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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Keep Reading …

Praise for Paul Finch

About the Author

By the same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

The Hollinbrook estate, in Crowley, was as suburban as they came.

Not rich, but the gardens were neat, tidy, their lawns smoothly mown if not expansive. The cars on the drives were mainly family affairs, some a little beaten-up, all implying middle-income rather than wealth. But if it wasn’t hugely prosperous, at least the Hollinbrook had the air of safety. It might be part of Greater Manchester’s sprawling conurbation, but Hollinbrook was peaceful and quiet, a sedate backwater, where children could play unsupervised, and where pensioners like Harry Hopkins could take their dogs out for a late evening stroll in full confidence that nothing bad would happen to them.

Not that this would normally have been an issue for Harry. A former collier, he’d been a burly bloke in his youth, and though seventy-seven now, he still had a bluff, rugged aura. In his day, ‘graft’ had been a word that meant something: hot sweat, aching muscles, hands cut and callused, a body shrouded black with coal-dust. And none of it a source of complaint – because that was your job, your life, that was what you did to put food on the table.

A quarter of a century had passed since Hollinbrook Pit had closed, but Harry wasn’t the sole relic of those arduous days. He still lived at No. 8, Atkinson Row, the only line of dwellings that hadn’t been bulldozed in the late 1990s, when they’d finally started developing the vast brownfield site. This was partly because Atkinson Row had never looked out of place in the proposed new townscape. Its houses were more than serviceable, a terraced row of traditional two-up-two-downs, but with solid roofs, secure foundations and no hint of subsidence. These days they were downright attractive, their brickwork repointed and whitewashed, new pipes and gutters fitted, each with its own little garden at the back instead of a tiny yard and outdoor privy. They were still referred to locally as the ‘Pit Cottages’, even though Harry was the only ex-pitman living there. He had lived alone for the last nine years, since Ada had passed, but his property was the smartest of the lot, with a box of flowers under the front window, and his front door painted canary-yellow.

It was just after ten o’clock when Harry closed this handsome door behind him, the lock catching. Milly, his small Pekingese, waited patiently. She was thirteen now, tubby, grey at the jowls and bandy-legged. But she was an affectionate little soul who liked nothing better than an idle wander with her master. Harry buttoned up his overcoat, tugged his trilby down at the front and drew on his fingerless gloves. It was September, and the searing heat of August had noticeably diminished. Nights were cool, and there was an edge to the breeze.

They set off up the road together, Milly snuffling at the base of every streetlight, lapping at the occasional puddle left over from the afternoon rain, despite Harry’s gruff admonitions. They turned right at the top of the road, following their usual route.

Though it wasn’t terribly late, it was midweek, so each street they came to was bare of life: Candlemaker Avenue, Rotherwood Drive, Hornby Crescent, Billington Grove. They even sounded suburban, and they certainly looked the part: more of those manicured front gardens, rockeries, shrubbery. It was a far cry from the narrow terraced streets of Harry’s day. But in general, he had to concede that things tended to change for the better. It was too easy to get dewy-eyed about the past, especially if you hadn’t been part of it.

Most windows were now curtained, only soft lamplight filtering through, though now and then he passed an open bedroom window, and heard music playing or what sounded like a TV programme. That was something that had not changed for the better, in Harry’s opinion: kids having all that kit in their bedrooms when they should be out, running around. Not that he would really have expected that at this late hour, of course.

And not when there was that other thing supposedly keeping them indoors.

The black van.

By instinct, Harry tightened his grip on the lead, drawing Milly closer. The old girl wasn’t too worried. She didn’t exactly scurry these days.

The black van, though …

Harry didn’t know if it was one of these so-called urban legends. But if it was, he’d only heard about it recently. It had been down at the bookies a couple of weeks ago.

‘Whenever you’re walking your Milly, Harry … keep your eye out for this black transit van. It’s touring the neighbourhoods late at night. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be up to … but you can guarantee it’ll be no good.’

‘Well, if you don’t know what it’s up to, how do you know it’s no good?’ Harry had responded, puzzled.

A helpless shrug. ‘I dunno, pal. People are just saying it.’

‘Oh … must be true then.’

But now that he was out here on the road alone, and it was past ten o’clock, Harry didn’t feel quite so scathing. He was sure the black van thing was a myth. Good God, there were black vans all over. But though certain parts of Crowley, like this, had been prettified in recent years, he couldn’t deny that life wasn’t as tranquil overall as it once had seemed. Not even in the shopping district where you saw homeless folk everywhere. That was a sad story, but it was a nuisance too. Some of them had mental health problems, some of them were drug addicts, and nearly all of them were beggars. That had been almost unknown during his youth, even though everyone had been considerably poorer back then.

