‘This is still not a good situation,’ Marcie said. In the nursery, Arthur was screaming his lungs out, but there were two closed doors between him and her, so the noise was muted but still annoying. She and McCabe had completed their third very satisfactory fuck since he’d returned home, managed to get some sleep between each bout and now, the morning after, Marcie was reflecting on everything. She had taken charge of the sex and, following an outrageous climax, had slid sweatily off McCabe, lit a cigarette and pondered. McCabe, still exhausted from his killing spree in the north, had immediately dozed.
‘What?’ he said groggily.
‘Not a good situation. This.’
‘Whatever.’
‘OK, I mean you’ve done great up there. The Yorks are dead …’
‘Which I didn’t do.’
‘OK, right, I get that … some fuckin’ gyppos did it and saved us a job, but then you’ve taken care of Jack Carter and snuffed out any link to us. Now we have to convince Dunster Cosmo that all his money has gone to that great investment house in the sky and, hopefully, if I plead innocent, he might back off from us … I say “might”, which is why this is still not a good situation … plus you had to shoot a cop, so we need to lie extra low for a long time until that shit fizzles out. Maybe scoot abroad?’
‘It was something I had to do,’ McCabe complained.
‘I know, I know – you did good. We just have to hope they don’t come knocking,’ Marcie said. ‘But as for Cosmo … he’s going to take some real convincing. I’m more worried about him than the cops.’
‘I know what you mean, babe.’ McCabe closed his eyes and instantly fell asleep again.
When he next woke up properly, he was tied to a chair, his ankles taped to the legs, his arms bound behind him.
His head drooped, his chin on his upper chest.
His eyelids flickered and he knew both his eyes were swollen. His face hurt, zinging with agonizing pain, and something dribbled out of his mouth. Blood, saliva.
He groaned and heard another groan next to him – and sobbing.
He tried to look sideways, but his eyelids wouldn’t open fully and what he could see was just unfocused blur. He knew instinctively that there was someone alongside him in the same predicament and that someone was Marcie.
But before he could recover his senses, he was drenched by a powerful, freezing wall of water, hitting him with such brutal force in the centre of his chest that he was thrown bodily, chair included, and hurled backwards on to a floor of cold, hard concrete where the jet spun him round and round until it finally subsided and he was lying on his side, desperately gagging as he tried to breathe again.
It could never be said that Henry Christie and Steve Flynn had an easy relationship.
Their animosity dated back many years to when Henry was a DCI and had been asked to investigate Flynn, then a DS on the Drugs Branch, who, with others, was suspected of stealing a huge amount of money from a drug dealer following a police raid.
Henry had been unable to prove any wrongdoing on Flynn’s part, but there was a big whiff of suspicion over his head, and Henry had made Flynn’s life so uncomfortable that Flynn left the police under that cloud. Other things going on in Flynn’s life also added to his decision to skulk out of the force and head south to Gran Canaria where he eked out a fairly meagre existence as skipper of a sportfishing boat.
In the intervening years, Henry and Flynn, through various circumstances, had come into contact with each other a few times and eventually arrived at a mutual understanding, especially when Flynn proved his innocence to Henry, who had begrudgingly accepted it. They had become friends of sorts, or maybe just a couple of guys who tolerated each other.
The thing about Flynn from Henry’s point of view was that he was big and tough, relatively intelligent, and someone Henry would be happy to have behind him if he ever needed any muscle. Flynn was no youngster, but years of hauling in fighting sailfish from the Atlantic Ocean had kept him incredibly fit, and that was why Henry had speculatively given him a call, expecting nothing.
Flynn, though, was intrigued, if deeply suspicious.
Henry said, ‘Didn’t expect to see you.’
Flynn shrugged. ‘I was passing through on family business. Up here to see my son.’
Henry nodded. Through the retired cop grapevine, he knew Flynn had become embroiled with some shenanigans involving Albanian gangsters, but he didn’t know how that scenario had ended. Presumably because Flynn was here, all was good.
‘Heard you got caught up with some shite,’ Henry said.
Flynn shrugged again. He wasn’t the verbose sort. ‘So why ring me, Henry?’
‘Because I’m caught up in some shite, too, and I need someone to watch my back, someone who can operate off the radar a bit and – uh, how can I put this? – someone unencumbered by the legalities of a situation.’
Flynn blinked. ‘You lost me at unencumbered.’
‘OK, in simple terms: protect me if necessary. There’s something I want to do, and do it quickly, and I think it might ruffle the feathers of a bunch of people who are also unencumbered by legalities.’
