The Killer

  THE KILLER

  SUSAN WILKINS

  MACMILLAN

  To Sue Kenyon

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THE INFORMANT by Susan Wilkins

  THE MOURNER by Susan Wilkins

  The Informant

  PROLOGUE

  1

  PROLOGUE

  Sweat trickled down his face. Wiping it away, Yevgeny Koshkin adjusted the aviator shades. He’d lost count of the number of funerals he’d attended. Too many, that’s all he knew. And that didn’t include the funerals he’d caused, of the men he’d killed. Those he dismissed from his mind. He’d done his job and if the ghosts of his victims haunted him he’d never have admitted it.

  The noonday sun was high and blinding and he smiled to himself as he imagined it beating down on the mob of paparazzi and camera crews waiting ten miles away at Chelmsford crematorium. Pretty soon they’d realize that they’d been duped. Joey Phelps, the angel-faced cop killer the tabloids loved to hate, would not be arriving there in a grand horse-drawn hearse, as they’d been led to believe. Instead he’d be laid to rest here, in this forgotten churchyard, surrounded by late summer birdsong rather than the click-clack of prying lenses.

  The ancient church was set on a knoll above rich and rolling Essex farmland, a small pond fringed with sedges separating it from a winding lane. Yevgeny stood in the shade of the lychgate. The fresh-faced curate was beside him in surplice and cassock, hands clasping his prayer book, practising his funereal face.

  He was the most junior member of the local ministry. Evangelical and ambitious to serve the Lord, he’d interpreted it as God’s munificence when a polite Russian with a briefcase full of cash had turned up on his doorstep offering to make a large donation to the church’s restoration fund. And money was desperately needed. The boiler was bust, the roof leaked and scaffolding held up the reputedly Saxon tower, giving the building a mysterious and abandoned air.

  The curate let his gaze drift upwards to the rooks circling the elderly yew in the far corner of the clumpy, overgrown churchyard. Two fresh graves had been dug; the Russian had arrived early to select the spot. There were to be no headstones, just a planting of bulbs – a carpet of crocuses and narcissi – to bloom in the spring.

  If he was honest, the secrecy of the proceedings excited the young cleric; ‘total privacy’ was the phrase the Russian had used. He should have discussed it with his boss and followed proper procedures, he knew that. So what if the paperwork was sketchy? Modern ministry meant thinking outside the box. He was guessing the departed were illegal immigrants, and the Russian said nothing to disabuse him of this assumption. No one else was about to solve the problem of his crumbling spire and didn’t all souls deserve a Christian burial, whether or not they had the right passport? He felt he’d made a compassionate decision as well as a pragmatic one and if necessary he would defend it all the way up to the bishop.

  Yevgeny cast a wary professional eye over his surroundings. He had a couple of his own men, including his cousin Mika, discreetly placed in the churchyard, although with the official funeral scheduled to take place miles away he didn’t expect any problems. He checked his watch as a plain black Mercedes panel van turned from the lane into the short gravel drive and drew up at the gate. It was right on time. Behind it came a chauffeured four-by-four with dark tinted windows. The Russian gave the curate a nod then stepped forward to open the rear door of the car.

  There were two passengers and Kaz Phelps was the first out. She wore black jeans and a tailored jacket, her only concession to the formality of the occasion. Her dark eyes were wary, her face pale and inscrutable. She’d come to bury her little brother, her Joey, the needy, adoring boy who’d grown into a monster. That’s what the press had dubbed him and it was hard to disagree. The fact he’d been trying to help her when he died, riddled with bullets on a London street, fuelled the toxic brew of guilt and anger swilling round in her head, though there was no way she’d ever show it.

  As far as Yevgeny or anyone else could see, the shock of Joey’s death had left her contained and distant. She didn’t crack, she didn’t even cry. But there were two graves because the Russian had lost a brother too. Tolya had been gunned down in the same foolhardy escapade and Yevgeny had certainly cried – alone, on a Skype call to his elderly mother in Magnitogorsk and cradling his sister, Irina, in his arms.

  Since he’d left home at seventeen to join the army, Yevgeny Koshkin had hammered out his own moral code and loyalty was at its heart. He’d served his country, obeyed his officers and, in more recent years, the bosses who’d hired and trusted him. Following orders, he’d killed but he took no pleasure in it. It was just part of a soldier’s job. He’d always tried to make it fast and clean. He was a hard man, circumstances had left him with little choice, but he’d resisted the temptation to become cruel.

  After years of rootless wandering, following the money and the next job, he’d started to feel the need to settle and England appealed to him. Women, outside his immediate family, had hardly figured in his life. Short-term sexual liaisons had satisfied his needs. As a young man he’d once fancied himself in love with a Chechen nurse; she’d been beaten to death by her own father for fraternizing with the enemy.

