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  Flynn realized he needed to get moving, to start to stretch his limbs and muscles, to get himself in action again, and being chained to a bed was not the best way to recuperate.

  When a nurse came in to check his drip and vitals and make him comfortable, he refused a bed bath and requested a proper shower instead. She didn’t have a problem with it – but he was still hooked up to the monitors and drip, although the urinary catheter and tube from his leg wound had been removed, so he would have to somehow shower while still attached to the drip.

  The armed cop, by the name of Mike Guthrie, was not happy.

  ‘I’m beginning to reek,’ Flynn argued. ‘I’ve not been discharged, I’m still a patient and I want a shower. Speak to Superintendent Dean. He’ll OK it.’ Flynn glared at Guthrie, and then smiled sweetly at the nurse and urged her, ‘Tell him.’

  ‘He really needs to start moving,’ she said on the prompt.

  ‘I’ll check,’ Guthrie said unenthusiastically.

  ‘Thanks,’ Flynn said to the nurse. ‘Any chance of a bite to eat, too? I know it’s not feeding time …’

  ‘I’ll see what I can rustle up,’ she promised.

  Guthrie stood aside for her to leave the room, then straddled the threshold of the open door as he called Rik Dean via his personal radio, which also doubled as a mobile phone as well as having the facility to dial up other officers directly by just inputting their collar numbers.

  The other officer stationed in the corridor watched impassively.

  Flynn didn’t like him much, either.

  Flynn listened, up to the point where Guthrie came over, held out the radio and said, ‘Mr Dean wants to talk to you.’

  Flynn took it and said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Flynn?’ Rik Dean said, his voice sounding strained. ‘Have your fucking shower, but promise me you won’t do anything nuts – like do a runner.’

  ‘I won’t. Not capable, as you know, having been seriously wounded.’

  ‘Give the radio back to the officer.’

  ‘One thing,’ Flynn said quickly.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Going to need clothing. What I had on won’t do. All bloody and I guess you’ll want it for forensic anyway?’

  ‘There’s a zoot suit on its way up to you for when you’re discharged.’

  ‘Shit. Thanks a mill.’

  Flynn handed the radio back to Guthrie.

  Some food came for him – a red-hot microwaved Cornish pasty, which he wolfed down with a mug of tea that tasted like nectar.

  After this he looked plaintively at Guthrie, then rattled the handcuff around his wrist, clanking it on the bed frame. ‘The shower won’t come to me.’

  Clearly unhappy, the PC released him and the nurse disconnected him from his monitors and drips, saying he should be OK to take a shower because of the cannula in the back of his hand, but would need to be hooked up as soon as he was back in bed. Flynn sat upright, stiffly, on the edge of the bed, carefully allowing his feet to dangle. The nurse covered the dressing over the gunshot with a waterproof bandage, then Flynn slid apprehensively on to his feet, swaying slightly as he got his balance and winced with the pain from the wound which, so far, had not had any pressure on it since the operation.

  He sat back down again quickly.

  Guthrie grinned at him. ‘Bed bath?’ he suggested.

  ‘Uh-huh, shower time,’ Flynn said and pushed himself determinedly back upright.

  The shower room was a little further down the corridor and it was here, with sour-faced Guthrie standing behind him, that Flynn was taking a long, considered look at his reflection, interrupted by the officer’s impatient geeing-on.

  ‘Privacy,’ Flynn said.

  ‘Not gonna be any of that,’ Guthrie snorted. He had apparently taken a dislike to Flynn, as Flynn had to him, so the feelings were mutual. There was no particular reason for it, it simply existed.

  ‘Fine,’ Flynn said haughtily. He pulled the fastening of the surgical gown. It split open down the back to reveal his buttocks, then he allowed it to slide to the floor and pool around his ankles. He stepped out of the circle of the material, glanced at Guthrie, gave him a salacious wink as his genitals swung loosely into view – Guthrie rolling his eyes at the gesture – and stepped into the shower cubicle that Guthrie had checked for any possible weapons. There was only a bar of harsh, unscented soap.

