Headhunter Read online

  ‘If you think that …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘What? If I think that, I don’t know you?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘No, no, you’re right. I don’t know you … yet. How many people have you killed in your illustrious life, Flynn? Does it get easier or something?’

  ‘Which bit do you want me to answer?’

  ‘All the bits,’ she snapped.

  They were back on the coast and somewhere, far to the east across Lancashire, the beginnings of dawn were starting to crack the sky open.

  Molly had driven on to the M55 at the Broughton junction and then powered the Mini towards Blackpool, but had exited before reaching the resort and curved inland across to Fleetwood to the north of Blackpool, where she had pulled up on the seafront close to the well-known Beachfront Café and then wandered down on to the beach itself with Flynn, where she linked arms with him and they strolled in soft sand.

  The journey from Bilsborrow had been in silence.

  Flynn had brooded darkly as Molly drove the Mini, unable to formulate any answers to the questions. As they walked, he began to talk falteringly – and didn’t even know why. He knew he shouldn’t be doing it but there was something about Molly that touched his inner being and, with all the events of the last few days, maybe it was time to let a few things out.

  ‘I’m not a killer,’ he began, ‘but I have killed.’

  Molly’s arm tightened.

  ‘I was a Marine, then a cop. I was in special forces for a time, then I was a cop. In special forces—’

  He tried to explain, but she cut him off and said, ‘Like what? SAS or something?’

  ‘Special Boat Service. SAS with dinghies.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Sometimes you are pitted against people who will kill you without compunction and you have to take them first. You don’t want to have to kill anyone but sometimes there’s no choice.’ He stopped, not wishing to expand further on that insight. What he had done in the SBS was for no one’s ears.

  ‘And that’s what happened to us?’ Molly asked.

  They had stopped walking. Now they stood side by side looking out across the grey expanse of Morecambe Bay towards the hills of the Lake District, which were just becoming sharp as morning continued to creep in.

  ‘You did what you had to do, Molly. Mike Guthrie showed you that.’ Flynn felt her tense up at the name of her murdered colleague. ‘As did your other injured workmates. These guys were happy to mow down anyone who stood in their way. That’s the equation, the balance, Molly. Yep, I’ve killed people and I had to kill someone yesterday. Him or me. You or them. It’s not rocket science.’

  ‘But I feel so …’ She struggled to find the words but Flynn understood.

  ‘And you should. Whatever you’re feeling, you should.’

  ‘But you don’t!’ she accused him.

  ‘Yes, I do – and some nights it comes back to haunt me, like a ghost with a gutting knife.’ He paused. ‘Look, Molly, I never asked for any of this. I never asked to become involved with the Bashkim family, nor for Brian Tasker to break out of prison with murder and revenge on his twisted mind. I know I should’ve held back from killing Tasker, and when or if Rik Dean catches up with me, I’ll face a court and take it on the chin. I lost everything through those men … but, hey, you know the saying. They pulled a gun, opened a door and guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was standing on the other side of it.’

  They sat close to each other on the sea wall, their feet dangling. Flynn had his arm around her shoulders and held her against him.

  ‘Just tell the truth about what happened,’ he encouraged her. ‘Don’t worry about me. You tell them what happened again and again and that process will help you deal with it, rationalize it, come to terms with it, then move on.’

  She nodded as he talked.

  ‘You’ve nothing to worry about. As that TV cop show says, it was justified.’

  ‘I’ll never be given a firearm again. I’ve already been suspended from the team … and I’m not actually sure if I want to pick one up again.’

  ‘They’ll let you back in time. When it all comes out in the wash, the department will realize they have a bone-fide real-life hero in the ranks, a valuable asset, someone who actually had to pull a trigger. You’ll be giving talks to trainees for years. Career sorted.’

  She chuckled. Flynn thought it was a nice sound.

  With painful difficulty, she turned her head to him, ‘You can come back to my flat with me, if you like. You could lay low there.’

