Killing the Beasts (10 page)

The end of the afternoon and early evening was spent exchanging emails and the odd phone call with Ges and the London office. It was 10 p. m. in the Seychelles and 6 p. m. in England when Tom finally conceded they would have to call it a day and resume tomorrow.

In their bungalow he threw off his shirt and lay back on the bed, mind still racing. A light caress took him by surprise and he looked down to see Charlotte's fingers drawing a lazy circle across his stomach. Instead of instant stirrings of desire, all he felt was irritation at her touch. He turned away and, as her hand fell on to the mattress, he mumbled that the flight had finally caught up with him.

*

The phone began to blast out tinny music. Sly paused, the carapace of a live cricket held between one finger and thumb. At the bottom of the vivarium the tarantula's eight eyes fixed on the waving legs of the insect above and its own legs shuffled slightly in readiness for the coming meal.

When Sly saw whose name was glowing on the display screen, he dropped the cricket to its death, slid the hood back over the vivarium and picked up the phone.

'Hey Dan, where are yous?' Manchester accent almost pushing the words through his nose.

'Outside the building, man. You ready?'

He looked round the interior of his brand new Urban Living flat, eyes settling on the ornately carved wooden box sitting on the arm of the reclining chair that was positioned directly in front of the widescreen TV. 'Fancy coming in for a smoke or a toot before we get started?'

'Nah, man, it'll be light in a few more hours. Let's get going.'

Sly sighed and looked at his watch. 'OK.' Crouching down, he watched with pride as the spider crept stealthily towards the chirruping cricket, bunched legs rising and lowering as if controlled by a puppeteer's strings. Grinning, he stood up and put on a Helly Hansen jacket, then positioned a Burberry baseball cap over his ginger hair. After grabbing his little kit off the peg in the hall, he opened up the industrial-style metal door and stepped out onto the decking that bordered the feng shui courtyard shared by the flats in the renovated mill.

He glanced up at the sound of footsteps. Making their way towards him were his immediate neighbours. On seeing him, their conversation had instantly dried up.

He looked the woman up and down, sucked his teeth and raised a forefinger. 'Now I don't want you two coming back from your clubbing and rousing the rest of us with your boom boom music.' He smiled, knowing the reverse was usually the case. Avoiding eye contact, the couple huddled at their front door while the husband tried to get the key in the lock.

Laughing quietly to himself, Sly jumped down on to the freshly raked white gravel making up the Zen part of the courtyard and strode across its middle, his trainers crunching out a trail of footprints behind him. He could feel the couple's eyes burning into his back and he imagined how pissed off they must be – over a hundred grand for a one-bedroom city-centre flat and they end up with a gangster like him for a neighbour. Fuck 'em.

Beyond the front gate of the building, Dan's Ford idled on the street outside. Sly pressed the unlock button on the side panel and the gate slid slowly back into the wall. Stepping through, he crossed the pavement and leaned down to the driver's window.

'Dan, my man,' he said, letting a touch of Jamaican patois creep into his accent.

The black face smiled up at him and they pressed their knuckles together for an instant. 'Sly. Ready to roll?'

He nodded in reply, walked round the vehicle and slid into the front passenger seat.

'I thought we'd take a little drive out Wilmslow and Alderley Edge way,' Dan said. 'Our friends are still looking for BMW A5s, preferably black. Plenty of folks out there need them for getting over those nasty bumps in the Marks and Spencer's car park at Handforth Dean.'

Sly laughed, 'Yeah – or maybe we should find a footballer's house. Half those wankers playing at Old Trafford turn up in them on match days.'

The car pulled away.

'They still after Audi TTs?' Sly asked.

'Always.'

'Let's go via Didsbury, then. I want to check on that house from a couple of weeks ago – I've got a longer garden cane to play around with this time.'

Jon Spicer's radio finally came to life. 'Unit one here, we have a scrote alert. Blue Ford Mondeo turning into School Lane, two male occupants, passenger wearing a baseball cap.'

Jon was sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked Golf VR6. He'd been scanning the deserted Didsbury Street while listening for any sort of contact on the police radio for almost four hours.

Parked at strategic positions in the area were three other unmarked cars, each one waiting to catch a glimpse of the gang taking high-performance vehicles in the south Manchester area. Jon looked up. They were parked at the intersection of Atwood Road and Catterick Road, six streets away from School Lane.

