Stalkers (48 page)

The message had been printed by a modern desk-jet of some sort. It read:

Ho Ho Ho

For some reason, Ernshaw’s short-cropped hair prickled. This could easily be more empty-headed idiocy from the local scrotes. But there was something about it – probably the fact that it was clearly a recent addition to this neglected pile – that made him think it might be significant. He stepped backward, examining the wall again. It had definitely been constructed recently. At its base, two lumps of tapered black wood protruded through a tiny gap under the bricks; some builder’s device, no doubt, to keep the whole thing level.

A hand tapped his shoulder.

Ernshaw spun around like a dervish. ‘Fuck me!’ he hissed.

‘What’s this?’ Rodwell asked.

‘Will you stop sneaking up on people!’ Ernshaw handed him the notice. ‘Dunno. Found it pinned to the wall.’

Rodwell stared at the wall first. ‘This brickwork’s new.’

‘That’s what I thought. Well … they’ll have done all
sorts of jobs over the years, to keep the place serviceable, won’t they?’

‘Not in the last twenty.’ Rodwell glanced at the notice, then back at the wall again. ‘This is a chimney breast. Or it was. Probably connected to one of the outer flues.’

‘Okay, it’s a chimney,’ Ernshaw said. ‘Bricking up an old chimney isn’t much of a criminal offence these days, is it?’

Rodwell read the notice a second time.

Ho Ho Ho

‘Jesus … Christ,’ he breathed slowly. ‘Jesus Christ almighty!’

Moving faster than Ernshaw had ever seen him, Rodwell threw the paper aside and dropped to one knee to examine the two wooden stubs protruding below the brickwork. Ernshaw leaned down to look as well – and suddenly realised what he was actually seeing: not wooden supports, but the scuffed toes of a pair of boots.

Rodwell grabbed the pick and Ernshaw the hammer.

They went at the new wall as hard as they could. Neither man was much of a dab-hand at this, so at first it resisted their efforts – but they pounded fiercely, Rodwell stopping only to call for supervision and an ambulance, Ernshaw to unzip his anorak and throw off his hat. After several minutes grunting and sweating, mortar was bursting out with every impact – then they were loosening bricks, extricating them with their fingers, striking again, guarding their eyes against flying chips. Piece by piece, the wall came down, gradually exposing what stood behind it – though it was the aroma that hit the two cops first.

Ernshaw gagged, clamping a hand to his nose and mouth. Rodwell, more used to rotting meat, worked all the harder, smashing away the last vestiges of brickwork.

They stood back panting, wafting at the dust, retching at the stink.

‘Good God!’ Rodwell said as he focused on what they’d uncovered.

Though it stood upright, this was only because it had been suspended by the wrists from two manacles fixed above its head. It had reached that stage of early putrefaction where it could either have been a shrivelled corpse or a wax mannequin, its complexion somewhere between sickly yellow and maggoty green. It had once been an elderly man – that much was evident from the scraggly white beard on its skullish jaw, plus it was bone-thin, an impression only enhanced by its baggy, extremely dirty red garb. This consisted of a red tunic hanging in foul-smelling folds, trimmed down the middle and around its hem with dirt-grey fur, and red pantaloons, the front of them thick with frozen urine, their cuffs tucked into a pair of oversized wellingtons.

It was not an unusual experience, even for relatively new bobbies like Ernshaw, to discover corpses in a state of corruption. Not everyone handled it well, though Ernshaw usually had – until now.

He laughed. Bizarrely. It was almost a cackle.

‘S-Santa,’ he stuttered.

Rodwell glanced at him, distracted.

‘Fucking Santa!’ Ernshaw continued to cackle, though his glazed expression contained no mirth. ‘Looks like there was no one nice waiting for him at the bottom of this chimney. Only naughty …’

Rodwell glanced back at the corpse as he recalled those words –
Ho Ho Ho
. He noticed that a red hood with a greyish fur trim had been pulled up over the wizened, hairless cranium. He hadn’t spotted this at first because a few futile death-struggles had dislodged it backward.

‘Christ save us,’ he whispered. The corpse wore a tortured expression, its eyes bugging like marbles in a face twisted into a rigid, grimacing devil-mask. ‘This poor bastard was walled up in here alive.’

