The Killing Club Read online

  Heck pursed his lips. He’d made the comment a couple of times during the post-arrest debrief, but had thought no one was listening.

  ‘I know it doesn’t look likely on the face of it,’ he said. ‘But here’s my thinking. Crabtree and his gang lived and breathed urban violence, and they were usually team-handed. There’s at least five or six of them still at large. They’re also connected with various football factories, which means they can call an army into the field if they need one. On top of that, they have local credentials. They know every alley and subway. The whole East End of Sunderland is their turf.’

  ‘All of which makes it less likely that one bod could do this on his own,’ Grant said.

  ‘Not if he knows the ground too,’ Heck argued. ‘In all three cases, the vics were skilfully entrapped. Witnesses say Crabtree chased someone half a mile before he was killed – in other words he was lured. Course, they didn’t say who by. They didn’t get a proper look.’

  ‘They never do, do they.’

  ‘And apparently he was led a merry dance … all over the housing estates.’

  A different display board featured a large, very detailed street map of the Hendon district. Trails of red felt pen, constructed from the fleeting glimpses witnesses had admitted to, indicated the zigzagging routes taken by the three victims, each one of whom – for reasons not yet known – had suddenly taken off in pursuit of someone in the midst of their everyday activities, the subsequent footrace leading each man directly to the spot where he was murdered. All three had been on their own at the time, which suggested they’d been observed beforehand, and stalked like prey.

  ‘We’re talking careful preplanning here and good local knowledge,’ Heck said. ‘Greg Matthews and his mates aren’t urban guerrillas … they’re student gobshites. On top of that, none of them are Sunderland natives.’

  ‘I’m not sold on Matthews either,’ Grant said, ‘but another crew could easily be responsible. I don’t see why it needs to be one man.’

  ‘Call it a hunch, but I keep thinking … Rambo.’

  ‘Rambo?’

  ‘First of all, we’ve canvassed all the main gangs on the east side of town. None of them are a fit. Secondly, none of your team’s grasses are talking, which more or less rules out the rest of the local underworld. That knocks it back into the political court – Matthews and his like. Except that no … they may say they’re fighting a war, they may dress like commandos, but whatever else they are, they aren’t that. Not for real.’ Heck rubbed his chin. ‘We’re looking for someone below the radar. Someone who knows every nook and cranny, but who’s a loner, a misfit …’

  ‘Could it be you’ve forgotten we’re in the Northeast?’ Grant chuckled. ‘A violent misfit? Won’t be a piece of piss singling him out.’

  Heck pondered the question in the station canteen.

  It was lunchtime so the place was crowded: uniforms and plain clothes, as well as traffic wardens and civvie admin staff. Heck had only been up here in the Northeast five weeks thus far, and aside from Grant, hadn’t made friends with anyone locally, so he sat alone in a corner, sipping tea and hoping the DSU in charge of the enquiry would eventually bail the suspect downstairs. It didn’t help that there were no alternative faces in the frame, but even if there had been Heck hadn’t made enough of a mark on the enquiry yet to expect his opinion to carry any weight. His SCU status, while politely acknowledged, didn’t cut much ice on its own – which in some ways he understood. The Serial Crimes Unit might be good at what they did, but they were based in London, which as far as many northern coppers were concerned was a different world. It didn’t matter that SCU had a remit to cover all the police force areas of England and Wales, and subsequently could send out ‘consultant officers’, like Heck, who had experience of investigating various types of serial cases in numerous different environments – there were still plenty of local lads who’d view it as interference rather than assistance.

  ‘Mind my whips and fucking stottie!’ a voice boomed in his ear.

  A chair grated as it was pulled back from the table alongside Heck.

  ‘Oh … sorry,’ the uniform responsible said, noticing he’d nudged Heck’s arm and slopped his tea – though he didn’t particularly look sorry.

  Heck nodded, implying it didn’t matter.

  The uniform in question was one of a group of three, all loaded down with trays of food. The other two were younger, somewhere in their mid-to-late twenties, but this one was older, paunchier and of a vaguely brutish aspect: sloped forehead, flat nose, a wide mouth filled with yellowing, misaligned teeth. When he took off his hi-viz waterproof and hung it over the back of his chair, he was barrel-shaped, with flabby, hairy arms protruding from his stab-vest; when he removed his hat, he revealed a balding cranium with a thin, greasy comb-over. He ignored Heck further, exchanging more quips with his mates as they too sat down to eat.