  At first, the water was freezing cold. Flynn jolted with the icy chill, but gradually it heated up and Flynn lifted his face into the jets and allowed the hot water to mingle with his tears as his thoughts once more turned to Maria Santiago. Then to grief, then rage, then revenge.

  Flynn was a man who was unlikely to sit back and wallow because he knew, as he had told Rik Dean, that what he was involved in was far from over. He knew if he did not end it now – somehow – he would be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, because that was how the Bashkims operated.

  PC Molly Cartwright struggled to get Steve Flynn off her mind. Although she had only just met him and under very inauspicious circumstances, she had seen something kind and generous in him, together with the fact he was a bit of a bronzed specimen and a scarred alley cat in wolf’s clothing.

  Not that there was any way she could even contemplate getting involved with him other than professionally, but she was definitely drawn to him, even though he had committed the cold-blooded murder of a man in police custody.

  But was it so cold-blooded?

  Actually it was hot-blooded, driven by passion and anger, and although Molly would never admit it verbally, Brian Tasker had got exactly what he deserved. Surely any court in the land would see that. Yes, Flynn would have to be convicted of the offence but should be allowed to walk free from court under the circumstances.

  Now, if that happened, maybe she could start to think of Flynn in a different way.

  All silly conjecture, she chided herself.

  First of all, she had her own personal problems to sort out, namely in the guise of DS Alan Hardiker.

  Molly admitted to herself she was a poor judge of men. She should sever all connection with Alan and then take a vow of celibacy for about ten years.

  On handing over the responsibility to guard Flynn to another armed crew (including Mike Guthrie, whom she loathed), Molly had driven with her partner, Robbo, back to Blackpool nick and booked herself as off-duty. Her own car was parked on the secure police-only section of the multi-storey car park adjacent to the station, accessed by leaving the nick on the first floor, walking across the mezzanine area in front of the magistrates’ court and going through a secure gate on to the parking level.

  Her car was at the far end of a row, necessitating a fairly long, lonely walk in the poorly-lit concrete edifice to her ancient British racing green Mini Cooper.

  She thought nothing of it. She’d done it a zillion times there and back in the ten years she’d been in the cops, based in Blackpool for all that period of time.

  It was only when the shape materialized from the darkness behind her car that she suddenly felt vulnerable.

  ‘You scared me,’ she told Alan Hardiker coldly as his face came clear of the shadow.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he muttered meekly. ‘Didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Yeah, well, blokes hiding behind cars tend to do that.’

  She unlocked the driver’s door.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said. His apologetic voice had vanished.

  ‘Alan, you slept with at least two other members of staff and I’m pretty sure you’ve also been sifting money from my bank account. When my statement comes this week, I’m going to go through it with a fine-tooth comb. You’ve been using my debit card, haven’t you?’

  ‘Just for bits,’ he admitted. ‘We’re a fucking couple, aren’t we?’

  ‘No,’ she said contemptuously. ‘We’re not a couple and we’re certainly not fucking.’ She opened her car door an inch. ‘I’m going home, and don’t you dare turn up.’

  He
moved quickly and forced the door shut. His right hand shot up to Molly’s neck. He gripped her windpipe with his fingers, spun her around and crashed her hard against the car, pushing his pulsing red face up to hers, spittle flicking from his lips, terrifying her.

  ‘We are a couple,’ he hissed. ‘We help each other out.’

  She struggled to break free but he forced himself right up to her, keeping his fingers locked on her throat. She started to feel weak but then, with a surge of power generated by self-preservation, she manoeuvred her right leg between his and rammed her knee up, driving it hard and accurately.

  He bellowed in agony, released the grip and sagged away, covering his groin with both hands as he doubled over. ‘Bitch!’

  ‘The old ones are the best. It’s over,’ she informed him. ‘End of.’

  She yanked open the door and dropped in. The Mini screeched away on the shiny concrete floor, leaving Hardiker down on one knee, watching the back of the car swerve down into the exit ramp.