  ‘Nah, thanks but no thanks. I have things to do.’ The potential of a warm body and solace through sex was appealing on one level, he had to admit.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Kick doors down – metaphorically speaking, or maybe literally.’

  ‘She was a lucky woman to have you,’ Molly said quietly.

  ‘But I wasn’t there for her. I feel like I sent her to her death.’

  Her eyes played over Flynn’s face. ‘Thanks for meeting me. I know it puts you in a delicate position, on the run and all that.’

  ‘Maybe best if you don’t tell anyone – now that would take some explaining on your part.’

  ‘I know, I won’t. Oh, just one thing: can we swap phones?’ She pulled the old PAYG mobile out of her pocket. Flynn handed her iPhone over.

  ‘I’ll ditch it soon anyway. By the way, that boyfriend of yours keeps harassing you on this number,’ he said. Molly’s mouth twisted. ‘I didn’t call him back to tell him I loved him.’

  ‘Mmm, I think he’s going to be hard work.’

  ‘Ditch him good and proper,’ Flynn advised, not for the first time.

  She nodded.

  Molly dropped him off outside the Hilton.

  He watched her drive away and she watched him in the rear-view mirror, through the cracked screen, distorting his image. He gave her a little wave.

  Both were certain they were unlikely to see each other again.

  NINE

  When Molly was out of sight, Flynn limped up to Carshalton Road looking for a green Ford Focus parked by the roadside. ‘T’ registered, he had been told. He found it straight away. Sue Daggert had been true to her word.

  The car was unlocked and Flynn slid into the driver’s seat and fumbled for the ignition key which, also as promised, was slotted under the passenger-side sun visor. He fired up the engine, which ticked over like lumpy porridge but sounded just about OK. Then he reached under the seat and his fingers brought out a very old-looking six-shot revolver of indeterminate make. Flynn flicked out the cylinder and saw six bullets loaded into the chambers, .38 calibre, which he ejected into the palm of his left hand to inspect them. They were commercially made, which gave them a good chance of actually working – always a bonus. There were no spares, so if it came to a shoot-out he would have to make each one count.

  He closed the cylinder empty and did a couple of dry-fires to check the mechanism was working. Although doing this was not good for a firearm, it was the only way of testing the weapon. It was OK. Then he checked the hammer action, thumbing it back one click so it was on single shot. He touched the trigger lightly and the hammer crashed into the empty chamber. Fine. Then he tried double-action and that too was fine.

  He reloaded, thumbed on the safety catch and weighed the gun in his hand.

  It was a six-inch barrel and cumbersome, not easy to conceal but it would have to do. Just as long as it made whoever it was pointed at shit themselves, it was OK by him.

  He wondered what its provenance was. How many bullets had it fired in its history? Had it taken someone’s life? Had it been used in robberies or drug deals gone bad? Were there ballistic reports out there that would be flagged up if he was forced to use it?

  Probably.

  Placing it back under the driver’s seat, he fastened on his seat belt and set off, calling in at a twenty-four-hour garage and an Asda superstore on the way
to make a few purchases.

  ‘Where the hell’ve you been?’ Alan Hardiker demanded of Molly as she inserted her key into the front door of her flat. He had appeared like a spectre but she had almost been expecting him so, while unpleasant, it was not a surprise.

  ‘Fuck all to do with you,’ she informed him.

  ‘I’ve left my phone in your flat,’ he told her. ‘I want it back; it’s my personal one.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. It’s not here, I can assure you,’ she told him, thinking this was just a pathetic ruse to gain entry again, pushing the door open, stepping inside with a little pirouette and slamming it in his face.

  She climbed the stairs slowly and painfully as the whiplash seemed to intensify.

  Inside the living room, she immediately spotted Hardiker’s phone on the coffee table, picked it up and pressed one of the keys, bringing the screen to life. She saw two missed calls and a voice message.

  With a sneer, she tossed it contemptuously on to the armchair and went into her bedroom.

