The next thing Heck noticed was that both Gemma and Tasker had drawn pistols from the armoury: Tasker wore his in a shoulder-holster; Gemma’s lay on the desk in front of her, alongside a glossy photograph. Guns were never ever a good thing.
It was still relatively early in the day – Heck had made it from Fulham to New Scotland Yard in near record time – but Gemma was already less than her usual pristine self. A strikingly handsome woman anyway, she didn’t need much makeup, but she believed in appearances, in making a lasting impression; and yet today she looked tired and worn. Tasker, who if Heck recalled rightly, was also known for being a snazzy dresser, was suited, but in a similarly rumpled state. Even his artificially bronzed looks had paled to an ashen hue. Only Kane seemed relaxed, maintaining his usual air of scholarly attentiveness.
‘Heck,’ Gemma said. ‘You know Commander Tasker? Serious Offender Control and Retrieval. He heads up their Special Investigations unit …’
‘I know him, yeah,’ Heck replied.
‘Sergeant Heckenburg,’ Tasker said with a curt nod.
‘Sir.’ Heck turned back to Gemma. ‘What a bloody disaster.’
She sighed. ‘By any standards. Before you ask, we’re working on the basis it’s down to a Nice Guys team who’ve come in from abroad. Somehow or other, they managed to bring an entire arsenal of high-tech weapons with them …’
‘Unless the weapons were already here,’ Heck said. ‘I know two or three underworld quartermasters we can lean on straight away …’
‘For the record!’ she interrupted. ‘We’ve lost sixteen officers, two prison personnel and two ambulance crew. There are no wounded … no survivors.’
‘A courting couple got the chop too,’ Tasker added. ‘Two civvies.’
‘How’s that?’ Heck asked.
Tasker glanced at Kane, who rummaged through his pocket-book. ‘A Jenny Barker and Ronald Withersnap,’ Kane said. ‘Looks like they were out for a late-night canoodle when the Nice Guys ran over their parked car in a JCB, killing them both in the process. They then used their bodies and the wreck of their car to stage the accident.’
‘Jesus Christ …’ Heck breathed.
‘Worst of the worst, this lot,’ Tasker said, his eyes meeting Heck’s – their gaze was cold, distinctly unfriendly. ‘Which of course you won’t need us to tell you about. Anyway, now you’re as clued-in as we are, sergeant.’
It seemed to be a morning for euphemisms. That one clearly meant ‘so fuck off back to your own office’.
Instead of taking the hint, Heck continued to ask questions. ‘What about Silver?’
‘No sign of him,’ Gemma said, with another ill-disguised sigh.
‘They just whisked him away?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Isn’t he supposed to be ill?’
‘Not “supposed to be”,’ Tasker said. ‘He is ill. The prison infirmary confirmed it.’
‘Is it serious? I mean, how far do we expect him to get?’
‘We don’t know, Heck … okay?’ Gemma replied in a patient tone. ‘It’s too early to say.’
Heck pondered. ‘Well, I suppose the next question is did he actually tell you anything useful before he disappeared? I mean during the prison interviews?’ Their expressions remained blank. ‘Surely you’re allowed to discuss that now he’s gone?’
‘We’re not going to discuss it at this stage,’ Gemma said.
‘Which means he told you nothing …’
‘Which means we’re not discussing it,’ Tasker asserted.
‘Heck,’ Gemma said. ‘You know the kind of intel we were trying to glean from those interviews. We wanted to know about other Nice Guys associates. About Nice Guys operations abroad … how many there are, where they are, who they are. Regardless of where Peter Rochester is now, there’s still a significant amount of sensitivity surrounding that information.’
Heck shook his head. ‘I don’t see why.’
‘Because if you must know, sergeant,’ Tasker interjected, ‘the various law enforcement agencies we’re in contact with overseas are well aware of the damage done to your own enquiry into the Nice Guys by a British police insider. They don’t want their investigations to suffer in the same way.’
Which, Heck had to admit, made a kind of sense.
‘Subsequently, all info related to the prison interviews with Peter Rochester is still being handled on a need-to-know basis,’ Tasker added.
Heck nodded. ‘Okay, okay … but just out of interest, what’s this?’
He indicated the photograph on Gemma’s desk, which appeared to depict a dented car door, marked here and there with bullet holes, but in the centre of which a jumble of apparently meaningless letters had been crudely inscribed in the paintwork.
BDEL
‘That was carved into the driver’s door of the SOCAR command vehicle,’ Kane said. ‘We’re not sure what it means yet … if it means anything.’
‘BDEL …?’ Heck mused.
‘We’re not going to town on that yet,’ Gemma added. ‘For all we know it could have been done before – at the prison, maybe even before then. The car was a fully marked police vehicle. If the driver had parked up somewhere, I dunno … to buy chips. Some lowlife with an attitude comes along …’
Heck looked sceptical. ‘Wouldn’t the driver have noticed? It’s on his door.’
‘We don’t know what it is yet,’ Tasker replied. ‘All options are still on the table.’
‘But in the event it turns out to be relevant,’ Gemma said, ‘and is perhaps some kind of signature, we’re keeping it in-house, yeah?’
Heck shrugged. ‘Yeah, sure. So … I suppose it’s down to practicalities. Do we know how many casualties we inflicted on the ambushers? If we bagged a few of them, we can be checking hospitals and …’
‘None,’ Ben Kane said.
‘You mean none that we know about?’ When Heck received no answer, he glanced from one to the other. ‘What’re you saying … our people didn’t even return fire?’
‘A couple of the police weapons found at the scene had been discharged, but it looks as if that was in panic,’ Tasker said.
‘Seems like they were taken totally by surprise,’ Gemma added. ‘And by overwhelming forces.’
Heck could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Hadn’t SOCAR known they were escorting one of the most dangerous criminals in Britain? Or had they been too busy taking it all in their stride, playing it cool? He wanted to ask that question aloud. Wanted to give full voice to exactly how such arrogant incompetence made him feel, but of course it would be impolitic – it was always impolitic. ‘I hear you’re forming a taskforce to go after them, ma’am?’
She appraised him carefully. ‘It’s a SOCAR taskforce, Heck. That means we’ve more than enough bodies. Every spare officer Frank’s got is now on the case.’
‘Well