The Killing Club (21 page)

‘Oh, yeah.’ Heck accompanied him along the corridor. ‘You on that one as well?’

‘Yep, it’s me and you. Probably sending me along to puppy-walk you. Make sure you don’t lose interest halfway through and bugger off somewhere else.’

Heck wasn’t displeased to hear that Quinnell would be accompanying him. The two of them went back some way, having worked together closely on several cases. They weren’t natural bedfellows. Quinnell had an affable nature and liked to joke around. He also held staunch Anglican beliefs – which occasionally left Heck nonplussed as they didn’t seem to moderate the big guy’s effectiveness in a tight spot one iota. But that was a good thing. There was no one Heck would rather go across the pavement with than Gary Quinnell.

Ben Kane was waiting for them in the DO. He regarded Heck with thinly disguised irritation. ‘I take it you’re not too busy to do some SCU work today?’

‘No sir, I’m sorry about that,’ Heck replied. They were, of course, Kane’s orders that Heck had blatantly flouted the previous day – not intentionally, but it was still disrespectful to a supervisory officer. ‘I’ve had my knackers chewed off about it, I assure you.’

Kane harrumphed. ‘I ought to make you drop your kecks and prove it.’

Heck cleared his throat at the sound of suppressed sniggers from the surrounding desks. ‘Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.’

‘Like I believe that,’ Kane said. ‘Anyway, enough bullshit. Let’s get on with it.’ He showed them a couple of photos that had just been emailed through. ‘I’m sending Gary to Stoke Newington with you, Heck, because this thing’s getting serious at a rate of knots. Apparently there was another one last night. This one also suffered severe damage to her left eye. As usual, the mugger seemed more interested in striping the victim with a knife – probably a Stanley – than in taking her handbag. But he
did
take the handbag.’

‘Perk of the job, I suppose,’ Quinnell said, hands in pockets.

Kane glanced at him with distaste. ‘The Met reckon it’s only a matter of time before someone dies.’

Heck nodded, but said nothing.

‘I know it’s small potatoes compared to the Nice Guys,’ Kane added. ‘But it’s worrying stuff and the local lads could use some help.’

Heck nodded again. ‘That’s what we’re here for, sir.’

‘Good. Now’s an excellent time to remember that. So get up there. Liaise with DCs Reynolds and Grimshaw.’ They slouched to their desks to get their stuff together. ‘And get a sodding move on!’ Kane bawled after them. ‘Take the quickest, shortest route … no dawdling or pissing around. That lot have waited long enough!’

‘You can bring the worst out of anyone, you can, boyo,’ Quinnell said as they sauntered down to the car park. ‘Now Schoolmaster Ben’s shouting and carrying on!’

‘You gonna blabber on all the way up to the East End?’ Heck asked.

Quinnell made a zipping motion across his lips.

‘Good. Because I’ve got to think some stuff through.’

‘Well, thinking stuff through’s one of your strong points, sarge.’

Heck gazed at him suspiciously, but Quinnell only grinned.

They opted to take one car up to Stoke Newington – Quinnell’s silver Subaru XV. The Welshman drove, the growling, honking horde of mid-morning traffic testing his good humour to the limit, as did the deluging rain. Heck, meanwhile, slumped in the passenger seat, flipping through the paperwork they’d been sent.

‘What do you think?’ Quinnell asked after ten minutes.

‘I think it should be left to Division,’ Heck replied.

‘Bit messy, though, isn’t it?’

Heck pondered the details of the case. The attacks were confined to the Shoreditch and Hackney districts, and rarely varied. In almost all cases, the assailant, a tall, lean man wearing a black anorak and a hoodie, and described as having ‘a pale, skullish face’ accosted lone females after dark. His MO was to shove them back against a wall or lamppost with his left hand, pull a small, sharp blade with his right, and demand money. In every case thus far, the terrified victim had handed valuables over. The assailant had then lunged at them with his blade, always going for the face, before running away. A couple of times, the wound had been superficial – no more than a nick, but he was clearly getting better at it. On the last three occasions, he’d created six- or seven-inch incisions, sometimes half a centimetre in depth. Heck could understand the divisional CID office’s concern – in the case of the previous night’s victim, Angelina Watts, a seventeen-year-old waitress, the blade had sliced clean through her left eyeball – yet he still didn’t view this as an SCU case, for various reasons.

