The Killing Club (18 page)

Heck flashed his ID, and indicated the wailing woman on the perimeter. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Oh …’ Bennett, who Heck now realised was even more harassed than he’d first looked, barely glanced towards her. ‘That’s, erm … Miss Entwistle.’

‘Miss Entwistle?’

‘She lives in the village. Her mother’s one of the victims here.’

‘For Christ’s sake, sir … you’ve got to get her away from there! We’re going to be working this scene!’

If Bennett was offended by such belligerence from a lower rank, he didn’t show it. Only slowly did he turn and signal that the civvie onlooker needed to be moved away.

‘Get rid of that scavenger too!’ Heck called to one of the armed PCs, nodding at the freelance photographer, who heard and made a bolt for it. ‘In fact, he might have tampered with evidence … arrest him for obstructing an enquiry!’

The armed officers took off at high speed.

Bennett watched all this in a kind of daze.

‘You Crime Scene Manager here, sir?’ Heck asked

‘Not really. Just providing a situation report for you guys. You’re SECU, did you say?’

Heck shook his head. ‘Serial Crimes Unit.’

Bennett looked nonplussed. ‘I thought SECU were taking this one?’

‘They are, but we may have an interest too.’

Bennett shrugged distractedly. ‘So long as someone’s coming. Don’t mind admitting I feel a bit out of my depth on this.’

‘I doubt there’ll be anyone who isn’t,’ Heck replied, rummaging in a box at the side of the drive, taking out some fresh Tyvek coveralls and climbing into them. ‘Just out of interest, sir … we’re in the middle of nowhere here. Who reported this?’

‘A poacher and his mate, would you believe. They were about half a mile away, back in the spinney, when they heard the shooting and the explosions. By the time they got here it was all over.’

Heck pulled on some shoe-covers and a pair of his own disposable gloves. ‘They didn’t
see
anything then?’

‘They say not. They’re at Abingdon nick now, getting debriefed.’

‘They’ll need checking for firearms residue,’ Heck said. ‘Just in case they’re not as innocent as they say.’

‘It’s being taken care of.’

‘No other witnesses?’

‘Not as far as we know.’

When they entered the house, they had to step warily. Smashed, smouldering items lay everywhere. A fog of acrid smoke still hung in the hallway. Myriad bullet-casings were scattered around the first two corpses, both of whom were women. Blood wreathed the walls and radiators.

‘No SOCO yet?’ Heck asked, moving from one body to the next. ‘No Photographic?’

‘En route,’ Bennett replied.

‘FME?’

‘Same.’

Heck glanced around. ‘This crime was committed over two hours ago. Did they all have somewhere else they needed to be?’

‘Yeah. We’ve had a busy night.’

‘Other shootings?’

‘No … but serious stuff.’ Bennett wiped a sheen of sweat from his pasty brow.

Only a couple of light-bulbs remained in the lounge, but these gave sufficient light to penetrate the veil of smoke. Again they had to tread carefully; no safe access-way suggested itself amid the blasted, bullet-riddled wreckage. The dead stiffened where they sat or lay, in most cases hammered to pulp by shrapnel and gunfire.

‘Butcher’s shop, or what?’ Bennett said. He looked queasy.

‘Tell me about the other offences tonight,’ Heck replied.

Bennett scratched his head. ‘The first was two bouncers in Oxford city centre. About eight-thirty this evening. They got dragged down an alley next to a bar, and had the shit kicked out of them. I mean literally … the living shit!’

‘
Two
bouncers? Must’ve been a heavy mob?’

‘They’re lucky to be alive, apparently. We’ve also had three muggings in the city tonight. No fatalities but all violent – brutal beatings. We’re usually looking at one of those a week, tops. There’s been a whole raft of burglaries too, an armed robbery at a corner shop, an attempted arson at a homeless shelter, and a young girl got attacked coming home from school. That was around tea-time in Beckley, which is only about three miles from here. The assailant dragged her into some trees, ripped her knickers off and gave her an arse-whipping with a willow twig. It was nastier than it sounds. She’s needed stitches.’

‘That
is
a busy night,’ Heck concurred. ‘Is it normally so bad around here?’

‘Almost never. Anyway … what’s all that got to do with this?’

‘Maybe nothing … but by the same token it could all be an elaborate diversion.’

Bennett remained blank-faced. ‘What do you mean?’

