Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller. Paul Finch

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      Heck sat down while she read again through the GMP dossier. He glanced around her office, which, while it was larger than the cubby-hole she’d occupied back at the Yard, still didn’t bespeak the rank of Detective Superintendent.

      Gemma Piper was a conundrum to many who knew her: handsome and fiery, two traits that combined well when she fought her corner in this most competitive and male-dominated of environments. But at the same time she didn’t routinely favour the trappings of power. She was forceful enough to pull rank any time she felt it was necessary, her bollockings were legendary, today’s relatively painless session notwithstanding, and when she gave evidence in court or to a House of Commons Select Committee, she radiated strength and competence. But, possibly because she’d done her stint in the lower ranks, and had scrapped tooth and nail for every promotion she’d ever had, she didn’t like to paint herself as an aristocrat of the job. Hence the Spartan décor and bare furnishings in this dull little room at the top of their dull new building.

      ‘Four murders in Bradburn inside five weeks,’ she said. ‘Is that your hometown’s normal strike rate?’

      ‘Not when I lived there,’ he replied. ‘But times change.’

      ‘Does this surprise you?’

      She dropped another glossy onto her desk. It depicted two hunks of human-shaped charcoal laid side by side on a rubber sheet. This image had been inserted at the bottom of the file. Heck had only found it several minutes after seeing the pictures of the corpses in the landfill. It depicted the remains of two Bradburn porno merchants, Barrie Briggs and Les Harris, who early last March had been cremated alive in their own sex shop.

      He pursed his lips and nodded. ‘A bit, yeah.’

      ‘It’s pretty extreme stuff.’

      ‘If what you’re asking, ma’am, is: can I equate this kind of violence with the town I grew up in?… then no. We had crime. Of course we did – plenty of it, it was a rough old place. But there was a kind of moral focus in those days. At least in general terms. This is way off the scale in comparison, but I don’t think these are normal times, are they? GMP Serious reckon Briggs and Harris were the first shots fired in an underworld war. The bad boys in the landfill – Calum Price and Dean Lumley – were probably retaliation.’

      Gemma read more of the attached notes, this time concentrating on the latter two victims.

      ‘Lots of form,’ she said. ‘Lots of it. For which they paid a very high price. Both castrated, eyes slit, tongues cut out, nipples scissored off, fingers removed with an electric saw. They finally died when a power-drill penetrated each of their brains through the left ear.’

      Neither needed to give voice to what they both were already thinking: that, even given the two deaths by fire, this was a further escalation still, and to some tune.

      ‘Put two and two together often enough, ma’am, and sometimes you get four,’ Heck said. ‘Those two torture-killings have got Sagan written all over them, especially now we know he’s in the Manchester area. A war’s erupted up there. A real one and Sagan’s taken sides.’

      ‘Taken sides or hired himself to the highest bidder?’

      ‘Probably the latter. He doesn’t have friends. But he does have chloroform.’

      She glanced up from the file. ‘Sorry?’

      ‘You’ll note from the post-mortem reports, ma’am, that both Price and Lumley’s bodies contained traces of chloroform. Penny Flint told me that was how Sagan subdued her when she tried to fight back inside his caravan.’

      ‘So chloroform’s his signature?’

      ‘One of them, yeah. Though this one, I’d argue, is the smoking gun. It makes sense that he would use it too. According to Penny, he’s punished a lot of wayward underworld guys in the past. Some of them will have been pretty handy, and John Sagan’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chloroform would have helped him overpower them. Plus, it’s not a long-lasting anaesthetic – would give him just enough time to strap them down, and then they wake up bang in time for the fun to start.’

      ‘OK.’ She spread out more paperwork. ‘So what do you know about this guy?’

      These particular notes originated from the GMP Local Intelligence Office, and referred to one Vic Ship, a notorious Manchester gangster who had been an associate of Briggs and Harris. GMP now believed him to be engaged in a power-struggle with the smaller Bradburn faction with whom Price and Lumley were connected. If Sagan had signed on for anyone up there, it was most likely to be Ship given that he was the bigger fish. Ship’s mugshot in the file portrayed an overweight, brutal-looking guy in his mid-fifties, with pudgy, pock-marked cheeks, a small mouth and piggy eyes. His grey hair had thinned to the point where he was almost bald, and yet it was long enough to be greased back to his collar and fastened there with an elastic band. Distinguishing marks included a tattoo of a gorgon’s head on the left side of his neck, and a jagged scar across the bridge of his nose.

      ‘Never had dealings with Ship personally, ma’am,’ Heck said. ‘But way back when I was in GMP it was said he’d buried more bones than you’d find in the average brontosaurus room. And just skimming these notes, you can see that for yourself. Born in Whalley Range, which is Gangster Central. Lots of known previous for armed robbery, attempted murder, demanding money with menaces, supplying, you name it. He’s the real deal. Likes violence and highly placed. By any standards, a player.’

      ‘If Ship’s genuinely the big time, why’s he involved in an undignified scrap with a bunch of street-punks in a nowhere place like Bradburn?’ Gemma asked. ‘No disrespect to your hometown, Heck, but it’s hardly Chicago or south-central Los Angeles.’

      ‘True. But like most other nowhere towns in that part of the world, they’ll have a voracious appetite for drugs, sex and contraband booze. Besides, Bradburn’s probably only the battlefield-of-the-moment. I suspect what this is really about is Ship trying to firm up his control across the whole of the Northwest, which is a massive market. Other local elements will try to resist him in due course.’

      Gemma scoured the documentation. ‘Penny Flint … have we got everything out of her we can?’

      ‘Sorry, ma’am. I just don’t know.’

      ‘If she’s so keen to see Sagan go down, why didn’t she volunteer the information about Manchester in the first place without you having to pressurise her?’

      Heck had been wondering about this too. ‘My reading is that she tried the police route first, but we blew it. This time I think she was hoping that whatever he’s got himself into up north, that’d be the death of him in due course. She reckons prison’s too good for Sagan. She wants him dead. That’s why she tried to engineer that shoot-out.’

      ‘And this is the person whose info we’re basing a whole new line of enquiry on?’

      Heck shrugged.

      ‘These torture-murders?’ Gemma said. ‘Price and Lumley? How much was publicised?’

      ‘Only the bare bones, as far as I can see. Names of the victims, confirmation there are sus circs. GMP Serious are sitting on the detail.’

      ‘But people are not stupid, Heck. These fellas were known hoodlums, so it won’t take long for the public to work out that СКАЧАТЬ