Strangers: The unforgettable crime thriller from the #1 bestseller
Strangers: The unforgettable crime thriller from the #1 bestseller
Paul Finch
‘A fast-paced, terrifying journey.’ RACHEL ABBOTT‘A born storyteller.’ PETER JAMESA stranger is just a killer you haven’t met yet… The SUNDAY TIMES bestseller returns with the next big thing to hit the shelves. If you haven’t discovered Paul Finch yet, this book will have you hooked.Unknown, alone, and fearing for your life: as PC Lucy Clayburn is about to find out, going undercover is the most dangerous work there is.But, on the trail of a prolific female serial killer, there's no other option – and these murders are as brutal as they come. Lucy must step into the line of fire – a stranger in a criminal underworld that butchers anyone who crosses the line.And, unknown to Lucy, she's already treading it…Dark, gritty and ALWAYS edge-of-your-seat: Paul Finch will leave fans of Rachel Abbott and MJ Arlidge gasping for more.What readers are saying about Strangers:‘A book that every crime fan needs to read.’ Book Addict Shaun‘OMFG what a cracker of a story! Would I recommend this book? WTAF, are you serious? HELL YEAH I would! ’ Crime Book Junkie‘Crime fiction of the highest calibre.’ Grab This Book‘Completely brilliant…the market is saturated with crime thrillers but I really believe that Strangers is one of the best books in the genre and Paul Finch one of the most talented writers.’ Linda’s Book Bag‘Strangers is one hell of a read, full of adrenaline…there isn’t a single page that doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.’ Chick Library Cat‘A fast-paced and thrilling read…there is so much to keep the reader guessing.’ The Quiet Knitter‘Life will not resume until you’ve solved the mystery…captivating, strong and bloody good!’ Gin, Books and Blankets‘I seriously hope that this is the first book in a series because Lucy Clayburn is one hell of a woman.’ Bookaholic Swede
Copyright (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Paul Finch 2016
Cover photographs © Arcangel Images / GalleryStock / Stephen Mulcahey
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2016
Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007551316
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007551323
Version: 2017-10-26
PRAISE FOR PAUL FINCH (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
‘Wonderfully dark and peppered with grim humour. Finch is a born storyteller and writes with the authentic voice of the ex-copper he is.’
PETER JAMES
‘Edge-of-the-seat reading … formidable – a British Alex Cross.’
THE SUN
‘An ingenious and original plot. Compulsive reading.’
RACHEL ABBOTT
‘A deliciously twisted and fiendish set of murders and a great pairing of detectives.’
STAV SHEREZ
‘Avon’s big star … part edge-of-the-seat, part hide-behind-the-sofa!’
THE BOOKSELLER
‘An explosive thriller that will leave you completely hooked.’
WE LOVE THIS BOOK
Dedication (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
For my Dad, Brian, who never lived to see any of my published novels, but who if he had would have been 80 this year. You were always the spark, Dad. You lit the flame that burns in these books.
Table of Contents
Cover (#ud8d07d5c-883b-5d0e-8ddc-2c4e7564ae68)
Title Page (#u5871cae1-7a3f-5a2a-81fb-3558cdf026e3)
Copyright (#ue84543e9-bb67-514e-bc0c-c2d98b46ea1f)
Praise for Paul Finch (#u03cec447-9465-55aa-a227-6883f6ea459e)
Dedication (#u64d0bf08-2494-5c17-8e43-06abedd09348)
Prologue (#ud9dbe156-aa46-568a-851b-9de5b8cfea19)
Chapter 1 (#u25a64fd2-09b1-54ce-8e63-68dfe471781d)
Chapter 2 (#uaef8987d-8b7b-5ad3-adbb-cbeba0cb45d1)
Chapter 3 (#u60802a4f-b88e-5abd-868f-bd4606cced63)
Chapter 4 (#uae8a8684-6fa5-57ac-bfc5-7e4bf379eac9)
Chapter 5 (#uc489b28a-a86f-5ca4-be7f-98b6533337b3)
Chapter 6 (#u855531f7-68c1-5eb0-a461-cc9d261305a0)
Chapter 7 (#u32019c46-8e91-5ea0-a782-0473145d4195)
Chapter 8 (#ub720d91b-5d3a-538f-9744-c2e852b85288)
Chapter 9 (#u3c83636d-94ba-5fcf-819d-086fca2a212a)
Chapter 10 (#u46515555-b6b0-59dc-9c03-0933c0dcc50d)
Chapter 11 (#ucd161133-2e45-538e-a94d-8ec130b981de)
Chapter 12 (#u71e9e647-b542-5d6e-937e-e56d71d2ccaf)
Chapter 13 (#u681c68ee-e24a-5085-a1bb-e997d05e3e0f)
Chapter 14 (#u69fa73ec-95cb-5faf-bc96-5807a31bc290)
Chapter 15 (#uf5cf2c5f-fbc2-50d1-9dd6-7c6f30e0f3c8)
Chapter 16 (#ub0861bf8-a90d-5e6c-81c6-924aee073eaf)
Chapter 17 (#uad0ce513-cb5f-52ed-8894-baee00eddd8f)
Chapter 18 (#u3d83ba01-863a-5884-9e7b-2da9411d29c5)
Chapter 19 (#u0bbf399e-f4f7-57aa-b09a-61187254d639)
Chapter 20 (#u05ea7e60-ad4a-5673-84f7-f93775e65a35)
Chapter 21 (#u17972f65-f7d6-5988-826d-2005175401b2)
Chapter 22 (#u63b77085-1cd2-56eb-9cb2-f49e69477d82)
Chapter 23 (#u1d210e4c-31aa-5445-a130-05ab38be4281)
Chapter 24 (#u17408000-d004-569e-b747-6c7eefa40fd2)
Chapter 25 (#u270abf83-9398-5b0d-95a9-53171e068e09)
Chapter 26 (#u5a38810c-f7d8-515f-b209-5b661676ebbf)
Chapter 27 (#ua9de7862-22bb-521c-8f52-df8eec60e7eb)
Chapter 28 (#ub2a62d1d-f2b5-5809-8282-617caa16a4e3)
Chapter 29 (#u0e28ecb0-ea37-5087-ab68-3f6e0c0410c2)
Chapter 30 (#u64144799-6eee-577c-8714-45e3d464830a)
Chapter 31 (#uc49ed780-5b34-5e05-817d-434548e4daad)
Chapter 32 (#ufb25d4a1-06b7-55db-a389-b74e7b974f73)
Chapter 33 (#u58bb1c43-0c4a-5931-9795-517d08ddd076)
Chapter 34 (#ufe26eba4-5ebc-5430-9f22-b8fd6718e016)
Epilogue (#u00ddae3d-56f6-51ee-b381-4e0baeeb1454)
About the Author (#u299c048f-ec8b-5706-84e4-a5b7590e69de)
By the Same Author (#u3e549259-6a3b-53d7-9277-c02925f8dd9e)
About the Publisher (#u4ef194e6-4ee2-54ba-81c2-326d9ba0086b)
Prologue (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
Four years ago …
Michael Haygarth didn’t look much like a man who’d raped and murdered two women, but then Lucy had already learned that there was no set physiology for the deranged. He sat on the bench opposite her in the rear of the unmarked police van. Throughout the journey here he’d remained perfectly still, his head hanging low as though the muscles in his neck and shoulders couldn’t support it.
It was an awkward posture. Haygarth was tall, about six-four, but lanky too, and, folded into this confined space, his sharp-tipped knees came almost to his chest. He was somewhere in his forties, she surmised, though she couldn’t be sure exactly, and balding, what little hair he had left around the back and sides shaved to grey bristles. His skin was brownish, tanned – as if he’d spent time abroad or maybe was of mixed-race, though apparently neither of those applied. With his weak chin, snub nose and buck teeth, he had a rodent-like aspect, and yet there was something oddly innocent about him. From his glazed eyes and vacant expression you’d have wondered if he wasn’t all there. There was certainly no hint of violence in his demeanour. Rather than a murder suspect, he looked the sort of hopeless, unemployed oddball who’d sit on park benches all day.
And yet he’d confessed. Under no duress whatsoever.
With a crunch of brakes, the van ground to a halt, presumably on the unmade track leading into Borsdane Wood, though it was impossible to be sure because the only windows in the rear of the van were small, mesh-filled panels set in its back doors, and only gloom penetrated past these, unaided by their dim, smeary glass. There was muffled movement as the other detectives crammed into the back of the vehicle stirred. Metal bumped and clanked as they sorted through the pile of spades and picks lying along the riveted steel floor.
The van’s back doors were yanked open from the outside. Frigid air flowed in, smoky breath weaving around the tall, lean form of DI Doyle and the shorter, stumpier figure of DS Crellin. They’d already donned their white Tyvek coveralls and disposable gloves, and now stood with torches in hand.
‘Michael, it’s your time,’ Doyle said, flipping open her pocketbook. ‘I’ve got all your instructions written down. But I want to confirm them with you. We’re at the end of this track now, where the bollards are … so we go on foot from here, approximately forty paces north, yes?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Haygarth replied in his wavering, flutelike voice, still not looking up.
‘We go that way until we come to an old rotted log lying crosswise on our path, correct?’
‘That’s right, ma’am.’
‘From there, we walk thirty paces west … until the ground slopes upward?’
‘Yes.’
‘We don’t ascend the slope, but navigate along the base of it for another fifty paces … until we come to a clump of silver birch.’
‘They’re not all silver birch, ma’am.’ He still didn’t look up, but his words were slow, thoughtful. ‘But there’s a few silver birch in there. You won’t be able to miss it.’
‘Let’s hope not, Michael … for all our sakes. There’s a clearing in the middle of this clump, somewhat unnatural because you cleared it out yourself some time ago. And that’s where the two graves are?’
‘Correct, ma’am.’
‘How deep did you say you buried them again?’
‘A foot or so. You’ll find both bodies in a few minutes.’
The officers pondered this in silence. Haygarth was in custody for the rape and attempted murder of the seventy-five year old woman who lived next door to him. The admission that he’d raped and strangled two prostitutes three years earlier and had buried their bodies out in Borsdane Wood was unlooked for and had come completely out of the blue during the course of his very first interview. At the time, no one had known what to make of it, but a rapid-fire check on the system had revealed that in roughly the same time-zone two Crowley-based sex workers, a Gillian Allen and Donna King, had been listed as missing persons. No trace of them had been found since.
‘One final thought on this, Michael,’ Doyle said, voice clipped and stern. ‘If we get lost, we’ll come back for you so you can show us the location in person. But I warn you now … I won’t be impressed if that’s the case. These directions had better be good.’
‘They’re right, ma’am. You’ll find it.’
Doyle backed away, Crellin alongside her as the rest of the team lumbered to the doors. Lucy, who was handcuffed to the prisoner, had to change position first, switching across the interior to sit next to him. One by one, the rest of the team, now armed with shovels and spades, jumped down outside, where Crellin handed them each a set of overalls.
‘No shoe covers till we get to the actual scene,’ Doyle said. ‘We’ll be tramping through God knows what kind of crap before we reach it.’
In the milky twilight of this dull February evening, the wood was a leafless tangle, the unmade road snaking back away from them beneath a roof of wet, black branches. Lucy glanced at her watch. Just before five. Another forty minutes and it would be pitch-dark. Unless they’d already uncovered physical evidence by then – in which case the entire arc-lit circus would be summoned – there’d be nothing else they could do until morning, which perhaps explained why everyone was in a hurry, Crellin’s voice issuing gruff instructions as the sound of their boot-falls receded.
Only Lucy and DI Mandy Doyle now remained.
She was an odd-looking woman, Doyle: tall, lean of build, pinched of face and often dressed messily in skirts, blouses and jackets that never seemed to match. She walked with a slight stoop and had longish, straggly brown hair streaked with grey, all of which combined to make her look older than she probably was, which couldn’t have been much more than thirty-five. In particular, Lucy found her attitude puzzling. A woman who’d fought her way up through the ranks, one might have thought she’d welcome the arrival of a young female officer on her first CID attachment, but from the outset Doyle had seemed to find Lucy’s presence frustrating.
‘She just wants to get ahead,’ Crellin had confided in Lucy earlier that week. ‘She doesn’t feel she’s got the time to break in trainees.’
‘I’m not exactly a trainee, sarge,’ Lucy had protested. ‘I’ve been six years in uniform.’
‘Sure, sure … you don’t have to convince me. But Mandy’s a bit funny like that. She’s got this idea that the team’s only as strong as its weakest link. If you’re going to work with us, she’ll expect you to pull your weight.’
‘I’ll pull my weight, don’t worry.’
‘I know that, I’ve seen your record.’ He’d winked. ‘And I’m sure Mandy knows it too.’
Lucy was less sure about that. Especially at present.
‘Hang onto this fella like your life depends on it, Detective Constable Clayburn,’ Doyle said, her limpid gaze flicking from Lucy to the prisoner and back again. There was rarely a hint of friendship in her voice, but on this occasion her tone was especially ominous. ‘Though I suppose we mustn’t exaggerate … it isn’t your life as much as your job. Because for the next hour at least this suspect is your responsibility. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly, ma’am,’ Lucy replied, straightening up dutifully, but irritated to be addressed this way in front of Haygarth, who gave no indication that he was listening but could hardly have failed to overhear.