‘To ensure you lot couldn’t respond fast and team-handed to the main event of the evening. And if that’s what it was, it worked, didn’t it?’

‘Christ’s sake …’ Only slowly did the reality of this possibility seem to strike the DI. ‘Who … who the fuck are we talking about? A terror group, surely?’

‘Best if we save the hypothesis for later, eh?’

‘Well, this obviously wasn’t a robbery.’ Bennett indicated the jewellery visible on the women, and the watches on the men’s wrists. ‘That’s a Rolex, unless I’m mistaken.’

Heck bent over a heavy-set male body slumped by the right-hand wall; he was horrifically mutilated, a fork dangling from his mangled cheek. The watch adorning his plump wrist was a blue-faced Rolex Submariner. Five grand’s worth, easily. Even the average professional gunman should have been interested in claiming a prize like that. Of course, there was nothing average about these perpetrators. Masses and masses of spent casings strewed the floor – hundreds, maybe even thousands.

‘You ever seen anything like this?’ Bennett said. ‘I mean … ever?’

Heck declined to respond. His eyes had now come to rest on another door at the far end of the lounge. The door stood partly ajar, but not so that the large letters crudely carved with a knife or chisel on its smooth matte finish weren’t clearly visible.

BDEL

‘What’s, erm … through there?’ he asked.

‘Two more APs,’ Bennett replied. ‘What about that graffiti?’

‘Yeah … that needs looking at.’ Heck edged through, entering a conservatory lit only by the moon, though there was sufficient of this to show it had suffered marginally less damage than the previous room. Yet again, there was a wide-ranging scatter of shell-casings on its parquet floor, any one of which could prove a forensic officer’s dream. The only people who left this much evidence behind them were either novices – which this lot weren’t – or they didn’t care, which was probably a lot closer to the mark, and a whole lot scarier.

It was increasingly evident the Nice Guys had either undergone a conscious change of direction, or a change of management – or both. Whereas previously they’d specialised in erasing people without trace, now they left victims where they could openly be found and in a ghastly state of torture; now they indulged in full-on massacres. Yet Heck was certain there was more to this than mere recklessness. He had already mentioned to Gemma that he thought the Nice Guys were teaching people lessons. But maybe they weren’t just teaching their former clients, maybe they were teaching the police as well, and the entire British legal establishment.

You fucked up our former operation,
he could almost hear them saying.
You killed some of our guys and sent our top man to prison. Well, this is what happens. You mess with us and we leave a trail of blood and chaos like you never imagined. We run you from one end of the country to the next, and all the time we snatch those witnesses you tried so hard to locate right from under your stupid pig noses. And we’re gonna leave collateral damage as well. Anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Even Heck found the idea terrifying. But now was not the time for flipping out.

A huge hole had been smashed through the double-glazed wall on his left. When he peeked through it, he saw two more bodies lying face up on the outside patio. Both were grotesquely torn by gunfire; the recipients of multiple gunshots to head and body, which had all but eradicated their personal features, though it could at least be seen that they were male and possibly middle-aged.

‘These poor sods look like they were singled out for special attention,’ he said. ‘Separated from the others, brought in here … executed side-by-side.’

‘Maybe they just tried to run,’ Bennett said.

‘Maybe,’ Heck replied, not thinking that at all. He glanced back through into the lounge. ‘How many IDs?’

‘Couple. Some of the villagers have been in, identifying them.’

‘You’ve had some of the villagers in
here
?’

Bennett seemed to wake up at that, and abruptly looked irritated by Heck’s disapproval. ‘They were already here when we arrived! The poachers ran down into Stanton St John raising the alarm before we even got called!’

‘And I suppose you’ve got their details … I mean for elimination purposes?’

‘I’ve started a fucking log, don’t worry. Fuck’s sake, sergeant! I may look like I need my arse wiping, but I know my job, alright …?’

‘Alright, sir … apologies.’ Heck wasn’t particularly concerned that he’d offended the guy. But it was important for now that Bennett kept his head.

Still disgruntled, the DI leafed through his pocket-book. ‘The occupants of the house are Doctor Ronald Po and his wife, Nina. She’s in the kitchen. He’s one of those two out there.’ He thumbed the shattered window. ‘The one on the left. The others were dinner party guests. The one half-lying under the front door’s been identified as Mary Entwistle, another woman from the village …’

‘What about the other guy outside?’ Heck glanced back at the corpses on the patio.

