Kiss of Death

‘Robbins …’ Heck tried to recall; the name sounded familiar.

‘He’s the one who got Milena Misanyan off,’ Hunter said.

Heck did remember it. Last year, the City of London Police had charged some female oligarch from Turkey or somewhere, who was newly settled in the UK, with various highfalutin white-collar offences: embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, that kind of thing. Apparently, they’d done months of work on her before striking, only to see her defence, organised by Morgan Robbins, take them on at every turn and defeat them. It had been all over the papers for several months.

Heck seemed to recollect a photo of Misanyan on the cover of Time magazine: it was a portrait of an archetypical eastern beauty, complete with dark eyes, thick lashes and ruby lips, a fetching silk scarf woven around her head, her expression a bland but enigmatic smile. That item had come well before the recent court battles; he thought it had been in celebration of her joining the ranks of the world’s female billionaires – the headline had been something like From Hell to Heaven – but he hadn’t bothered reading the story.

‘Thanks to the Misanyan case, Robbins is no ordinary lawyer these days,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s a big fish, a real whopper.’

‘Even so …’ Heck shook his head. ‘Hearing that Ray Marciano would rather be a case worker than a cop is like hearing Kim Jong-un’s up for Man of the Year. It doesn’t compute.’

‘He’s not really a case worker, is he? More like their lead investigator. Look … don’t be surprised, Heck. Ray’s still doing what he loves, only now there’ll be no more pissing around with Met politics, no having to cover his back all day, no having to mind his Ps and Qs or watch what he says in case he upsets some fucking snowflake back in the office. On top of that, he’ll be on massive money. Way more than we can afford to pay.’

Heck arched an eyebrow. ‘You’re not exactly selling the Squad to me, Bob.’

‘Look, Heck … we’re all pig-sick of the changes in the job. Everyone’s pissed off about their pensions. We’ve had lads slogging their guts out for twenty years, waiting for promotion, only to see chinless wonders brought in from Civvy Street as direct-entry superintendents. It’s not just us, it’s you lot in NCG too … I know you’re feeling it. But there are still some oases of common sense here and there, even in London.’

They were alone in the Refs Room, but Hunter lowered his voice conspiratorially.

‘Heck, you know that with me as your guv’nor, you’d get a lot more leeway than you do under Her Ladyship. And I’m only answerable to Al Easterbrook, which basically means I’m answerable to no one.’

Alan Easterbrook was Senior Commander of the Flying Squad, a man once famed but now with a reputation for being a distant, remote figure, whose main ambition in life was to get through each day without any underlings bothering him with details.

‘Until Easterbrook retires,’ Heck said.

‘Why would he retire?’ Hunter replied. ‘They want us all to stay on. And he’s got the cushiest number ever. It’s me who does the donkey work. He just gets the credit for it.’

‘Look, Bob …’ Heck threw his half-empty cup into a bin. ‘I don’t know if I’m even qualified to replace Ray Marciano.’

‘You must be joking, pal. Ray never did anything you don’t. You’re bang on for it.’

Before Heck could argue further, the door swung open and Gemma came in, followed by Jack Reed. They headed to the vending machine, deep in conversation about how to pitch the next interview, though Gemma was visibly distracted by the sight of Heck and Bob Hunter, particularly Hunter.

‘You don’t have to decide now, pal,’ Hunter said quietly, when the other two had resumed their discussion. ‘But I’ll have to make a decision in the next few weeks. Can’t leave a vacant DI desk for too long. Not with all the bloody nutters we’ve got lining up to do jobs.’

Heck pondered. The offer had come from left-field and, even if other things hadn’t been preoccupying him, would have left him a little dazed, not to say doubtful. It wasn’t just the personal ties he had at SCU, he’d been with the unit eleven years now. In some ways, he’d almost become institutionalised. It was difficult to imagine being anywhere else.

‘I’ll get back to you, Bob,’ he said.

‘Give it some serious thought.’ Hunter leaned again into his personal space. ‘SCU’s a good gig, but anyone who stays in the same place for too long gets stale. Plus, I’ll say it again … National Crime Group’s on rocky ground. You don’t believe me … wait around and see.’

He glided away, leaving the Refs Room without a backward glance.

‘What’s Bob Hunter doing here?’ Gemma wondered, coming over.

‘Dunno,’ Heck replied. ‘Suppose he’s got some case in.’

‘Thought his new patch was the East End?’

‘Flying Squad, ma’am. If anyone makes good use of this nick, it’s them.’

By the look on her face, she didn’t believe this for one second, but decided to let it pass.

‘Purdham given us a full confession yet?’ he asked.

‘In the end,’ she said. ‘I actually believe him … somehow or other, they railroaded him into participating in these crimes. It’s amazing what you’ll do to become part of a club. But yeah, to answer your question … if Ulfskar and his cronies don’t get thirty years apiece, no one ever will. Once we get the forensics in play, it’s over for them.’