Doyle droned on in the same menacing monotone, as if she hadn’t received any such reassurance. ‘Be warned … if anything happens while we’re over there digging, anything at all – your fault, his fault, the fault of some squirrel because he distracted you by shitting on the roof – it doesn’t matter. Anything happens while we’re away that is prejudicial to this enquiry, you will carry the can. And if, by any very unfortunate circumstance, you manage to lose him, well –’ Doyle cracked a half-smile, though typically it was devoid of humour ‘– in that case, the best thing you can do is sneak off home and send us your resignation by snail-mail.’
‘I understand, ma’am,’ Lucy said.
‘Don’t engage him in conversation. If he tries to talk to you, just tell him to shut up. If he tries anything fancy, and he gets out of hand … remember, you’ve got your radio and we’re only a hundred yards away. You’ve also got Alan in the driving cab … you only need to shout and he’ll come running.’
Alan Denning was one of the bigger, beefier detectives in Crowley CID. He was thinning on top, but had a thick red moustache and beard, and the meanest eyes Lucy had ever seen. If it kicked off, he looked as if he’d be more than useful. But in truth the last thing they needed was for something bad to happen. Haygarth hadn’t been charged with anything yet, but assuming it all went as planned, he’d be facing lots and lots of prison time, and though he might be acquiescent now – perhaps struggling to come to terms with what he’d done to the harmless OAP next door – in due course he’d realise the big trouble he was in. So at all costs they needed to avoid handing him something his legal reps could use as leverage, such as an injury. It didn’t matter whether it was inflicted on him in self-defence or in an effort to prevent him escaping, any time police officers assaulted suspects these days it exponentially increased said suspect’s chance of walking free.
‘But I don’t think you’re going to try anything silly, are you, Michael?’ Doyle said.
Haygarth didn’t reply. His head still hung; his posture was so still it was almost creepy.
Lucy, on the other hand, was churning inside. It wasn’t just the embarrassing warning she’d been issued. Even without that, it had now dawned on her how serious this shift was turning out to be. The strange, distant man linked to her right wrist might actually be a multiple killer. It was unnerving, but it was exciting too. After several years in uniform spent ticketing cars, chasing problem teenagers and nicking shoplifters, this was what she’d really joined for, this was why she’d applied again and again for a CID post.
‘Michael, can you hear me?’ Doyle persisted.
‘Uh?’ Haygarth glanced up. As before, he only seemed half aware what was going on. ‘Erm … yes, ma’am.’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, I’ll be good.’
In actual fact, Lucy didn’t think the guy would pose much of a threat even if he wasn’t. He was tall, but rail-thin, whereas she, who was about twenty years younger, was in the best shape of her life. Okay, she didn’t represent the Greater Manchester Police women’s hockey and squash teams any more, but she regularly ran, swam and visited the gym.
‘Excellent,’ Doyle said. ‘That’s all I needed to know, Michael. You play fair with us, and we’ll play fair with you.’ She turned back to Lucy. ‘Remember what I said, DC Clayburn.’
‘Certainly will, ma’am,’ Lucy replied.
The DI made no further comment, just slowly and purposefully closed the doors to the van. For what seemed like a minute, her trudging footfalls diminished into the woods. After that, there was only stillness, though other sounds gradually became audible: a faint metallic clicking as the engine cooled; the hiss of dead air on the police radio; the dull but distinctive murmur of music and voices from the cab at the front, most likely Radio One. Beyond all that, the silence in the encircling trees was oppressive. Borsdane Wood wasn’t as idyllic as it might sound, covering several hundred acres of abandoned industrial land on the town’s northern outskirts, not far from the old power station and sewage plant, and ultimately terminating at the M61 motorway. In summer it was trackless and overgrown, and in winter bleak and isolated. Bottles, beer cans and other rubbish routinely strewed its clearings; more than once, drugs paraphernalia had been found. No one ever came here for picnics.
Lucy rubbed her gloved hands together. The temperature inside the van was noticeably dwindling, mainly because the engine had been switched off so the heating had deactivated. She glanced sidelong at Haygarth. Someone had given him a coat to wear over the white custody tracksuit, but if he was feeling any chill, he wasn’t showing it. His head still hung, while his hands, which looked overlarge and knobbly at the ends of his long, thin wrists, were clasped together as though in penitential prayer.
This had certainly been his attitude since DI Doyle had arrested him earlier that day. It wasn’t unknown for violent criminals to occasionally feel guilty, or even to turn themselves in through remorse. Others coughed because their life outside prison had become unendurable, because they needed a more stable and disciplined regime. But neither of those possibilities struck Lucy as a given where Michael Haygarth was concerned. Perhaps they might if his only offence had been to attack the lady next door, but the conscience thing didn’t seem quite so likely when you considered that up until now he’d been happily sitting on the deaths of two other women.
Unexpectedly, he looked up and around. ‘Ma’am … I, erm …’ His eyes widened, in fact bugged, while his wet mouth had screwed itself out of shape as if he suddenly felt distressed about something.
‘Best not to talk, Michael.’ Lucy refused to make eye contact with him. ‘It’s for your own good.’
‘But … I need to relieve myself.’
‘You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.’
‘Seriously … don’t think I can. Didn’t Miss Doyle say they might be an hour or more?’
‘It’s honestly best if we don’t talk.’
‘But this is ridiculous.’ His voice thickened with feeling as he stared down at the floor again. It was his first show of emotion in several hours, since he’d been arrested in fact, and yet still there was that air of the pathetic about him, of the beaten.
‘Michael … it’s just not possible at the moment,’ Lucy said, angry with herself for having started conversing with him.
‘All I want is a toilet break, and … now you’re not letting me have one.’
‘You never mentioned you needed a break back at the nick.’
‘I didn’t need one then.’
‘We’ve only been out here ten bloody minutes.’
‘Sorry, but I can’t help it. It’s all that tea you kept pouring down my throat in the interview room.’
‘Just try and wait, Michael … you’re not a kid.’
But he now sat stiffly upright, his face etched with discomfort. ‘What if I released it down my leg and messed your van up, eh? All because I couldn’t hold it? I bet you’d have a right go at me, wouldn’t you?’
Lucy thought long and hard.
It wouldn’t be the first time a prisoner had urinated on her, and quite often that had happened inside the back of a police vehicle. It wasn’t always their fault; some of them were losers in so many aspects of life. And it wasn’t as if clothing couldn’t go in the wash or that she herself couldn’t just step under a warm shower. But it always took so long to get the smell out of the car or van. This was a pool vehicle, of course, and different officers would drive it every day, so it wouldn’t solely be her problem … except that she was the one who’d get blamed for it, and on top of that, she’d be stuck in here tonight with the stink for God knew how long.
‘They probably won’t be more than an hour,’ she said, though it was as much an attempt to convince herself as Haygarth, and in that regard it didn’t work.
Most likely they’d be much more than an hour. They might even be several hours.
He muttered something else, his voice turning hoarse. She noticed that his bony knees, formerly wide apart, were squeezed together. He’d begun twitching, fidgeting.
Could it really do any harm?
‘Alright,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We go outside and you pee against the nearest tree, but you’ll have to do it one-handed because you’re staying cuffed.’
‘That’s fine.’ He sounded relieved and waited patiently while Lucy reached down, found the release lever on the door and flipped it upright.
If Alan Denning in the cab heard the clunk of the rear locks disengaging, he didn’t respond. Most likely, he couldn’t hear it with what sounded like Rhianna blaring away. Lucy thought to call him anyway, for the purpose of extra security, but decided that Denning, being the epitome of the big, unfeeling, hairy-arsed male copper, would most likely respond with: ‘Don’t be so soft, Clayburn! Make him fucking wait! He can tie a fucking knot in it!’ Or something similarly enlightened.
She kept her mouth shut as she climbed out onto the road, Haygarth following, grit and twigs crunching under their feet. Proper darkness now enveloped the woods, the source of the constant dripping and pattering completely invisible. Lucy’s torch had been purloined by one of the others, but there was sufficient light spilling from the back of the van to show the nearest tree-trunk, a glinting black/green pillar standing on the verge about five yards away, with a huge hollow some eight feet up it, where a knot had fallen out. Haygarth made a beeline towards it, but Lucy stopped him, first peering down the length of the van to see if anyone else on the team was hanging around at the front, maybe having a smoke. From what she could see, there was no one. The glow of the headlights speared forward, delineating the concrete bollards that signified the end of the track. Those too sparkled with moisture. Beyond them lay a dense mesh of sepia-brown undergrowth. Nothing moved.
‘Okay,’ she said, proceeding to the tree. ‘This’ll do. Make it quick.’
Haygarth grunted with gratitude as he assumed the position. Lucy stood alongside him, but turned her shoulder so that, even by accident, she couldn’t glance down and catch sight of anything. It fleetingly occurred to her that, given, Haygarth’s alleged form, this voluntary blindsiding of herself might not be the wisest policy, but it was done now, and he had the air of a broken man in any case – plus Alan Denning was only a shout away.
She heard Haygarth sigh as liquid splashed gently down the bole of the tree.
‘That’s much better,’ he mumbled. ‘God, I’ve been waiting for this.’
‘DC Clayburn, what the hell’s going on?’
Lucy turned, surprised. Behind the blob of torchlight approaching from beyond the bollards there was an indistinct figure, but she knew who it was. The clumsy, slightly stooped gait was the main giveaway, but the harsh, humourless voice was added proof.
‘Ma’am, the prisoner …’ Lucy’s words tailed off as everything suddenly seemed to go wrong at once.
First, she sensed movement alongside her. When she glanced around, Haygarth, who was six foot four – and with one arm extended upward could reach to nearly nine feet – was rooting inside the tree-trunk cavity.
‘What’re you …?’ she said, fleetingly baffled.
Next, DI Doyle ran forward. At the same time, with a metallic thud, a driving-cab door swung open in response. Then there was a plasticky crackle, and Haygarth laughed, or rather giggled – it was a hyena-like sound rather than human.
Lucy tried to grab his arm, but he barged into her with his left shoulder, knocking her off balance. And now the object he’d been groping for inside the tree came into view. It was only small, but it had been swathed in a supermarket wrapper to protect it, so its make and model were concealed. And it was anyone’s guess what calibre it was.
As Lucy fell to the ground, he swung the object around. Its first booming report took out Doyle’s torch. She was only about ten yards away, but her light vanished with a PLOK. By the way she grunted and gasped and doubled over, the bullet had punched clean through it, tearing into her midriff.
Lucy, prone on her back, was too numb to react. Hideous, unimaginable seconds seemed to pass before her training kicked in and she tried to roll away – only for her right arm to pull taut where it was handcuffed to Haygarth’s left. As she struggled to escape, he turned a slow circle, still laughing, a black skeletal figure in the reduced light, a man of sticks, a living scarecrow. And yet so much stronger than he looked. With embarrassing ease, he yanked her backwards, throwing her hard onto her spine, and pointed his bag down at her, smoke still venting from the hole blown at the end.
She kicked out, slamming the flat of her foot against his right knee. There was a crack of sinew, and Haygarth’s leg buckled. He gave a piercing squeal as he collapsed on top of her, at the same time trying to hit her with his weapon. She blocked the blow with her left arm, and fleetingly their faces were an inch apart, his no longer the melancholic image she’d seen earlier, but a portrait of dementia, foam surging through his clenched buck-teeth, cheeks bunched, brow furrowed.
He headbutted her. Right on the bridge of her nose.
The pain that smashed through the middle of Lucy’s head was so intense that she almost blacked out, and as such didn’t see the weapon as he swept it down at her again, twice in fact, both times catching her clean on the left temple. A double explosion roared in her skull. As awareness faded and hot, sticky fluid pooled over her left eye, she saw him kneel upright, sweating, drool stringing from his mouth as he bit at the plastic wrapping, exposing the gleaming steel pistol underneath, and then pointed it down at her face – only to go rigid as a massive blow clattered the back of his own head.
Consciousness ebbing away, the last thing Lucy saw was Haygarth’s thin, limp form as it was hauled roughly off her by the brute force that was Alan Denning.
Chapter 1 (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
Now …
He said that his name was Ronnie Ford and that he was from Warrington. By the looks of his heavy build, weathered face and chalk-grey hair, he was somewhere in his late forties. Apparently, he ran his own business – an auto-repair shop, which explained his ragged sweater and oil-stained canvas trousers – but he added that he was now on his way home for tea. Weirdly, the longer the woman rode alongside him, the more she came to suspect that he’d picked her up for honest, even gentlemanly reasons.
For the first fifteen minutes of their shared journey, he’d kept his eyes firmly on the road, chatting amiably, covering every subject under the sun, from the unseasonably mild autumn weather, to the poor state of the Malaga hotel where he and his wife had spent two weeks last August, to the latest and, in his opinion, even-more-hopeless-than-usual contestants on the new series of X Factor. It was all very affable and light-hearted.
So … a bit of a father figure, Ronnie Ford.
Or at least, an avuncular uncle type.
But ultimately he was a man too. And seemingly as red-blooded as so many others.
