Friends to Die For

Twenty-four

I didn’t care. I had completed my task. It mattered not to me what happened to my apology of a body. My soul is omnipotent. I am as He is. And will be for ever and ever. Amen.

My table thou hast furnished me, In presence of my foes, My head thou dost with oil anoint, And my cup overflows.

I supposed it was inevitable that eventually I would be discovered. Although, as I had fooled so many for so long, I did wonder, had almost come to believe, that I might yet escape.

But sometimes I was not even sure I wanted to. There was a part of me that yearned for them all to know what I had done and why I had done it. Perhaps that was the reason I had chosen to carry a picture of my non-existent girlfriend, knowing it could conceivably lead to my being discovered. A doctored picture of the woman who had been my foster mother.

Now they would know. The whole world would know what I had done.

There was another reason why I chose to carry with me that doctored picture of Alice Turner, even before I learned about Marlena. Alice was the only woman I had ever really loved. The only human being I ever loved after my mother was taken from me. Along with my mother, I lost all hope of a future, any chance of a normal life. And I was only three at the time, too young to understand. Too young to hate. My father, my weak bloody father, claimed to have suffered a nervous breakdown. Said he couldn’t cope, and gave me away. Just gave me away to the state, asking that I be taken into care.

He couldn’t cope? What did he think it was like for me, having to cope with what I had become?

But Alice. My dear sweet Alice. She had nurtured me, cared for me, soothed me, made me feel that I was normal in spite of everything, and that to her I was precious. I’d yet to think about growing into a man, and what that might mean. As a child, with Alice, I felt safe enough. I had perhaps dared to believe I was just an ordinary little boy. And to her, to Alice, a special boy.

Then I witnessed her betrayal. A quite casual betrayal.

I overheard her one day, talking to a social worker in the kitchen. They thought I was in the garden, kicking a ball around with the boy from next door, but I’d come back into the house to find a plaster because I’d cut my knee. I was in the hall when I heard the words I shall never forget.

‘He was such a disturbed child when he came here,’ said the social worker. ‘And he’s doing so well now.’

‘Yes,’ replied Alice. ‘But I can’t help fearing for his future. He’s always going to be a freak, isn’t he, out there in the big wide world? My dear, darling little freak...’

I didn’t make a sound. It was as if I was frozen. Then I turned, crept along the hallway out of the house.

They never even knew that I was there.

She might have known later though, in the early hours of the following morning. I’ve often wondered if she ever realized what had sealed her fate. What she had done. How she’d left me with no choice but to deal with her disloyalty, her nonchalant derision, in the way that I had.

I took no notice of the other words she used, not ‘my’, nor ‘dear’, nor ‘darling’. All I heard was ‘freak’. I was a freak to her, as well as to the rest of the world. My sweet Alice thought I was a freak. And that one throwaway comment, never intended for my ears, meant that I would always be a freak to myself. How could I ever regard myself as anything other than that after hearing Alice, lovely Alice, speak of me in that way?

I never told them. Not any of them. Or not in so many words. If they’d been cleverer, they might have guessed.

Alice was the second woman to have destroyed my life. I could do nothing about the first evil bitch. Not then. But I could destroy Alice. I could make her life every bit as dreadful, as empty, and as wasted as I knew mine would be. I was only ten, but I had the power. The vengeful God of the Bible I kept always at my side was with me, bestowing upon me steadfast resolution and a will beyond my years.

I took her eyes so that she would never again see me. And I took her tongue so that she would never again speak of me.

Alice had been more than a foster mother to me. I’d loved her in a way I do not remember loving even my real mother. But then I have no memories of the time before my devastation. It was Alice who seemed to have been always there for me. She’d been everything to me. Until she betrayed me. The shock of it made me capable of what others might regard as a quite heartless brutality. It wasn’t that. I was not the evil one. Alice had proven herself to be shallow and craven. I did have a heart, then, but she broke it. I knew at once what I had to do. Alice left me no choice. My destiny lay before me. It was written in The Book.

