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

Heck’s mouth crooked into a smile as he rose to his feet. It was Shawna McCluskey.

Someone had heard his frantic transmissions after all. And if anyone had, he ought to have realised it would be his old mucker Shawna, who’d started off with him all those years ago in the Greater Manchester Police.

Sagan remained rigid. From this distance, his face was unreadable. Dots of yellow street-light glinting from the lenses of his glasses gave him a non-human aura. His right hand opened and the shotgun clattered to the floor.

‘Keep those mitts where I can see ’em!’ Shawna shouted, approaching from behind. ‘You all right, Heck?’

‘Never better,’ he called, dusting himself down.

‘Kick the weapon back towards me,’ Shawna said, addressing Sagan again. ‘Backheel it … don’t turn around. And keep your hands spread where I can see them … in case you didn’t realise it, you lowlife shithead, you’re under arrest!’

Sagan did exactly as she instructed, the shotgun bouncing past her and vanishing beneath the van. Now Heck could see him more clearly: his black overcoat, a black roll-neck sweater, black leather gloves, black trousers and shoes, his pale face, the thinning fair hair on top, and those gold-rimmed glasses. Yet still the killer was inscrutable, his features a waxen, sweat-soaked mask.

‘DC McCluskey on a lorry park off Camberwell Grove,’ Shawna said into her radio. ‘One in custody. Repeat, one in custody.’

But only now, as she angled around her captive, did Heck spy the possible danger.

Her Glock was trained squarely on Sagan’s body, but side-on, the target’s width had reduced and Sagan’s left hand was suddenly only inches from the muzzle of her weapon – and it was with this hand that he lunged, slapping the pistol aside, and in the same motion, spinning and slamming his other hand, now balled into a fist and yet glittering as if encased in steel – a knuckleduster, Heck realised with horror – straight into Shawna’s face.

Her head hinged backward and she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

‘Shawna!’ Heck bellowed.

But he was still forty yards away. He raised his pistol, but again had to hesitate – Sagan had dropped to a crouch alongside the policewoman’s crumpled form, merging them both into one. Heck dashed forward as the killer flipped off Shawna’s hat and smashed his reinforced fist several times more into her head and face. Then he snatched up her Glock and fired it once into her chest, before leaping to his feet and bolting towards the parked van.

Heck slid to a halt and fired. The van’s nearside front window imploded as Sagan scarpered around it, returning fire over his shoulder, and proving uncannily accurate. Nine-millimetre shells ricocheted from the ground just in front of Heck. He fired back, but Sagan was already on the other side of the vehicle and shielded from view. A door slammed closed somewhere along the front of the building. Heck scrambled forward, but kept low. The killer was now indoors; he might have any number of concealed vantage points from which to aim.

‘DC McCluskey down with head injuries and a possible gunshot wound,’ Heck shouted into his radio, skidding to one knee alongside her, still scanning the grimy windows overhead.

In the partial protection of the van, Shawna lay limp. Heck tore open her jacket and gasped with relief when he saw the slug flattened on her Kevlar vest – it hadn’t penetrated. However, her face was a mass of bloodied pulp, her splayed hair glutinous with gore. He probed for the carotid artery. Her throat was slick with blood, but at last he found a pulse.

An engine now growled to life somewhere inside. Fresh sweat pinpricked Heck’s brow.

As he leaped to his feet, a pair of double doors some twenty yards to the left exploded outward in a shower of splinters and rusted hinges, and a powerful SUV came barrelling through. Heck backed away from Shawna’s body to get a clear shot. But Sagan was already firing through the open passenger window, wildly, blindly. Heck let off one round before diving for cover, aiming at the SUV’s front tyre but missing by centimetres. In the process he caught a fleeting glimpse of the vehicle’s make and model. A Jeep Cherokee, dark-blue in colour with bull bars across the front, but with its headlights switched off it was impossible to make out the registration number. It was towing a gleaming white caravan, which tilted onto one wheel as the car swerved away across the wasteland, finally righting itself again as it accelerated into the darkness. Heck gave chase for several yards. He even got off one final shot, hitting the caravan’s rear door, which judging by the lack of visible damage, was armoured. And then the target was gone, vanishing around the corner of a warehouse, the roar of its engine rapidly diminishing.

Heck got urgently onto the radio, relaying as much info as he could while rushing back to Shawna. As before, she lay perfectly still, and now the blood had congealed in her hair.

When he felt her carotid a second time, there was no pulse.

Calum and Dean walked along King’s Parade as if they owned it, which, to some degree, they did. There were bouncers on all the doors to the numerous bars and nightclubs; surly, brutish types in monkey suits, with gap-toothed grins and dented noses. But if Calum and Dean wanted admission, there was only a small handful who’d say ‘no’. Most of the doormen, if they weren’t involved with them professionally, knew about them by reputation, sufficiently enough to know that serious trouble was easy enough to come by in Bradburn without inviting it.

Not that, in a normal time and place, Calum and Dean were even close to being adequately attired to gain entry to any nightspot which held itself in reasonable regard.

The former, who was heavyset – more than was good for a guy in his early/mid-twenties – wore only a pair of grey shell-pants and grey and orange Nike training shoes. He’d removed his ragged pink sweater and now wore it draped across his shoulders, exposing acres of flabby, pallid flesh, particularly around the midriff, not to mention the usual plethora of tasteless tattoos. Whether he felt the evening chill was unclear. In all probability, thanks to his system being overloaded with drugs and drink, he probably didn’t think that he did, though if his body-odour permitted you to get close enough to appraise him in detail, you’d note that the small, pink nipples on his sagging man-boobs stood stiffly to attention.

Dean was no less dressed-down for the occasion. In his case it was blue and blood-red Nikes and emerald green tracksuit pants with white piping down the sides, a stained string-vest and thick gold neck-chains. Such bling was Dean’s most outstanding feature, cheap and nasty though it all looked, especially the sovereign rings on his fingers and diamond studs in his ears.

The irony was that, despite all this, neither of the two lads looked especially menacing.

Calum’s features were rounded and pudgy, with a small nose, a tiny mouth and button-like Teddy Bear eyes. If it hadn’t been for the shaven ginger thatch on his cranium and his various nicks and scars, you could almost have said that he looked soft. Dean, on the other hand, was thin and weasel-like, but closer inspection would reveal that he was wiry rather than bony; he was certainly no weakling. Under his greasy mat of blond locks and between a pair of jug-handle ears, his face was also scarred, his features oddly lopsided, the mouth forever twisted into a weird, lupine grin. Dean didn’t look soft; more like strange .

And yet they swaggered side-by-side through the Saturday night revellers thronging the pavements – the high-heeled, mini-skirted girls, the boys and men in polo-shirts and jeans – and if an alleyway didn’t clear for them, they cleared one for themselves. This only involved pushing and shoving, but it was still early, not yet midnight.