Equally unknown had been this new level of nasty criminality. Harry had always fancied himself a rough customer, but he wouldn’t go anywhere near the town centre pubs on a Friday or Saturday night, not these days. He much preferred The Horsehoe at the top end of the estate, even if it did have a reputation for being an old fellas’ pub. Harry didn’t mind. Anything was better than someone smashing a bottle over your head because you’d looked at them the wrong way, and then kicking your face as you lay on the floor. And it wasn’t just the town centre either. There were plenty of housing estates around Crowley that were just as bad; run-down neighbourhoods like Hatchwood Green for example. Nearly everyone in those miserable districts was unemployed, which didn’t help of course, though to Harry’s mind it didn’t excuse the wife-battering, the drunks sitting on doorsteps, the needles and condoms left in playground sandpits.

Harry knew all this went on because he knew men and women of his own age who were unfortunate enough to live in these areas, and they reported it every time he met them. But even the Hollinbrook wasn’t as safe as it might appear. Not these days. It had been idyllic once, but slowly and subtly things had been changing as the villains had started to notice it. There were burglaries here now and occasional vehicle thefts. Prowlers had been reported, even some pets had allegedly gone missing.

And then, as he pondered this, he heard the scuff of what sounded like boot leather.

He glanced up and caught someone stepping out of sight.

Just ahead of him, on the other side of the road.

Harry faltered in his stride.

He almost stopped – before pressing on, grumbling to himself.

Highly likely his imagination had been running wild thanks to those worrying reflections. But he was now approaching the crossroads between Billington Grove and Bucks Lane, and it really had looked as if someone had just scampered away around the left-hand corner.

Big deal, he told himself. Was it an offence to walk home?

But actually it hadn’t looked as if he’d just glimpsed someone walking home. It had looked as if they’d been standing watching him, and then had ducked away to avoid being seen. When he came level with Bucks Lane, he glanced left, not sure what he expected. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he saw nothing and no one – though that didn’t mean there was nobody there, as whoever it was could have gone to ground in any one of the front gardens.

‘Bloody hell, lad,’ he muttered. ‘You’re letting these daft stories get to you.’

He trudged on past the junction, and only after a hundred yards glanced back, to ensure that no one was behind him.

No one was. At least, no one who was close by. But was that dark, diminutive shape back at the crossroads a figure? Standing there motionless? Staring after him?

Harry squinted. Perhaps it was another dog-walker? That wouldn’t be unusual. Or some other innocent resident standing outside their house having a smoke? But if so, why did they seem so interested in him?

Unless they weren’t. Unless there was no one there at all.

Harry couldn’t be certain. Most likely, he was seeing things. Fading eyesight and substandard streetlighting were the probable explanation. But, determined to show that he wasn’t concerned either way, he ambled casually on, turning left down Tottington Road, Milly toddling at his side. Everything along here was as it should be: cars in driveways, front lawns scattered with children’s toys and occasional bits of garden furniture; typical end-of-summer scenery.

He looked back over his shoulder. The road was deserted.

Daft, he chided himself. If that had been some idiot waiting to jump him, he’d have done it back at the crossroads. Why would he be following?

Harry turned right onto Langtree Brow, and then right again into a ginnel. Here he halted, tall hedges on either side, as Milly squatted to do her business. After she was finished, he got a poop bag from his pocket, scooped it all up and tied the bag in a knot. More by instinct than design, he again glanced behind him. He was halfway along the ginnel, which ran for about seventy yards before crossing a narrow footbridge over the Manchester-to-Southport railway. The gap where it opened into Langtree Brow was empty, though why he’d thought it might not be eluded him.

He strode on, turning up his overcoat collar against the chill, depositing the poop bag in the next bin. Milly seemed happy, sniffing under the hedges, nothing troubling her.

They crossed the footbridge together, the railway cutting a strip of blackness beneath them. They were now at the furthest point from home, and Harry was ready to head back, his legs getting tired. Walking south along Rampton Road, he crossed the railway line again and then followed alongside it. The only sound was Milly’s gentle panting and the clicking of Harry’s leather soles on the damp pavement. Occasional gusts of wind whispered through the leafage in the gardens or moaned among the electric cables down in the cutting.

It was easy to feel alone at moments like this. And vulnerable.

He passed another couple of street-entrances on his right. The first led into Hopwood Lane, the second into Delamere Avenue. Again, no one was around, though, as it happened, halfway down Delamere a black van was parked up on the right.

Harry forced a chuckle, reminding himself that there was nothing unusual about that. He hadn’t seen the van before and he’d walked past here a dozen times this last month alone, but that meant nothing.

He turned left onto Rose Street, now well on his way home, though this was always the least comforting part of the journey, because though there were houses on the left, Hollister Park stood to the right. It was nothing really – a miniature green space provided by the estate’s original builders so the local kids would have somewhere to hang out. It had a playground, and lots of grass for football. Even so, it probably occupied no more than a handful of acres – though at this time of night it was an unlit void. There’d been some problems here during the summer, with teenagers gathering late on, drinking and shouting. But the police had been called, and that had been it.

Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t somebody there now, maybe just beyond the outer fringe of trees, keeping a silent, steady pace with Harry. Not that Harry knew what any would-be mugger would have to gain. It wasn’t like he carried money when he was walking the dog, or wore an expensive watch, or even had a mobile phone (despite his daughter Janet’s endless badgering that he acquire one). Again, he was vexed with himself for even thinking this way. This was his home neighbourhood, the place he’d lived all his life. He’d seen whole families come and go, he’d seen houses come and go, hell … he’d seen the pit come and go.

And he was frightened? Seriously?

Even so, he crossed to the other side of the road, so that the wet, leafy blackness of the park wasn’t directly at his shoulder. That wasn’t a sign that he was scared, he told himself; it was simple common sense. But he was still relieved to come to the end of the road and turn down Bradley Way. When a quick backward glance showed a clump of thickets on the edge of the park shuddering as though someone concealed among them was moving, Harry forced another chuckle.

‘Bloody breeze,’ he mumbled.

There was a breeze. He wasn’t making that up.

On Bradley Way, there was a minor incident when Harry glanced back and saw the headlights of a slow-moving vehicle only twenty yards to his rear.

He stumbled to a startled halt, at which point the vehicle, a large estate car, swung into the kerb to park. Harry continued to watch it even as he lurched on, until he blundered into a lamp-post. To the accompaniment of a faint, broken, rasping sound – what might have been muffled snickering laughter, though in truth was probably another breeze rattling the wet bushes – he hurried on, turning right into Malvern Avenue and then right again into Deerwood Close, where he stopped to get his breath and dab his forehead with a handkerchief.

It was okay, he told himself. He’d be home in a couple of minutes. He was almost there.

He glanced down at Milly, who’d craned her neck up to regard him curiously.

Even the bloody dog was wondering what was up with him.

Grim-faced, he crossed the road and turned onto Lodge Lane, and a few minutes later entered Atkinson Row at its bottom end. Harry could only feel relief as he wheezed his way along the pavement to his yellow front door. He inserted the key, looked to either side one last time – no one was anywhere in sight – and turned it. The door opened, and he stepped inside, Milly jumping over the step next to him. He wasn’t telling anyone down the bookies about this, that was for sure: how he’d become unaccountably afraid while walking the dog.

No … ‘afraid’ was the wrong word. He’d been nervous, that was all. A tad nervous. And why wouldn’t he be? Like it or not, he wasn’t a young bucko any more. And there were bad things going on. It might be a thought to take their evening stroll a little earlier from now on.

Harry closed the door, threw the bolt and applied the safety-chain. He unfastened the dog’s lead, and she trotted down the hall, turning into the living room, where the lights were still on and the television playing to itself.

Harry pulled his gloves off and took off his hat and coat, draping them over the newel post at the bottom of the banister. Milly meanwhile re-emerged from the living room and went through to the kitchen, which lay in darkness.

‘What’s up, lass … need a drink?’ Harry followed her in, switching the light on.

As always, the kitchen was impeccably clean, everything put away, the linoleum floor swept, the worktops sparkling. The mug Harry had left beside the kettle before he’d gone out still waited for him. It contained a teabag, one and a half spoonfuls of sugar and the spoon itself, and only required him to flip the kettle on, which he now did.

Then he noticed that Milly hadn’t touched her water-bowl. Instead, she stood with rigid spine, staring at the back door.

‘Something bothering you, lass?’ he asked.

He leaned over the sink and looked out through the kitchen window. He had a light in the back garden, but it was motion-sensitive, and at present was off. That was a positive thing, because it meant there was no one trespassing. But it also meant that he couldn’t see anything. Milly whimpered and pawed at the door.

‘Nothing out there, lass … what is it, a cat?’

It couldn’t have been that. If it had been, the light would have come on.

Harry leaned closer to the window, straining his eyes.

Gradually, the streetlighting seeping over the tops of the houses revealed the garden’s basic dimensions. It wasn’t large, about fifteen yards by ten, and mostly turfed, with the exception of a crazy-paved path running down the middle. To the right, where the coal-bunker had once stood, there was a brick-built dais – all Harry’s own work – with stone vases on top, containing plants. He could see that much. He could also see the potting shed standing to the left of his back gate, which, painted canary-yellow like the front door, was also clearly visible.

But now that he was looking hard, there was something else.

The top of a tall vehicle stood on the other side of his gate.

Harry felt a stab of confusion – that thing hadn’t been here when he’d left.

And then he got annoyed.

The Backs, as they called it, was a straight passage running along the rear of the terraced houses on Atkinson Row. It was little more than an access road; though narrow and unevenly cobbled, it was barely wide enough for vehicles, which meant that whoever had left this one here would be causing a massive obstruction – and right on the other side of the gate to No. 8. Harry wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to get out there. He had no clue who the vehicle might belong to, though he had a notion that the Rodwells, the young couple next door, were a bit rum. Okay, they weren’t lowlifes – they were teachers, apparently – but they’d had more than a few noisy barbecues in their garden during the summer months, which had gone on until late, and which they’d never offered apologies for. Even when they weren’t having barbecues, their friends tended to come and go loudly. A couple of times, he’d heard the Rodwells themselves squabbling through the dividing wall between his bedroom and theirs. So it wouldn’t be unlike them, or someone they knew, to have thoughtlessly left a vehicle in such an inconvenient place.