  Steve Flynn had never heard of Mark Carter, the name of the big-time drug dealer given to him by Molly Cartwright. Once he had known every dealer in the resort when he was just a PC on the beat. He’d made it his business to get to know each and every one of them from street corner shit-heads to the guys – and the occasional woman – who controlled the localized businesses. When he gravitated to being a detective on the drug squad, his field of vision had widened regionally and nationally, his raison d’être then being to bring down the kingpins of the trade. Sometimes local dealers moved up the chain, but usually they got stuck where they were.

  It sounded as though Mark Carter was on his way up.

  When asked, Sue Daggert had told Flynn a little about Carter’s background – a young lad who had inherited his brother’s drug business when said brother was sent to prison for a very long stretch. This was all a few years after Flynn had quit the cops, hence his lack of knowledge about Carter.

  But Mark Carter’s life story didn’t actually matter very much to Flynn.

  He just wanted information – intelligence on this man for one thing alone, the kind of golden knowledge that only someone like Sue Daggert could provide. It was stuff that, had Flynn still been a cop, he would have chopped his right hand off for, figuratively speaking.

  After his errands, Flynn drove out to the south-eastern edge of Blackpool on to the notorious council estate called Shoreside. Flynn had dealt with many criminals from here, some of whom had turned a once-decent area into one plagued by drugs and crime, an estate where even a parade of shops had been demolished by rampant, uncontrolled kids driving out shopkeepers, some of whom actually fled for their lives.

  He drove on to the estate, past the concrete wasteland that had once been the location of the shops.

  He knew that, historically at least, much of the crime was controlled by the Costain family whose influence, according to Sue Daggert, was waning because of a concerted effort by the police under the leadership of a certain, but now retired, detective superintendent called Henry Christie. He had made it his job to dismantle the Costain operation and had made a pretty good fist of it, by all accounts. The Costains were in ruins but, as always happens in these cases, someone else had stepped into the void.

  Mark Carter.

  Flynn crawled slowly past the house owned by the Costains, a knocked-together semi which now looked dilapidated, helpless, lifeless.

  He continued on to the perimeter of Shoreside to Mark Carter’s house, where Sue had told him Carter lived with a girl.

  It was a semi-detached council house, purchased by the occupier and nicely done up. Nothing special or spectacular, just what a sensible drug baron’s home should be: under the radar, hiding the wealth.

  Flynn cruised past. The only obvious bit of money was the black Range Rover in the driveway, all greyed out windows and personalized number plate.

  So Mark Carter did like to flaunt some of his cash after all.

  The house was in darkness, no sign of anyone being up.

  Flynn parked up a few houses down the cul-de-sac and sat low in the car for about half an hour, slumped behind the steering wheel, using his mirrors to watch the house. A couple of cats sneaked across the road but there were no human movements.

  According to Sue Daggert, Carter had done some security work inside the house with doors, locks and blinds. It was therefore doubtful if Flynn could force his way into the property, nor was it likely that Carter would simply open the front door to a stranger hammering on it at any time of day, let alone at dawn.

  Flynn knew that his method of luring Carter out of his bed and house would have to be much more subtle, or brutal, depending on your perspective.

  Satisfied the cul-de-sac was unwatched by anyone, law or crims, Flynn did a three-point turn and parked facing out close to the junction. Then he quietly removed his recent purchases from the hatchback – a plastic petrol can filled with ten litres of premium unleaded, a cigarette lighter and a box of matches. He shoved the pistol into his waistband, pulled his balaclava over his head and walked swiftly to the front of Carter’s house.

  The Range Rover wasn’t really parked on a driveway, just a section of the front garden that had been flattened and laid with a few paving stones to accommodate the beast off the road.

  Flynn knew there was no telling how such a thing as this would pan out, but he had to give it a try.

  He quickly splashed petrol all over the lovely car, instantly seeing the fuel begin to burn the paintwork like acid. He finished by pouring a puddle underneath the petrol tank at the rear of the car.

  Then he tossed a lighted match under it.