‘A bodyguard?’
‘In a way.’
‘What’s in it for me?’
‘The pursuit of truth and justice?’ Henry said loftily. Seeing the cynical look on Flynn’s face, he added, ‘And two fifty a day, maybe some expenses, free board and lodgings here … although there won’t be any Alison for you to lust after.’
Flynn said, ‘I heard about that. I’m sorry.’
It was Henry’s turn to shrug. ‘So what do you say?’ Henry had thrown the £250-a-day figure at him because he himself would be drawing £1,000 a day. He’d have to pay income tax on that, but Flynn could hide his take from it tax-free. Henry didn’t care. Henry said, ‘I’ll guarantee you seven days’ minimum, even if what I’m doing doesn’t last that long. Cash in hand.’
Flynn nodded. For him it would be handy money as his fishing business brought surges of cash, followed by many fallow months. If nothing else, £1,750 would buy him food for a few months.
‘So what’s going on?’
McCabe shivered, the cold biting; he could hardly breathe, his teeth were literally chattering like cogs in an old gearbox. He was completely naked now, the chair back upright, his hands and ankles still bound. Alongside him was Marcie, her head drooping. Like McCabe, she was naked, but she had not yet had the cold water treatment; even so, she shook with cold.
McCabe raised his head slowly and squinted through the slits that his swollen eyelids allowed him.
He saw shadowy figures standing in front of him, although he couldn’t quite work out how far away they were from him. They were unfocused, blurred, maybe eight feet apart.
Another figure joined them, stood between them, then walked right up to McCabe.
McCabe raised his face higher and knew he was looking at Dunster Cosmo, who said, ‘I think it’s time we three had a discussion.’
The first figures to appear from the gloom that morning were a vicar standing behind a terrified-looking woman carrying a shopping bag. But there was no weapon in evidence.
So although Jake Niven swung the Glock towards them, he did not shoot the vicar or the woman.
The figures clattered away out of sight.
Still holding his breath, Jake took a few tentative steps forward.
A man holding a shotgun stepped into view, the double barrels aimed at Jake’s body mass.
Jake double-tapped him – bang-bang – two shots, quick succession, so fast they sounded almost like one. Both hit the gunman’s chest, shredding his heart and lungs. He would have been dead if he’d been real.
The figure flicked out of sight.
Jake felt the dribble of sweat from his hairline, dared to take a breath, then moved on a few more feet, dropping into the cover provided by a low wall just as two more gunmen appeared from either side, weapons brandished. Jake took one of them out dead-centre chest – great shooting and another double tap – but only managed to put one bullet into the other, in the middle of the head. Show-off shooting.
Jake calculated: five shots gone, eight remaining.
He rose to his feet, adopting the combat stance, and moved on slowly, knowing he was required to make progress. He angled across the ground, his gun sweeping sideways, back and forth, expecting many problems. The next figure to appear was a kid with a baseball bat resting on his shoulder. Jake sighted on him instantly; his brain computed what he was seeing. It might look like a shotgun, but it wasn’t and that was his decision to make. So, no threat.
He swivelled away as another kid came in from the opposite direction, and in that split second Jake had to make another life-and-death decision because this ‘kid’ was carrying a gun and it was pointed at him.
Jake screamed a warning. Loud. Clear. Unambiguous. ‘Armed police! Drop your weapon or I will shoot you.’
Still he came.
Jake shot him – another double tap, centre body mass. Classic shooting. You didn’t aim to kill, you aimed to stop. The killing was incidental.
Six bullets remaining.
And then, moments later, having made a further series of instant life-and-death decisions, Jake’s Glock was empty and he stopped, raised the weapon and shouted, ‘Empty.’ He released the magazine into his left hand and held both gun and mag up high.
It was over.
Henry Christie removed the ear defenders, as did Rik Dean. They looked at each other, nodding their heads in admiration, having just watched Jake Niven’s firearms requalification shoot from the back of the firing range.
‘He can still cut the mustard,’ Rik said.
‘Certainly can.’
Having finished the shoot, Jake had been debriefed at the far end of the range by a trainer who, on the face of it, had given him quite a bit of grief initially, but finished by patting him on the shoulder and shaking his hand.
‘He still uses shotguns a lot,’ Henry told Rik. ‘He’s a member of the local rough shooting club in Kendleton and spends a lot of time with gamekeepers.’ Henry knew it had been a while since Jake had been an authorized firearms officer – that had come to an end when he became the Kendleton bobby – but he’d jumped at the opportunity to requalify on the Glock when Rik had approached him about the job Henry wanted him to do. Jake’s wife, Anna, had been less than enthusiastic but had accepted it.
