The Killing Club (27 page)

But for all this, he
did
love her. It infuriated Docherty to hear her defamed, drove him to the vilest anger the way every unthinking, atheistic pipsqueak in Britain would heap calumnies on her without knowing any of the true facts, without having experienced the love or care she’d extended to millions.

None of that counted, it seemed, thanks to the follies of a few sexually misguided wretches; weak, confused creatures who should never have been ordained in the first place, who had only come to the Church to find sanctuary from the hardships of life. Docherty had to blink back tears, his vision of the narrow road dimming as the last vestige of sunlight retreated west. All because of this handful of undisciplined fools; these hateful, boorish oafs who’d lost control of their primitive urges!

Not that any of this excused his
own
deviations, of course – he couldn’t just write himself off as a fool; that would be way too easy. And it certainly didn’t forgive them. Only God forgave. And sometimes even that ultimate judge might respond with vengeance rather than sympathy.

There was only one recourse, Docherty had decided that morning – and now he affirmed it again as he drew into the small car park. Direct and determined action.

He climbed from the Volkswagen and pulled on his waterproof coat. The car park was otherwise deserted, which was understandable. The nearest town was Culkein, actually only a fishing village, and that was five miles away; beyond that, the next nearest ‘real’ town was Ullapool, which was closer to thirty-five miles away. As such, this spot was normally reserved for visitors: climbers, hikers and the like, and there were fewer and fewer of these as the year waned.

A gust of icy sea wind moaned down a gully leading away through piny crags. It set Docherty’s waterproof rippling, and he was glad he’d thought to bring it. He crossed the car park to the foot of the gully, where there was a stile. He still had great affection for this place, he thought as he climbed over and ascended the zigzagging path. Though a Kirkcaldy man by origin, in Scotland’s east lowlands, he had visited the far northwest numerous times as a boy, and spent many happy holidays here before the bitterness and frustrations of adulthood had pervaded his life.

Docherty’s footfalls echoed on the stony footway as he strode uphill. He thought about other pilgrims, in harsher days and harsher climes, ascending towards forgiveness on their hands and knees, their blood smearing the rugged ground. Folly, in his opinion – to damage themselves in that way, when they had a duty to exist and ensure the existence of others. Not that the shoes he’d consciously opted to wear for this occasion were guaranteed to prevent him suffering injury. In his days as a young priest, when he’d brought school parties to the Highlands, he’d been as well-equipped as the next man – in his boots and his hardwearing canvas trousers, and his plaid shirt and his waxed jacket with the big hood that he could draw against the worst of the Atlantic gales. But it was important that none of that was on show now. Today it was the black shirt of office, the clerical collar, the thoroughly polished shoes.

When he reached the top, he threw off the waterproof coat. In front of him stood a waist-high railing, with a coin-operated telescope on a concrete pivot in its centre. Beyond that lay the vast, barren seascape of the northern Minch, rolling and exploding in the fading, reddish light, the sun a dying spark on its distant horizon.

With dull creaks in his knees and hips, Docherty clambered over the railing and walked the five feet to the edge of the cliff top, the wind tugging at his body. He stood there rocking, toes protruding over the brink. Below, by nearly three hundred feet, mountains of spume erupted from heaps of jagged, seaweed-covered rocks. Only vaguely visible far to the north stood the thumb-shaped Old Man of Stoer, the teetering sea-stack around which the ocean literally boiled. To the south, the arrow-thin beam of the Stoer lighthouse crossed and re-crossed the desolate wastes of water, and beyond that, lost in haze, lay the rugged headland of Rubha Mor.

It was a good thing visibility was failing, Docherty decided. No more distractions. No more happy memories with which to hamper himself. Of more importance now was the future – and what might lie in store. Self-destruction with sound mind was a terrible sin, and would incur severe punishment. But then severe punishment would be the order of the day anyway. And maybe … just maybe, he could negate some of it by punishing himself first. He wasn’t certain of that, but who knew how the Lord thought?

Anyway, the time for such rumination was over.

As he’d told himself on first arriving here, there was nothing for it now but direct, determined action.

At which point, electric light flooded over him from closer at hand.

For a crazy, near-hallucinogenic moment, Docherty imagined the distant eye of the lighthouse had sought him out, spearing its life-saving glow across acres of foam, as though to reassure him, to advise him he wasn’t alone in his pain. But just as quickly, he understood otherwise. He swivelled around.

