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Kitabı oku: «The Killing Club», sayfa 2

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‘Aye, Pegasus Bridge,’ Blondie said. ‘That was where he won his medals. Remember my dad saying.’

Heck sat back. ‘I’d like to meet Ernie Cooper, if you don’t mind.’

The older PC shrugged. ‘We don’t mind. Why should we?’ He rummaged in his jacket pocket. ‘Can give you his addy right now.’

‘Might be easier if you were to introduce me to him,’ Heck said. ‘Help break the ice maybe.’

The older PC glanced at his mates as if he couldn’t believe the audacity of such a request. ‘Before or after I’ve had my nosh?’

Heck stood up. ‘I’ll probably need an hour actually. Can you meet me downstairs at two?’

‘Well … suppose I can put this lot away in an hour.’ The older PC indicated his plate, which was piled with chips, eggs, sausage, beans and buttered bread. In less charitable mode, Heck might have commented that considering his bulk, which, now he was seated, bulged over his waistband and utility belt like a stack of tyres, the guy would be lucky to live through the next hour, but that would hardly help.

Besides, his thoughts were now on other things.

Like the Leibstandarte.

‘What?’ Jerry Farthing said – that was the older PC’s name. ‘The Leibstan-what?’

‘Full title … 1st SS Division Leibstandarte,’ Heck said from the front passenger seat of Farthing’s patrol car.

Farthing drove thoughtfully on. ‘Nazis, yeah?’

‘Frontline shock-troops. Total fanatics. Most of them had been recruited from the Hitler Youth when they were still too young to see through the Führer’s bullshit.’

Farthing looked puzzled. Up close, he gave off a faintly sour odour – sweat, unwashed armpits. He hadn’t shaved particularly well that morning; his leathery, pockmarked cheeks were covered with nicks. ‘I’m sure this is leading somewhere … I just hope it’s worth it.’

‘There was one place where we saw the Leibstandarte at their best.’ Heck checked a mass of notes he’d recently scribbled in his notebook. ‘Wormhoudt. A farming area near Dunkirk. That’s where they murdered a bunch of British POWs with machine guns and grenades. Eighty men died … after they’d surrendered.’

‘Nasty.’ But Farthing still looked baffled as to how this concerned him.

‘That was in 1940,’ Heck said. ‘In 1945 it was the other way around. Then, the 1st SS Division were in the rear-guard as Hitler’s forces fell back into Germany. That April, quite a few of them got captured by British airborne forces at Luneburg. Ever heard of Luneburg, Jerry?’

‘Can’t say I have.’

‘Well … if someone else had won the war, it would have gone down as a place of infamy. It’d be regarded as the scene of a notorious war-crime.’

‘I’m guessing we got payback for Wormhoudt?’

‘At least forty members of the Leibstandarte were executed on the spot.’

‘What goes around comes around.’

‘Yeah. It was war. What’s interesting to us, though, is the method of the execution.’

‘Okay …?’

This train of thought hadn’t occurred to Heck straight away on hearing that Ernie Cooper’s father had been a commando in World War Two, or that Cooper himself was a World War Two obsessive. But then the word ‘para’ had been mentioned, and it had jogged Heck’s memory again – this time significantly.

The other thing, of course, was the wire.

‘The British paratroopers who grabbed those SS men made them run the gauntlet,’ Heck said. ‘You know what that means?’

‘Aye. Blokes line up on either side and hit them with rifle butts while they run down the middle.’

‘Rifle butts, spades, trenching tools, anything,’ Heck said. ‘After that – and this is something I knew I’d read about once before – they tied them to posts … according to some accounts, with barbed wire.’

‘Jesus,’ Farthing said. Then the parallel seemed to dawn on him. ‘Jesus! … Are you serious?’

‘Then they cut their throats.’

‘Throats …’ Briefly, Farthing was almost distracted from driving. ‘Okay, there’s a similarity with the way Nathan Crabtree copped it …’

‘More or less with the way they all copped it …’

‘Yeah, but that was probably nothing to do with Bert Cooper.’

