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

‘Detective Sergeant Heckenburg. Open up.’

‘Erm … what do you, erm … what do you want?’

‘Do you want me to shout it at the top of my voice? Because I will.’

‘Erm … hang on.’

‘Never mind “hang on”,’ Heck growled. ‘Open this soddin’, piggin’ door, or I’ll kick it down.’

A chain rattled as it was removed, and the door opened. Penny Flint’s younger brother, Tyler, stood there. He was weedy, pale and with a badly spotted face, particularly around the mouth. He had a mess of dyed-orange hair, and a single earring dangling from an infected lobe. He wore pyjama trousers, dinosaur-feet slippers and a ragged jersey that was three times too large.

‘Thought it’d be you,’ he said dully.

‘Well, obviously.’ Heck shouldered his way inside. ‘No one else knows she’s here. Yet.’

The colour scheme inside the flat was grey, grey and grey, with perhaps a hint of lime-green, which had faded almost to grey. The place was a tip: bare, damp-looking walls, tatty and disordered furniture, dirty crockery and empty beer bottles on a side table. It was cold for an April morning, so the electric fire was on full blast. It was too much really, but it didn’t bother Penny Flint, who was slumped in an armchair and smoking an unfiltered cigarette, focused intently on morning TV, where Jeremy Kyle was putting a bunch of people just like her through their paces. She wore a thin dressing gown, while her long brown hair hung in ratty strands. The ashtray on her armrest was crammed with dog-ends.

In the corner, Alfie, her six-month-old son, lay snug in a rabbit romper suit, burbling to himself in his carry-cot. The baby was the only dab of real colour in the room, aside from Tyler Flint’s ludicrous fake hair. Having checked outside that Heck hadn’t been followed, Tyler had closed and locked the door again and now hovered in the background.

‘Don’t stare at me like that, Heck,’ Penny said without looking round. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘Nervous?’ Heck retorted. ‘You’re lucky I’m not dragging you down to Brixton cop-shop by your knicker-elastic.’

She turned a face on him that had once been pretty but was now haggard.

‘I’m not wearing knickers at the moment, Heck. I can’t stand the pain they cause me. Or maybe I didn’t make that clear enough the last time we spoke.’

If that was true, she was pretty scantily clad, her gown finishing above the knee and her toe- and fingernails painted their trademark shocking-green. There was even a slinky gold chain looped around her left ankle. Her injuries weren’t visible, but Heck had seen the photographs taken at the hospital, and they had spared no anatomical detail. If there was still any doubt, the pair of metal crutches propped against the back of her chair indicated that Penny didn’t even yet figure among the walking wounded. His sympathy for her in this regard hadn’t ebbed. But some things were unforgivable.

‘You realise what you’ve done?’ he asked her quietly.

‘That wasn’t what I intended,’ she said.

‘Intended or not, you tipped off two different police units about John Sagan, and you didn’t have the good grace to warn either of them there were other friendly forces in the field. What did you expect was going to happen?’

‘Look, I just wanted that bastard to go down. Wanted to make sure of it. It’s not my fault if you lot don’t talk to each other.’ She turned back to the TV screen.

‘You deceitful, self-centred cow.’

Her brother ventured forward. ‘Hey, come on. She’s been through –’

‘Sit down, Tyler!’ Heck jabbed a finger at him. ‘Just being who you are and having the life you have is enough for you to worry about. Don’t compound it by getting any more involved than you need to in a shit-storm like this.’

Mouth clamped shut, Tyler sank stiffly onto a chair.

‘It’s all right, Tyle,’ Penny said, with more than a hint of the cocky belligerence which, up until now, had got her through so many years on the streets unscathed. ‘I can handle Heck.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Heck said. ‘What you going to do, set me the same kind of trap you set for Reg Cowling?’

‘I’m sorry ’bout what happened to Cowling. I actually liked him.’

‘I sincerely doubt that, else you wouldn’t have tipped him off about Sagan but at the same time neglected to mention how dangerous the bastard could actually be.’

Penny said nothing. Just focused on the TV screen.

‘You’ve got a sodding nerve,’ Heck added. ‘Blaming us for this. My boss logged our interest in Sagan with the top brass at Organised Crime, and with most of the CID offices in Southeast London. Everyone around here who mattered knew we were watching him. So you decided to go to one of the lower ranks, didn’t you? What was it? Reg Cowling feel his days in National Crime Group were numbered? Perhaps he needed some arrests?’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Don’t give me “maybe”, Penny. Cowling was one of your official handlers at Organised Crime, wasn’t he? Don’t bother answering – I know, I checked.’

‘What if he was?’

‘Let me guess … he wanted something off the record? Something he could big himself up with? And you thought, “Bollocks to Heck and SCU. They’re not making things happen fast enough. I’ll tell someone who’ll knock on Sagan’s door straight away.” But if I was a really cynical man, Pen, I’d say it was actually worse than that. I’d say you engineered this fuck-up deliberately. In the knowledge Sagan would run and bullets would fly. And that maybe, in the ensuing gunfight, he’d get zapped – by the police no less, so there’d be no comeback to you.’ He peered down at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. ‘Is that right, or is that right?’

‘How could I have engineered all that, Heck? I’m a tom, not some criminal mastermind.’

‘But you’ve got street-smarts, love. You always have had. And you knew Sagan wouldn’t come without a fight. Just like you knew Cowling and his inexperienced sidekick would do something stupid like go in feet-first. Like you knew we were on the plot, armed … and that we wouldn’t just stand by.’

‘And still you couldn’t take him,’ she sneered. ‘Two different teams and you both missed him.’

Heck shook his head. ‘You know, Pen, I wish I lived in your world. Where real shithouse behaviour is measured only by the bloody inconvenience it might cause you. Not by guilt, or remorse, or regret …’

She glanced round at him again, wryly amused. ‘You don’t wish you lived in my world, Heck. You’re quite happy in your own. Where you can go home at night and leave all this stuff behind you. Where if anything does go wrong, you’ve got an entire army one radio-call away. You really think it would satisfy me to see John Sagan in jail, in relative comfort, while me and Alfie are living on hand-outs, and the one thing that’s ever earned me anything has turned to putty?’

‘That was the deal we made.’

‘Then more fool you.’ She turned back to the television. ‘Like I’d settle for seeing Sagan get life when the alternative was getting him shot down on the street like the dog he is?’ Her smile grew tighter, thinner. ‘At least that way I’d keep my respect.’

‘Even more so if a few coppers died too, eh?’

‘Like I say, Heck, that wasn’t the plan. But if you need to take a positive from it …’

‘The positive is seeing you for the conniving little mare you are. For your info, I’m having you scrubbed off the grass register!’

She turned again. The sneering smile had faded.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Heck said. ‘I’m gonna drive you into a normal, everyday life if it kills me. And to do that, I first need to ensure that no copper in Greater London ever makes the mistake of using you as an official informant again.’

‘Well … cool. I lose half my income in one fell swoop, and now you’re taking the other half too.’

‘Try getting a proper job … you need to do that anyway if you’re gonna bring that kid up decently.’ Heck’s mobile chirped in his pocket. He checked it and saw a text from Gemma.

Shawna’s come round. Meet at KCH

‘Me – sat on a supermarket till!’ Penny scoffed. ‘You having a laugh, or what?’

‘It could be worse.’ Heck headed for the door. ‘You could be lying on an intensive care bed, like a very good friend of mine.’