Rik asked, ‘Anything come of that other name you mentioned?’
Henry knew he was probing about Flynn, but he decided to be a bit cagey. He wanted Flynn in the background, knowing his presence was one of those last-resort things. ‘I left him a message but he’s not got back to me yet.’
‘Just as well,’ said Rik, searching Henry’s eyes for the lie, then turning towards the firing range where Jake and the firearms trainer were on their way back up from the sharp end.
‘Score?’ Henry asked.
‘Ninety-eight,’ Jake said, wincing.
To requalify on any shoot, the lowest score allowed was a very stringent ninety-four per cent. Ninety-eight per cent meant Jake had dropped one shot, but his score, while still a very good ‘pass’, annoyed him; when he’d been an AFO, his requalification scores had always been a hundred per cent.
‘That’s good,’ Henry congratulated him.
‘I’d like one more run,’ Jake requested of the trainer, then looked at Rik Dean. ‘Still feeling rusty, boss.’
‘Fine by me, but you’d better make it quick. Henry wants to be on the road as soon as. He needs to be at Lancashire prison soon.’ Rik glanced at Henry. ‘Your rearranged appointment.’
‘I’ll be quick,’ Jake promised.
Dunster Cosmo’s ‘about time’ in reference to his discussion with Marcie and McCabe didn’t happen until several hours later.
Instead of having an immediate chat, he decided to let the couple stew – or chill – for even longer on the chairs in the middle floor of one of the numerous small industrial units he rented around London. This one was in Neasden in north London and was destined to be used as a holding pen for the human beings he helped other criminal gangs to traffic into the UK.
Today it was not in use. All there was today were two people bound and gagged in chairs, two armed men standing a few feet behind them with masks pulled down over their faces, and in the office in one corner of the unit, a cold, hungry baby boy crying.
Cosmo entered the unit by way of a staff door and walked diagonally across to Marcie and McCabe, stood in front of them, hands clasped in front of him like a priest.
‘Now then, where do we go from here?’ he asked.
Wearily Marcie raised her chin. ‘I need my baby, Dunster,’ she pleaded.
‘Mmm, not sure about that.’
‘Why? Why? What’s he ever done to you?’
‘It’s not what he’s done to me, Marcie; it’s what you’ve done to me.’
Her head drooped and she started to sob. ‘I didn’t know they were ripping us all off,’ she bawled. ‘I woulda sorted it, but the gyppos killed ’em before I could speak to ’em.’
‘Mmm, gyppos,’ Cosmo murmured with contempt, his mind wandering into another subject which filled him with anger. ‘They’ll be getting their dues. Anyway, that’s a whole different ball game.’
McCabe had looked up. ‘Let her get to the baby, Dunster.’
Cosmo leaned in. ‘You honestly think I give a flying fuck about that baby, that I won’t just bury it when I bury you two?’
‘You can’t mean it,’ Marcie cried.
Cosmo pivoted and directed his ire back to Marcie. ‘Ten million quid says I mean every single fucking word.’ He paused, stood upright, clasped his palms in front of his face as though he was about to pray. ‘So, who’s going to speak first?’
‘See, I’m not all bad,’ Cosmo said.
He looked paternally down on Marcie, who was still naked but covered by a grimy old blanket over her shoulders and now had tiny Arthur clasped to her bosom, having fed him, calmed him and warmed him up. She was no longer shivering, although she was still cold. She had been released from her bonds, but McCabe had not. He was still naked and tied to the chair.
Dunster had ordered his two men to drag McCabe on his chair across into the office in the corner of the industrial unit, then do the same to Marcie but to cut her ties, give her a blanket and return Arthur to her.
The two heavies then lounged at the back of the office.
Marcie and McCabe were sitting on one side of an old, tea-stained table and Cosmo was sitting on the other side.
‘No, you’re not,’ Marcie agreed.
Cosmo smiled. ‘Right, glad you agree. Now, about my money.’ He kept smiling. ‘The thing is, Marcie, I gave Brendan – your dearly departed husband – a great deal of my money to invest and I continued to do this well after his death, except I gave that money to you. You then invested this money with John York, a name I’d never heard Brendan mention, incidentally, and you told me this John York was the person Brendan had been investing through all the time and you would continue to do so. But the sad thing is that John and his wife came to a particularly sticky end – which is a whole other story – but just because they are dead doesn’t mean to say I still don’t want my money, because I do. And since their unfortunate deaths, all you seem to be doing is stonewalling me, making excuses, fobbing me off, and now I’ve begun to suspect that – maybe – there is something you’re not telling me. So …’ Cosmo leaned on the table. ‘I want every single penny that Brendan and then you invested in cash, underneath my bed. I don’t want it in some fancy, foreign, offshore bank. I want every penny back under my mattress, so that when I’m fucking my girlfriend, I’ll get extra hard when I’m ramming my cock home, thinking about all that lovely dosh underneath her arse. So, the fact that John York is dead shouldn’t alter a thing. You know where the money went; I want you to get it back.’