When he parked the car in the quiet lay-by and she climbed out, he climbed out as well. When she ran giggling to the stile, he followed her, expressing open if feigned admiration as she climbed it with lithe efficiency, despite her tight, knee-length skirt and four-inch heels. It helped, of course, that she did it sexily, wiggling up the rickety ladder and stepping prettily over its topmost rung before descending into the field on the other side.
At this point, he shouted. ‘Hold up, love! Whoa … wait a minute!’
He’d lost sight of her, thanks mainly to the autumn twilight. It was early October and not yet seven in the evening, so it wasn’t what you’d actually call dusk. It wasn’t even what you’d call cold. They’d had an Indian summer, which even now was only dissipating slowly, but light was leaching from the cloudy sky and dim traces of mist rising in the undergrowth.
In the field, hacked stubble was all that remained of a recently harvested crop. It was roughly the size of a football pitch, but as the woman already knew, there was a clear pathway running straight as a ribbon to a belt of reddish-leafed trees on its far side. She hared off along this, still giggling. She had no idea why men found that ‘cheeky giggle’ thing fetching; she supposed it harked back to those daft naughty schoolgirl fantasies that generation after generation of saucy movies and top-shelf lads’ mags had impressed on British male society.
From behind, she heard the clump of Ronnie Ford’s feet on the wooden rungs, and his loud grunts for breath. A non-too-fit avuncular uncle then, but evidently a man who now felt he was on a mission.
They usually were in the end. It was always so pathetically easy.
She’d only needed to remove her black knitted beret and shake out her blonde locks, ease down the zip on her anorak just sufficiently to reveal the skimpy blouse underneath, and then cross and uncross her legs a few times while he’d attempted to drive.
The surreptitious sidelong glances had started soon after. And then, about quarter of an hour into the journey, when the suggestive conversation had commenced, she’d known he was hers.
‘It’s okay to check me out,’ she said in what was almost an apologetic tone. ‘I know I’m a bit of alright. Men are always saying crude stuff like that to me. I’ve got used to it now. So if it makes it easier for you, I don’t mind you looking.’
‘The problem is,’ he replied, heat visibly flaming the back of his neck, ‘I’ve got to concentrate on the road. Where did you say you were heading for again?’
‘Liverpool.’
‘I can drop you off at Warrington bus station. You’ll have no problem getting a connection to Liverpool from there. It’s not too far.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Not at all.’
Despite having permission, Ronnie still only glanced furtively at her. Possibly he was even more of a gentleman than she’d first thought. Or maybe it was just his age and upbringing. She’d all but invited him to ogle her, but his initial reaction seemed to be to try and resist, to try to avoid getting drawn into those huge doe-eyes, which had gazed on him so beseechingly when he’d first pulled up alongside her, as if to say: ‘Are you here to help? Is it possible you are genuinely here to help? Or are you only after one thing too?’
That always added to the allure, the ‘little girl lost’ approach.
She resumed that teasing conversation, again crossing and uncrossing her legs so that the hem of her skirt started to rise.
‘Warrington’s still quite a ride from here,’ she said. ‘And I’ve nothing to pay you with.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he replied. ‘I’m going that direction anyway.’
‘Yes, but you should get something for your trouble. I’m Loretta, by the way.’
‘Erm … nice to meet you, Loretta.’
Somewhat belatedly, he fiddled with the radio, trying to find a different station, something smoother than the hard-edged rock jarring out at them. After twenty seconds jamming and prodding, he located a slow, bluesy saxophone and turned it down a notch so that it could clearly be heard but at the same time they could talk.
‘What about it?’ she asked again, watching him. ‘How do I make it worth your while?’
‘Don’t be daft, Loretta …’
But she wasn’t being daft. And he knew it.
The revealing attire, the improper pose, the Marilyn Monroe combo of sweet, innocent kid and pulse-pounding vamp.
‘Look … I don’t mean to imply anything, but …’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘I don’t have much cash on me.’
‘You’re paying your way by giving me a ride,’ she tittered. ‘I’m just wondering if I can return the favour.’
‘Don’t taunt me like that, love,’ he said, driving less than steadily. ‘You’ll make a sad old man even sadder.’
‘No, I’m serious,’ she responded. ‘I want to make it up to you any way I can. You’ll find I’m very broadminded.’
‘Yeah?’ Though it wasn’t really a question.
‘Look … just ahead there’s a turn,’ she said. ‘That’s a backroad. It leads to Abram eventually, but about half a mile along it there’s a lay-by for lorries and such. There’s a chippie van there during the day, but it’ll be closed at this hour. We could park up.’
He glanced at her wonderingly. Whatever he’d been about to say died on his tongue, his eyes diverting down to where the zip on her silver anorak had completely descended, exposing a deep, creamy cleavage, and then even further down, to where a pair of black stocking-tops were revealed, along with shiny clips and taut, white straps.
He looked again at her beautiful face, this time askance. And then he grinned. Broadly if somewhat disbelievingly. ‘Is this for real?’
‘Maybe. You’ll have to find out.’
And if nothing else, he was keen to do that. Which was why she was now three quarters of the way across an empty field, with the darkling trees in front and Ronnie Ford about fifty yards behind.
‘Loretta?’ he called, huffing and puffing as he attempted to follow. ‘Come on, eh?’
He wasn’t just unfit, he was clearly unhealthy. Just climbing over the stile appeared to have sapped him of energy. Perhaps it would be necessary to give him further encouragement. The wood stood in front of her, the path leading into it through a natural archway amid the nearest trees. As soon as she entered, and was fleetingly out of view, the woman hiked her skirt up and slipped her lacy white knickers down, stepping nimbly out of them and hanging the garment on a nearby twig.
Giggling again, she hurried on into the darkness. Any reservations he might still have harboured ought to evaporate completely now.
‘Loretta?’ He tried to make a joke of it as he breathlessly entered the wood. ‘As you’ve seen, I’m approaching the autumn of my years. I might be like a fine vintage wine, but I can’t chase around the countryside anymore.’
She watched him from about forty yards in front, from behind the clump of rhododendrons she’d been looking for on the left side of the path.
Approximately five yards into the trees, he stopped and pivoted round. Suddenly wary.
She wondered what he was thinking.
A blue murk was spreading amid the gnarled stanchions of the trunks. Here and there, ground-level bushes hung heavy with dew. There was a reek of woodland decay, of fungus and leaf-mulch. All was deathly still.
It looked as if he was about to start retreating. But then he stopped short.
Ten yards to his right, he’d spotted the pair of knickers suspended from their twig.
Hurriedly, he lumbered over there, fingers twitching, apparently eager to fondle that soft, pliable material.
Yeah … so much for the avuncular uncle.
He yanked the garment down and spread it out in two hands, to check its authenticity no doubt. Then he folded it into a small, neat square and inserted it into his left hip pocket, before ambling back to the path and proceeding along it towards her, penetrating deeper into the ever-gloomier trees but now with a big lewd grin on his mug.
She’d have laughed aloud if it wouldn’t have given her away.
The poor stupid sod really thought he was going to get some.
Chapter 2 (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
The Hatchwood Green estate was a sinkhole even by the standards of Crowley, which was one of Greater Manchester’s most deprived boroughs. It had been constructed in the 1950s, along with the rest of the district’s many council estates, though this was one of the largest, having been built on extensive brownfield land – a site formerly occupied by the long defunct Manchester Railway Company – and in so many ways it embodied the decline of the council housing dream in post-war Britain.
Brand-new, spacious living accommodation for Crowley’s working class had soon turned sour for its residents as they’d found themselves isolated from the town centre and other amenities, and often from jobs. More to the point, this new community was broken from the outset, as its members had already sacrificed the old social networks they’d formerly built up in order to move. Follow that with decades of neglect, the gradual deterioration of cheaply built properties due to their having exceeded their expected lifetimes, and the increased and often twin ravages of drugs and crime, and you were left with a truly depressing environment. Years later, even with right-to-buy in force, Hatchwood Green still had the aura of desolation and menace.
To PC Lucy Clayburn’s jaundiced eye – and she couldn’t help but see it this way as a copper – there was something inherently soul-destroying about these immense, sprawling housing estates: all the domiciles built from the same red brick, their doors existing in repeating patterns of pale blue, pale red or pale yellow; the patches of grass between them boasting no other distinguishing features – no trees, no bushes, no flowerbeds – though they occasionally hosted the relics of kiddies’ playgrounds. And of course, when they had dropped into disrepair, as this one had, with dilapidated housing and broken fences, their inhospitable aura reached a new low.
So it was with the usual air of stoic boredom that, one Wednesday night, she and PC Malcolm Peabody, the twenty-year-old probationer she’d been puppy-walking for the past couple of months, drove their liveried BMW saloon onto the Hatchwood, to attend 24 Clapgate Road in response to a reported domestic.
This house was in no better or worse state than those around it: a small front garden, which was mainly a trash heap (though it hadn’t used to be, Lucy recalled), a rotted gate hanging from its hinges and thick tufts of weed growing through the lopsided paving along the front path. They could hear the hubbub inside as soon as they pulled up. When they actually entered – the house’s front door having opened immediately to Lucy’s firm, no-nonsense knock – the interior looked as if a bomb had hit it, though it was difficult to tell whether this was a new mess or just the usual one. Dingy wallpaper and mouldering carpets implied the latter, but it was hard to make out whether the bits of strewn underwear, or the beer tins, dog-ends and other foul bric-a-brac, were recent additions. The atmosphere, of course, was rancid: a mingled fetor of sweat, cigarettes, booze and ketchup – which was sad as well as sickening, Lucy thought, because again, that hadn’t always been the case at this address.
The occupants were Rob and Dora Hallam, he a displaced and unemployed Welshman, she a local lass who’d recently been sacked from her supermarket job for being light-fingered. They were both in their late thirties, though they looked older: ratty-haired, sallow-faced, gap-toothed. Rob Hallam was short, stumpy and overweight, Dora thin to the point of emaciation, her facial features sunken as though the very bone structure was decaying. At present he was wearing Y-fronts, a vest and a pair of dirty socks. She was in flip-flops, pyjama bottoms and a Manchester United shirt.
Both were streaming blood, Rob from a split eyebrow and gouged left cheek, Dora from a burst nose, which as she sniffled into a handkerchief, continued to discharge itself in a constant succession of sticky crimson bubbles.
The main set-to looked to have occurred in the lounge. That was where most of the wrecked furniture and broken glass was congregated. The door connecting the lounge to the kitchen, which now lay wrenched from its hinges against an armchair, was also a giveaway. But whatever violence had erupted before, it was over now, primarily because the combatants were too exhausted to continue. They stood apart, one at either side of the room, panting, glaring. In between them, quite surreally, the television played away to itself, screening the crazy antics of Cow and Chicken.
‘So what am I going to do with the pair of you?’ Lucy asked, having stood in stony silence during the predictable exchange of accusations and counter-accusations, and refusing to give a moment’s thought to Rob Hallam’s meandering explanation that the squabble had started over his wife’s ‘fucking stupid’ assertion that the Red Guy, Cow and Chicken’s nemesis, was supposed to be imaginary and not the real-life Devil.
‘You’ve got to arrest him,’ Dora whimpered, seemingly surprised that this hadn’t happened already.
‘Arrest him?’ Lucy said. ‘Dora … every time we try to arrest him, you either go ballistic as soon as we lay hands on him, or come rushing down to the station and insist he hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘You can see that this time he has.’ Dora yanked her hair with bloodstained fingers. ‘Look at the state of me.’
‘And look at the state of Rob.’
‘But I had to defend myself …’
‘What did you use?’ Lucy asked. ‘A meat-grinder?’
Dora’s mouth dropped open, guppy-like with incomprehension.
‘The point I’m making, Dora,’ Lucy said, ‘is that you’re both as bad as each other. Every time you have a drink, you have a fight, usually over nothing … and you wake the whole neighbourhood up. And it’s not just every Friday and Saturday. Now it seems it’s weekdays too.’ She glanced at Rob. ‘And what’ve you got to say for yourself? And don’t give me some bollocks excuse about kids’ cartoons!’
Rob regarded her hollow-eyed. ‘She’s right. I need locking up. Even if she withdraws her complaint, you can do that, can’t you? You said that last time.’
‘That’s right, Rob … but this isn’t a straightforward assault, is it? You’re going to need at least as many stitches as she is. Your brief’ll have a field day. Unless I lock you both up, of course.’ Lucy knuckled her chin. ‘I could charge you both with wounding, breach of the peace, causing damage to council property … that might get a result.’
‘Both of us?’ Rob looked startled.
‘Both of us?’ Dora echoed, as if this had never been part of the plan.
‘It’s the age of equal opportunities, love,’ Lucy replied. ‘Spousal abuse works both ways these days.’
Dora’s mouth slackened into another bewildered gape.
‘Course,’ Lucy added, ‘ultimately, it’d be a waste of all our time, wouldn’t it? Not to mention expensive … when what you really need is to go and get some counselling.’ She stepped across the wreckage-strewn room, and took a framed photo from the cluttered mantelpiece. It depicted a little blond boy, smiling happily despite his missing front teeth. ‘When Bobbie died, it changed everything for you two, didn’t it?’
Rob slumped onto the couch. He shook a can, sipped out a last dreg and discarded it onto the floor. ‘I can’t remember a time before that,’ he said.
