Stalkers

Chapter 44

Heck remained dazed even after he’d regained full consciousness. The top of his head throbbed, his vision was blurred and strands of blood-gluey hair dangled in front of his eyes.

‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg,’ a vaguely familiar voice said. ‘I must say, I’m impressed.’

Heck jerked upright, so quickly that it made him nauseous. He was briefly blinded by the well-lit room, which seemed to be long, narrow and sparsely furnished. The floor was bare wood; he thought there might be steel shutters over the windows. Gradually, he became aware that five people were standing in front of him. One was the grey-haired man with the stick who’d confronted him on the tow-path. The others were equally recognisable: the tall black guy with the pearl earring — the one he’d seen on the Victoria Line, though now he was wearing a hoodie top and dark overalls; the swarthy, bullish guy in desert combat fatigues, who they’d also encountered on the Victoria, also now in a hoodie and overalls; and Shane Klim — with his hideously scarred visage, dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans and trainers. The fifth person was positioned behind them, and she wasn’t standing up. She was hanging by the wrists from a hook in the ceiling. She was unconscious and naked; her sleek brown body blotched from head to toe with livid bruises. It was Lauren.

When Heck finally focused on Lauren, he struggled to get up — only to find that he too was naked and fastened into place, though in his case he was seated and bound by his wrists and ankles to an iron chair that appeared to have been bolted to the floor.

‘You’re part of a police unit that covers the entire country,’ the walking-stick man said. He smiled almost benignly: he wasn’t as old as his grey hair made him appear from a distance; probably in his late thirties. He could only be Mad Mike Silver. As Blenkinsop had said, there was a steely air about him; he was handsome like an actor — lean featured but with a strong, square jaw, a bronze tan and penetrating blue eyes. His walking stick was of thick bamboo, with an ivory skull for its handle. He was smartly dressed in tan chinos and a crisp, white shirt buttoned to the collar beneath a navy-blue blazer. ‘And I can see why, sergeant. You’re here, there, everywhere.’

‘So are you people,’ Heck retorted. ‘But personally I’m not impressed.’

‘You’ve no need to be. We’re nothing special, just a bunch of fellows making a living. It’s all about supply and demand.’

‘Where’s my sister?’ Heck said.

‘She’s not too far away,’ Silver replied. ‘Don’t worry, she’s safe … for the moment.’

‘Why we talking to him and not doing him?’ one of the men muttered — it was Klim; he spoke awkwardly as if his disfigured mouth was stuffed with soggy bread. ‘He’s fucking trouble. Soon as I saw his face, I knew we’d have problems.’

‘Says you,’ Heck snorted.

Silver raised his bamboo on high and swung it down, dealing a hard, stinging slash to Heck’s shinbone. Heck just managed to restrain a bellow of agony.

‘Mr Klim may not have been one of us originally, but he’s more than proved his worth since,’ Silver said. ‘Even if he did make a few unwise comments while he was in prison …’

If it was possible for Klim’s mangled features to blush, they did so now. Highly likely, Heck thought, he’d already been made to pay for those comments.

‘Not to worry,’ Silver added. ‘That’s now been taken care of. Either way, I won’t hear him mocked.’

‘No, but you’ll see women and girls raped and killed!’ Heck gritted his teeth on the lingering pain. ‘You fucking animals!’

Silver made an airy gesture. ‘Casualties of war … collateral damage, and … I don’t know … there are lots of other euphemisms they’ve invented for those kinds of unfortunates.’

‘I can see why they call you Mad Mike!’

If Silver was surprised that Heck had identified him, he didn’t show it, but neither did he deny that this was his name.

‘You might have made this crackpot scheme work in lawless banana republics,’ Heck said. ‘When you were using tough squaddies that you’d once led in battle. But just because you’re back in Blighty you resort to hiring Johnny Handsome here …’ he indicated the scowling Klim, ‘who’d stand out even among the rank-and-file dickheads? Some pro you are!’

Silver regarded Klim’s ravaged face almost fondly. ‘We value expertise more highly than anything, but sometimes an enthusiastic amateur can be just as useful.’

Heck had pored over many case files detailing the sort of grisly enthusiasms that Shane Klim specialised in. ‘You weren’t just wounded in the leg, were you, Silver?’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve lost your fucking marbles.’

Silver pondered. ‘I’ve had a high-stress career, I’ll admit.’

‘You’re nothing but a cold-blooded murderer.’