  When Yevgeny first met Kaz Phelps she’d not long been released from jail. He found it hard to explain the attraction; she was beautiful certainly, but there was something in her physical presence – tough yet sensual – and the sharp watchfulness in her eye, that both unnerved and excited him. However, he’d been working for her brother at the time and any approach would have been unprofessional. Now that Joey was dead and she was staying in his house, under his protection you could say, he hoped that she might start to notice and appreciate his interest.

  Offering his hand, he helped her out of the back of the four-by-four. Her palm rested lightly in his for hardly a second yet he felt a pulse of raw energy shoot up his arm. No woman had ever had such a visceral effect on him before. But her eyes skated away from his face and back into the car towards Irina.

  The girls – to Yevgeny they were girls – had become firm friends and he was glad. His sister seem
ed so skittish and young; she’d always been cosseted. To have a comrade, and maybe in time a sister-in-law, like Kaz – someone a couple of years older who really knew the score – was bound to be a steadying influence.

  His attention moved across to the four beefy pall-bearers, in black tailcoats and leather gloves, climbing out of the van. Being unfamiliar with the customs of the country, he’d made discreet enquiries and been recommended an East End firm, who boasted a long history of taking care of things for clients on the wrong side of the law. Still it surprised him to see that the funeral director accompanying them was female. She wore a top hat, carried a cane and issued her instructions in a soft sing-song voice which Yevgeny strained to hear. It wasn’t English, a couple of words sounded vaguely Slavic, but not quite. Then he realized she was speaking Albanian.

  As they unloaded the first of the two solid oak caskets from the Mercedes onto silver coffin trolleys, an old Vauxhall Vectra, with a dent in the boot, pulled up behind the four-by-four at the gate. The three remaining mourners had arrived.

  Yevgeny was well aware of the strained relationship between Kaz and her mother. He had gone personally to break the news of her son’s death to Ellie Phelps. She was a stupid and vindictive woman and, if she made any kind of scene, he was ready to intervene and shut her up. But Ellie stumbled out of the car and had to be rescued and supported by her companion Brian. Whatever medication she was on, prescribed or otherwise, it had rendered her dead-eyed and docile. A black fascinator with a lacy veil had been planted askew on her unwashed hair and she looked flushed in a collarless leather coat too hot for a late summer’s day.

  Ignoring her mother and Brian, Kaz gave a smile of acknowledgement to the third mourner, Glynis. Yevgeny watched the small, bird-like creature move forward and grasp Kaz’s hand. ‘So sorry, love. Must be awful for you.’

  Kaz’s smile soured. ‘Fucking cops wouldn’t release the bodies for ages.’

  ‘They never give no thought to the families, do they?’

  Ellie swayed on the balls of her feet. She seemed to be trying to focus on her daughter. Yevgeny readied himself to step in. A low, keening moan rose from deep in the woman’s chest and Kaz edged back, expecting it to be followed by a blow. But Ellie toppled forward into her arms and began to sob. ‘My babies, my poor babies! What we gonna do without him, Kaz? What we gonna do?’

  Detaching herself from the maternal grasp, Kaz gave no hint of the welter of emotions rippling through her. She was there to bury Joey, quietly, without fuss or fanfare, in an anonymous grave. Would he have approved of such an ending? Probably not. But she didn’t care. She glanced at Yevgeny. ‘Can we just get this over with?’

  He smiled, took her arm and they followed the coffins into the church.

  Yevgeny, Kaz and Irina settled in the wooden pews on one side of the aisle, Ellie, Brian and Glynis on the other.

  Sensing a tension between the camps the curate pitched straight in. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord . . .’

  Yevgeny’s thoughts drifted back to his homeland. Even in Soviet times his mother had been a religious woman.

  ‘He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live . . .’

  All his brothers were dead now – Tolya had been the last – and all had suffered violent ends. Only him and Irina were left.

  ‘And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’

  The language was a little arcane for Yevgeny to grasp completely but the curate’s incantatory tone soothed him. In the far recesses of memory he was still a small boy, clinging to his mother’s skirt as the priest sailed by in his vestments, censer swinging and billowing smoke. That intense fragrance, frankincense undercut with the sharp resin of fir, wafted through his unconscious and tethered him to the place where he was born. How could he bury his brother without incense? It felt wrong. He neither believed nor disbelieved in God. But he believed in family.

  The grass was sun-baked and crackled underfoot as the mourners picked their way through the untended churchyard and gathered around the open graves. The rooks cawed and the young curate fumbled with the pages of his prayer book.

  ‘Oh holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts . . .’

  Yevgeny glanced at Kaz standing beside him. Would this woman ever allow him to glimpse the secrets of her heart?

  This was what he was wondering, this was what he was hoping for when a flash of light caught his eye. In a single frozen moment he realized it was sunshine glinting off the barrel of a gun, he heard its report and felt the gust of the bullet whooshing between him and Kaz, nicking the lobe of her ear and causing her to yelp.