‘You need to try,’ Lucy replied.
In response, he reached into a carrier bag next to the couch, took out a fresh can and ripped it open.
‘What do you mean counselling?’ Dora asked.
‘Grief counselling,’ Lucy said. ‘Look, I know Bobbie’s death changed your lives, Dora, because I never had to come here in the middle of the night before then. But it’s five years ago, love. And it’s still tearing you apart. So you need some professional help. There’s something else. You need to stop hitting the pop.’ She snatched the can from Rob’s grasp and placed it on the mantel. ‘You can get some help for that too … but you’ve got to want it first.’
Rob gazed blearily up at her. ‘So … I’m not getting locked up?’
He seemed puzzled rather than relieved, though perhaps now that he’d calmed down a little, it was dawning on him that the advantages of being allowed to sleep in his own bed outweighed the disadvantages of being cooped up in a vomit-stained police cell.
‘That depends.’ Lucy indicated the broken door. ‘What about this?’
‘Suppose I can fix it.’
‘Definitely?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When?’
‘Soon as I get round to it.’
‘Not good enough, Rob. I’m back on duty tomorrow afternoon. I’ll make this my first port of call. Will it be fixed by then?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure? Stare me in the eye and say it.’
‘Yeah,’ he said again, though he looked too haggard to be totally convincing.
‘Okay …’ Lucy pondered. ‘Before I leave here, I want a solemn promise from you two jokers that, for the rest of tonight … no, let’s not cheapen it … for the rest of this year, I won’t get a call-back to this address.’
‘Promise,’ Dora said quietly.
Rob nodded again.
‘You have to get some help, you understand?’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
Lucy knew they wouldn’t. It might be all quiet now, but in a few days’ time tempers would flare again over something completely ridiculous. The Hallams were too stuck in this rut, too damaged by events, too drunk on misery and hopelessness to effect any kind of change in their own fortunes. For anyone to keep proceeding down a dark, dank tunnel there had to be at least a flicker of light at the end. But in truth, Lucy didn’t really care a great deal. She couldn’t afford to. At times she was so tired out by these mini disasters in the lives of others that all she wanted to do was shut them down any way she could, even if it was only temporarily.
‘Alright …’ She put her radio to her lips. ‘1485 to Three, receiving?’
‘Go ahead, Lucy,’ Comms crackled back.
‘Yeah, I’m finished at Clapgate Lane. No offences revealed. All parties advised, over.’
‘Roger, thanks for that.’
‘That was so cool,’ Peabody said, as they climbed back into the panda.
‘Cool?’
‘The way you defused that situation.’
‘It defused itself.’ She put the car in gear. ‘They were too knackered to keep fighting.’
‘Yeah, but we could’ve locked them both up. Plenty of reason. Instead, you calmed it down, had a few words, put them right, spared them a difficult time …’
‘And saved us a raft of paperwork.’ Lucy drove them away from the kerb. ‘That was my main motivation.’
Peabody chuckled. ‘Can’t fool me. You just didn’t want to bring any more crap down on them … you’re getting soft-hearted in your old age.’
He was a rangy, raw-boned lad, red-haired and freckled, and to an outsider his tone might have seemed a tad impertinent given that Lucy was a ten-year veteran of the job and he’d only been in it a few months, but a few months on the beat in a town like Crowley counted for a lot. Even a few days spent side-by-side on the frontline could bond coppers together like no other job outside the military.
‘Well …’ Lucy swung them towards the south end of the estate. ‘It’s not like they haven’t had a lot to deal with.’
‘What happened to the kiddie, anyway?’
‘Run over.’
‘Christ!’
‘On the way home from school. Horseplay with his mates … ends up stepping off the pavement in front of a bus.’
‘Sounds messy …’
‘It was.’
‘You were there?’
‘First responder. But there was nothing anyone could do. After that, I had to deliver the death message.’ She sighed. ‘Not among my favourite memories.’
Before Peabody could say more, the air was shattered by a burst of static from the radio.
‘November Three to all units, urgent message … female reported under attack in the telephone kiosk at the top end of Darthill Road. Anyone to attend, over!’
‘1485 and 9993 en route from Hatchwood Green!’ Peabody shouted as Lucy spun the car in a U-turn and blazed back across the housing estate, activating the blues and twos as she did.
They were three miles from Darthill Road, which ran from top to bottom of a steep hill; on its south side it was lined by houses but on its north it gave way to arid spoil-land. As such, there was only one real approach to it, but other patrols had been closer and by the time Lucy and Peabody arrived at the phone-box, Sergeant Robertson in the Area Car had got there ahead of them. A Traffic unit was also in attendance, alongside an ambulance, which rather fortuitously, had already been in the area. From the radio messages bouncing back and forth, it sounded as if the assailant had fled on foot.
Lucy and Peabody jumped out and dashed forward.
The girl, who was clearly young but too bloodied around the face to be recognisable, sat crying on the kerb, two female paramedics kneeling as they tended her cuts and bruises. Robertson was on his phone to CID, but a quick conflab with the Traffic guys, who were already deploying incident tape, revealed that the attacker had dragged his would-be victim a few yards onto the rough ground, before she’d fought him to a standstill. He’d then had to punch her repeatedly to subdue her, after which, thinking he’d knocked her out, he’d started going through her handbag – only for her to suddenly jump up again and leg it. Having already lost her mobile to the bastard, she’d scrambled into the phone-box and called 999. The assailant was kicking the hell out of its door when she managed to get through. That was when he finally did a runner.
Lucy raced back to the car and leapt in, Peabody hurriedly following.
‘Get onto Comms,’ she told him, flinging the vehicle around in a rapid three-point turn. ‘Tell them we need India 99.’ That call sign wasn’t officially used any more in GMP, but some police terminology never changed. ‘We want the eye in the sky.’
‘So where are we going?’ Peabody asked.
‘The other side of the Aggies.’
‘You think he’ll have got over there already?’
‘He’ll have heard our sirens, Malcolm … if that doesn’t put wings on his heels, nothing will.’
‘This time of night he’ll break his bloody neck.’
‘Most of these scrotes grew up round here. They’ll have played there as kids. Don’t underestimate their local knowledge. Now get me that bloody chopper!’
The Aggies was one of numerous spoil-heaps in Crowley. A former hotbed of coalmining and cotton-weaving, the township was sandwiched between Bolton and Salford, November Division on the GMP register. It had definitely seen better days, the glory years of muck and brass having long departed. Most of its factories were closed, either boarded up or redeveloped into carpet warehouses, while its collieries were totally gone, pitheads and washeries dismantled, even some of the slagheaps and derelict brows flattened and built over, though for the most part these remained as barren, grey scars, sometimes covering hundreds of unusable acres.
The Aggies was typical. A hummocky moonscape dotted with the ruins of abandoned industry, no road led over it. Lying between inner Crowley and Bullwood (an outer district that was almost as depressed as Hatchwood Green), it was rectangular in outline, which meant that someone trying to get clean across it on foot, so long as he knew his way, had a reasonable chance of reaching the other side ahead of someone in a car, as the latter would have to drive the long way around. And it wasn’t as if Lucy could activate the blues and twos. At its lower, western end, the Aggies terminated in a swampy region caused by a polluted overflow of the River Irwell, and a mass of black and twisted girders marking out the remnants of the old Bleachworks, which had burned to cinders twenty years ago. Aside from that, it was wide open down there – there were no other houses, and the stretch of road looping through that section, Pimbo Lane, was unlit, so anyone crossing the Aggies from south to north, especially on the higher section in the middle, would clearly spot the police car’s beacon as it raced around to intercept him.
But if nothing else, the day and the hour were in the officers’ favour. All the way down Darthill Road, they met not a single vehicle coming the opposite way, and as they swerved onto Pimbo, only a night-bus cruised past, and its driver had the sense to pull into the kerb to allow them swifter passage.
Meanwhile, messages crackled on the force radio. They broke constantly and the static was loud, but it was just about possible to glean from them that the AP, who had only just turned eighteen, had suffered facial injuries and wounds to her neck and chest, but that otherwise she was safe and well. Apparently, she’d described her assailant as somewhere in his late twenties, blond-haired and wearing a green tracksuit with white piping. Peabody scribbled this down as Lucy steered them at reckless speed along the swing-back lane.
They arrived in Bullwood five minutes later, Lucy slowing to a crawl and knocking the headlights off as the BMW prowled from one darkened side street to the next. She’d zeroed in on several rows of terraced houses, each one of which terminated at the edge of the Aggies. Superficially, you couldn’t gain access to the wasteland from any of these residential streets – in some cases there were garages there, in others wire-mesh fencing had been erected. But the local urchins enjoyed their desolate playground too much to tolerate that. Thanks to the various holes they’d made over the years, passage through was easily possible if you knew where it was.
The only question now was did their suspect know all that?
Assuming he had come this way at all.
The first three streets were bare of life, nothing but cars lining the fronts of the identical red brick terraces. Most house lights were now off, given that it was almost midnight. But in the fourth street, Windermere Avenue, they glimpsed movement, a dark figure sauntering out of sight into the mouth of a cobbled alley. Lucy turned her radio down to the minimum and indicated that Peabody should do the same, before cruising on past the top of the road and pulling sharply up before the next street, Thirlmere Place.
‘Leave your helmet off,’ she whispered, opening her door.
Peabody nodded and slipped out onto the road, just as a walking man appeared from Thirlmere, turned sharp right and receded away along the pavement. It was difficult to distinguish details in the dull streetlamps, but he wore a light-coloured T-shirt, which fitted snugly around a muscular, wedge-shaped torso. More important than any of this, he also wore tracksuit bottoms, and had a tracksuit top tied around his waist by its sleeves.
If this was the guy, one might have expected him, on hearing the chug of the engine, to try to hide, but instead he was going for “normality”, Lucy realised; rather than skulking in some backstreet and probably drawing more attention to himself, looking to brazen it out by hiding in plain sight – like he was just an everyday Joe on his way home.
They walked after him, padding lightly but gaining ground quickly, hands tight on their duty belts; Lucy clutched her CS canister, Peabody the hilt of his extendable Autolock Baton. When five yards behind, they saw sweat gleaming on their target’s thick bull-neck, dampening his fair, straw-like hair. They could also see his tracksuit properly – it was green with white piping.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Lucy said. ‘Can I talk to you?’
He walked on, not turning, not even flinching at the sound of her voice.
They closed the gap, at any second expecting him to bolt.
‘Excuse me, sir … we’re police officers and we need to speak to you.’
What Lucy didn’t expect was for him to whirl around and throw a massive punch at her, but she was now so used to these situations that her reactions sat on a hair-trigger. She ducked the blow and wrapped her arms around his waist.
‘MALCOLM!’ she shouted.
Peabody might have been a newbie, but he threw himself forward and crooked his own arms around the assailant’s bullet-shaped head, crushing his Neanderthal features in a brutal bear-hug, and at the same time dropping down with his full weight, dragging the guy to the pavement. The three of them landed heavily, the suspect on top of Peabody, Lucy front-down on top of the suspect. The two men got the worst of it, the suspect primarily as Lucy dug her left elbow into his solar plexus and drew her CS spray with her right hand, ejecting its contents into his gagging, choking face. He squawked and convulsed. With a satisfying click, Peabody snapped one bracelet onto his brawny left wrist.
‘You’re locked up, you bastard!’ Lucy gasped down at him as he writhed, using her right forearm to compress his throat. ‘You’re bloody locked up!’ She put her radio mic to her lips. ‘1485 to Three … re. the attack at the phone-box on Darthill Road. One detained at the junction of Pimbo Lane and Thirlmere Place. Require immediate supervision and prisoner transport, over.’
‘Pig-slut!’ the prisoner choked. ‘You’ll fucking die for this …’
‘What did you say?’ Lucy asked, levering herself backwards now that Peabody, who was clearly stronger and handier than he looked, had got both the prisoner’s hands cuffed behind his back. She grabbed the guy’s throat in a gloved claw. ‘Eh?’
‘Nothing,’ he gagged. ‘For Christ’s sake … I said nothing!’
‘Nah …’ She shook her head. ‘Sounded to me like your response to caution was “okay, I did it … you’ve got me banged to rights”. Did you hear that confession too, PC Peabody?’
‘Absolutely, PC Clayburn,’ Peabody replied. He wasn’t just handier than he looked, Malcolm Peabody, he was in the right job too. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely!’
