Loe raamatut: «Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller»

Chapter 2

The quarter of Peckham where Fairfax House stood was not the most salubrious. To be fair, this whole district of South London had once been renowned for its desolate tower blocks, maze-like alleys and soaring crime rates. That wasn’t the whole story these days. It was, as so many internet articles liked to boast, ‘looking to the future’, and its various regeneration projects were ‘well under way’. But there were still some pockets here which time had left behind.

Like the Fairfax estate, the centrepiece of which was Fairfax House.

A twelve-storey residential block, it stood amid a confusion of glass-strewn lots and shadowy underpasses, a textbook example of urban decay. Much was once made in the popular press of the menacing gangs that liked to prowl this neighbourhood, or the lone figures who would loiter on its corners after dark, looking either to mug you or to sell you some weed, or maybe both, but the sadder reality was the sense of hopelessness here. Nobody lived in or even visited this neighbourhood if they could avoid it. Several entire apartment blocks were now hollow ruins, boarded up and awaiting demolition.

At least Fairfax House had been spared that indignity. Darkness had now fallen, and various lights showed from its grotty façade, indicating the presence of a few occupants. There were several cars parked on the litter-strewn cul-de-sac out front, and even a small sandpit and a set of swings on the grass nearby, fenced off by the residents to keep it free from condoms and crack phials. Even so, this wasn’t the sort of place one might have expected to find John Sagan.

A high-earning criminal, or so the story went, Sagan would certainly value his anonymity. Unaffiliated to any gang or syndicate, he was the archetypical loner. He wasn’t married as far as the Local Intelligence Unit knew; he didn’t even have a girlfriend, or boyfriend for that matter. He worked by day as an office admin assistant, and as such seemed to lead a conventional nine-’til-five existence. This, presumably, was the main reason he’d flown beneath the police radar for as long as he had. But even so, it was a hell of a place he’d found to bury himself in. It wouldn’t appeal to the average man in the street. But then, contrary to appearances, there was nothing average about John Sagan. At least, not according to the detailed statement Heck had recently taken from a certain Penny Flint, a local streetwalker of his acquaintance.

Heck, as his colleagues knew him – real title Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg – was currently ensconced in Fairfax House himself, though in his case lolling on a damp, badly-sprung sofa on the lower section of a split-level corridor on the third floor. Immediately facing him was the tarnished metal door to a lift which had malfunctioned so long ago that even the ‘Out of Order’ notice had fallen off. On his right stood a pair of fire-doors complete with glass panels so grimy you could barely see through them; on the other side of those was the building’s main stairwell. It was a cold, dank position, only partly lit because most of the bulbs on this level were out.

He’d been here the best part of the afternoon, with only a patched-up jumper, a pair of scruffy jeans, a raggedy old combat jacket and a woollen hat to protect him against the March chill. He didn’t even have fingers in his gloves, or socks inside his rotted, toeless trainers. Of course, just in case all that failed to create the impression that he was a hopeless wino, he hadn’t shaved for a week or combed his hair in several days, and the half-full bottle of water tinted purple to look like meths that was hanging from his pocket was not so wrapped in greasy newspaper that it wouldn’t be spotted.

The guise had worked thus far. Several of the gaunt individuals who inhabited the building had been and gone during the course of the day, and hadn’t given him a second glance. But of John Sagan there’d been no sign. Heck knew that because, from where he was slumped, he had a good vantage along the passage, and number 36, the door to Sagan’s flat, which stood on the right-hand side, hadn’t opened once since he’d come on duty that lunchtime. The team knew Sagan was in there – officers on the previous shift had made casual walk-bys, and had heard him moving around. But he was yet to emerge.

Heck was certain he would recognise the guy, having studied the photographs carefully beforehand. Purely in terms of appearance, Sagan really was the everyday Joe: somewhere in his mid-forties, about five-eight, of medium build, with a round face and thinning, close-cropped fair hair. He usually wore a pair of round-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles, but otherwise had no distinguishing features: no tattoos, no scars. And yet, ironically, it was this workaday image that was most likely to make him stand out. In his efforts to look the part-time clerk he actually was, Sagan favoured suits, shirts, ties and leather shoes. But that wasn’t the regular costume in this neck of the woods. Far from it.

And yet this was only one of many contradictions in the curious character that was John Sagan.

For example, who would have guessed that his real profession was torturer-for-hire? Who would have known from his outward appearance that he was a vicious sadist who loaned his talents to the underworld’s highest bidders, and performed his unspeakable skills all over the country?

Heck wouldn’t have believed it himself – especially as the Serial Crimes Unit had never heard about John Sagan before – had the intel not come from Penny Flint, who was one of his more trustworthy informants. She’d even told Heck that Sagan had a specially adapted caravan called the ‘Pain Box’, which he took with him on every job. Apparently, this was a mobile torture chamber, kitted on the inside with all kinds of specialist devices ranging from clamps, manacles and cat o’nine tails to pliers, drills, surgical saws, electrodes, knives, needles and, exclusively for use on male victims, a pair of nutcrackers. To make things worse, and apparently to increase the sense of horror for those taken inside there, its whole interior was spattered with dried bloodstains, which Sagan purposely never cleaned off.