And thine eye shall not pity, but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.’

Ironically it was Alice who had sent me to Sunday school. I quickly became a star pupil. I was a clever boy, particularly good at memorizing verse from the Bible. And I took an intense pleasure in the Old Testament. I avidly devoured the messages it held for me. I gloried in them. I knew beyond doubt that so many of them were directed at me alone. They had been written in another age, by prophets and by saints and by scholars, for me to seize upon, to grasp with my whole being, and to obey.

My one true friend is the Bible. The Good Book has an answer for everything in my world. It tells me that my God will supply every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. That has always been and always will be so. For ever and ever. Should my heart be troubled He provides solace. Should I ever, for a second, question my destiny, He enhances my resolution. He lifts me from despair and gives me vigour in all that I endeavour. I am and will always be His avenging angel.

Vogel travelled to Charing Cross in the back of the squad car with George. He wanted to be close to him. He was appalled and captivated by him. If George spoke, if George moved a muscle, if George crossed his legs, scratched his nose, touched his ear, sneezed or coughed, Vogel wanted to know.

George Kristos, né Rory Burns, did not look like a monster. Yet he was undoubtedly the most monstrous creature Vogel had ever encountered.

Kristos did not speak again during the ten-minute journey, nor did he speak in the custody suite. It was only when he was asked to step into an anteroom with an officer in attendance and remove his clothes for forensic examination that he spoke.

‘And you shall make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness, from their loins even to their thighs they shall reach,’ he said. And he smiled. A wide gentle smile that did not reach his eyes.

Vogel felt a shiver run up and down his spine. Clearly George Kristos was some sort of religious maniac. Vogel wasn’t sure that modern psychology recognized such a condition. But the label certainly fitted.

He waited until George reappeared, now dressed in the regulation paper suit made of recycled materials, which was standard custody issue. Then he instructed the custody officer, Sergeant Andy Pierce, to arrange for George to be placed in a cell where he would be detained until they were ready to interview him. Vogel knew that Clarke and the rest of the MIT team would have been working flat out on the case in his absence, and he wanted to familiarize himself with any new information before proceeding with a formal interview.

George smiled again. It was a knowing smile. Vogel looked away. He couldn’t wait to see Nobby Clarke and learn what progress had been made.

When he arrived at the DCI’s office she was engaged in an animated discussion with Pam Jones and Joe Carlisle. Clarke looked up at him, pausing mid-sentence.

‘Scotland have done some digging for us. The real Georgios Kristos died when he was seventeen,’ she said.

‘Jesus,’ said Vogel.

‘And you are not going to believe the rest of this, Vogel,’ she said.

Vogel thought he might. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

‘We now have details of the road accident in which Rory Burns’ mother was killed and he was injured. Apparently, mother and son were walking across a bridge when a motorcyclist who’d been going way too fast suddenly lost control and ploughed into them. The mother was catapulted into the river and swept away on the current. They found her dead body washed up downstream a couple of days later. The boy ended up straddling the front wheel of the bike. It seems the motorcyclist carried on across the bridge until the boy eventually fell off. A witness said the biker just sped off — didn’t even stop to see whether the kid was still alive. The boy suffered appalling injuries to the genital area and lower abdomen. Surgeons had to perform a penectomy and his testes were also removed.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Vogel. ‘He has no penis and no balls. No sexual organs. That would explain why Marlena’s sexual organs were removed — same thing with the two King’s Cross victims.’

‘Revenge,’ said Clarke. ‘Revenge for what happened to him.’

Vogel nodded. ‘Was the motorcyclist caught?’

‘Disappeared without trace. The only witness was a fisherman down on the riverbank, a couple of hundred yards away. It was dusk, and he wasn’t close enough to give a description of the biker. Rory Burns was three years old — too young and too traumatized to be of any help. All they could get from him was that there’d been a big wheel and a pink lady.’

