Paul Finch - Dead Man Walking

‘Ma’am,’ he said.

‘Heck?’ He couldn’t tell whether she was pleased to hear from him or not. The probability was she was more surprised. ‘Where are you calling from?’

‘Cragwood Keld nick, South Cumbria.’

‘Oh … right.’ Perhaps she’d fleetingly wondered if he was back down in London for some reason.

‘Currently buried in the muckiest November fog I’ve ever seen,’ Heck added. ‘The whole of the Lakes is in lockdown at present, ma’am. Nothing’s moving.’

She’d sounded curious about his call, but her patience, as always, was wearing thin, especially now he’d got onto the weather. ‘What can I do for you, Heck?’

‘We’ve just had an attempted double homicide.’

‘I see. Local to your subdivision?’

‘Right on it.’

‘Good job they’ve got you there.’

‘Thing is, ma’am, I think this one may be of interest to you.’

‘You said two attempted homicides. Have you actually had any fatalities?’

‘Not sure.’

‘Doesn’t sound like an SCU job, Heck. Give it to South Cumbria Crime Command in the first instance. That’s what they’re there for …’

‘No … I think it may be of interest to you , as in you personally, rather than SCU.’

‘Okay …?’ Now she sounded cautious, not to say sceptical, but she knew Heck well enough to at least give him a hearing. ‘Go on …’

‘It was a blitz attack, seemingly without motive. Two girls hiking in the Langdale Pikes got themselves lost in the fog. The next thing they know, they’re being followed by someone who attacks them. The first one he beats down with a stone. The second one he shoots.’

There was a lengthy pause. ‘This is news to me. When did it happen?’

‘Last night, around midnight.’

‘Nasty stuff, but I still don’t see …’

‘Two female hitchhikers alone on a dark night? Getting jumped by a single assailant, who takes one of them out ASAP with a lump of rock?’

‘That would be a common sense strategy for any random attacker attempting to overpower two people at the same time.’

‘I’m not sure this is a random attacker, ma’am. While he was stalking them through the fog, the assailant was whistling something.’

‘Whistling?’

‘It was a song you’re quite familiar with … Strangers in the Night .’

Now there was a much longer pause, and the sound of paperwork being shuffled. Heck could picture Gemma filching a pen from her drawer, shoving documentation aside as she opened a fresh daybook on her desk. Gemma was in the habit of starting a new log for every crime that was referred to her personal office. ‘Give me the details, Heck.’

He told her what they knew, which in truth wasn’t very much. Namely, that Tara Cook and Jane Dawson had gone astray while following a challenging route through the Langdale Pikes, at which point they’d been assailed first by that eerie whistling, and then by a strong, stocky figure, whose physical features had not just been concealed by fog, but by a full head mask and heavy outdoor clothing. He’d beaten Jane Dawson savagely – though whether it was to death was as yet unknown, as the sole witness, Tara Cook, had fled, only to be shot from behind. She’d survived the wound, but in a subsequent delirious state, had fallen down a waterfall, finishing up in Witch Cradle Tarn, where Heck had found her only an hour and a half ago.

Gemma listened long and hard, clearly undecided about the import of what he was telling her. While she tried to make her mind up, Heck glanced back from the Cragwood Keld front desk into the rear office, the little bit of floor space in there now taken up by a camping bed, on which the casualty, her more serious wounds dressed and bound, was reclining. Mary-Ellen was crammed in there alongside her, scribbling anything Tara could recollect into her pocketbook. The ambulance scheduled to take the casualty down to the Westmorland General Hospital, in Kendal – the nearest medical facility capable of dealing with a gunshot wound – had still not arrived. Nor had any supervision units from Windermere. In the meantime, they’d done the best they could, bringing Tara Cook directly back to Cragwood Keld in the police launch, which was now tied up down at the public jetty near to The Witch’s Kettle, and applying as much first aid as possible. Their cause was assisted by Tara Cook’s apparent determination to survive. She’d suffered a nasty-looking wound, but in reality the attacker had only winged her, which was understandable in such poor visibility. This started Heck thinking again.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘the Stranger was never accounted for, was he?’

‘Heck … that was ten years ago. And I shot him through the left side of his chest. That wound had to be fatal.’

‘But you didn’t see him die. The Stranger taskforce never found his body, and they dragged that mire for days afterwards.’

‘Why would he suddenly reappear now?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d be interested in finding out.’

‘Did he try to rape or rob these girls?’

‘We don’t know what he did with the girl he clobbered. We haven’t been able to get up there yet, and there’s no sign of a body down at this level.’

‘You say he shot the second girl? Well that wasn’t the Stranger’s MO, Heck. He never carried a firearm.’

‘Which he’s probably always considered a big mistake. I mean, it all went swimmingly for him until the night he met a nice-looking chick packing a .38.’

There was another long pause. Gemma was the arch-professional. Not just a top-notch administrator, but a highly organised investigator. She rarely let emotion get in the way of cool-headed logic, but he knew she’d been haunted all her career by the very close call she’d had at the hands of the Stranger back in 2004.

Despite that, she was clearly making an effort to be realistic. ‘Heck, as far as British law enforcement is concerned, the Stranger is dead. Not just because he suffered a deadly wound, but because no further victims were reported.’

‘Suppose he modified his MO. Suppose he didn’t just start carrying a gun when he went on the job, suppose he cleared off to another part of the country to do it. I mean, we know he’s a Scot. Up here in the Lakes, he’s only an hour from the border.’

‘Ten years ago, Heck …’

‘Yeah, but like you say, you shot him. Suppose he survived but was badly damaged. It might have taken a decade for him to recover his health.’

She sighed, though it didn’t sound like a sigh of frustration; more a sigh of puzzlement. ‘Heck … what do you want me to do about this?’

‘Well, now you mention it … nothing.’

‘Come again?’

‘I’m drawing this to your attention, ma’am, because I still respect you. And because I’d like to think we’re still friends to some degree. Plus I thought you might be interested. And you are, I can tell. If you remember, the Stranger taskforce never publicised that intelligence about the Frank Sinatra song.’

This was another key factor in Heck’s thinking. The original investigation team had avoided any public mention of Strangers in the Night. Firstly on the grounds the song was actually irrelevant to the case at the time, but secondly because cranks had a habit of putting themselves forward as serial killer candidates, so it was always useful to withhold one small detail.

‘What’s the current status of the enquiry?’ Gemma asked.

‘It’s not even started. I’ll be accompanying the casualty down to Westmorland General just as soon as the ambulance gets here. And then liaising with DI Mabelthorpe from Windermere nick.’

‘And this assault happened around midnight?’ She sounded unimpressed. ‘That’s almost eleven hours ago. Life moves at a slower pace up there, eh?’