‘On the contrary …’ Heck flipped a page in his notebook. ‘Bert Cooper’s unit, the 15th Air Pathfinder Brigade, were implicated. In fact, our Corporal Cooper was one of ten men arrested by the Special Investigation Branch. It was even suggested he did the throat-cutting. He was held for six days while the evidence against him was assessed.’

Farthing had turned a slight shade of pale. ‘And?’

‘He was released on grounds of “battlefield trauma”. Instead of being charged and sent to the glasshouse, he received four months “psychotherapeutic counselling”.’

‘And … where’ve you learned all this?’

‘It’s all in the public domain, Jerry … you have heard of the internet?’

Farthing shrugged. ‘Aye, but … even so.’ He clearly wasn’t enjoying hearing these revelations. ‘What’s it got to do with his son? I mean it’s seventy bloody years ago.’

‘Well for one thing, his son’s still got the knife. Or so you said.’

‘Hang on … we don’t know it’s the same knife. It probably isn’t.’

Heck glanced sidelong at him. ‘Seriously? Why else keep it in a place of honour?’

‘He told me his dad took that knife off a dead Gurkha at Medenine in 1943.’

‘Even if that’s true, doesn’t mean it wasn’t the weapon used two years later on those SS prisoners. Might even have been a kind of poetic justice in that.’

Farthing shook his head. ‘I’m sorry … this is a stretch.’

‘Well, let’s look at Ernie Cooper himself. You told me he’s got form for violence.’

‘Nothing serious.’

Heck flipped another page. ‘Wounding his wife?’

‘That was quite a while ago, wasn’t it?’

Heck read on. ‘1977, to be precise. He actually assaulted her twice that year. On the second occasion, which was so serious that she subsequently left him, he received a two-month prison sentence. In 1979, he served time again, this time six months for threatening to kill members of a local Irish family. Apparently the Irish dad had been mouthing off down the pub about the Warrenpoint massacre of eighteen paratroopers by the IRA, saying it was justice for Bloody Sunday. Ernie Cooper went round that night, banging on their door and windows, threatening to burn the place down while they were all asleep. Two years later, he got locked up again … drew a suspended sentence for assaulting a bunch of CND members who’d tried to lay white poppies at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.’

Farthing shrugged. ‘Aye, but if that was his last offence … I mean, 1981. It’s no wonder he’s not on our radar.’

‘That was the last time he got arrested,’ Heck said. ‘It wasn’t his last offence. Seems our Ernie’s a bit of a letter-writer. He’s had stuff in all the local rags, having a pop at drug addicts, prostitutes, child molesters and “bad families”, as he calls them. Saying they should all be wiped out, quote, “to make the streets decent again”.’

‘Alright, so he’s a right-wing nutter …’

‘He got cautioned only five years ago for forcibly confiscating some kid’s skateboard because he said it was annoying the whole street. He was also advised after another bunch of kids said he’d called them “dope dealers” and threatened them with a baseball bat.’

‘Okay, I get it. He’s got a temper.’

‘He’s also got a big bloody knife that was once used to murder a number of SS men,’ Heck said. ‘So what do you reckon, Jerry?’

Farthing nodded resignedly. ‘I suppose we can have another chat with him.’

Chapter 3

Time hadn’t made much impact on the Hendon district of east Sunderland.

It mainly comprised rows of age-old terraced housing, scruffy high-rise apartment blocks and the odd derelict industrial unit. A notorious area in law and order terms even during its docklands heyday, now it was largely unemployed, which made things even worse. The street they pulled up in was typical; a single row of houses facing onto a low-lying stretch of overgrown spoil-land cordoned off by a rickety old fence. The house fronts were black with grime, many of their doors dented and battered. It boasted ten dwellings in total and was bookended by two corner shops, which, as far as Heck could see, contained nothing but rubbish.

