Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller

Heck climbed out and looked the church over. Some parts of its venerable old structure were clad with scaffolding, while its windows were dark and doors locked – though that was no surprise at this time of night. Once, England’s churches were left open twenty-four/seven, their interiors shimmering with candlelight so they could provide a haven for souls in distress whatever the hour. But now a church was just as likely to get robbed and vandalised as any other easily accessible building. Heck crossed the car park on foot to the presbytery, skirting around tins of paint and tools propped against its gatepost. It looked as if extensive refurbishments were under way, probably not before time, given the state of the two-hundred-year-old church.

The presbytery itself wasn’t quite so old, perhaps dating from the late-Victorian period, but evinced the simple austerity of the ecclesiastical life: a narrow building, but tall, again built from red brick, with a steeply sloped roof of heavy grey slate. The fanlight above its large front door was filled with stained glass, as were sections of the two arched windows to either side of it. Both of these were curtained, but dull lamplight speared out.

As Heck rang the doorbell, he recollected the brief time he’d spent lodging here after his family had unanimously decided they didn’t want an officer of the law living under their roof. He’d taken official police digs at first, but those had been in short supply back in the mid-1990s – most of the old section-houses were being sold off. So he’d soon finished up here. His uncle, Father Pat as the local schoolchildren had known him, though equally bemused by his nephew’s decision to join the force, had at least shown a spirit of Christian kindness. Heck had crashed in the presbytery’s spare room until he could afford his own place.

‘How can I help you?’ came a terse Irish voice.

Heck had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t realised the door had opened.

An extremely short woman stood there – five feet at the most – with a truculent, weather-beaten face and thinning red-grey hair. Heck recognised her as Mrs O’Malley, his uncle’s housekeeper. She’d filled out a little since he’d last seen her, which was roughly nineteen years ago. She’d been stocky before, but now was quite plump – an impression enhanced by the thick raincoat she was in the process of buttoning up with a set of stubby, ring-covered fingers.

‘Erm … Mrs O’Malley?’

‘Yes?’ she said impatiently, as if this was something he should surely already know.

She’d been the official housekeeper here for the last thirty years, but she clearly didn’t recognise him. And it was hardly fair to expect otherwise. He hadn’t changed too much in physical terms. He’d been six feet tall then and was six feet tall now. He’d been lean, weighing in at an athletic thirteen and a half stone, and was only slightly above that all these years later. But the smart police uniform had gone, along with the short-back-and-sides, and the unscarred, unlived-in face. It was tempting to say: ‘Hey, it’s me – Mark. I’ve come back to see you after all this time.’ But Mrs O’Malley, who’d always been an irascible soul, was the last person he would ever have come back to visit voluntarily.

‘There’s no bed here,’ she added, before he could say anything. ‘The spare room’s now a lumber room. You’ll have to find one of the shelters down in town.’

Heck was a little surprised. OK, he was wearing jeans, trainers and a hoodie top, but none of it was tatty. Perhaps, if he was so easily mistaken for a hobo, he shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to dress down in Peckham.

‘I’m looking for Father Pat,’ he said. ‘I’d just like a quick word.’

‘He’s not in.’ She stepped out into the porch as she closed the door behind her. Its latch clunked home with an air of finality. ‘He’s making his evening rounds.’

These ‘evening rounds’ had been part of Heck’s uncle’s routine for as long as he remembered. Once the day’s Masses had been said, Father Pat would visit the hospitals and hospices, then the homeless centres, then the houses of the sick and the bereaved and the down-at-heart. That wasn’t the sort of thing you could wrap up in half an hour.

‘OK.’ Heck turned away. ‘Thanks.’

‘He might – just might – pop into The Coal Hole down on Shadwell Road,’ she called after him. ‘But only if he has a bit of time left.’

Heck glanced back and nodded. He knew where The Coal Hole was. Father Pat might be a priest, and a good one too, but he was occasionally partial to a small whiskey.

‘If he misses you tonight, I’ll be seeing him again in the morning. Who shall I say called?’

‘Mark – his nephew.’

There was a long, cool silence, the woman’s features inscrutable in the dimness. Finally, she said, ‘Well, well … you wouldn’t by any chance be in trouble again?’

