The Killing Club (16 page)

‘Don’t know why you’re so keen to mix it with these Nice Guys reprobates,’ Kane said. ‘Leave that to Tasker and his crew. They’re the ones who let Silver escape.’

It was no surprise to Heck that Kane didn’t quite empathise with him on this. The guy was a notorious straight bat, primarily because he was big on self-preservation. From Kane’s point of view, it was always the same pattern when a crime was reported; investigation of facts, identification of suspect, arrest, interview, charge – after which you filed your paperwork and went home. So long as everything was clean and above board, you could sleep easy in the knowledge you’d done your job. There was never an emotional context to it: no lingering concerns for the victims or bereaved; no prolonged brooding over unexplained elements or incomplete avenues of enquiry. And yet the irony was that this thorough, methodical and utterly humourless approach was exactly the way you were supposed to operate as a police officer. The alternative, they always said, could lead to madness.

‘I’ve told Stoke Newington I’m sending one of my best lads,’ Kane added. ‘So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fuck anything up.’

‘I promise,’ Heck muttered.

‘I’m serious, Heck. As you may have heard, for my sins I’m now double-hatting. I’m still official liaison with SOCAR as well as running SCU while Gemma’s busy. That means I’m getting heat from various directions, which my equilibrium could do without.’

‘Sorry … your what?’

‘It means I like things to be nice and straightforward, and at present they aren’t.’ Kane nudged the Stoke Newington paperwork. ‘So just go and do what you do. Catch this little fish, and let SOCAR chase off over the horizon after the big ones.’ They halted at the entrance to the DO. ‘That’s worth a smile, surely? I’m doing you a favour.’

A favour?
Briefly, Heck was puzzled. Ben Kane was about as famous for doing people favours as Gemma was for avoiding confrontations.

‘Look, Heck … that Nice Guys thing’s a nightmare. Seventeen coppers dead, Public Enemy Number One back on the loose. It’s a real shit-storm, and it’s gonna cover everyone. But thanks to me, you’ll now be somewhere else … chasing some piddling little street robber who thinks his penknife makes him the big man.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Heck said. ‘Thanks for that.’

Chapter 13

The village of Stanton St John, in South Oxfordshire, was very picturesque in the early autumn. In actual fact, its peaceful, tree-lined avenues were scenic any time of year, but never more so than when reds and golds were sparking to life amid its lush cottage-garden greenery. And especially on mellow September evenings like this, when sunlight lay in vivid streaks down grassy verges and across the velvet lawns and mullioned bay-windows of its honey-coloured stone houses. There might be a hint of freshness in the air, it may smell of apples and nuts rather than barbecued steak and chicken, but it still bespoke neighbourliness and content: wives chatted over fences; husbands ambled to the pub together; children played happily and safely, barely concerned by the early advance of evening.

Though it shared a Stanton St John postcode, Woodhatch Gate – the ‘Big House’, as locals knew it – stood about four miles outside the village and nine miles northeast of Oxford. Formerly a Georgian coach-stop, it was now a resplendent but secluded country residence, located just off the main road to Worminghall, at the end of a lengthy gravel drive, overlooking extensive acres of private wood and parkland. Beyond that on all sides, the verdant landscape extended away in a rolling quilt of blue, green and dusky purple.

It was a tranquil scene – except for the riot of laughter and good cheer inside Woodhatch Gate itself, at the heart of which, as always, was the lady of the house, Mrs Nina Po, currently in her usual place at the head of the table.

Nina was a pretty, bubbly bottle-blonde in her late forties, but she was also the mother-hen: the chatterbox, the bundle of energy, the arch-organiser. Her husband, Ronald, a consultant heart surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, was ten years older than his vivacious wife, and was seated to her right.

This was an official dinner party, and the word ‘official’ meant something in this company. It wasn’t just a gathering of pals for a natter and a chip supper. It was one of Nina’s ‘special events’; long in preparation, exquisite in execution. However, as Ronald Po wore a jacket and tie all day – when he wasn’t wearing scrubs of course – he made a point of never dressing for these occasions. A tall, trim man with silver sideburns and wavy silver hair, he looked neat enough – he would say – in clean jeans and a polo shirt. He’d also add that this put their guests at ease, helped them relax, and would offer the same explanation for his inertia between courses; not for Ronald the back-and-forth bustle from dining room to kitchen, the ferrying of dirty crockery to the sink, or the more careful transportation of the next amazing dish to the table.
His
role was to entertain their visitors, talk to them, amuse them; be a warm and convivial host.

