Severed (19 page)

Because what Lucas is holding, stained and dark with decay underneath the thick seal of clingfilm wrapping, and with the first, jaundiced glint of bone showing through, is a human finger.

'Where did you find it?' I ask him, trying to keep down the sense of dread that's rising within me.

'Down the side of the sofa,' he answers, his voice quiet. 'Can you believe it?'

'Jesus, what the hell was Ferrie involved in?'

He shakes his head. 'Christ knows, but whatever it is, it's bad. This is real, no question.'

I stare down at the finger. The skin is pitted and badly discoloured where it's been wasting away, but it's still possible to tell from its size, combined with the manicured curve of the fingernail, that it belonged to a woman. The extent of the decay means there's no way of telling how old she was - or is, I suppose, since if you want to be pedantic about it, we don't
know for sure that she's actually dead.

'How long since this was removed from the rest of her, do you think?' I ask Lucas, finally turning away from his gruesome discovery.

'I've got no idea,' he answers. 'I suppose it depends on what conditions it's been kept in. If it was out in the sun for any time in this heat, it wouldn't take very long to decompose.'

He stares at me for a moment, and I can see that his pale blue eyes are filled with concern. Lucas, I have to remind myself, has been a civilian for years. He may not have forgotten his other life entirely, but the danger that was such a part of it is all a long time ago. He's a carefree bachelor now, running a thriving business. At least he was until a few hours ago. Now, like me, he's in it up to his neck.

He sighs, furrowing his brow. 'I never liked Ferrie that much, but I never had him down for a killer.'

'Maybe he isn't,' I say.

'Maybe not. But how else would a finger have got here? It wasn't planted by someone. It was too well hidden for that.'

'If he was a killer, why keep a souvenir of what he's done round here?'

'I don't think he meant to. He obviously wasn't coming back, so he must have left it by accident.'

I think about this for a moment, but I'm unconvinced. I don't know why, but like Lucas, I just don't have Ferrie down for a murderer. Certainly not one who cuts off fingers and leaves them down the side of his sofa.

'You think it's got something to do with whoever it is he's blackmailing?' Lucas asks. 'How does that work? Blackmailing them with . . .' He searches for a suitable description. 'Human remains?'

'I don't know. But why else would he have it?'

It's a good question, one Lucas makes no attempt to answer. Instead, he stands in silence, surveying the finger for several seconds. Finally, he drags his gaze away.

'It still doesn't move us on though, does it?' he says.

'No, but this might.'

I show him the address book and open it at the 'I' section, explaining its significance.

'W2,' he says. 'That's the Paddington area.'

'I'm going to go there. But you don't need to come.'

'No,' he answers. 'We're in this together, we'll go there together.'

'I lost my gun back at the brothel, so we're unarmed. It could be dangerous.'

'I think I might have a way round that.'

'No, Lucas. You don't need to do anything else. I'm not dragging you in any deeper. At the moment, I've got nothing to lose. But you have.'

'Listen,' he says, as if he hasn't heard me, 'I brought back some souvenirs from the first Gulf War. A couple of pistols and an AK-47 that supposedly once belonged to Saddam Hussein's son-in-law.'

Believe it or not, it isn't unheard of for soldiers serving in overseas war zones to smuggle weapons back with them into the UK when they return with their units. Since they come through military airports rather than civilian customs, they're rarely subject to searches and there's ample opportunity to hide their illicit ordnance among all the other equipment and weaponry. Although most of them are brought back, like Lucas says, as souvenirs, a fair number end up sold to criminals, and I've often wondered why the government hasn't done more to combat the problem.

'The AK-47 doesn't work any more,' continues Lucas, 'but I'm pretty sure the pistols do.'

'Where are they?'

'In my loft at home.'

I sigh. 'Let me think about it.'

He nods. 'Fair enough, but let's go. It's not safe to hang round here.'

'What are you going to do with that?' I ask, indicating the decaying finger.

He reaches into a pocket and produces a crumpled, clear plastic bag, which he shakes open. 'It's evidence,' he answers, putting the finger inside and returning the bag to his pocket. 'Evidence of what I'm not sure, but it's got to be worth hanging on to.'

I don't question his rationale, and I need no second invitation to leave Ferrie's squalid little residence, with its stale, lingering air of death. We're out of there quickly, neither of us looking back as we walk, relieved, into the brightness of the early evening heat.

Almost immediately, Lucas's mobile rings.

'Anonymous call,' he says, stopping to check the screen.

But it's soon clear that it is in fact the police. Two and a half hours after we first discovered
Snowy's body, they've finally traced him back to Lucas. I stand listening as Lucas first feigns shock at hearing of his colleague's death - something he does extremely well - then agrees to meet with the officers as soon as possible to make a statement. 'I can't believe it,' he keeps saying, sounding utterly deflated. He is, I have to say, a very able actor and he almost convinces me that this is the first he's heard of what's happened. He finishes the call by saying that he'll be with them in twenty minutes.

'They're going to come to the apartment to question me,' he says as we get into the car. 'There was no way I could get out of it.'

'Don't worry,' I tell him, 'I know that.'

'I don't know what I'll be able to do about the guns, either.'

'Forget it,' I tell him. 'It's OK.' But underneath I'm concerned. Once again I'm on my own, and without any obvious means of protection.

Still, I tell myself in an effort to raise my spirits, I have a lead. I know one of the people involved in Leah's murder, and this time I'm not going to let that bastard Marco slip from my grasp.

When Lucas drops me off at Holloway Road tube station, he reaches under his seat and pulls out a cylindrical device about a foot long with a handle running its entire length. I recognize it instantly from my days serving in Northern Ireland. It's an Enforcer, a heavy bludgeoning device used by the police to break the locks on doors. Something of an anachronism in these days of hi-tech gadgetry, but still one of the most highly effective means of gaining entry to a locked house.

