Headhunter Read online

  ‘I’m in the shit, though, brave or not.’

  ‘No one can blame you for what you did.’

  ‘Even giving Flynn my gun?’

  ‘Even that. Under the circumstances, it was reasonable … trust me.’

  She wasn’t convinced and had been wavering inside about it since her interview with Piss and Shit.

  Robbo sensed it. ‘You’ll have doubts, Moll, ’course you will. Human nature, but it’ll all turn out OK.’

  ‘Mm.’ It was a doubtful murmur. ‘I’m not going to be an AFO any more.’

  ‘You’ll be in demand, though,’ Robbo said. Then went quiet before saying, ‘That said, I won’t be either. I’m going to jack it in. It’s done my nerves, this … and I have a family to think of.’

  Molly touched his hand and he gripped her fingers. ‘You’re a good cop and AFO, Rob. I understand what you’re saying but I’d go into any dangerous situation with you behind me or I’d follow, you know that.’

  ‘I know, but something like this is a game changer.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Molly’s eyes began to moisten.

  ‘There is one thing, Molly.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Who knew we were escorting Flynn to Preston? Not many, I’d lay odds. It was basically done on the hoof, which poses a very worrying question to me, lass.’

  ‘Listen, Grandad, this man Flynn is very dangerous. Too dangerous. We should let it go now, otherwise other things will be compromised. We’ve made our point; let’s leave it at that.’

  Viktor Bashkim regarded his last remaining grandson with undisguised scorn. ‘You never had the stomach for this, did you?’

  ‘It’s not that, Grandad.’ Niko sighed down his large nose, frustrated by trying to get his point across.

  ‘What exactly is it, then?’

  ‘We are not in the Albanian hills any more. These are not the old days when you took a man’s life just for looking at you. Please, let this go.’

  They were on the lower rear deck of Halcyon, once more berthed in Zante. The evening was warm and the scent of hibiscus hung in the air.

  ‘You were always the weak one, Niko,’ Viktor said stubbornly. ‘Good at adding up the money but no real feel for the business.’

  Viktor had been sitting on a leather armchair, waiting for news.

  When it came, via Niko, Viktor had been of a mind to string up one of the staff and baseball bat him to death. Niko had managed to talk him down and try to reason with him.

  Now Niko’s eyes played over his grandfather’s face. ‘We have enough assets now to live the rest of our lives in luxury.’ He stopped suddenly, realizing he had said the wrong thing when Viktor’s eyes flashed ferociously. But he went on, ‘You can live in luxury … you live in luxury …’ He waved his hands at the boat. ‘You don’t need anything else.’

  ‘And you don’t understand,’ Viktor said. ‘This has now become about pride and honour, not about the accumulation of wealth. This man has devastated my family, directly or indirectly, and I will only rest when he pays the price.’

  The cool box was on the deck next to Viktor’s feet.

  He slid his fingers underneath the lid and lifted it off.

  He looked down at Maria Santiago’s severed head. It was packed with ice that was continuously replenished, but the flesh was beginning to deteriorate and the aroma of death could be smelled against the scent of flowers.

  Viktor looked up at Niko. ‘You know what I want.’

  Niko nodded.

  ‘Bring me Mr and Mrs Jackson.’

  ELEVEN

  It was late and felt even later as Detective Superintendent Rik Dean walked into the Tram & Tower public house close to Marton Circle on the outer edge of Blackpool and ordered a much-needed pint of Stella Artois with a Bell’s whisky chaser and a packet of peanuts.

  Instead of letting the whisky chase, though, he swallowed it first because he wanted to clear his airways, nose and throat of the stench of death.

  Next he snaffled a palmful of peanuts then swigged about one third of the pint.

  Only then did he relax a little and glance around the bar, spot a deserted alcove which he made a beeline for, sat down and exhaled.

  He had been on a post-mortem marathon, lasting most of the afternoon and well into the evening.

