Headhunter Read online

  He did some necessity shopping at the small Spar supermarket just behind the front row of restaurants and shops, then carried his four bags back to the boat.

  After informing the harbour master of his plans for the afternoon, he slipped his moorings and edged carefully to the fuel station, filled up with diesel and a few moments later was on the open sea, heading north, slowly opening the throttle while passing the Ses Estaques Hotel and making the boat skim the calm water, prow high and proud, Flynn at the wheel in his dark glasses, battered baseball cap, torn T-shirt and cargo shorts and deck shoes. He could feel the throb of the engines shooting through his soul, making him come alive.

  Maybe for the first time in days, his smile was utterly genuine.

  Leaving Santa Eulalia behind, he followed the coastline, passing between Punta d’en Valls and the privately owned island of Tagomago. He came in tight into the tiny bay of Pou des Lleo, translated as the ‘Well of the Lion’, one of Ibiza’s prettiest locations with great views of Tagomago. Flynn slowed, stopped and dropped anchor, and picked up a mooring in the crystal clear water. Once happy the boat was secure, he changed into his swimming shorts. After checking the dressing on his leg wound – now no more than big plasters – he dived in, going deep to the sandy bed, holding his breath until his chest began to cry out before propelling himself like a nuclear missile back to the surface, which he broke with an explosion of water. He bobbed for a couple of minutes, treading water, then began a slow, circular crawl around the boat, which he maintained for half an hour before dragging himself back on to the rear deck. He shimmied along to the foredeck where he laid out a towel, removed his shorts, laid himself out to catch the rays of the hot afternoon sun and fell asleep.

  He was back at the berth in Santa Eulalia by five p.m., sipping Spar own-brand whisky on the rear deck before venturing out for a meal from one of the many good quayside restaurants bought with cash stolen from Mark Carter.

  ‘He hasn’t learned,’ Molly moaned to Rik Dean, who was standing looking over her shoulder in an office in the FMIT block at police headquarters at Hutton, near to Preston. Lounging in a chair behind her was Karl Donaldson, his long legs crossed. Molly had been driven over to Hutton and allocated an en-suite room in one of the accommodation blocks at the training centre which she could enter and leave discreetly, just fifty metres from the FMIT block. That itself had once been student accommodation but had been commandeered and refurbished for the Senior Investigating Officer team which had eventually become FMIT. It was where Rik Dean’s main office was located, halfway down the first-floor corridor, and it had once belonged to Henry Christie. Since taking over, Rik had had the office completely gutted, refurbished and decorated at great expense to the taxpayer.

  Molly had been given an empty office on the same corridor which had computer links wired in, and she was now using a laptop provided by Donaldson. It seemed to have all the bells and whistles required.

  She was discussing Alan Hardiker and the fact he was still harassing her in spite of the meeting with Rik Dean.

  ‘He texted me four times, called me twice but hung up, also left two vaguely threatening voicemails and guess what?’ She had her mobile phone in her hand, thumbing through the dross from Hardiker. She held the screen up so Rik could see it – a photograph that Hardiker must have taken while sitting at his desk in the detective sergeants’ office of his open flies with his flaccid cock peeking out, foreskin pulled right back, in full colour, of course. ‘Not even erect,’ Molly said.

  Rik said, ‘Yuk. I’m really going to nail him to the wall when all this is done, possibly by his foreskin.’

  ‘Only if you give me a hammer too,’ Molly said.

  She had been glad to move out of her flat for the time being and into headquarters, away from any possible physical harassment from Hardiker. She had left her car parked in a non-police friend’s garage who was happy to let her do so without having to provide a detailed explanation. Although the facilities at headquarters were not five star, they were good and comfortable.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  Molly shook the computer mouse and a screen similar to a Google Earth satellite view came up, but it was the FBI version and it was live from orbiting satellites. It was almost a drone’s-eye view of the police station at Blackpool from which a tiny red dot pulsed a signal, letting her know that, at the very least, Hardiker’s doctored phone was there.

