Strangers (52 page)

Swearing, Heck panted the new directions into the radio as he set off running again. At the end of the factory wall there was a net fence and on the other side of that a deep canyon through which another railway passed. The London Overground, Heck realised, though at present it was a good twenty feet below him. He glanced right. The nearest way across it was an arched steel walkover about fifty yards off. A figure was already traipsing over this, slowly and tiredly.

Sagan. The killer and torturer was an arch-pro. But he was also in early middle-age. His energy reserves were finally flagging.

Heck scrambled in that direction, taking a short cut along a narrow defile between the factory’s north wall and the railway fence. Initially he had to get through barbed wire, and then found himself negotiating thick, leafless scrub entwined with wastepaper and rubbish. Inevitably, cans and bottles clattered around his feet, causing such a racket that the figure on the bridge stopped and looked around – and began to run again. By the time Heck got to the bridge, there was no sign of him. Now exhausted himself, Heck lumbered up the steel staircase and over the top. A train thundered past below; a chaos of light and sound, illuminating the footway clear to its far end. There was a possibility Sagan could reappear over there – while Heck was hemmed between neck-high barriers of riveted steel. But that didn’t happen. Heck made it to the other side, descended the stair to half way and halted, hot breath pluming from his body. Open waste-ground lay ahead, on the far side of which stood a cluster of dingy buildings: workshops, offices and garages, with an old Ford van parked at the front. Sagan was almost over there, moving at a fast but weary trudge – about sixty yards distant.

Heck raised his pistol and took aim, but he wasn’t a good enough marksman to ensure a clean shot from this distance. Especially not at night. He continued down, and inadvertently kicked a beer bottle standing on the bottom step. It cartwheeled forward and smashed.

Sagan twirled around.

Heck ran down the last couple of steps and veered sideways. Sagan held his ground tensely – and then he strode back, shooting from the waist, like a character out of a western, working the slide again and again, pumping fire and shot. Heck scuttled and crawled, but found no more cover than bits of rubbish and sprigs of weed.

At which point a third party intervened.

‘Drop it!’ came a fierce female voice.
‘Do it now, or I’ll shoot you, you bastard … I swear!’

Heck glanced up, to see a short, shapely figure in jeans, trainers, a leather jacket and a chequer-banded police cap circling around from behind the van, her Glock trained with both hands on the back of John Sagan’s head. The gunman froze, the shotgun clasped in his right hand, his left held out to the side.

‘I mean it, you dickless wonder!’ the female cop shouted in a ringing northern accent. ‘Drop that weapon now, or I’ll drop
you
!’

Heck’s mouth crooked into a smile as he rose to his feet. It was Shawna McCluskey. Someone had heard his frantic transmissions after all. And if anyone had, he ought to have realised it would be his old mate Shawna, who’d started off with him all those years ago in the Greater Manchester Police. Sagan remained rigid. From this distance, his face was unreadable. Dots of yellow street-light glinting from the lenses of his glasses briefly gave him a non-human aura. His right hand opened and the shotgun clattered to the floor.

‘Keep those mits where I can see ’em!’ Shawna shouted, encroaching from behind. ‘You alright, Heck?’

‘Never better,’ he shouted, dusting himself down.

‘Kick the weapon back towards me,’ Shawna said, addressing Sagan again. ‘Backheel it …
don’t
turn around. And keep your hands spread, where I can see them … in case you didn’t realise it, you fucking lowlife, you’re under arrest!’

Sagan did exactly as she instructed, the shotgun bouncing past her and vanishing beneath the van. Now Heck could see him more clearly: his black overcoat, a black roll-neck sweater, black leather gloves, black trousers and shoes, his pale face, the thinning fair hair on top, and those gold-rimmed glasses. Yet still the killer was inscrutable, his face a waxen mask.

‘DC McCluskey, on a lorry park off Camberwell Grove’, Shawna said into her radio. ‘One in custody … repeat, one in custody.’

But only now, as she angled around her captive, did Heck see the possible danger. Her Glock was trained squarely on Sagan’s body, but side-on the target width had reduced, and Sagan’s left hand was suddenly only inches from the muzzle of her weapon – and it was with this hand that he lunged, slapping the gun aside, and in the same motion, spinning and slamming his other hand, now balled into a fist and yet glittering as if encased in steel – a knuckleduster, Heck realised with horror – straight into Shawna’s face.

She dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

‘Shawna!’
Heck bellowed.

But he was still forty yards away. He raised his pistol, but again had to hesitate – Sagan had dropped to a crouch alongside the policewoman’s crumpled form, merging them both into one. Heck ran forward again, shouting as the killer flipped off Shawna’s hat, and smashed his reinforced fist several times more into her head and face. Then he snatched up her Glock and fired once into her chest, before leaping to his feet and bolting back towards the parked van.

Heck slid to a halt and fired. The van’s nearside front window imploded as Sagan scarpered around it, returning fire over his shoulder, and proving uncannily accurate. Nine-millimetre shells ricocheted from the ground just in front of Heck. He fired again, but Sagan was now on the other side of the vehicle and shielded from view. A split-second later, a door slammed somewhere along the frontage of the building. Heck scrambled forward, but kept low. If the bastard was now indoors, he might have any number of concealed vantage points from which to aim.

‘DC McCluskey down with head injuries and a possible gunshot wound,’ he shouted into his radio, skidding to one knee alongside her, still scanning the grimy windows overhead.

The van provided partial protection, but it all depended on whether Sagan’s desire to slot his pursuers was more of a priority than evading them. Shawna lay limp. Heck tore open her jacket and gasped with relief when he saw the slug flattened on her Kevlar vest – it hadn’t penetrated. However, her pretty face was a mass of bloodied pulp, her splayed hair glutinous with gore. He probed for the carotid artery. Her throat was also slick with blood, but at last he found a pulse.

An engine now growled to life somewhere inside. Fresh sweat pinpricked Heck’s brow.

As he leapt to his feet, a pair of double-doors some twenty yards to the left of the van exploded outward in a shower of splinters and rusted hinges, and a powerful SUV came barrelling through. Heck backed away from Shawna’s body to try and get a clear shot at it. But Sagan was already firing through the open passenger window, wildly, blindly. Heck let off one round before diving for cover, aiming at the SUV’s front tyre but missing by centimetres. In the process he caught a fleeting glimpse of the vehicle’s make and model. A Jeep Cherokee, dark in colour with bull bars across the front, but with its headlights switched off it was impossible to make out the registration number. It was towing a gleaming white caravan, which tilted onto one wheel as the car swerved away across the wasteland, finally righting itself again as it accelerated into the darkness. Heck gave chase for several yards. He even got off one final shot, hitting the caravan’s rear door, which judging by the lack of visible damage, was armoured. And then the target was gone, vanishing around the corner of a warehouse, the roar of its engine diminishing.

He got urgently onto the radio, relaying as much info as he could while scrambling back to Shawna. As before, she lay worryingly still, and now the blood had congealed in her hair. When he felt her carotid a second time, there was no pulse.

Want more? Read the rest when it hits the shelves in Spring 2017.

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