Clarke looked down at a report in front of her, freshly emailed from Edinburgh. ‘“The pink lady went away,” he said. His mother had been wearing a pink coat, so the cops thought the boy must have been talking about her. I think they should have listened more carefully. I think the motorcyclist may have been a woman. I think she may have been the pink lady.’

Vogel thought fast.

‘You think the pink lady was Marlena?’

Clarke passed a photograph to Vogel. It showed a young Marlena standing alongside a pink Norton motorcycle.

‘The SOCOs found it in that suitcase of memorabilia in Marlena’s flat, but nobody thought it had any significance. Do you remember seeing it?’

Vogel shook his head. ‘Even if I had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me ’til now.’

‘Well, it turns out Marlena’s father was from Edinburgh, so she may have had other kin up there. There can’t have been too many female motorcyclists in the early eighties, not riding proper grown-up machines.’

‘But wasn’t she supposed to be living in France throughout the eighties, supplying the great and the good of Paris with young women of ill repute?’ asked Vogel.

Clarke picked up the mug of tea on her desk and took a sip. She pulled a face. Vogel guessed she’d probably let the beverage go cold.

‘Maybe she was just visiting Scotland. That would explain why they never caught up with her. A day or two after the incident a couple of uniforms were called to an explosion at an old municipal dump. Someone had set light to a motorcycle. The tank had been full of petrol, so there was damn all left of it. The number plates had been removed and the vehicle identification number destroyed, either during the fire or before. The local plod believed it was the bike involved in the incident that had maimed Rory Burns and killed his mother, but they couldn’t take it any further. The evidence literally went up in flames.’

‘But if Marlena had been riding that bike, how did Kristos find out? And when? The Sunday Clubbers had been meeting at Johnny’s Place for two years. He couldn’t have known from the beginning surely. Why would he have waited so long for his revenge?’

Vogel paused, reflecting on this. ‘That’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it, revenge? And if this theory holds together, it was all about Marlena from the start. Kristos planned to murder her, and all the other stuff was a smokescreen.’

Clarke agreed. ‘Poor Michelle Monahan was onto something, I reckon. That’s why she had to die.’

‘You know what, boss,’ Pam Jones interjected. ‘When Michelle was attacked in Brydges Place, she could well have just come from Kristos’s place. It’s just off the top of St Martin’s Lane, so she’d have had to pass that alleyway to get from there to here.’

‘There were lock-picking tools in her pocket,’ interjected Carlisle. ‘Remember?’

‘Shit,’ said Vogel. ‘Perhaps she thought he was out and decided to break in. He could have walked in and found her there. But then, why didn’t he kill her there and then?’ He tried to picture the scene in his mind. ‘Maybe he was at home all along. In bed asleep, or in the shower.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Yes, if she’d surprised him, caught sight of him naked — a man with no dick and no balls — she’d have known. And it would have given her a chance to make a run for it.’

‘You’re getting carried away, Vogel,’ said Clarke. ‘We haven’t got evidence for any of that.’

‘We could at least try checking out whether Marlena had ever talked about having a pink motorcycle,’ said Vogel. ‘And if she did, did they all know about it? Did Kristos know? That would be something.’

Clarke nodded. ‘We’ve got three of ’em here already, haven’t we? That leaves another three, including Greg Walker. We need him too, but go gently. Ask all three to come in. Don’t arrest ’em, not this time. We need them on our side. Tell them we would like to share certain information before it becomes public knowledge and ask them to come here soon as poss. And tell the three we’ve got banged up — Ari, Billy and Tiny — that they’re about to be released on police bail but we need a final chat. Tell them all that they may be able to help us finally settle this.’

‘Right, boss,’ said Vogel.

‘Then get a doctor here,’ instructed Clarke. ‘I want Kristos or Burns or whatever his fucking name is fully examined before we go any further. If we’re right, his physical condition should confirm that he’s Burns. Custody are about to get the hairdrier big time. Twice now they’ve had him undress and taken his clothes away. You’d think they might have noticed he didn’t have a dick.’