‘This is five minutes of a job,’ he said. ‘To start with, he’s local. He always leaves the scene on foot, but CCTV footage from bus stops and railway stations has brought no results, which means he’s got somewhere close to lie low. He’s been chased from the scene three times, but always eludes his pursuers. That means he knows the area. He almost certainly lives or works on the plot. He’s white, six-foot-four minimum, lanky build. That narrows the field.’

Heck read on. ‘Look at this … he left footprints in a flowerbed after vaulting a fence to get away across a nursery school playing-field. They’ve been identified as belonging to a size-twelve training shoe. That’s a big foot, which narrows it down even more. The tread pattern is also identifiable. It gives us the specific brand. So … six-four, size twelve feet, specific make of shoe, and all in that same small area. Realistically, how long should it take for the local factory to trace this lad? His signature crime is slashing the faces of female strangers. He robs them too, but the wounding is the object of the exercise. Think about it, Gaz. Face-slashing … that suggests he’s either got a disfigurement himself, or someone in his family has … maybe his mother, his sister.’

‘No witness has reported a disfigurement,’ Quinnell said.

‘No witness had a proper gander at his face. All they did was glimpse it under his hood, calling it pale and skull-like.’

‘A disfigurement isn’t a given …
hey, shit-brain
!’ Quinnell hit his horn as the red Alfa Romeo in front took its sweet time moving through a green light. The traffic was still heavy, the dirty grey rain intensifying, drumming the windshield.

‘Alright, put that aside,’ Heck said. ‘He only attacks young women. Non-fatal knife attacks on females tend to indicate a sexual inadequate. Someone who hasn’t got the capability to commit rape. The chances are he’s committed similar but lesser telltale crimes before. Purse-snatching, skirt-lifting, bottom-pinching, spitting on girls in the street, name-calling … especially when he’s drunk. You seriously think someone like that won’t already be in the system?’

Quinnell shrugged, but snarled. The Alfa Romeo was again dawdling at a traffic light.

‘And with all these ID markers,’ Heck added, ‘how long before you’re looking at a shortlist of one? And that’s assuming he isn’t dumb enough to have used one of the stolen credit cards at a cashpoint and get himself caught on film. It’s also assuming the local grasses can’t turn something up. Or that a poster campaign or a door-to-door won’t drop a name into our lap. Seriously, Gaz, this dickhead should’ve been topped and tailed in a couple of days.’

Quinnell shrugged. ‘This is why they’ve asked for us. We’ve got it sorted and we haven’t even arrived there yet … whoa, what’s this now?’

Heck looked ahead. The Alfa Romeo in front had stopped at another red light, but now two passengers, two big young guys – one black, one white – had climbed out, one on either side. They chatted amicably as they sauntered around to the rear of the vehicle; the white one wore a denim jacket and jeans, the other a leather jacket and jeans. Their only precaution in the face of the heavy rain was to wear a knitted cap each. They continued laughing and chatting as they turned to the Romeo’s boot.

‘What the hell are these bozos doing?’ Quinnell wondered.

‘Get us out of here now!’ Heck said sharply.
‘Now, Gaz … NOW!’

‘What?’ Quinnell’s Subaru still advanced, though was slowing to a halt. Twenty yards ahead, the two men had opened the boot and were lifting something out, one item each.

‘Hit the fucking gas!’
Heck bellowed.

A third man, with a red beard, was coming across the road towards them. He wore a khaki flak-jacket and had a rolled-up newspaper in hand. One second earlier he’d been seated in a bus shelter. He too wore a woolly hat – but was now in the act of pulling it down over his face, to reveal that it was actually a ski-mask.

The twosome at the back of the Romeo did the same, and spun around.

Quinnell reacted, throwing his car into reverse, slamming the pedal to the floor. In seconds they were thirty yards away, but had to swerve sideways with a screech of rain-sodden tyres to avoid colliding with vehicles behind, before the two men opened fire with blistering flashes of flame and an ear-numbing
dadadadadada!
A strobe-like burst flared from the end of the rolled newspaper as the man in khaki opened up too.

Heck and Quinnell weren’t quite caught in an enfilade; they were moving too quickly for that, but streams of lead raked the Subaru from different angles, safety glass exploding, bodywork buckling and puncturing on all sides, projectiles whining across the interior. Blood and flesh spattered Heck’s face as one slug ploughed through the side of Quinnell’s neck. A split-second later, the Welshman was hit again, the second slug slamming through the windshield and into the right side of his ribs. Yet somehow he kept the vehicle on track, reversing clean across the A10, a hail of lead still rattling over and through it. He struck the kerb, which collision half-turned the car, spun the wheel and shifted gear.