  Three bodies – one cop and two crims, the latter still unidentified.

  It had been drummed into Rik Dean by his predecessor, Henry Christie, that there were some duties a senior investigating officer could not duck.

  One was delivering the death message to whom it may concern – wife, husband, lover, whoever; the other was to be in attendance at the post-mortem of the victim(s).

  Both duties were emotionally draining, especially when one of the victims was from the ‘police family’.

  Rik had taken it upon himself to deliver the message of PC Mike Guthrie’s death to his wife, now widow. It had been traumatic.

  That had been yesterday.

  Today he’d attended Mike’s post-mortem plus those of the two offenders who had been part of the gang that ambushed the police escort. One had been almost sawn in half by bullets from Molly Cartwright’s MP5; the other had massive head wounds from her Glock, fired by Steve Flynn.

  They had been relatively straightforward PMs, the causes of death obvious from the get-go, but they had to be carried out thoroughly and all forensic and ballistic evidence had to be collected for further examination. Post-mortems did not stop on the slab.

  He drank more beer and wondered how he had got through the last few days on such little sleep.

  The last thing he needed were three more bodies to add to the tally, those belonging to local drug dealers.

  Rik had taken and covered the call because he was on duty and the closest SIO, plus the Fylde was his area of responsibility, even though there was no way in which he could take on this new investigation and run with it. The plan was for him to cover the initial stages then hand it over to one of the FMIT DCIs – Jackie Dangerfield, a more than competent detective who was champing at the bit for a big job. Rik was more than happy to hand it over.

  He had dealt with the initial press briefings but Dangerfield would be handling everything else from now on.

  Rik had more than enough on his plate with the whole Flynn/Bashkim/Tasker scenario and did not have the room or energy to take on anything else, no matter how juicy it looked. And the Mark Carter triple killing looked very interesting indeed.

  He downed the remainder of his pint, bought another plus chaser and resumed his seat in the alcove, happy that the smell of death was no longer in his tubes. The beer and spirit tasted good but he knew this was his limit. He had to get home, get some sleep and be back at work at six a.m. the next morning to get his mind around the complexities of the investigations.

  There was a lot to do if he was ever going to bring down a crime syndicate such as the Bashkims, who were behind everything that Steve Flynn had been sucked into, confirmed by the phone call he’d received the day before from a man with an American accent and a conversation that revolved around the future of Flynn.

  Rik reached into his jacket and pulled out Flynn’s passport, flipped through the pages and had a very tough argument internally, one of many presently tumbling through his mind at that juncture, until eventually all thoughts came to roost on the moments prior to Rik receiving the phone call from the American, when he had been leafing through the custody records … At which point, as he sipped his lager thoughtfully, Rik’s phone rang again.

  In a similar way in which Rik Dean’s brain was in freefall, so was Molly Cartwright’s. There were two main threads, interlocking and twisting, which were causing her untold grief, confusion and suspicion.

  The first related to Steve Flynn and surrounded a conflict in her dendrites about him. Although fighting it, she did feel a huge attraction to him in spite of their age difference and the fact he was obviously a rogue. For some unaccountable reason, she had felt able to
open up to Flynn both when she was guarding him at the hospital and subsequently after the attack when she’d sought him out under circumstances that could have got her into very serious trouble (and still might), and driven him across the breadth of the Fylde in order to further unload her emotions on him. He had listened, given good advice, opened up to her a little and even turned down her genuine offer of a warm – but stiff – body for the night. His refusal had moved him even higher up in her estimation.

  But then, the murder of Mark Carter and his two heavies.

  That was where her respect for Flynn began to falter.

  Was it a coincidence?

  Molly seriously doubted it. In her lower gut, which ached like trapped wind, she knew Flynn had killed them because she knew he needed money in order to get out of the country.

  She’d been happy to gloss over the fact that Flynn had taken her mobile phone but now she realized she had to put a block on her feelings for him. Her duty as a cop came first.