  ‘Still in work, by the look of it.’

  ‘And Flynn?’

  Molly typed in a command and the screen flicked to an aerial view of Santa Eulalia. Green and blue lights pulsed. One was from a restaurant on the quayside, the other from Flynn’s boat moored in the marina.

  ‘He’s using that one,’ she said, pointing to the blue dot coming from the restaurant. ‘He let me know earlier.’

  Molly had followed him, on and off, all that day, from his lunch at the Mirage to his boat trip to a secluded cove and now his evening meal at El Corsario Negro – the Black Pirate restaurant, wishing she was with him all the way.

  She didn’t add that she had done this, nor that she had zoomed in low for a view of the marina and the name of the restaurant he was eating at, though she could not see him because it was not a live feed as such.

  ‘OK,’ Rik said. He turned to Donaldson. ‘Shall we eat?’

  Donaldson nodded and stood up.

  ‘Keep us posted if anything interesting happens,’ Rik told Molly. They left her alone in the office where her task, as well as monitoring Hardiker’s and Flynn’s movements, was to delve into police and intelligence services databases across the globe to search for anything useful as regards the Bashkims via a special portal supplied by the FBI. It was a fairly vague task but it was interesting to learn about the extent of their operations. They were vast and lucrative. She was also following up and delving into murders committed by the unknown couple who were supposed to be working for the Bashkims and who could have murdered Maria.

  Molly wasn’t a computer geek but she had done a short spell in the Intelligence Unit in the aftermath of a miscarriage she’d suffered when she was married, something she rarely shared with anyone. It was a bleak part of her life that had played a major part in the breakdown of her marriage. In that time on the unit she had been taught by a certain DC Jerry Tope to interrogate databases. She was rusty but it was coming back to her.

  She leaned back and thought briefly about the baby she had lost. It was mid-pregnancy, there’d been ongoing complications from the start and the baby had been born almost fully formed but dead. She had named her Elise after her own mum and buried her next to her father’s grave.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, and rubbed her gritty eyes.

  That had been four years ago but the pain, though well hidden, was still raw.

  Her phone rang.

  She scooped it up.

  ‘Hey! You watching me? I’m standing looking up at a beautiful night sky, waving at the stars and the moon, hoping I’m being beamed to you by satellite.’

  Flynn actually was standing by the water’s edge, looking up, waving into the darkness with an iPhone to his ear and crowds of people on their night-time strolls splitting to walk around him but pretty much ignoring him. Silly people were not unusual in this part of the world.

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ Molly said. ‘No live link for this, just GPS tracking, so I know exactly where you are but not what you’re doing.’

  ‘Maybe it’s as well,’ Flynn said. He stopped waving. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Been moved to HQ and shoved into one of the rooms at the training centre for the duration, so I’m OK. Alone, but OK. You?’

  ‘Good, too. Any news on anything?’ He started to walk slowly along the quayside.

  ‘Nothing so far.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I know it’s inappropriate, Flynn, but I wish I was there with you … obviously only because I know you’ve been out on your boat today. I need a bit of warmth and I’m jealous.’

/>   ‘You wouldn’t have liked it,’ he said. ‘All that sun, all that seawater.’ Then he became serious. ‘And I know it’s inappropriate too, but your company would have been appreciated, Molly.’

  Both smiled at the thought.

  ‘How is the boat?’ she asked.

  ‘Spot on, like unleashing a tiger.’

  ‘And have you got any plans yet?’

  ‘No, other than to stay here a day or two to help out my mate with the boat hire business. It should give me time to get my head straight, then I’ll head back to Puerto Rico and maybe say, “C’mon, I’m here”, to the Bashkims.’

  There was a pause before Molly said, ‘OK.’ She hated the thought.

  The call ended.

  Flynn stopped walking and looked across the water, then up to the almost full moon again, which he considered howling at. He thought about Maria Santiago and Molly Cartwright. In his bones, he knew he was going to have to put them both behind him.

  Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, Molly thought about Steve Flynn, wondering how she could make it work.

  Molly spent another couple of hours sifting through various databases but feeling she was getting nowhere in a hurry.

  She had been looking at all the murders attributed to the couple and where possible had been scanning CCTV records in and around the murder locations, then looked at ports and airports but it was a huge, thankless task for one person who had a sore neck and back, both getting gradually worse from sitting around staring at a computer screen all day.

  She checked the locations of Hardiker and Flynn.

  The former, according to the pulse from his phone, was now at his home, a flat in a nice part of South Shore. The latter was on his boat, from which two pulses throbbed.

  That was if both men had their phones with them.

  She stared at the signal from Flynn’s boat, imagining being there with him, then she decided to call it a night. She hadn’t been told how long she was expected to be at the computer, but surely it wasn’t forever. She needed bed, urgently.

  As she was about to power down the laptop, the signal from Hardiker’s phone began to move.

  SIXTEEN

  Molly shot upright in the office chair and watched the beating dot travel along the road outside Hardiker’s flat then turn on to Lytham Road. She fumbled for her phone and called Rik Dean’s mobile number: no answer, straight to voicemail. Then she called Donaldson and got the same result.

  ‘How very fucking useful,’ she muttered crossly. Then, ‘Shit!’ and sat back down to watch the progress of the dot through Blackpool while calling and recalling Rik and Donaldson repeatedly and leaving messages on both their phones, plus a text to each: Call me.

  Not that Hardiker’s movements necessarily meant anything.

  He could be going to a club or maybe, Molly thought nauseatingly, meeting up with one of his girlfriends to compare genital shots.

  The blob travelled south along Lytham Road, then turned inland, east, on to Squires Gate Lane, a road which was essentially the southern boundary of Blackpool. She followed the progress past the airport and up to the roundabout where the A5320 joined the M55, at which point the dot, and presumably Hardiker, began to travel quickly along the motorway towards Preston.

  Maybe that was unusual.

  Molly phoned Rik Dean again. This time, it was answered.

  Problem is that when obsession takes over, coupled with power, it is very difficult to curb. Which was Alan Hardiker’s issue with Molly Cartwright. Sending subtly threatening texts and phone calls were things that gave him great pleasure, as did sending photos of his cock, because he knew the devastating effect it would have on her. Even though he’d had his warning from the superintendent, it was clear that Rik and the organization were firmly on his side and that both thought Molly was just an unbalanced female.

  That was why he couldn’t resist sending her a few more things through the ether, although he knew he would have to stop after tonight.

  He had the upper hand and didn’t want to lose it.

  Well, maybe he would stop using this particular phone, which he intended to destroy and cover his tracks anyway. He was lucky that Rik Dean, the stuck-up stickler, hadn’t even bothered looking at the content on it.

  He had certainly yanked the wool over that sucker’s eyes, Hardiker thought.

  He had been considering pulling the plug on the Bashkim connection, but when he had stumbled more by chance than anything on information they would pay dearly for – the possible whereabouts of the one and only Steve Flynn – that changed the game.

  After leaving Rik Dean that morning, Hardiker had bided his time at work, going through the motions, dealing with prisoners and delegating as much as possible. He was actually glad that he hadn’t been selected for the team to investigate Mark Carter’s murder, because that would have been full-on, taking up all his time, no excuses.

  He made the call at five p.m., brazenly using a work landline in the DS’s office. He was feeling untouchable.

  He believed this little nugget of information would be a nice earner for him. The Bashkims had paid quickly for his previous help – cash followed by a bank transfer, but Hardiker much preferred cash in his greasy palm. Everything electronic could be traced. As a one-off it was fine, but he didn’t want to take too many chances. This time it would have to be cash in hand. Any combination of pounds, dollars or euros would do, just as long as it all added up to five thousand pounds in total.

  The phone was answered; he made his pitch.