‘You know how it is, boss, the prisoners always turn their backs, and nobody looks really,’ said Carlisle, who had been a custody officer before his transfer to CID.

Clarke flashed him a stony look.

‘I don’t give a damn how it is, Carlisle — and when I want your fucking opinion I’ll ask for it,’ she said. ‘Neither do I want any more fucking mistakes, right? And let’s get our prisoner’s genitalia, or what remains of it, photographed and put on record.’

‘Right, boss,’ said Vogel again.

‘Oh, and go see the bastard in his cell. Tell him what’s happening. Let him realize his big secret is about to be revealed. Let him stew. We’ve still got bugger-all in hard evid—’

Carlisle giggled.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, grow up, Carlisle, or I’ll have you back in uniform,’ said Clarke, glowering at the DC.

‘Our best hope is a confession,’ she continued. ‘Proving Kristos and Burns are the same person will be straightforward enough. Apart from his lack of genitalia, we can run a comparison between the DNA samples we took when Kristos was first arrested and the samples taken when Burns attacked his foster mother back in 1990 — luckily for us, they pulled out all the stops on that one; if it had been a routine case they wouldn’t have bothered with DNA samples back then. We’ll prove he’s Rory Burns, no question of that. But it’s going to be a lot tougher pinning four murders on him. The evidence for the two King’s Cross victims, Marlena and Michelle — it’s all circumstantial. So far anyway.’

‘It’s got to be him,’ said Vogel.

‘Yep. You know that and I know that. But first the CPS have to be convinced and then a jury. We’ve checked out his alibi for Michelle’s murder, by the way — the neighbour, Marnie. You were right: when pushed, she couldn’t be sure when Kristos was with her that day. Said he usually came round about nine, sometimes before. He banked on that, I reckon.’

‘Well, that’s something, boss.’

‘Not enough. Just go put some fear into the bastard, Vogel. He’s too damned cool for my liking.’

‘Yes, guv,’ said Vogel.

He was getting up to leave when Clarke’s desk phone rang. She listened for a few seconds, then gestured for Vogel to wait.

‘We’ve had a call from a woman who works in the Covent Garden Veterinary Surgery,’ she said. ‘Apparently she’s only just seen a newspaper report mentioning that Michelle had been mugged and her face disfigured not long before she was murdered. Says she put two and two together and reckons it was Michelle, wearing heavy make-up, dark glasses, and with a baseball cap pulled down over her face, who visited the surgery on the morning of her murder. She was asking about the medical history of George Kristos’s dog.’

Vogel looked at Clarke enquiringly.

‘The dog was terminally ill, Vogel. And Kristos knew it. He’d been taking the creature to the vet regularly. It had cancer of the liver.’

‘Christ, so Kristos was about to lose his dog anyway. This is getting better, boss.’

‘Yep. But still not enough for a conviction. Let’s just see if we can’t break Kristos. Clinch it.’

Vogel left the room, taking Joe Carlisle with him.

He told Carlisle to get a doctor to the station to examine Kristos as soon as possible, to contact Bob and Alfonso, and to pass on DCI Clarke’s message to Ari, Billy, and Tiny in their cells.

Hoping that Parlow and Wagstaff would call in soon with news of Greg Walker, Vogel was just about to head off to the cells to begin the process of trying to break Kristos when Carlisle halted the phone call he was making and called after his DCI.

‘Guv, they reckon it’s going to be a couple of hours before they can get a doctor here,’ said the DC. ‘Apparently there’s been some sort of emergency...’

Vogel set off for the cells, cursing under his breath. On the bright side, a two-hour delay would give him time to talk to the Sunday Clubbers. And it would mean Kristos would have plenty of time to stew.

When the detective entered his cell, George Kristos was sitting bolt upright on the stone bench that served as a bed. His eyes instantly fixed on Vogel’s. It was as if he had been staring at the door, waiting.