They parked Farthing’s Vauxhall Astra patrol car opposite number three, alongside the only gate in the fence. As soon as they climbed out, the September breeze took hold of them. There had been squalling rain that morning and the road was still damp, its gutters lined with puddles. Now the sun had emerged, but rags of grey, wind-tossed cloud were strewn across it, absorbing any warmth. There was no one else in sight. No curtains twitched either in the house directly facing them, or in those next to it. No lights were on.

PC Farthing knocked on the front door and waited, while Heck stood behind him. There was no response. The interior lights remained off. Farthing knocked again. Still there was nothing; not a sound from inside.

He glanced at Heck and shrugged. ‘Well … we tried.’

Heck ignored that, crouching at the letter flap and pushing it open. ‘Mr Cooper!’ he shouted. ‘This is the police. Can you open up please?’

Still there was no sound from inside. Heck tried again twice, to no avail, before straightening up.

‘Satisfied?’ Farthing asked.

‘Far from it. If you were under suspicion of murdering three gang members, and the police came round before you’d got a chance to do the rest of them, would you open the door voluntarily?’

‘You can’t be bloody serious … I only spoke to this fella as part of a house-to-house. To ask if he’d seen anything the day Crabtree got chased.’

Heck dug under his jacket and produced a folded document, scanning quickly through it. ‘We’ll never know how much he saw until we check him out properly.’

Farthing’s eyes bugged. ‘Is that … is that a warrant?’

‘No, it’s a beautician’s appointment. Course it’s a bloody warrant.’ Heck tested the front door with both hands, but found it unyielding. ‘This is pretty solid. Let’s try round the back.’ He set off along the pavement.

‘You’ve had a busy lunchtime, haven’t you?’ Farthing said, hurrying to follow.

‘Couldn’t have done it without you, Jerry. Told the beak about Cooper’s track record of political violence.’

‘Political?’

‘Picking on hippies and IRA supporters. Told him about that nasty knife you saw too. I’ll need a statement about that, of course.’

‘Jesus H … I told you that knife was an antique.’

‘A combat knife’s a combat knife, Jerry.’ They turned the corner at the end of the row, and entered a squalid backstreet. ‘Anyway, we’ve got the warrant now … and this is more like it.’

The rear gate to number three was missing from its hinges, revealing a tiny paved yard. Unlike the surrounding environment, this area was cleared and well-swept. A clothes prop was leaning against the coal bunker, with a basket of pegs next to it.

‘I’m not sure about this,’ Farthing said as they entered. There was a rear ground-floor window to the house and a rear door. Both looked to be closed and locked. ‘I don’t like forcing entry, even with a search warrant.’

In response, Heck rapped loudly on the rear door and shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Mr Cooper … we are police officers! This is really quite important! Could you open up please!’ They waited for half a minute. Heck tried again. A further wait brought no reply. Heck glanced at Farthing. ‘The occupier was definitely at home when you called this morning?’

‘Aye … he let me in, gave us a brew.’

‘Okay … well he’s pretty clearly absent now. Would you agree?’

‘Suppose so.’

‘Good.’ Heck put his shoulder to the rear door, and it crashed inward, its rusted lock flying off with the first impact. Inside, the house stood in sepulchral dimness.

‘Mr Cooper, it’s the police!’ Farthing called as they shuffled through a narrow scullery into a small, tidy kitchen. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises!’

There was no reply, but Heck glanced around. ‘Place is immaculate,’ he observed.

‘He’s always a well-turned-out bloke.’

‘Bit like a soldier, eh?’

In the hall, a shoe rack stood close to the door, on which Heck noted two pairs of muddy trainers. A raincoat was draped over the foot of the banister. Aside from these mundane items, this part of the house also looked neat. Its linoleum floor shone, as if mopped regularly. But the real surprise came when they moved sideways into the lounge, which in the past had been knocked through into the dining room to create one large living space, the walls of which had since been completely covered with sepia-toned news cuttings.

