Kiss of Death. Paul Finch

more a case that he simply didn’t fancy the extra responsibility of DI.

      Times changed, of course. And so did attitudes and ambitions.

      As he sipped more coffee, he thought again about how comfy the handsome, debonair Jack Reed was in his new role as DI at SCU, which in effect made him Gemma’s deputy. And how comfy Gemma apparently was to have him there.

      And it wasn’t as if the Flying Squad itself wasn’t appealing. Heck had worked Tower Hamlets Robbery once, though that had been a smaller role – mainly he’d found himself going after muggers and other street bandits. The Sweeney pursued the big boys. For that reason, there’d always been a certain glamour about it – they were regularly in the press and on TV. Their reputation for being wideboys, just a bit too close in spirit to the East End villains they often investigated, had always put him off in the past.

      But again, things changed.

      ‘Not that Squad DIs don’t do a bit of soldiering themselves from time to time,’ Hunter added. ‘Just think, you can make your ultimate fantasy real … you’ll be Regan Mark II, a displaced Manchester lad working over the blaggers of London.’

      ‘Who’d I be replacing?’ Heck asked him.

      ‘Ray Marciano.’

      ‘Come again …?’

      Hunter shrugged. ‘He’s left us, Heck.’

      Heck was astounded. ‘Ray Marciano’s left the Flying Squad?’

      ‘Not just the Squad, pal. The job.’

      The term ‘living legend’ was often overused in police circles, but Ray Marciano, the Flying Squad’s quietly spoken detective inspector from Sevenoaks, Kent, had proved to be the exception to that rule. For the last nineteen years, he’d led one successful campaign after another against the capital’s legion of bank robbers, taking down more firms than anyone else before him, securing hundreds of years’ worth of convictions for major-league faces. He wasn’t just considered a brilliant detective, he was also better connected and therefore better informed than almost anyone else in the Met, which was all the more remarkable given that he wasn’t a London boy by origin. There was scarcely a snout in the city he didn’t have a working relationship with, barely a villain who didn’t know him well. In fact, it was gang leader, Don Parry, whom Marciano had arrested in connection with the Millennium Dome raid and sent down for twenty years, who had christened him, with a degree of grudging respect, ‘Thief-Taker No. 1’.

      ‘Would you believe he’s gone working for a defence solicitor?’ Hunter said.

      Heck was vaguely aware that his jaw had dropped. ‘You’re telling me Ray Marciano hasn’t just chucked it in, he’s chucked it in to go and be a case worker for a brief?’

      ‘Not just any brief. It’s Morgan Robbins.’

      ‘Robbins …’ Heck tried to recall; the name sounded familiar.

      ‘He’s the one who got Milena Misanyan off,’ Hunter said.

      Heck did remember it. Last year, the City of London Police had charged some female oligarch from Turkey or somewhere, who was newly settled in the UK, with various highfalutin white-collar offences: embezzlement, fraud, tax evasion, that kind of thing. Apparently, they’d done months of work on her before striking, only to see her defence, organised by Morgan Robbins, take them on at every turn and defeat them. It had been all over the papers for several months.

      Heck seemed to recollect a photo of Misanyan on the cover of Time magazine: it was a portrait of an archetypical eastern beauty, complete with dark eyes, thick lashes and ruby lips, a fetching silk scarf woven around her head, her expression a bland but enigmatic smile. That item had come well before the recent court battles; he thought it had been in celebration of her joining the ranks of the world’s female billionaires – the headline had been something like From Hell to Heaven – but he hadn’t bothered reading the story.

      ‘Thanks to the Misanyan case, Robbins is no ordinary lawyer these days,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s a big fish, a real whopper.’

      ‘Even so …’ Heck shook his head. ‘Hearing that Ray Marciano would rather be a case worker than a cop is like hearing Kim Jong-un’s up for Man of the Year. It doesn’t compute.’

      ‘He’s not really a case worker, is he? More like their lead investigator. Look … don’t be surprised, Heck. Ray’s still doing what he loves, only now there’ll be no more pissing around with Met politics, no having to cover his back all day, no having to mind his Ps and Qs or watch what he says in case he upsets some fucking snowflake back in the office. On top of that, he’ll be on massive money. Way more than we can afford to pay.’

      Heck arched an eyebrow. ‘You’re not exactly selling the Squad to me, Bob.’

      ‘Look, Heck … we’re all pig-sick of the changes in the job. Everyone’s pissed off about their pensions. We’ve had lads slogging their guts out for twenty years, waiting for promotion, only to see chinless wonders brought in from Civvy Street as direct-entry superintendents. It’s not just us, it’s you lot in NCG too … I know you’re feeling it. But there are still some oases of common sense here and there, even in London.’

      They were alone in the Refs Room, but Hunter lowered his voice conspiratorially.

      ‘Heck, you know that with me as your guv’nor, you’d get a lot more leeway than you do under Her Ladyship. And I’m only answerable to Al Easterbrook, which basically means I’m answerable to no one.’

      Alan Easterbrook was Senior Commander of the Flying Squad, a man once famed but now with a reputation for being a distant, remote figure, whose main ambition in life was to get through each day without any underlings bothering him with details.

      ‘Until Easterbrook retires,’ Heck said.

      ‘Why would he retire?’ Hunter replied. ‘They want us all to stay on. And he’s got the cushiest number ever. It’s me who does the donkey work. He just gets the credit for it.’

      ‘Look, Bob …’ Heck threw his half-empty cup into a bin. ‘I don’t know if I’m even qualified to replace Ray Marciano.’

      ‘You must be joking, pal. Ray never did anything you don’t. You’re bang on for it.’

      Before Heck could argue further, the door swung open and Gemma came in, followed by Jack Reed. They headed to the vending machine, deep in conversation about how to pitch the next interview, though Gemma was visibly distracted by the sight of Heck and Bob Hunter, particularly Hunter.

      ‘You don’t have to decide now, pal,’ Hunter said quietly, when the other two had resumed their discussion. ‘But I’ll have to make a decision in the next few weeks. Can’t leave a vacant DI desk for too long. Not with all the bloody nutters we’ve got lining up to do jobs.’

      Heck pondered. The offer had come from left-field and, even if other things hadn’t been preoccupying him, would have left him a little dazed, not to say doubtful. It wasn’t just the personal ties he had at SCU, he’d been with the unit eleven years now. In some ways, he’d almost become institutionalised. It was difficult to imagine being anywhere else.

      ‘I’ll get back to you, Bob,’ he said.

      ‘Give it some serious thought.’ Hunter leaned again into his personal space. ‘SCU’s a good gig, but anyone who stays in the same place for too long gets stale. Plus, I’ll say it again … National Crime Group’s on rocky ground. You don’t believe me … wait around and see.’

      He glided away, leaving the Refs Room without a backward glance.

      ‘What’s Bob Hunter doing here?’ Gemma wondered, coming over.

      ‘Dunno,’ Heck replied. ‘Suppose he’s got some case in.’

      ‘Thought his new patch was the East End?’

      ‘Flying