M1 MANIAC

LATEST

–

POLICE ADMIT

FEW LEADS

If it was possible for a newsagent billboard to shriek, this one did. If it had been printed in huge, zigzagging letters, it couldn’t have been any more eye-catching.

Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg observed it through the driver’s window of his Fiat while he waited at a traffic light. Homeward-bound commuters darted across the road in front of him, huddled and muffled against the February evening. Much of the heavy winter snow had cleared, but dirty, frozen lumps of it lingered in the gutters and on the corners of pavements. Thick wafts of exhaust drifted across the road as the traffic light changed to green.

Heck eased his Fiat forward, glancing continually at his sat-nav. Milton Keynes was a big place; it comprised about two hundred thousand citizens, and like most of the so-called ‘new towns’ – purpose-built conurbations designed to accommodate the overspill population after World War II left so many British cities in smoking rubble – its suburbs seemed to drag on interminably. After half an hour, the entrance to Wilberforce Drive appeared on his left. He rounded its corner and cruised along a quiet, middle-class street, though all streets were quiet at present, particularly in southern English towns like Milton Keynes, which were close to the M1 motorway. Especially after nightfall.

For the most part, the houses were semi-detached, nestling behind low brick walls or privet fences. All had front gardens and neatly paved driveways. In the majority of cases, cars were already parked there, curtains drawn. When he reached number eighteen, he halted on the opposite side of the road and turned his engine off.

Then he waited. It would soon get cold, so he zipped up his leather jacket and pulled on his gloves. Eighteen, Wilberforce Drive seemed almost impossibly innocent. A snug pink light issued through its downstairs window. A child’s skateboard was propped against its garage door. There was even the relic of a snowman on its front lawn; little more now than a sooty, twisted ghost, but it was clear what it once had been.

Heck took his notes from the glove-box and checked through them. Yes – eighteen, Wilberforce Drive, the home of Jordan Savage, thirty-three years old, a married man who managed the local garden centre for a living. The homely environs made it altogether less menacing a scene than Heck had expected. It would be easier than usual to walk up the path and rap on the door here, even to get tough if he wanted to – this wasn’t the sort of place where cops normally got their teeth knocked out. But Heck was still nervous that he might be barking up the wrong tree.

Not that he would ever know sitting behind his steering wheel. But before he could open the car door, another door opened – the front door to number eighteen. The man who stepped out could only be Jordan Savage: his solid build and six-foot-two inches of height made him unmistakable; likewise his shock of red, spiky hair. No doubt, up close, those penetrating blue eyes of his would be another give-away.

Savage was wearing jeans, a sweater and a heavy waxed jacket. As Heck watched, he moved the skateboard aside, took a key from his pocket and opened the garage door. There was a vehicle inside; it was too dark to tell for sure, but it looked like a Mondeo Sport. Again Heck consulted his notes. Yes – a green Mondeo Sport. The VRM checked out as well. It was the same car the Traffic patrol had become suspicious of and had stopped that dank October night.

The Mondeo’s engine rumbled to life, its headlights snapped on and Savage eased it down the drive. If he noticed Heck seated in the car opposite, he gave no indication, but turned right along Wilberforce Drive, heading for the junction with the main road. When Savage was a hundred yards ahead, Heck switched his own engine on and followed.

Tailing a suspect was never easy, especially when you were doing it unofficially and on your own – but it wasn’t hugely difficult either. Heck had performed this task dozens of times and was well aware that you were never as exposed as you felt. Unless the suspect had reason to believe he was being followed and was keeping watch, he most likely wouldn’t notice you, particularly if the traffic was heavy.

Heck stayed about three cars behind – not too close to attract attention, but close enough to keep a careful eye on his target. Even so, when the Mondeo suddenly veered left onto what looked like another housing estate, he was taken by surprise. Exercising extreme caution – it was easier to be noticed following someone around a quiet estate than on a busy thoroughfare – he drove in pursuit.

This neighbourhood was less salubrious than the previous one. Its houses were council stock, some terraced with communal passages between them, some with front gates hanging from broken hinges. But its central artery was called Boroughbridge Avenue, and that rang a bell of familiarity. Heck didn’t need to rifle through his notes this time to know that this was where Jason Savage, Jordan’s twin-brother, lived.