Grumpily, all previous concerns forgotten – because one thing you could never do was challenge Harry Hopkins in his own home – he unlocked the back door and stepped out. The garden light came on, and there was no mistake: a large, dark vehicle was parked just the other side of his back wall. He stumped along the path, Milly trotting inquisitively behind him, undid the bolts and yanked the gate open – to find a vehicle there so large that it literally filled the alley. Though its rear end was close to his gate, perhaps a yard to his left, there was minimal room to manoeuvre; less than a foot’s clearance separated its offside flank from his wall, which meant that he could only move along it if he slithered sideways.

But none of that mattered as much as the kind of vehicle it was.

A van.

A black transit van.

Fleeting pinpricks of sweat appeared on Harry’s brow; it was several seconds before he could even engage his voice.

‘Okay … okay,’ he grunted to himself.

This was a challenge, and no mistake – but there was no need to get jumpy. He’d already worked out what the problem was here: the Rodwells and their inconsiderate friends.

Thankfully, he hadn’t changed his shoes for slippers yet, so the fact there’d likely be lots of dirty puddles out there wasn’t a problem. He stepped from his gate and, as the rear of the van was nearest, edged in that direction first. For some reason, Milly hung back in the gateway. But Harry barely noticed, his temper continuing to fray as he thought more and more about the Rodwells and their loutish, snot-nosed pals. He noticed that the van wasn’t parked across their gate. When he reached the back of it, its rear doors were both closed, doubtless locked.

Moving to the vehicle’s nearside and finding that the passage on that side was wider by several inches, he sidled along it more quickly, though his feet sloshed through inches of mucky water. When he got to the front, there was nobody inside the cab. Both the front doors were also probably locked, but when Harry put his hand down to the radiator grille, warmth exuded from it. As he’d suspected, the damn thing had only recently arrived.

The more he looked at it now, the more he thought it was dark-blue rather than black, which was a relief in a silly kind of way. But that didn’t stop it being any less of a nuisance.

He was now well positioned to view the rear of the Rodwells’ house. There were no lights on at the back, but there could be at the front. Harry would need to go back through his house to check.

His slid along the vehicle’s nearside, circling its rear end towards his own gate – and there stopped in surprise. The left of the van’s two rear doors now stood open.

Harry was stumped.

Could it have been the wind? No, that was preposterous. There was the odd gust tonight, but nothing like sufficient to open a vehicle door, even if that door had been left ajar, which he was damn sure this one hadn’t.

So – had someone inside this van just climbed out?

He glanced over his shoulder, but the alley dwindled away in a straight line until it joined with the next street. There was no one there.

‘What the bloody hell?’ he muttered.

He leaned forward, poking his nose into the van’s interior. It was too dark to see anything, but now he wondered if that was a faint rustle of cloth he was hearing.

‘Is someone … someone in here …?’

Two hands in black leather gloves shot out of the darkness, gripping him by the cardigan collar.

He was yanked forward with tremendous force, smashing both kneecaps against the van’s rear bumper. The material of his trouser legs hooked on jagged metal, briefly anchoring him in place, allowing him to splay his arms out and grab at the door-frame on one side and the closed door on the other, wedging himself. As his shock ebbed, he began resisting, pushing backward, but those gloved hands were strong, and they dragged at him all the harder. Harry travelled forward again, feet leaving the ground, the material of his trousers ripping, along with the flesh underneath.

As he shouted in pain, one of the hands released his collar and slapped palm-first across his mouth. Then there was a thundering impact on the back of Harry’s head.

His world spun as his hands slipped loose and he slumped forward. Somewhere, there was a frantic yipping – was it Milly?

Whoever had hit Harry from behind now wrapped both arms around Harry’s thighs, and lifted him bodily, feeding him forward into the van’s interior. The person already in there continued to lug him.

The next thing Harry knew, though he was too groggy to make sense of it, he was lying in oily darkness, face-down on corrugated metal. As if that wasn’t enough, someone knelt on the middle of his back, pinning him with their full weight. And still that yipping went on, though it turned into a squeal of fright as a bundle of fur and paws was flung in alongside him. With an echoing CLANG!, the door slammed shut, and blackness descended.

The back of Harry’s head throbbed appallingly; hot fluid leaked through his thinning hair. Milly grizzled and snarled alongside him. When he attempted to speak – absurdly, it was to try and calm the dog – it came out a spittle-clotted burble. His captor responded by shifting one of his knife-like knees from the middle of Harry’s spine to the back of his head, pressing it down sideways, which intensified the raw, stinging pain. The old man yelped aloud, but it was lost as the vehicle rumbled to life and, with a shudder-inducing growl, accelerated away along the Backs.