The voice on the radio continued, 'Unit three, if he continues along School Lane you should see him on your right any second.'

'Unit three here; I'm looking,' Jon replied, leaning forward in his seat, eyes fixed on the stretch of road leading down to School Lane. Twenty seconds passed and no car crossed the intersection. 'Nothing has shown, Boss,' he announced.

'OK, units two and four, anything?'

Both cars answered negative.

'Unit three, have a little scout around. There's not many side roads he could have turned down.'

Next to him, Sergeant James Turner of the Tactical Vehicle Crime Unit took the last sip from a can of Tango, crumpled it and dropped it into the small box on the floor behind the driver's seat that served as their makeshift bin. He started up the engine and turned right on to Catterick Road, then on to School Lane itself.

He cruised to the end of Ladybrooke Road and was slowly turning around when unit one came over the radio. 'We have a member of the public reporting a prowler on Moorfield Road. Some guy fiddling at the letterbox of number sixteen.'

Jon flicked on the interior light to look down at his blown-up page of the A to Z. 'That's the next street,' he said, thinking the address somehow rang a bell. Turner accelerated back up to School Lane and turned right. As they were about to enter the junction for Moorfield Road, a dark blue Ford crossed the road in front of them and Jon caught a glimpse of the driver. 'The Ford has just crossed in front of us, going into Parrs Wood Road. One occupant only.' He craned his head to the left. 'Registration Alpha 478 ... I've lost the rest. Shall we go after him?'

'Negative,' answered unit one. 'We'll intercept him. Get to number sixteen and see what's happening.'

They had got halfway along the street, trying in vain to spot a number on any of the dark houses, when a car reversed sharply out of a driveway ahead. It quickly swung around, headlights sweeping across the front of Jon's vehicle, making his pupils contract so quickly his eyeballs hurt.

'Is it him?' Turner said.

By now they were level with the car. Jon looked to his right, saw the silhouette of the driver, a baseball cap on his head. He realized it was an Audi TT, and everything suddenly clicked. They were at Tom Benwell's house. 'Yeah, it's him! Turn around!'

Turner yanked the car sharply across the road and executed the fastest three-point turn Jon had ever experienced. As he was thrown back and forth against the seat belt, Jon said, 'Unit three here; we're following an Audi TT. It's turning left, left, left on to School Lane, repeat School Lane.'

Keeping in second gear, Turner floored the Golf and it accelerated up to forty in seconds. He shot out of the junction with School Lane, skidding slightly as the car veered to the left. Thirty metres in front the Audi suddenly bolted forward like a spooked animal.

The radio blared, 'Unit four here; we're at the junction of School Lane and Wilmslow Road. I'm parking sideways across the street.'

'Unit three here,' said Jon. 'He knows we're after him.'

A couple of seconds later unit four responded. 'I can see his headlights approaching! Come to Daddy you little bastard.'

The Audi showed no signs of slowing down. It raced past La Tasca's then, at the last second, cut up a tiny alleyway, joining Wilmslow Road metres away from unit two.

'Shit!' came the shout from the side-parked vehicle.

Turner mirrored the Audi's manoeuvre, bouncing out on to the main road. 'He's turned right, right, right on to Wilmslow Road, repeat Wilmslow Road,' announced Jon.

'Unit one here; no sign of the Ford. For God's sake maintain visual contact with the Audi. I've requested helicopter assistance for you!'

Turner raced along the high street, the trendy shops and bars thinning out as they left the village. 'He's heading for Kingsway and the motorway junction. We don't want him to make that – if he gets back onto home ground he can lose us in some maze of a housing estate, 'Turner said.

Jon nodded, eyeing the road as it opened up in front. They were now doing almost eighty, whipping past a church on their left. Suddenly the Audi began losing speed.

'What the hell is he doing?' asked Jon, unable to understand why the car should be suddenly slowing up. Turner was laughing. 'He can't find a gear, the prick.'

They had nearly caught up with him when the driver finally got the car in gear. But his speed had been lost. He turned sharply to the left, cutting between two traffic islands and into a narrow lane running alongside a huge cream-coloured pub.

'What the... ?' said Turner, screeching to a halt and spinning the wheel around.