She walked from the room with coffee in hand.

‘OK, Heck?’ Reed asked, edging after her.

‘Fine, sir,’ Heck replied stiffly. ‘You?’

‘Never better. You can call me Jack, you know.’

‘That’s all right, sir. I always think we’ve got to earn the right to use first names.’

Reed smiled as he left. ‘No one’s earned that right more than you.’

‘Who’s talking about me?’ Heck said under his breath.

Chapter 3 (#u3b931196-b8bc-52a4-8965-821e9c7f2828)

The impending threat to the National Crime Group felt as if it might be real. Heck was in no position to judge, or even voice opinions on the matter – but there was rarely smoke without fire, and there was an awful lot of smoke at present.

Almost certainly, there’d be pay and recruitment freezes, people would be expected to work longer hours for less, resources would likely be slashed, and maybe staff too. If the worst came to the worst – and certain folk were saying that the crisis was actually this bad – entire departments could be disbanded, and all personnel reassigned. On the face of it, the latter would seem unlikely, but it would be a sure way to make an awful lot of savings in one fell swoop. And in that regard, the National Crime Group, thus far untouched by the cutbacks, had to be a prime target.

It comprised three specialist branches: the Kidnap Squad, the Organised Crime Division and the Serial Crimes Unit. In the eyes of many, these were all luxuries the British police could ill afford, as they monopolised manpower and funds for relatively small gain. Even Heck had to admit that it didn’t look good in the stats when an SCU detective made maybe only four or five arrests per year. What matter that these were nearly always repeat serious offenders – serial murderers, rapists and the like – who may already have ruined countless lives and had the potential to continue doing exactly that? It was still only four or five villains off the street each year, compared to the forty or fifty that a divisional detective might account for, never mind the hundred or so claimed by the average uniform.

He tried to put it from his mind as he worked his Megane through the heavy mid-morning traffic in Dagenham, but it frustrated him no end. Several days had passed since the Black Chapel sting and yet the ominous stories about the unit’s potential fate continued, seemingly unaffected by these recent positive results. In the words of DS Eric Fisher, SCU’s main intel man, ‘Why should we expect preferential treatment just because we do our job?’ Heck supposed that Fisher had a point, but it was a job that few others could do.

Again though, he tried to dismiss it all. He’d always sought to ignore the internal politics of the police, especially high-end politics like this, mainly because it was hardly the sort of thing you’d expect of a ‘rogue angel’.

This unusual status referred to the roving commission Heck was often accorded during SCU enquiries. Another name for it, again of Gemma Piper’s invention, was ‘Minister Without Portfolio’. In a nutshell, this meant that he was rarely attached to any specific part of the investigation but instead was authorised to develop and chase down his own leads. This was a privilege he’d earned over many years, on the basis of having felt numerous quality collars on the back of his own analysis and intuition. But whether it would have happened under any other supervisor than Gemma was questionable.

Not that Gemma was his best friend at present, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason why. It was certain that the menacing sounds from the top floor had put her on edge. She’d been brusque and indifferent with him recently, if not downright vexed. Neutral observers might argue that this was their normal relationship – there’d been many times in the past when it felt like they were at daggers drawn, but this was usually because of procedural disputes, not as a matter of course. Lately, she’d been actively and protractedly cold with him, much more than was normal, and much, much more than she was with anyone else.

Heck puzzled over it as he left the A13 and joined the Heathway.

He hadn’t done anything especially wrong, as far as he knew. Quite the opposite, in fact. His own intel had laid the Black Chapel on a plate for them, for which he’d received minimal gratitude. He wondered if it could be down to his lack of enthusiasm for the recently appointed DI Reed, though on that front Gemma was more than making up for it herself.

He shook that thought from his head, aggravated in ways he couldn’t explain.

He was now on the edge of the Rimmington Hall estate and, inevitably, his mind moved to other things. St Agatha’s Roman Catholic Church was easy enough to find. It faced onto Rimmington Avenue from behind a tall wire-mesh fence. There’d be a car park behind it somewhere, but as this was August and the junior school next door was closed, there was nothing to stop him parking on the main road at the front.

St Agatha’s was an industrial-age structure, stark and functional, its brickwork ingrained with the smoke and soot of generations. After recent investigations, especially the pursuit of the Black Chapel, Heck felt as if he’d been spending a lot of time in and around churches. But the lichen-clad tombstones and ivy-hung chancels of rural Suffolk were a world away from this place. Not that St Agatha’s grim appearance made it seem any less incongruous that Jimmy ‘Snake’ Fletcher now hung out here, though it wouldn’t have been the first time in Heck’s experience that a half-hearted soul had only needed to be exposed once to the full viciousness of his chosen team before he went scuttling off to join the opposition.

That said, Fletcher was still lucky that the local parish priest had been sympathetic.