‘Jesus loves me,’ Quinnell whimpered through clenched teeth. ‘Jesus loves me … Holly … Sally …’ Those were the respective names of his wife and daughter.

They blazed through a U-turn, other road-users shrieking out of their way. Heck squirmed around to peek over the top of his seat. The masked man in khaki had discarded his newspaper and was running full pelt in pursuit, in the process of snapping off a spent magazine and banging another into its place. The other two had jumped back into the Romeo, which swung around in a crazy three-point turn, back-ending a waste bin with such force that it cartwheeled through the window of a carpet showroom, and front-ending a Ford Fiesta coming the other way.

‘Jesus loves me,’ Quinnell gasped, three separate rivulets of blood running from his frothing mouth. He tromped the pedal hard, but his efforts to negotiate the oncoming traffic looked doomed. With a wild wailing of horns, cars and vans swerved aside at the last second, crashing through railings or into shop-fronts.

‘Serial Crimes Unit to Stoke Newington CAD, urgent message!’ Heck hollered into his radio, despite the rain now blasting his face. ‘We’re in trouble on lower Stoke Newington Road. Multiple shots fired by unknown number of assailants … maybe a Nice Guys hit-team! Repeat … maybe a Nice Guys hit-team! One officer injured. Require immediate back-up, plus armed support, over!’

‘Holl – eee …’
Quinnell moaned, the eyelids fluttering in his stone-grey face. Heck realised he couldn’t even see the single-decker bus screaming sideways towards them as it attempted to spin out of their way. He grabbed the wheel from Quinnell’s bloodstained hands and thrust it left, the Subaru jack-knifing around at speed, shuddering again from bullet impacts to its rear, and now to its offside flank, before shunting its way down a narrow alley.

A collapsible steel market stand blocked the way. Quinnell didn’t see this either, because they smashed through it at full speed, its rain-soaked tarpaulin plastering itself across the imploded windscreen. Heck punched at it, but only got it partially clear. ‘Jesus!’ he swore.

‘He’s calling me, Heck,’ Quinnell stammered.

‘No he isn’t,’ Heck retorted. ‘He’s telling you to hang tight!’ He yanked the wheel left as they approached a redbrick T-junction. They swerved around it, gearbox grinding, jagged cornerstones chewing through the Subaru’s nearside flank.

‘Gonna die …’ Quinnell groaned.

‘No you’re not! Keep that foot to the floor!’

Frantic voices sounded from the radio, but Heck couldn’t concentrate sufficiently to reply. Rain still whipped into his face, along with litter. The tarpaulin wouldn’t shift either, but even beyond that it was difficult to make things out. They were firmly in back-alley country, more bleak cobbled passages lined with old boxes, rainwater gushing in tumults from the broken gutters and rusty gantries overhead.

Quinnell kept his foot down, but was barely conscious. If his features had been grey before, now they were almost green. Blood clotted his chin and streamed from the gruesome gash in his neck – but it wasn’t pulsing out, which suggested no artery had been severed. The wound on his right was more of a worry. Heck couldn’t lean across to assess it, but that whole side of Quinnell’s jacket, and the shirt underneath, were saturated with gore.

They slid around another corner into a wider thoroughfare, with mountainous heaps of plastic rubbish bags on the left and locked-down steel shutters on the right.

‘Holl … eee …’ Quinnell croaked.

‘Hang on, Gaz, we’ll be out of here …’

‘Smashed me up, Heck … smashed me …’

‘Fuck!’ Heck said, glancing back to the front.
‘OH FUCK!
Brakes! Gaz, brakes!’

Quinnell was just adequately compos mentis to pull this off. They skidded wildly on the rain-slick cobbles, Heck jerking forward against his belt, losing his radio through the shattered windscreen. When they came to a halt, another T-junction lay ten yards in front. The left-hand turn was too narrow for any vehicle; little more than a footway. But the right-hand turn would have been wide enough to swing into had it not been blocked by a skip filled with broken pub furniture.

Heck kicked the passenger door open, jumped out and stared back down the passage behind them. Veils of rain swept along it, but there was no sign of immediate pursuit. From somewhere in the near distance, he could hear sirens. It was possible the Nice Guys had called it off. Alternatively, they might have followed and just got lost in this maze of backstreets. He clambered quickly over the bullet-riddled bonnet, and opened the driver’s door. ‘We’ve gotta get out of here, Gaz. Now … come on!’