Stalkers

considered how others are having to deal with it.’

‘You’ve not lost anyone in this case.’

‘Not in this case, no. But as good as.’ He paused briefly, as if unsure whether to say more. ‘You think your sister has been raped, tortured and killed. Understandably you’re worried, you’re distraught. But I know for a fact that my brother was raped, tortured and killed. So how do you think that makes me feel?’

‘Your …?’ She was astonished; the anger drained out of her like water from a sieve. ‘You never told me.’

‘Yeah, well maybe it was none of your business. But seeing as you’ve more or less demanded to know about it …’

He continued to get dressed, pulling on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a fresh t-shirt.

‘Tom was three years older than me, and a bit of a rebel — I mean an intellectual rebel, not a troublemaker. He was doing his A-levels at Bradburn Tech when he first got into drugs. My mum and dad were creatures from another era. They didn’t understand any of that. When he got arrested for smoking a joint at a party, they were beside themselves. My dad’s response was to severely punish him rather than guide him. There was a complete breakdown in communications, and the next thing Tom’s dropped out of college and gone on the dole. Now he was on stronger stuff — pills and heroin. Instead of getting him help, my dad just bollocked the shit out of him, took every penny he got from the social, which of course only made things worse. Eventually, Tom and some junkie friend of his got caught burglarising the park cafe. It was a nothing crime. It wasn’t a residential property, there was no one in there, nothing worth taking. But unfortunately it was just around this time that some nutjob who the newspapers had nicknamed the “Bradburn Granny Basher” was doing the rounds of the town’s sheltered accommodation. He’d smash his way in, beat seven colours out of the OAPs living there, and make off with all their savings — usually about two or three quid. The team who’d been put together to bring him down were having no luck. One particularly lazy bastard DI, who was feeling pressured to get a result, decided that by some stretch of the imagination — and I mean a considerable stretch — the photo-fit they’d got of the Granny Basher matched the look of this young drug addict currently in custody for burglary.’

Heck cracked open a can of beer and took a long sip. Lauren listened in silence.

‘As you can imagine, even with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in force, it’s never been impossible for a ruthless copper to frame a suspect … especially if that suspect is a strung-out junkie who’ll say anything to get a fix. Well, the inevitable soon happened. Tom got leaned on hard, and eventually confessed. The next thing, he’s been charged and convicted. He was eighteen by this time, so he was sent to adult prison.’

Heck paused, sipped more beer. ‘He wasn’t up to that. He only lasted a month, but at a rough guess he must’ve been raped fifty times before he decided to call it quits. He went to the shower, took a razor and slashed both his wrists and both his groins. It took him two hours to bleed to death, and it was another hour before anyone found him.’

He gave her a long, level gaze. ‘You want to know what the most painful part of all that was, Lauren? About three weeks later — three weeks, that’s all — the real Granny Basher got caught in the act by two sharp-eyed uniforms.’

He shook his head, and finished the can.

All Lauren could do was stutter: ‘I hope, well, I hope your family got some compo?’

‘Course we did, but surely you of all people realise how little that actually means?’

‘Yeah, I do … but hey, you then went and joined the police. What the hell possessed you?’

Heck shrugged. ‘Exactly what my mum, dad and sister asked. I mean, after Tom’s death the police were personae non gratae as far as we were concerned. They were the biggest scrotes on Earth. And I just dropped everything and went off and joined them. You ask me why … I don’t know. It was vague, I suppose. I wanted to redress the balance, put right the grievous wrong that had been done to my family in the only way I could — by joining up and showing the useless bastards how the job should be done.’

‘Which you’ve been doing ever since.’

He chuckled bitterly. ‘And what a smart move it was. My dad never talked to me again ’til the day he died. My mum tried to understand, tried to forgive, but I don’t think she ever really succeeded. And Dana — well, you’ve seen the way things are between me and her.’

‘From what I saw, that’s mainly you.’

‘That’s because she feels guilty about it now.’ He munched on a sandwich, but didn’t have much taste for it. ‘She tries too hard to be all the things to me that she wasn’t during the years she ignored my very existence. Things got so bad that I didn’t just leave home, I ended up leaving town — I was in the Greater Manchester Police at the time, but requested a transfer to the Met. I basically gave up my entire world because my family weren’t prepared to let me live in it. And Dana played her part, let me tell you.’

‘So now you’re teaching her a lesson?’

‘I don’t mean to, but I can’t pretend I don’t feel resentful. Anyway … the upshot is that you’re wrong. I do know what it’s like to lose a loved one to violence. But grabbing a gun so you can fight those responsible in the urban jungle, like some hoodlum, is the worst thing you can do.’

‘Heck … whether we like it or not, we’re already in that jungle.’

Before he could answer, the phone beside the bed started ringing. They peered at it. It rang maybe four times before the answering-machine kicked in.

‘Talk to me,’ Deke’s pre-recorded voice said.

‘Deke?’ It was a man; by his accent, he was from the Midlands. ‘Might I remind you, we were expecting a progress report from last night. Anyway, contact us when you can. In the meantime, it’s a special for Alpha- Yankee-Zulu-Zulu-Zulu. Usual terms.’

The caller hung up. Silence followed.

‘“A special”?’ Lauren said. ‘Sounds a bit worrying.’

Heck crossed to the hidden panel they’d found the previous time, opened it and climbed the stair to the attic. When Lauren got up there, he’d already pulled one of the buff files and spread it open. A photograph showed a dark-haired man in his mid-forties. There was a sheet with typewritten information, including the address of the man’s home, which was in Hampstead, and his place of work, which was at an investment bank in the City. His name was Ian Terrance Blenkinsop.

Heck showed her the coded tag on the file cover. It read: Ayzzz.

‘Alpha-Yankee-Zulu …’ Lauren’s words tailed off.

‘Looks like we came to the right place after all,’ Heck said. ‘We’ve just found our next lead.’

Chapter 37

When Ian Blenkinsop checked in for work that morning, he looked better than Sally had seen in some time: bright-eyed, clean-shaved, wearing a pressed suit. He was even smiling. But she was a little surprised when she saw that he was carrying an overnight bag instead of his briefcase, and especially so when he informed her that he was taking some unplanned leave.

‘I’m joining Yvonne and Carly at Lake Como,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think I’ve been overdoing things a little and I need a break.’

‘Well … okay,’ she answered. ‘I mean, there’s probably nothing in your schedule that we can’t rearrange.’

‘Good, that’s excellent. Because I’ve got a flight booked for two o’clock this afternoon.’

‘I see.’

Sally wasn’t quite sure what else to say. This was a little irregular. Even someone as highly placed in the firm as Ian Blenkinsop occasionally had responsibilities that he couldn’t just drop on a whim. Of course there was no question that he’d been ‘off-colour’ the last few days; he’d almost gone through a personality change. This morning, though he’d only been in for a minute or so, he seemed a lot more like his old self.

‘I can’t wait to see them,’ he confided in her. ‘It isn’t a good thing being left on your own all summer, Sally. I