Fascinated, Heck’s attention flitted from one headline to the next.

Soviets launch winter offensive

British triumph in desert battle

As he’d heard in the station canteen, this was World War Two. Every aspect of it. But it wasn’t like a temporary display. The thousands of carefully interlocked cuttings here had literally been turned into wallpaper, incorporated into the fabric of the house’s interior. And it was a professional job; there wasn’t a square inch of plasterboard exposed. Heck glanced into what had once been the dining room.

Mussolini snatched from mountain redoubt

Royal Navy enters Pacific

Grainy images had been mounted to create maximum impact: frostbitten German troops surrendering in Russia; British tanks rolling over the sunburned plains of Alamein; U-boat survivors bobbing like driftwood in an oil-filled sea.

In addition, there were four framed black and white snapshots on the mantelpiece, each one depicting the same toothily grinning face: a young squaddie, usually with tousled hair and dust on his cheeks. In one, he’d been photographed in what looked like a desert graveyard, and had a small mongrel dog sitting on his left shoulder. In another he was hefting a Bren gun.

‘I’ve heard about living in the past,’ Heck said. ‘But this …’

‘Fuck!’ Farthing interrupted. ‘The knife’s gone.’

He was standing by the lounge sideboard, where other items of memorabilia were arranged. Two of these were cruciform medals done in black metal with white edging, attached to black, white and red ribbons – Heck recognised them as Iron Crosses, second class. In a glass case on the wall there was a faded red beret, with a silver badge attachment depicting an eagle clutching crossed daggers. Also fixed on the wall, as Farthing now indicated, there was a bent wooden scabbard, bound with black leather and clad at its sharpened tip with slivers of plate metal.

Heck didn’t need to be an expert to recognise the sheath for a khukuri. Though the knife itself was absent, its two smaller cousins – the chakmak and karda, utilised for sharpening the main blade, were still in place.

‘He might just have taken it to get it cleaned, or something,’ Farthing said.

‘That in itself would be a tad suspicious, don’t you think?’

Before Farthing could reply, a shudder passed through the house, and then another, and another. Heavy feet were descending the stairs, and at speed. Heck and Farthing both lurched to the lounge door at the same time, briefly hampering each other. When they finally burst into the hall, they caught a fleeting glimpse of a tall shape in a fawn tracksuit vanishing out through the front door, slamming it closed behind him. Heck reached the door first, but was briefly foxed by its special security lock. He twisted and turned the handle and hit the button repeatedly, all without consequence.

‘Here,’ Farthing said, pushing past.

He managed to get the door open, and they blundered outside.

The street was empty again, but two things struck them simultaneously: the front nearside tyre of the police Astra had been slashed to the ply-cord – as though someone had dealt it a passing blow with a heavy blade; and the gate in the fence opposite was now open and swinging.

‘Shit!’ Farthing shouted, heading across the road to his car.

‘What’s on the other side of that fence?’ Heck replied, going for the gate.

Farthing was now busy filching his radio from its harness. ‘What … oh, wasteland. Industrial wasteland …’

‘Can you get the car round there?’

‘Not without changing the tyre, obviously …’

‘Sod the bleeding tyre!’ Heck ran through the gate. ‘And get us some support!’

On the other side, a beaten earth path wove crazily down a shallow slope, looping between dense stands of Indian Balsam, their September seedpods now loaded to capacity and exploding as Heck barged against them. The path unfurled ahead of him for dozens of yards, but there was no sign of Cooper, which was disconcerting, given that he was in his fifties. Though what was it they’d said about him – that he’d formerly been an athlete? Heck swore under his breath. He’d known fitness fanatic coppers who were still ripped and energetic in their mid-sixties.

He fished his own radio from his pocket as he circled a thicket of hogweed and found himself following a rusty wrought-iron fence. Thirty yards ahead, there was a gap in this; on the other side of that, a muddy lane led beneath a dripping black railway arch. Heck kept running, doing his damnedest not to slip and slide in his leather lace-up shoes.