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Paul Finch
‘A fast-paced, terrifying journey.’ RACHEL ABBOTT‘A born storyteller.’ PETER JAMESA stranger is just a killer you haven’t met yet… The SUNDAY TIMES bestseller returns with the next big thing to hit the shelves. If you haven’t discovered Paul Finch yet, this book will have you hooked.Unknown, alone, and fearing for your life: as PC Lucy Clayburn is about to find out, going undercover is the most dangerous work there is.But, on the trail of a prolific female serial killer, there's no other option – and these murders are as brutal as they come. Lucy must step into the line of fire – a stranger in a criminal underworld that butchers anyone who crosses the line.And, unknown to Lucy, she's already treading it…Dark, gritty and ALWAYS edge-of-your-seat: Paul Finch will leave fans of Rachel Abbott and MJ Arlidge gasping for more.What readers are saying about Strangers:‘A book that every crime fan needs to read.’ Book Addict Shaun‘OMFG what a cracker of a story! Would I recommend this book? WTAF, are you serious? HELL YEAH I would! ’ Crime Book Junkie‘Crime fiction of the highest calibre.’ Grab This Book‘Completely brilliant…the market is saturated with crime thrillers but I really believe that Strangers is one of the best books in the genre and Paul Finch one of the most talented writers.’ Linda’s Book Bag‘Strangers is one hell of a read, full of adrenaline…there isn’t a single page that doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.’ Chick Library Cat‘A fast-paced and thrilling read…there is so much to keep the reader guessing.’ The Quiet Knitter‘Life will not resume until you’ve solved the mystery…captivating, strong and bloody good!’ Gin, Books and Blankets‘I seriously hope that this is the first book in a series because Lucy Clayburn is one hell of a woman.’ Bookaholic Swede
Copyright (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Paul Finch 2016
Cover photographs © Arcangel Images / GalleryStock / Stephen Mulcahey
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2016
Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007551316
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007551323
Version: 2017-10-26
PRAISE FOR PAUL FINCH (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
‘Wonderfully dark and peppered with grim humour. Finch is a born storyteller and writes with the authentic voice of the ex-copper he is.’
PETER JAMES
‘Edge-of-the-seat reading … formidable – a British Alex Cross.’
THE SUN
‘An ingenious and original plot. Compulsive reading.’
RACHEL ABBOTT
‘A deliciously twisted and fiendish set of murders and a great pairing of detectives.’
STAV SHEREZ
‘Avon’s big star … part edge-of-the-seat, part hide-behind-the-sofa!’
THE BOOKSELLER
‘An explosive thriller that will leave you completely hooked.’
WE LOVE THIS BOOK
Dedication (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
For my Dad, Brian, who never lived to see any of my published novels, but who if he had would have been 80 this year. You were always the spark, Dad. You lit the flame that burns in these books.
Table of Contents
Cover (#ud8d07d5c-883b-5d0e-8ddc-2c4e7564ae68)
Title Page (#u5871cae1-7a3f-5a2a-81fb-3558cdf026e3)
Copyright (#ue84543e9-bb67-514e-bc0c-c2d98b46ea1f)
Praise for Paul Finch (#u03cec447-9465-55aa-a227-6883f6ea459e)
Dedication (#u64d0bf08-2494-5c17-8e43-06abedd09348)
Prologue (#ud9dbe156-aa46-568a-851b-9de5b8cfea19)
Chapter 1 (#u25a64fd2-09b1-54ce-8e63-68dfe471781d)
Chapter 2 (#uaef8987d-8b7b-5ad3-adbb-cbeba0cb45d1)
Chapter 3 (#u60802a4f-b88e-5abd-868f-bd4606cced63)
Chapter 4 (#uae8a8684-6fa5-57ac-bfc5-7e4bf379eac9)
Chapter 5 (#uc489b28a-a86f-5ca4-be7f-98b6533337b3)
Chapter 6 (#u855531f7-68c1-5eb0-a461-cc9d261305a0)
Chapter 7 (#u32019c46-8e91-5ea0-a782-0473145d4195)
Chapter 8 (#ub720d91b-5d3a-538f-9744-c2e852b85288)
Chapter 9 (#u3c83636d-94ba-5fcf-819d-086fca2a212a)
Chapter 10 (#u46515555-b6b0-59dc-9c03-0933c0dcc50d)
Chapter 11 (#ucd161133-2e45-538e-a94d-8ec130b981de)
Chapter 12 (#u71e9e647-b542-5d6e-937e-e56d71d2ccaf)
Chapter 13 (#u681c68ee-e24a-5085-a1bb-e997d05e3e0f)
Chapter 14 (#u69fa73ec-95cb-5faf-bc96-5807a31bc290)
Chapter 15 (#uf5cf2c5f-fbc2-50d1-9dd6-7c6f30e0f3c8)
Chapter 16 (#ub0861bf8-a90d-5e6c-81c6-924aee073eaf)
Chapter 17 (#uad0ce513-cb5f-52ed-8894-baee00eddd8f)
Chapter 18 (#u3d83ba01-863a-5884-9e7b-2da9411d29c5)
Chapter 19 (#u0bbf399e-f4f7-57aa-b09a-61187254d639)
Chapter 20 (#u05ea7e60-ad4a-5673-84f7-f93775e65a35)
Chapter 21 (#u17972f65-f7d6-5988-826d-2005175401b2)
Chapter 22 (#u63b77085-1cd2-56eb-9cb2-f49e69477d82)
Chapter 23 (#u1d210e4c-31aa-5445-a130-05ab38be4281)
Chapter 24 (#u17408000-d004-569e-b747-6c7eefa40fd2)
Chapter 25 (#u270abf83-9398-5b0d-95a9-53171e068e09)
Chapter 26 (#u5a38810c-f7d8-515f-b209-5b661676ebbf)
Chapter 27 (#ua9de7862-22bb-521c-8f52-df8eec60e7eb)
Chapter 28 (#ub2a62d1d-f2b5-5809-8282-617caa16a4e3)
Chapter 29 (#u0e28ecb0-ea37-5087-ab68-3f6e0c0410c2)
Chapter 30 (#u64144799-6eee-577c-8714-45e3d464830a)
Chapter 31 (#uc49ed780-5b34-5e05-817d-434548e4daad)
Chapter 32 (#ufb25d4a1-06b7-55db-a389-b74e7b974f73)
Chapter 33 (#u58bb1c43-0c4a-5931-9795-517d08ddd076)
Chapter 34 (#ufe26eba4-5ebc-5430-9f22-b8fd6718e016)
Epilogue (#u00ddae3d-56f6-51ee-b381-4e0baeeb1454)
About the Author (#u299c048f-ec8b-5706-84e4-a5b7590e69de)
By the Same Author (#u3e549259-6a3b-53d7-9277-c02925f8dd9e)
About the Publisher (#u4ef194e6-4ee2-54ba-81c2-326d9ba0086b)
Prologue (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
Four years ago …
Michael Haygarth didn’t look much like a man who’d raped and murdered two women, but then Lucy had already learned that there was no set physiology for the deranged. He sat on the bench opposite her in the rear of the unmarked police van. Throughout the journey here he’d remained perfectly still, his head hanging low as though the muscles in his neck and shoulders couldn’t support it.
It was an awkward posture. Haygarth was tall, about six-four, but lanky too, and, folded into this confined space, his sharp-tipped knees came almost to his chest. He was somewhere in his forties, she surmised, though she couldn’t be sure exactly, and balding, what little hair he had left around the back and sides shaved to grey bristles. His skin was brownish, tanned – as if he’d spent time abroad or maybe was of mixed-race, though apparently neither of those applied. With his weak chin, snub nose and buck teeth, he had a rodent-like aspect, and yet there was something oddly innocent about him. From his glazed eyes and vacant expression you’d have wondered if he wasn’t all there. There was certainly no hint of violence in his demeanour. Rather than a murder suspect, he looked the sort of hopeless, unemployed oddball who’d sit on park benches all day.
And yet he’d confessed. Under no duress whatsoever.
With a crunch of brakes, the van ground to a halt, presumably on the unmade track leading into Borsdane Wood, though it was impossible to be sure because the only windows in the rear of the van were small, mesh-filled panels set in its back doors, and only gloom penetrated past these, unaided by their dim, smeary glass. There was muffled movement as the other detectives crammed into the back of the vehicle stirred. Metal bumped and clanked as they sorted through the pile of spades and picks lying along the riveted steel floor.
The van’s back doors were yanked open from the outside. Frigid air flowed in, smoky breath weaving around the tall, lean form of DI Doyle and the shorter, stumpier figure of DS Crellin. They’d already donned their white Tyvek coveralls and disposable gloves, and now stood with torches in hand.
‘Michael, it’s your time,’ Doyle said, flipping open her pocketbook. ‘I’ve got all your instructions written down. But I want to confirm them with you. We’re at the end of this track now, where the bollards are … so we go on foot from here, approximately forty paces north, yes?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Haygarth replied in his wavering, flutelike voice, still not looking up.
‘We go that way until we come to an old rotted log lying crosswise on our path, correct?’
‘That’s right, ma’am.’
‘From there, we walk thirty paces west … until the ground slopes upward?’
‘Yes.’
‘We don’t ascend the slope, but navigate along the base of it for another fifty paces … until we come to a clump of silver birch.’
‘They’re not all silver birch, ma’am.’ He still didn’t look up, but his words were slow, thoughtful. ‘But there’s a few silver birch in there. You won’t be able to miss it.’
‘Let’s hope not, Michael … for all our sakes. There’s a clearing in the middle of this clump, somewhat unnatural because you cleared it out yourself some time ago. And that’s where the two graves are?’
‘Correct, ma’am.’
‘How deep did you say you buried them again?’
‘A foot or so. You’ll find both bodies in a few minutes.’
The officers pondered this in silence. Haygarth was in custody for the rape and attempted murder of the seventy-five year old woman who lived next door to him. The admission that he’d raped and strangled two prostitutes three years earlier and had buried their bodies out in Borsdane Wood was unlooked for and had come completely out of the blue during the course of his very first interview. At the time, no one had known what to make of it, but a rapid-fire check on the system had revealed that in roughly the same time-zone two Crowley-based sex workers, a Gillian Allen and Donna King, had been listed as missing persons. No trace of them had been found since.
‘One final thought on this, Michael,’ Doyle said, voice clipped and stern. ‘If we get lost, we’ll come back for you so you can show us the location in person. But I warn you now … I won’t be impressed if that’s the case. These directions had better be good.’
‘They’re right, ma’am. You’ll find it.’
Doyle backed away, Crellin alongside her as the rest of the team lumbered to the doors. Lucy, who was handcuffed to the prisoner, had to change position first, switching across the interior to sit next to him. One by one, the rest of the team, now armed with shovels and spades, jumped down outside, where Crellin handed them each a set of overalls.
‘No shoe covers till we get to the actual scene,’ Doyle said. ‘We’ll be tramping through God knows what kind of crap before we reach it.’
In the milky twilight of this dull February evening, the wood was a leafless tangle, the unmade road snaking back away from them beneath a roof of wet, black branches. Lucy glanced at her watch. Just before five. Another forty minutes and it would be pitch-dark. Unless they’d already uncovered physical evidence by then – in which case the entire arc-lit circus would be summoned – there’d be nothing else they could do until morning, which perhaps explained why everyone was in a hurry, Crellin’s voice issuing gruff instructions as the sound of their boot-falls receded.
Only Lucy and DI Mandy Doyle now remained.
She was an odd-looking woman, Doyle: tall, lean of build, pinched of face and often dressed messily in skirts, blouses and jackets that never seemed to match. She walked with a slight stoop and had longish, straggly brown hair streaked with grey, all of which combined to make her look older than she probably was, which couldn’t have been much more than thirty-five. In particular, Lucy found her attitude puzzling. A woman who’d fought her way up through the ranks, one might have thought she’d welcome the arrival of a young female officer on her first CID attachment, but from the outset Doyle had seemed to find Lucy’s presence frustrating.
‘She just wants to get ahead,’ Crellin had confided in Lucy earlier that week. ‘She doesn’t feel she’s got the time to break in trainees.’
‘I’m not exactly a trainee, sarge,’ Lucy had protested. ‘I’ve been six years in uniform.’
‘Sure, sure … you don’t have to convince me. But Mandy’s a bit funny like that. She’s got this idea that the team’s only as strong as its weakest link. If you’re going to work with us, she’ll expect you to pull your weight.’
‘I’ll pull my weight, don’t worry.’
‘I know that, I’ve seen your record.’ He’d winked. ‘And I’m sure Mandy knows it too.’
Lucy was less sure about that. Especially at present.
‘Hang onto this fella like your life depends on it, Detective Constable Clayburn,’ Doyle said, her limpid gaze flicking from Lucy to the prisoner and back again. There was rarely a hint of friendship in her voice, but on this occasion her tone was especially ominous. ‘Though I suppose we mustn’t exaggerate … it isn’t your life as much as your job. Because for the next hour at least this suspect is your responsibility. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly, ma’am,’ Lucy replied, straightening up dutifully, but irritated to be addressed this way in front of Haygarth, who gave no indication that he was listening but could hardly have failed to overhear.
Doyle droned on in the same menacing monotone, as if she hadn’t received any such reassurance. ‘Be warned … if anything happens while we’re over there digging, anything at all – your fault, his fault, the fault of some squirrel because he distracted you by shitting on the roof – it doesn’t matter. Anything happens while we’re away that is prejudicial to this enquiry, you will carry the can. And if, by any very unfortunate circumstance, you manage to lose him, well –’ Doyle cracked a half-smile, though typically it was devoid of humour ‘– in that case, the best thing you can do is sneak off home and send us your resignation by snail-mail.’
‘I understand, ma’am,’ Lucy said.
‘Don’t engage him in conversation. If he tries to talk to you, just tell him to shut up. If he tries anything fancy, and he gets out of hand … remember, you’ve got your radio and we’re only a hundred yards away. You’ve also got Alan in the driving cab … you only need to shout and he’ll come running.’
