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

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The Sunday Times bestseller returns with his next unforgettable crime thriller. Fans of MJ Arlidge and Stuart MacBride won’t be able to put this down.John Sagan is a forgettable man. You could pass him in the street and not realise he’s there. But then, that’s why he’s so dangerous.A torturer for hire, Sagan has terrorised – and mutilated – countless victims. And now he’s on the move. DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg must chase the trail, even when it leads him to his hometown of Bradburn – a place he never thought he’d set foot in again.But Sagan isn’t the only problem. Bradburn is being terrorised by a lone killer who burns his victims to death. And with the victims chosen at random, no-one knows who will be next. Least of all Heck…

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Gemma read more of the attached notes, this time concentrating on the latter two victims.

‘Lots of form,’ she said. ‘Lots of it. For which they paid a very high price. Both castrated, eyes slit, tongues cut out, nipples scissored off, fingers removed with an electric saw. They finally died when a power-drill penetrated each of their brains through the left ear.’

Neither needed to give voice to what they both were already thinking: that, even given the two deaths by fire, this was a further escalation still, and to some tune.

‘Put two and two together often enough, ma’am, and sometimes you get four,’ Heck said. ‘Those two torture-killings have got Sagan written all over them, especially now we know he’s in the Manchester area. A war’s erupted up there. A real one and Sagan’s taken sides.’

‘Taken sides or hired himself to the highest bidder?’

‘Probably the latter. He doesn’t have friends. But he does have chloroform.’

She glanced up from the file. ‘Sorry?’

‘You’ll note from the post-mortem reports, ma’am, that both Price and Lumley’s bodies contained traces of chloroform. Penny Flint told me that was how Sagan subdued her when she tried to fight back inside his caravan.’

‘So chloroform’s his signature?’

‘One of them, yeah. Though this one, I’d argue, is the smoking gun. It makes sense that he would use it too. According to Penny, he’s punished a lot of wayward underworld guys in the past. Some of them will have been pretty handy, and John Sagan’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chloroform would have helped him overpower them. Plus, it’s not a long-lasting anaesthetic – would give him just enough time to strap them down, and then they wake up bang in time for the fun to start.’

‘OK.’ She spread out more paperwork. ‘So what do you know about this guy?’

These particular notes originated from the GMP Local Intelligence Office, and referred to one Vic Ship, a notorious Manchester gangster who had been an associate of Briggs and Harris. GMP now believed him to be engaged in a power-struggle with the smaller Bradburn faction with whom Price and Lumley were connected. If Sagan had signed on for anyone up there, it was most likely to be Ship given that he was the bigger fish. Ship’s mugshot in the file portrayed an overweight, brutal-looking guy in his mid-fifties, with pudgy, pock-marked cheeks, a small mouth and piggy eyes. His grey hair had thinned to the point where he was almost bald, and yet it was long enough to be greased back to his collar and fastened there with an elastic band. Distinguishing marks included a tattoo of a gorgon’s head on the left side of his neck, and a jagged scar across the bridge of his nose.

‘Never had dealings with Ship personally, ma’am,’ Heck said. ‘But way back when I was in GMP it was said he’d buried more bones than you’d find in the average brontosaurus room. And just skimming these notes, you can see that for yourself. Born in Whalley Range, which is Gangster Central. Lots of known previous for armed robbery, attempted murder, demanding money with menaces, supplying, you name it. He’s the real deal. Likes violence and highly placed. By any standards, a player.’

‘If Ship’s genuinely the big time, why’s he involved in an undignified scrap with a bunch of street-punks in a nowhere place like Bradburn?’ Gemma asked. ‘No disrespect to your hometown, Heck, but it’s hardly Chicago or south-central Los Angeles.’

‘True. But like most other nowhere towns in that part of the world, they’ll have a voracious appetite for drugs, sex and contraband booze. Besides, Bradburn’s probably only the battlefield-of-the-moment. I suspect what this is really about is Ship trying to firm up his control across the whole of the Northwest, which is a massive market. Other local elements will try to resist him in due course.’

Gemma scoured the documentation. ‘Penny Flint … have we got everything out of her we can?’

‘Sorry, ma’am. I just don’t know.’

‘If she’s so keen to see Sagan go down, why didn’t she volunteer the information about Manchester in the first place without you having to pressurise her?’

Heck had been wondering about this too. ‘My reading is that she tried the police route first, but we blew it. This time I think she was hoping that whatever he’s got himself into up north, that’d be the death of him in due course. She reckons prison’s too good for Sagan. She wants him dead. That’s why she tried to engineer that shoot-out.’

‘And this is the person whose info we’re basing a whole new line of enquiry on?’

Heck shrugged.

‘These torture-murders?’ Gemma said. ‘Price and Lumley? How much was publicised?’

‘Only the bare bones, as far as I can see. Names of the victims, confirmation there are sus circs. GMP Serious are sitting on the detail.’

‘But people are not stupid, Heck. These fellas were known hoodlums, so it won’t take long for the public to work out that these are tit-for-tat killings – probably in response to the fire-attack on the sex shop.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘but nothing was given to the press about the use of chloroform or the extreme torture. So if what’s concerning you is that Penny might have read all this in the papers and decided to spin us a line about Sagan to send us in the wrong direction, I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s happened.’

‘Obviously we’re going to have to go up there.’ She dragged a pad from a drawer and started jotting notes. ‘We’ll keep the MIR here for the time being. But we need to liaise with GMP Serious, possibly about opening a subsidiary office in Bradburn.’

A former Greater Manchester Police officer himself, and knowing the macho culture that persisted in that corner – GMP were one police force whose approach to crime and criminals was proactive to say the least – Heck didn’t think this would be quite so easy.

‘I think we’ll have to bring GMP in on it, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It was simple enough fending off the OC, but that was because their foul-up allowed all this to happen in the first place. Greater Manchester’s Serious Crimes Division will be a different matter, and they’ll consider it a right liberty if we just barge in and try to take over.’

‘Story of our life, isn’t it?’ Gemma muttered.

‘Seriously, ma’am. We’re only after Sagan, but they’ve got this whole gangster war thing going on. They’ll have wider priorities.’

Gemma stopped writing and tapped her pen on the table as she thought it through.

‘Well, organised crime is not our specific field,’ she conceded. ‘So any help would be appreciated, I suppose. But like I say, Sagan’s our case and I’m not relinquishing it. I’ll go up there myself. See what I can sort out. In the meantime, Heck, you only need to think about convicting Charlie Wheeler. Join us in Bradburn when it’s over.’

‘Ma’am.’ He nodded and stood up to leave.

‘Unless that’s a problem, of course?’

He glanced back from the door. ‘Sorry?’

‘You hate Bradburn, Heck. You can’t stand going back there. You’ve told me a dozen times if you’ve told me once. It’s got nothing but bad memories for you. You don’t even like anyone who lives there.’

‘I’ve probably mellowed a bit over the years.’

‘Mellowed?’ She smiled without humour. ‘Heck, no one else in the job carries grudges as long as you do. Don’t get me wrong – on one hand I agree that if we set up a new enquiry team in Bradburn, you should be in it for your local knowledge. But on the other, given your history with that place, perhaps it would be better if you were nowhere near.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘We don’t do emotions in SCU, as you know perfectly well … or we try not to.’

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