Chapter 1

The men began arriving shortly after ten o’clock that night. At least, Lucy assumed they would all be men. The intelligence suggested that, and while she wasn’t so naïve as to believe that casual cruelty was solely a male preserve, this particular business, as well as being totally disgusting, just seemed so childishly laddish that she couldn’t picture any of the female offenders she’d arrested over the years participating willingly.

‘All units, we’re on,’ she said into her radio. ‘But sit tight … wait for the order.’

From where she was concealed in the woodland hide, just beyond the cover of the trees, Lucy had a clear view of the rutted track leading to the farm cottage. Over at the point where it joined Wellspring Lane, the gateman was busy admitting a succession of vans and cars, which now passed within seventy yards of her position, travelling slowly in cavalcade. Already she could hear the yipping and yelping of the dogs caged in their boots.

Geraldson, the RSPCA inspector, dabbed with a handkerchief at the sweat glinting on his brow. He was young and nervous.

‘Is there a black van out there?’ His voice was querulous.

‘Even if there is, it won’t necessarily be the one that’s been abducting pets,’ Lucy replied. ‘These are all paying participants. They’ll have their own animals.’

‘So … when do we move?’

‘Not until it gets going.’ Lucy – Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn – continued to watch through her night-vision scope but reached out a hand and squeezed his shoulder with a firm, hopefully reassuring grip. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this.’

‘There’ll be some rough customers.’

‘That’s why we’ve got the Tactical Aid Unit with us. They’re mostly ex-military. They like nothing better than a ruckus.’

Geraldson nodded and smiled, eyes gleaming wetly as more headlights rolled across the hide, shining fleetingly on his face.

By Lucy’s estimation, about fourteen vehicles had now arrived at the cottage. Each one would likely be carrying more than one dog. So that would be twenty-eight animals at least, not counting any that were already being kept on site. The RSPCA were anticipating thirty-two in total, which would provide a straightforward knock-out contest. The members of this ring were clearly anticipating a long night.

As the vehicles pulled up haphazardly in the farmyard, a bulb sprang to life outside the ramshackle building to which it was attached, and a man slouched out. He was heavy-set and bearded, in a ragged green sweater and khaki pants. One by one, the parked vehicles opened, and men disgorged from them: generally at least two, sometimes as many as five. Like the guy from the cottage – whom Lucy had already identified as Les Mahoney – they mostly wore outdoor-type clothing: khaki, camouflage fatigues and such, though there were a few leather jackets among them, and a bit of oily denim.

‘Christ,’ Geraldson breathed. ‘There’s more than I expected.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Lucy replied.

As a rule, when you were facing big numbers, quite a few of them weren’t looking for legal entanglements and would scarper at the first opportunity. That was when they were most vulnerable; all you had to do was pick them off. Though, looking at these guys – and she turned the super-zoom dial on her scope – there might be as many fighters as runners. She saw shaved heads, scarred faces, scuzzy tattoos. For once she was glad the sixty officers from the TAU were parked in a layby in their troop-carriers a little way down Wellspring Lane.

She continued to observe the men as they greeted each other with high fives and bear-hugs, before swaggering over to Mahoney and thrusting at him the wads of banknotes that made up their admission fees.

Another cop came into the hide behind her. It was PC Malcolm Peabody, once Lucy’s probationer when she too had been in uniform. He was still only young, but a tall, rangy lad, with short red hair, a freckled face and jug-handle ears. Currently, he wore heavy-duty body-armour, plus a ballistics helmet with its visor raised and strap tight under his chin.

‘Sergeant Frobisher says everyone’s in position,’ he said quietly.

‘Everyone except you, Malcolm,’ Lucy replied, thinking that if it suddenly kicked off, she didn’t want handy lads like Peabody anywhere other than the front line. ‘There’s not enough space for all of us in here. Go back to your LUP and stay sharp.’

Peabody nodded and stooped back out through the low, narrow entrance.

None of them knew what the hide had originally been constructed for. It might indeed have been a wildlife observation point in the past. But it made a perfect OP for today: a flimsy, flat-roofed wooden hut, partly dug into the ground so it had an earthen floor, its exterior covered with vegetation, which, at the tail-end of summer, partly obscured the horizontal viewing port at the front – partly, but not completely.

Its interior was so restricted that it could only contain two with any comfort. But it gave an excellent view of the farm cottage, some fifty yards beyond the trees, and the open grassland to the east of it, where at this hour nothing stirred save a couple of tethered ponies munching the cud.

An increasingly excited canine yelping drew Lucy’s attention back to the cottage, where the rear doors to vehicles were now being opened and muzzled dogs brought out on chain leashes. Even through the zoom-lens of her scope, and with the whole of the farmyard area lit up, many of them were already so horribly scarred from battles past that their breeds were unidentifiable, but by their lean, squat, muscular frames she reckoned they’d be fighting species of old: pit bulls, Staffies and the like, an impression enhanced by the thick muzzles they wore, and their steel-studded leather harnesses.

