Stalkers

groan of pain, followed by profuse curses.

When she looked through the gap, Deke was a foot or so underneath her, suspended upside down in a web of barbed wire. Blood leaked from numerous gashes in his face and hands.

Heck, still unsteady on his feet, appeared alongside her. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Seems the Angel of Death has had his wings clipped.’

Lauren watched Deke down the barrel of the Dragunov. ‘What do you say, Heck? Shall we snatch total victory from the jaws of certain defeat?’

Deke stared up at them. Despite his predicament, he chuckled. ‘Do you people have the first idea what you’re dealing with here?’

‘You’re going to tell us,’ Heck said.

It wasn’t easy dragging the hit-man back up into the bunk room. Heck did most of it, lugging him by the feet, while Lauren kept the rifle trained on him.

‘Just gimme a reason,’ she kept repeating, and by the wild glint in her eye, Heck suspected that she wasn’t kidding. Deke had hurt her of course: had beaten her, had tried to kill her; they’d been chased from pillar to post, they’d roughed it, been scared half to death — and to top it all, she was still no nearer to finding her sister. Or so she felt.

They tied Deke’s hands behind his back with a piece of rope they found hanging from a girder, and knelt him up to face interrogation. Lauren put the rifle aside, and grabbed the Glock. She pointed it straight at the prisoner’s face while Heck did the talking. They’d already searched him thoroughly, removing his one remaining grenade, his knife and his ammunition belt, before removing a second, even sharper knife, which they found in his boot. In one pouch they discovered a coil of high-tensile wire, doubtless a garrotte, in another a tube of capsules which Heck guessed were cyanide pills.

‘Filthy tools for a filthy trade,’ he said.

Deke smiled, unconcerned.

‘I know you’re working for a group called the Nice Guys,’ Heck added. ‘And that you and they have been following my investigation. Which means that someone must have been tipping you fellas off about my progress.’

Still no reply.

‘It would be in your interests to answer.’

‘That shows how much you know,’ Deke said.

‘You think we won’t beat the crap out of you, if we have to?’ Lauren retorted.

‘Give it your best shot.’

Lauren clenched a fist, but Heck led her to one side. ‘He’s ex-special forces,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s probably been worked over by experts — and that’s just in training. Let’s chill out and think this through.’

She scowled but nodded.

Heck turned back to the prisoner. ‘You’ve tied yourself in with some bad people, Deke. People who are only going to one place. You really want to go with them?

Deke still seemed indifferent.

‘We have something you want,’ Heck added.

‘No you don’t.’

‘Something that will implicate you in a number of extremely serious crimes.’

‘That’ll be taken care of.’

‘How?’ Lauren demanded. ‘How will it be taken care of? Who’s the bent bastard copper who put you onto McCulkin?’

‘Ease off,’ Heck warned her.

‘Look at the smug bastard!’ she snapped. ‘He thinks we’re not tough enough to make him talk!’

‘Whoever your police contact is,’ Heck told him, ‘he’s not going to help you now. He can’t. You ought to think about your future, what there is left of it. The time for being a good soldier is past. You’ll never receive money for murdering or brutalising people again. You’ll never receive money for anything again. There’s no reason to show loyalty to people who’d now rather you were dead than alive.’

Deke smiled to himself.

Heck continued: ‘It’s very simple. I want to know who the Nice Guys are and where I can find them.’

‘And just out of interest,’ Deke asked, ‘what do I get in return?’

‘How about your freedom?’

‘What?’ Lauren said, stunned.

Deke sneered. ‘You’re not in a position to make that kind of deal.’

‘But I am in a position to leave you on this fort alive and unguarded.’

Deke laughed. ‘And how do you propose to do that? You can’t even get off this fort yourself. Going to swim again? The last time you tried that, it nearly killed you.’

Lauren butted in, grabbing him by the lapels. ‘This is not a debating society, you arrogant shitehawk! Give us some answers or I’ll punch your fucking lights out!’

‘Sorry, but I don’t like the smell of her breath,’ Deke said calmly. ‘Get her out of my face, or this conversation’s over.’

Lauren cracked Deke across the temple with the Glock. ‘This bastard’s taunting us, Heck.’

‘It’s nothing but bravado,’ he said, hauling her away. ‘Now cool down, okay?’

Heck swung back to Deke, whose face was running with fresh blood.

‘As you can see,’ Heck said, ‘trying to be clever will prove unprofitable. Thanks to your handiwork in Salford, we’re not exactly operating inside the law here. There could be plenty more where that came from, and at some point I’ll get pissed off too and will stop trying to prevent it.’

Deke shrugged. ‘Enjoy your sense of power while you can. Whatever happens here, you’re both going to die soon. And it won’t be over quickly.’

‘Shit, this is a waste of time,’ Lauren said.

‘And this jungle-bunny bitch is going to go just like her sister did.’ Deke eyed Lauren contemptuously. ‘Raped, sodomised, tortured. Of course that was before she was dead. You can’t imagine what was done with her afterwards.’

Lauren’s eyes dilated. ‘You son of a …’

He laughed. ‘You weren’t entertaining childish fantasies that she might still be alive, were you? Or that she died easily?’

‘You fucking son of …’

‘Lauren!’ Heck shouted, but it was too late.

She’d already put the gun to Deke’s forehead and fired.

Chapter 33

Given the frazzled state of his nerves, Ian Blenkinsop was less than calm when late that afternoon his secretary buzzed through and said that there was a police officer to see him. There’d been police here for the last couple of days, seeking witnesses to Louise Jennings’s last movements. They’d spoken to quite a few members of staff, Blenkinsop included — but only as a matter of course, they’d insisted; just trying to establish if Louise had said or done anything out of the ordinary on her last day in work. But Blenkinsop broke into a heavier than normal sweat when he heard that this particular officer — a certain Detective Inspector Palliser — was here from the ominously named National Crime Group.

When Palliser was shown in by Sally, he wasn’t quite what Blenkinsop had anticipated. He was elderly to the point where he was surely close to retirement, and thin of physique, with scraggy grey hair and an even scraggier grey beard. He wore an anorak over his rumpled brown suit and, before sitting at Blenkinsop’s desk, shook hands and gave a benevolent, almost fatherly smile. He smelled strongly of tobacco.

‘Can I get you a tea or coffee, inspector?’ Sally said.

‘No thanks, my love, I’ll be fine,’ Palliser replied.