My Bloody Valentine (Alastair Gunn) (32 page)

Having discussed the latest developments with Simon Hunter, Hawkins had agreed their strongest chance of success seemed to be keeping an eye on potential future victims, the logic being that the killer probably spent time observing each target before making his move. He was also likely to repeat this pattern, so if they could identify a smaller group of probable marks and wait for his next attack, they might just get lucky.

Beside her, the driver attached his pulley system to the Audi’s towing eye, and began winching the despoiled car on to the back of his low-loader, which was parked in the next space.

Hawkins looked up at the house, seeing a woman’s face retreat into the shadows of the front room inside the window. Evidently, the owner was curious about the person standing outside her home, watching her vandalized car being removed, but not so eager to chat.

Amanda Cain, a senior doctor from the local NHS hospital, was on their newly extended list of possible targets. Of the original fifteen recently released murder or manslaughter convicts, six had killed arguably
innocent victims, and of those, two were already in protective custody. That left four as yet unapproached potential targets, including Cain.

There had been no adjustments to the doctor’s sentence for extenuating circumstances, so she hadn’t been approached in the first wave, but now the team’s focus had shifted on to killers of innocent victims, she was at the top. John Travis, the man Cain had killed just over a year before by prescribing drugs to which her patient had been allergic, was about as innocent as victims came.

Hawkins agreed with the court’s judgement that the doctor hadn’t intended to cause harm, although, judging by the state of her car, it looked as though the effects of the woman’s mistake would continue haunting her for a while yet.

Aside from Cain, there were three other potential marks that hadn’t been on the previous list. Mike had gone to see a man in Brixton who had just finished a stretch for mistakenly bottling an intervening bystander to death in a drunken pub brawl, and then he was due to visit the fitness coach who had pushed a client too far in training, causing a fatal heart attack.

Yet, somehow, Hawkins had managed to lumber herself with the worst call of the day. She definitely wasn’t looking forward to her next appointment, with the woman who had attempted to kill herself, and her one-year-old child, in her car with a hose pipe through the window from the exhaust. The mother had been
rescued just in time, after concerned relatives contacted the police, but it had been too late for the child’s tiny lungs. Mum had been under suicide watch ever since.

But all four visits still qualified as groping in the proverbial dark. There were still big, unanswered questions.

Previously, Hawkins had assumed the perpetrator’s information must have been limited to details of the victims’ convictions, the addresses to which they’d been relocated and release dates, but now it seemed the Judge had links that allowed him to uncover the most arcane details of each victim’s life – secrets that only a privileged few would have known. Apart from her best friend, the only people who had knowledge of Sam Philips’ abortion were likely to be the medical professionals who arranged and carried it out. Okay, so it was difficult to say how many hospital staff might have had access to any record of the procedure, but if they could establish how the killer had known about Sam’s abortion, as well as the address to which she had moved following her release, a pattern of sorts should become clear. The cross section of individuals with access to such information in
every
case, potentially via council or medical files, had to be smaller still. And once they had that list, a suspect just might emerge.

She knew Tanner, Todd and Sharpe were now working hard to establish every potential route by which supposedly classified information could leak from government departments into the public domain. Gaining access to their findings might involve a delay, but the
stand-off couldn’t continue long term; eventually, both teams would have to reveal all at some sort of conciliatory confab. But while there was still a possibility of progress on her part, Hawkins was prepared for the two factions to operate autonomously, because she had more to lose than her competition did. And the outcome of this case would define immediate futures on both sides.

The rivalry itself seemed to be escalating; a situation only intensified the previous afternoon by what Tanner undoubtedly saw as his victory in their most recent clash, when Hawkins had played the authority card before being forced into ignominious retreat. Humiliating as it was, however, the result might still work in her favour, because the boost to Tanner’s already titanic confidence had led him to exclude himself, and his sub-team of Frank Todd and Aaron Sharpe, from that morning’s eight-thirty brief. Ostensibly, they were chasing an important lead that required all three of them all day. Hawkins knew an attempt to avoid disclosing progress when she saw one, but she hadn’t complained, because it meant she didn’t have to reveal tactics of her own. Now, she just had to hope that, if their investigative paths crossed, she’d pass through first. And, if they didn’t, that hers bore better results.