Lucy shook her head.

Mahoney now walked across the farmyard, his guests following, though they kept their four-footed charges well apart from each other. As most of these animals, if not all, had been trained through years of brutal abuse to despise other dogs on sight, they were already snarling and rearing, having to be forcibly restrained.

Geraldson watched through a pair of binoculars.

‘Savages,’ he whispered.

‘Yeah, well, don’t worry,’ Lucy replied. ‘Tonight, they’re going to learn what it means to be chained and caged.’

At the other side of the farmyard, perhaps fifty yards from the cottage, there was another clutch of outbuildings, all in a similarly dilapidated condition to the main house. The largest had clearly once been a barn of some sort; it was an ugly brick and concrete structure, but its roof had evidently caved in some time ago, because while the rest of it was rotted and flimsy, that was relatively new, made from sturdy sheets of corrugated steel.

Mustn’t have the guests getting wet if it rains, Lucy thought.

Mahoney went into the barn first, through a side-door. Lights came on within, and then he re-emerged on the east-facing side, pushing open a large pair of timber doors, through which the men and dogs now trooped. It was difficult to be sure what went on after that, because once the majority were in there, all Lucy could see through the open doors was a chaos of bodies milling about, the dogs still grizzling and snarling at each other.

She lifted the radio mic to her lips but refrained from issuing an order, relying on her ears to tell her what was going on. When the snarling and grizzling gave way to full-on barking, that would mean that muzzles had been removed, and when the men also began shouting, the first bout would be in progress.

A person Lucy hadn’t seen before entered the farmyard, almost certainly Mahoney’s wife, Mandy. She was a slatternly, overweight woman wearing sandals, jeans that were too tight for her, and a baggy, semi-transparent cheesecloth shirt that barely concealed her naked, pendulous breasts. Ratty grey hair hung past her shoulders, and she had a pudgy, porcine face, tinging red as she made cumbersome trips back and forth from the cottage to the barn, hefting crates of beer.

‘Shouldn’t we go now?’ Geraldson asked quietly.

‘No,’ Lucy said firmly. ‘Just wait.’

She leaned forward, almost pushing her head through the greenery curtaining the aperture. But it was pointless. She couldn’t see the woods stretching away to the right of the hide and fringing the open pasture. She’d simply have to trust that Sergeant Frobisher, who was on secondment from Area, would have everyone adequately concealed but also primed for action, so they could jump up and move in the instant she gave the word. There were other lying-up points around the one-time farm: behind the stone walls bordering the eastern end of the pony paddock, sixty yards further away than Lucy’s own position; and in the trees on the west side of the farm buildings, though the lads over there had needed to dig in further back because it was open woodland and there was a risk of their being seen. So Frobisher’s team would be the first into action, and they’d need to make a very rapid approach.

An explosion of barking suddenly sounded from inside the barn. Geraldson gazed at Lucy, white-faced, a globule of fresh sweat trickling down his nose. She raised a hand for calm but leaned closer to her mic. ‘Clayburn to TAU, over?’

Static crackled, before Inspector Rick Crawley, heading up the TAU, responded. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Tine to move, sir. Can you block the gate on Wellspring Lane, over?’

‘Roger, received.’

Lucy glanced at Geraldson, who nodded wordlessly, his mouth clamped shut. And then, inside the old barn, men began shouting, bellowing encouragement, but laughing too, with an angry, raucous delight. The barking took on a new, savage, monstrous overtone.

‘All units,’ Lucy said into the mic. ‘Hit ’em!’

Sergeant Frobisher and Malcolm Peabody’s eight-strong snatch squad broke cover and scampered across the grass, dark and stealthy in the night, the only sound a clack of visors being snapped down and a repeating metallic click as Autolock batons were flicked open.

She turned and stooped out through the small rear entrance of the hide onto the access lane behind. Here, screened by late-summer undergrowth, several RSPCA vans were parked, their personnel standing around in taut silence. Lucy signalled to them and walked around to the front, pushing through the foliage and onto open ground. She wasn’t fully armoured like the snatch squads, but she wore a stab-vest and basic Kevlar padding over her scruffs.

The RSPCA officers followed her out, wearing thick handling gloves, carrying deterrent sprays and poles with slip-leads attached. Well-equipped as they were, they kept a safe distance behind.

From this angle, the pony paddock lay in front of them. More police officers were scurrying across it from its eastern perimeter wall. As Lucy veered towards the farm, Mandy Mahoney had waddled back into view, heaving another crate of beer, apparently unperturbed by the terrible sounds emanating from the barn and seemingly oblivious to the advancing forces. Several pairs of moving headlights also caught Lucy’s attention. Along Wellspring Lane, on the far side of the paddock, three large vehicles – the TAU troop-carriers – were slowing to a halt in front of the farm gate. The gateman was slow to respond, probably because he was stumped by the sight of them. However, half a second later, he was haring back down the farm track, shouting hoarsely and incoherently.