Alan Denning was one of the bigger, beefier detectives in Crowley CID. He was thinning on top, but had a thick red moustache and beard, and the meanest eyes Lucy had ever seen. If it kicked off, he looked as if he’d be more than useful. But in truth the last thing they needed was for something bad to happen. Haygarth hadn’t been charged with anything yet, but assuming it all went as planned, he’d be facing lots and lots of prison time, and though he might be acquiescent now – perhaps struggling to come to terms with what he’d done to the harmless OAP next door – in due course he’d realise the big trouble he was in. So at all costs they needed to avoid handing him something his legal reps could use as leverage, such as an injury. It didn’t matter whether it was inflicted on him in self-defence or in an effort to prevent him escaping, any time police officers assaulted suspects these days it exponentially increased said suspect’s chance of walking free.
‘But I don’t think you’re going to try anything silly, are you, Michael?’ Doyle said.
Haygarth didn’t reply. His head still hung; his posture was so still it was almost creepy.
Lucy, on the other hand, was churning inside. It wasn’t just the embarrassing warning she’d been issued. Even without that, it had now dawned on her how serious this shift was turning out to be. The strange, distant man linked to her right wrist might actually be a multiple killer. It was unnerving, but it was exciting too. After several years in uniform spent ticketing cars, chasing problem teenagers and nicking shoplifters, this was what she’d really joined for, this was why she’d applied again and again for a CID post.
‘Michael, can you hear me?’ Doyle persisted.
‘Uh?’ Haygarth glanced up. As before, he only seemed half aware what was going on. ‘Erm … yes, ma’am.’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, I’ll be good.’
In actual fact, Lucy didn’t think the guy would pose much of a threat even if he wasn’t. He was tall, but rail-thin, whereas she, who was about twenty years younger, was in the best shape of her life. Okay, she didn’t represent the Greater Manchester Police women’s hockey and squash teams any more, but she regularly ran, swam and visited the gym.
‘Excellent,’ Doyle said. ‘That’s all I needed to know, Michael. You play fair with us, and we’ll play fair with you.’ She turned back to Lucy. ‘Remember what I said, DC Clayburn.’
‘Certainly will, ma’am,’ Lucy replied.
The DI made no further comment, just slowly and purposefully closed the doors to the van. For what seemed like a minute, her trudging footfalls diminished into the woods. After that, there was only stillness, though other sounds gradually became audible: a faint metallic clicking as the engine cooled; the hiss of dead air on the police radio; the dull but distinctive murmur of music and voices from the cab at the front, most likely Radio One. Beyond all that, the silence in the encircling trees was oppressive. Borsdane Wood wasn’t as idyllic as it might sound, covering several hundred acres of abandoned industrial land on the town’s northern outskirts, not far from the old power station and sewage plant, and ultimately terminating at the M61 motorway. In summer it was trackless and overgrown, and in winter bleak and isolated. Bottles, beer cans and other rubbish routinely strewed its clearings; more than once, drugs paraphernalia had been found. No one ever came here for picnics.
Lucy rubbed her gloved hands together. The temperature inside the van was noticeably dwindling, mainly because the engine had been switched off so the heating had deactivated. She glanced sidelong at Haygarth. Someone had given him a coat to wear over the white custody tracksuit, but if he was feeling any chill, he wasn’t showing it. His head still hung, while his hands, which looked overlarge and knobbly at the ends of his long, thin wrists, were clasped together as though in penitential prayer.
This had certainly been his attitude since DI Doyle had arrested him earlier that day. It wasn’t unknown for violent criminals to occasionally feel guilty, or even to turn themselves in through remorse. Others coughed because their life outside prison had become unendurable, because they needed a more stable and disciplined regime. But neither of those possibilities struck Lucy as a given where Michael Haygarth was concerned. Perhaps they might if his only offence had been to attack the lady next door, but the conscience thing didn’t seem quite so likely when you considered that up until now he’d been happily sitting on the deaths of two other women.
Unexpectedly, he looked up and around. ‘Ma’am … I, erm …’ His eyes widened, in fact bugged, while his wet mouth had screwed itself out of shape as if he suddenly felt distressed about something.
‘Best not to talk, Michael.’ Lucy refused to make eye contact with him. ‘It’s for your own good.’
‘But … I need to relieve myself.’
‘You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.’
‘Seriously … don’t think I can. Didn’t Miss Doyle say they might be an hour or more?’
‘It’s honestly best if we don’t talk.’
‘But this is ridiculous.’ His voice thickened with feeling as he stared down at the floor again. It was his first show of emotion in several hours, since he’d been arrested in fact, and yet still there was that air of the pathetic about him, of the beaten.
‘Michael … it’s just not possible at the moment,’ Lucy said, angry with herself for having started conversing with him.
‘All I want is a toilet break, and … now you’re not letting me have one.’
‘You never mentioned you needed a break back at the nick.’
‘I didn’t need one then.’
‘We’ve only been out here ten bloody minutes.’
‘Sorry, but I can’t help it. It’s all that tea you kept pouring down my throat in the interview room.’
‘Just try and wait, Michael … you’re not a kid.’
But he now sat stiffly upright, his face etched with discomfort. ‘What if I released it down my leg and messed your van up, eh? All because I couldn’t hold it? I bet you’d have a right go at me, wouldn’t you?’
Lucy thought long and hard.
It wouldn’t be the first time a prisoner had urinated on her, and quite often that had happened inside the back of a police vehicle. It wasn’t always their fault; some of them were losers in so many aspects of life. And it wasn’t as if clothing couldn’t go in the wash or that she herself couldn’t just step under a warm shower. But it always took so long to get the smell out of the car or van. This was a pool vehicle, of course, and different officers would drive it every day, so it wouldn’t solely be her problem … except that she was the one who’d get blamed for it, and on top of that, she’d be stuck in here tonight with the stink for God knew how long.
‘They probably won’t be more than an hour,’ she said, though it was as much an attempt to convince herself as Haygarth, and in that regard it didn’t work.
Most likely they’d be much more than an hour. They might even be several hours.
He muttered something else, his voice turning hoarse. She noticed that his bony knees, formerly wide apart, were squeezed together. He’d begun twitching, fidgeting.
Could it really do any harm?
‘Alright,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We go outside and you pee against the nearest tree, but you’ll have to do it one-handed because you’re staying cuffed.’
‘That’s fine.’ He sounded relieved and waited patiently while Lucy reached down, found the release lever on the door and flipped it upright.
If Alan Denning in the cab heard the clunk of the rear locks disengaging, he didn’t respond. Most likely, he couldn’t hear it with what sounded like Rhianna blaring away. Lucy thought to call him anyway, for the purpose of extra security, but decided that Denning, being the epitome of the big, unfeeling, hairy-arsed male copper, would most likely respond with: ‘Don’t be so soft, Clayburn! Make him fucking wait! He can tie a fucking knot in it!’ Or something similarly enlightened.
She kept her mouth shut as she climbed out onto the road, Haygarth following, grit and twigs crunching under their feet. Proper darkness now enveloped the woods, the source of the constant dripping and pattering completely invisible. Lucy’s torch had been purloined by one of the others, but there was sufficient light spilling from the back of the van to show the nearest tree-trunk, a glinting black/green pillar standing on the verge about five yards away, with a huge hollow some eight feet up it, where a knot had fallen out. Haygarth made a beeline towards it, but Lucy stopped him, first peering down the length of the van to see if anyone else on the team was hanging around at the front, maybe having a smoke. From what she could see, there was no one. The glow of the headlights speared forward, delineating the concrete bollards that signified the end of the track. Those too sparkled with moisture. Beyond them lay a dense mesh of sepia-brown undergrowth. Nothing moved.
‘Okay,’ she said, proceeding to the tree. ‘This’ll do. Make it quick.’
Haygarth grunted with gratitude as he assumed the position. Lucy stood alongside him, but turned her shoulder so that, even by accident, she couldn’t glance down and catch sight of anything. It fleetingly occurred to her that, given, Haygarth’s alleged form, this voluntary blindsiding of herself might not be the wisest policy, but it was done now, and he had the air of a broken man in any case – plus Alan Denning was only a shout away.
She heard Haygarth sigh as liquid splashed gently down the bole of the tree.
‘That’s much better,’ he mumbled. ‘God, I’ve been waiting for this.’
‘DC Clayburn, what the hell’s going on?’
Lucy turned, surprised. Behind the blob of torchlight approaching from beyond the bollards there was an indistinct figure, but she knew who it was. The clumsy, slightly stooped gait was the main giveaway, but the harsh, humourless voice was added proof.
‘Ma’am, the prisoner …’ Lucy’s words tailed off as everything suddenly seemed to go wrong at once.
First, she sensed movement alongside her. When she glanced around, Haygarth, who was six foot four – and with one arm extended upward could reach to nearly nine feet – was rooting inside the tree-trunk cavity.
‘What’re you …?’ she said, fleetingly baffled.
Next, DI Doyle ran forward. At the same time, with a metallic thud, a driving-cab door swung open in response. Then there was a plasticky crackle, and Haygarth laughed, or rather giggled – it was a hyena-like sound rather than human.
Lucy tried to grab his arm, but he barged into her with his left shoulder, knocking her off balance. And now the object he’d been groping for inside the tree came into view. It was only small, but it had been swathed in a supermarket wrapper to protect it, so its make and model were concealed. And it was anyone’s guess what calibre it was.
As Lucy fell to the ground, he swung the object around. Its first booming report took out Doyle’s torch. She was only about ten yards away, but her light vanished with a PLOK. By the way she grunted and gasped and doubled over, the bullet had punched clean through it, tearing into her midriff.
Lucy, prone on her back, was too numb to react. Hideous, unimaginable seconds seemed to pass before her training kicked in and she tried to roll away – only for her right arm to pull taut where it was handcuffed to Haygarth’s left. As she struggled to escape, he turned a slow circle, still laughing, a black skeletal figure in the reduced light, a man of sticks, a living scarecrow. And yet so much stronger than he looked. With embarrassing ease, he yanked her backwards, throwing her hard onto her spine, and pointed his bag down at her, smoke still venting from the hole blown at the end.
She kicked out, slamming the flat of her foot against his right knee. There was a crack of sinew, and Haygarth’s leg buckled. He gave a piercing squeal as he collapsed on top of her, at the same time trying to hit her with his weapon. She blocked the blow with her left arm, and fleetingly their faces were an inch apart, his no longer the melancholic image she’d seen earlier, but a portrait of dementia, foam surging through his clenched buck-teeth, cheeks bunched, brow furrowed.
He headbutted her. Right on the bridge of her nose.
The pain that smashed through the middle of Lucy’s head was so intense that she almost blacked out, and as such didn’t see the weapon as he swept it down at her again, twice in fact, both times catching her clean on the left temple. A double explosion roared in her skull. As awareness faded and hot, sticky fluid pooled over her left eye, she saw him kneel upright, sweating, drool stringing from his mouth as he bit at the plastic wrapping, exposing the gleaming steel pistol underneath, and then pointed it down at her face – only to go rigid as a massive blow clattered the back of his own head.
Consciousness ebbing away, the last thing Lucy saw was Haygarth’s thin, limp form as it was hauled roughly off her by the brute force that was Alan Denning.
Chapter 1 (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
Now …
He said that his name was Ronnie Ford and that he was from Warrington. By the looks of his heavy build, weathered face and chalk-grey hair, he was somewhere in his late forties. Apparently, he ran his own business – an auto-repair shop, which explained his ragged sweater and oil-stained canvas trousers – but he added that he was now on his way home for tea. Weirdly, the longer the woman rode alongside him, the more she came to suspect that he’d picked her up for honest, even gentlemanly reasons.
For the first fifteen minutes of their shared journey, he’d kept his eyes firmly on the road, chatting amiably, covering every subject under the sun, from the unseasonably mild autumn weather, to the poor state of the Malaga hotel where he and his wife had spent two weeks last August, to the latest and, in his opinion, even-more-hopeless-than-usual contestants on the new series of X Factor. It was all very affable and light-hearted.
So … a bit of a father figure, Ronnie Ford.
Or at least, an avuncular uncle type.
But ultimately he was a man too. And seemingly as red-blooded as so many others.
When he parked the car in the quiet lay-by and she climbed out, he climbed out as well. When she ran giggling to the stile, he followed her, expressing open if feigned admiration as she climbed it with lithe efficiency, despite her tight, knee-length skirt and four-inch heels. It helped, of course, that she did it sexily, wiggling up the rickety ladder and stepping prettily over its topmost rung before descending into the field on the other side.
At this point, he shouted. ‘Hold up, love! Whoa … wait a minute!’
He’d lost sight of her, thanks mainly to the autumn twilight. It was early October and not yet seven in the evening, so it wasn’t what you’d actually call dusk. It wasn’t even what you’d call cold. They’d had an Indian summer, which even now was only dissipating slowly, but light was leaching from the cloudy sky and dim traces of mist rising in the undergrowth.
In the field, hacked stubble was all that remained of a recently harvested crop. It was roughly the size of a football pitch, but as the woman already knew, there was a clear pathway running straight as a ribbon to a belt of reddish-leafed trees on its far side. She hared off along this, still giggling. She had no idea why men found that ‘cheeky giggle’ thing fetching; she supposed it harked back to those daft naughty schoolgirl fantasies that generation after generation of saucy movies and top-shelf lads’ mags had impressed on British male society.