‘Alpha-Echo control from DS Heckenburg, Operation Bulldog, over?’

‘DS Heckenburg?

‘I’m pursuing a suspect in the neo-Nazi murders. I could use some back-up, and some geographical guidance, over?’

It was several seconds before he received a response, which was no surprise as the passage under the arch ran forty yards at least. When he re-emerged into the open, Heck found himself on a dirt track strewn with bricks and twists of wire, which led past a broken-down gate onto the forecourt of a nondescript derelict building.

‘Excuse me, sarge … can you confirm that you’re pursuing a suspect in the Hendon murders, over?’

‘That’s affirmative. His name is Ernest Cooper, male IC1, tall, six-two or six-three, late fifties, over.’

‘Whereabouts are you, over?’

‘That’s the problem. I don’t bloody know.’ Heck could have beaten himself up at that moment. He hadn’t even memorised Ernest Cooper’s address, and he’d dropped the warrant back in the house, so he had no point of reference at all. All he knew was that he was somewhere in Sunderland’s East End.

‘Can you contact PC Jerry Farthing?’ Heck hadn’t memorised Farthing’s collar number either, which was another black mark against him. ‘He’ll tell you where we are, over.’

Affirmative. Stand by.’

‘I can hardly stand by,’ Heck said under his breath, as he jogged through the gate onto a broad, cindery parking area. About thirty yards ahead, the scabrous edifice of the main building was visible. Its upper windows were yawning cavities. A protruding lattice of rusted metalwork ran along the front, about fifteen feet up; the relic of a canopy, beneath which wagons would have idled. Fragments of mildewed signage remained, but were unreadable.

Heck hesitated to go further. Was it feasible that Cooper, fit as he was, could have got this far ahead? The problem was there didn’t seem to have been anywhere else he could run to. It was all a bit worrying, of course, because if Cooper was the perp, and it now seemed highly likely he was, there were only three reasons why he’d run like this: either there was somewhere else he could go, some bolthole where he could lie low; his personal liberty was less important to him than finishing off the work he’d set himself, eliminating Nathan Crabtree’s gang; or both of the above.

In no doubt that he needed to catch this guy right now, Heck advanced towards the building, scanning it for any identifying marks he could pass to Comms. Most of its ground-floor entrances were covered by wooden hoardings, but the most central one had collapsed, exposing black emptiness.

He stepped through this, ultra-warily.

Total darkness enclosed him – but only for a second. Very rapidly, dimmer light sources became apparent, and his eyes attuned to an area that was like a small lobby, half-flooded with water, crammed with broken bricks and masonry. Anyone attempting to dash through here would likely have fractured an ankle. Instead, Heck tip-toed through it, balancing on planks and fallen joists. A secondary door led into a cavernous inner chamber, the entrance to which was only accessible at the end of sixty yards of cage-like corridor, lagging and bits of cable hanging down through its mesh ceiling.

Again, Heck halted. Going further on his own was asking for trouble. Cooper had the khukuri knife – and he was clearly a dab hand at using it. With a single blow, he’d disabled a police car. Speaking of which – Heck gritted his teeth with fury at Jerry Farthing. Any bobby with his experience ought to have known that checking damage to a company vehicle was of less importance than apprehending a suspect. In fact, he would have known it. The reason Jerry had refused to join the chase was a lack of motivation. Whether that was down to fear or laziness, Heck wasn’t entirely sure, but the bastard was clearly past his best.

Then, to his surprise, he heard the chugging of an engine outside.

He scrambled back through the brick-strewn lobby, and felt a vague pang of guilt at the sight of Farthing’s Astra wallowing to an unsteady halt on the forecourt, its front nearside tyre hanging in ribbons. He walked quickly over there. ‘Have you put Comms in the picture? I wasn’t able to …’ His words petered out.

