Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller. Paul Finch

reached his normal pitch just after eleven. It was halfway down a narrow brick entry between two derelict warehouses alongside the Leeds–Liverpool Canal, whose water lay black and motionless under a thin film of oil.

      Clapping his gloved hands together, Danny waited patiently beneath the decayed stoop of a side entrance. It was a good position. He wasn’t exactly hidden from the world; those who wanted to find him would do so easily. But the canal lay forty yards to his right, and an open cobbled backstreet forty yards to his left; if a patrolling cop turned in from either of those directions all he had to do was back out of sight and beat a retreat through the burned-out innards of the industrial ruin. But in all honesty, what were the chances of a patrolling cop showing up here? It was well known that they were understaffed to an epic degree. Course, if the Drug Squad came sniffing around, that would be more of a problem. But there was an open drain just to the left. Everything could go down there at a second’s notice if it needed to. It was all cellophane-wrapped anyway, and Danny knew where it washed out again. He didn’t see it’d be a problem. Such cops as were available these days surely had more important things to do. OK, Danny traded in crack and heroin as well as grass, not to mention a bit of China. It wasn’t what the average Joe would call small potatoes, but for safety purposes he never carried massive amounts of the stuff. And Danny was a user as much as a dealer. If the time ever arrived, he’d shrug his stick-thin shoulders and say: ‘I only shift enough to feed my own habit.’ And he’d be absolutely sincere.

      He coughed harshly. It hurt, the air rasping in his sunken chest. His head ached too – he always seemed to have a headache these days. And a cold. Snot spooled out from his sore-encrusted left nostril, and he wiped it with his skinny wrist.

      An engine rumbled somewhere close by.

      Danny stepped back into the recess, crooking his head right and left. There was no sign of anyone on the towpath, but the other way he saw that a vehicle had pulled up on the cobbled space beyond the entry. By instinct, his left hand burrowed more deeply into his pocket, fingers caressing the folded switchblade he kept down there.

      The vehicle at the end of the alley had turned its lights off, but remained motionless. Danny watched it irritably. This happened on occasion. Middle-class kids looking to score would come down here nervously. Not wanting to get jumped on these mean streets, they’d get as close as they could in the car and then, ignorant of the protocol, would sit there waiting, engine chugging. With every passing minute, it was more likely they’d draw attention to themselves. The narrow backstreet they were parked on might feel like it was in the middle of nowhere, but actually it wasn’t. A couple of hundred yards further up, another old warehouse had been changed into a nightclub. OK, it was only open on Fridays and Saturdays; there was no one there on weekday nights, but there was a small car park in front of it, and on the other side of that a grotty little pool bar which sometimes entertained midweek custom.

      The fact the car was grey, or looked grey in the dimness, would reduce this risk a little. But even so, its occupants were clearly not for venturing down the alley.

      Danny swore under his breath. He could picture them. A twenty-something couple. Probably both doing jobs they loved and at the same time earning good money. They’d have put street-gear on to come down here. Stonewashed jeans or Army Surplus, maybe hoodie tops, perhaps a baseball cap for the guy. But everything would be crisp and clean, with designer branding.

      Danny loathed middle-class phoneys, but he could never allow himself to show it. Whatever their pretensions in life, they were still dopers, and dopers were his lifeblood.

      But still the car sat at the end of the alley, swimming in a smog of its own exhaust.

      ‘Shit,’ he said.

      These really would be silly little rich kids. They might not intend it, they possibly didn’t even realise it, but it clearly came natural to them to get served. Well, this once – just this once, to get rid of the dickless fool and his bint before they attracted the entire town – Danny would wander down there. But once business was concluded, he’d give them some advice, spiced with a few choice swear-words of his own.

      He ambled along the passage, hands in his coat pockets. Even when he reached the end, he couldn’t tell for sure what kind of motor it was. It surprised him actually – it was an estate car, but it looked a bit grubby and beaten-up; not what he’d expected. Though perhaps this was the family spare; something they felt safer in down on the Blackhall ward, a bit more incognito. As he approached, its front passenger window scrolled down. Most likely this would be the guy. The girl would be behind the wheel, because he wouldn’t want her dealing face to face with a criminal. Obviously not.

      But then it all turned a bit unreal.

      The window had reached the bottom of the frame, and yet no bearded or handsomely chiselled face appeared there. Instead, Danny saw a circular steel muzzle – a broad one, at least three inches in diameter. His mouth dropped open.

      A bulky figure was visible behind the muzzle, hunched over from the driving seat. There was no one else in there, quite clearly. To operate this mechanism, one man was enough.

      A fountain of white-hot flame spewed out.

      One minute Danny’s tall, thin body was uncomfortably cold, the next every part of him was ablaze with agony. He stumbled backward with such force that he bounced from the warehouse wall. At first, he was so agonised that he was unable to make a sound. But as his clothes fell away in charring tatters, taking much of the flaming, adhesive fuel with them, he found his voice – in long, braying screeches. Only for a second jet to engulf him, lighting him head to foot, eating immediately into his scorched and vitreous flesh.

      Danny tottered around like a burning mannequin. He blundered back into the dark alleyway, thrusting his way headlong, the dancing firelight shooting ahead of him and up the brick walls, his arms weaving glittering patterns. He didn’t just feel the heat all over him, but inside him – inside his head even. Along with a pain he’d never known, a pain that clawed through his muscles and nerves and bones, shredding his very sanity it was so unbearable, and yet somehow he kept going, one unsteady foot following another, until he’d passed his normal pitch and was out at the other end, on the cinder towpath.

      And now, in the reeling, tortured inferno of his mind, he realised why he had done this.

      His brain was malfunctioning, but his body had made the decision for him.

      He sensed the canal in front.

      Staggering another few yards, he pitched down face-first into the water, a hissing cloud erupting behind him.

      At first it was so frigid that it was like passing out of reality, and yet as well as quenching the flames, it served to numb him – to an extreme degree, to a point where he was able to flounder across the channel like a crazed fish. The semi-liquid flesh unravelled from his twisted limbs, but he threw himself forward until he reached the far side, where, with eyeballs seared beyond use, he thudded into a wall of bricks hung with tufts of rank vegetation. His blistered hands groped left and found an upright ladder, rusted and rotted in its moorings, but just about capable of holding his weight as he hauled his agonised form to the top of it, and there flopped wheezing onto another cinder path.

      Danny’s tongue had melted to a molten stub in the scalded cave of his mouth, so he couldn’t even sob let alone scream. His nose had gone, along with his eardrums and eyelids. He had minimal senses left with which to detect the armoured, helmeted figure that had clumped steadily after him down the warehouse alley, petrol tank sloshing in the harness on its back, and now came over the canal as well, footfalls louder on the metal footbridge some twenty yards to the left.

      Even when the hulking, pitiless form came and stood right over him, the shuddering, mewling wreck that had once been Danny Hollister didn’t know it was there. Thus it met no opposition, not even a protest, as it trained its weapon down, and from point-blank range blasted him with flame again, and again, and again.

       Chapter 9