With the main door to the garage firmly closed, Lucy’s captor whipped the firearm out of her coat pocket. It was the real deal, a Browning BDA, and Lucy was now marched at gunpoint through a connecting passage into the main body of the house. It was only dimly lit, most of its Venetian blinds closed. However, the rooms were spacious and well appointed, and, from what she could see, they’d been furnished tastefully, laid with wooden block flooring, with rich drapes on the windows and handsome paintings on the walls. She was poked through into the largest and plushest of these, which seemingly was the lounge. A right-angled leather sofa faced an enormous flat-screen TV, while a thick rug lay in front of a huge granite hearth with an ornate real-flame gas fire. Another girl was waiting in here, standing behind a carved wooden chair, which looked as if it had been brought in from the dining room. Years had passed since the custody shot had been taken, but Lucy immediately recognised her as Alyssa Torgau.
‘Searched her yet?’ she said.
‘Nope,’ the girl with the gun replied, lobbing Lucy’s car keys onto the couch. ‘You’re about to do that now.’ She stepped to the side, aiming her Browning at Lucy’s head with both hands.
Alyssa Torgau came around the chair. She was wearing trainers, running shorts and a sports bra, her exposed flesh glinting with a sheen of sweat as though she’d been in mid-workout. Lucy noted that her face was swollen and bruised, and that there were dried cuts on it. Quite clearly, this was the same girl who’d attacked Sister Cassie.
‘Think you two have met before, haven’t you?’ Lucy’s captor said.
Alyssa eyed Lucy curiously, particularly her leather jacket. ‘Well … if it isn’t the biker chick who helped that Maggie slut.’
‘She was sitting outside in a car.’ The other girl came back into Lucy’s line of vision, though she still kept the weapon trained on her head. ‘Not very observant, I have to say. Didn’t see me coming up from behind. Your handiwork was sitting on her back seat. Question is … is that incident the only reason she’s here?’
Alyssa rummaged through Lucy’s jacket pockets, pulling out her phone, which she placed on the mantel, then her handcuffs, and then the wallet containing her warrant card. ‘Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn,’ she read aloud. ‘Crowley CID.’
‘No radio?’ the other one said.
‘Not on her.’
‘Go and check the car.’
Alyssa took Lucy’s keys, and sauntered out into the hall. While she did, the other one grabbed Lucy’s phone.
‘What’s the security code?’ she asked, keeping the gun level.
With no option, Lucy gave it to her. The girl used one thumb to access the list of recent calls.
‘You got any mates out there who think they’re about to storm this place,’ she finally said, throwing the phone at the stone fireplace, where it shattered, ‘guess who dies first.’
Lucy didn’t answer, because she wasn’t sure what the right answer might be. If they thought she was only here to investigate an assault, that was good – it was less serious. But they’d now abducted her, of course, so they might still need to take drastic action. On the other hand, if they thought she was part of a larger operation, they might consider it sensible to keep her alive as a hostage. But with dangerous criminals you simply never knew.
In light of which, the best plan was surely to keep them guessing by saying as little as she could get away with.
Alyssa returned, closing the front door behind her and tossing the keys back onto the couch.
‘No radio in the car,’ she said. ‘No sign of anyone else out there, either. Think this one was just being nosy, Ivana.’
Ivana, Lucy thought. Alyssa and Ivana.
The Torgau twins.
They wore their hair in different styles and dressed differently, and one had marks on her face, but they still resembled each other. That said, the one with the gun, Ivana, had more of an air of authority. She gestured with the Browning at the dining room chair. Lucy did as she was told, sitting down in it. Alyssa slid around to the rear, twisting Lucy’s hands behind her back, pulling them through the spindles in the chair’s backrest, and locking them together with her own handcuffs. While this was happening, Lucy heard heavy feet descending the staircase, thudding impacts that resounded throughout the house.
‘Watch her,’ Ivana said. ‘I’ll go and speak to him.’
Alyssa nodded and moved to a corner of the room, near the front window, where she picked something up that Lucy hadn’t noticed previously. It was another gun, a battle-rifle with a large magazine attached. Despite everything, this shocked her. Originally, she’d wondered if they were dealing with some kind of ultra-dysfunctional family here, a bunch of sexual sadists and thrill-killers. Okay, the murder of Miles O’Grady, and the gangland connection that suggested, put it into a slightly different league, but she hadn’t expected heavy firepower like this. Ivana, meanwhile, moved out into the hall, half-closing the lounge door behind her. A muffled conversation followed. Alyssa approached slowly, clutching the rifle in both hands but, as per the manual, keeping it dressed down.
‘You ride a mean bike, I have to say,’ she said.
‘And yet you outran it,’ Lucy replied. ‘You must be fit as a fiddle.’
‘We train a lot.’