Farthing, white-faced and sweating, climbed slowly from the driver’s side, while someone else climbed from the passenger side. The newcomer was slim but tall, about six-foot-three. He was in his late fifties, with lean, angular features and pale blue eyes. He had grey hair cut so short that it was really no more than a circular patch on top of his head, and a clipped grey moustache. He wore a fawn tracksuit, and a khaki belt, into the left-hand side of which the khukuri knife was tucked. This was a truly admirable object – its blade shone wickedly and there was a carved steel lion’s head at its pommel. But he also wielded a firearm: a Luger nine-millimetre, that most iconic weapon of the Third Reich, which he now trained squarely on Farthing’s head.

They’d been fooled, Heck realised. He’d gone straight through that gate in the fence without considering that their quarry might be somewhere closer to home – hiding under the police car perhaps, or squatting around the back of it.

‘Please tell me you managed to get a call out first?’ Heck said to Farthing.

But Farthing was too busy jabbering to his captor. ‘Mr Cooper … this is ridiculous. You’re not going to shoot us. I mean, come on, you can’t …’

‘Shut up,’ Cooper said, quietly but curtly.

‘Look, we were only here to ask you a couple of questions …’

‘I said shut up!’

‘Jesus, man … you can’t just fucking shoot us!’

‘Don’t do anything rash, Mr Cooper,’ Heck advised.

‘Rash implies unnecessary, pointless, futile.’ Cooper’s accent was noticeably Sunderland, but more refined than most. He waggled with his pistol, indicating that Farthing should walk over and stand alongside Heck, which he duly did. ‘I assure you, Sergeant Heckenburg … the action I take here today will be none of those things. Now empty your pockets, please. Every weapon you’re carrying, every communication device. I want them placed on the ground. When you’ve done that, put your hands up.’

Heck stooped, laying down his radio, mobile phone and handcuffs. Cooper watched him intently and yet unemotionally. His pale blue eyes were like teddy bear buttons; it was quite the most unnatural colour Heck had ever seen.

‘That looks like an original 1940s Luger to me, Mr Cooper,’ Heck said. ‘Another spoil of war?’

‘Inside!’ Cooper indicated the yawning doorway behind them.

Heck held his ground, fingers flexing. He glanced around. There wasn’t a building overlooking them. The only high points in sight were the towering hulks of disused cranes. Directly overhead, the sun had gone in, tumbleweeds of cloud scudding through a colourless sky.

Cooper pointed the Luger directly at Heck’s face. ‘I said move.’

Heck turned, hands raised. Farthing did the same, half-stumbling, the eyes bulging in his sweaty, froglike face.

‘I’m guessing you haven’t tried to fire that before?’ Heck said over his shoulder.

‘It’s fully loaded, I assure you,’ Cooper replied.

‘Yeah, but what do you think’ll happen if you fire it now … for the first time in seventy years?’

‘Keep walking,’ Cooper instructed.

Farthing whimpered as the dark entrance loomed in front of them. Heck glanced sideways; tears had appeared on the chubby cop’s milk-pale cheeks.

‘You still need a way out of this, Mr Cooper,’ Heck said. ‘Shoot us now, and what happens next?’

‘That hardly matters to you.’

‘But what about you? Won’t be much chance of getting the rest of Crabtree’s gang if you’re sitting in jail. It might be the other way around. Crabtree’s lot will have friends on the inside …’ Bricks and other rubble clattered under their feet as they stumbled into the mildew-scented interior.

‘If I feared retaliation, I’d never have embarked on this course,’ Cooper said.

‘And what course was that?’ Heck wondered. ‘Bumping off some Nazis? Carrying on your father’s good work?’

‘Father was the finest of the fine. During this nation’s darkest hour, fighting men like him shone.’

‘Pity he didn’t restrict himself to the fighting, eh? Pity he became a war criminal.’

‘It’s no crime to execute those responsible for heinous deeds.’ Cooper’s voice had imperceptibly tautened. ‘Father was always an honest man. He believed in justice and a firm response to wickedness. Along there … all the way to the end.’