Mrs O’Malley was another who’d disapproved of what Heck had done all those years ago. Descended from a long line of Irish Republicans, she’d disapproved of the British police in general, so she’d felt especially affronted by Heck taking up lodgings here.

‘No, I’m not in trouble, Mrs O’Malley,’ Heck replied. ‘But you guys may be.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘All of you.’ He walked on to the gate.

‘If Father Pat asks?’ she called again, now sounding a tad concerned.

‘Yep,’ Heck said over his shoulder. ‘Him too.’

Chapter 11 (#ulink_62c3154a-73bb-5510-a0f3-a2d26d48920e)

Bradburn wasn’t just known for being a grim town up north. It had also produced several celebrated sons and daughters who’d made an impact in the entertainment industry.

One of the most controversial of these – at least in his time – was Terry Bayber, a knockabout northern comic whose heyday was the late 1940s and early 1950s, but who’d mainly been famous back then for being irreverent and even ‘subversive’ according to one daily newspaper. Bayber’s risqué routines were always aided and abetted by his busty, blonde and ever scantily clad girlfriend and business partner, Mavis Broom, ‘Our Mavis’, who was the recipient of endless light-hearted innuendo throughout his shows. Bayber’s death in 1954, at the age of 55, was very premature, but his memory lived on, certainly on his home patch, where campaigners had lobbied from an early stage for a permanent memorial to him. Only now had this dream finally become reality, with Bradburn Council coughing up, and further donations coming from local businesses, to produce a seven-foot-tall bronze figure mounted on a plinth in the town’s central Plaza.

But this was Bradburn, so things had not gone entirely smoothly.

There’d been considerable debate about the proposed grand unveiling, some officials expressing concern that on a rainy midweek evening there’d be a relatively low attendance. Others, however, argued that the recent gangland violence had frightened and depressed everyone, making them feel that they lived in a no-go zone, and that it could only be good for Bradburn to host some kind of event in the town centre, something lively and fun, something that would cheer people up and distract from the painful present by injecting it with a touch of nostalgia. As for the weather – that was a moot point. A bit of rain was easily tolerable for the average Bradburner, especially if they hired their woman-of-the-moment, Shelley Harper, to do the bouncy, blonde Our Mavis thing while she unveiled the statue.

Shelley Harper.

She’d been the town’s official doe-eyed beauty for as long as most Bradburn residents could remember. A pageant winner from way back, and a mainstay of high-profile charity events, where she’d parachuted in wearing basque and suspenders or had run marathons in a thong and baby-doll nightie, the latter turning ever more suggestively transparent the hotter and sweatier she got, Shelley had always been one to catch the eye. But a recent television appearance had raised her profile dramatically, and on a national scale, even earning her the much-sought moniker ‘reality TV star’.

Ever the willing lass, Shelley had signed up for the unveiling without hesitation, even though she’d never heard of Terry Bayber. Reflecting her recent TV success, the money would be marginally better than it used to be for events for this, though it still wasn’t up to much. But, on the positive side, it wouldn’t take long and would be easy enough work. All she had to do was pull some cord and a sheet would fall down, and if it was a little bit demeaning that yet again she’d be posing and preening while wearing next to nothing in the midst of goggling spectators, well … that was Shelley’s stock-in-trade.

So she was there bang on time at the Town Hall that damp Thursday night of April 5, and, suited and booted, found herself ushered out into the middle of the Plaza, where, swathed in a heavy blue cloak, she was confronted by a lively crowd, mainly male, milling around behind the red velvet ropes and, though easily marshalled by a handful of uniformed bobbies in hi-vis doublets, so eager for the unveiling to commence – the unveiling of Shelley Harper as much as the unveiling of the statue – that they were shouting and hooting with impatience.

The mayoral party lined up alongside her in their overcoats and waterproofs, though Bradburn’s actual Mayor, Councillor Jim Croakwell, who was currently at the microphone making a rather ponderous speech, was wearing his robes and chain of office, plus his tricorn, which, given his porcine shape, triple chins, roseate cheeks and gruff northern voice, made him look like some kind of Victorian beadle.