Three men, indistinguishable behind the light, had emerged onto the cliff top to his rear and had climbed the safety rail, against which they now casually leaned.

‘Ready to make peace with God, your grace?’ the man in the middle asked. He was the one holding the light. When he spoke it was in fluent English, though his accent was foreign – vaguely Germanic, or Scandinavian. Danish possibly.

‘Not … not possible, I’m afraid,’ Docherty replied confusedly. ‘I’ve never even made peace with myself.’

‘And which particular memory prevents this? Your casual abuse of holy women? Your gross misappropriation of diocese funds? Or that most heinous thing of all … that filthy service you purchased with those funds?’

‘All … all these,’ Docherty replied, dazed. After brief, absurd notions that in his moment of horror and agony he might be experiencing something transcendental, he now had no doubt who these men actually were.

‘Repentance is the first step to forgiveness,’ the man added. ‘But I wonder how repentant you’d be had we not caught up with you?’

‘I … I already told you … I’ve suffered every day.’

‘But not sufficiently to hand yourself in?’

‘What good would that have done?’ Docherty wasn’t sure why he was trying to explain this when he didn’t believe it himself, but the words were so rehearsed they fell from his lips. ‘It wasn’t an offence I would ever commit again. I could atone for it better out here, among my people … to whom I had a duty.’

The man chuckled. ‘There are certain things one must always rationalise to make them bearable.’

‘It’s not like that. I knew you would come … or someone like you.’

‘You did?’

‘You
had
to come. First they suspended me from office, then they dismissed me … I was mocked, scorned, publicly reviled. But that was never going to be enough. In my heart of hearts, I knew … my conscience told me. One can’t commit offences so grievous, even secret ones, and expect to walk away unscathed.’

‘You’re a wise man, your grace, but I think your conscience may have driven you mad.’

Docherty glanced back over the cliff. Nothing down there was visible. It was a void, a maelstrom. ‘When I heard about the violence in England, the shooting and killing connected to that fellow from the prison … I knew chaos had entered our world through the rent I and others like me opened. It could only be a matter of time …’

‘Well …’ The man spoke with an air of finality. ‘The fact that you’re ready to take your punishment can only be a good thing.’ He strode forward.

Docherty wanted to clench his eyes shut, but inner guilt prevented him.

With his clean looks and blond windblown hair, the man did indeed possess the face of an angel. If not for that hideous scar. And that demonic smile. And that glinting blade in his gloved right hand.

Chapter 22

It wasn’t long after eight in the morning when Nick Gribbins emerged yawning from the security booth, to find Heck showered and track-suited, turning sausages on a grill and cracking eggs into a pan.

‘Fry-up?’ Heck asked. ‘You may as well … you lot are paying for it.’

‘Okay,’ Gribbins said warily. He wandered into the safehouse lounge, where Steph Fowler, having come downstairs first and polished off a bowl of muesli, was dividing her attention between the TV, on which she was channel-hopping, and her laptop, which sat on the coffee table, a Skype link open to the MIR at Scotland Yard.

In the kitchen, Heck dished up two plates of sausage, bacon, egg and beans, while shoving several slices of bread into the toaster. He’d benefited from a comfortable night in the four-poster. No doubt he’d needed it – he still felt battered and weary, but this was an undeniably restful environment.

He walked through into the lounge, handing Gribbins his food, along with some cutlery and a napkin. Gribbins grunted his thanks, and commenced to eat at the coffee table. Heck stood by the door to eat his own. ‘Sorry about the hand,’ he said. ‘Seriously. I thought you were the Nice Guys.’

Gribbins shrugged. ‘You got dragged through the gutters after. Seems like we’re square.’

‘What’s the actual damage?’

‘Hairline fracture of the metacarpals. Not too serious, but it hurts.’

‘Surprised they’re letting you work.’

‘We’re totally pulled out. Every man and woman we’ve got is on this job. When I volunteered for light duties, they couldn’t very well refuse.’

‘Light duties?’ Heck said.

‘Lighter than they’d be out there … on the frontline.’

‘Well … yeah.’ Heck couldn’t argue with that, and it irked him. He too was wasting away in here whilst the real battle was being fought elsewhere.

Suddenly, Fowler hit the volume control on the television.