About fifty yards ahead, the Mondeo stopped outside a two-flat maisonette. Jordan Savage didn’t get out, but sat there, his exhaust pumping winter fog. Heck slowed to a halt as well – just as a glint of light revealed that a door to the upstairs flat had opened and closed. A figure trotted down a narrow flight of cement steps.

Even from this distance, the similarities between the two men were startling. Jason Savage, who was a mechanic by trade, wore an old donkey jacket over what looked like black coveralls, but he too was about six-foot-two and had a mop of spiky red hair. He climbed into the Mondeo’s front passenger seat, and it drew away from the kerb. Heck remained where he was, wondering if they were about to make a three-point turn, though apparently there was another exit from this estate: the Mondeo drove on ahead until it rounded a bend and vanished.

Heck nosed forward. This was better than he’d hoped for, but it could also mean nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time that two brothers had spent an evening playing darts together, or catching a flick. That said, when he swung around the bend and found himself at a deserted T-junction, he briefly panicked.

Trusting to luck that the left-hand route would lead back onto the council estate, he swung his car right and got his foot down. Leafless trees closed in from either side as he passed through public woodland – this didn’t look promising, but then it gave way to the high fencing of an industrial park, and about fifty yards ahead a red traffic light was showing and a lone vehicle waiting there. Heck accelerated and, to his relief, recognised the Mondeo. He’d be directly behind them now, but he couldn’t afford to worry about that. His police instinct – that old ‘hunch’ thing honed to near perfection through so many criminal investigations (or alternatively, ‘his imagination’, as Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper called it), told him he was onto something.

The light turned to green as he pulled up behind the Mondeo, and it swung left. Heck followed, but decelerated a little. They were on another main road, with houses to either side, followed by shops and pubs. More and more vehicles joined the traffic flow. Heck decelerated further to allow a couple to push in front of him. With the relaxed air of a driver who knows his way around, Jordan Savage worked his way across the centre of Milton Keynes, negotiating roundabouts and one-way systems as if he could do it blindfold. There were roadworks in abundance, but he glided through the contra-flows without hindrance. Heck, who wasn’t a local and in fact had never even been to Milton Keynes until he’d arrived here as part of the enquiry team some six months earlier, found it more difficult, though thankfully that ultimate bugbear of the covert tail – a traffic light or stop-sign separating him from his target – never occurred. It
almost
did as they approached a bustling intersection, but Jordan Savage, who clearly (and interestingly) seemed to have no intention of causing a stir, halted at the white line even though, if he’d floored his pedal, he could probably have made it through the break in traffic.

Heck was only one car behind him at this stage. He too slowed and stopped, by chance underneath a large Crimestoppers notice-board. As well as various telephone numbers, including the hotline in the Main Incident Room at Milton Keynes Central, it carried a massive photo-fit of the so-called ‘M1 Maniac’, a frightful figure with hunched, gorilla-like shoulders, wearing a black hood pulled down almost to his eyes, which in turn were half-covered by a fringe of lank hair, and a collar zipped up to his nose. It was impossible to tell in the yellowish glow of the streetlamps, but in normal daylight those eyes would be a startling blue and that fringe a vivid red. In fact, to emphasise this, the artist who’d constructed the photo-fit had only colourised those sections; the rest of it was in black and white.

Heck followed cautiously as the Mondeo advanced through the intersection, the vehicles between them peeling off left. The Mondeo headed straight on, taking a narrow street between industrial units surrounded by high walls. Past these lay shabby apartment blocks: broken glass strewed their forecourts, ramshackle cars cluttered the parking bays. Heck slowed to a crawl, but still managed to keep the Mondeo in sight. It was about a hundred yards ahead when it turned right, appearing to descend a ramp.

He cruised forward another fifty yards, then pulled up and stopped. He grabbed the radio from his dashboard, switched its volume down and shoved it under his jacket, before climbing out and walking the rest of the way.

The ramp swerved down beneath a monolithic tower block, which, from a rusted nameplate screwed onto a concrete buttress, was called Fairwood House. As Heck ventured down, he kept close to the wall on his right. When he reached the bottom, he halted, waiting until his eyes adjusted. What looked like a labyrinthine underground car park swam slowly into view. Unlit alleyways wound between concrete stanchions covered with spray-paint, or led off along narrow alleys between rows of padlocked timber doors. The occasional niche or litter-strewn corner played host to wrecks: hunks of burned, twisted metal sheeted with cobwebs.