Paul Finch - Stalkers

‘I’ll make it my life’s work, I promise.’

Her mouth curved into a smile. ‘You’re a top bloke, Heck. Just get yourself a girl too. It’s a sorry waste, you flying solo …’

‘Lauren, just …’

‘Gotta go, I think.’

He couldn’t do anything except clutch her hand. Her eyes closed, but then flickered open again. She looked troubled. ‘Heck … we did right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s just … for my mum. I want … her to know that.’

‘I’ll make sure she does.’

Lauren nodded and smiled. When her eyes flickered shut this time, they stayed shut.

Heck held her hand for another couple of minutes, by which time he could hear Ballamara and Asquith advancing down the meadow, mumbling together. Heck was too numbed to pay attention to this; too numbed by pain, by fatigue and by catastrophic blood-loss. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t because there was barely any moisture left in his body. When Ballamara finally arrived, Heck too lay silent in the grass.

The street was quite ordinary in character, part of a typical unassuming suburban neighbourhood. There were nice, quiet families living here. The fathers all had jobs. The children went to school on time, and when playing out in the evening were polite to adults and would keep the noise down if there were babies in bed. Newspapers were delivered. Milk floats made early morning rounds.

No one batted an eyelid about the people who lived on this street.

It was perhaps unusual to see nocturnal activity here. For someone to be placing bags and suitcases in the rear of a car at four o’clock in the morning was out of the ordinary, but then it was the middle of August, and people flew to Spain, Greece and the Canaries at all kinds of ungodly hours at this time of year. Even so, Mike Silver made as little noise as possible as he hobbled in and out of one particular house, ferrying various small items of luggage down the garden path and placing them in the boot of his Citroen C2. It had all been packed and ready, and waiting on the upstairs landing. Not because he’d anticipated having need of it this evening, but because it was always packed and ready.

Once it was all stowed in the boot, he made a last trip into the house, not so much to check that everything was locked up or unplugged, as a regular holidaymaker would do, but to ensure that no items of paperwork had been left behind. In truth, there was minimum chance of this. Silver kept only small items of paperwork, and none of it in his own name. But of course, he hadn’t been the only occupant of fifty-eight, Rentoul Street, and despite the discipline he’d routinely imposed on his underlings, not everyone was always as careful about cleaning their tracks as he was — though on this occasion, thankfully, they had been.

Satisfied, he pulled a clean anorak over his roll-neck sweater, and turned the lights off one by one. Soon only the hall light remained. The switch for that was next to the front door. He intended to flick it off as he stepped into the porch. But just as he was about to do this, he noticed someone approaching along the garden path. It was a youngish, blonde woman in a light coat, slacks and high-heeled boots. ‘Mr Hobbs?’ the woman enquired.

‘Hello?’ Silver replied, standing in the doorway.

‘I wonder if you can help us?’

‘I’ll try,’ Silver said, noticing that a white BMW and a battered old Chevrolet parked behind his Citroen, and that a thin, older man with a scraggy grey beard was circling around it.

‘I’m Detective Superintendent Piper,’ the young woman said, showing a police warrant card. ‘This is Detective Inspector Palliser.’

Silver smiled. ‘I see.’

‘Sorry if we’ve caught you going on holiday.’

‘I’ve got a couple of minutes. What can I do for you?’

‘How long have you lived at this address?’

‘Oh … all my life.’

Gemma pondered this, wondering why he didn’t seem to have a Coventry accent, and then spotting a reddish mark on his cheek. ‘Does anyone else live here with you?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘No, I’m resolutely single.’

Gemma glanced past him into the lighted hall, and was surprised when the man shifted sideways and drew the front door half closed, as if to prevent her seeing anything.

‘No one else has access?’ Gemma asked, distracted by the sound of Palliser’s mobile phone ringing and being immediately answered.

The man shrugged. She noticed that the hand with which he clutched the door handle had knotted until its knuckles were white. ‘Erm … friends call round from time to time.’

‘Friends?’ Gemma said.

‘Ma’am!’ Palliser shouted, hurrying up the path, his face graven in stone. She turned to face him. ‘Heck’s been shot!’

Gemma swung back round to the man, but the front door was already closing. She threw herself forward, smashing it open with her shoulder before the lock could engage. The man staggered up the hall, limping badly, but Gemma followed and brought him down with a tackle that would have made a rugby three-quarter proud.

‘You bitch!’ he bellowed. ‘You can’t do this! You’ve got nothing on me …’

‘We’ve got that to start with,’ Gemma retorted, indicating a white shirt and a blazer hanging at the foot of the stairs. Both were liberally stained with blood.

Palliser barged into the house behind her. ‘Apparently he’s alive … just.’

Gemma nodded, before twisting the man’s hands behind his back and saying: ‘Now Mr Hobbs, or whoever you really are, I’m arresting you on suspicion of attempting to murder a police officer. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say …’

‘You spunk-breathed whore! You’ll be next!’

‘… will be given in evidence.’ Gemma leaned next to his ear. ‘Starting with that!’

Detective Superintendent Piper and Detective Inspector Palliser were in morose mood as they watched the television in Palliser’s office. On the screen, a Devon amp; Cornwall Police launch was backing into a rain-swept dock in Plymouth harbour. Visible on board, three prone shapes lay side by side on the deck, covered by tarpaulins. Underwater Recovery officers, still in their wetsuits and oxygen tanks, stood alongside them.

‘So how many does that make?’ Gemma asked.

Palliser checked his notes. ‘Six bodies recovered from Plymouth Sound. Three from the mouth of the Wash. Searches are also commencing off Holy Island in the northeast, off Blackpool and Anglesey.’

‘All areas where these maniacs chartered offshore craft?’

Palliser nodded solemnly.

Beyond the glazed partition, the entire rest of the squad, who’d all been called back from their various assignments, scrambled madly between telephones and computer terminals. There was a hubbub of noise; paperwork was being flung everywhere.

‘Any IDs yet?’ Gemma asked.

‘None yet, but I don’t think we’ll need to look any further than that .’

He nodded out into the main office, at the far end of which a large placard had been set up. The array of mugshots on it, and the accompanying sheaves of notes, had all been removed from the makeshift incident room in Heck’s flat.

‘What about the suspects?’

He consulted his notes again. ‘Sonny Kilmor and Tommy Hobbs. Both formerly of the British Army. Exemplary records, bizarrely. Both saw a lot of action, and were decorated many times for bravery. Much involvement with special ops. Believed to have gone freelance about the same time as each other — 2007-ish. Tommy Hobbs actually owned fifty-eight, Rentoul Street. Seems like the rest of the gang used it as a base or a safehouse whenever they were up in the Midlands …’