Stalkers

Chapter 22

They abandoned Heck’s Fiat in a multistorey car park in Cockfosters. It was on one of the upper floors, but there was a dank, cavern-like atmosphere, water dripping from the huge arches. At this time of day there were few other vehicles. The dimness of early evening spread between the concrete stanchions.

Before leaving, they again checked the address they had on the print-out.

‘Kingston’s a good hour from here,’ Lauren commented. ‘Even by tube.’

‘Well we’re not going to force entry by daylight, are we?’ Heck said.

‘We’re going to force entry?’

‘Unless you want to knock on the front door?’

‘Suppose there’s someone in?’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll play it by ear.’

They set off down the ramp to the main road.

‘What happened to the scrupulous copper I first joined forces with?’ Lauren asked. ‘The one who didn’t even want me with him because it was against the rules.’

‘He doesn’t want to get hung up by his feet and have his belly ripped open.’ Heck shrugged as if this was all in a day’s work, though he didn’t look happy. ‘It’s needs must, okay? I don’t like it any more than you, but at present we’re flying blind.’

From Cockfosters, they caught a train to Finsbury Park, changed to the Victoria Line, and alighted again at Warren Street, from where they crossed the West End on foot. Heck had decided that, if they went the whole distance by train, it would be easier for their progress to be tracked by station security footage. At Sloane Square, they boarded a westbound Circle Line train, changed to the District Line at Gloucester Road, got off again at Putney Bridge, and proceeded on foot, stopping once at a DIY store to purchase a roll of silver duct-tape.

It was close on eight o’clock when they finally reached Kingston upon Thames.

From Lauren’s perspective, this was the first salubrious neighbourhood the enquiry had brought them to. It was a mix of the old and new, handsome Tudor buildings fronting onto the river, alongside restaurants, chic bars and luxury apartment blocks — which was pretty ironic given that both she and Heck were extremely nervous about what they had to do here. They knew from personal experience that Eric Ezekial would be no pushover. Okay, there was no guarantee he’d be here — it seemed unlikely he could have got down to London ahead of them in this short time. But suppose he didn’t live alone; what if he had a family, what if there were business associates on his premises?

When they found six, Redbrook Close, it was a whitewashed terrace cottage, located in a small, quiet mews. There were no lights inside, but there were in the neighbouring cottages and in the cottages opposite, which meant that a frontal approach was out of the question. As they ventured around to the back, Lauren felt increasingly uneasy about Heck’s scheme.

‘You sure this is a good idea?’

‘When someone’s after me, Lauren, I like to turn the tables at the first opportunity.’

‘But suppose we’ve got it wrong?’

He shook his head. ‘If we’ve got it wrong about this being connected to the case, we’ve not got it wrong about Ezekial.’

‘Yeah, but even though we’re wanted for murder, your colleagues won’t just ignore what you tell them. You can give them enough for them to get a warrant and turn this guy’s place over legally. It could blow this thing wide open.’

For the hundredth time, Heck wondered about this. The problem was that he had nothing concrete or conclusive. Even though it was only a hunch that Shane Klim was the scar-faced man who’d stalked some of the women who were later abducted, it was hard fact that beforehand he’d been banged up for two years with Ron O’Hoorigan — ample time for him to discuss any future plans he might have. In fact, it would have been unusual if he hadn’t. But taken as a whole, it still looked a little weak. The fact that O’Hoorigan had since been murdered did not prove anything either — it could be completely unrelated to Heck’s investigation. And Commander Laycock would not be understanding about that; quite the opposite.

‘Perhaps too wide open,’ Heck said. ‘Let’s see what we can find first.’

At the rear of the cottage, a long narrow alley meandered away between hedged gardens. Night had now fallen properly, and a single lamppost was visible at the far end.

‘I’m just bothered that this business might be distracting us from finding Genene,’ Lauren said.

‘Has it occurred to you that Ezekial might be the guy who abducted her?’

She looked startled. ‘But you said Shane Klim …?’

‘Maybe they’re in it together. It would certainly explain why Ezekial did what he did to O’Hoorigan — to shut him up perhaps? Klim may be inside this building right now.’

She glanced over the hedge at the cottage’s darkened rear. ‘That’s a lot of maybes.’

‘For the time being, maybes are all we’ve got.’

They overcame the hedge easily enough. Heck gave Lauren a leg up and she was nimble enough to do the rest herself, jumping down the other side and opening the gate quietly. He slipped in and they closed it again. As their eyes attuned, they found themselves at the bottom end of a long lawn with immaculate flower beds down either side. They stole forward, passing en route a sun lounger next to a low, wrought-iron table on which there was a pile of newspapers and an empty cocktail beaker with a paper umbrella hanging out of it.