As he spoke, his eyes were focused on Marcie’s tits but she couldn’t even be bothered to cover up. Finally, he looked up and smiled at Marcie and McCabe. ‘The alternative to not giving me my money is pretty appalling, I can tell you.’
It was a relatively short drive from headquarters to Lancashire prison near Leyland and through the gates of the separate annexe that was the Young Offenders Wing in which young men under the age of twenty-one were kept segregated from the mainstream prison population next door.
The young man Henry had arranged to see that morning was called Jamie Costain. He was a member of the well-known Costain family who dominated the criminal skyline in Blackpool but was now on remand awaiting his Crown Court trial on a charge of accessory to murder. His co-accused, Tommy Costain, one of his cousins, had been charged with the actual murder of a drug dealer in Lancaster (and other very serious matters all connected in some way to the double murder of the Yorks), but Jamie, now sitting stone-faced in an interview room, was on the periphery of all this and had just been acting as a lookout for Tommy as he kicked his victim to death in an alleyway.
While investigating the murder of the Yorks and other brutal crimes (including the shooting of their dog) which had resulted in Henry arresting Tommy Costain and others, he and Diane had accidentally encountered Jamie, and Henry had ruthlessly coerced the lad into speaking off the record about Tommy; in so doing, Jamie had inadvertently put himself in the frame for the accessory charge.
Jamie’s face contorted with contempt when the interview room door opened and Henry entered alone.
‘I am not speaking to you,’ he said instantly. ‘You’re a twat.’
Henry sat down across the table from him. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘I should never o’ spoken to you in t’ first place.’
‘I’m told you’ve made no admissions of guilt,’ Henry said, ‘so it’s not as though you dropped Tommy in it, did you?’
Actually, Jamie had provided Henry with information about Tommy’s location by pointing it out on a map, although Tommy did not know this.
Jamie’s face twitched.
Henry knew that if Tommy – who was essentially second-in-command of the Costain crime clan – knew this, then Jamie’s time on planet Earth would be very limited. Tommy was being held on remand in the adult section of this prison, as was Conrad Costain, the old man who was the godfather of the clan, but Henry was sure that Tommy had enough clout to be able to get someone on this side of the wall to stick a blade into Jamie.
Jamie fidgeted. ‘Even you coming to visit me here … If Tommy gets wind, then I’m goosed. And anyway, fuck d’you want?’
‘He won’t find out, promise you,’ Henry said. ‘And even if he did, I’ve come here to help you – and him – sort of.’
‘I very much doubt that.’
Henry placed the file he’d brought with him on the table.
‘I said I wasn’t talking to you.’
Henry winked at him. ‘As we both know, and although I know you had nothing to do with it, those two people on the farm, John and Isobel York, were butchered by two travellers called Roche and O’Hara. Two killers, two assassins, brought in by Tommy Costain to give one or more London gangs a bloody nose for not allowing the Costains into some county-line operations running out of the capital … that is more or less what you told me last time we spoke.’
Jamie’s eyes remained blank.
‘But you never told me who ran the London gang or gangs, and that’s what I’m here to find out, Jamie. I want names.’
Jamie suddenly leaned forward. ‘I don’t know who they are.’
‘OK, that’s fine. I’m not saying you do.’
‘So why are you here? Putting me in danger of gettin’ a shiv between me ribs.’
Henry continued, ‘You’ll probably have heard that a lot of cash was recovered from the farm – and I mean a lot.’
‘Yuh – millions.’
‘Yuh,’ Henry mimicked him. ‘And firearms and ammo – and two dead bodies. Two young guys, shot in the head.’
‘I didn’t do it. Didn’t even keep nix,’ Jamie joked. ‘You i’nt gonna pin that one on me.’
‘I know. I thought about trying,’ Henry teased him, keeping a straight face.
The smirk on Jamie’s face vanished very quickly. ‘So what you doing here? I get it you’re investigating the money and the dead guys, but other than what I’ve told you, I know eff-all. I’m just a gofer.’