‘An interesting comment from a man whose own hands are not entirely clean. I’m assuming you killed Trooper Ezekial? There’s no other reason why he’d simply drop from sight like this.’

Heck sat back as the ache in his leg eased. ‘Hey … another of those unfortunate casualties of war.’

‘And I’m sure a fair one. After all, Trooper Ezekial attempted to ruin your life by framing you for a serious crime. He got exactly what he deserved, yes?’

Heck didn’t reply. Behind them, he saw Lauren’s eyes flutter open. They were bloodshot, watery, but when they fixed on him he could see that she was cognisant of what was happening.

‘Except that Trooper Hobbs here doesn’t share that view.’ Silver indicated the guy who’d worn the desert fatigues. Not only did Heck recognise him from the Underground train, but now — having heard the name ‘Hobbs’ — he recognised similarities in him to someone else. Okay, he looked older, tougher and more rugged than the ‘Kid’ currently lying dead in Belsize Park, and he was a lot more suntanned, but there was no denying that overly prominent forehead.

‘We’re a small outfit at heart,’ Silver added. ‘A tight-knit bunch. Trooper Ezekial wasn’t really part of that — he was an outside contractor, who it suited us to use now and then. But he was also a friend. Trooper Hobbs and he were very close when they were back in Scorpion Company — and what kind of skipper would I be if I didn’t respect comradeship? So …’ Silver sighed as if it pained him, ‘when all this is over, I’ll have to let Trooper Hobbs have the final say.’

Trooper Hobbs moved his gloved hands to his belt and gripped the hilts of two large, hook-bladed knives.

Heck eyed the blades nervously, but still tried to tough it out. ‘He couldn’t have been very handy with those when you got run out of town back in the Middle East. What was it, Silver … local cowboys turfing you off their patch? Local sheriff deciding he wasn’t getting a big enough cut?’

Silver chuckled. ‘What a simplistic world you police officers inhabit.’

‘Well I’m damn sure you didn’t come back here for the climate.’

‘There are political tides out there that people like you can’t even comprehend, Sergeant Heckenburg, but even you must have noticed that the Arab world is changing dramatically. And we don’t do wars and revolutions anymore. So for the last few years we’ve been gradually catching up with former clients over here. Setting up a new base of operations.’

‘One that isn’t as dangerous, eh?’ Heck scoffed.

‘One that pays better too,’ Trooper Hobbs blurted out in broad Brummie.

The black guy now spoke up as well. He sounded more educated than Hobbs — he had no noticeable accent, he was almost refined — but his was the gloating voice Heck had heard on the telephone. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much we earn these days,’ he said, ‘for taking almost no risk whatsoever. And the job satisfaction … well!’

Heck regarded them the way he would the lowest vermin. Despite his attempted boldness, there was only so much that even he could endure. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Silver? For Christ’s sake, you and your lads once served Queen and country. You followed an honourable profession. Even when you were mercs — you were doing an honest job. How the fuck … how the diddly fuck did you come to this?’

Silver shrugged. ‘Well … I’d like to give you a load of Rambo-type baloney about how tough it is for veterans coming home from foreign wars … having to live in the woods and all that because they can’t integrate back into society. But I’ve never been much of a romantic. The facts are simple. When we all left our respective units, we were still very good at what we did. We were a collective, you might say … of uncommon skills and abilities. In the light of that, it was always going to be a crime if we were just to spend the rest of our days sitting around hotel lobbies sipping mineral water, or driving armoured limousines up and down the nightclub strip, dodging the paparazzi. I mean seriously … would you have let us go to waste like that? Even back here in civilised Europe, it would have been a crying shame.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Heck said slowly. ‘So you’re all about making a British contribution to the world?’

‘That’s a good way of putting it.’

‘Except that Ian Blenkinsop told me you had foreigners working for you out in the Gulf. French, Russian, American … where are they now?’

‘Sergeant Heckenburg, I’m so disappointed.’ Silver glanced around at his men, who sniggered at their prisoner’s innocence. ‘For someone who’s astute in so many ways, you’re amazingly dense in others. Haven’t you heard? We live in a global economy now. There are many more markets than the United Kingdom.’

At first Heck couldn’t respond to that. A truly horrible picture was unfolding in his mind of numerous mirror-image operations to this one — abduct-to-order rackets — functioning efficiently in countries all over the world. In only a few years, Britain’s own Nice Guys had clocked up nearly forty ‘scores’. But what was the figure on a Europe-wide scale? What about if you included Eastern Europe? What about North America?

