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More movies had followed: an attractive woman crossing a dual carriageway bridge carrying shopping bags; an Asian schoolgirl waiting at a bus stop; a lady vicar, for heaven’s sake, saying goodbye to parishioners at the church gate. One after another, they’d followed, each one occupying the screen alone but then retracting into a small thumbnail and finding its place in a vast electronic mosaic. And now, only slowly, had it begun to occur to Blenkinsop that what he was looking at here were not teasers for movies that someone had scripted, directed and performed, but fragments of reality. These were actual shots of real women going about their everyday business, in each case completely unaware they were being observed.

Another stream of words had then appeared: ‘We can arrange it for you to rape any woman, anywhere, any time.’

His hair had actually prickled at that point; his flesh had goose-bumped.

‘Age, race, creed – they’re no concern to us. It’s your choice. We only have two stipulations: a) Women only – we don’t do guys or transsexuals (though if that’s your bag, we know someone who does); b) UK only – you aren’t going to pay our travel exes, so we aren’t going abroad.’

An email address had followed, something embedded in a bogus website somewhere – Blenkinsop knew that much about the internet. So he’d mailed to it. Why not? He’d been left alone here while everyone else was on holiday; why couldn’t he have some fun? Damn his fucking rule about never doing this kind of thing at home. Why not, if it was all safe and secure? He’d felt no guilt as he’d made contact, only keen anticipation. And, almost immediately, they’d replied with answers to his questions, and strong reassurances about his privacy should he decide to do business with them.

Looking back on it, how ridiculously easy it had been for something so heinous.

But he mustn’t email them again, they’d told him. They would email him, but only after checking him out. After that, it had been plain sailing. The following day they’d contacted him from a different email address – and this time had given him the works, the whole picture. All he had to do was name the woman he wanted and state where she was to be found. It was that easy. They would do all the hard work and take all the risks. The only pain for him would be coughing up seventy-five grand, payable to a certain Swiss bank account, the details of which he’d receive in due course. But was that a problem when such a prize was in the offing?

Blenkinsop had been hooked, dazzled by the ease with which something so desirable could so quickly be his. The mere recollection of it, and its ultimate terrible outcome, made him sick with self-repugnance – and of course with terror as well. How was it possible for such an organisation to exist online? Yet it happened all the time. Terrorists used the internet to recruit, poisoners to advertise their wares and services, and then there was the kiddie porn network – he hadn’t thought there could be anything worse than that. But this took his breath away.

Any woman he’d wanted. All he’d had to do was name her and pay the cash.

Any woman – no matter who she was. Imagine that!

Once the ball was rolling, he’d never gone back to the Nice Guys website, as per their strict instructions. All further information, very carefully worded so as to be non-incriminating – would be delivered to him from email addresses that would immediately be negated afterwards, or via snail-mail. But whatever happened, he should stay away from the website. That was their explicit command. He wasn’t sure why or how this might affect their security. Presumably the site existed on a machine located in a banana republic somewhere, or was being run from some completely innocent person’s computer, which had been hacked and, unbeknown to its owner, was now being used as the host – again he had no technical know-how where this was concerned, but even a layman like him had sufficient understanding of how it might be done and how it could therefore be protected.

He walked across the office and stared at his laptop screen.

Under no circumstances, they’d said. The website was for first contact only (in other words the bait, he thought bitterly). From that point on, they’d be in charge of communications. Of course, the situation had radically altered now, and as he hadn’t been given a customer-care number – he laughed at the very thought – this was the only way he knew to contact them.

He sat at his desk. The muscles tightened in his neck and down the middle of his back. There was a slow pounding in the base of his skull that he knew would soon become a full-blown headache.

He assessed the stream of pencil-drawn gobbledygook in his diary. Then he reached out, typed it in – and hit ‘send’.

Nothing happened.

The address was not found.

He tried again, to make sure that he hadn’t mis-keyed.

It was the same result, nothing. Frantic, he tried to Google it. Immediately, hundreds of other beta sites were listed for him, and below many there were all kinds of disgusting hints about what they might contain: ‘Scat, farm sex, amputee fun day, teen smokes donkey dick …’ But none of them struck a bell of familiarity.