'Oh, superb,' said Jon, slapping his free hand on the dashboard. 'It's a dead end. Just leads towards Didsbury Toc H's pitches. Beyond that is the River Mersey.' He lifted the handset to his lips. 'Suspect has turned right, right, right on to...' he looked up at the side of the pub as they entered the lane,'. . . Stenner Lane, repeat Stenner Lane. It's a dead end. Where's the helicopter? He's likely to be on foot soon.'

'About five minutes away,' answered unit one.

The Golf clattered along the uneven surface, its lowered suspension making every bump jar through the seats. Up ahead the red taillights of the Audi jerked up and down as the car also struggled over the cobbles. Suddenly the trees seemed to close in as a gate reared up from the darkness. Unable to stop, the car crunched into the thick gatepost at its side. The driver jumped from the car.

Thirty metres behind, Jon watched it all happen in the glare of the Golf's headlights. 'Suspect on foot, heading along the lane past Didsbury Toc H Rugby Club and towards the River Mersey.'

Before they had come to a halt, Jon's door was open and he was clear of the vehicle. Vaulting the gate, he began sprinting along the footpath, sets of white rugby posts just visible through the screen of trees to his right. He heard the sound of feet on wooden steps, reached them seconds later and bounded up. He was on a footpath. To his right he could just make out the dark figure running away, rasping breath clearly audible in the still night. He knew that up ahead a footbridge led over the Mersey to the next stage of the Trans-Pennine Way, a walk connecting Liverpool on the west coast and Hull on the east. 'I hope you enjoy running,' Jon shouted out, resuming the chase. 'You're on a pathway that's over three hundred and fifty kilometres long.'

Now gasping for air, it was the last thing Sly needed to hear. Worse, the pig who had shouted it didn't even sound out of breath. Emerging from the darkness in front was a bridge. He ran halfway out over the river and looked back. The dark figure was racing towards him. It looked like the huge bastard would never slow down, never give up. Sly's bottom lip began to go as a wave of self-pity welled up: he was going to be caught. He looked at the inky blackness below, climbed up on to the waist-high metal railings and leaped out into space.

Jon heard the splash and looked up. The silhouette had vanished from the bridge ahead. He got to the end of it, straining to hear anything. Silence except for the sound of the river gliding quickly past. He stepped back and went to jump down the grassy bank to the water's edge. The dark green cast-iron post caught him full on the left kneecap and before he knew what had happened, he was lying with his face pressed into thick grass that reeked of dog's piss. He had been kicked in the kneecap during rugby matches and knew that it was the next worst thing to being booted in the testicles. All he could do was lie still, clutch the sides of the joint in both hands and wait for the agony to pass. The searing pain didn't dissipate outwards or convert to a gentle throb – instead it remained concentrated in the bone itself, losing strength with the speed an oven cools down. Several minutes later he was able to hobble to his feet, just as he heard the thrum of the approaching helicopter. He realized his radio was in the car.

Tom was working in Daniel's office when his mobile rang. He glanced down at the phone's display and picked it up. 'Jon, how are you?'

'Fine Tom, cheers. Are you at work?'

'You could say that. I'm in the Seychelles, but believe me, it's no holiday. There's been a disaster at work.'

'Oh,' said Jon. 'I'm afraid I'm not ringing with good news either.'

'Go on. It can't get any worse.'

'Your Audi was taken off your driveway last night. I actually chased the guy. He crashed your car into a gatepost and, I hate to say, escaped. The car's pretty much screwed. It's in the police compound now, being dusted for prints.'

Tom let out a long sigh. 'They didn't do the house too, did they?' 'No,' said Jon. 'Just hooked the keys through the letterbox.'

Tom groaned. 'And you bloody warned me.'

Jon said nothing.

'Oh well, 'Tom continued. 'Cheers for letting me know. Look, I'd better go – there's all sorts going on.'

'OK mate, phone me for the number of the police compound when you get back.'

Two thirty arrived and with it Charlotte rapping on the door. Tom had spent the morning writing to his clients with the nearest deadlines, explaining their problems with the printers. He'd been able to speak with Ges at one o'clock, only to learn that the other two companies in the Manchester area with printers capable of producing building wraps were booked out for weeks with council-paid banners for the Games.