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

was distracted by the adjustments he was making to one of the displays.

      When Sadie’s Dungeon had first opened, sales had initially been great, but ever since then – thanks mainly to the internet, and despite the lads’ conscientious customer-care routine – business had steadily declined.

      ‘Don’t get your undies in a twist,’ Barrie said, determinedly relaxed about it. ‘They’re not that far down. We’re doing all right.’

      Though Les didn’t share such airy optimism, he tended to listen to Barrie, who was undoubtedly the brains behind Sadie’s Dungeon, and in Les’s eyes a very smart cookie.

      ‘Sonja, we’re almost done!’ Les shouted down the corridor behind the counter.

      ‘’Kay … getting dressed,’ came a female voice.

      Which was when the bell rang as the shop’s outer door was opened. The breeze set the ribbons fluttering as a bulky shape backed in, lugging something heavy behind him.

      Les turned from the rack of DVDs he was busy reordering. ‘Sorry, sir – we’re closing.’

      The customer halted but didn’t turn around; he bent down slightly as if what he was dragging was cumbersome as well as heavy. They noticed that under his massive silvery coat he wore steel-shod boots and baggy, shapeless trousers made from some thick, dark material.

      ‘Sir, we’re closed,’ Barrie said, approaching along the right-hand aisle.

      Where Les was short, stocky and shaven-headed, Barrie was six-four and, though rangy of build with a mop of dark hair and good looks, he knew how to impose himself and use his height.

      ‘Hey, excuse me … hey, mate!’

      The figure backed all the way into the shop, the door jammed open behind him. When he straightened up, they saw that he was wearing a motorcycle helmet.

      ‘Shit!’ Les yanked open a drawer and snatched out a homemade cosh, a chunk of iron cable with cloth wrapped around it.

      Barrie might have reacted violently too, except that as the figure pivoted around, the sight froze him where he stood. He wasn’t sure what fixated him more, the extended, gold-tinted welder’s visor riveted to the front of the intruder’s helmet, completely concealing the features beneath, or the charred-black steel muzzle now pointing at him, the rubber pipe attachment to which snaked back around the guy’s body to a wheeled tank at his rear.

      Les shouted hoarsely as he lifted the counter hatch, but it was too late.

      A gloved finger depressed a trigger, and a fireball exploded outward, immersing Barrie head to foot. As he tottered backward, screeching and burning, it abruptly shut off again, swirling oil-black smoke filling the void. The intruder advanced, a second discharge following, the gushing jet of flame expanding across the shop in a ballooning cloud, sweeping sideways as he turned, engulfing everything in its path. Les flung his cosh, missing by a mile, and then ran across the back of the shop, stumbling for the exit. But the intruder followed, weapon levelled, squirting out a fresh torrent of fire, dousing him thoroughly as he hung helplessly on the escape bar.

      The suspended ceiling crashed downward, its warping tiles exposing hissing pipework and sparking electrics. But the intruder held his ground, a featureless rock-like horror, hulking, gold-faced, armoured against the debris raining from above, insulated against the heat and flames. Slowly, systematically, he swivelled, pumping out further jets of blazing fuel, bathing everything he saw until the inferno raged wall to wall, until the room was a crematorium, the screaming howl of which drowned out even those shrieks of the two shop-managers as they tottered and wilted and sagged in the heart of it, like a pair of melting human candles.

       Chapter 2

      The quarter of Peckham where Fairfax House stood was not the most salubrious. To be fair, this whole district of South London had once been renowned for its desolate tower blocks, maze-like alleys and soaring crime rates. That wasn’t the whole story these days. It was, as so many internet articles liked to boast, ‘looking to the future’, and its various regeneration projects were ‘well under way’. But there were still some pockets here which time had left behind.

      Like the Fairfax estate, the centrepiece of which was Fairfax House.

      A twelve-storey residential block, it stood amid a confusion of glass-strewn lots and shadowy underpasses, a textbook example of urban decay. Much was once made in the popular press of the menacing gangs that liked to prowl this neighbourhood, or the lone figures who would loiter on its corners after dark, looking either to mug you or to sell you some weed, or maybe both, but the sadder reality was the sense of hopelessness here. Nobody lived in or even visited this neighbourhood if they could avoid it. Several entire apartment blocks were now hollow ruins, boarded up and awaiting demolition.

      At least Fairfax House had been spared that indignity. Darkness had now fallen, and various lights showed from its grotty façade, indicating the presence of a few occupants. There were several cars parked on the litter-strewn cul-de-sac out front, and even a small sandpit and a set of swings on the grass nearby, fenced off by the residents to keep it free from condoms and crack phials. Even so, this wasn’t the sort of place one might have expected to find John Sagan.

      A high-earning criminal, or so the story went, Sagan would certainly value his anonymity. Unaffiliated to any gang or syndicate, he was the archetypical loner. He wasn’t married as far as the Local Intelligence Unit knew; he didn’t even have a girlfriend, or boyfriend for that matter. He worked by day as an office admin assistant, and as such seemed to lead a conventional nine-’til-five existence. This, presumably, was the main reason he’d flown beneath the police radar for as long as he had. But even so, it was a hell of a place he’d found to bury himself in. It wouldn’t appeal to the average man in the street. But then, contrary to appearances, there was nothing average about John Sagan. At least, not according to the detailed statement Heck had recently taken from a certain Penny Flint, a local streetwalker of his acquaintance.

      Heck, as his colleagues knew him – real title Detective Sergeant Mark Heckenburg – was currently ensconced in Fairfax House himself, though in his case lolling on a damp, badly-sprung sofa on the lower section of a split-level corridor on the third floor. Immediately facing him was the tarnished metal door to a lift which had malfunctioned so long ago that even the ‘Out of Order’ notice had fallen off. On his right stood a pair of fire-doors complete with glass panels so grimy you could barely see through them; on the other side of those was the building’s main stairwell. It was a cold, dank position, only partly lit because most of the bulbs on this level were out.

      He’d been here the best part of the afternoon, with only a patched-up jumper, a pair of scruffy jeans, a raggedy old combat jacket and a woollen hat to protect him against the March chill. He didn’t even have fingers in his gloves, or socks inside his rotted, toeless trainers. Of course, just in case all that failed to create the impression that he was a hopeless wino, he hadn’t shaved for a week or combed his hair in several days, and the half-full bottle of water tinted purple to look like meths that was hanging from his pocket was not so wrapped in greasy newspaper that it wouldn’t be spotted.

      The guise had worked thus far. Several of the gaunt individuals who inhabited the building had been and gone during the course of the day, and hadn’t given him a second glance. But of John Sagan there’d been no sign. Heck knew that because, from where he was slumped, he had a good vantage along the passage, and number 36, the door to Sagan’s flat, which stood on the right-hand side, hadn’t opened once since he’d come on duty that lunchtime. The team knew Sagan was in there – officers on the previous shift had made casual walk-bys, and had heard him moving around. But he was yet to emerge.

      Heck was certain he would recognise the guy, having studied the photographs carefully beforehand. Purely in terms of appearance, Sagan really was the everyday Joe: somewhere in his mid-forties, about five-eight, of medium build, with a round face and thinning, close-cropped