Ivana came back into the lounge, still talking. ‘She’s made no calls to anyone but her mum since this morning. Plus, she’s got no radio. She’s only local fuzz too. She’s not Murder Squad …’
A man entered the room behind her.
‘The route’s clear, by the way,’ Ivana added. ‘Alyssa checked it first thing, as usual.’
The man said nothing. From the sound of his footfalls, Lucy had been expecting someone larger and heavier, but as it turned out, the biggest thing about him was the travel bag he was carrying. He dropped it, and it struck the floor a reverberating blow. She eyed it quickly. Police grab-bags tended to be a lot lighter, but then detectives only usually needed overnight stuff, because they’d be home again soon. For hoodlums on the run, the future was less certain. Not that Martin Torgau – because this was the same guy she’d seen in the custody shot from 2002 – looked much like a hoodlum. He was about five-foot-nine, with a slightly portly build, which wasn’t enhanced by his chosen attire of jersey and tracksuit trousers. She put him somewhere in his late fifties.
‘Seems we may have panicked over nothing,’ Alyssa said.
‘No one’s panicking,’ he replied, not looking at her. ‘Go upstairs. Watch the road.’
She hurried from the room with rifle in hand, scampering upstairs.
Torgau took Lucy’s warrant card from Ivana, studied it and placed it on the mantel. He regarded his captive with eyes that were deep, brown and strangely soulful. ‘I congratulate you, DC Clayburn. You’re the very first police officer ever to encroach on this sanctuary. I’m not sure that bringing you inside so quickly was the wisest course –’ he threw a quick glance at Ivana, who reddened slightly ‘– but I understand it was a taut moment, which required some sort of immediate response. It wasn’t totally unreasonable that Ivana, on learning who you were, took the action she did.’
Lucy said nothing.
‘Just getting close to us, though, is impressive,’ he added. ‘Either you’re remarkably adept at your job. Or you’ve been incredibly lucky. Or unlucky, depending on your viewpoint.’
He possessed a Manchester accent, but it was refined, as if he’d spent much of his life working to modify it. He also spoke in leisurely, casual fashion, as if he had plenty of time on his hands. He might not be panicking, but she’d have expected greater urgency than this.
‘Naturally, my curiosity is piqued,’ he said. ‘Which means that I want to know all about you.’
Ivana left the room and returned with another dining chair, which she handed to him. He placed it in front of Lucy and sat down. Again, there was no air of haste.
‘You already know everything there is,’ Lucy replied. ‘I’m DC Clayburn from Crowley CID.’
He ignored that. ‘Such as how you came to be here … at my house.’
‘I obviously can’t tell you that.’
‘How unfortunate.’
‘Mr Torgau, you do realise that abducting a police officer means hefty prison time?’
‘Oh, I’m in no doubt.’ He seemed saddened by that prospect. ‘Which is why you should be in no doubt that when I ask you questions, I’m serious about wanting answers.’
‘Then you’re going to be seriously disappointed.’
He sighed and looked at his daughter, who approached the hearth, bent down and, throwing a switch, brought the real-flame gas fire to life. Lucy felt a gush of heat. The girl took a blackened fire poker from a hook and inserted it into the flames.
‘You look worried, DC Clayburn,’ Torgau said.
Lucy glared at him. ‘You’re getting yourself into so much trouble here.’
He seemed intrigued. ‘Is it possible, I wonder, that you really don’t know who you’re talking to? That you really have no idea what you’ve stumbled across?’ He paused. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m going to play a little game with you. I tell you a bit about myself, and then you tell me a bit about yourself. Yes?’
Lucy glanced at the poker again, its blackened tip still resting in the flames. Sweat was gathering on her brow.
‘It is going to get hot in here, I’m sorry to say,’ Torgau said. ‘But it doesn’t need to get terribly hot … so long as you play the game.’
‘For God’s sake!’ she hissed. ‘You’ve unlawfully imprisoned a police officer. How do you think this is going to end?’
‘That’s entirely up to you.’ He sat back with arms folded, as though contemplating the best way to start his game. ‘I’m what you might call a professional problem-solver. I mean, I operate a number of ordinary, legitimate businesses. But none of them make any money. My real gig is … well, let me tell you how it began. I was a child at the time, growing up on the same Moston estate as the legendary Bill Pentecost.’
Lucy was unsurprised to hear it confirmed that this thing was connected to the Crew.
