Strangers. Paul Finch

detective for sixteen years and I’ve never known a case where as many resources were being chucked around. I could put my cynical hat on and say that if we were investigating the usual type of serial murder … i.e. drug-addled hookers getting sliced ’n’ diced rather than the white, middle-class men who use their services, there wouldn’t be half as much media attention and nowhere near as much pressure on us to get a result. But I’m not going to. I don’t know if that’s the case, and frankly I don’t care.’

      His gaze roved across them. His delivery was a low, taut monotone.

      ‘Mine’s a school of thought where all lives are valuable,’ he said. ‘Where each one that gets snuffed out leaves a hole in people’s lives that will probably never be filled. None of these fellas asked to get murdered, much less tortured. And that’s the other thing. That’s the really nasty bit … someone’s out there using a butcher’s knife to carve off these blokes’ crown jewels. Now I’m sure everyone here knows some misogynistic pillock who in one of your lighter moments you’d happily say deserves such a fate. But you’ve still got to ask yourself the question … do you really want someone wandering the streets who’s capable of this kind of sadism? I mean, disregarding the mistreatment she may have suffered at the hands of men, because that’s irrelevant to our role here … do you really want this woman walking about free? Because who gets it next? Not just the bloke who propositions her or offers her money … maybe the bloke who makes a politer approach, offering her a drink or asking her out on a date. Maybe the bloke who opens a door for her, or simply gives her a smile when he’s out walking his dog. And this is the real rub, ladies. Because when you get out there, this could be the very same person you’re swapping banter with when you’re fixing your make-up in the bus station toilets. It could be the girl standing on the next street-corner, the one who comes over every five minutes to scrounge a ciggie off you.’

      He scrutinised them carefully.

      ‘When policewomen usually do decoy work, they’re standing among the prospective victims. This time you may be standing with the killer. And for that reason if none other, you’re going to have to stay sharp. You’ll be working four days on, three days off, four till four. You’ll not be on the same pitch all the time, though I’m not going to allocate any one of you more than two or three pitches, the whole purpose of this being that you get to know the other girls who work there … that you talk to them, find out who they think might be doing it. But for your own safety, at no time can you take your eye off the ball. I mean not once. Because if you let something slip about who you are, and Jill the Ripper picks up on it, and you’re stuck with her all night on a lonely road … I wonder who’s not going to be heading home again when the shift finally ends.’

      Lucy had already considered this discomforting possibility, though by the looks on the faces of some of the others, primarily the younger girls, they hadn’t. There was no safe way to perform this kind of work. At the best of times, the women they’d be interacting with were likely to be damaged. They wouldn’t all be bad people; there’d be tired mums trying to make ends meet, students with college bills to pay, actresses and models who couldn’t get real work. But it was an unforgiving profession. There’d be thieves among them too, addicts, mental patients, disease carriers. And now one of them could be a murderer.

      ‘And if that hasn’t scared you shitless,’ Slater said, ‘sorry … but next up we’re going to run through the details of the enquiry. And this isn’t going to be pleasant either.’

      He called various images onto the VDU as he outlined the progress thus far. As expected, the crime scene photos were graphic in the extreme, and yet, from a purely analytical perspective, there were startling similarities between them. The most recent victim, Ronald Ford, lay on his back in the roadside woods near Abram, with a pool of blood and brains beneath his broken skull, and his trousers and underpants pushed down to his shins, exposing a gore-glutted cavity where his genitals used to be. Two of the other victims, William Hammond and Graham Cummins, who were found in lay-bys near Chadderton and Southport respectively, lay in exactly the same posture, suffering from exactly the same fatal injuries. Only the second victim, Larry Pupper – the heavily built HGV driver, who’d been dragged a considerable distance – lay on his side in a muddy, litter-cluttered ditch on the outskirts of Salford. His trousers were tangled around his feet, as though he’d been trying to take them off altogether, which suggested the killer had waited until he was most off his guard in order to attack, and his face was battered savagely and extensively, implying that even then he’d put up a fight. Perhaps even after the beating, he’d struggled, which might explain why he’d needed to be dragged still further from the East Lancashire road. Whatever, it looked as if he’d died before he’d reached his final destination – in the photo he lay draped on his side, his arms twisted out of shape as though partly dislodged from their sockets. The gaping wound where his genitals had been hacked off was less bloody than the others.

      Medical examiners now felt certain the actual implement used to achieve this ghastly effect was a knife with a thick, serrated blade – the sort a butcher might use to saw through bone and gristle. There were plenty other lines of enquiry too, though few had borne fruit as yet. Slater hastened through them anyway, skimping on detail where he could – primarily because this was mainly of use to the girls as background info. They had no investigative brief, and so the DI was much more interested in those factors that had potential relevance for the role they would be playing.

      In which case he now summoned the mugshots of three living men onto the VDU.

      ‘A bit of intel on the kind of people you are likely to hear about,’ he said. ‘I doubt you’ll encounter any of these characters personally – I sincerely hope you don’t – but you definitely need to know something about them. As you’re probably aware, we have a wide range of crime syndicates trading in the north-west. But tough as they like to talk, on the whole they are all dominated by these maniacs. Anyone know who they are?’

      Lucy eyed the three faces with interest. All looked to be in early middle age, but at second glance there was no doubting their chosen professions.

      ‘The Crew,’ one of the other girls spoke up.

      ‘That’s correct,’ Slater said. ‘This is the infamous Crew. For any of you who’ve spent your police service on another planet, the early noughties saw the formation of a particularly dangerous cartel here in the north-west of England … they’re known simply as the Crew, and they control most of the high-level crime in Manchester, Liverpool and various of the two cities’ satellite towns. As I say, it wasn’t always thus. Back in the day, the numerous gangsters we had up here were too busy fighting each other to actually make any money. At least, that was the case until one of our leading Manchester hoodlums –’ he indicated the middle face ‘– a certain Bill Pentecost, decided enough was enough.’

      Lucy looked in fascination at the image of Bill Pentecost, the north-west’s legendary boss of bosses. At first glance there was nothing immediately brutal about him, but on closer inspection something wasn’t quite right. He was weasel-faced, with a shock of greying ‘wire-wool’ hair. His features were lean and sharp-edged, and he wore steel-framed, rectangular-lensed glasses over a pair of narrow, ice-blue eyes.

      ‘Pentecost started his career as a council estate money-lender,’ Slater said. ‘His trademark was extreme terror; he would punish those who failed to pay up by crucifying them on doors. But he built his larger empire on drugs and extortion, finally coming to occupy a position as one of Manchester’s top godfathers. As such, his vision gradually broadened. He decided that he’d rather make deals than engage in crazy violence, and so arranged a meeting of all the heads of the region’s main gangs, at which he proposed the set-up of a kind of overarching north-west crime faction, in which they’d all participate and which in due course would become known as “the Crew”. Members would have an equal partnership and an equal say in all major decisions affecting the governance and protection of crime in this region, the endgame being to establish permanent peace and prosperity.

      ‘And guess what … with a few minor exceptions, it worked. Harmony wasn’t just restored to the north-west crime network, all these years later the Crew is still the