Shadows: The gripping new crime thriller from the #1 bestseller Read online

  A great video for someone to post on YouTube, he thought as he scrambled back to his feet, insulated from the pain by his growing sense of unease. In actual fact, he hoped that somebody was filming. It might help them catch this Creep nutter.

  When he stepped out onto a narrow, largely residential thoroughfare which he recognised as Roseland Way, it was a relief. He wasn’t far from home now.

  Within a few minutes, he’d worked his way down to the A4540, or the Middleway as it was known, a large inner-urban dual carriageway, which formed part of the Birmingham ring road.

  On the other side of that lay Edgbaston.

  He crossed the Middleway via an underpass, descending a flight of stone steps and heading quickly along the square cement passage, which led some thirty yards to the other side. The usual graffiti was there in abundance – ‘Blues’ and ‘AVFC’ – along with other vastly more profane slogans. Keith might consider himself a lad-about-town, but he didn’t particularly like using these subways at night, especially not alone – they were damp, desolate and echoey. But tonight was an exception. He just wanted to get home, get showered and get to bed. Not long now.

  He was perhaps ten yards from the end when a figure descended the steps in front of him.

  By its height and shape it was male, but there was no real certainty of that because it was covered by a heavy black rain-slicker with the hood pulled down over the face.

  It came straight along the passage, head bowed, hands buried in its pockets.

  Keith continued forward too, didn’t even falter in his stride. Partly this was due to surprise – it basically stupefied him; his brain, for all that he thought he’d sobered up, was still too sluggish to transfer immediate messages to his limbs. It was also, he supposed – somewhat fatalistically – because there was no turning back now.

  He lowered his own head as he advanced, burrowing his hands deeper into his pockets, and at the same time moving slightly to the right. Drunk or not, he was still an athlete. He could still dodge and run. But the guy – who was quite clearly the same person Keith had seen before – now veered straight into his path.

  They were about two yards apart when he looked up and met Keith face to face.

  Keith couldn’t speak. He was too mesmerised by the waxy-pale features and the deranged grin imprinted on them. In fact, he was only able to move when the figure drew something metallic and gleaming from inside its right-hand pocket – which clearly wasn’t a pocket at all, because this thing came out inch after curved and glittering inch.

  It wasn’t as much a knife as an old-fashioned cavalry sabre.

  Keith jerked himself backward – and slipped on some waste paper. For the second time that night, he landed hard on his spine. For the second time, he barely felt it as he attempted to crab-scuttle backward. The grinning figure followed with a slow, deliberate tread, raising the sword as though for a massive downward chop.

  ‘Alright!’ Keith shrieked, scrabbling frantically to his feet but at the same time yanking the wad of cash from his jeans pocket and waving it at the advancing shape.

  Sword still hovering, the Creep – whose maniacal expression never changed – reached out a gloved hand, and snatched the cash away. Keith could only peer up at the gleaming steel. In part because he couldn’t bear to lock gazes with those small and weirdly shimmery eyes – he’d read something in the paper about the Creep always wearing a demented expression and having a penetrating, glint-eyed stare – but also because he knew, he just knew, that awful blade would not be staying overhead. Even so, he never expected it to sweep down in a blur of speed, to deliver a murderous blow to the joint between his neck and shoulder, to bury itself deep in muscle and bone. Keith sagged to his knees, stunned by pain and horror.

  But it was only when the blade was wrenched free that the blood fountained out of him, and he fell face-first to the concrete.

  Chapter 2

  Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn headed north along the M60, and at the Wardley interchange swerved west along the M61. It was just after ten o’clock at night, so even Greater Manchester’s famously crowded motorway network was relatively quiet, enabling her blood-red liveried Ducati M900 ‘Monster’ to hit a cruising speed of 80mph as she passed the turn-offs to Farnworth, Lostock and Westhoughton. She only slowed as she reached Junction 6, where she swung a right, entering the complexity of roundabouts and slip roads surrounding the Reebok stadium, the home of Bolton Wanderers Football Club.