Not that Nina would have accepted assistance from her other half in any case. For that she had her best friend, Mary Entwistle, who, to those who knew her, seemed almost permanently to wear an apron. A legendary cook, Mary aided and abetted Nina in all her culinary creations. Take tonight for instance, with chicken and butternut squash stew, autumn chestnut salad and Moroccan roasted lamb with mint pesto on the menu. Nina had selected the courses, provided the ingredients, the utensils, the work-space and the elbow grease, not to mention the supervisory intellect, and of course was the sole architect of all those delicate last details so typical of a mercurial perfectionist (origami napkins, lilies wrapped in silk as perfumed favours for the ladies, a measure of cognac for each of the men), but it was Mary who provided the gastronomic expertise. She was the same age as Nina but a less lively soul; her barrister husband had abandoned her before she was thirty, leaving her to look after their demanding young daughter, who had now grown up into an obstreperous snob. Despite all this, Mary continued to work full-time at the catering company she’d originally set up with the money inherited from her late father, but the pressure on both these fronts had built so enormously over the years that she was now a semi-anonymous shadow of her former self, and perhaps by her own admission, a little too fond of the G&Ts. But she was still a marvellous cook, and more than happy to be the permanent fixture on Nina’s right hand in her zealous quest to wine and dine the socialites of the county.

These were the hosts, but there were several other personalities gathered at the dinner table that September evening at Woodhatch Gate, on the outskirts of Stanton St. John.

Tim and Trudy Willoughby were the straight couple. Both were in their early forties and keen outdoors folk; if they weren’t camping at weekends, they were climbing, or hiking, or kayaking. ‘The Lakes is our back-garden,’ Tim was fond of saying, usually to the accompaniment of an infectious grin. Despite being only a junior accountant at one of the less important Oxford colleges, he never appeared at any of these functions in anything less than a smartly tailored three-piece suit (though always the same one, Nina had noted). Apart from the mouse-brown tufts behind his ears, Tim was bald and rangy of build – to an ungainly degree, which was a surprise to many as his wife was a natural beauty with flowing red tresses and a curvaceous figure. But Trudy Willoughby wasn’t just a looker; she was incredibly well brought-up. It was impossible to ascertain where she hailed from merely by speaking to her. She never smoked, never swore, never laughed at crude jokes, and always drove because she drank so little (‘One dry-white for me, please, and then I’m on Perrier’).

Seated at the table opposite the Willoughbys, much to Trudy’s quiet discomfort, were the Hardcastles. Ross Hardcastle was a loud, proud Yorkshireman, fifty years old and foursquare of physique – that was the way he described himself, though much of his former rugby union prop forward’s frame had now run to plumpness. He was MD of a blue-chip software company based at Kidlington, and owner of a Bentley Continental GT, which he insisted on driving everywhere, even when he’d consumed his usual vast quantities of alcohol – ‘There’s more chance of our Sal totalling it when she’s sober than there is of me doing it when I’m pissed!’ For all this, he was an attractive man: bluff, hearty, outrageously amusing, still with a full head of naturally blond hair, a thick blond moustache, and though pudgy in the face, elements of the handsome young devil he’d once been were in plentiful evidence. In professional terms, he was said to be shrewd, calculating and confident; a real shark in the boardroom – though just to meet him, a natural assumption would be that he’d only reached the level of boardroom by pushing and shoving his way there. By contrast, while Ross Hardcastle filled almost every room, both in terms of his body and his personality, Sally Hardcastle was virtually invisible. Pencil-thin, with short grey hair and a dull line in three-quarter-length skirts, flat shoes, grey blouses and strings of beads that were too long, she rarely spoke and certainly never upbraided her husband for any of his more outspoken opinions – he was a Conservative to his back teeth, which was not always to his advantage in a liberal, scholarly town like Oxford. She didn’t even comment when, on occasions like this, he would sometimes play footsie with Trudy under the table – though to be fair Trudy didn’t comment either, because she never wanted to cause a scene.