  With his jacket buttoned, denying him instant access to his own holstered weapon, he had only a split second to make a decision. He barged Kaz sideways first, then he went for his gun. But the funeral director had already fired her second shot. It struck him in the temple; he was dead before he even hit the ground. Rolling over, his body came to rest on the mound of soft earth edging his brother’s grave.

  1

  Nicci Armstrong watched from her desk as the men in suits filed out of the boardroom. There were handshakes and pleasantries but it was impossible to tell if the meeting had been a success. She glanced across at Pascale, her researcher. They didn’t speak. Both were wondering the same thing: did they still have a job?

  Everyone knew the business was in dire financial straits, there had already been redundancies and the small investigations team, led by Nicci, was down to three. The remaining employees, in cybercrime and security, were scattered across the smart open-plan office, beavering away at their desks, but they all knew the score.

  Since the firm’s inception Simon Blake Associates had sailed pretty close to the wind. Blake himself, in the opinion of many in the security industry, was just too arrogant and now he was getting his comeuppance. SBA’s most recent case had led to the high-profile arrest of Robert Hollister, a prominent politician and member of the shadow cabinet. The media had loved it and showered SBA with praise and glossy profiles in the Sunday supplements. But they were the new kids on the block and it soon became obvious that upsetting the establishment came with a hefty price tag.

  Nicci kept a surreptitious eye on the boss as he escorted his guests to the lifts. His manner was unctuous, which she found disturbing. An ex-copper, who’d made it to the senior rank of commander in the Met, Simon Blake had dealt with a slew of serious villains and he took no prisoners. But now he’d moved into the private sector he’d become a hostage to fortune and the moneymen had brought him down. The City fixers and twisters, who’d initially backed his enterprise, had decided they didn’t like his attitude or priorities. He’d crossed the wrong people so they’d pulled the plug.

  Rising from her desk Nicci wandered towards the coffee station in the hope of waylaying him. He was meandering back to his office with a glazed expression.

  ‘Get you a coffee, boss?’

  Blake seemed startled but he smiled. ‘Yeah, why not?’

  The task of assembling mugs and pushing buttons removed the necessity for small talk. Blake gazed across the room and out of the window at the fine late September day beyond. His look was wistful; the view – the towering cityscape of steel and glass and power – was the thing that had sold him on the location.

  Nicci shot him a covert glance. He was jiggling the change in his trouser pocket. The aroma of fresh coffee wafted from the machine as it filled their cups.

  ‘How did it go?’ She knew it was the question he didn’t want to hear, though she hoped he wouldn’t evade it.

  He sucked his teeth. ‘Who can tell? They will bail us out. The loan’s agreed in principle. The accountants are being upbeat. But there are stringent conditions. The bottom line is we have to do a lot more with a lot less.’

  She handed him the coffee. He stared down at the dark steaming liquid as if in search of inspiration.

 
‘Y’know, Nic, all my years as a serving officer I lived on my salary, had a mortgage but not a penny more of debt. Not even a car loan. Now?’ He gave a bleak chuckle. ‘Now I’m in hock up to my eyeballs. My future’s in hock, my kids’ futures. And there’s no sodding guarantee they won’t turn round in three months and say, “Sorry, target’s not met, we’re calling it in. Declaring you bankrupt.”’

  Nicci watched him, noting the moistness in his eyes. She’d worked for him inside the Met and on the outside as a private detective. When she was at her lowest ebb he’d given her a chance. They weren’t exactly friends, the bond was in a sense deeper: professional colleagues with shared values. And, whatever else, she owed him.

  Tipping a sachet of sugar into her own coffee she cast him a sidelong glance. ‘Goes without saying, if there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘As a matter of fact there is.’ He grinned. ‘But you’re not going to like it.’

  With a dip of the head he invited her to join him in his office. She followed him in and closed the door.

  Plonking down in his chair he rested the mug of coffee on a leather coaster. He was a precise man with an organized mind; it was what had made him such a good copper.

  Nicci settled on the sofa and waited.

  Blake steepled his fingers. ‘Here’s the situation. The new equity partners will come on board provided we concentrate on the security side of the business. That’s where they think the money is. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, London’s got more resident billionaires than any other city on the planet. Reliable ex-coppers as minders is the brand they want to promote.’

  She sniffed. ‘No investigations at all then?’

  ‘Depends on whether we can get on the right side of the Police and Crime Commissioners and land a few outsourcing contracts. But that’s down to me – and you know how rubbish I am at charming politicians.’

  ‘Don’t sell yourself short. You can brown-nose with the best.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m going to have to. And we’ve got cybercrime. That’s obviously a growth area and they’ll put money into that.’

  ‘So who’s going to run the security side with Rory gone? I hope that’s not what you’re asking me to do.’