Penny Flint knew all this because, having offended some underworld bigwig, she herself had recently survived a session in the Pain Box – if you could call it surviving; when Heck had gone to see her in her Lewisham flat, she’d been on crutches and looked to have aged thirty years. She’d advised him that there were even medical manuals on the shelves in the Pain Box to aid Sagan in his quest to apply the maximum torment, while its central fixture was a horizontal X-shaped cross, on which the victims would be secured with belts and straps. Video feeds of each session played live on a screen positioned on the ceiling overhead, so that the victims were forced to watch in close detail as they were brutalised.

As he waited there on the semi-derelict corridor, and took another swig of ‘meths’, Heck recollected the initial reaction back at the Serial Crimes Unit, or SCU as it was officially known in police circles, when he’d first broken the story. Strictly speaking, a freelance torturer operating inside the underworld wasn’t entirely within their normal remit, but it was anyone’s guess how many people this guy had maimed and/or murdered. It was way too tempting a case to simply hand over. Even so, there had been understandable doubts expressed.

‘Why haven’t we heard about this guy before?’ DC Shawna McCluskey wanted to know.

Shawna had grown increasingly cynical and pugnacious the longer she’d served in SCU. These days she never took anything at face value, but it was a fair question. Heck had asked the same of Penny Flint when he’d been to see her. The primary explanation – that Sagan was an arch-pro and that those he was actually paid to kill were disposed of without trace – was plausible enough. But the secondary explanation – that he’d mostly tended to punish gangland figures who’d betrayed or defied their bosses, and so those who were merely tortured and released again would be unwilling to blab – was less so. Contrary to popular belief, the much-mythologised code of silence didn’t extend widely across the underworld. But then, Penny Flint had been the proof of that. From what she’d told Heck, she’d had no idea who Sagan initially was and had merely thought him another customer. She’d gone off with him voluntarily to perform a sex service, or so she’d expected. When they’d arrived at what she assumed was his caravan sitting on a nondescript backstreet in Lewisham, she’d had no idea what was inside it.

Perhaps if he’d simply beaten her up, Penny would have accepted it as justified punishment for a foolish transgression, but Sagan was nothing if not a meticulous torturer. In her case, after she’d recovered from the chloroform to find herself manacled and helpless, it had been deliberately sexual – the idea being not just to hurt her in a deep and lasting way, but to deprive her of an income afterwards. And that was too much to tolerate.

‘Why is Flint tipping us the wink?’ Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper, head of SCU, asked. ‘What does she have to gain?’

‘In this case I think it’s personal, ma’am,’ Heck replied.

‘That won’t cut it, Heck – we need specifics.’

‘Well … she wasn’t very forthcoming on the details, but she’s got a kid now. A baby – less than one year old.’

‘Bloody great!’ DC Gary Quinnell chipped in. A burly Welshman and a regular attender at chapel, he was well known for tempering his sometimes brutal brand of law-enforcement with Christian sentiment. ‘God knows what kind of life that little mite’s going to have.’

‘The first thing it’s going to get acquainted with is the Food Bank,’ Heck replied. ‘By the looks of Penny, she won’t be working the streets any time soon. Unless she can find some johns who like getting it on with cripples.’

Gemma shrugged. ‘So she’s got a child and suddenly she’s lost her job. Perfect timing. But how does grassing on John Sagan help with that?’

‘It doesn’t, ma’am. But Penny isn’t the sort to go down without a fight. She told me that if she isn’t good for the game any more, she’ll make sure this bastard’s put out of business too.’

‘So it’s purely about revenge?’ Gemma still sounded sceptical.

‘Penny’s an emotional girl, ma’am. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of her.’

It hadn’t been a lot to go on, but it had been a start. Heck had touched other snouts for info regarding Sagan, but none had been prepared to talk. At least, not as much as Penny Flint. She’d given them the suspect’s description, his home address, his place of work and so forth. In fact, just about the only thing she hadn’t been able to deliver was the Pain Box, which he supposedly kept in a lock-up somewhere else in South London, though its actual location was his best kept secret. They’d searched hard, but no avenue had led to his ownership of any kind of vehicle other than a battered old Nissan Primera, which he’d owned since 2005 and which was parked outside Fairfax House at this very moment. Of course, it didn’t help that Penny Flint didn’t know the vehicle registration mark of the Pain Box. It had been late at night when Sagan had taken her to it, and, not knowing what was about to happen, she hadn’t been paying attention to detail.

This was no minor problem.

