The Killing Club Read Online Free PDF

heavy blade; and the gate in the fence opposite was now open and swinging.
    ‘Shit!’ Farthing shouted, heading across the road to his car.
    ‘What’s on the other side of that fence?’ Heck replied, going for the gate.
    Farthing was now busy filching his radio from its harness. ‘What … oh, wasteland. Industrial wasteland …’
    ‘Can you get the car round there?’
    ‘Not without changing the tyre, obviously …’
    ‘Sod the bleeding tyre!’ Heck ran through the gate. ‘And get us some support!’
    On the other side, a beaten earth path wove crazily down a shallow slope, looping between dense stands of Indian Balsam, their September seedpods now loaded to capacity and exploding as Heck barged against them. The path unfurled ahead of him for dozens of yards, but there was no sign of Cooper, which was disconcerting, given that he was in his fifties. Though what was it they’d said about him – that he’d formerly been an athlete? Heck swore under his breath. He’d known fitness fanatic coppers who were still ripped and energetic in their mid-sixties.
    He fished his own radio from his pocket as he circled a thicket of hogweed and found himself following a rusty wrought-iron fence. Thirty yards ahead, there was a gap in this; on the other side of that, a muddy lane led beneath a dripping black railway arch. Heck kept running, doing his damnedest not to slip and slide in his leather lace-up shoes.
    ‘Alpha-Echo control from DS Heckenburg, Operation Bulldog, over?’
    ‘DS Heckenburg? ’
    ‘I’m pursuing a suspect in the neo-Nazi murders. I could use some back-up, and some geographical guidance, over?’
    It was several seconds before he received a response, which was no surprise as the passage under the arch ran forty yards at least. When he re-emerged into the open, Heck found himself on a dirt track strewn with bricks and twists of wire, which led past a broken-down gate onto the forecourt of a nondescript derelict building.
    ‘Excuse me, sarge … can you confirm that you’re pursuing a suspect in the Hendon murders, over?’
    ‘That’s affirmative. His name is Ernest Cooper, male IC1, tall, six-two or six-three, late fifties, over.’
    ‘Whereabouts are you, over?’
    ‘That’s the problem. I don’t bloody know.’ Heck could have beaten himself up at that moment. He hadn’t even memorised Ernest Cooper’s address, and he’d dropped the warrant back in the house, so he had no point of reference at all. All he knew was that he was somewhere in Sunderland’s East End.
    ‘Can you contact PC Jerry Farthing?’ Heck hadn’t memorised Farthing’s collar number either, which was another black mark against him. ‘He’ll tell you where we are, over.’
    ‘ Affirmative. Stand by .’
    ‘I can hardly stand by,’ Heck said under his breath, as he jogged through the gate onto a broad, cindery parking area. About thirty yards ahead, the scabrous edifice of the main building was visible. Its upper windows were yawning cavities. A protruding lattice of rusted metalwork ran along the front, about fifteen feet up; the relic of a canopy, beneath which wagons would have idled. Fragments of mildewed signage remained, but were unreadable.
    Heck hesitated to go further. Was it feasible that Cooper, fit as he was, could have got this far ahead? The problem was there didn’t seem to have been anywhere else he could run to. It was all a bit worrying, of course, because if Cooper was the perp, and it now seemed highly likely he was, there were only three reasons why he’d run like this: either there was somewhere else he could go, some bolthole where he could lie low; his personal liberty was less important to him than finishing off the work he’d set himself, eliminating Nathan Crabtree’s gang; or both of the above.
    In no doubt that he needed to catch this guy right now, Heck advanced towards the building, scanning it for any identifying marks he could pass to Comms. Most of its ground-floor entrances