From behind, she heard the clump of Ronnie Ford’s feet on the wooden rungs, and his loud grunts for breath. A non-too-fit avuncular uncle then, but evidently a man who now felt he was on a mission.
They usually were in the end. It was always so pathetically easy.
She’d only needed to remove her black knitted beret and shake out her blonde locks, ease down the zip on her anorak just sufficiently to reveal the skimpy blouse underneath, and then cross and uncross her legs a few times while he’d attempted to drive.
The surreptitious sidelong glances had started soon after. And then, about quarter of an hour into the journey, when the suggestive conversation had commenced, she’d known he was hers.
‘It’s okay to check me out,’ she said in what was almost an apologetic tone. ‘I know I’m a bit of alright. Men are always saying crude stuff like that to me. I’ve got used to it now. So if it makes it easier for you, I don’t mind you looking.’
‘The problem is,’ he replied, heat visibly flaming the back of his neck, ‘I’ve got to concentrate on the road. Where did you say you were heading for again?’
‘Liverpool.’
‘I can drop you off at Warrington bus station. You’ll have no problem getting a connection to Liverpool from there. It’s not too far.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Not at all.’
Despite having permission, Ronnie still only glanced furtively at her. Possibly he was even more of a gentleman than she’d first thought. Or maybe it was just his age and upbringing. She’d all but invited him to ogle her, but his initial reaction seemed to be to try and resist, to try to avoid getting drawn into those huge doe-eyes, which had gazed on him so beseechingly when he’d first pulled up alongside her, as if to say: ‘Are you here to help? Is it possible you are genuinely here to help? Or are you only after one thing too?’
That always added to the allure, the ‘little girl lost’ approach.
She resumed that teasing conversation, again crossing and uncrossing her legs so that the hem of her skirt started to rise.
‘Warrington’s still quite a ride from here,’ she said. ‘And I’ve nothing to pay you with.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he replied. ‘I’m going that direction anyway.’
‘Yes, but you should get something for your trouble. I’m Loretta, by the way.’
‘Erm … nice to meet you, Loretta.’
Somewhat belatedly, he fiddled with the radio, trying to find a different station, something smoother than the hard-edged rock jarring out at them. After twenty seconds jamming and prodding, he located a slow, bluesy saxophone and turned it down a notch so that it could clearly be heard but at the same time they could talk.
‘What about it?’ she asked again, watching him. ‘How do I make it worth your while?’
‘Don’t be daft, Loretta …’
But she wasn’t being daft. And he knew it.
The revealing attire, the improper pose, the Marilyn Monroe combo of sweet, innocent kid and pulse-pounding vamp.
‘Look … I don’t mean to imply anything, but …’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘I don’t have much cash on me.’
‘You’re paying your way by giving me a ride,’ she tittered. ‘I’m just wondering if I can return the favour.’
‘Don’t taunt me like that, love,’ he said, driving less than steadily. ‘You’ll make a sad old man even sadder.’
‘No, I’m serious,’ she responded. ‘I want to make it up to you any way I can. You’ll find I’m very broadminded.’
‘Yeah?’ Though it wasn’t really a question.
‘Look … just ahead there’s a turn,’ she said. ‘That’s a backroad. It leads to Abram eventually, but about half a mile along it there’s a lay-by for lorries and such. There’s a chippie van there during the day, but it’ll be closed at this hour. We could park up.’
He glanced at her wonderingly. Whatever he’d been about to say died on his tongue, his eyes diverting down to where the zip on her silver anorak had completely descended, exposing a deep, creamy cleavage, and then even further down, to where a pair of black stocking-tops were revealed, along with shiny clips and taut, white straps.
He looked again at her beautiful face, this time askance. And then he grinned. Broadly if somewhat disbelievingly. ‘Is this for real?’
‘Maybe. You’ll have to find out.’
And if nothing else, he was keen to do that. Which was why she was now three quarters of the way across an empty field, with the darkling trees in front and Ronnie Ford about fifty yards behind.
‘Loretta?’ he called, huffing and puffing as he attempted to follow. ‘Come on, eh?’
He wasn’t just unfit, he was clearly unhealthy. Just climbing over the stile appeared to have sapped him of energy. Perhaps it would be necessary to give him further encouragement. The wood stood in front of her, the path leading into it through a natural archway amid the nearest trees. As soon as she entered, and was fleetingly out of view, the woman hiked her skirt up and slipped her lacy white knickers down, stepping nimbly out of them and hanging the garment on a nearby twig.
Giggling again, she hurried on into the darkness. Any reservations he might still have harboured ought to evaporate completely now.
‘Loretta?’ He tried to make a joke of it as he breathlessly entered the wood. ‘As you’ve seen, I’m approaching the autumn of my years. I might be like a fine vintage wine, but I can’t chase around the countryside anymore.’
She watched him from about forty yards in front, from behind the clump of rhododendrons she’d been looking for on the left side of the path.
Approximately five yards into the trees, he stopped and pivoted round. Suddenly wary.
She wondered what he was thinking.
A blue murk was spreading amid the gnarled stanchions of the trunks. Here and there, ground-level bushes hung heavy with dew. There was a reek of woodland decay, of fungus and leaf-mulch. All was deathly still.
It looked as if he was about to start retreating. But then he stopped short.
Ten yards to his right, he’d spotted the pair of knickers suspended from their twig.
Hurriedly, he lumbered over there, fingers twitching, apparently eager to fondle that soft, pliable material.
Yeah … so much for the avuncular uncle.
He yanked the garment down and spread it out in two hands, to check its authenticity no doubt. Then he folded it into a small, neat square and inserted it into his left hip pocket, before ambling back to the path and proceeding along it towards her, penetrating deeper into the ever-gloomier trees but now with a big lewd grin on his mug.
She’d have laughed aloud if it wouldn’t have given her away.
The poor stupid sod really thought he was going to get some.
Chapter 2 (#u2f927b29-5c60-544a-ae1f-0bc835080202)
The Hatchwood Green estate was a sinkhole even by the standards of Crowley, which was one of Greater Manchester’s most deprived boroughs. It had been constructed in the 1950s, along with the rest of the district’s many council estates, though this was one of the largest, having been built on extensive brownfield land – a site formerly occupied by the long defunct Manchester Railway Company – and in so many ways it embodied the decline of the council housing dream in post-war Britain.
Brand-new, spacious living accommodation for Crowley’s working class had soon turned sour for its residents as they’d found themselves isolated from the town centre and other amenities, and often from jobs. More to the point, this new community was broken from the outset, as its members had already sacrificed the old social networks they’d formerly built up in order to move. Follow that with decades of neglect, the gradual deterioration of cheaply built properties due to their having exceeded their expected lifetimes, and the increased and often twin ravages of drugs and crime, and you were left with a truly depressing environment. Years later, even with right-to-buy in force, Hatchwood Green still had the aura of desolation and menace.
To PC Lucy Clayburn’s jaundiced eye – and she couldn’t help but see it this way as a copper – there was something inherently soul-destroying about these immense, sprawling housing estates: all the domiciles built from the same red brick, their doors existing in repeating patterns of pale blue, pale red or pale yellow; the patches of grass between them boasting no other distinguishing features – no trees, no bushes, no flowerbeds – though they occasionally hosted the relics of kiddies’ playgrounds. And of course, when they had dropped into disrepair, as this one had, with dilapidated housing and broken fences, their inhospitable aura reached a new low.
So it was with the usual air of stoic boredom that, one Wednesday night, she and PC Malcolm Peabody, the twenty-year-old probationer she’d been puppy-walking for the past couple of months, drove their liveried BMW saloon onto the Hatchwood, to attend 24 Clapgate Road in response to a reported domestic.
This house was in no better or worse state than those around it: a small front garden, which was mainly a trash heap (though it hadn’t used to be, Lucy recalled), a rotted gate hanging from its hinges and thick tufts of weed growing through the lopsided paving along the front path. They could hear the hubbub inside as soon as they pulled up. When they actually entered – the house’s front door having opened immediately to Lucy’s firm, no-nonsense knock – the interior looked as if a bomb had hit it, though it was difficult to tell whether this was a new mess or just the usual one. Dingy wallpaper and mouldering carpets implied the latter, but it was hard to make out whether the bits of strewn underwear, or the beer tins, dog-ends and other foul bric-a-brac, were recent additions. The atmosphere, of course, was rancid: a mingled fetor of sweat, cigarettes, booze and ketchup – which was sad as well as sickening, Lucy thought, because again, that hadn’t always been the case at this address.
The occupants were Rob and Dora Hallam, he a displaced and unemployed Welshman, she a local lass who’d recently been sacked from her supermarket job for being light-fingered. They were both in their late thirties, though they looked older: ratty-haired, sallow-faced, gap-toothed. Rob Hallam was short, stumpy and overweight, Dora thin to the point of emaciation, her facial features sunken as though the very bone structure was decaying. At present he was wearing Y-fronts, a vest and a pair of dirty socks. She was in flip-flops, pyjama bottoms and a Manchester United shirt.
Both were streaming blood, Rob from a split eyebrow and gouged left cheek, Dora from a burst nose, which as she sniffled into a handkerchief, continued to discharge itself in a constant succession of sticky crimson bubbles.
The main set-to looked to have occurred in the lounge. That was where most of the wrecked furniture and broken glass was congregated. The door connecting the lounge to the kitchen, which now lay wrenched from its hinges against an armchair, was also a giveaway. But whatever violence had erupted before, it was over now, primarily because the combatants were too exhausted to continue. They stood apart, one at either side of the room, panting, glaring. In between them, quite surreally, the television played away to itself, screening the crazy antics of Cow and Chicken.
‘So what am I going to do with the pair of you?’ Lucy asked, having stood in stony silence during the predictable exchange of accusations and counter-accusations, and refusing to give a moment’s thought to Rob Hallam’s meandering explanation that the squabble had started over his wife’s ‘fucking stupid’ assertion that the Red Guy, Cow and Chicken’s nemesis, was supposed to be imaginary and not the real-life Devil.
‘You’ve got to arrest him,’ Dora whimpered, seemingly surprised that this hadn’t happened already.
‘Arrest him?’ Lucy said. ‘Dora … every time we try to arrest him, you either go ballistic as soon as we lay hands on him, or come rushing down to the station and insist he hasn’t done anything wrong.’
‘You can see that this time he has.’ Dora yanked her hair with bloodstained fingers. ‘Look at the state of me.’
‘And look at the state of Rob.’
‘But I had to defend myself …’
‘What did you use?’ Lucy asked. ‘A meat-grinder?’
Dora’s mouth dropped open, guppy-like with incomprehension.
‘The point I’m making, Dora,’ Lucy said, ‘is that you’re both as bad as each other. Every time you have a drink, you have a fight, usually over nothing … and you wake the whole neighbourhood up. And it’s not just every Friday and Saturday. Now it seems it’s weekdays too.’ She glanced at Rob. ‘And what’ve you got to say for yourself? And don’t give me some bollocks excuse about kids’ cartoons!’
Rob regarded her hollow-eyed. ‘She’s right. I need locking up. Even if she withdraws her complaint, you can do that, can’t you? You said that last time.’
‘That’s right, Rob … but this isn’t a straightforward assault, is it? You’re going to need at least as many stitches as she is. Your brief’ll have a field day. Unless I lock you both up, of course.’ Lucy knuckled her chin. ‘I could charge you both with wounding, breach of the peace, causing damage to council property … that might get a result.’
‘Both of us?’ Rob looked startled.
‘Both of us?’ Dora echoed, as if this had never been part of the plan.
‘It’s the age of equal opportunities, love,’ Lucy replied. ‘Spousal abuse works both ways these days.’
Dora’s mouth slackened into another bewildered gape.
‘Course,’ Lucy added, ‘ultimately, it’d be a waste of all our time, wouldn’t it? Not to mention expensive … when what you really need is to go and get some counselling.’ She stepped across the wreckage-strewn room, and took a framed photo from the cluttered mantelpiece. It depicted a little blond boy, smiling happily despite his missing front teeth. ‘When Bobbie died, it changed everything for you two, didn’t it?’
Rob slumped onto the couch. He shook a can, sipped out a last dreg and discarded it onto the floor. ‘I can’t remember a time before that,’ he said.
‘You need to try,’ Lucy replied.
In response, he reached into a carrier bag next to the couch, took out a fresh can and ripped it open.
‘What do you mean counselling?’ Dora asked.
‘Grief counselling,’ Lucy said. ‘Look, I know Bobbie’s death changed your lives, Dora, because I never had to come here in the middle of the night before then. But it’s five years ago, love. And it’s still tearing you apart. So you need some professional help. There’s something else. You need to stop hitting the pop.’ She snatched the can from Rob’s grasp and placed it on the mantel. ‘You can get some help for that too … but you’ve got to want it first.’
Rob gazed blearily up at her. ‘So … I’m not getting locked up?’
He seemed puzzled rather than relieved, though perhaps now that he’d calmed down a little, it was dawning on him that the advantages of being allowed to sleep in his own bed outweighed the disadvantages of being cooped up in a vomit-stained police cell.
‘That depends.’ Lucy indicated the broken door. ‘What about this?’