Even the medical evidence proving that Penny had been severely assaulted was useless on its own; firstly, because there was nothing to physically link this act to John Sagan, but secondly, and mainly, because Penny valued her status as a cash-earning police informer, and had no intention of giving evidence herself – not in open court. The best they could do in this case was ‘respond to information received from an anonymous tip’ by stopping and searching the caravan for items intended for use in criminal activity, and then ‘discovering’ the many bloodstains inside it, which the forensics boys could later, hopefully, link to an extensive list of past crimes – in that event it wouldn’t matter that Penny wasn’t prepared to witness for them.

‘We need that caravan,’ Gemma said emphatically. ‘We could raid his flat, but what would be the point? If this guy’s as careful as Flint says, every incriminating thing in his life is stored in this so-called Pain Box.’

With regard to Sagan himself, it was highly suspicious how clean he seemed to be. No criminal record was one thing, but his employment, financial and educational histories were also unblemished. The guy appeared to have led a completely uneventful life, which was almost never the case with someone involved in violent crime.

‘What we’ve got here is a real Jekyll and Hyde character,’ Heck declared. ‘Openly a picture of respectability, deep down – very deep down – a career degenerate.’

‘Inspired comparisons with cool horror stories don’t make a case,’ Gemma replied. ‘We still need that caravan.’

Short of putting out public appeals, which was obviously a no-no, they’d done everything in their power to locate the Pain Box, but had still come up with nothing. However, when Heck went to visit Penny Flint a second time, now in company with Gemma, it was the prostitute herself who made a suggestion.

‘Why don’t I just piss the local mob off again?’ she said. ‘They’ll send him to teach me another lesson, and you can nab him.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Heck asked her.

‘Christ’s sake, Heck, this is easy. After he finished with me last time, I was half dead, but still conscious enough to listen to his threats. “If I need to see you again, it won’t end so well,” he said. And he really meant it, I’ll tell you.’

‘Who paid him to do that to you?’ Gemma asked.

‘Don’t be soft,’ Penny snorted. ‘I’m not telling you that.’

‘OK, no names, but what did you do to annoy them?’

‘Gimme a fucking break, Miss Piper –’

‘Hey!’ Gemma’s voice adopted that familiar whip-crack tone. ‘We’re not here at your disposal, Miss Flint. Our job is to enforce the law, not pay off private scores. And we can’t do that flying blind. At present we don’t even know who you are, never mind John Sagan. So the least you can do is enlighten us a little.’

Penny glanced at Heck. ‘You gave me your word I’d be immune from prosecution if I helped you out with this …?’

Heck shrugged. ‘Unless you’ve done something very serious, we’re only interested in Sagan.’

‘OK, well …’ She hesitated. ‘Doing a bit of delivering, wasn’t I?’

‘Delivering what?’ Gemma asked. ‘Drugs? Drugs money?’

‘Bit of both. You know the scene.’

‘And let me guess, you were skimming?’

‘What else?’ Penny’s cheeks reddened. ‘Hey, you’re looking at me like I’m some kind of criminal.’

Neither of the two cops commented, though both wanted to. Even so, she detected the irony.

‘Don’t get smarmy on me, Heck. Look at the state I’m in. I’m past forty. Even before that bastard Sagan tore my arse and pussy inside-out, how much shelf-life did I have left? Anyway, I thought I’d been careful. Thought no one’d notice me dip, but they did. And … well, you know the rest.’

‘And you’re seriously saying this firm would trust you with that job again?’ Heck said.

‘Yeah.’ She seemed surprised he’d ask such a question. ‘Sagan’s a scary guy. They’re sure I’ll have learned my lesson.’

‘And what you’re proposing is to commit exactly the same offence all over again?’ Gemma said. ‘Even though you know what the outcome will be?’

‘The difference is this time you lot’ll be sitting on Sagan, won’t you? You can jump on him as soon as he gets his caravan out.’

They were impressed by her courage – in fact they were quietly startled by it. Heck wondered if her desire for revenge was getting the better of her common sense, to which she merely shrugged.

‘Heck – we both want the guy gone. The only way we can make that happen legally is for you to catch him in the act with his Pain Box. This is the quickest and most obvious way to make that happen.’

‘Miss Flint,’ Gemma said. ‘This time you may have pushed things too far. He could just shoot you through the head.’

‘Nah. The firm I’m talking about like to make a show. Besides … Pain Box, gun? Why will it matter? Like I say, you lot’ll jump on him first.’

It had sounded simple initially, but of course there were complicating issues. Even if Penny Flint had been prepared to testify in court, the fact that, by her own admission, she’d been stealing from an underworld bigwig would have made her an unreliable witness. It could even have allowed the defence to accuse the police of conspiracy for ‘encouraging’ her to steal again. It was all the more important, therefore, that the team write up their interest in Sagan as an anonymous tip-off, and go solely on any evidence they found inside the Pain Box, keeping Penny out of it altogether. Despite that, the risks of using a female civilian as bait would be extraordinary. Since the operation had gone live four days ago, Gemma had assigned a round-the-clock armed guard to her flat – all covertly of course, which had added an extra dimension of difficulty.