  From here it was straight north-west, first along Chorley New Road towards Horwich, and then north along Rivington Lane. Only now, on the northernmost edge of the Greater Manchester Police force area, with the great bulk of Winter Hill looming on her right – an amorphous escarpment on the star-speckled October sky – did the red-brick conurbation of the cityscape dissipate properly, to be replaced by the more pastoral villages, woodlands and stone-walled farms of rural Lancashire. In due course, she even veered away from this, riding east into the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, dipping and looping along narrow, fantastically twisty lanes. A few minutes later, deep in Lever Country Park, in the close vicinity of the renovated Tudor structure that was Rivington Barn, she throttled slowly down. A famous meeting point for bikers from all across the north of England, this picturesque but isolated spot was for the most part deserted late at night, but now one particular car park – a small area about four hundred yards from the Barn, hemmed on three sides by thick belts of trees – was a riot of light and noise.

  Lucy homed in on it, gliding in among the many bikes parked haphazardly across its gritty surface and the bodies milling there in blue denim and worn leather. As usual, they were all ages, from rangy, pimply-faced teens to characters in their fifties with capacious ale-guts, bald pates and grey fuzz beards. Women of various ages were present too – Hell’s Angel type activity had never been exclusively confined to the guys.

  Regardless of gender, the back of each jacket had been emblazoned in fiery orange letters: LOW RIDERS.

  They fell silent as Lucy rode slowly among them, a natural alleyway parting for her. She hit the anchors properly at the far edge of the car park, where she turned the engine off and lowered her kickstand. She climbed from the bike, took off her crimson helmet and shook out her black hair, which tumbled glossily down her back and shoulders.

  Immediately, there were wolf whistles, ribald comments.

  Lucy didn’t react. She was in her motorbike leathers, which while they weren’t exactly skin-tight, were pretty clingy. Add to that her constant work-outs at the gym, which meant that she was in good shape. But when she turned and fronted them, and they recognised her as the copper she was, someone hawked and spat.

  The Low Riders weren’t just a motorcycle club. They were traditionalists, with an ‘old-school’ ethos: Live fast, die hard. Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. We operate by our rules, not yours. All of which translated into a lifestyle of endemic lawlessness and a natural distrust of the police.

  Yellow teeth had now appeared in nasty, defiant grins. Lucy saw bottles of brown ale, the scattered empties as well as those half-full and clamped in oily fists (even though most of these guys would be on the road in the next hour). She saw spliffs too; not many, but enough on brazen display to signify a challenge. Not that making a drugs bust was why she was here tonight – as they realised perfectly well, hence their brashness.

  One of them came swaggering forward.

  It was Kyle Armstrong, president of the Crowley chapter.

  Lucy hadn’t seen him for quite some time; he was in his mid-thirties now, but still the way she remembered him: tall and lean, with truculent ‘bad boy’ looks, a tar-black mane hanging to his collar, and thick black sideburns. In his tight jeans, steel-studded belt and leather jacket, which he almost invariably wore open on a bare, hairy chest, he had a raw animal appeal. He might be out of time, fashion-wise, but he’d always reminded her of one of those classy heavy rockers of the early days, an Ian Gillan or Robert Plant.
br />   Of course, she’d never let him know that was what she thought about him. Armstrong’s ego was already the size of a barrage balloon.

  ‘New length on your locks,’ he said approvingly. ‘Just like the old days. Going plain clothes obviously suits you.’

  Beforehand, when in uniform, a spell that had only ended about ten months previously, Lucy had always kept her hair cut square at the shoulder. She hadn’t been overly fond of that style, and so Armstrong was quite correct; being a CID officer did have its perks.

  Again though, she wouldn’t admit this to him. Mainly because she wasn’t in the mood for banter. Were it any other low-to-mid-level criminal who’d requested a meeting with her, she’d have told him that he was the one who’d have to travel, but she and the Low Riders’ president had something of a shared past, which, being hard-headed about it, meant that a useful outcome here was marginally more possible than the norm.

  Even so, she didn’t have to pretend that she liked the arrangement.

  ‘What do you want, Kyle?’ she asked.