At least he isn’t standing next to me any more, Shelley thought.

Several times already that evening he’d allowed his arm to steal around her waist under the pretence of fatherly protectiveness.

It wasn’t very respectful, but there was nothing new in it.

In truth, she was under no illusions about her status here: she was no real VIP, and everyone in the Plaza knew it. She was little more than a bit-part actress and wannabe model. Shelley’s glorious looks and figure and her flowing blonde hair were all for real. She was a natural-born stunner. But a variety of ill-advised career moves had served to limit her life’s ambitions at an early stage. For example, an appearance on Page Three back when she was nineteen had led on to a much more explicit role as a centrefold in a less than classy girlie mag a couple of years later, and even if both those adventures had paid her well at the time, they’d detracted from her marketability in later years. So, on approaching her late twenties and fearing her star was waning, she’d embarked on several well-publicised affairs with other, somewhat less minor celebrities from the Northwest – one a locally born TV writer, whose married life was subsequently ruined, the other a Premiership footballer whose fabulous wealth had ensured that his wasn’t – none of which had done her long-term reputation any good. This had been her career’s last gasp, or so she’d thought at the time – fame for all the wrong reasons – yet now, ten years later (after doing a few other things she was even more ashamed of, though thankfully they remained private), she was suddenly in the midst of a personal renaissance thanks to Bond or Break, a satellite TV talent show in which the Z-list contestants had to endure extreme hardships as they trekked through the Amazon jungle, cooking their own food, sleeping under canvas and only able to bathe in rivers, lakes and waterfalls.

This latter aspect was where Shelley had come good, mainly because of the teeny string bikini she’d fortunately remembered to take along with her, and the fact that she was still in terrific shape. It didn’t win her the contest, but it won her the hearts of male viewers, while her bubbly personality and determination to do well in the face of private accusations from one rival contestant that she was a ‘cutie-pie airhead’ won the admiration of women. She didn’t cop off with anyone on the show either, which the dailies suggested meant that Shelley Harper had finally grown up and earned her widespread approval.

Of course her career hadn’t exactly been relaunched. No sooner was she being talked about again than images from that infamous top-shelfer reappeared on the internet. But Shelley wasn’t too concerned. This was, she understood, a brief second throw of the dice, which would get her back into the gossip columns for a short time, grant her a few unexpected earners here and there, and, if nothing else, make her ‘Bayber’s Babe’ for 2017.

And why the hell not? She might be in her late thirties by now, but she was still the whole package. As eight o’clock came, she peeled off her cloak – to much ribald cheering from the crowd – and sashayed forward to stand alongside the veiled statue and its dangling cord. She boasted an impressive 36-24-36 figure, which fitted snugly into her sexy little showgirl outfit (the ‘Our Mavis Special’, as the organisers had referred to it). It was a bright-blue minidress, with a thigh-high hem and plunging neckline, and, trimmed with white tassels, it perfectly complemented her white fishnets and high-heeled white leather ankle boots. Shelley’s flowing blonde mane shone to dazzling effect in the explosion of flash-bulbs.

Fleetingly, the attention switched away from her as she yanked the cord and the sheet rustled to the ground, exposing the glittering bronze form of Bradburn’s very own cheeky chappie, standing in the guise of his personal favourite character, Wing Commander Porkins, complete with bomber jacket, flying helmet and monocle.

This was the moment when Shelley had to go that extra yard to win back the onlookers’ attention. Because after all, if they weren’t looking at her, what was the point in her being here? So she held her ground boldly, poised, pert, waving to the crowd, smiling gorgeously, throwing enormous kisses, shamelessly upstaging one of the grand old men of suggestive comedy, until gradually she became the focus again, everyone shouting and gesticulating back, and if some of those gestures were a little crude, and some of the comments a tad on the coarse side, what did it really matter if they desired her too?

The main thing was that she was back where she’d always wanted to be, in front of a mob of people who adored her. Whatever their preference, whatever their kink, adoration was the bottom line. They wanted her.

They idolised her.

They loved her.

Every single one of them.

Chapter 12 (#ulink_ab09f8d1-0f2a-5029-a8b5-13c0d1a1e205)