‘Not much chance of facial recognition with that one, but he had his college parking pass with him. Doctor Anton Trevelyan … bit of a name in Oxford. Big noise at the uni. Apparently a good friend of Doctor Po’s.’

‘Anton Trevelyan,’ Heck said, wondering. ‘That name rings a bell.’

A voice called through from the front of the house. ‘DI Bennett? Deputy Chief Constable Ryerson would like access to the scene.’

‘What? No … no bloody way!’ Bennett retorted.

‘Well, can you come and tell him that yourself, please.’

Bennett grunted and headed off through the lounge, leaving Heck alone. He quickly dug his mobile out and tapped in a number.

‘Heck?’ came Eric Fisher’s sleepy reply.

‘You at home, Eric?’

‘Now … at ten to one in the morning, where do you think I am?’

‘Listen, mate … I need you to look someone up for me.’

‘Don’t tell me … Anton Trevelyan?’

Even Heck was taken aback by that. ‘Okay, I’m impressed. How’d you know?’

‘I’m psychic, what do you think. So psychic I can also predict that Gemma is gonna kick your arse into orbit when she catches up with you.’

‘She’s been looking him up too?’

‘Yeah. About an hour ago. Just before I came off.’

‘She got onto that fast.’

‘Give her some credit, Heck. It’s not every day we get people chucking hand grenades.’

‘Well, she’ll be glad to know her instinct was good. We’ve got the same Greek signature here as at the other scenes. It’s been cut into a door inside the house. Course, there are other vics here too, so we need to establish exactly who it was intended for. This guy Trevelyan rings a bell …’

‘Heck, dare I ask … are you in Stanton St John?’

‘Didn’t have much else on. Thought I’d stick my nose in.’

‘She’s still going to kick your arse, pal. Probably as a prelude to walking all over you with her four-inchers on.’

‘What happy memories that brings,’ Heck said.

‘Is this really a laughing matter?’

‘I wasn’t laughing, Eric.’ Heck glanced again at the bullet-shredded corpses outside. ‘Not at all. What did she learn about Trevelyan?’

‘He was arrested in ’98 as part of Operation Ripsaw.’

‘Yeah, now I remember.’ Heck recalled the details. Acting on information received from the US Homeland Security Service, various UK police agencies had identified several thousand British suspects believed to have accessed a network of American-based child pornography websites after paying with credit cards. Houses were searched all over the country, arrests made and masses of computer equipment seized. Multiple charges had followed, and in some cases significant prison sentences resulted for persons formerly regarded as pillars of the community.

‘Trevelyan was eventually bailed,’ Fisher said. ‘His gear was thoroughly checked and no images were found, so about four months later he accepted a caution.’

‘Would it be un-PC of me to say that makes him sound a likely candidate for the Nice Guys Club?’ Heck said.

‘That was Gemma’s thinking,’ Fisher replied.

‘She turn anything up on the other APs, specifically a Doctor Ronald Po?’

‘Nah … she looked him up too, but he’s clean.’

‘As far as we’re aware. Listen, I know you’re in bed, mate … but any chance you can give me five minutes? I need everything we’ve got on Anton Trevelyan.’

Chapter 15

The Trevelyan house was located in a quiet mews in one of the tree-lined precincts surrounding Jesus College. It was a tall, gloomy structure with an ecclesiastical aura: steep roofs and narrow, vaulted windows, behind which heavy curtains were drawn, though lamplight was still visible even at this ungodly hour.

Heck stood for several minutes at the iron front gate.

What he was about to do now was beyond the pale. This wouldn’t just be a bit of sniffing around on the edges; he’d actually be injecting himself into the very heart of an enquiry that quite literally had nothing to do with him. But no matter how hard he tried to persuade himself, he couldn’t just watch this thing from the sidelines. Gemma would go ballistic; that was a given. But she also knew his value, and if he embedded himself in the enquiry sufficiently she might just find it easier to bring him into it officially. Okay, in a way, he’d be bullying her, trying to force her hand, but it didn’t feel as if he had any other choice. He certainly wouldn’t be able to work effectively on other cases while all this was going on. And it wasn’t like it wouldn’t ultimately be a smart move, not when he was the only cop in Britain with experience of hunting and catching the murdering bastards.