But for all the differences between them, it was really the last guest who was the odd one out. He was unmarried and a self-professed bachelor. Nina, Trudy and Mary had always assumed this meant he was gay, but there were no obvious indications of that – he actually lived with his elderly mother. His name was Anton Trevelyan, and he was a fellow of Jesus College, specialising in Classical English Literature. He was in his mid-fifties, white-haired and pale-skinned. A cross-country runner in his youth, it would be a mistake to assume his lean figure meant he was frail, but his athletic days were far in the past, and there was something undeniably wispy and wraithlike about him, even when clad, as now, in bow-tie, frilled shirt and pristine tuxedo. Doctor Trevelyan wasn’t always the most attentive guest. When you pinned him on his pet subject, the Age of Sensibility, he spoke interestingly and eloquently, revealing deep knowledge. But when mundane matters were under discussion, he merely nodded when he concurred, or puffed out his lips and blew long breaths if he disagreed. Though he’d chuckle at the occasional quip, he rarely laughed uproariously. Nina said she thought this was because there was some secret tragedy in his past, something tormenting him even to this day – which was odd because, though her husband had known Doctor Trevelyan for many, many years, he’d never thought there’d been anything unconventional in his life. Tonight in particular, Doctor Trevelyan seemed down, only smiling sadly when he smiled at all, and scarcely communicating. Of course, this only increased Nina’s fascination with him – because secretly she’d often thought Doctor Trevelyan a rather good-looking chap. Okay, he might be white-haired, it might be said he’d aged before his time, but there was still something there, something noble but also mysterious, something gracious but also … could she use the term ‘wolfish’? She didn’t mean it in a negative way, especially as he was so well mannered, so civilised … but she felt certain he had a darker side, and at some point she was determined to discover it.

It was just around nine o’clock when the cups bearing the hostess’s famous palate-cleansing lemon sorbet were cleared away. There was more than bonhomie in the air. Most of the diners already knew each other from past events at Ronald and Nina’s; though it wasn’t always the same combination of guests, there was enough mutual familiarity for the banter to flow along with the wine. Ross Hardcastle was in mid-tirade, mocking the recent Labour Party conference in his usual brash, pseudo-uncouth way, but he kept it light-hearted – to such an extent that even the Willoughbys, who were of a left-wing inclination, had to chuckle. Doctor Trevelyan noticeably didn’t, and, as his political affiliations were unknown, it seemed more likely he was preoccupied with other matters. Ronald, who was also a Tory, thought it utterly hilarious and when he started with his hearty, booming laugh, it was difficult for others not to join in.

For all these reasons, it was quite a shock when the dining-room window suddenly exploded inward, flecks of razor-edged glass showering the happy band, and a massive half paving stone crash-landed in the middle of the mahogany table, sending flowers and scented candles spinning, scattering crimson claret across faces and hair-dos and the pastel-shaded walls.

It was even more of a shock two seconds later, when a second missile was lobbed in and landed amid the wreckage with a gentle
plop
.

Because it was a hand grenade.

When it detonated, the hardwood table absorbed some of the downward blast, but mainly ensured that most of it went upward and out. Of course it wasn’t just the flash and flame that did the damage, or the concussive, ear-crunching
BANG
– it was also the cutlery, the crystal goblets, the shards of glass and porcelain, and even the PVC place-mats, which went flying like mini guillotine blades.

Nina was in the kitchen at the time, while Mary was halfway along the hall with a covered dish in hand. It wasn’t the first explosion that stopped Mary in her tracks; it was the second one – the one that blew the front door in, hinges, chains and all. It hit her head-on at terrific speed, all ninety kilogrammes of it, knocking her flat beside the foot of the grand staircase, and landing on top of her, a mass of heavy, scorched oak. The first of the masked, khaki-clad figures who came charging in through the smoke-filled entrance initially stepped on top of it. Realising there was someone underneath, he lowered his MAC-10 machine-pistol and drilled a dozen shots through its surface. A second intruder spotted Nina at the end of the hall, framed in the kitchen doorway, mouth agape. He opened fire with his Desert Eagle .44 Magnum. Nina, struck four times, tottered backwards amid a deluge of shattered kitchenware.