A loud scraping sound dragged her back to the present. She looked round to see the Audi’s low rear bumper grinding along the tarmac as the damaged car was winched on to the ramp.

‘Wow.’
Yasir arrived beside her. ‘Is this Amanda Cain’s car?’

‘Looks that way,’ Hawkins said, checking the digits painted on the tarmac as the Audi was dragged fully out of its space. ‘Number twenty-six.’

‘Somebody’s still upset with her, then,’ Yasir said quietly. ‘Who’d be a doctor these days?’

‘I don’t know.’ Hawkins turned towards the house. ‘Let’s find out.’

Hawkins rang the bell again.

The house was well insulated, so the classic double chime from inside was distant. But this time she was certain she’d heard it ring. Just like before, though, there was no response.

She gave it another few seconds, turning to watch the truck driver crank another retaining strap into place around one of the Audi’s front wheels.

Yasir stood beside her on the step, wringing her hands, shifting her weight from foot to foot. ‘Maybe she’s out.’

‘Someone’s here.’ Hawkins told her about the face at the window.

Amala pointed to the letterbox. ‘I could tell her who we are.’

Hawkins nodded. ‘I suppose we should identify ourselves, though I don’t suppose it’ll help.’

The sergeant crouched, easing open the spring-loaded cover with upturned thumbs before calling
through it into the property. ‘Dr Cain? DS Amala Yasir, Metropolitan Police. Please answer the door.’

She looked up at Hawkins as they waited again, then glanced back to monitor the hallway for any sign of capitulation. But her eventual frown said there was none.

Yasir stood and shrugged. ‘You were right, chief. What now?’

For a moment Hawkins said nothing, just stood watching the low-loader, engine running in the parking space at the bottom of the steps, the driver busily completing paperwork in his cab.

‘Come with me.’ She grabbed Amala’s arm, ignoring her colleague’s confused glances as she was ushered back on to the street. Hawkins turned them both right out of the gate and moved them off along the pavement. She waited until they reached a safe distance before glancing back, just in time to see the truck driver heading for Cain’s house, forms in hand.

She stopped Amala, half using the sergeant for support as they turned back to face the house. They waited as the driver creaked his way slowly up the steps. He was the archetypal tow-truck cabbie, tall and thickset, wearing a scruffy white T-shirt and dungarees under a puffy winter coat. He reached the door, using his clipboard to scratch his chin through a healthy-looking beard as he ignored the bell and banged the heel of an oversized fist on the door. ‘All loaded up, love.’

He stepped back, as Hawkins pictured the same
timid face at the window, checking to make sure her previous visitors had gone. She gave it a few seconds before easing Amala forward. ‘Now.’

They began walking back towards the house, reaching the gate and turning left up the steps. The truck driver looked around as they approached, giving a bemused nod when Hawkins stopped Yasir in line with him, two steps from the top.

Hawkins smiled, and the three of them stood in silence until a shadow arrived on the opposite side of the glass, before a lock was released and the door swung inwards.

In the gap stood Amanda Cain.

55

The eight men waited twenty yards apart, watching each other across the plain.

Six Iraqi insurgents facing two British soldiers, the wind swirling between them, blowing dust into their eyes. Everyone was armed, but no one had raised a weapon yet and, for a moment, nobody moved.

Bull knew they were in trouble. Their
SA80
weapons were superior to the
AK47s carried by the insurgents, more powerful and a lot more accurate, but it was six against two, and where the Iraqis had the trucks for cover, he and Cheshire were in the middle of a field, exposed. If they stood their ground, they’d make easy meat.

