Grinton looked surprised. ‘All this groundwork and you don’t want to be in on the pinch?’
Heck shrugged. ‘I’ll be honest, sir: good show Devlin put on in there, but I don’t think Hood has any intention of going to Derbyshire. I reckon we’re being sent on a wild goose chase.’
Jowitt looked puzzled. ‘Why would Devlin do that?’
‘It’s a hunch, sir, but it’s got legs. Despite the serious crimes Jimmy Hood was last convicted for, Alan Devlin let him sleep on his couch. Not once, but several times. This guy is not too picky to associate with sex offenders.’
‘Come on, Heck,’ Jowitt said. ‘Devlin’s in enough hot water as it is – he’s not going to aid and abet a multiple killer as well.’
‘He’s in lukewarm water, sir. Apart from assisting an offender, what else has he admitted to? Even if it turns out he’s sending us the wrong way, he’s covered. It’s all “I’m not sure about this, I’m only guessing that” – there aren’t even grounds to charge him with obstructing an enquiry.’
‘We can’t not act on what he’s told us,’ Grinton argued.
‘I agree, sir. But while you’re off to Matlock, I’m going to chase a few leads of my own. If that’s okay?’
‘No problem … just make sure you log them all.’
While Grinton arranged for a couple of his plain-clothes officers to maintain covert obs on Lakeside View, the rest of them returned to their vehicles and mounted up for a rapid ride over to the next county. Jowitt was back on the blower again, putting Derbyshire Comms in the picture as he jumped into his car. Heck remained on the pavement while he too made a quick call – in his case it was to the DIU at St Ann’s Central. As intelligence offices went, this one was pretty efficient.
‘Heck?’ came the hearty voice of PC Marge Propper, a chunky uniformed lass whose fast, accurate research capabilities had already proved invaluable to the Lady Killer Taskforce.
‘Marge – am I right in thinking that, apart from Alan Devlin, Jimmy Hood has no other known associates in the inner Nottingham area?’
‘Correct.’
‘Okay … I want to try something different. Can you contact Roundhall Prison in Coventry? Find out who’s been visiting Hood this last year and a half. Any regular names that haven’t already cropped up in this enquiry, I’d like to know about them.’
‘Wilco, Heck – might take a few minutes to get a response at this hour.’
‘No worries. Call me back when you can.’
He paused before climbing into his Peugeot. The other mobile units had driven away, leaving a dull, dead silence in their wake. The surrounding buildings were little more than blurred, angular outlines, broken by the odd faint square of window-light, most of which leached into the gloom without making any impression. The passage leading towards Lakeside View was a black rectangle, which bade no one re-enter it.
Heck climbed into his car and switched the engine on.
It was impossible to say whether or not they were on the right track, but it felt right. He still didn’t trust Alan Devlin, but the guy’s partial admissions had revealed that Jimmy Hood had been in this district as well as Hucknall – which put Hood close to all the identified murder scenes and in roughly the right timeframe. Of course, with the knowledge of hindsight, it was all so predictable and sordid. As Heck drove out of the cul-de-sac it struck him that this decayed environment, with its broken glass and graffiti-covered maze of soulless brick alleys, seemed painfully familiar. So many of his cases had brought him to blighted places like this.
His phone rang and he slammed it to his ear. ‘Yeah, Heckenburg!’
‘We could have something here, Heck,’ Marge Propper said. ‘In his last year at Roundhall, Jimmy Hood was visited nine times by a certain Sian Collier.’
‘That name doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘No; she hasn’t been on our radar up to now, though she’s got minor form for possession and shoplifting. She’s white, thirty-two years old and a local by birth. Her last conviction was over five years ago, so she may have cleaned up her act.’
‘Apart from the bit where she gets mixed up with sex killers?’
‘Yeah …’
Heck fiddled with his sat nav. ‘Where does she live?’
‘Mountjoy Height, number eighteen – that’s in Bulwell.’
‘I know it.’
‘Heck, if you’re going over there, you might want to speak to Division first. It’s a lively place.’
‘Thanks for the warning, Marge. But I’m only spying out the land. Anyway, I’ve got my radio.’
The murkiness of the winter night was now to Heck’s advantage – mainly because it meant the roads were empty of traffic, but also because, once he arrived in Bulwell, he was able to cruise its foggy, run-down streets without attracting attention.
When he finally located Mountjoy Height, it was a row of pebble-dashed two-storey maisonettes on raised ground overlooking yet another labyrinthine housing estate. First, he made a drive-by at the front, seeing patches of muddy grass serving as communal front gardens, with wheelie bins dotted across them and rubbish strewn haphazardly. There were only a couple of other vehicles present, but lights were on in most of the maisonette windows. After that, he explored at the rear, working his way down into a lower, winding alley, which ran past several garages. Some of these stood open, some closed. The garage to number eighteen didn’t have a door attached, but was of particular interest because a large, good-looking motorcycle was parked inside it.
Heck glided to a halt and turned his engine off.
He climbed out, listening carefully; somewhere close by voices bickered. They were muffled and indistinct, but it sounded like a couple of adults; he wasn’t initially sure where it was coming from – possibly number eighteen itself, which towered behind the garage in the gloom and was accessible by a narrow flight of steps.
He assessed the motorbike through the entrance, and despite the darkness was able to identify it as a new model Suzuki GSX; an expensive make for this neck of the woods.
‘DS Heckenburg to Charlie Six,’ he said into his radio. ‘PNC check, please?’
‘DS Heckenburg?’ came the crackly response.
‘Anything on a black Suzuki GSX motorcycle, index Juliet-Zulu-seven-three-Bravo-Foxtrot-Alpha, over?’
‘Stand by.’
Heck moved to the side of the garage and glanced up the steps. The monolithic structure overhead was wreathed in vapour, but lights still burned inside it and the argument raged on; in fact it sounded as if it had intensified. Glass shattered, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – it might grant him the right to force entry.
‘DS Heckenburg from PNC?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Black Suzuki GSX motorcycle, index Juliet-Zulu-seven-three-Bravo-Foxtrot-Alpha, reported stolen from Hucknall late last night, over.’
‘Received, thanks for that. What were the circumstances of the theft, over?’
‘Fairly serious, Sarge. It’s being treated as robbery. A motorcycle courier got a bottle broken over his head outside a newsagent, and then had his helmet stolen as well as his ride. He’s currently in IC. No description of the offender as yet.’
Heck pondered. This sounded more like Jimmy Hood by the minute. On the basis that he was now looking to make an arrest for a serious offence,