eyed him carefully. ‘Is there something about Genene’s case that makes it different from all these others?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that.’ He fished the car keys from his pocket.
‘If Genene’s case doesn’t bother you more than any of the others, it should,’ Lauren said. ‘She’s not the sort who’d just disappear. She wasn’t in debt or on drugs or being abused. She’d just got a degree, for God’s sake. She’d started a job with one of the top legal firms in West Yorkshire. She had everything to live for. She didn’t even take a change of clothes with her the day she disappeared, or her credit cards or driving licence. All she had was what she was wearing that morning on her way to work, and a briefcase with a few papers in it.’
This reminded Heck why he’d first requested to see the case file on Genene Wraxford. ‘It’s time for you to go home,’ he said abruptly.
‘What?’
‘I’ve told you it’s being investigated, and that’s it.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Finish your coffee.’ He opened the car door. ‘I’ll give you a ride to Salford station. From there, you can get a train to Piccadilly, where you can pick up a connection to Yorkshire.’
Lauren shook her head. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I came here because I want to help you.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘You’ve already admitted you haven’t got a team with you. That means you need help. If nothing else, I can do all the legwork.’
‘Lauren … this is a police enquiry and you’re a civilian.’
‘You saying you don’t use civilians? I know that’s bullshit.’
‘You’re not qualified in any shape or form.’
‘I’m an ex-combat soldier.’
‘That isn’t qualified and, to be frank, that would worry me more than reassure me.’ He indicated the car. ‘Hop in.’
‘Look … just let me tag along.’
‘No. Now get in the car.’
She folded her arms defiantly. He shrugged, jumped into the driving seat and switched the engine on. As he nosed the vehicle forwards, she rounded the bonnet and clambered in alongside him. He had to suppress a grin as he pulled back out onto the A580, but Lauren sat in sullen silence – all the way to Salford railway station, where rush-hour commuters were bustling back and forth. Heck pulled up on the cobbled taxi rank beneath the station’s heavy concrete canopy.
‘You must know that I can’t have you with me?’ he said, turning to face her. ‘I mean, you’re an adult, a grown-up … you must realise that?’
Lauren stared directly ahead. ‘What am I going to tell my mum when I get home?’
‘Tell her we know what we’re doing. We’re professionals … we’re pretty good at this sort of thing.’
‘Why should we trust you now? After three years of hearing nothing.’
‘Because we’re all you’ve got.’
She gave a scornful smile. ‘That’s what I thought.’ She climbed from the car, humping her pack onto her shoulder. ‘Why should the law-abiding community tremble, eh?’
‘Don’t forget to report that hire van stolen,’ Heck called after her.
She gave him the finger, before limping off towards the station steps.
Heck drove away. It was quite an irony, of course. Given the job that lay ahead of him, if there was one thing he really could have made use of right now, it was a wingman.
In police terms, Salford was a legendary district.
Existing as a city in its own right, but enclosed by the larger Greater Manchester conurbation, it was regarded as one of the toughest beats in Britain outside London. It fell within the Greater Manchester Police’s F-Division, described to Heck on his last day of basic training, when he’d learned that he was being posted there, as: ‘A big, dark, noisy, chaotic, rain-soaked, urban hell!’
Heck had done two years as a cop in Manchester before transferring down to London. It wasn’t a long time in reality, but it was long enough if you were working on as busy a division as ‘the F’ to get to know every one of its nooks and crannies. Once a manufacturing hotbed and busy dockland on the Manchester Ship Canal, Salford had endured severe unemployment since the mid-twentieth century and, as a result, had come to suffer some of the worst social and housing problems the northwest had ever seen. Modern regeneration schemes had spruced up certain parts of it – Salford Quays saw the creation of attractive and costly canal-side residences, but other parts of it were still agonisingly depressed. The Industrial Revolution-era slums had been cleared away en masse in the 1960s, and replaced with austere, high-rise architecture, which had very quickly degenerated into slums of a different sort. Some sections of the town were now wastelands of graffiti-covered tower blocks, boarded-up shops and rubbish-strewn subways.
Heck arrived in one such locality around six o’clock that evening. His Fiat, already old and beaten-up, was additionally dirty from the chase across the spoil land, so no eyebrows were raised as he prowled between rows of identical concrete maisonettes that were more like World War II bunkers than dwelling places.
Ron O’Hoorigan supposedly lived at fourteen, Lady Luck Crescent, a spectacularly misnamed cul-de-sac. On one side of it lay the maisonettes, on the other a row of poor quality council houses. The gutters were scattered with litter and broken glass, there was scarcely a gate or fence left intact, and those remaining were covered in spray paint; the burnt hulk of a car occupied the turning circle at the far end.
Identifying number fourteen as one of the maisonettes, he cruised to a halt some three buildings down, where he considered how best to play it.
At length, he decided that the easiest option was to introduce himself as a police officer and invent some imaginary crime that he could claim he was looking into. He checked again through O’Hoorigan’s print-out. O’Hoorigan, whose lean hatchet-face glared up at him from the attached glossy, was a professional burglar – mainly small time, though his last offence had involved the tying up of two terrified householders. On arrest, he’d thus been charged with aggravated burglary, which was the reason he’d finished up serving seven in Rotherwood high security unit. Another such conviction and he’d likely go down for twenty, which gave Heck quite a bit of leverage. He’d make something up and demand an interview. O’Hoorigan would be eager to clear himself and, that way at least, Heck could get a foot in the door and start asking questions about Klim.
He climbed from the car, locked it, and walked back along the pavement and up the path to number fourteen. The tiny front garden was an unkempt mass of weeds. The front window had what at first glance looked like drawn curtains, though at second glance these turned out to be hanging bed sheets.
Heck