‘I didn’t associate with Wild Bill back in those days,’ Torgau said. ‘I knew who he was, he knew who I was … but we had our own rackets. Me and my lot, we burgled, stole car radios, rolled drunks. But for all that, we were just punks, hustlers really. Bill had more of a plan. He was loan-sharking, ringing motors, running a whole stable of working girls before he was twenty. Then, one day, we learned about this gun shop down Alderley Edge way. It was off our normal patch, but we went over there, got inside, helped ourselves to … oh, forty or fifty shotguns. Hundreds of boxes of cartridges. Afterwards, we spent three months selling them out of the back of a van, all over the Northwest. Word had got around. Anyone planning a job, we were the armourers. This brought us to Wild Bill’s attention. He was setting up a real network by then, which meant that we were around at just the right time. We armed his desperadoes, and at a good price. The upshot, me and Bill … we became solid.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Lucy asked, genuinely puzzled.
Torgau pondered. ‘It’s a good question, DC Clayburn. Most of my life, I’ve flown under the police radar. You can call it skill, you can call it luck, you can call it the Devil looking after his own. But after a lifetime dedicated to breaking the law – I mean, I’ve barely ever done an honest job and look at the life I lead – I have the smallest criminal record imaginable. So maybe, just maybe … this is an opportunity to show at least one of you what you’ve been missing. Cosy in the knowledge that it won’t mean a damn thing.’
‘Dad hasn’t told you what he was really good at yet,’ Ivana chipped in.
Lucy saw that she’d lifted the poker from the flames and was blowing gently on its tip, which had started to glow.
This was Torgau’s cue to talk a little more about himself.
‘Wild Bill was impressed no end by the gun thing,’ he said. ‘But what he really liked about me was how I excelled at violence. You may not believe that, because I’m not a big man. And back in Moston in the bad old days, when I was very young, that made me a target for every kind of bully. It began with my father, who hammered me regularly for the most minuscule things. But mainly it was this big kid in the neighbourhood – Arun Swaraj. He gave me a kicking every single day. Until my father saw it happen and refused to let me in the house afterwards. He put an empty milk bottle in my hand and said that I couldn’t come home until I’d smashed it over this guy’s head. I knew he meant it. So that was what I did. Arun went down like the pathetic sack of shit he was. But the really amazing thing was the way his wingmen ran away. My father taught me an important lesson that day, DC Clayburn. Violence works. Especially the nasty kind. The kind from which there is no coming back. That kind of violence doesn’t just earn you respect, it can actually earn you a living.’
Lucy was stunned, not just by how unconcernedly he was revealing his criminal past to her, but by how long he was taking to do it. It was a dead cert that they wouldn’t be telling her all this if they intended to let her live. But shouldn’t there be an air of urgency by now? She was a police officer who’d vanished from the grid. She’d be missed.
Unless that was the purpose of the delay.
Were they waiting to see what would happen?
They were clearly ready to run – the weighty travel-bag for example – but perhaps they weren’t sure whether that was a good option. Were there other cops out there, covertly watching them? Would they be followed if they ran? All of these had to be considerations. Or would it be safer to assume that any surveillance team should have reacted by now? Lucy was ‘local fuzz’ after all, not ‘Murder Squad’. So, might it indeed be the case that she wasn’t here as part of a larger operation? Might it be that the Torgaus didn’t need to flee at all?
Martin Torgau was still talking, shedding more light on his villainous life. Describing the street-gang he put together, and how it came to enjoy unparalleled success because of his ruthless leadership. How various enemies sought to tear him down. How he and his cronies responded savagely: shooting them, stabbing them, clubbing them, the bodies disposed of down derelict mine-shafts or thrown into lakes and reservoirs with concrete chained to their feet. And how, in due course, Wild Bill had persuaded Torgau that his real vocation lay not in petty crime, like selling guns, but in real problem-solving.
‘We’d just done a one-off job for Bill,’ Torgau said. ‘A Stockport gangster called Jerry Coonan was cutting in on Bill’s action. Bill didn’t want the problem solving publicly. Nevertheless, he wanted to know that Coonan had been properly punished. Me and a couple of lads, we nabbed Coonan when he came out of his local and took him to this derelict workshop. We’d already got a workbench laid out, with clamps and vices. And we had a camera set up – we had to film it, you see. Bill wanted to watch it for himself.’
Torgau half-smiled, as though it was a fond recollection.
‘We did a real number on him. Pliers, nutcrackers. Then I got this ripsaw, and I cut him up while he was still alive. Piece after piece. After it was over, we bagged him, laid him down under some new cement. He’s holding up an office block these days. Anyway, Bill watched the video, and he was so happy afterwards that he said: “Martin, you can be my personal problem-solver.” And he’s certainly kept me busy since then. Too busy really. Which is why I’ve been training up the girls.’
‘Training?’ Lucy said, trying not to show how sickened she felt.
‘In the end I did away with all my other sidekicks because I wanted it purely to be a family business. And now someone must take that business over. Anyway, your turn, detective.’ His mournful face split into an unexpected smile. ‘The game … remember.’
It was difficult for Lucy to know how she should respond. She glanced at the fire again, where the poker lay white-hot.
