Stalkers

when you got run out of town back in the Middle East. What was it, Silver … local cowboys turfing you off their patch? Local sheriff deciding he wasn’t getting a big enough cut?’

Silver chuckled. ‘What a simplistic world you police officers inhabit.’

‘Well I’m damn sure you didn’t come back here for the climate.’

‘There are political tides out there that people like you can’t even comprehend, Sergeant Heckenburg, but even you must have noticed that the Arab world is changing dramatically. And we don’t do wars and revolutions anymore. So for the last few years we’ve been gradually catching up with former clients over here. Setting up a new base of operations.’

‘One that isn’t as dangerous, eh?’ Heck scoffed.

‘One that pays better too,’ Trooper Hobbs blurted out in broad Brummie.

The black guy now spoke up as well. He sounded more educated than Hobbs — he had no noticeable accent, he was almost refined — but his was the gloating voice Heck had heard on the telephone. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much we earn these days,’ he said, ‘for taking almost no risk whatsoever. And the job satisfaction … well!’

Heck regarded them the way he would the lowest vermin. Despite his attempted boldness, there was only so much that even he could endure. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Silver? For Christ’s sake, you and your lads once served Queen and country. You followed an honourable profession. Even when you were mercs — you were doing an honest job. How the fuck … how the diddly fuck did you come to this?’

Silver shrugged. ‘Well … I’d like to give you a load of Rambo-type baloney about how tough it is for veterans coming home from foreign wars … having to live in the woods and all that because they can’t integrate back into society. But I’ve never been much of a romantic. The facts are simple. When we all left our respective units, we were still very good at what we did. We were a collective, you might say … of uncommon skills and abilities. In the light of that, it was always going to be a crime if we were just to spend the rest of our days sitting around hotel lobbies sipping mineral water, or driving armoured limousines up and down the nightclub strip, dodging the paparazzi. I mean seriously … would you have let us go to waste like that? Even back here in civilised Europe, it would have been a crying shame.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Heck said slowly. ‘So you’re all about making a British contribution to the world?’

‘That’s a good way of putting it.’

‘Except that Ian Blenkinsop told me you had foreigners working for you out in the Gulf. French, Russian, American … where are they now?’

‘Sergeant Heckenburg, I’m so disappointed.’ Silver glanced around at his men, who sniggered at their prisoner’s innocence. ‘For someone who’s astute in so many ways, you’re amazingly dense in others. Haven’t you heard? We live in a global economy now. There are many more markets than the United Kingdom.’

At first Heck couldn’t respond to that. A truly horrible picture was unfolding in his mind of numerous mirror- image operations to this one — abduct-to-order rackets — functioning efficiently in countries all over the world. In only a few years, Britain’s own Nice Guys had clocked up nearly forty ‘scores’. But what was the figure on a Europe-wide scale? What about if you included Eastern Europe? What about North America?

‘I assume you’re telling me all this because I won’t be leaving here alive?’ Heck said.

Silver’s expression became regretful. ‘Sadly, that’s true.’

‘In which case, you can presumably tell me what happened to the victims?’

‘No I can’t actually. At least, I can’t give you their exact locations. Put it this way, the sea rarely gives up its dead.’

‘The sea?’

Silver indicated the long, narrow room. ‘We’re on a boat, sergeant. Surely you’ve noticed that. And most of Britain’s waterways connect with the sea at some point.’

Heck hung his head. He almost felt sick at how simple it was. Even when there was a major search for a missing person, he couldn’t imagine many police forces thinking to check the canal traffic, not when the boat-owner in question was a bloke with a walking stick, who from a distance looked quite a bit older than he was.

‘When you’re out at sea, even if it’s only a mile or so,’ Silver added, ‘it’s astonishing how useful bin-liners, twine and a few lumps of cement can be.’

‘You’ll still get found out!’ Heck snapped. ‘At some point you’ll be caught.’

‘Maybe. But we obviously have to do everything we can to reduce that possibility. Which brings us rather neatly to you.’ Silver produced the two phones, Deke’s and Heck’s own. ‘Your mobile is clearly beyond repair, and we’ve been through Trooper Ezekial’s data from the last few days and found no sign that you’ve put a message or text out. All of this is in your favour, but you could have made a call from a landline before you left London, and let someone know roughly where you were headed for.’ He gave Heck a frank stare. ‘So … did you or didn’t you?’

‘You know I haven’t contacted anyone at Scotland Yard. If I had, your man inside would have informed you.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you didn’t contact someone else, or someone in a different police department.’

So the insider was definitely a member of the NCG. Heck made a mental note of this. Not that it made a lot of difference at present.

‘You see, my problem, Sergeant Heckenburg,’ Silver added, ‘is that though I’m well aware you’re a bit of a chancer, I find it hard to believe you’re so stupid that you’d come after us entirely alone.’

That was the second time in the last few days he’d been called a ‘chancer’, Heck realised.

‘Now okay,’ Silver said, ‘granted … whoever your back-up people are, they aren’t very close, or they’d have intervened when we ambushed you. But I still need to know who they are, and where they are, and how much, exactly, they know about our operation.’

‘No one else knows anything about you. I knew you had a man inside. So I couldn’t risk spreading the word.’

‘You expect us to believe that you don’t trust anyone at all?’

‘No, I have friends. But I’m wanted for murder, I’m AWOL … and if I’d gone to them I’d have put them in an impossible position.’

Silver pondered this. ‘That has a ring of truth about it, but unfortunately I can’t just take your word for it.’

‘You’re going to have to.’

‘No … I’m afraid I don’t.’ Silver signalled to Hobbs, who stepped forward again. ‘Trooper Hobbs here used to have a specific role inside his unit. Can you guess what it was?’

‘Never,’ Heck said, his body tensing.

‘Scorpion Company made great use of him in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everyone talks in the end, of course. But Trooper Hobbs made it happen more quickly than most, as you’ll discover. Well … you won’t discover personally.’ Silver turned to Lauren, whose eyes were closed again. ‘But your friend here will.’

Heck went rigid. ‘Don’t be crazy!’

‘Sergeant, we’re playing for very high stakes.’

‘Silver, for Christ’s sake!’

Silver merely shrugged. ‘Like it or not, everyone’s involved — your friend, your sister. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. The longer you hold your tongue, the longer you’ll hold off the inevitable. With that in mind, I imagine you’d be able to resist us for quite some time. But the inevitable is going to happen eventually, to all three of you. It’s only a matter of how.’ Silver smiled. ‘If we commence it now — on those you care most about, and prolong it and prolong it and prolong it — then you holding out will become rather pointless, don’t you think? Especially if I give you my solemn guarantee that the moment you tell us what we want to know, we’ll end it very quickly.’

‘The inevitable will happen to you too, you fucking maniac,’ Heck replied. ‘Everyone gets theirs in the end.’

Silver sighed. ‘Have it your own way. Mr Klim, Trooper Kilmor, let’s leave Trooper Hobbs to work.’

Hobbs drew the two hooked blades from his belt and began to strop them together the way a butcher does before carving a joint.

‘Believe it or not, sergeant,’ Silver said, as he and the other two moved to a door at the end of the room, ‘there are some things even we can’t stomach.’