Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Read Online Free Page B

target.”
    I couldn’t let ‘intercept’ go unchallenged. It was another of those handy euphemisms, a word with a fatter meaning now than it had twenty-five years ago. Back then, ‘to intercept’ meant to nick a letter or get the ball off an opposing player; now it meant to shoot down enemy aircraft or catch a serial killer.
    Blackwell smiled and gestured for me to say it my way.
    “When to jump in and nail the bastards.”
    He nodded. “And OCC spent far too long faffing around, afraid of offending colleagues in Humberside, which meant the trawlermen sailed into Grimsby mid-November, unloaded a meagre catch and feigned disappointment. Later the same night somebody went back to the boat for the heroin, took it to Aaron Flaxman’s father’s farm.”
    “Two hundred and twenty pounds of heroin’s a lot to sell,” I said. “How did they plan to get rid of it?”
    “In one fell swoop and for half its value, to the Heritage IRA.” He smiled. “When those three letters enter a conversation the temperature usually rises, and this case was no exception. Understandably, the IRA quickly became favourites for the murders...”
    “Hang on a tick,” I intercepted. “Have I missed something? What murders?”
    “Sorry, sorry. The two trawlermen, up near the family farm. Couple of bullets, very amateurish, very messy, but still rendering the victims very dead.”
    He’d hooked me in classic style by holding back a crucial piece of information, the two killings, then dropping it into a lull. In the space of twenty words he’d shifted the emphasis of his story: a family smuggling business had evolved into a major drugs trafficker with links to the Heritage IRA who in turn murdered anyone who got in their way. He reached out for his glass and knocked back what was left in a single gulp. I must have looked surprised and offered him another, but he declined. So did I when I offered myself a top-up.
    “The wives had reported their husbands and Kinsella missing, but since they weren’t twelve-year-old kids, a file was opened and left dangling. Until the body of one of the trawlermen was found a couple of weeks later in a ditch. Ten days after that his brother-in-law rose to the surface of a slurry pit. Kinsella’s body still to be found. When questioned the wives didn’t know a thing about heroin, Latvia or the Heritage IRA. They gave up the name Aaron Flaxman willingly, saying he was a top dog sort of bloke, alpha male, gave the orders and woe betide anyone who didn’t follow them. But as for him being a murderer, well...” He smiled. “You know how the rest of it goes: unthinkable, can’t believe he would do that, he’s just an ordinary bloke. Be that as it may, the trawlermen’s blood and brain matter were found in the back of a pickup belonging to Flaxman and he was charged with their murders. He’s on remand in Stamford.
    “Then one night, middle of April, the local police got a call to Speaker’s Farm. Aaron Flaxman’s father had shot an intruder, winged him. The intruder turned out to be Liam Kinsella and this was the fourth time the old man had caught him poking around the farm.”
    “Looking for the overweight copper?” I asked.
    Blackwell nodded. Kinsella had maintained he was just hiding out, had been for weeks, and when asked about the heroin he was deeply offended. He hadn’t signed up to bring in stuff like that, nor had the dead trawlermen. When they’d objected Aaron Flaxman had shot them. How did Kinsella know this? He’d seen him do it!
    Blackwell thought he’d better boil all that down so that I could digest it more easily. “In other words, this scruff-bag Kinsella was manna from heaven, the best break the local crime squad had had. He’d been standing thirty feet away when Flaxman pulled the trigger. And for a case that didn’t have much going for it, bar some blood and brains in a Chevy pickup, Kinsella’s willingness to talk was a godsend.”
    I’d retained most of what he’d