‘He’s been enjoying the summer,’ Lauren murmured.

‘Good. He’ll have a long, cold winter in Parkhurst to look forward to soon.’

The cottage was about twenty yards in front, and still there were no lights inside. They halted. ‘I’d be expecting motion-sensitive bulbs to come on any time now,’ Lauren said.

Heck glanced up at the cottage eaves, and at the eaves of the cottage next door. The diminutive shapes of pipistrelles flitted back and forth.

‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘There’s a bat colony there, look. The lights would be coming on and off all night.’

Reassured, they moved forward onto a crazy-paved patio. A French window stood directly in front of them, with the curtain behind it drawn. Alongside there was a recess, and inside that a rural-style door: oak planks painted white with bands of black ironwork.

‘I can’t see any alarm?’ Lauren said.

‘There may not be one.’

‘Oh, come on …’

‘Just think about it. If this place gets broken into while he’s away, does he really want police activity here? There could be all sorts of incriminating stuff.’

‘You’re telling me a property like this isn’t alarmed?’

‘Not in the conventional sense, as in an alarm that makes a loud noise. More likely, it’ll have one of those high-tech systems that sends him a text, so that he’s alerted but no one else is.’

‘That still isn’t good news for us.’

‘Not if he’s nearby and can get back quick. But if he isn’t, we’ve nothing to worry about.’

Lauren shook her head; she still wasn’t convinced. ‘Suppose there’s someone living here? A girlfriend?’

Heck glanced at his watch. ‘It isn’t nine o’clock yet and all the lights are off. It’s a fair guess there’s no one at home.’

‘It’s risky.’

‘Risks are sometimes necessary.’

They crept past the door recess to a small wash-house window. It was double-glazed, its frame made of PVC.

‘Breaking one of these will disturb the entire neighbourhood,’ Lauren said.

‘Yeah, but that won’t.’ Heck pointed to the floor above, where there was a smaller window with a panel of frosted glass. ‘That’s a bathroom or toilet. It’s our best bet.’

It was far out of reach, though a horizontal stretch of iron guttering was located about three feet underneath it. They might conceivably be able to reach that. ‘Okay.’ She still sounded unhappy. ‘How do we do it?’

He produced the duct-tape. ‘Plaster the glass with this, then punch it.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘It works for hundreds of shithead house-breakers every day. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for us. No one’ll hear a thing.’

‘Who’s going to do it?’

‘Can you stand on that gutter without ripping it out of the wall? I don’t think I can.’

‘Christ,’ she said, resigning herself to the inevitable.

‘Here.’ He gave her the roll of tape, then took his sweatshirt off and handed it to her. ‘When you get up there, wrap this round your fist.’

They glanced around once more just to make sure they weren’t being observed from the premises opposite. But it was still pitch-black in the narrow canyon between the two rows of cottages. Nothing stirred apart from the bats darting about overhead.

Using Heck’s foot as a stirrup, she clambered up his body until she was able to stand erect on top of his shoulders. She wasn’t heavy, but after the battering he’d recently taken, he had to lean against the wall for support.

‘Can you reach?’ he asked in a strained voice.

‘Just about.’ She yanked down on the gutter with both hands to ensure it was solid, and then used it to lever herself upwards. It was just wide enough for her to gain a purchase with her knees and then reach up and find the window sill. Once standing, she carefully layered the duct-tape on the glass. ‘Here goes nothing.’

There was a dull whump as she struck it. Another followed, slightly louder, but not loud enough to alert the neighbours. Piece by piece, she handed the sticky tape-coated shards down to him. ‘You know we’re leaving prints all over this stuff?’

‘He’s not going to call the police. Don’t worry.’

A short while later, she was able to climb in through the empty frame. Heck moved back to the rear door. She opened it from the inside. He stepped through and closed it behind him. Again they had to wait as their eyes attuned, but street lighting filtered in through the front windows, so it wasn’t long. The interior was split level in the 1960s beatnik style, the upper floor open aspect with only a carved wooden balustrade to separate the sleeping area from an eight-foot drop. Aside from smaller rooms like the wash room and kitchen, the ground floor was an all in one lounge-diner, modern in look yet with old-fashioned fixtures: a flagged floor, oil paintings on the white plaster walls.

They advanced warily.

‘What exactly are we looking for?’ Lauren asked.

‘We’ll know when we find it. There must be something here we can use — I was right about the personalised alarm.’ Heck pointed to a corner of the ceiling, where a tiny red light was flashing on and off, and a video camera turning to follow their progress.