‘Pretty green eyes you’ve got, DC Clayburn,’ Ivana said. ‘Would be such a shame.’
My eyes … God almighty!
Lucy still didn’t know how to respond.
Quite clearly, she had to give them something. But what?
Lie that the rest of the police knew everything, and even now were circling the neighbourhood, mustering their forces – and that might convince them that it was better to keep her alive. Though it might also mean that they’d adopt a scorched-earth policy, destroying all evidence, warning their contacts in the Crew that they’d been rumbled. A better option perhaps was to play things down. If they didn’t know anything about the connection she’d made between the van and the strangled dogs and the double murder on the Aggies, they might stay here and try to brazen it out. They’d still have to do away with Lucy – they wouldn’t be able to argue their way out of having abducted a copper – but there were ways to allay that too.
‘I’m investigating an assault on a homeless person,’ she said.
‘Indeed?’ If this was something Torgau had been hoping to hear, he didn’t sound a whole lot happier.
‘I came across the incident by accident, while working undercover to buy drugs in the St Clement’s ward.’ That sounded plausible, she thought. ‘I overheard the sound of the attack and intervened. I pursued the assailant on my motorbike, but she got away.’
‘You knew already that it was a she?’ Torgau sounded less than satisfied, but not necessarily with Lucy.
‘I saw that it was a she,’ she replied. ‘I saw her face during the attack. And this was confirmed later on by forensic examination of organic material found under the fingernail of the victim.’
‘That’s impossible!’ Ivana snapped, stepping forward with the brightly glowing poker.
Torgau warned her off with a raised hand.
‘It was your sister,’ Lucy said to her. ‘Alyssa.’
‘Alyssa would’ve known if she’d been clawed,’ Ivana said.
‘I sometimes wonder if Alyssa even knows what day it is,’ Torgau rumbled.
‘Alyssa already had facial injuries when the victim struck her in the face,’ Lucy said, wondering why she was making excuses for the girl. ‘It’s probably no surprise that she didn’t realise blood had been drawn.’
He still looked unimpressed.
‘After that, the DNA brought me here,’ Lucy added. ‘Alyssa has a criminal record, after all. I asked around the neighbourhood, to be sure, and two or three different people were able to direct me to your house. If it’s any consolation, Mr Torgau, they think you’re all very nice people who wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’
I’m sure it’ll be no consolation, though, to now think that several different witnesses can place me right here, she added to herself. So checkmate, you bastard!
Before Torgau could reply, there was a scuttling of feet overhead, as if Alyssa was running from one side of the house to the other.
Ivana went rigid. Her father leaped to his feet.
‘Assault team, coming in by twos!’ Alyssa yelled down the stairs. ‘Front and back!’
Lucy was as startled as the rest of them but was still handcuffed to the chair and could only watch as Torgau lurched out into the hall. Ivana, meanwhile, advanced with the poker raised over her head. Lucy tried to duck away, the chair falling sideways. But when the poker came down, which it did several times, it was on the chair’s backrest, smashing and burning it. This proved to be a lengthy process, Torgau returning while it was still going on, unzipping his travel-bag and taking something out of it; to Lucy’s bewilderment it was a cardboard cylinder, about three feet long, with an old image of a bulldog wearing a Union Jack waistcoat imprinted on it. Possibly it contained a weapon of some sort, because he immediately took it back out into the hall.
Ivana, meanwhile, threw the poker into the hearth, wrestled what remained of the chair’s woodwork apart, and dragged the hostage to her feet. The next thing Lucy knew, she was being hustled out into the hall, the muzzle of the Browning pressed into her neck.
Torgau had braced the front door with some furniture and was now shouting upstairs. ‘How many?’
‘Four, so far,’ Alyssa’s voice shouted back.
‘How are they dressed?’
‘Body-armour and balaclavas.’
‘Shit!’ Ivana swore. ‘SWAT.’
But her father shook his head. His expression was uncertain, confused. ‘Police would have spoken to us first, tried to resolve it peacefully.’
‘Shotguns!’ Alyssa shouted.
‘Does it matter?’ Ivana asked, bewildered.
Alyssa came hurtling downstairs, still clutching the battle-rifle. ‘I didn’t see any back-up or support vehicles!’
‘Give me that HK!’ her father replied.
She threw the rifle to him. He caught it, passed the cardboard cylinder to Ivana, and swung around to face the front door.
‘Do that slag, Vana!’ Alyssa shouted. ‘Do her now!’
‘No!’ her father roared, glaring at them both, red-faced. ‘What do you not understand about bargaining chips?’
‘But if they’re coming in anyway!’ Alyssa protested.
‘You goddamn idiot bitch!’ Froth flew from his mouth. ‘These are not cops!’