Strangers: The unforgettable crime thriller from the #1 bestseller

In the dimness, he couldn’t distinguish much about the car parked behind his van – he could only see the offside of it, and he certainly couldn’t identify its make or colour. But there were no Battenberg flashes down its flanks. Nor was there any kind of beacon or visi-flasher on top of it. That didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a police car, but its engine had been switched off and there were no headlights showing. Surely, if they were coppers, they’d still be sitting inside, waiting for the miscreants to come back?

Barney trod forward warily. Even drawing closer, it wasn’t possible in this gloom to determine whether or not someone was inside it. But then a voice addressed him.

‘Excuse me … can you help?’

He swung right, to find a woman sliding into view around the front nearside of the van.

Barney was shaken to see anyone at all, but this lady was the last person he’d have expected. Even in the dimness, she was a stunner: quite tall, an impression enhanced by her high-heeled boots and long, shapely legs, which were clad in spray-on black leggings. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of a shiny, silvery anorak, which was partly unzipped, exposing the best amount of cleavage he’d seen since last accessing the Butts & Boobs section of SexHub. She had a pretty face as well, and a nice smile. What looked like an awful lot of blonde hair was tucked beneath a smart black beret.

‘Erm … miss?’ he stammered.

‘I said can you help me?’

Barney remained tongue-tied; he was smitten. But it now struck him that whoever this lady was, she was still a potential witness to his crime. Even if she failed to recognise him again, she might recognise the registration mark on the van. Trust him to let bleeding Kev talk him into using his uncle’s vehicle.

‘I’ve broken down, you see,’ the woman said, apparently oblivious to all this. ‘I don’t know what it was but I just kept losing power and stalling. I’d only just managed to get off the road when I saw your vehicle. I could really use someone to look at the engine.’

‘Look at the engine …? I’m, whoa … I’m not a mechanic.’

‘Please help,’ she said, her smile faltering, her voice softening with distress. ‘I don’t want to get stuck all the way out here.’

‘Can’t you just call a garage?’ he said, and immediately cursed himself. That would be all they needed, a vehicle-recovery team showing up.

But now the woman spoke again, taking a couple of steps towards him, unzipping the front of her anorak. To his disbelief, he saw that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

‘There must be something I can do,’ she said, ‘to make you change your mind.’

‘Miss, I …’ Barney turned hoarse, his mouth dry of spittle. ‘You can’t be …’

She beckoned him with a long, crimson-tipped finger, before slowly backtracking.

Barney wondered if he was actually unconscious and dreaming. Even though a voice inside kept telling him that this didn’t happen in real life, he followed her anyway – back around the front nearside corner of the van and down along the flank of it towards the deep shadows where her own vehicle was parked.

As Kev made his way back to the van, he quietly fumed.

A small man, of thin, wiry stature, the last item he’d taken – the larger of the two mattresses – had almost overwhelmed him with its size and weight. He’d dropped it several times en-route; it had subsequently smeared mud all over the front of his white shell-suit top.

It was no one’s fault obviously, but Barney was still going to cop it verbally.

A bloke his size ought to have gone straight to the heavier items, rather than leaving them for his mate. And where the fuck was he anyway? They ought to have passed each other again by now. Kev was secretly hoping that, whatever remained in the van – and it couldn’t have been much – Barney would take care of it all himself.

But then he came in sight of the vehicle. And stopped short.

Who the bloody hell had been so inconsiderate as to park up behind them?

Surely to God Barney hadn’t been right and, by a one in a million chance, some lazy-arsed copper had happened to drive past and spot what they were up to?

‘These bastards!’ Kev said under his breath, spittle seething through his clenched teeth.

But then he realised that the other vehicle wasn’t a police car. At least, not a marked one.

He padded forward, wondering why both vehicles appeared to be unmanned. If nothing else, Barney still ought to be hanging around. Unless he too had thought the new arrivals were coppers, and had headed for the hills.

That would be so fucking typical.

The big daft prat never watched the news, of course. Dear Lord, they weren’t even sending burglars down these days. Did Barn seriously expect they’d find prison space for fly-tippers? Of course, even if such stupidity explained why Barney was absent, it offered no clue about the car behind. By the looks of it, it was a relatively new Ford Mondeo. A posh bit of kit to be driving on a rubbish-strewn wasteland like this.

Then, without warning, the van’s headlights came on, catching Kev in their full beam. He backed away a step, raising his hand to block the dazzle.

‘Whoa!’ he shouted. ‘Barney, that you?’

The van’s engine chugged and coughed, and grumbled to life.

With a CLUNK, it was thrown into gear – and then rocketed forward.

‘Jesus!’ Kev screamed.

It crunched headlong into him, its front bumper-bar slamming his thighs with sledge-hammer force, snapping them both like sticks of celery, its windscreen smashing into his face with explosive force.

Kev was carried forward for several yards, spread-eagled, before the driver hit the brakes. The van screeched to a halt in front of the Portakabin, and he slumped to the ground. At the same time, a heavy, cumbersome form catapulted down from on top of the van’s roof, and landed with a thud on the gritty floor next to him.

Kev was only vaguely aware what had happened. His body felt like a heap of disjointed wood. There was no feeling in it, and when he tried to turn his head sideways, his neck burned with a bone-deep fire. Even so, he managed to focus on the prone figure at his side. This too was in a broken, bedraggled state, but its face, which had been worked over with some heavy implement until it was gory pulp, was just about recognisable. As Barney.

This made no sense to Kev.

Barn had been on the roof of the van?

Who put him there?

A pair of feet trudged up behind him. Kev wanted to glance around, but his neck was hurting too badly. With a slow exhalation of breath, someone sank to their knees.

‘Two trophies for the price of one,’ a hoarse voice snickered.

To Kev’s incredulity, his flies were pulled down and someone started unbuttoning his skinny jeans.

‘Did you really think you were going to get some?’ the voice whispered. ‘You little shit! You little rodent! Did you and that brainless hunk of meat seriously believe you were going to tap this perfect arse?’

Kev still didn’t understand. Chill air embraced him as his underpants were ripped away.

These bastards, he thought as he ebbed into unconsciousness.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_9b437b35-17f4-5a4d-b5ed-9b309a9dc179)

The Intel Unit convened that first Monday, in their office on the top floor at Robber’s Row – to find that some wag from somewhere else in the nick had already attached a paper sign to the door, which read:

Ripper Chicks

As a general rule, there was dark humour, and then there was black humour, and then there was police humour. It was a psychological defence mechanism, of course. The best way to fend off the stress of spending every day steeped to your armpits in human misery was by laughing at it. But even by those standards, this was seen by several of the girls as a little close to the knuckle. Some, on the other hand, thought it rather catchy.