At last one of the insurgents stepped forward, showing himself to be in command. He pointed at his weapon, then at the floor, telling them to drop their rifles. Slowly they lowered their guns. The leader nodded, raising a hand and waving for him and the kid to go over.

Bull heard Cheshire’s boots grind the dirt. He raised a hand. ‘Don’t move.’

‘What?’

‘We’d be fucking crazy to go over there.’

‘No crazier than if we run. We’ll get shot to shit.’

‘Shut up, man. Let me think.’

Cheshire might have been right. If they surrendered, there was a small chance they’d survive; there had been a few reports of the enemy taking more hostages recently, rather than leaving soldiers’ bodies lying around to demoralize the troops. But Bull didn’t like those odds.

So what the fuck were they going to do?

Bull was in charge, so it was his call. He’d bought time by moving them both on to the verge; that’s why the insurgents hadn’t followed them along the track. They could see from the detectors that the soldiers had been sweeping for mines, but it wasn’t obvious from where they were standing which parts of the trail they’d checked, or if they’d already found a device somewhere between the two groups. Which was why the Iraqis wanted him and Cheshire to go to them.

Plus, the insurgents’ guns were inaccurate at this range. They were designed to spray bullets all over, to pin an enemy down. At twenty yards they could miss a building.

Which gave them a fighting chance.

‘Listen up.’ Bull spoke quietly over his shoulder. ‘When I say, turn and run like hell for the far end of this track.’

‘You sure, man? That’s twenty-five yards, uphill.’

‘We go over there we’re dead, so we might as well run. They won’t come after us.’

The kid blew out his cheeks. ‘Okay.’

‘When we go, drop your detector but take your rifle.’ Bull waved at the insurgent who had stepped forward, as if they were about to head over. ‘Ready …’ He took a breath, felt the adrenalin kick in.

‘Now!’

He reached out, grabbing the shoulder strap of his gun, dumping his detector, hearing Cheshire’s feet grinding the dirt as he took off. The Iraqi shout went up as they turned and sprinted away, and a second later the first shot cracked the air.

‘Run!’ he shouted at the kid, who was already a few yards ahead, as the bullets began hitting the track around them, tiny thuds going off as they slammed into the soil.

He kept going, skidding on the loose surface, not daring to look round.

Then he felt the punch on the back of his thigh, so hard that it took the leg out from under him. He stuck his hands out, but as he fell there was a flash. Suddenly, he was on his back, ears ringing, vision blurred.

And all he heard before passing out was the patter of dirt landing all around.

56

Hawkins watched the low-loader pull out of the parking space and edge off down the congested street, carrying the mangled Audi like wounded offspring. She turned back from the window to find their host staring at her from the far side of the room.

A decade ago, such behaviour might have unsettled Hawkins, but these days she’d seen it too many times. Prison had a way of changing anyone who spent a while inside, the pressurized environment driving inmates towards the extremes of confrontation or retreat, often without them being aware. Back in the fluffy outside world, ex-cons often ended up fearlessly aggressive or eternally scared.

She decided Cain was in the former camp. The doctor was in her mid-forties, a few inches shorter than Hawkins, attractive despite the apparent lack of make-up or sleep. She wore a dressing gown and her hair was pulled back in a frayed ponytail.

Cain hadn’t paid even lip-service to hospitality, for them or the truck driver, since appearing at the door. She’d signed the driver’s collection form and offered scant thanks, before turning to the people waiting
behind him, addressing them in a tone the detached side of stern.

You’d better come in.

She’d shown them into a large front room with high ceilings and tasteful decor. Yet there was an oddly vacant feel to the place, despite the well-coordinated furniture. The house was tidy, almost spookily so, possibly because there had been no one around to mess it up, but it was also unnervingly clean. Hawkins guessed at an overzealous housekeeper, because Cain herself wasn’t much of a host.

Amala nervously occupied the single armchair at an angle to a large, empty sofa. She was also first to break the silence.

‘The Audi,’ she asked Cain, ‘is it owned or hired?’