  The other conundrum sloshing around was Alan Hardiker. She was absolutely positive she did not love him any more, did not even like him after what she’d found on his mobile phone. What she had discovered on his work computer disquieted her – Hardiker searching the intel database for details of the Bashkims. It was just an uncomfortable feeling – that plus the very strange phone call he’d received on his mobile phone from abroad.

  That is why she then made a call to Rik Dean.

  She had an awful lot to confess.

  Flynn hadn’t really expected to hear from Molly again, so when she called he was quietly pleased, yet wary.

  ‘It’s me. I’ve got some stuff you might want to read,’ she opened up straightaway.

  After a short conversation and a lot of reassurance from her, he agreed to meet at her flat in Bispham later that evening, just before the witching hour.

  Despite Flynn’s cynical view of the police and their ability to catch crims, he knew he had to be cautious. Even if Molly wasn’t luring him into a trap, and he believed she wasn’t, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that she was under surveillance herself and didn’t know it. When something as serious as an ambush on a police escort happens, even the cops involved had to be thoroughly checked out and maybe followed. Inside jobs were not unknown – and in this instance, Flynn would have put all the money he’d taken from Mark Carter on very bad odds and still won. Details of the escort must have come from a police source, he believed.

  Finding it would be tricky.

  Molly had told Flynn what her movements would be that evening and he managed to pick up her tail when she left the hospital after visiting Robbo. He was in the ‘clean’ car that Sue Daggert had provided for him, but knew for sure this would be the last time he would ever use it. He had wiped it down and was wearing surgical gloves while driving it.

  He tailed her back to her flat and found a parking space close by where he could keep an eye on the door. Nothing occurred that gave him any cause for concern. No suspicious vehicles parked up and no one walked past, other than himself when he decided to stroll around the block to see if he could spot anything or anyone untoward.

  He was convinced she wasn’t being watched because, even in the world of hi-tech, the human element of keeping tabs on a target was still crucial and Flynn saw no such evidence.

  After one more drive around and one more stroll, with his newly purchased hoodie from Asda pulled over his head, he affected to walk past Molly’s front door, then, at the last moment, veered down the short path and rapped on the door.

  Seconds later, he was in.

  She looked even more wasted and drawn since he had last seen her in the early hours of that same morning. She was clearly on pins, had been crying and her hand shook as she gave him a shot of whisky. Her eyes seemed deep and hunted and, as much as Flynn was glad to see her, he was nervous, wondering if he had walked into a set-up.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ Molly said as he took a sip of the whisky then placed the glass down. She was standing just a couple of feet in front of him, looking up into his face. ‘Will you hold me again, please?’ she whispered.

  He nodded. They came together and he wrapped his muscled arms gently around her as she started to sob and he had to do his best to hold back his own tears. Now he was sure he had not been lured into a trap as he held her close, feeling the shudder of her body with the side of his face close to her ear.

  She exhaled long and hard, the breath juddering out of her before she pushed away from him. She tucked her hair back and gestured for him to take a seat, which he did on the armchair across from the settee where she sat.

  ‘Nice place,’ he said appreciatively.

  ‘Bijou, I think is the term.’

  ‘Whatever that means.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not sure either, but it sounds good.’ She coughed, cleared her throat. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Not much, Lying low, considering my options. You? I’ll bet it’s been a killer of a day.’

  ‘It has, more than you could know.’

  ‘Have you been interviewed by the IPCC yet?’

  ‘Yes, it was grim but, y’know, stuck to my story.’

  ‘Best way.’

  ‘And I got these for you.’ She pointed to the file on the coffee table. ‘From the intelligence database. Stuff that’s confidential and sensitive. Stuff I shouldn’t be showing you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It could put me in a very awkward position.’

  ‘I know. I won’t blab.’

  ‘There is one thing, though …’ She hesitated and her eyes became steely, like the cop she was. No pushover.

  ‘That would be?’

