. Two doors opened immediately to rooms on the left and right. The one on the left had once been a kitchen but was now a gutted shell, black with filth and reeking of damp. The room on the right might have been a bedroom: a slashed, stained mattress lay in the middle, swamped on all sides by chip wrappers and food cartons — which suggested that someone had been staying here in the recent past. But in neither case was anyone present now.

‘He’d have to be absolutely desperate to lie low in here,’ Lauren said, revolted.

‘Or absolutely terrified,’ Heck replied.

They moved towards the room at the end. By now, Heck would normally have raised his voice to let the occupants know this was a raid and that police officers were on the premises. But of course none of that was possible.

When they reached the end room, he hesitated before going in. Lauren had been right, there was a smell — and it was vile. He glanced round at her. Her eyes were wide, almost rabbit-like. He pushed on in — but then stopped again, so abruptly that she blundered into the back of him. Neither was really sure what they’d been expecting to find in there. Perhaps they’d only been half-expecting to find Ron O’Hoorigan.

But they certainly hadn’t been expecting to find him like this .

They could tell it was O’Hoorigan because of his green canvas trousers, but that was the only way. He’d been suspended upside down from the central light fitting, his ankles tied with a coaxial cord, which had then been drawn behind his back and used to bind his wrists as well. He hadn’t been dead too long: the blood spattered all over the walls looked relatively fresh. And his intestines, which had been yanked out from his stomach in oily red and purple ravels and left to hang over his chest and face, were still glistening with moisture.

This latter detail explained the nauseating smell.

It wasn’t decay — it was offal, ordure, human bowels ripped brutally open, their fecal contents allowed to drain onto the floor.

A cloud of bluebottles exploded from O’Hoorigan’s belly cavity, and from the pool of filth underneath him. Heck and Lauren fell back choking as the droning horrors swept around them, getting into their faces and hair, even into their mouths.

They staggered out of the flat together, gagging. Heck, despite having attended countless murders before, had to lean on the facing wall to fight down queasiness. Lauren, though she’d fought on the real battlefield, wasn’t in a much better state — she crouched alongside him. Both were gasping for air.

‘Christ,’ Heck said. ‘Jesus Christ …’

‘Heck, I …’ She hawked and spat. ‘I …’

‘That guy was clearly an arsehole, but he never deserved …’

‘Heck, I’ve seen this before. I mean the MO. ’

He glanced round at her. ‘What … where ?’

She stood up, mopping her mouth with her sleeve. ‘Iraq.’

She glanced back into the flat and down its central corridor. Now that their eyes had adjusted to the murk, the ghastly shape could still be seen hanging beyond the open door at the far end.

‘Tell me about it,’ Heck said.

‘It can’t be relevant to this …’

‘I’ll decide whether it’s relevant or not.’

‘Okay.’ She still looked sickly. ‘It had been done to three Arab men, insurgents who were believed to have been planting roadside bombs. Their killers were never apprehended.’

Heck pondered this — but his thoughts were interrupted by the screech of a vehicle skidding to a halt.

It was difficult in the dank passage to judge which direction the sound had come from. The motorway lay just beyond the end window, but there was an ongoing rumble of traffic from that direction, and it was muffled. What they’d just heard had been loud and clear. Heck lurched back towards the gantry overlooking the courtyard. As he did, he heard another car screeching to a halt. He reached the balustrade and looked down. Two police cars were parked below. An officer had got out of each. As Heck watched, a third police vehicle — this one looked like a dog unit — came thundering through the courtyard entrance.

Lauren joined him. ‘Timely arrival,’ she said, relieved.

‘Timely arrival — nothing!’ Heck retorted.

He glanced down at his training shoes; they were bloodied. Lauren’s were the same. Two trails of reddish footprints were visible on the gantry walk behind them. He glanced at his sweatshirt; perhaps inevitably, blood was also smeared there — along its left sleeve.

‘We’ve been set up,’ he said slowly.

‘What do you mean?’

A fourth police vehicle hurtled into view. It was another dog-van. Seconds later, the two dog-handlers, their animals straining at the leash, were picking their way through the rubbish towards the entrance Heck and Lauren had used to get up here.

‘We’re going to carry the can for this,’ Heck said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

He stared at her, amazed that she could be so naive. ‘We’ve been looking for Ron O’Hoorigan, haven’t we? Asking anyone who’d listen. Not only that, we’ve beaten the crap out of some guys who didn’t want to help us. Now we’re at his murder scene and we’ve got his blood all over us!’

It still took several moments for the import of this to dawn on Lauren, as though she was dazed by the speed of events. Heck took her arm and dragged her back from the balustrade. Only one copper was now visible in the courtyard, talking animatedly into his radio. Already a yelping of dogs could be heard from inside the building.

‘We obviously can’t go out the way we came in,’ Heck said.

‘We’re running?’

‘Of course we’re bloody running! There must be a fire exit.’

He raced back down the internal passage. Previously, they hadn’t gone right to the far end. Now they did, and found, as Heck had hoped, a fire escape, though its metal door was badly corroded. When he tried to push the bar down, it wouldn’t budge.

He threw his whole weight against it, but it still didn’t move.

Lauren joined in — they hit the metal together, and there was a clunk as the bar finally shifted. The door opened, but only about an inch before it grated to a halt. Lauren stepped back and aimed a flying kick. The door didn’t so much open now, as break from its hinges and go crashing and banging down the spiral stairway on the other side.

Wind and traffic noise assailed them as they peered down. The stair descended to earth via a straight concrete shaft, which was open to the air on the motorway side. Whether or not the coppers in the building heard this racket was unclear, but the dogs sounded a lot nearer — they were barking excitedly.

‘Come on,’ Heck said.

But the spiral stair was as rusty as the door had been. As they started down, it shuddered alarmingly. In some places, the bolts holding it to the building wall had visibly rotted through. From this terrible height, it was easy to imagine that, should the thing collapse, they’d fall clear down to the M602. The foot of the stair rested on a small paved area, only about ten yards by ten; a low wooden fence separated that from the dirt embankment plunging steeply to the motorway, along which an endless procession of cars and lorries was roaring in both directions.