The cold gaze unnerved Vogel. He had to remind himself that he was the one who was supposed to be doing the unnerving. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Vogel had an idea of something that might intimidate Kristos far more than the prospect of being tried for murder.

‘We have arranged for you to be seen by a doctor,’ he said. ‘Information has come to our attention that makes it necessary for you to undergo a full medical examination before we formally interview you again.’

He knew that his language was stilted and awkward. It was deliberate. Vogel studied Kristos carefully. Was there just a flicker of something indecipherable in his eyes? Was the man blinking a little more quickly?

‘Unfortunately it could be as long as two hours before an appropriate doctor can attend. Until that time you will be detained in this cell. Food and drink will be brought to you at the requisite intervals. Is that clear?’

Kristos inclined his head slightly. Were his hands trembling? Vogel wasn’t sure of that either. Perhaps he had begun to imagine things.

‘I shall see you later then, Mr Kristos,’ said Vogel as he left the cell.

This time there was no reaction at all.

I will never allow myself to be violated again. The surgeons were as bad, in some ways, as the woman who had destroyed me. I still found it hard to believe that they could not have saved some part of my manhood.

I read, many years later, of transplants and reconstructions, but after what I had been through I would never again put myself at the mercy of the medical profession. They had left me like this. Not even half a man. And as I had grown into what would have been puberty, in a young offenders’ centre, with vandals and rapists and idiots, neither they nor anyone else knew of my inner agony. They did not realize that I too had sexual feelings. That the torture of adolescence was also mine. Testosterone raged inside me, just as it did in the bodies of my fellow inmates who passed for normal.

The last time I saw a doctor was when I was seventeen, the year before I left the young offenders’ centre. The ignorant bitch sat there in her white coat and stethoscope and told me that as I had lost my testicles as well as my penis, I would not suffer from any sexual desires I may be unable to satisfy.

Was she not aware that it is not only the testes which produce male hormones? The adrenal glands also do so. Not enough to deliver any sort of sexual satisfaction — especially in one who lacks the required equipment — but enough to drive me mad with sexual frustration. Particularly in my teens.

I have not been near a doctor since. My knowledge of my condition, and the drugs I have used to manage it, have all come from the Internet.

When they let me out of that dreadful institution, a place where everyone knew what had happened to me, where the staff and the inmates all knew that I was a freak, I vowed that I would reinvent myself. I would learn how to pass for normal. I thought if I could become an actor I could teach myself to perform off stage as well as on.

And, indeed, my whole life since I was eighteen has been a performance.

But first I had to acquire a new identity. As long as I remained Rory Burns I would always be the freak with no balls and no prick. I would never be able to get beyond that.

The whole time I was in the Edinburgh halfway house, I was just awaiting the right opportunity, obeying my licence to the letter, reporting like a good boy to my probation officer, behaving myself perfectly — apart from the small matter of my two visits to King’s Cross.

Although I had no money, I was clean and tidy and well-mannered, so it was easy enough for me to hitch-hike to London. I’d read about King’s Cross and how the prostitutes lurked there, wanton and lustful, worthless in the eyes of the Lord. Unable to find the one who had been responsible for my destruction — the evil bitch Marlena having yet to be revealed unto me — I needed to release the anger within. I needed to vent my wrath, to worship at the altar of retribution. With my sacrificial blade I violated their secret places and ripped out their womanhood. And then I returned to the halfway house.

It was only after I sacrificed my second victim that I found out she was not a prostitute. She was a student nurse from Sweden who had strayed into that place of depravity by accident. I watched the girl’s parents on television, weeping as they told of how she’d wanted only to devote her life to God. She had been pure — a virgin as I was and would always remain.

God showed me His wrath then. I began to have violent headaches. I would wake up in the night in a terrible sweat and quaking with fear. Sometimes pains would course through my whole body. I knew that God was punishing me for causing the death of one of His chosen children. I listened to His voice. I vowed I would never again give in to my base urges. There must be no more wanton killing. Instead I would dedicate my life to becoming someone else.