‘Police are playing down reports that the body of a man found this morning in the mouth of a sewer connecting with the River Thames, close to Execution Dock in Wapping, is linked with the recent spate of shootings and bombings,’ the news anchorwoman said.

The screen displayed a police launch bobbing on a mud-brown tide at the foot of a dockland wall. Police divers were clustered in the mouth of a weed-fringed vent.

‘The man, who is reported to have died by drowning, has not yet been formally identified,’ the anchorwoman added.

‘Your guy?’ Gribbins asked Heck.

‘Could be.’ Heck watched the screen, but there were no further developments on that particular story, and the scene switched to a live broadcast from the ambush site near Gull Rock. He took his crockery back through to the kitchen, slid it into the dishwasher, and returned to the lounge. ‘I’m off to check the pool,’ he said.

Gribbins shrugged as he mopped his plate.

Fowler glanced through the French windows, beyond which the day looked cool and grey. ‘In this weather? You’ll catch your death.’

‘Just having a look.’ Heck walked towards the windows. ‘If it needs scooping, I’ll scoop. Not hanging around here, catching updates on a case I’m not involved with.’

‘Those French windows are deadlocked,’ Fowler said. ‘Use the back door. It opens from the inside. The key-code to get back in is 78745.’

Heck nodded, leaving the room and heading down the hall. Behind him, Fowler took her place in the security booth, where she could no doubt watch his every move on camera. He left the house via the kitchen, and set off up the extensive garden by a paved central path. As he did, he tapped out a number on his re-energised mobile.

‘Incident Room,’ Shawna McCluskey answered.

‘It’s me,’ he said.

‘Oh great.’ She lowered her voice. ‘This is all I need.’

‘Relax … just a quick chat.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

‘No one’s said I’m not allowed to talk to people.’

‘That’s what you think. Gemma reckons the more incommunicado you remain, the safer you’ll be.’

‘She doesn’t even trust
you
?’

‘She’s just being cautious.’

‘Fair enough … I’ll make this quick. What’s the skinny on that corpse found in the sewer at Wapping?’

‘Hellfire! I’m definitely not supposed to talk to you about the case.’

‘What … Gemma doesn’t trust
me
either? That’s funny, considering I’m the one who’s supposed to be in danger.’

‘You know what it’s like. If these Nice Guy bastards get hold of you …’

‘You mean if they grab me and torture me, I won’t be able to tell them anything? So they’ll just keep torturing and torturing … until I expire? At which point they’ll have learned precisely nothing.’

She hesitated. ‘That’s the gist of it, I suppose.’

‘That doesn’t sound remotely like Gemma, and you know it. What’s going on, Shawna? At least tell me about the body.’

She lowered her voice even more. ‘We’re pretty sure it belongs to one of those blokes who bushwhacked you yesterday. The one who fell off the gantry.’

‘Black fella? Big bugger, well built?’

‘Correct.’

‘Wearing a leather jacket and jeans?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s him. What’ve you found out?’

‘Nothing so far. We’re running his prints and his DNA. Failing that, we’ll go for facial recognition.’

‘He had no ID?’ Heck asked.

‘A few bits of sodden paper stuffed in one of his pockets, which don’t make any sense. But no wallet, no driving licence … if he did have that stuff, he lost it while he was being washed through the sewers.’

‘Get back to me as soon as you know something, yeah?’

‘Heck … I can’t.’

‘Shawna, this is bullshit. I’m hardly going to blab my mouth off! I just want to know what’s going on. I think you guys owe me that much.’

‘My job could be on the line here.’

‘If anything happens, I’ll put my hand up … I’ll take the fall for it.’

‘Oh yeah. If you fell in a barrel of monkey shit, you’d come out clean.’

‘I’ll sort it, I promise you. Just call me back, yeah?’

‘Maybe …’ She sounded unsure. ‘If I get the chance.’

She hung up, leaving him perplexed. He’d always liked to think he and Shawna enjoyed a special relationship. Originally officers in the Greater Manchester Police, they’d known each other from the earliest days of their careers, and after finding their way to London and the Serial Crimes Unit by different routes, had renewed that friendship fiercely. A fellow child of the industrial Northwest, Shawna shared many of Heck’s blue-collar traits: she was a roughneck but she looked good; she was streetwise but witty; she also knew her job inside-out and she didn’t get fazed or upset. But she was running scared at present, and Heck felt he detected SOCAR behind that rather than Gemma.