  Uniform refreshment breaks wouldn’t normally coincide with lunchtime, which on Division was reserved for the nine-till-five crowd, so this presumably meant the noisy trio had been seconded off-relief for some reason, most likely to assist with Operation Bulldog. Heck relapsed into thought, though at shoulder-to-shoulder proximity it was difficult for their gabbled conversation not to intrude on him, despite the strength of their accents. Heck was a northerner himself. He’d initially served in Manchester before transferring to the Metropolitan Police in London. Even though he’d now been based in the capital for the last decade and a half, there were many ways in which the north still felt more familiar than the south, though the north was hardly small – and Sunderland was a long way from Manchester.

  The PC who’d nudged his arm was still holding the floor. Heck could just about work out what he was saying. ‘Aye t’was. Weirdest lad I’ve ever seen, this one.’

  ‘Ernie Cooper, you say?’ a younger colleague with a straight blond fringe replied.

  ‘Aye. Bit of an oddball.’

  ‘You were H2H off Wear Street?’ asked the other colleague, who was Asian.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Bet you didn’t get much change there?’

  ‘Wouldn’t think you’d find Ernie Cooper there,’ the older PC added. ‘Two-up-two-down. Bit of a shithole outside. Aren’t they fucking all, but that’s by the by. He answers the door – suit, tie, cardy. Like he’s ready to go to church or something.’

  ‘I know what you’re gonna say,’ the blond said. ‘It’s inside his house, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Was in there last year. Reporting damage to his windows. Bairns chucking stones.’

  ‘Thought he was off to work, or something,’ the older PC explained, ‘so I says “Caught you at a bad time?” He says, “no, come in.” What a fucking place.’

  ‘Shrine to World War Two, isn’t it?’ the blond agreed.

  Heck’s ears pricked up.

  ‘Everywhere,’ the older PC said. ‘Never seen as much wartime stuff. And it’s neat as a new pin, you know. It’s orderly. Like it matters to him.’

  The blond mused. ‘Bit of an obsessive, I think. His dad, Bert, was a commando or something. Got decorated for bravery.’

  It was a simple association of ideas, but Heck had been brooding on his own comments from earlier and the thought processes behind them – ‘they may dress like commandos, but whatever else they are, they aren’t that.’

  ‘And then there’s that bloody big knife on his living-room wall,’ the older PC added. ‘Enough to scare the crap out of you.’

  Heck turned on his chair. ‘Say that again?’

  At first the three PCs didn’t realise he was talking to them. When they did, they gazed at him blankly.

  ‘Sorry … DS Heckenburg. I’m on Bulldog too.’

  ‘Aye?’ the older PC said, none the wiser.

  ‘I’ve been attached from the Serial Crimes Unit in London.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ This was Blondie. He sounded less than impressed.

  ‘It’s what you were saying
about this bloke … Something Cooper?’

  ‘Ernie Cooper.’

  ‘His father was a veteran, yeah?’ Heck asked.

  ‘Was, aye,’ Blondie said. ‘Been dead five years.’

  ‘How old is the younger Cooper?’

  The older PC, who wasn’t bothering to conceal how irked he felt that his meal had been interrupted, shrugged. ‘Late fifties … more.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘Has he got form?’

  The older PC frowned. ‘Bit. From way back.’

  ‘Violence?’

  ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘But now you say he’s got a big knife?’

  ‘Aye, but it’s not what you think. It’s a wartime memento … something his dad brought home. A kukri knife, you know. Antique now.’

  Heck’s thoughts raced. The kukri knife – or khukuri, to be accurate – was that sharp, heavy, expertly curved weapon still used by Gurkha battalions in the British Army. It was infamously well designed to deliver a fatal stab wound, but was also known as a powerful chopping tool. And what was it one of the medical officers who’d examined the three murder victims had recently said? Something like: ‘The lacerations are deep – they’ve gone clean through the muscles of the oesophagus in a single incision. We’re talking a finely honed, but very heavy blade …’

  ‘Was Ernie Cooper a military man himself?’ Heck asked.

  The older guy shrugged. ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Factory worker,’ the Asian PC said. ‘Retired early.’

  ‘Is he fit?’ Heck wondered. They exchanged glances, now more bewildered than irritated by the protracted nature of the interrogation. ‘What I mean is … can he run? Seriously fellas, this could be important.’

  Blondie shrugged. ‘Seen him jogging. Used to be part of the Osprey Running Club, I think … ultra-distance. Probably knocking on a bit for that now.’

  ‘Nah, I still see him running,’ the Asian PC said. ‘On his own, like. Don’t see him running with anyone else. Never have, to be honest.’

  ‘And you say his dad was a commando?’

  ‘Aye …’ Blondie confirmed. ‘Bert Cooper. Well-known character up the East End. War hero like.’

  ‘Commando?’ Heck said. ‘Don’t suppose you can be any more specific?’

  ‘He wasn’t a commando,’ the Asian replied. ‘I read his obit in the paper. He was a para. He was in the desert and at Pegasus Bridge.’

  ‘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 d
ead 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?’