Kiss of Death. Paul Finch

and switched it on. When it came to life, she inserted the pen drive, which immediately appeared as a smiley face icon on her desktop. When she touched it with her cursor, it opened, and she saw that it contained a single file: an MPEG, which someone had entitled: Greetings – from the Devil’s Messenger.

      Even more mystified, she clicked on it.

      A window opened, and a black-and-white video commenced playing. Nan watched it for twenty seconds or so, slack-jawed.

      Before she began to scream.

       Chapter 9

      Setting off at around six from his Fulham flat, Heck made it to Staples Corner before seven, hoping to get some breakfast in the canteen, only to find even at this ungodly hour that it was busier than usual.

      Lots of people appeared to have set off early to avoid being late for the briefing. Not just from SCU, but from the Cold Case team as well, while Gemma and her joint SIO, Gwen Straker, had secured the attachment of extra personnel, both police and admin, to do the legwork and provide office back-up. This meant that the queue to the service counter stretched halfway around the room.

      Disgruntled, Heck went to the vending machine instead, to get himself a coffee-to-go. While he waited for his Styrofoam cup to fill, he glanced left – and saw Gemma in the far corner, facing Jack Reed across a tabletop, conversing with him in intent but friendly fashion. The body language alone was fascinating. The twosome cradled a cuppa each and leaned towards one another – not exactly the way lovers do, though it would be easy to picture Reed reaching out an affectionate hand and brushing aside a stray lock of Gemma’s flaxen hair.

      Heck was more than surprised. Behaviour like this, not just in full view of her own team but of the Cold Case officers too, who’d be arriving here under the impression that their new joint boss was a hard-ass of legendary proportions, underlined the sea change in Gemma since Reed had come on board. She would never normally have been this lax in her manner. Quite clearly, other things were now on her mind.

      Other things that were making her smile.

      ‘You’ll not win her favour by glaring at her in public,’ a voice behind him said.

      Heck spun around and found Detective Chief Superintendent Gwen Straker waiting her turn at the vending machine.

      ‘Oh, ma’am …’ he stuttered. ‘Sorry … I’m done here.’

      He stepped aside, and she moved forward.

      ‘I wasn’t glaring,’ he said. ‘I’m, erm … I’m actually waiting for the new DC I’m working with. Wanted a quick chat before the briefing.’

      ‘Why don’t you go and find us a table, Mark,’ she said.

      ‘Thing is, ma’am … I was going back to the office. Wanted to get some stuff sorted.’

      ‘Couple of minutes won’t hurt. Go and find us a table.’

      This was easier said than done, so the first time a couple of seats facing each other became free, Heck pounced on them. When Gwen arrived, she sat down in neat, non-fussy fashion. Not atypically, she’d got herself a herbal tea rather than the milky, sugary coffee that Heck preferred.

      One of the first black female detectives in the Met to actually make rank, Gwen was now in her mid-fifties. She wasn’t especially tall, around five-seven, and the little weight she’d put on over the years gave her a buxom-to-heavy build. But otherwise, age had been kind to her; she still possessed thick, shoulder-length hair, and, unmarked by wrinkles, boasted soft, pretty features. Back during her days as Heck and Gemma’s divisional DI at Bethnal Green, Gwen had favoured street casuals: denims, sweatshirts, leather jackets and the like, earning her the soubriquet ‘Foxy Brown’, after the gorgeous, hard-hitting heroine of the 1970s blaxploitation movie. But today, in reflection of her new, high-powered status, she wore a charcoal-black skirt suit, which fitted her snugly, though such a severe look didn’t quite match her personality, which was famously warm, at times almost maternal.

      Gwen sipped her brew, before grimacing.

      ‘Ma’am, like I said, I have some stuff—’

      ‘So, you’ve been getting reacquainted with Gail Honeyford?’

      Heck was surprised. ‘You know her?’

      Gwen sipped her tea again, slowly but surely finding it tolerable. ‘You worked with her once, I believe?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘And it went well?’

      ‘We got a result.’

      Gwen pursed her lips and nodded. ‘Sounds ideal … you and her, I mean.’

      ‘It’s hardly ideal.’ He’d blurted that out without thinking; immediately regretting it. He ought to have learned from experience that Gwen Straker never missed anything.

      She arched an eyebrow, intrigued.

      Heck chewed his bottom lip. His and Gwen’s previous relationship had been a difficult one to gauge, even at the time. While she was his DI, Gwen had rebuked him whenever necessary – sometimes spectacularly – but she was an old-stager herself. So long in the tooth that when she’d first entered the police, rules and regulations were mainly regarded as guidelines. For that reason alone, while she hadn’t always approved of some of Heck’s antics, she’d tacitly tolerated them if there was no serious fallout. Stranger than that, though, had been her attitude to his relatively short-lived romance with Gemma. Whereas most gaffers would have wanted the two officers concerned to work in different outfits so that they couldn’t distract each other, Gwen had seemed to enjoy it; like a fond parent pleased to finally see two of her wayward children get fixed up.

      Heck and Gemma had been her protégés, of course. Bethnal Green had been both their debut CID postings, and Gwen their first ever plain-clothes supervisor. Perhaps it was no surprise that, way back then, Heck had come to trust her to the point where he’d seek advice from her, even on personal matters, and would feel particularly lousy if he ever did anything that seriously disappointed her. It was probably as much the presence of Gwen Straker, right here in the canteen, as it was the sight of Gemma fawning over that square-jawed, blue-eyed Henry Cavill lookalike, Reed, that reminded him why a working partnership with Gail Honeyford might prove to be more awkward than he’d prefer.

      ‘Look, ma’am,’ he said, ‘Gail’s a great girl, and an even better detective. Spirited, tenacious. Not perfect, of course. When I first met her, she was all attitude and not enough nous. But that seems to have changed. I’m strongly hopeful she’s not going to go at this case like a bull at a gate …’

      ‘Well, no,’ Gwen agreed. ‘Two of you taking that approach would never work.’

      ‘Listen … if you must know,’ he lowered his voice, ‘last time, we … as in me and Gail … I’ve unfortunately neglected to mention this to anyone, but we had a thing.’

      ‘I see.’ Gwen looked thoughtful. ‘As in a real thing? Or as in you just ended up in bed together.’

      ‘Well, the latter.’ He reddened. ‘We’d had a tough day. Got into a real scrape, in fact. We were stressed, wired, whatever you want to call it.’ He shrugged. ‘Guess we just needed to hit a release valve. I mean, Gail wasn’t spoken for at the time. But it was still an error … and we both realised that afterwards.’

      ‘You don’t need to offer a defence, Mark.’

      ‘Just filling you in on the circs.’

      ‘You don’t need to do that, either …’ she sipped more tea, ‘because I know all about it.’

      Heck was astonished. ‘How’d you know?’

      ‘Gemma told me.’

      ‘Gemma told you!’