style="font-size:15px;"> She blundered forward, heart trip-hammering. But as she approached, she realised that it wasn’t a cigarette lighter. Nothing so sinister, in fact. She ventured all the way up to it, and there was no mistake.
A pen drive lay on her welcome mat.
Nan wasn’t the kind of person one might automatically expect to be electronically proficient. ‘Dim’ was one term she’d heard people using for her. She’d been regarded as a ‘dunce’ at school. But in fact, in adult life, Nan had become familiar with computers, the internet and such because she’d needed to while she was working at the Spar. She’d even bought herself a second-hand laptop in order to practise at home. And though she wasn’t an expert yet, she certainly knew what she was doing.
She’d been so momentarily petrified by the thought of petrol that now she mainly felt relief, but she was mystified too. Why would someone stick something like this through your letter box in the middle of the night? If it was someone well-intentioned, wouldn’t they have attached a note? Perhaps not if it was a friend playing some elaborate but harmless joke – but Nan wasn’t friendly enough with anyone for that to be a possibility.
As she took her laptop from the shelf in the living room, it occurred to her that the pen drive might contain a virus. But she had nothing on her computer that she would miss if it was lost. She sat on the couch, set the laptop on her knees, opened it and switched it on. When it came to life, she inserted the pen drive, which immediately appeared as a smiley face icon on her desktop. When she touched it with her cursor, it opened, and she saw that it contained a single file: an MPEG, which someone had entitled: Greetings – from the Devil’s Messenger.
Even more mystified, she clicked on it.
A window opened, and a black-and-white video commenced playing. Nan watched it for twenty seconds or so, slack-jawed.
Before she began to scream.
Setting off at around six from his Fulham flat, Heck made it to Staples Corner before seven, hoping to get some breakfast in the canteen, only to find even at this ungodly hour that it was busier than usual.
Lots of people appeared to have set off early to avoid being late for the briefing. Not just from SCU, but from the Cold Case team as well, while Gemma and her joint SIO, Gwen Straker, had secured the attachment of extra personnel, both police and admin, to do the legwork and provide office back-up. This meant that the queue to the service counter stretched halfway around the room.
Disgruntled, Heck went to the vending machine instead, to get himself a coffee-to-go. While he waited for his Styrofoam cup to fill, he glanced left – and saw Gemma in the far corner, facing Jack Reed across a tabletop, conversing with him in intent but friendly fashion. The body language alone was fascinating. The twosome cradled a cuppa each and leaned towards one another – not exactly the way lovers do, though it would be easy to picture Reed reaching out an affectionate hand and brushing aside a stray lock of Gemma’s flaxen hair.
Heck was more than surprised. Behaviour like this, not just in full view of her own team but of the Cold Case officers too, who’d be arriving here under the impression that their new joint boss was a hard-ass of legendary proportions, underlined the sea change in Gemma since Reed had come on board. She would never normally have been this lax in her manner. Quite clearly, other things were now on her mind.
Other things that were making her smile.
‘You’ll not win her favour by glaring at her in public,’ a voice behind him said.
Heck spun around and found Detective Chief Superintendent Gwen Straker waiting her turn at the vending machine.
‘Oh, ma’am …’ he stuttered. ‘Sorry … I’m done here.’
He stepped aside, and she moved forward.
‘I wasn’t glaring,’ he said. ‘I’m, erm … I’m actually waiting for the new DC I’m working with. Wanted a quick chat before the briefing.’
‘Why don’t you go and find us a table, Mark,’ she said.
‘Thing is, ma’am … I was going back to the office. Wanted to get some stuff sorted.’
‘Couple of minutes won’t hurt. Go and find us a table.’
This was easier said than done, so the first time a couple of seats facing each other became free, Heck pounced on them. When Gwen arrived, she sat down in neat, non-fussy fashion. Not atypically, she’d got herself a herbal tea rather than the milky, sugary coffee that Heck preferred.
One of the first black female detectives in the Met to actually make rank, Gwen was now in her mid-fifties. She wasn’t especially tall, around five-seven, and the little weight she’d put on over the years gave her a buxom-to-heavy build. But otherwise, age had been kind to her; she still possessed thick, shoulder-length hair, and, unmarked by wrinkles, boasted soft, pretty features. Back during her days as Heck and Gemma’s divisional DI at Bethnal Green, Gwen had favoured street casuals: denims, sweatshirts, leather jackets and the like, earning her the soubriquet ‘Foxy Brown’, after the gorgeous, hard-hitting heroine of the 1970s blaxploitation movie. But today, in reflection of her new, high-powered status, she wore a charcoal-black skirt suit, which fitted her snugly, though such a severe look didn’t quite match her personality, which was famously warm, at times almost maternal.
Gwen sipped her brew, before grimacing.
‘Ma’am, like I said, I have some stuff—’
‘So, you’ve been getting reacquainted with Gail Honeyford?’
Heck was surprised. ‘You know her?’
Gwen sipped her tea again, slowly but surely finding it tolerable. ‘You worked with her once, I believe?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And it went well?’
‘We got a result.’
Gwen pursed her lips and nodded. ‘Sounds ideal … you and her, I mean.’
‘It’s hardly ideal.’ He’d blurted that out without thinking; immediately regretting it. He ought to have learned from experience that Gwen Straker never missed anything.
She arched an eyebrow, intrigued.
Heck chewed his bottom lip. His and Gwen’s previous relationship had been a difficult one to gauge, even at the time. While she was his DI, Gwen had rebuked him whenever necessary – sometimes spectacularly – but she was an old-stager herself. So long in the tooth that when she’d first entered the police, rules and regulations were mainly regarded as guidelines. For that reason alone, while she hadn’t always approved of some of Heck’s antics, she’d tacitly tolerated them if there was no serious fallout. Stranger than that, though, had been her attitude to his relatively short-lived romance with Gemma. Whereas most gaffers would have wanted the two officers concerned to work in different outfits so that they couldn’t distract each other, Gwen had seemed to enjoy it; like a fond parent pleased to finally see two of her wayward children get fixed up.
Heck and Gemma had been her protégés,