The back of Blenkinsop’s throat had gone so dry that it was hurting him. The tension in his neck intensified to the point of no return, detonating inside his skull in a fiery migraine, but even this was of no immediate concern. Lines of irrational thought began to scramble in his mind.

Had they disbanded, ceased to exist? For a few seconds he was ludicrously hopeful.

But then he realised that they’d simply changed the address, as they no doubt did every time they snared a new customer. It was a simple but foolproof way to prevent him causing trouble for them in the future. Whereas they, of course, from their position of complete anonymity, could cause an awful lot of trouble for him.

Chapter 20 (#ulink_5826d293-636e-5844-96de-f4880109c79e)

They drove at increasing speed along the A57, swinging south down the A5063 and crossing the Ship Canal at the swing-bridge. Trafford, the next borough, was a massive complex of industrial estates and lorry parks, so there was a bit of a slowdown there. But they finally got out of it via the A518, and headed south again, steadily picking up speed. It was now mid-morning so the traffic was at low tide and, by the time they entered Sale, they were belting along.

‘Where’s the fire?’ Lauren asked.

‘Behind us,’ Heck replied. ‘You mean you hadn’t noticed?’

‘We got away.’

‘Yeah … for how long?’ They hurtled into Altrincham, where the M56 motorway would hook them up with the M6. ‘We’ve got to get back to London pronto. At least then we’ll be on home turf. And I can ditch the car.’

‘Why do you want to ditch the car?’

‘Because Salford CID will have the registration mark by midday today.’ She shook her head, clearly not believing him, but he was adamant. ‘From this point on, Lauren, don’t use your mobile. In fact, keep it switched off. Mine is. If you must make a call, use a landline, a payphone.’

‘Heck, much as you applaud your own craft, you’re surely not serious that your lot are going to be onto us so quickly?’

‘I’m certain of it. An expert has created this fit-up. Someone who won’t have left anything to chance. If the police don’t draw the correct conclusions from what they’ve already got, he’ll just drop them another clue.’

She checked the dashboard clock. It was ten-thirty; on a good day they’d be back in London by two. But Heck now stated that he didn’t intend to stay on the motorway for long. If an APB was put out, there’d be traffic patrols on the bridges, looking out for them. South of Birmingham, he intended to use the back roads.

Lauren groaned. ‘This is a serious overreaction.’

‘Have I been wrong once so far?’

‘I’m not sure you’ve been right once.’

‘You think people like Ron O’Hoorigan get killed that way every day?’

She had no immediate answer for that. It was probable that scrotes like O’Hoorigan got bumped off more regularly than normal people. But in that particular fashion? It seemed unlikely.

‘And doesn’t it seem a hell of a coincidence that it happened as soon as we made contact with him?’ Heck added.

Lauren had to admit that it did.

‘On the subject of which,’ Heck said, ‘you mentioned something about seeing a similar murder in Iraq.’

‘That’s true.’

‘So?’

‘I’m breaking the Official Secrets Act, if I tell you.’

‘It’s about time you justified your presence on this enquiry, so bloody break it!’

She glanced uneasily at him, though this was more to do with the memory of the incident than the breach in protocol. ‘Three guys had been killed, all in identical fashion to the one we saw this morning. They’d been hung upside down and gutted while they were still alive. I was in the patrol that found them …’

She hesitated to continue. Even now, several years later, the stench re-assailed her. It had been much worse than that at Gallows Hill because southern Iraq’s oven-like heat had commenced the putrefaction process more quickly. The buzzing of flies had been so loud as to deafen even ears like hers, which had become accustomed to the roar of artillery. Just thinking about it again made her gorge rise.

‘It was in a ruined town on the outskirts of Basra. Initially, it was assumed to be the work of sectarian Iraqis. But later on evidence suggested the victims were insurgents and that occupation forces might be responsible. Like I said, no one was ever prosecuted.’

They drove on in silence, both wondering how these things might be connected. To Heck it seemed doubtful. Exemplary punishments were enacted in criminal circles in every corner of the globe. There were numerous overlaps in style and method.

‘Why did you refer to him as an expert?’ Lauren asked.