TWISTER WAS FEELING restless and frustrated. It would soon be dark, but there was still no sign of Hayden Lewis or Kate Hamblin. Where had the bloody love-birds got to? He suddenly felt very uneasy, a little voice in his head telling him he should give up on the whole thing. But quitting went against the grain. One of them at least had to put in an appearance sooner or later; he would just have to be patient. As he settled back into his chair, however, after first removing the bulbs of the chandelier, he broke a golden rule and lit a cigarette. The smell would be a dead give-away if someone opened the front door, he knew that, but he needed a drag like nothing else and anyway, by the time they sussed they had company, it would be too late. He just had to remember to take the cigarette butt with him afterwards. Didn’t want to risk that being picked up by some eagle-eyed plod and sent for DNA analysis.
He had finished his cigarette and pocketed the butt when his mobile telephone rang. He checked the number on the display and frowned. It was the organ grinder again and he decided it would be better to answer this time.
‘Twister,’ he announced with a weary resignation.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ a familiar voice snarled.
‘Meaning?’ he replied, his tone dull and indifferent.
‘Meaning the two new murders I’ve just heard about – the breakdown man and Hamblin’s sister. Press are saying that, behind the scenes, they are being linked to the same killer.’
‘So?’
‘Were they your handiwork?’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘Maybe, but it’s nothing to worry about – I’ll be better soon.’
‘This isn’t funny, Twister.’
‘Who’s laughing?’ He hesitated. ‘Look, the girl was a mistake, OK? How was I to know she was Hamblin’s twin?’
‘And this Ray Jury character – was he one of the family too?’
‘Hardly. Just a bit of collateral damage, that’s all.’
‘Collateral damage? What’s got into you? You were only supposed to knock out a bloody surveillance team – not half of Somerset.’
He yawned. ‘Yeah, well, it’ll all be over soon anyway.’
There was anxiety in the caller’s tone now. ‘Why do you say that? Where are you?’
He smirked to himself. ‘Nice little thatched cottage in Burtle actually.’
‘Burtle? What the hell are you doing there?’
‘Waiting for a certain police lady and her boyfriend.’
There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘You prick! You’ll blow everything.’
‘Thought you wanted Miss Fancy Knickers out of the way?’
‘That was before you went on this last killing spree. We can’t afford more corpses with their necks broken. Snapping necks is hardly Duval’s MO anyway. He’s a bloody arsonist, not some kind of martial arts hitman.’
‘Fine, so I’ll arrange a nice fire this time. Could be fun and it will put Duval back in the frame.’
‘Just drop the idea, will you? I’m not convinced Hamblin is the threat we thought she was and, despite your best efforts to cock everything up, there’s still a realistic chance that this whole business will turn out just as we’d planned. So no more killings, OK?’
Twister didn’t answer and the caller added, ‘Are you listening to me? I said it’s over. Finished. Have you got that?’
He took a deep breath, reluctantly deciding to come clean. ‘It can’t be.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Hamblin and her boyfriend have something of mine and I need it back.’
A heavy pause. ‘Something of yours? Like what, for instance?’
‘Like the electronic tracker I put under her car. She and this guy, Hayden Lewis, found it after the crash.’
A despairing groan. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You seem to be making a profession out of incompetence. If your fingerprints or DNA are on that thing—’
‘I’m pretty sure there won’t be anything on it, but I can’t afford to take the risk. I have to find out where the tracker is and get it back.’
‘Well, it’s pretty obvious where it is, isn’t it? Police forensics will have it.’
‘I doubt it. Hamblin is persona non grata with the firm and seems to be playing her own little game. I don’t reckon she’ll trust official channels, so the thing is likely to be still in her possession.’
‘In which case, it’s best left there – especially if getting it back means knocking her and her boyfriend off afterwards.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ he retorted. ‘There’s nothing to connect you to any of this and in your position, no one would suspect you anyway, but I’m wide open if that tracker happens to lead Old Bill to me.’
‘But as you’ve just said, that’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it? And anyway, you should have thought about that before sticking the thing on her car in the first place.’
‘Easy for you to say that, sitting there on your fat arse while I do all the dirty work.’
‘That’s what I hired you for, isn’t it? Not that I’d have bothered if I’d known what an amateur you are.’