One day in the local paper I read about a Greek Cypriot couple who ran a kebab shop in Muirhouse. Their seventeen-year-old son, Georgios Kristos, had died suddenly of meningitis. Broken-hearted, they were selling up and returning to Cyprus. It was perfect. The boy was just a year younger than me. I would turn myself into Georgios Kristos. And I knew exactly how I would set about doing so.

I’d read the book, The Day of the Jackal. It had all seemed too simple to be true. Surely it was only in a novel that this method of building an identity could work? But work it did. In 1998 anyway.

The authorities had found me a job in the packing department of a chicken factory. Not exactly appropriate for someone who had committed a violent crime, but nobody seemed to notice. It paid little, but I saved all I earned. Then I realized that I could earn far better money by actually killing the creatures. I applied for overtime whenever possible. It caused me no concern to watch these poor hairless battery hens die. After all, their lives were as full of pain and despair as mine had so far been. And I too had sometimes thought that I would be better off out of my misery.

But suddenly I had a real purpose. I saw my chance to become a new person, somebody who could at least seem to be normal — and I grasped it.

The newspaper report most obligingly supplied the date of Georgios Kristos’s death. I was able to obtain his death certificate. That supplied me with his date of birth, and I was then able to obtain a birth certificate. The report also told me which school Georgios had attended. It seemed he had been a precocious student, and at seventeen had already passed four A-levels, including English and, most fortuitously for me, Drama.

I waited until Georgios would have been an adult. On his eighteenth birthday I left my halfway house one morning and never returned. Neither did I ever see my probation officer again. I was no longer Rory Burns. I was Georgios Kristos. I dyed my reddish blond typically Gaelic hair a Mediterranean black, acquired dark-tinted contact lenses, and took to using sunbeds and fake tan.

I have learned well how to pretend to be something that I am not. Indeed, anything at all that I am not. I was not drawn to acting by a desire to become a star of stage or screen. Though I have found, curiously perhaps, that I enjoy performing before an audience. I chose acting because it seemed the ideal craft for a man who was to live entirely by subterfuge.

The principals of the Willesden Academy for Performing Arts were impressed by my false academic qualifications. And it turned out that I was a natural. While I was there, I learned to drive and acquired a driving licence, I acquired a passport in the name of Georgios Kristos, I opened a bank account, and I was able to join Equity.

I had succeeded in creating a new life for myself. And I wanted to live it. For my God. In order to keep my vow that there would be no more killings, I researched medications and therapies, and overseas suppliers who did not concern themselves with prescriptions and legalities, eventually settling on a cocktail of anti-psychotic drugs that allowed me to keep my anger in check.

Sometimes I almost forgot that I was acting on and off stage. Playing a role. I travelled to London, found myself work, acquired somewhere to live in the heart of the city and nurtured my new life. I kept it up for thirteen years. Thirteen unbelievable years. There was one little lapse. But only one in all that time. And I doubted anyone would ever find out about it, even now, for it took place in another country. Not realizing that it would react with my medication, I decided to sample marijuana. My hard-won control evaporated and I was again overwhelmed by the urge to take revenge. But I did at least make sure that my victim was a prostitute. An evil woman without morality. And God did not seem to mind. The terrible pains in my head and my body did not return. And I never smoked marijuana again.

God rewarded my efforts. I achieved happiness of a sort. Enough acting engagements came my way to fund my modest needs, supplemented by the various odd jobs I undertook. There were bit parts on TV, pantomime, a couple of commercials, fringe theatre and occasional provincial tours. I worked out in the gym as a diversion for any sexual energy, and to build up muscle and improve the appearance of my body. With the help of enhancing jockstraps I became an expert at creating a satisfactory crotch bulge.

I was George Kristos, handsome young man-about-town. I could have any girl I wanted. Or so everyone thought.