‘Suppose I can fix it.’
‘Definitely?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When?’
‘Soon as I get round to it.’
‘Not good enough, Rob. I’m back on duty tomorrow afternoon. I’ll make this my first port of call. Will it be fixed by then?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure? Stare me in the eye and say it.’
‘Yeah,’ he said again, though he looked too haggard to be totally convincing.
‘Okay …’ Lucy pondered. ‘Before I leave here, I want a solemn promise from you two jokers that, for the rest of tonight … no, let’s not cheapen it … for the rest of this year, I won’t get a call-back to this address.’
‘Promise,’ Dora said quietly.
Rob nodded again.
‘You have to get some help, you understand?’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
Lucy knew they wouldn’t. It might be all quiet now, but in a few days’ time tempers would flare again over something completely ridiculous. The Hallams were too stuck in this rut, too damaged by events, too drunk on misery and hopelessness to effect any kind of change in their own fortunes. For anyone to keep proceeding down a dark, dank tunnel there had to be at least a flicker of light at the end. But in truth, Lucy didn’t really care a great deal. She couldn’t afford to. At times she was so tired out by these mini disasters in the lives of others that all she wanted to do was shut them down any way she could, even if it was only temporarily.
‘Alright …’ She put her radio to her lips. ‘1485 to Three, receiving?’
‘Go ahead, Lucy,’ Comms crackled back.
‘Yeah, I’m finished at Clapgate Lane. No offences revealed. All parties advised, over.’
‘Roger, thanks for that.’
‘That was so cool,’ Peabody said, as they climbed back into the panda.
‘Cool?’
‘The way you defused that situation.’
‘It defused itself.’ She put the car in gear. ‘They were too knackered to keep fighting.’
‘Yeah, but we could’ve locked them both up. Plenty of reason. Instead, you calmed it down, had a few words, put them right, spared them a difficult time …’
‘And saved us a raft of paperwork.’ Lucy drove them away from the kerb. ‘That was my main motivation.’
Peabody chuckled. ‘Can’t fool me. You just didn’t want to bring any more crap down on them … you’re getting soft-hearted in your old age.’
He was a rangy, raw-boned lad, red-haired and freckled, and to an outsider his tone might have seemed a tad impertinent given that Lucy was a ten-year veteran of the job and he’d only been in it a few months, but a few months on the beat in a town like Crowley counted for a lot. Even a few days spent side-by-side on the frontline could bond coppers together like no other job outside the military.
‘Well …’ Lucy swung them towards the south end of the estate. ‘It’s not like they haven’t had a lot to deal with.’
‘What happened to the kiddie, anyway?’
‘Run over.’
‘Christ!’
‘On the way home from school. Horseplay with his mates … ends up stepping off the pavement in front of a bus.’
‘Sounds messy …’
‘It was.’
‘You were there?’
‘First responder. But there was nothing anyone could do. After that, I had to deliver the death message.’ She sighed. ‘Not among my favourite memories.’
Before Peabody could say more, the air was shattered by a burst of static from the radio.
‘November Three to all units, urgent message … female reported under attack in the telephone kiosk at the top end of Darthill Road. Anyone to attend, over!’
‘1485 and 9993 en route from Hatchwood Green!’ Peabody shouted as Lucy spun the car in a U-turn and blazed back across the housing estate, activating the blues and twos as she did.
They were three miles from Darthill Road, which ran from top to bottom of a steep hill; on its south side it was lined by houses but on its north it gave way to arid spoil-land. As such, there was only one real approach to it, but other patrols had been closer and by the time Lucy and Peabody arrived at the phone-box, Sergeant Robertson in the Area Car had got there ahead of them. A Traffic unit was also in attendance, alongside an ambulance, which rather fortuitously, had already been in the area. From the radio messages bouncing back and forth, it sounded as if the assailant had fled on foot.
Lucy and Peabody jumped out and dashed forward.
The girl, who was clearly young but too bloodied around the face to be recognisable, sat crying on the kerb, two female paramedics kneeling as they tended her cuts and bruises. Robertson was on his phone to CID, but a quick conflab with the Traffic guys, who were already deploying incident tape, revealed that the attacker had dragged his would-be victim a few yards onto the rough ground, before she’d fought him to a standstill. He’d then had to punch her repeatedly to subdue her, after which, thinking he’d knocked her out, he’d started going through her handbag – only for her to suddenly jump up again and leg it. Having already lost her mobile to the bastard, she’d scrambled into the phone-box and called 999. The assailant was kicking the hell out of its door when she managed to get through. That was when he finally did a runner.
Lucy raced back to the car and leapt in, Peabody hurriedly following.
‘Get onto Comms,’ she told him, flinging the vehicle around in a rapid three-point turn. ‘Tell them we need India 99.’ That call sign wasn’t officially used any more in GMP, but some police terminology never changed. ‘We want the eye in the sky.’
‘So where are we going?’ Peabody asked.
‘The other side of the Aggies.’
‘You think he’ll have got over there already?’
‘He’ll have heard our sirens, Malcolm … if that doesn’t put wings on his heels, nothing will.’
‘This time of night he’ll break his bloody neck.’
‘Most of these scrotes grew up round here. They’ll have played there as kids. Don’t underestimate their local knowledge. Now get me that bloody chopper!’
The Aggies was one of numerous spoil-heaps in Crowley. A former hotbed of coalmining and cotton-weaving, the township was sandwiched between Bolton and Salford, November Division on the GMP register. It had definitely seen better days, the glory years of muck and brass having long departed. Most of its factories were closed, either boarded up or redeveloped into carpet warehouses, while its collieries were totally gone, pitheads and washeries dismantled, even some of the slagheaps and derelict brows flattened and built over, though for the most part these remained as barren, grey scars, sometimes covering hundreds of unusable acres.
The Aggies was typical. A hummocky moonscape dotted with the ruins of abandoned industry, no road led over it. Lying between inner Crowley and Bullwood (an outer district that was almost as depressed as Hatchwood Green), it was rectangular in outline, which meant that someone trying to get clean across it on foot, so long as he knew his way, had a reasonable chance of reaching the other side ahead of someone in a car, as the latter would have to drive the long way around. And it wasn’t as if Lucy could activate the blues and twos. At its lower, western end, the Aggies terminated in a swampy region caused by a polluted overflow of the River Irwell, and a mass of black and twisted girders marking out the remnants of the old Bleachworks, which had burned to cinders twenty years ago. Aside from that, it was wide open down there – there were no other houses, and the stretch of road looping through that section, Pimbo Lane, was unlit, so anyone crossing the Aggies from south to north, especially on the higher section in the middle, would clearly spot the police car’s beacon as it raced around to intercept him.
But if nothing else, the day and the hour were in the officers’ favour. All the way down Darthill Road, they met not a single vehicle coming the opposite way, and as they swerved onto Pimbo, only a night-bus cruised past, and its driver had the sense to pull into the kerb to allow them swifter passage.
Meanwhile, messages crackled on the force radio. They broke constantly and the static was loud, but it was just about possible to glean from them that the AP, who had only just turned eighteen, had suffered facial injuries and wounds to her neck and chest, but that otherwise she was safe and well. Apparently, she’d described her assailant as somewhere in his late twenties, blond-haired and wearing a green tracksuit with white piping. Peabody scribbled this down as Lucy steered them at reckless speed along the swing-back lane.
They arrived in Bullwood five minutes later, Lucy slowing to a crawl and knocking the headlights off as the BMW prowled from one darkened side street to the next. She’d zeroed in on several rows of terraced houses, each one of which terminated at the edge of the Aggies. Superficially, you couldn’t gain access to the wasteland from any of these residential streets – in some cases there were garages there, in others wire-mesh fencing had been erected. But the local urchins enjoyed their desolate playground too much to tolerate that. Thanks to the various holes they’d made over the years, passage through was easily possible if you knew where it was.
The only question now was did their suspect know all that?
Assuming he had come this way at all.
The first three streets were bare of life, nothing but cars lining the fronts of the identical red brick terraces. Most house lights were now off, given that it was almost midnight. But in the fourth street, Windermere Avenue, they glimpsed movement, a dark figure sauntering out of sight into the mouth of a cobbled alley. Lucy turned her radio down to the minimum and indicated that Peabody should do the same, before cruising on past the top of the road and pulling sharply up before the next street, Thirlmere Place.
‘Leave your helmet off,’ she whispered, opening her door.
Peabody nodded and slipped out onto the road, just as a walking man appeared from Thirlmere, turned sharp right and receded away along the pavement. It was difficult to distinguish details in the dull streetlamps, but he wore a light-coloured T-shirt, which fitted snugly around a muscular, wedge-shaped torso. More important than any of this, he also wore tracksuit bottoms, and had a tracksuit top tied around his waist by its sleeves.
If this was the guy, one might have expected him, on hearing the chug of the engine, to try to hide, but instead he was going for “normality”, Lucy realised; rather than skulking in some backstreet and probably drawing more attention to himself, looking to brazen it out by hiding in plain sight – like he was just an everyday Joe on his way home.
They walked after him, padding lightly but gaining ground quickly, hands tight on their duty belts; Lucy clutched her CS canister, Peabody the hilt of his extendable Autolock Baton. When five yards behind, they saw sweat gleaming on their target’s thick bull-neck, dampening his fair, straw-like hair. They could also see his tracksuit properly – it was green with white piping.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Lucy said. ‘Can I talk to you?’
He walked on, not turning, not even flinching at the sound of her voice.
They closed the gap, at any second expecting him to bolt.
‘Excuse me, sir … we’re police officers and we need to speak to you.’
What Lucy didn’t expect was for him to whirl around and throw a massive punch at her, but she was now so used to these situations that her reactions sat on a hair-trigger. She ducked the blow and wrapped her arms around his waist.
‘MALCOLM!’ she shouted.
Peabody might have been a newbie, but he threw himself forward and crooked his own arms around the assailant’s bullet-shaped head, crushing his Neanderthal features in a brutal bear-hug, and at the same time dropping down with his full weight, dragging the guy to the pavement. The three of them landed heavily, the suspect on top of Peabody, Lucy front-down on top of the suspect. The two men got the worst of it, the suspect primarily as Lucy dug her left elbow into his solar plexus and drew her CS spray with her right hand, ejecting its contents into his gagging, choking face. He squawked and convulsed. With a satisfying click, Peabody snapped one bracelet onto his brawny left wrist.
‘You’re locked up, you bastard!’ Lucy gasped down at him as he writhed, using her right forearm to compress his throat. ‘You’re bloody locked up!’ She put her radio mic to her lips. ‘1485 to Three … re. the attack at the phone-box on Darthill Road. One detained at the junction of Pimbo Lane and Thirlmere Place. Require immediate supervision and prisoner transport, over.’
‘Pig-slut!’ the prisoner choked. ‘You’ll fucking die for this …’
‘What did you say?’ Lucy asked, levering herself backwards now that Peabody, who was clearly stronger and handier than he looked, had got both the prisoner’s hands cuffed behind his back. She grabbed the guy’s throat in a gloved claw. ‘Eh?’
‘Nothing,’ he gagged. ‘For Christ’s sake … I said nothing!’
‘Nah …’ She shook her head. ‘Sounded to me like your response to caution was “okay, I did it … you’ve got me banged to rights”. Did you hear that confession too, PC Peabody?’
‘Absolutely, PC Clayburn,’ Peabody replied. He wasn’t just handier than he looked, Malcolm Peabody, he was in the right job too. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely!’
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Paul Finch
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 18.04.2024
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О книге: ‘A fast-paced, terrifying journey.’ RACHEL ABBOTT‘A born storyteller.’ PETER JAMESA stranger is just a killer you haven’t met yet… The SUNDAY TIMES bestseller returns with the next big thing to hit the shelves. If you haven’t discovered Paul Finch yet, this book will have you hooked.Unknown, alone, and fearing for your life: as PC Lucy Clayburn is about to find out, going undercover is the most dangerous work there is.But, on the trail of a prolific female serial killer, there′s no other option – and these murders are as brutal as they come. Lucy must step into the line of fire – a stranger in a criminal underworld that butchers anyone who crosses the line.And, unknown to Lucy, she′s already treading it…Dark, gritty and ALWAYS edge-of-your-seat: Paul Finch will leave fans of Rachel Abbott and MJ Arlidge gasping for more.What readers are saying about Strangers:‘A book that every crime fan needs to read.’ Book Addict Shaun‘OMFG what a cracker of a story! Would I recommend this book? WTAF, are you serious? HELL YEAH I would! ’ Crime Book Junkie‘Crime fiction of the highest calibre.’ Grab This Book‘Completely brilliant…the market is saturated with crime thrillers but I really believe that Strangers is one of the best books in the genre and Paul Finch one of the most talented writers.’ Linda’s Book Bag‘Strangers is one hell of a read, full of adrenaline…there isn’t a single page that doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.’ Chick Library Cat‘A fast-paced and thrilling read…there is so much to keep the reader guessing.’ The Quiet Knitter‘Life will not resume until you’ve solved the mystery…captivating, strong and bloody good!’ Gin, Books and Blankets‘I seriously hope that this is the first book in a series because Lucy Clayburn is one hell of a woman.’ Bookaholic Swede