  Almost instantly, the fuel erupted into flame with a maniac crackle and then, with a breathtaking whoosh, the whole vehicle was engulfed in blue and orange dancing flames and the pool of fuel under the car caught light with a guttural roar.

  Flynn had quickly retreated to the corner of the house, out of direct line of the flames, but even so he was amazed by the heat generated, which sent a wave of boiling air spiralling around him.

  He wasn’t too concerned that the car might explode. As a cop, he had seen many stolen then abandoned cars go up in flames and never once blow up. It took a particular set of circumstances, mainly associated with trapped vapour, to make petrol explode, and setting fire to a car rarely had that effect. It was often spectacular but rarely dangerous if you kept your distance.

  Once he was happy the vehicle was well alight, Flynn swung around to the front door and began to beat it with his fists and feet.

  Behind him, the flames licked high. The heat was almost singeing his back.

  He continued to whack the door.

  An upstairs light came on. A face appeared through a crack in the curtains at the bedroom window. A shout. More lights. The sound of footsteps rushing down stairs.

  The car fizzled and burned.

  Flynn thumped the door again. A key turned.

  Flynn swung away just as the door opened and the dancing flames lit up the face of a young man dressed in a baggy T-shirt and shorts with a frightened-looking woman behind him, gripping a tiny, yapping dog of some sort to her bosom.

  ‘Jesus, shit!’ the man blurted, stepping out barefoot on to the front step, but then crumpled to his knees as Flynn came at him from the side and smashed the old revolver on to the back of his head with just enough force, Flynn hoped, to poleaxe him and keep him unconscious long enough to haul him to the Ford Focus.

  Behind him, the young woman’s screams mingled badly with the howling of her pooch.

  With his free hand flat against her chest, Flynn pushed her roughly back into the hall.

  She stumbled back and Flynn grabbed the unfastened cord of her dressing gown and yanked it out of the loops before bending down over the unconscious man’s feet, lifting them and dragging him down the garden away from the burning car. He was light, nothing like a 1,000-pound heavy marlin. At the back of the car, he opened the hatchback and
lifted him in, then used the dressinggown cord to quickly bind his wrists to his ankles before slamming down the lid and jumping in the car.

  As he drove off the estate, Flynn did not see any of the emergency services on their way. He knew that around here dialling 999 was the last thing most people wanted to do because it got them involved, which was not good. Most would happily watch the Range Rover burn and forget they might have seen a man being abducted from his own house. In fact, Flynn was counting on it.

  Blood streaked down Mark Carter’s face. There was a gaping, ugly wound on the back of his head, exposing the shiny blue-grey of the skull under the scalp. It would require many stitches. His eyes, caked in drying blood, opened and, despite the pain and predicament, he glowered at the menacing figure of Steve Flynn standing in front of him.

  Carter looked around, working out where he was.

  He was sitting on the ground propped up against the front wheel of a car. His hands were bound tightly behind him. The car was on an unlit road bounded by trees with the glimmer of light beyond from a series of buildings that Carter recognized as the eastern side of Blackpool Victoria Hospital. He knew the resort well. He’d been brought up here, spending many of his younger years bike-riding around with mates.

  The screech of a monkey confirmed the location.

  Then the deep, throaty roar of a lion.

  He was sitting on his backside leaning against a car on the road leading up to Blackpool Zoo.

  All this was mind-processed quickly.

  ‘Fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ he growled at the silhouette.

  Flynn had now removed the old balaclava and his face, though in shadow, was revealed to Carter.

  Flynn slowly squatted down on his haunches in front of Carter, careful not to split open his bullet wound again. He was just slightly above Carter’s eye level, keeping the psychological and physical advantage.

  ‘You set my car on fire.’

  ‘Attention-grabber,’ Flynn said.

  ‘You got it,’ Carter said pragmatically. Until he knew where this was going, he would play the game and hold back on threats. He had become a negotiator and businessman and had risen to prominence with very little violence, but if there had to be some he could dish it out if necessary. ‘What d’you want? I don’t even know you.’