Stalkers

the deafening blows. ‘What the fuck is this? No, no no … please no, please no! Don’t bury me alive! Please, dear God no, please don’t fucking bury me alive.. ’

The hammering ceased, the lid now fixed firmly on the crate.

‘Relax, Toady,’ Walking Stick shouted down to him. ‘We’re not going to bury you alive.’

‘Oh thank God, thank God …’

‘Too much like hard work digging a grave. So we’re going to bury you in the Ship Canal instead.’

‘No! NO!’

But the muffled wail sounded for only a few seconds as they manhandled the heavy box across the disused dock, and then, with much grunting and sweating tipped it over the side. It broke the silt-black waters with a thunderous impact, and sank swiftly from view.

Chapter 28

Pat McCulkin was a familiar figure on his home turf of Deptford. But those who knew him would have been surprised to see him walking along Creek Road at six o’clock on a Wednesday morning. As usual, he cut a grumpy figure: he was sixty, with thinning grey hair, and a leathery, shrew-like face. Rings dangled from both his ears and tattoos covered most of his scrawny body, though at present, as he wore a flat cap and shabby raincoat, these only showed on his neck and hands. Even so, they gave him a less than wholesome appearance. It might only be six o’clock, but as he walked sullenly towards Greenwich, he lit what was already his third cigarette of the morning.

Of course, when he got there, the person he was supposed to be meeting — who’d already annoyed him by calling him at home at God knows what hour — was not present. McCulkin stood alone on a bleak stretch of riverside esplanade. There were no other pedestrians around. There wasn’t even much traffic on the road. Behind him, the Thames sloshed against the hull of the Cutty Sark, the onetime tea clipper now turned museum ship. McCulkin glanced up. The sky was overcast and it was unusually cool for August.

He swore under his breath, coughed, hawked up a lump of phlegm and spat it on the pavement. And to his surprise, a phone began to ring.

He took out his mobile. No call was registering on it. Puzzled, he pivoted around, finally focusing on a waste bin attached to the post of a traffic sign. He wandered over and glanced down. A folded copy of that day’s Guardian had been left on top of the trash. The trilling of the phone continued; it was emanating from inside the newspaper.

McCulkin glanced furtively around — still no one was in sight. He opened the paper and found the phone. It was red in colour and looked new. He picked it up and answered.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m watching you, so don’t try anything stupid.’ It was Mark Heckenburg again.

‘What’s all this bullshit?’ McCulkin asked.

‘Don’t talk, just listen. Go straight through the foot tunnel to the Isle of Dogs. No questions, no pissing about. Go now. If I see any sign that someone’s following you, you’re in big trouble.’

McCulkin pocketed the phone alongside his own and set off as instructed.

The Greenwich foot tunnel was accessible via a spiral stair that descended from under a glazed dome standing only a few yards from the Cutty Sark. It was forty-five feet down and, in essence, a steel pipe that ran beneath the river, though internally it was concreted and tiled. McCulkin had never liked it much, always regarding it as a mugger’s paradise. There were no hidden places where someone could jump out. It was a straight walk from one end to the other, but that didn’t mean some street punk couldn’t suddenly come down and confront you when you were hidden from the world above. He scurried across, glancing behind him several times, not just worried about muggers but curious about whom it was Heckenburg expected to be following him, and not a little concerned by it.

At the other end, he emerged in the shadow of Canary Wharf tower and the numerous other skyscrapers that surrounded it. The Isle of Dogs had changed a lot since McCulkin was a lad. In those days, it had been a tangle of wharfs and cranes, studded here and there with blocks of scruffy flats where some of London’s poorest residents had eked out a meagre existence. The glittering glass monoliths it now bristled with seemed somehow wrong for the famously deprived borough of Tower Hamlets, though he supposed it was progress of a sort.

The phone rang again. He answered.

‘The greasy spoon on East Ferry Road,’ Heckenburg said. ‘Make it quick.’

McCulkin walked doggedly along the old dockland road. The aforesaid greasy spoon, a small cafe with steamy windows, loomed into view. He glanced inside. There were a number of men, mainly van and lorry driver types, already in there eating breakfast, but there was no one McCulkin recognised.

A hand tapped his shoulder. He spun around.

Heckenburg was there. He was in casuals rather than his customary rumpled suit, while his face was puffy and cut in several places, as though he’d recently been in a car crash. He subjected McCulkin to a quick but thorough body search, before stepping back and saying: ‘You’ve not heard what’s going on, then? I mean with me?’

‘Am I supposed to have?’

Heck was pleased. That meant they were keeping it need to know. ‘Thanks Gemma, I owe you one. Okay, let’s walk.’

They headed north, keeping a brisk pace.

‘What about Charlie Finnegan?’ Heck asked. Finnegan — a DC in the Serial Crimes Unit, wasn’t someone Heck got on with easily, but he was McCulkin’s other official ‘handler’. ‘Has he said anything to you about me?’

McCulkin shrugged. ‘Haven’t spoken to him for about three weeks.’

Heck nodded, again pleased.

‘What’s all the cloak and dagger stuff?’

‘Tell you in a minute.’

Heck glanced behind them several times, and took one or two detours down deserted side streets, before finally ushering his guest into another tearoom, this one attached to Mudchute DLR station.

‘I need some help,’ he said, as they nursed cups of coffee and faced each other across a table. ‘Trouble is it’s got to be off the clock.’

McCulkin pulled a face. ‘You mean I don’t get paid?’

‘You’ll get paid. It just won’t necessarily come from the grass fund. If I have to, I’ll cough up from my own pocket.’

‘Sounds a bit irregular.’

‘All you need to know is that I’m in deep cover, and that, whoever asks — whoever — you haven’t seen or spoken to me.’

‘That include your lot?’

‘Especially my lot.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this.’

‘It’s just another job. No different from any of the others you’ve done.’

McCulkin sipped thoughtfully at his coffee, before replying: ‘What do you need?’

‘Anything you’ve got, or can find, on the Nice Guys.’

‘Never heard of them.’ McCulkin sipped his coffee again.

Heck knew immediately that he was lying. It wasn’t just McCulkin’s body language — the coffee, which was tepid and rather foul, was subconsciously being used as a shield — it was in his face too, which remained blank but had paled a little. McCulkin had also been way too quick to deny knowledge. His normal form would be curiosity. If he genuinely hadn’t heard about a firm with a cryptic name like ‘the Nice Guys’, he’d almost certainly want to know more, yet he’d asked no questions at all.

Heck was discomforted. Pat McCulkin was his main South London informant, and one of the best in the capital; he’d produced leads that had led to convictions for numerous serious offences. This was a mystery, and