For the first time in my life, I made friends. Each week, I would look forward to Sunday Club. I kidded myself I was fond of the others and they of me. Then I learned that I had been sharing a table with the woman who had brought about my destruction.

My pink lady was Marlena. Or rather, Marleen McTavish.

And it was then I rediscovered my own true identity: Rory Burns.

Now the whole world will know. I have been found out. But that is no matter. I have fulfilled my destiny.

And there shall be no retribution levelled against me except that of my Lord God Almighty.

Parlow and Wagstaff approached Vogel just as he arrived back at his desk.

‘’Fraid we can’t find Greg Walker, guv,’ said Parlow.

‘What!’ snapped Vogel. He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s taken you long enough to not bloody find him, hasn’t it? What the fuck have you been doing?’

‘We went to his flat, then to his mother-in-law’s place in case he’d gone there to see his kids. That’s up towards Camden, sir. She hadn’t seen him all day, so we drove to Waterloo to check out his lock-up. He wasn’t there either, but there was a bloke in the lock-up opposite who said Walker had been there all afternoon and had only just left.’

Vogel grunted, bored already with what was beginning to sound like a succession of excuses for failure.

‘I don’t suppose this bloke had any idea where Walker was going?’

‘Not really, guv. He said Walker got in a taxi and he thought he heard him ask for an address in Soho, but he couldn’t catch exactly what he—’

Vogel barely hesitated. He turned and ran for the door, yelling for Parlow and Wagstaff to follow.

‘Have you still got that CID car outside?’ he asked breathlessly.

‘Yes, guv,’ said Wagstaff.

‘Thank God,’ said Vogel, still running. ‘We need to get to the Zodiac on Lisle Street. Parlow — on your radio! Call for backup. And get an Armed Response Unit to meet us there. I reckon we’re gonna need ’em.’

Wagstaff, proud holder of a police advanced driving certificate, jumped behind the wheel, and with Parlow in the back seat and Vogel next to him shouting instructions, took off with a screech of rubber.

Greg Walker was at that moment climbing out of a black cab outside the Zodiac. The Browning was tucked into one pocket of his leather bomber jacket. It wasn’t yet cocked. Nonetheless the gun’s close proximity to his abdomen caused Greg to break into a sweat. He kept one hand in his jacket pocket, holding the pistol in place, almost as if he feared it might leap out of its own volition and shoot him in the foot.

It was early evening. The Zodiac opened at lunchtime seven days a week and stayed open until three or four the following morning, but it was seldom busy at this hour. There was only one security doorman on duty, whom Greg recognized from his previous visit. Greg approached him without hesitating. He was beyond fear.

‘I’m sorry to come unannounced,’ Greg said. ‘I have some information for Mr Kwan. I wonder if he could possibly find time to see me?’

The doorman turned slightly away from Greg, bending his head towards his radio mike, clipped, as usual, to the lapel of his black jacket. As he reached with one hand to switch it on, Greg stepped forward, removed the pistol from his pocket, cocked it by pulling back the top-slide thus springing a cartridge from the magazine, and thrust the barrel into the man’s midriff.

‘Take me in,’ he muttered, ‘or you’re a fuckin’ gonner.’

To Greg’s surprise, the bouncer made no attempt to knock the gun out of his hand the way Greg had so often seen it done in movies and on the telly. Instead he led the way through the main gaming room, where only a few dedicated punters were playing the tables. Greg walked close to the doorman and kept the gun tucked into the man’s side, hoping nobody would notice it. No one did. The gamblers were intent only on their own activities.

Perhaps because of the time of day and the relatively small number of punters on the premises, there was no second security operative at the rear door which led to Kwan’s offices. Greg gestured to the doorman to open the door, which he did at once, tapping in a security code. Greg pushed him through.

As soon as they were on the other side, the doorman made his move. Greg was pulling the door shut, which put him slightly off balance. The man kicked out, catching Greg with a mighty blow at the top of one thigh, then wrapped his leg around both of Greg’s, behind the knees, causing him to topple backwards, crashing heavily to the ground. It was expertly done. Unfortunately, as Greg fell he inadvertently squeezed the trigger of the Browning in his right hand.