  ‘I’ll make you pay for that, I so fucking will.’

  He stood up slowly, slid his right hand down the front of his trousers and tenderly cradled his throbbing balls.

  Flynn stood under the shower, eyes closed, now thinking about his recent past and his unsolicited connection with the Bashkim crime family from Albania, a road down which he had not wanted to travel.

  They had initially moved in on his boss, Adam Castle, who had been the co-owner of the sportfishing charter boat that Flynn skippered in Puerto Rico, Gran Canaria. Adam had got into bad business debts but had turned to the wrong people for help – the Bashkims. His attempts to wriggle free had ended in his own brutal murder and Flynn being wrongly accused of it, which was the point at which Flynn met Maria Santiago, one of the detectives on the case. Flynn had found himself drawn deeply into the Bashkim web and had dealt with the situation as only he knew how – meeting force with greater force and ultimately being involved in the deaths of some Bashkim family members, as well as taking the opportunity to raze to the ground some of the Bashkim’s seedier operations in the UK. He had also blown up and destroyed millions of dollars en route to the crime family from a Mexican drug cartel.

  Naively, perhaps, Flynn had thought this was the end of the game, but as he’d delved into the violent deaths of some of his former cop colleagues who had formed the squad responsible for bringing down a man called Brian Tasker, Flynn had discovered that Tasker had got into league with the Bashkims, and together they had targeted Flynn and murdered Maria Santiago in violent retribution.

  Flynn had been forced, via an Internet video link, to witness Maria’s horrific death, watch her being decapitated and her head dangling in front of the lens, taunting him in the moments prior to his own death at the hands of Tasker.

  He had been saved by the intervention of an armed police team assembled by Rik Dean, who had arrested Tasker and the duo of Bashkim heavies just before Flynn was about to be killed.

  Although injured – he had been incapacitated by Tasker, who had shot him in the leg – Flynn had assaulted Rik Dean to cause a diversion which he used to climb into the back of the police van that Tasker was being held in before being brought into custody at Blackpool. And broken his neck.

  Flynn did not regret it.

  He was slightly sorry for headbutting Rik Dean’s lights out, but that was about it. Minor collateral damage, he supposed.

  He was definitely not sorry about Tasker, who deserved to die a slow, lingering death rather than the quick one Flynn had gifted him.

  Now, somehow, Flynn knew he had to find a way to conclude this horrible mess.

  ‘Oi, hurry up,’ PC Guthrie called, interrupting Flynn’s shower-time recollections. The officer was still impatient, making Flynn like him even less.

  Flynn picked up the bar of soap, rubbed it between his palms to make a lather and applied it to his scalp in lieu of shampoo, carefully massaging his battered skull.

  There were certain things he had to do.

  Up to that point, his conflict with the Bashkims had been simply in reaction to their actions. He knew a little about them but obviously not enough, and he had to change that somehow. Get to know his enemy, take the fight to them and either destroy them or make them see sense.

  He guessed it would come down to option number one.

  It had to be intelligence-led. The question was where did he source that intelligence from?

  Once upon a time, he could have called on the skills of a certain DC Jerry Tope, his old friend and Lancashire Constabulary intelligence analyst. But Tope had been on Tasker’s hit list and that avenue was no longer open to Flynn – to search police databases. He could do his own Internet searches, and indeed had done so, but there was no real depth to those findings. He needed deep intelligence, naming people and places, and he wasn’t sure he could achieve that alone.

  As he had revealed to Molly Cartwright, he’d once been a detective sergeant in the drug branch, but that was a long time ago. He had a network of contacts and informants which was also dated. No doubt some of the major players still existed, but he guessed he needed to speak to some of the new kids on the block and break their fingers for information.

  He let the shower run for a few more seconds, then stepped out naked and smiled genuinely at Guthrie, who looked ready to shoot him.

  FIVE

  It took over half an hour for the pain in Alan Hardiker’s testicles and lower gut to subside. He had considered following Molly back to her flat but dismissed it as a bad idea. One phone call from her to report his stalking her would be counterproductive. Not that he couldn’t have smarmed his way out of any allegation she desired to chuck at him, but it was something he did not need at this moment in time.