  He stepped around her, unashamed in his admiration for her leather-clad form, which irked her, though it was insolence rather than an actual threat – and anyway it didn’t irk Lucy as much as it did Kelly Allen, or ‘Hells Kells’, as Lucy had once scornfully (and secretly) known her, a busty beauty of a biker chick, famous in the group not just for her impressive physique, but for her waist-length crimson-dyed hair, which very much matched her temperament. Many years ago, Kells had zealously sought out Armstrong’s personal affection, and when she’d finally secured it – and it didn’t come easily – she’d defended that status like a tigress.

  Kells currently watched from about ten yards away, not looking her sexy best in a raggedy old Afghan coat, but her kohl-rimmed eyes blazing under her blood-red fringe.

  Armstrong, meanwhile, had moved his attention on to Lucy’s bike.

  ‘I heard you’d written Il Monstro off chasing some bad guys,’ he said.

  ‘Banged it up a bit,’ she replied. ‘Nothing that wouldn’t fix.’

  ‘How about the villains of the piece?’

  ‘They’re both doing life.’

  ‘Ouch.’ He grinned. ‘Should’ve known better than to mess with you, eh?’

  ‘So should you by now. What’s this about?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he chuckled. ‘I’m not after rekindling that fire we once had together.’

  ‘Good … because that’s dead.’ She could sense the rest of them watching her in expectant silence, which annoyed her all the more – it might be a police thing, but Lucy never liked being the only person on the plot who didn’t know what was going on. ‘In addition to which,’ she said, ‘it’s late and I’m in Court tomorrow. So, whatever it is, make it quick.’

  ‘All right … can we walk a little?’

  ‘If you don’t want the rest of the crowd to know what you get up to, you shouldn’t bring them with you,’ she said as they strolled along a narrow, moonlit path. ‘Or is that like asking someone to go out without his pants on?’

  ‘It’s them I want to talk to you about,’ Armstrong replied. ‘Or one of them. But there’s no point everyone being party to the nitty-gritty, is there?’

  She supposed he was right about that. The rest of the clan would know that he’d asked her here to make some kind of deal, but the fewer of them who knew what it specifically entailed, the less chance there was that the info would leak out.

  ‘The word is you’re a big noise now,’ he said. ‘A full-time detective no less.’

  ‘And?’

  He turned to face her, his wolfish features saturnine in the woodland gloom. ‘I need your expertise.’

  Lucy had expected nothing less, but was still cheesed off about it. It was amazing how many of these outlaw gangs fell back on the law when it suited them.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, babe,’ he complained. ‘We’ve never been enemies.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Look … we’re on different sides of the fence, I agree. But we weren’t always, were we?’

  ‘I was young and stupid back then,’ she said.

  ‘Some might say you’re stupid to do what you do now.’ Briefly, he sounded stung by her dismissal of their former relationship. ‘Lead a happy life, do you, Luce? Still see all your old muckers?’

  ‘My personal happiness is irrelevant, Kyle … whether I’m stupid or not depends on my response to this favour you’re about to ask.’

  He didn’t immediately reply, humbled again – firstly because she’d clearly guessed why she was here, which kind of gave her an advantage, and secondly because if he wanted to get anything out of this, he had no real option other than to be nice to her.

  ‘One of our lot got turned over by Crowley Drugs Squad,’ he said.

  ‘Well … wonders never cease.’

  ‘No, look … this is serious. Remember Ian Dyke?’

  ‘Not sure. The memory plays tricks. All your idiots tend to blend into one.’

  ‘He’s been busted for possession with intent to supply.’ Armstrong shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t normally be a big deal … he was only carrying some draw, a few ecstasy tablets … but he really doesn’t want to go down.’

  ‘What’s that popular phrase?’ she said. ‘If you don’t like the time, don’t do the …?’

  ‘I know all that. Listen Luce, Dykey’s girlfriend’s just had a baby and he’s trying to get his life sorted. Got himself a proper job and everything. But this isn’t going to help with that, is it?’

  ‘If it’s only a bit of molly … he won’t go down for that.’

  ‘But he will lose the job.’