The bullet hit the doorman straight between the eyes. The tac vest he was undoubtedly wearing was therefore of no use. He died instantly.

Greg scrambled uncertainly to his feet, stunned but determined to finish what he had begun. He ran up the stairs to the third floor. The door to Kwan’s offices was shut. Greg fired three rapid shots at the lock, then gave the door a shove.

Tony Kwan was sitting at his glass desk, just as he had been when Greg had made his previous visit. But this time he did not rise to greet Greg. He did not move. He just sat there, unblinking.

Greg aimed his pistol at Tony Kwan’s head. He had no idea whether or not Kwan wore a bulletproof tac jacket, but he was taking no chances. He wanted to shoot the murdering bastard right between the eyes. As he had the doorman. Only this time it would be deliberate. He began to squeeze the trigger.

The subsequent bang was therefore not a surprise. Then he became aware of a terrible pain in his lower arm. He looked down and saw that his right wrist and hand were a bloody mess of shattered bone and sinew. His pistol lay at his feet. He had been given no opportunity to fire it at Kwan. He’d been shot. Worse, he’d failed. He’d let his Karen down.

But what had he expected? Greg wondered, as the world started to go hazy and he slumped to the ground.

One of Kwan’s goons, holding a still-smoking revolver, stepped forward and kicked Greg a couple of times in the ribs.

Greg howled in agony. There was little doubt that at least one rib had been broken. But then, that too was only to be expected.

With lights flashing and siren blaring, Wagstaff got Vogel to Lisle Street in four minutes. As they approached the Zodiac all three policemen heard gunshots. Vogel threw himself out of the car before Wagstaff had brought it fully to a halt. They did not know then, but the first four shots had been fired by Greg Walker at the security doorman and then the lock on the door to Kwan’s office, and the fifth was the shot fired at Greg by Kwan’s henchmen.

Vogel moved at speed across the pavement to the now unsupervised front door, which stood ajar. He rushed inside. The place was empty, all the gamblers having fled the moment the first shot was fired. Vogel ran past empty gaming tables, Carlisle and Parlow trailing in his wake.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for the back-up, guv?’ asked Parlow lamely.

‘Yeah, we need those armed response boys,’ Carlisle called after the DI.

Vogel ignored them both. The door at the back of the club which led to Kwan’s private offices was closed but unlocked. Vogel pushed the door and it opened, but not completely. He squeezed himself through the gap, his pulse quickening as he saw the dead doorman lying at his feet. He stepped over the body and ran upstairs.

The third-floor door to Kwan’s office was also open. Having been decimated by the blast of gunfire administered by Greg Walker, it would no longer close.

Vogel burst through. He just had time to take in Tony Kwan, still sitting at his desk, a bleeding Greg Walker slumped on the floor, and a Kwan henchman holding a handgun stepping threateningly towards him. Thanks to his police firearm training, Vogel registered that the gun, doubtless illegal, was a revolver of the type favoured by bodyguards and so-called security staff because, although it could not be fired as rapidly as a semiautomatic, it didn’t jam.

The henchman fired. The revolver didn’t jam. Vogel felt a burning sensation in his left shoulder.

He staggered but managed to stay upright.

‘Put that gun away, you fool!’ Tony Kwan shouted at his henchman. He was almost screaming, apoplectic with rage. ‘You’ve shot a cop!’

Vogel’s knees were beginning to buckle. His legs felt like jelly, and the burning sensation in his left shoulder had become a searing pain. His mind remained absolutely lucid. He’d behaved like a fool, but perhaps the consequences were not entirely without merit.

‘Yes, indeed Mr Kwan,’ he said, managing a small smile. ‘Your goon has shot a policeman. And in your own office. Looks as if we’ve got you bang to fucking rights at last.’

Then he fell to the ground alongside Greg Walker.