‘Shit!’ She made to dart away, but he grabbed her.

‘Don’t panic. I want him to know we’ve been here.’ He made a V-sign at the lens.

‘This is so nuts,’ she replied.

‘No. This is psychological warfare. He needs to know that his adversaries are at least as smart as he is.’

‘Sounds like macho bullshit to me.’

‘Whatever, it works.’

They poked around the downstairs, moving furniture, opening drawers, before Heck headed up to the first floor. Lauren followed, increasingly tense. They’d been here several minutes already, which felt as though they were stretching their luck absurdly. They searched the bedroom shelves but found nothing of interest.

‘Know anything about hacking?’ Heck asked, eyeing the bedside computer.

‘No.’

‘Neither do I.’

He tried to access the system anyway, but the password defeated him. While he was thus engaged, Lauren brushed against the wall, only for it to creak as though made from flimsy material. Heck heard this and got to his feet. They examined the wall carefully. Now that their attention had been drawn, it became apparent that this portion of wall had been left accessible. There was no furniture against it; it had no skirting board. Heck tested it with his fingers. It creaked again.

‘This is just soft-board. Ah hah …’

He’d found a tell-tale slit in the paper, which, when he followed it, described a rectangle about six feet tall by three wide. He pushed hard. There was a click as a catch was released, and the rectangle swung outward. A bare wooden stair lay beyond.

‘What the hell’s this?’ Lauren said.

‘Fifty years ago it would’ve been Deke’s ascent to the gallows.’

The stair connected with the loft, or with a room that had been constructed inside the loft. It was small and square, with only the roof’s south-facing slope serving as its ceiling. There were no windows, so Heck felt it safe to flick a switch. An electric light came on, revealing another desk, another computer, a filing cabinet and a wall-cupboard.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ he said.

He opened the cupboard first. Inside it there was a steel rack containing a variety of automatic weapons. Various pistols and revolvers were ranged along the top: Glocks, Brownings, Berettas. Below those, there were heavier-duty items: rifles and submachine guns. Heck recognised a Kurtz, two Armalites, a Kalashnikov, even a high-powered Dragunov sniper rifle.

‘Good God,’ Lauren said slowly.

Heck turned to the filing cabinet and yanked open its drawers. They were packed with paperwork filed in buff folders. A reference code had been scrawled on each one with felt pen. The codes were the sort you used when listing electronic data and wishing to keep it orderly and chronological; for example, ‘a’ through to ‘z’, followed by ‘za’ through to ‘zz’, followed by ‘zza’ through to ‘zzz’, and so on. There was also a leather-bound ledger. Heck flicked it open. It was filled, page after page, with lists of scribbled notations. At first glance it looked like gibberish, but there were numbers in there with pound signs attached, big numbers, each one struck through with biro (possibly to indicate that the full fee had now been paid). On one occasion, Ezekial — because this was evidently a ledger of his accounts — had earned twenty-five thousand pounds for a single job. On another he’d earned forty-five thousand pounds.

Lauren stiffened. She thought she’d just heard movement outside the house.

Heck continued to flick pages. Each separate list clearly referred to a different employer — at least that was the way it appeared. She hooked his arm with her hand. He shook her loose; he was too preoccupied.

‘Someone’s coming in,’ she whispered, dashing to the top of the loft stair. She strained her ears to hear more — a key was turning in the front lock. This time Heck heard it too.

‘We’ve got to go!’ Lauren hissed.

He nodded, but his eyes scanned quickly down the very last page in the ledger. At the bottom of the final list, the reference to the most recent job was ‘RO’.

Ron O’Hoorigan?

The figure alongside it read ten thousand pounds.

‘Heck!’ Lauren had been halfway down the stair and now stuck her head back into the room.

He glanced at the top of the list. Whoever these particular jobs had been performed for, he — or they — were referred to simply as ‘Nice Guys’.

‘Heck, for Christ’s sake!’

He nodded, switched the light off and followed her down the stairs.

Just as they did, the cottage’s front door slammed open, and yellow streetlight flooded into the darkened ground floor. Lauren dashed across the sleeping area on cat-like feet. She made straight for the bathroom, but Heck didn’t immediately pursue. He paused halfway, and moved towards the balustrade. Even the sound of someone blundering around downstairs, and then the loud clack-click of what could be a firearm being cocked made no apparent impression on him. He loitered there as though uncertain about something. It took Lauren to hurtle back in, grab him by the collar, haul him into the bathroom and push him out through the window.

They both landed on their feet, and raced down the garden towards the rear gate. As they reached it, full lighting came on in the house behind. They didn’t glance back, but crashed out into the alley and raced away into the London night.