‘I assume you’re telling me all this because I won’t be leaving here alive?’ Heck said.

Silver’s expression became regretful. ‘Sadly, that’s true.’

‘In which case, you can presumably tell me what happened to the victims?’

‘No I can’t actually. At least, I can’t give you their exact locations. Put it this way, the sea rarely gives up its dead.’

‘The sea?’

Silver indicated the long, narrow room. ‘We’re on a boat, sergeant. Surely you’ve noticed that. And most of Britain’s waterways connect with the sea at some point.’

Heck hung his head. He almost felt sick at how simple it was. Even when there was a major search for a missing person, he couldn’t imagine many police forces thinking to check the canal traffic, not when the boat-owner in question was a bloke with a walking stick, who from a distance looked quite a bit older than he was.

‘When you’re out at sea, even if it’s only a mile or so,’ Silver added, ‘it’s astonishing how useful bin-liners, twine and a few lumps of cement can be.’

‘You’ll still get found out!’ Heck snapped. ‘At some point you’ll be caught.’

‘Maybe. But we obviously have to do everything we can to reduce that possibility. Which brings us rather neatly to you.’ Silver produced the two phones, Deke’s and Heck’s own. ‘Your mobile is clearly beyond repair, and we’ve been through Trooper Ezekial’s data from the last few days and found no sign that you’ve put a message or text out. All of this is in your favour, but you could have made a call from a landline before you left London, and let someone know roughly where you were headed for.’ He gave Heck a frank stare. ‘So … did you or didn’t you?’

‘You know I haven’t contacted anyone at Scotland Yard. If I had, your man inside would have informed you.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you didn’t contact someone else, or someone in a different police department.’

So the insider was definitely a member of the NCG. Heck made a mental note of this. Not that it made a lot of difference at present.

‘You see, my problem, Sergeant Heckenburg,’ Silver added, ‘is that though I’m well aware you’re a bit of a chancer, I find it hard to believe you’re so stupid that you’d come after us entirely alone.’

That was the second time in the last few days he’d been called a ‘chancer’, Heck realised.

‘Now okay,’ Silver said, ‘granted … whoever your back-up people are, they aren’t very close, or they’d have intervened when we ambushed you. But I still need to know who they are, and where they are, and how much, exactly, they know about our operation.’

‘No one else knows anything about you. I knew you had a man inside. So I couldn’t risk spreading the word.’

‘You expect us to believe that you don’t trust anyone at all?’

‘No, I have friends. But I’m wanted for murder, I’m AWOL … and if I’d gone to them I’d have put them in an impossible position.’

Silver pondered this. ‘That has a ring of truth about it, but unfortunately I can’t just take your word for it.’

‘You’re going to have to.’

‘No … I’m afraid I don’t.’ Silver signalled to Hobbs, who stepped forward again. ‘Trooper Hobbs here used to have a specific role inside his unit. Can you guess what it was?’

‘Never,’ Heck said, his body tensing.

‘Scorpion Company made great use of him in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everyone talks in the end, of course. But Trooper Hobbs made it happen more quickly than most, as you’ll discover. Well … you won’t discover personally.’ Silver turned to Lauren, whose eyes were closed again. ‘But your friend here will.’

Heck went rigid. ‘Don’t be crazy!’

‘Sergeant, we’re playing for very high stakes.’

‘Silver, for Christ’s sake!’

Silver merely shrugged. ‘Like it or not, everyone’s involved — your friend, your sister. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. The longer you hold your tongue, the longer you’ll hold off the inevitable. With that in mind, I imagine you’d be able to resist us for quite some time. But the inevitable is going to happen eventually, to all three of you. It’s only a matter of how.’ Silver smiled. ‘If we commence it now — on those you care most about, and prolong it and prolong it and prolong it — then you holding out will become rather pointless, don’t you think? Especially if I give you my solemn guarantee that the moment you tell us what we want to know, we’ll end it very quickly.’

‘The inevitable will happen to you too, you fucking maniac,’ Heck replied. ‘Everyone gets theirs in the end.’

Silver sighed. ‘Have it your own way. Mr Klim, Trooper Kilmor, let’s leave Trooper Hobbs to work.’

Hobbs drew the two hooked blades from his belt and began to strop them together the way a butcher does before carving a joint.

‘Believe it or not, sergeant,’ Silver said, as he and the other two moved to a door at the end of the room, ‘there are some things even we can’t stomach.’