  ‘So, he’ll have to get another.’

  ‘Look …’ Armstrong seemed inordinately frustrated. ‘Of all my lads, Dykey’s the last one to deserve this shit.’

  ‘You telling me the Drugs Squad framed him?’

  ‘Nah … that’ll be his defence, but that’s not what happened.’

  ‘Well, then he does deserve it, doesn’t he?’

  ‘It was his last delivery,’ the biker stressed. ‘His very last one. After that, I was gonna cut him loose so he could start a normal family life.’

  She eyed him with fascination. ‘So … is this your guilty conscience speaking, Kyle? Is the untouchable general finally getting a complex about the good little soldiers he sends into battle for him?’

  ‘Hey, I’m just trying to help a guy out who’s been a good mate of mine for a long time.’

  She pondered, mulling over whether she could turn this thing to her own advantage. ‘Have we got a trial date yet?’

  ‘Yeah … next spring.’

  ‘Next spring?’

  ‘He’s at Manchester Crown.’

  ‘He’s at Crown Court?’ That surprised her. ‘And he was only delivering a few bits and bobs?’

  Suddenly Armstrong couldn’t look her in the face.

  ‘Any other lies I should know about?’ she asked. ‘Like maybe he hasn’t got a job? Maybe his girlfriend hasn’t just had a baby? Maybe he hasn’t even got a sodding girlfriend … that’d be more believable, knowing half of your lot.’

  ‘Lucy, come on,’ he pleaded. ‘I can make this worth your while.’

  ‘Yeah … how?’

  He lowered his voice, and glanced back along the path to the lights of the car park. ‘Maybe I can drop you a bit of intel now and then.’

  ‘Oh … you want to be my informant?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, keep it down!’ he hissed. ‘And no, I never said that.’

  ‘But we’ll give each other a back scratch every so often?’

  ‘Come on … I know you do this stuff all the time.’

  She contemplated his offer. ‘Anything you can give me now?’

  ‘No, but …’ He shrugged. ‘But when the time comes, you only need to ask. Come on, Lucy … you know me.’

  Yeah, I know you, she thought. The Low Riders were reprobates through and through, and could hardly b
e relied on to give help to law enforcement. But they were connected, and if Armstrong – who at one time had been a lot more to Lucy than just an acquaintance, even if she had only been going through a ‘teen rebel’ phase – said he might be able to give her something now and then, there was always a chance it would be juicy.

  She sighed. ‘You say this lad’s name is Ian Dyke?’

  ‘Yeah. He lives on Thorneywood Lane.’

  Lucy knew the place. It was yet another nice-sounding street on a Crowley council estate, which in actual fact was so run-down that it ought to be bulldozed.

  ‘All I can do is speak to Drugs Squad,’ she said. ‘I’ve no clout … you understand that?’

  ‘Sure.’ He sounded happier.

  ‘I may be a detective, but I’m still only a constable.’

  ‘I know you …’ He eyed her suggestively. You can be very persuasive when you want to be.’

  ‘I can’t.’ she assured him. ‘And I’m not going to be. Best I can do is have a word.’

  They walked back to the car park, where Lucy pulled her helmet on, kicked her machine to life and spun it round in a tight circle. Before heading back to the exit, she pulled up alongside Armstrong and lifted her visor. The rest of the chapter looked on in silence, though Hells Kells had now come forward and firmly linked arms with her beau. She glared at Lucy with icy intensity.

  ‘Let me know how we get on, yeah?’ Armstrong said.

  ‘There is no “we”, Kyle. So, don’t be pestering me. I’ll call you if there’s anything to report. And if we hit pay-dirt on this, I want something back.’ She pointed a warning finger at him. ‘I mean it.’

  He shrugged. ‘Promised, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah … you promised all right.’ And she treated him to a dubious frown, before hitting the throttle and speeding out of the car park.

  Chapter 3

  Lucy Clayburn was known widely in the Greater Manchester Police as a biker girl, and as a deft handler of her Ducati M900. There was scarcely a colleague, whether male or female, who didn’t in some way find this intriguing.