Paul Finch - Ashes to Ashes - An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller

‘Somewhere in the Manchester area?’ Heck said slowly. ‘Seriously? That’s the best you can give me?’

‘Christ’s sake, Heck! I’m not his babysitter. I just hear things. He’s in the Manchester area, and he’s signed on for a firm who are in a bit of trouble. Jesus wept, you know his form … it’s not like you won’t know what to look out for.’

He didn’t answer.

‘So where do we stand?’ she asked.

‘Get out of London, Penny.’

‘You deceitful bastard! You just said –’

‘I said I’d put a good word in for you, which I will. But if you get out of London – like now! – I won’t know where you are if they decide to pull you in as an accessory, will I? On top of that, I can’t protect you from yourself, love. Whichever mob you’ve fucked over south of the river, they’ll be looking for you as we speak.’

She gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘How long do I have to duck out of sight for?’

‘That’s your call. If it was me, till the kid’s eighteen at least. But either way, do it quick. And when you do, make sure I’ve still got a number I can contact you on.’

He hung up before she could argue further, and wandered back into the DO, halting in the doorway. Everyone was beavering away at their paperwork, but then Eric Fisher glanced up and spotted him. He arched a bushy eyebrow.

‘I don’t suppose we’ve had anything from the Northwest?’ Heck asked, acutely aware that it sounded ridiculously vague.

Fisher sat back. ‘Anything what ?’

‘Let’s say, for the sake of argument … any recent torture-murders.’

Fisher remained blank-faced. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Eric!’ Heck approached him. ‘Have we or haven’t we?’

Almost theatrically, Fisher pushed an open file across his desk. ‘Came in this morning.’

Heck picked it up and flipped through the various photographic images paper-clipped on top.

They were Greater Manchester Police crime-scene glossies, and they depicted two vaguely recognisable forms – naked males, by the looks of it – lying half-buried amid broken, mouldy furniture and other manky, rat-infested rubbish, and covered with filth and thick, clotted blood.

‘Found by scavengers on a landfill,’ Fisher added.

Heck flipped more pages, but barely saw the text. He knew already that he’d found what he was looking for. ‘When did this happen?’

‘March 24 or 25, GMP reckon. Seen the location, mate?’

Heck focused on the name of the Greater Manchester township where the double slaying had occurred. And it couldn’t have hit him harder had it been inscribed on a house-brick.

Bradburn.

His home.

‘How long have you known about this?’ Gemma asked coolly.

Heck, who was standing in front of her desk, made a vague gesture. ‘Just since today.’

She tapped the pile of documents with a neatly manicured fingernail. ‘This morning?’

He shrugged. ‘Sort of.’

‘Sort of.’ She nodded and sat back. ‘So let me understand this … when you told me earlier that this morning’s lead didn’t pan out, it was a barefaced lie? Is that what you’re now admitting to me?’

She didn’t look surprised by any of this, which, on reflection, he realised he ought to have expected. There was rarely any point trying to deceive Gemma Piper. Her will was iron, and she had a built-in bullshit radar.

‘Ma’am,’ he tried to explain, ‘if I’d told you where Penny Flint was, you’d have had to act. You’d have her in custody by now, and we wouldn’t have got this juicy titbit.’

Gemma remained calm, remarkably so given her infamously volcanic temper. She glanced again at the spillage of paperwork and crime-scene glossies. ‘You think we wouldn’t have assessed this at some point under our own steam and detected John Sagan’s handiwork … without a hooker who’s got a screw loose needing to show us the way?’

‘Not as quickly, ma’am. This file was sent to SCU, not the Incident Room.’

Gemma said nothing else for some time, but perused the paperwork again.

Heck stood waiting, stiff-shouldered, feeling like a convict facing a hanging judge. They weren’t in the Incident Room now but Gemma’s own office, which conveniently was only located across the corridor from it.

‘You take the bloody biscuit, Heck.’ She glanced up again. ‘Did everything I said to you back at the hospital go in one ear and trickle out the other?’

‘No,’ he assured her. ‘I absolutely guarantee it.’

She spoke on as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘And of course, much as I’d like to kick you off Operation Wandering Wolf, I can’t, can I?’ Her voice rose, that old familiar whip-crack no doubt penetrating the closed door and echoing along the main corridor. ‘Because the likelihood now is that we’ll have to go all the way up to Bradburn, and you being a Bradburn native are probably the best weapon in that fight I could possibly have!’

That explained a lot actually, Heck realised. This time she needed him for more than his ability as a detective. But also, he couldn’t help thinking that she wasn’t giving him the total third degree because this latest little white lie of his had been well meant. Even the most productive police informants could be troublesome customers. You had to play it canny with them.

‘So you want me to go up to Bradburn?’ he said.

‘I want you to sit down. We’re not making hasty decisions.’ She aimed a finger at him as he pulled up a chair. ‘And don’t think this means I’m not thoroughly pissed off with you, Heck! If it wasn’t for the fact I’ve already lost Shawna from the team today, I’d be much more inclined to kick your impertinent arse all the way back to Division.’

Heck sat down while she read again through the GMP dossier. He glanced around her office, which, while it was larger than the cubby-hole she’d occupied back at the Yard, still didn’t bespeak the rank of Detective Superintendent.

Gemma Piper was a conundrum to many who knew her: handsome and fiery, two traits that combined well when she fought her corner in this most competitive and male-dominated of environments. But at the same time she didn’t routinely favour the trappings of power. She was forceful enough to pull rank any time she felt it was necessary, her bollockings were legendary, today’s relatively painless session notwithstanding, and when she gave evidence in court or to a House of Commons Select Committee, she radiated strength and competence. But, possibly because she’d done her stint in the lower ranks, and had scrapped tooth and nail for every promotion she’d ever had, she didn’t like to paint herself as an aristocrat of the job. Hence the Spartan décor and bare furnishings in this dull little room at the top of their dull new building.

‘Four murders in Bradburn inside five weeks,’ she said. ‘Is that your hometown’s normal strike rate?’

‘Not when I lived there,’ he replied. ‘But times change.’

‘Does this surprise you?’

She dropped another glossy onto her desk. It depicted two hunks of human-shaped charcoal laid side by side on a rubber sheet. This image had been inserted at the bottom of the file. Heck had only found it several minutes after seeing the pictures of the corpses in the landfill. It depicted the remains of two Bradburn porno merchants, Barrie Briggs and Les Harris, who early last March had been cremated alive in their own sex shop.

He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘A bit, yeah.’

‘It’s pretty extreme stuff.’

‘If what you’re asking, ma’am, is: can I equate this kind of violence with the town I grew up in?… then no. We had crime. Of course we did – plenty of it, it was a rough old place. But there was a kind of moral focus in those days. At least in general terms. This is way off the scale in comparison, but I don’t think these are normal times, are they? GMP Serious reckon Briggs and Harris were the first shots fired in an underworld war. The bad boys in the landfill – Calum Price and Dean Lumley – were probably retaliation.’