  Maybe later.

  He shuffled back to the police station, trying his best to walk normally. He took the lift up to the dining room, grabbed a mug of coffee and some toast, then sat alone at a table next to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of Blackpool Tower and took out his little black book.

  At other tables, a few uniformed cops were discussing the case surrounding Steve Flynn and Brian Tasker.

  Hardiker half-listened to the uninformed chatter.

  Instead, with a great degree of trepidation, he opened the moleskin notebook, read it, closed it and shut his eyes.

  Like many gambling addicts, he kept a close watch on his outgoings and winnings.

  His debt, in other words.

  His debt to several unsavoury characters operating in the underworld of Blackpool who did not care one jot he was a cop.

  A debt of £19,642.45 overrode that.

  Without doubt, unless he began to seriously service the debt then very soon he would be visited one cold, stormy Blackpool night by nasty men brandishing baseball bats and not afraid to use them.

  And that debt did not include the ridiculous amount he owed to three payday loan companies whose astronomical interest rates were crippling him mentally, whereas the baseball bats would cripple him medically.

  His coffee tasted bitter, his toast like cardboard. He consumed them perfunctorily, then stood up gingerly and walked back to the lift which he had to share with three uniforms still chattering about Flynn, Tasker and the two supposedly Albanian nationals in custody, suspected of murders surrounding the Flynn/Tasker debacle.

  It was nothing to do with Hardiker, professionally speaking. He was just a jobbing detective sergeant with few ambitions now, other than to feather his own nest. But as his ears homed in on some parts of the conversation about the Albanian mafia and rumours about their wealth, he became interested. The chatter went on to some rumours that there was a bounty on Flynn’s head for the things he had done to a certain Albanian clan called the Bashkims.

  The lift doors opened. The uniformed cops stepped out, leaving Hardiker alone. He pressed the button to take him down to the basement level where the custody office was located.

  His mind churned, working out the angles, the threats, the
benefits, because if what he had overheard was true, maybe there was something in this for him – but he would have to be clever and quick.

  The lift jarred to the ground; the doors opened with agonizing slowness. Hardiker stepped out, turned right then left into the narrow corridor leading to the custody office and beyond to the rear exit of the nick.

  Just before he reached the gate to the custody office, it swung open and a very stressed-looking Rik Dean came out, deep in conversation with a detective constable who Hardiker knew had been drafted on to the Flynn/Tasker investigation because of his interview skills.

  Hardiker stood aside as Rik Dean and the DC shouldered their way past him without acknowledgement, even though Hardiker gave Rik a nod and a ‘Boss,’ getting just a passing glance from the superintendent.

  Hardiker caught the gate before it closed and swivelled into the custody office which was, as ever in the case of the Blackpool custody office sausage machine, heaving with bodies. The holding cage was crammed; four prisoners were queued at the desk with their arresting officers, waiting to be processed.

  Good, Hardiker thought, knowing that the best place to hide was in plain sight.

  He scanned the prisoner board. Most cells were occupied.

  The ones that interested him were the two cells on opposite sides of the complex, as far away from each other as it was possible to be. Each one had the name ‘Bashkim’ felt-tipped next to it, both with question marks by the names.

  Hardiker’s eyes flashed around the busy room.

  Two custody sergeants were busy at the desk. Two gaolers were in and out of the cells’ corridor, keys jangling.

  Hardiker collared one, a civilian in a pseudo-cop uniform. His name badge said Gary something-or-other. He had been in the job six months or so and aspired to be a real cop one day.

  ‘One of the Bashkims, the one in cell twenty-two?’ Hardiker said, pointing at the board.

  ‘Yes, boss?’

  ‘Can you bring him to the fingerprint room? Superintendent Dean says he needs to be printed, photographed and DNA’d. Given me the job.’ Hardiker tutted and rolled his eyes, as though this was beneath him.