Lucy switched on her loudhailer and raised it to her lips.

‘Leslie Mahoney!’ she called, her voice projected across the darkened meadow. ‘This is Detective Constable Lucy Clayburn of Crowley CID. You and your friends are all being arrested under Section 8 of the Animal Welfare Act. The entire plot is surrounded, Mahoney … so I want you all to come out of that barn right now. Bring your dogs with you and keep them in check. Make sure they’re muzzled and leashed. Anyone resisting will also be arrested for assaulting police officers and assault with intent to resist arrest. Anyone using a dog to resist will be arrested for attempting to cause grievous bodily harm.’

Forty yards ahead, Mandy stood frozen in place as she listened to this message from the darkness. But only when Frobisher’s snatch squad burst into the light, having advanced across the paddock in complete invisibility, did she respond, dropping the crate of beer and running comically towards the barn. Some of the men inside, presumably those closest to the main doors, had also heard. Heads were fleetingly stuck out, and then disappeared again. The wild shouting inside took on notes of panic and then hysteria. Several seconds later, a confused knot of bodies emerged, both human and canine, the animals leaping and whining in confusion, the men hauling on their chains. Those unencumbered by dogs ran every which way, but already there was no escape. The snatch squad from the woods on the west side of the farm surged into view from between the decayed buildings, shouting orders and warnings. Other uniformed cops emerged from around the back of the barn.

The men and dogs scrambled for their cars, and there were gut-thumping collisions as the officers piled into them. Despite this, several vehicles started up, but as they all sought to rev away up the track at the same time, they slid into each other, clunking and shunting, grinding to a chaotic halt. The couple that managed to get ahead of this tangle only made it a few dozen yards, before the sight of a police troop-carrier blocking the gate and a whole phalanx of TAU men, as well armed and armoured as the divisional lads and yet somehow looking more menacing, more military as they advanced down the dirt track, brought them to a halt. The next thing, doors were being yanked open and burly policemen dragging out the drivers and their passengers.

Lucy lowered her loudhailer as she entered the farmyard.

Arrests were being made on all sides. There was no serious violence, but there were struggles as brutish, swearing men were wrestled to the floor and clapped into cuffs. One was struck across the back of the knee with a baton to help him comply. The dogs would have been a problem, especially as several had got loose and were darting back and forth, but they were all still muzzled, and now, at Lucy’s direction, the RSPCA handlers came forward to take charge of them.

‘Prisoner transports move in,’ Lucy told her radio. ‘We’ve got a large number detained.’

One suspect, a younger guy with longish, fair hair, wearing what looked like a wolf-fur doublet, made a semi-successful break for it, shaking off a lone PC and racing onto the open ground of the pony paddock, veering towards Wellspring Lane – only to stop at the sight of several more police vans pulling up behind the troop-carriers. He didn’t know they were divisional vans coming to take prisoners, and, thinking they were yet more police reinforcements, slowed to a trudging halt before dropping to his knees and raising his hands, allowing the pursuing officers to take him into custody.

Lucy was still in the thick of the action, though it was mostly over. On all sides, cautions were being issued, and the responses, mainly f-words and other more imaginative profanities, being recorded on dictaphone as the jostling, cuffed men were frogmarched to the farm cottage wall and held there, each by his individual arresting officer, while others commenced searching them. One resisted more than the rest, kicking out and spitting, and was given a backhander across the mouth for his trouble. Lucy wasn’t worried. When the evidence was finally presented, she doubted there was a magistrate in the land who’d be swayed by farcical complaints about police brutality.

Quite a bit of that evidence was on display inside the barn itself, when she went in there. The centrepiece was a purpose-built pit, squarish in shape, about ten yards by ten, dug to a depth of five feet and lined with brick, with a steel ladder fixed in one corner and a camera mounted on a tripod overlooking it, alongside an upright chalkboard scribbled with betting information.

Two dogs still occupied the pit. One, an American pit bull, charged crazily back and forth, jumping up to snap and snarl at the officers, despite the excessive blood dabbling its jaws and jowls. The other one, whose breed was uncertain, lay in a quivering, panting heap, gashed and torn and spattered with gore.

‘We need one of the vets in here,’ Lucy said to a PC at her shoulder. ‘And a handler … to control the other one, yeah?’

The PC moved away, just as acting DC Tessa Payne, a young black officer, formerly in uniform but currently on secondment to Crowley CID as a trainee, leaned in through a doorway connecting to another outbuilding. Like Lucy, she only wore light body-armour over her jumper and jeans and was in the process of pulling off her protective gloves and replacing them with latex.

‘Lucy …’ she said. ‘You might want to look in here.’

‘This going to make me throw up?’ Lucy said.

‘More likely make you dance a jig.’