'A present,' he says as he rummages around in the back of the car. 'It might come in useful.' He finds the holdall I was given earlier and drops the Enforcer inside before handing it to me.

'Thanks, mate,' I tell him. 'It's appreciated.'

We shake hands, and he says he'll call me later. I remind him once again that he's got to tell the truth to the cops, whatever it means for me. He tells me that he will, and then he's gone. It's just turned quarter past six.

At this time in the evening there's no point grabbing a taxi. The traffic's too heavy, and I've got to cross the centre of town. So I take the Piccadilly Line down to King's Cross and then the Circle Line to Paddington. The journey takes me just under half an hour, and because I don't know the area that well I buy a pocket
A to Z
from one of the news stands in Paddington station. The address I want is in the Little Venice area, over the other side of the Westway flyover.

Once again, my plan is simple: get in, get answers. Use the element of surprise to catch my quarry off guard, then force him to talk. And if he isn't there, I wait. You could say that this kind of direct approach hasn't worked for me before, and you'd have a point, but unarmed and still completely ignorant of the reason I've been targeted, I figure I have no choice. Marco is a trusted member of the gang, otherwise he wouldn't have been sent to pick up the case,
which means he'll know what's going on and who's behind it. After the discovery of the finger at Ferrie's place, I'm also very curious to know what it is the case actually contains.

As I walk through the fading sunshine, my thoughts drift back to Leah. I've tried to keep her out of my mind these past few hours, but now that I've got time to myself, it's proving impossible. I go back through our three weeks together, from start to finish. Our first meeting in the supermarket, the lovemaking that night. The picnic on Hampstead Heath the next day. Each and every date we shared. And in what I still can't help feeling is an act of betrayal, I look for signs: anything unnatural in her behaviour during that time; a mistake in her back story; a moment of evasiveness. But there's nothing. It was two people falling in love. Whichever way I look at it, that's how it was. It was also Leah there this morning next to me. I am sure of that. Poor, innocent Leah.

After ten minutes, I come to a quiet, tree-lined road of expensive whitewashed Georgian townhouses. I soon find the house I want, a grand place with hanging baskets filled with flowers on either side of an imposing front door.
Not the sort of place where you'd expect to run into a low-life gangster, but then, you have to remember, there's a lot of money in crime these days. Marco's address is the basement flat, which is reached via a short flight of stone steps protected by a locked, wrought-iron gate with an intercom security system. The top of the gate barely reaches my chest. I clamber over it without incident, conscious that with my holdall I must look like a burglar, and make my way down the steps and through a pretty walled garden, heavily planted with thick foliage.

When I reach the front door, I notice that there are bars on the adjoining windows. This is London after all, and if you have money, you don't want to make it easy for the area's burglars, even if the result does make your home look like a plush version of a prison cell.

I put my nose against the cool metal of the bars and find myself looking into a spacious kitchen. The worktops are empty, and the pots and pans hanging from the racks that run along the shelving units all look untouched. I move over to the front door and try the handle. It's locked. I put down the holdall, open the letter-box, and peek inside.

The entrance hall's empty, but I pick up the sounds immediately. Clear and unmistakeable as they drift through the open door of one of the rooms.

Someone's gasping for breath.

The attempts are utterly desperate, like those of an asthmatic having an attack. And they're accompanied by the sound of someone else, a man, grunting with exertion. Either it's a couple having a particularly wild bout of passionate sex, or he's trying to kill her, and straight away I know it's the latter, and that the way things are going it's not going to take him too much longer.

I unzip the holdall as fast as I can and pull out the Enforcer. I've been on enough arrest operations in Northern Ireland to know how these things work. Standing with my right side to the door, I lift it back in a low arc and then smack one end hard against the lock. Wood splinters, and the door flies open on its hinges.

The adrenalin's surging through me as I charge inside, dropping the Enforcer on the floor (it's too unwieldy to use as a weapon) and running towards the source of the noise. I've still just about got the element of surprise, and I
hope this'll help as I barge my way into a bedroom where a life-size poster of Pamela Anderson in her
Baywatch
swimsuit smiles back at me.

A powerfully built man with dyed black hair sits with his back to me astride a young woman on a kingsize double bed, his gloved hands round her neck in a tight, savage embrace as he throttles the life out of her. The woman's legs kick wildly as she struggles beneath him, and I notice that one of her shoes, a golden open-toed sandal with a stacked heel, is missing.

Marco's already turning his head so I launch myself at him, knowing I've got to move fast. My momentum knocks him off balance and I grab him round the neck and twist hard, prepared to break the damn thing if I have to. But I've made a mistake. I should have disabled him with a throat punch, not tried to use my weight against him, because I'm always going to be at a disadvantage in this kind of struggle. Marco doesn't panic either, which is always a bad sign, and for a big man he's quick. As I force his head into the crook of my arm, pulling him backwards, he reaches round and manages to clamp a meaty hand firmly over the most sensitive and
important part of my body, and squeezes savagely.

The pain is excruciating and my grip loosens, allowing him to break free and swing round so that he's facing me, his hand still firmly wedged between my legs. The good news is he's let go of the girl now, and she's still moving. It's the good-looking blonde from the brothel whose name, like a lot of other things, I have forgotten, so I guess I've now returned the favour and saved her life too, at least temporarily. The bad news is pretty obvious: I'm helpless and in agony, and by the sweaty, rage-filled expression on Marco's face, I'm guessing he's not about to let me off with a kick up the backside and a firm warning. There's death in his beady black eyes.