  Then he had to wait, holding the line for an answer, hoping no one wandered into the otherwise empty office, such as the DI, who had gone home for the day but had a nasty habit of forgetting things and coming back in a rush for them, dozy bint.

  The wait seemed never-ending.

  Then a voice came back on: a time, a location, a car make, a name and the promise of cash.

  At 11 p.m. he began the journey and twenty minutes later pulled off the M55 at the Fulwood junction, the Broughton interchange, and into the car park shared by the Phantom Winger pub and the Ibis Hotel, adjacent to the motorway roundabout.

  The pub was still open, busy; next to it, the lights burned at the Ibis.

  The car park was crowded, which was good because he didn’t really fancy meeting up with these guys in a dark alley. He had kind of done it once, had a gun pushed into his head and didn’t like it, so a busy public car park was good. He crawled around it in his car until he spotted an old Volvo tucked in one corner under some overhanging trees. He had been given a make and a partial number to look for and the Volvo was it. He swung nose first into the empty space next to it, got out and walked around his car to the Volvo, seeing just one person in it.

  Which was good.

  Two would have made him overcautious – one he could handle.

  It was a young man, good looking, fresh-faced, not really what Hardiker had been expecting. He thought he would have met a roughneck East European, brutish, square-jawed and unshaven. This guy looked like a soft-arse, more like an upper-crust Englishman and non-threatening, maybe a pushover in Hardiker’s world of racial stereotypes.

  The man reached over to the passenger door and stretched to open it for the detective.

  ‘Mr Hardiker?’

  ‘Yes … Mr Jackson?’

  ‘That’s me,’ the man smiled affably. ‘Why don’t you get in?’

  Hardiker did so and said, ‘You have my cash?’

  ‘I have. Right here,’ the man called Jackson said and handed over an A4-sized brown envelope which was bulky.

  ‘You won’t mind if I count it?’

  ‘Not at all, but it’s all there … in exchange for your information.’

  ‘I get it.’

  Hardiker opened the top flap of the envelope and peered in. It was dark, he could not see too much and to actually count it would have been almost impossible, but it was a big bundle of notes and looked to be all there.

  ‘Honestly, it is all there,�
� Mr Jackson assured him. ‘Now, if you please.’

  ‘The signal hasn’t moved for an hour,’ Molly said.

  She, Rik and Donaldson were staring at the blinking dot on the computer screen, the emission from the tracker that Rik had got the technical services department to fit into Hardiker’s phone.

  ‘Close in on it a bit more,’ Rik said.

  Molly clicked on a plus sign in the corner of the screen and enlarged the image, showing the signal was coming from the car park of the Ibis Hotel next to the Phantom Winger at Broughton. The image displayed wasn’t real time from a satellite and just showed a deserted car park surrounded by high trees in one corner.

  Molly knew the place well enough. She had eaten meals at the Phantom Winger and had once attended a murder at the Ibis. The car park was shared between the two establishments and there was a tree-lined footpath from the car park out on to the A6.

  So the signal from Hardiker’s phone, which gave the exact location, was from the car park and definitely not from the pub or hotel.

  ‘Maybe he left it in the car and has gone into the hotel,’ Donaldson suggested. ‘Or he’s gone with someone else and driven away.’

  ‘He could be shagging in the hotel,’ Molly said.

  ‘My interest is piqued,’ Rik said. ‘An almost midnight tryst … but with who?’

  ‘Let’s go sneaky beaky,’ Donaldson said. ‘Use my car.’ He looked at Molly. ‘Are you up for this?’

  ‘Definitely.’ She almost rubbed her hands together in gleeful anticipation.

  A couple of minutes later they piled into Donaldson’s Jeep and, ten minutes after that, having driven straight through Preston, he was pulling up on the car park, doing a loop around. Despite the hour, there were quite a lot of cars still parked up, suggesting the hotel, which was popular with travelling businessmen, was pretty full. Molly spotted Hardiker’s car parked under the overhang of some large trees in the far corner. Donaldson drove slowly past it, slotted into a gap opposite and stopped.