Twister’s face darkened. He was growing tired of the constant insults. ‘So what do you suggest?’ he said coldly. ‘There’s a lot of money riding on this job.’
‘I’m not in the game of suggesting anything – I’m telling you, forget the girl and the tracker and get out of that place before it’s too late.’
But he was no longer listening and abruptly snapped the flap of his mobile shut, cutting off the call, as headlights grazed the front window of the living room and car tyres crunched in the gravel alongside the cottage.
‘Seems like it’s already too late,’ he murmured to himself and, switching his mobile off altogether, he left his seat to position himself behind the front door, which opened directly on to the living room, flexing his powerful hands as he waited for the key to turn in the lock.
Detective Superintendent Steve Davey was on a high. That much was obvious when he showed Kate into DCI Callow’s office. Davey’s eyes were bright with almost evangelical zeal and he wore his characteristic boyish smile like a badge of commendation.
Plainly, Duval’s shooting had not fazed him in the least. In fact, he seemed positively delighted with the result and actually hummed to himself as he poured them both a cup of tea from the pot he had had sent up from the shift kitchen.
What followed was nothing like the interrogations Kate had been subjected to throughout the inquiry and it was certainly nothing like any debriefing she had experienced in her career before. There was no aggressive questioning, no in-depth probing and certainly none of the interview trickery she had learned to expect. In fact, the whole thing was conducted in the sort of relaxed informal style employed by psychiatrists with their clients and, as the debriefing progressed, it dawned on her that it was actually more to do with shoring up any possible weaknesses in the inquiry team’s pre-judged conclusions about the case than anything else.
Davey wanted – no, his career reputation needed – a speedy detection and he was desperate to ensure that nothing prevented that from happening. Duval’s death meant no long-winded interviews, no questions asked about some of the anomalies that had arisen during the investigation, and no protracted court proceedings. Naturally, there would be an inquest, plus the standard IPCC investigation into the actual shooting of Duval, but that was it. All nice and tidy. A result to be proud of – provided Kate Hamblin didn’t rock the boat, of course.
No wonder Callow had been excluded from the debriefing. The last thing Davey wanted was for any loose ends to be opened up by the vicious incisive questioning of someone who had a personal axe to grind and, as for Kate herself, she was in a real cleft stick. Allowing Davey to bury the truth and the real killer to go free went against everything she believed in, but for the present she had no choice. To make a stand meant revealing her involvement with Duval, resulting in the destruction not only of her own career, but that of the faithful Hayden as well. So she had no choice but to bite her tongue and go along with the charade, nodding sagely in all the right places and trying to control her trembling fingers as she finished her cup of tea.
‘So, Kate,’ Davey summarized, standing up to indicate the debriefing was now over, ‘I think we can safely say we have achieved a very successful result in this inquiry.’ He smiled with the sincerity of a crocodile. ‘And much of it is down to you.’ He patted her on the arm, adding the lie: ‘I’ll make sure you get a mention in dispatches, of course.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ she responded and left the room quickly before she was sick.
The thin bearded SOCO man was waiting for her on the stairs and he thrust a large padded envelope into her hands as if he were relinquishing hold of a bomb. ‘You’re mates with Hayden Lewis, aren’t you?’ he queried.
She hesitated, wondering if this was some sort of trick. ‘He asked me to do a rush job for him on the quiet like,’ he explained, turning back down the stairs. ‘Give that to him, will you? I can’t raise him.’
‘What on earth is it?’ she called after him, weighing the envelope in one hand.
He half-turned. ‘You’d better ask him,’ he retorted. ‘I just want shot of the bloody thing.’
Then he was gone, clattering down the stairs as if pursued by the hounds of hell. Frowning, Kate stared after him, then abruptly shrugged. She’d had enough excitement for one day and all she wanted to do now was sleep. Hayden’s damned envelope could wait.
Ducking into the empty CID office, she picked up the telephone and dialled his home number. The telephone rang and rang, but all she got was the BT answer phone service.
Two of her plainclothes colleagues, one her own DS, wandered into the office, threw her hostile glances and left again after checking their in-trays. ‘So much for camaraderie,’ she muttered to herself and dialled Hayden’s mobile. Once again, a metallic voice responded, telling her to leave a message. She glanced at her watch and headed for the stairs.