  ‘Mark Carter.’

  Flynn said, ‘Who?’ unconvincingly. He was a fairly simple man and did not lie well, often giving things away with his body language, as in this case. He dropped his eyes and shifted uncomfortably on the chair. Out of sight, his arsehole contracted. It was one thing making a denial over the phone; in person it was a whole lot tougher.

  ‘Mark Carter. Drug dealer, the one whose name I gave to you; the one who is now dead, together with two of his sidekicks.’

  ‘Oh, Mark Carter!’ Flynn shrugged. ‘Drug dealers end up dead. It’s a risk they run.’

  ‘I know I’ve already asked you, but did you kill him – them?’

  ‘How did they die, remind me?’

  ‘Shot to death.’

  He brought his gaze up level with hers. ‘I don’t have a gun.’

  ‘So did you or didn’t you?’

  Flynn sighed impatiently. ‘No.’ It was always best, as a solicitor friend once told him, to deny, deny, deny. ‘I don’t get where you’re coming from.’

  ‘I told you his name, now he’d dead. Just adding up, y’know?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Flynn said witheringly. ‘You’ve got something for me.’ He looked at the file, changing the subject without subtlety.

  Her mouth was pursed tight as she stared at him, then her shoulders wilted. ‘Yeah, stuff on the Bashkims. Quite high-level stuff above my authorization level.’

  ‘How did you get it?’

  ‘Logged in as Alan Hardiker. He once told me his password,’ she fibbed.

  ‘Clever … May I?’

  Molly reached out to get the file. Her fingers had almost got to it when there was a knock on the front door at the bottom of the stairs. She stopped moving like a mannequin, then tilted her head slightly. Her face was a mask of guilt.

  Flynn recognized it, tipped his head back and said, ‘You bitch.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Steve.’

  Flynn sat in the armchair with his head in his hands, cursing his naivety. He had checked the flat wasn’t being watched which meant his gut feeling must have been telling him not to trust Molly and he should have listened to it. She was a cop, after all, and her first allegiance was to herself and her job. Now he should be a hundred miles south of here on a coach or a train with the intention of blagging his w
ay across the Channel and into Europe. Not sat here being set up by a deceitful female, which is now how Flynn cynically thought of Molly.

  She had paused at the lounge door to look at him before going along the short landing and down the stairs to the door. Her mouth had popped open to say something contrite but no words came out because there were none to say. She knew what she had done.

  Flynn had almost reverted to his primal state because when his back was against the wall, his usual urge was to fight – and then fly. He didn’t want to hurt Molly so he decided to see how it panned out, understanding her perspective. She owed him nothing. She was a cop. He was a murderer.

  Fuck.

  He heard her footsteps clump down the stairs, heard the click of the latch being unlocked, then the creek of the door opening.

  Feeling like the worst traitor in the world, Molly unlocked the door, expecting to see Rik Dean. She was taken aback to see Alan Hardiker standing there, his shoulders hunched, his head angled towards her, his eyes glaring menacingly.

  ‘Alan,’ she said, but in a parallel thought she realized she’d shown her hand to Flynn by assuming it was Rik at the door. To find Hardiker there meant a very difficult time ahead with Flynn, who realized she had asked him there under false pretences.

  Hardiker’s hands were thrust into his trouser pockets. His eyebrows rose and fell. ‘Molly,’ he responded. ‘It’s me.’

  Already, his demeanour concerned her.

  ‘You’ve still got my phone.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry … things got busy.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘About what?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m assuming you’ve been through it, seen the photos? Especially after that little quip at Laura.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even with that one word, you’re a bad liar.’

  ‘Look, I haven’t been through your phone, but I have left it at work in my locker. Can I return it in the morning? I’m in real pain and need to get some proper rest.’

  Hardiker simply stared at her. ‘What were you doing on my computer?’

  Molly’s heart went cold. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The computer on my desk. In my office. You were on it this morning.’