They now faced the meshwork corridor with its hanging cables and rags of lagging. The open spaces beyond it were hidden in funereal gloom.

Farthing all but sobbed aloud.

‘And what wickedness were Nathan Crabtree and his cronies committing?’ Heck asked, starting forward, eyes darting right and left.

‘The mere fact you have to ask that condemns you … but their main fault is simply being who they are.’

‘You don’t share their views? I’m surprised.’

‘Which again shows how little you know, sergeant. Animals like that … they call themselves British. And yet they terrorise the weak, punish the innocent. They call themselves patriots … even though they defame our flag, besmirch our name …’

‘So how’d you do it?’ Heck asked. ‘Lure them to their doom. I’m guessing they didn’t know they had a runner on their hands?’

What are you doing?’ Farthing blurted, suddenly jerking out of his tearful reverie. ‘We don’t want to know, okay Mr Cooper? We don’t want to know anything.’

Cooper appeared not to have heard the outburst. ‘I propositioned the two henchmen. Made sexual remarks to them. One while he was using a public lavatory. The other while he was crossing a public park.’

‘As easy as that, eh?’ Heck said.

‘Dumb animals follow their instincts. As for Crabtree, I presented him with certain photographs I’d discovered on the internet. Offered them for sale to him in a pub. I knew he would pursue me for as long as was necessary.’

‘And in each case, when you got to the pre-prepared spot, you just turned around and pulled your Luger?’

‘The brutes are so easy. They were even easier to render unconscious. If your forensics people were ever to examine my khukuri, they’d find as many blood flecks lodged in its lion head hilt as they would in the grooves or bevels of its blade.’

‘They aren’t going to find it, Mr Cooper,’ Farthing said in an attempted manlier tone. ‘You have my word on that. Look … we couldn’t stand Crabtree and his Nazi pals either! We’re glad they’re dead. We weren’t investigating this case very hard …’

‘I’d like to believe you, PC Farthing,’ Cooper said, ‘I really would. But in modern Britain, the establishment – an amoral, drug-addled band born of the 1960s and 1970s, of whom you are the willing servants – have proved numerous times how uninterested they are in finding justice for the oppressed, and in fact have expended much more energy defending the rights of the vile. So no, I don’t believe you.’

Heck said nothing. They were now approaching the end of the meshwork passage, though just before that a sheet of grimy polythene part-hung down overhead.

‘Okay … you don’t like us.’ Farthing’s voice turned whiney again. ‘But what good is killing two bobbies? Look … I’ve got a wife and three daughters! What’s it going to do to them if they never see me again? How will they cope?’

‘Widows and fatherless children were left equally bereft in the years following the war,’ Cooper replied. ‘They managed.’

‘Oh, cut the crap!’ the PC snapped in a strangled tone. He swung sharply round, the eyes bulging like wet marbles in his pallid, frightened face. ‘If you’re going to do it, do it! Don’t bore us with your good old stiff-upper-lip “who-d’you-think-you’re-kidding-Mr-Hitler” bullshit!’

Heck spun around too, taking advantage of the distraction to grab the edge of the hanging polythene and yank the entire thing down; a crumpled mass of water-laden sheeting, which covered their startled captor head to foot.

Cooper didn’t fall beneath the weight of it, but it hampered him and blinded him. He never even saw the rocketing punch that Heck threw at his face, but grunted on impact. There was a splat of scarlet on the other side of the sheeting, and yet he remained upright. Already he was fighting the encumbrance off, levelling his Luger.

‘Leg it!’ Heck shouted, snatching Farthing by the sleeve.

‘What … where to?’

‘Anywhere! Just bloody leg it!’

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₺209,88
Yaş sınırı:
0+
Litres'teki yayın tarihi:
17 mayıs 2019
Hacim:
444 s. 8 illüstrasyon
ISBN:
9780007551262
Telif hakkı:
HarperCollins
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