‘Yes, but you see things, Jamie. Hear things, take things in. People think you’re unimportant, but I don’t. You’re a valuable guy.’ Henry slid his fingers into the file. ‘I want you to look at these photographs and also the mock-up pictures of the two men we found murdered at the Yorks’ farmhouse. The photos are pretty gruesome, Jamie, and the mock-ups are what the police think the dead men may have actually looked like before they got their faces blown off. Can you do that for me? That’s all I’m asking – do you know these men, or not?’
‘Why would I?’
‘Just look, eh?’
Henry slid out the four sheets, spun them around and pushed them towards Jamie who, at first, would not even glance at them. Henry kept his own eyes on Jamie because he knew that if the lad did look and did recognize them but claimed he didn’t, it would leak through his facial and body language. If he didn’t recognize them, it would also be obvious.
Studiously, Jamie kept his eyes firmly on the ceiling.
‘Just look, Jamie.’
He scowled at Henry, then reluctantly did as asked and his eyes immediately told Henry he knew the two men. There was the moment of realization, the flaring of the nostrils, the denial from the nervous shake of his head.
Henry said, ‘Who are they?’
‘No idea.’
‘Wrong answer.’
Jamie sighed through his nostrils, then relented. ‘I don’t know – but I have seen them, OK?’
‘Names.’
He shook his head. ‘I seen ’em talking to Tommy and Conrad once.’
‘So these two guys were talking to Tommy and Conrad?’
Jamie nodded.
‘What about?’
‘Di’nt hear.’
‘Guess what about.’
Jamie shrugged. ‘I’d guess summat to do wi’ the county lines kickback from London, but that’s all I know.’
‘So they’re gypsies?’
‘Travellers.’
‘From where?’
‘Peterborough, I’d guess, but I don’t know for certain – and I’m only saying that because Roche and O’Hara were from there. That’s my guess.’
‘You saw these two talking to Tommy and Conrad?’ Henry wanted to confirm.
‘Like I said.’
‘What did these guys do? Y’know, what was their job?’
‘Muscle.’
Henry frowned, trying to work this out. Two travellers from Peterborough are brought in to murder John and Isobel in some kind of retaliation for the Costains not being allowed to have a percentage of a county lines drug-running operation organized by one or more London gangs. Then another two, as yet unidentified, young men, who would seem to be from the travelling community, end up in a wall space at the farm.
Coincidence, Henry thought. He liked coincidences because to him they meant clues.
The world of John and Isobel York was really not a good place, Henry also thought. In so many ways it seemed they had bitten off more than they could chew. They just didn’t run for cover early enough.
‘Is that it?’ Jamie asked.
Henry nodded. ‘For now.’
‘No – forever. I won’t be talking to you again. You’re going to get me knifed.’
Dunster Cosmo stood behind McCabe and pushed a .38 revolver into the back of his neck. McCabe could feel the ‘O’ of the muzzle.
Cosmo’s two men had dragged Marcie and Arthur to one side of the room and they stood either side of her and the baby all watching the brutal scene unfold in front of them.
Cosmo said, ‘This is what I mean by appalling,’ as he screwed the barrel into McCabe’s skin, angling it up slightly. ‘A bullet going in here and then exiting via your face … and just in case you’re wondering, yes, they are soft-tipped rounds so they will remove most of your face.’ He leaned in close to McCabe’s ear. ‘Now, you’ve been a good boy for me, Darren, put a lot of people in the ground for me on a freelance basis, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take one for the team, does it?’ He tapped the muzzle hard against McCabe’s temple, then stood back, rolled his shoulders, set himself. He curled his forefinger around the trigger. It was a double-action revolver, and as the hammer began to roll back, the cylinder started to rotate.
‘I can get your money for you!’ Marcie screamed.
Cosmo relaxed, smiled and stood upright. ‘I knew you’d see sense.’
‘Any joy?’ Jake asked Henry as he climbed into the car. Jake had been waiting in the prison car park while Henry was inside talking to Costain.
‘Meh!’ Henry responded. ‘No names, but he remembers seeing the two men with the high-ranking Costains, Tommy and Conrad.’
‘Is it worth speaking with either or both of them two?’
‘They’re not the most chatty people where I’m concerned.’ Henry had a long, antagonistic relationship with the Costains. ‘Could be worth a try, but I’ll have to arrange to speak to them through the prison liaison officer anyway.’
He strapped himself in just as his mobile phone rang.
It was Rik Dean. ‘Henry, where are you?’
‘Just about to leave the prison.’
‘Don’t! You need to get back. There’s been a stabbing.’