Her DI, Ted Roscoe, was in the incident room and he looked up from a text-crowded computer screen. ‘And what are you doing in here?’ he demanded. ‘You’re supposed to be on leave.’
‘Debrief with the guv’nor, sir,’ she replied, taken aback by the hostility in his tone. ‘Just going home – no chance of a lift, I suppose?’
Roscoe’s heavy face creased into an even deeper scowl. ‘Too busy,’ he retorted. ‘Plenty of cabs about anyway.’
One of the officers manning the bank of VDU consoles threw her a sympathetic glance as Roscoe stalked from the room. ‘They’ll all come around in time, Kate,’ she said. ‘Look, I’m about finished here. I’ll give you a lift, if you like.’
Kate smiled her thanks and waited while she signed off. ‘No idea where DC Lewis has got to, I suppose?’ she asked.
The other shook her head. ‘He was in here this afternoon, but I don’t know where he went afterwards.’
Grabbing her civilian anorak, she led the way downstairs to her ancient Peugeot 205 in the police station yard, moving a pile of shopping from the front passenger seat so Kate could sit down. ‘You and Hayden an item?’ she grinned as she pulled out of the yard.
‘An item?’ Kate echoed, then chuckled in spite of herself. ‘Now that is a terrifying thought.’
And she frowned as they headed out of Highbridge in the direction of home, another thought troubling her. So, where are you, Hayden, she mused? And why the hell aren’t you answering your phone?
But she would have been a lot less preoccupied with Lewis had she been aware of the fact that a car, which had exited the police station yard just seconds after their departure, was now tailing them at a discreet distance along the Bridgwater Road.
Roz Callow had returned to the station in a foul mood, determined to have it out with Davey as to why she had been excluded from the debriefing, but her mood had lifted dramatically when, using her security card to enter the building by a side door, she had glimpsed the SOCO man handing Kate the padded envelope. Now hunched over the wheel of her Audi like some hungry praying mantis, she smiled grimly as she recalled the conversation she had overheard. ‘So why would you want shot of that envelope, my friend,’ she murmured to herself, ‘and what sort of a rush job were you doing for Mr Hayden Lewis anyway?’ Could it be something to do with whatever it was the ‘love birds’ had found under Hamblin’s car perhaps? A certain something that needed to be checked out forensically? It would be easy enough to find out, of course, by leaning on the SOCO man, but that would have to come later. Right now she was much more interested in what Detective Constable Hamblin did with her padded envelope and where the envelope went, DCI Callow was determined to go too.
Hayden Lewis at first thought there had been a power cut when he opened his front door and found the lights were dead. But then he detected the smoke from Twister’s cigarette still hanging in the air and noticed the half-open French doors standing out clearly in the blaze of moonlight.
‘Gordon Bennett, I’ve been done,’ he breathed and strode across to the doors to take a closer look.
He hadn’t expected that the intruder would still be on the premises lurking in the gloom behind him, but a faint sound alerted him as he bent down to examine the lock on the doors and he pivoted round just in time. The powerful hand chopped the air instead of his neck as the policeman dived to one side, out of harm’s way, throwing the assassin off-balance. But Twister had been trained to recover quickly and he was on to his target even as Lewis scrambled to his feet, both hands locking on to his throat in a deadly grip, searching for the vital pressure points.
But Lewis was no push-over. As he slammed back against the sideboard, he managed to snatch a wine glass from the tray he had left on top. Smashing it against the wall, he slashed his assailant across the wrist with the broken stem before the other realized what was happening, forcing him to release his grip and stagger backwards with a sharp cry of pain. The wound was bleeding badly. Twister could feel the blood pouring down his wrist into his glove and almost certainly soaking into the carpet (so much for leaving a clean crime scene), but the injury only served to heighten his focus and, kicking the coffee table Lewis had overturned in front of him out of the way, he slammed into the policeman with annihilating force.
Lewis hit the floor hard and was only briefly aware of Twister’s knee in his back and the blood dripping on to his neck in a steady stream before powerful fingers found the pressure points they had been seeking and he passed out completely.