Lucy went through into what was a basically a lean-to shed lit by a single electric bulb, its damp walls lined with shelves groaning beneath the grisly accoutrements of dog-fighting. She saw piles of spare muzzles and harnesses, stacks of grubby second-hand magazines with grotesque images on their covers, homemade DVDs, DIY veterinary kits, including staple-guns and tubes of superglue, and a number of ‘breaking sticks’, thick wooden bars impressed with toothmarks, which would normally be used to pry open a victorious animal’s jaws when it had them locked into its latest victim.

‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Bloody perfect. All this needs bagging and tagging, Tessa.’

Payne nodded, at which point they were distracted by the sound of more canine whining. The outhouse had its own outer door – again just a frame with no actual door in it. On the other side they found an enclosed yard containing a set of weighing scales, a treadmill and a large glass tank, very grimy and filled to the brim with water so filthy and green that it was almost opaque. There was also a row of grillwork cages with crudely built kennels attached. Each was occupied by a dog, but these were animals of a different ilk to those they’d seen so far. They were highly subdued, lying still with ears flat, each one watching the humans beyond their cages with fearful intensity.

And it was clear why.

They were brutally scarred, in many cases so bitten and ragged that the fur was entirely missing from their faces. Several had lost so much flesh from their jowls that their teeth were exposed. At least a couple were missing an eye, the empty sockets crudely sutured shut. Lucy saw ears hanging in ribbons, paws chewed into lame, leathery stumps. The reason for that was evident in their breeds, for these were mostly mongrels, but those that weren’t were recognisable as Labradors, spaniels and retrievers, suburban pets rather than fighting-dogs.

‘Bait,’ Lucy observed as she walked along the cages.

‘Looks like this is where all the abductees we’ve been hearing about have finished up,’ Payne said, following.

‘Maybe.’

‘No sign of the black van yet, though.’

‘We need to keep looking.’

To Lucy’s mind, the existence of ‘bait dogs’ was one of the most sickening aspects of the whole dog-fighting disgrace. That these trusting, innocent creatures could be thrown into the pit repeatedly as part of a callous training regime for the fighting-dogs, where they’d be attacked mercilessly, again and again, by savage beasts that wanted nothing more than to senselessly kill anything they were faced with, didn’t bear thinking about. But that such a thing could happen to one-time pets, allegedly stolen from loving homes by this mysterious black van that had been reported several times when an animal had vanished, was somehow even more horrible.

‘We need the vets again,’ Lucy said, to which the younger detective nodded and hurried away.

‘At least you’re not going to need them in here,’ a voice said.

She glanced around, and saw Malcolm Peabody leaning out through the entrance to an ugly breezeblock building with no glass in its windows and a sagging tarpaper roof. He’d removed his ballistics helmet and now carried it under one arm. His hair was damp and spiky, his freckled features greased with sweat. Normally an affable young bloke with a great enthusiasm for the job, his expression was grim and angry, his pallor waxen.

Deeply apprehensive, Lucy followed him inside.

Torchlight revealed that it was a basic shell of a room with bare walls and a rugged concrete floor. It was also stained with the blood of ages and strewn with dog carcasses. There were at least ten of them, all relatively recent; Lucy could tell that because flies buzzed everywhere, and a fetid odour thickened the air. She surveyed the heap of twisted forms with what a stranger might have called indifference, but in truth was cold professionalism. It wasn’t that it didn’t affect her, it was simply that, twelve years in, Lucy was a veteran of this kind of ghastliness, and she knew that to get emotional would only cloud her judgement.

Peabody, a relative newbie, was less in control.

‘These are obviously the ones they couldn’t use any more,’ he said, looking nauseous as he indicated a heavy mallet hanging from a nail by a leather strap. ‘And this is how they put them out of their misery.’

‘Don’t touch it,’ Lucy replied. ‘Don’t touch anything. Not till we’ve had Photographic in here.’

They stepped back outside into the fresher air, and Lucy indicated to one of the other uniforms to come and stand by the door. Walking back through the barn, they came to the farmyard where the prisoners were lined up, their details and the details of the officers who’d detained them being tabulated by Sergeant Frobisher to ensure there’d be no confusion back at Custody. One by one, the prisoner transports were reversing into place, their back doors swinging along with the cage doors inside.

‘Your cards are fucking marked!’ the hefty figure of Mandy Mahoney squawked as two armoured policewomen frogmarched her to a waiting police car. As the only female detainee, she would travel separately from the others. ‘All you pigs … you’re all fucking marked!’

Not far behind her, the even more ponderous and dishevelled shape of Les Mahoney was also manhandled forward. He stank of sweat, and when he grinned at Lucy, showed a full set of rotten teeth.

‘Sorry to disrupt your evening’s entertainment, Mr Mahoney,’ she said.

His grin never faltered. ‘Fuck you, you slip of a tart.’ Hawking a green one, he spat it on the floor at her feet. ‘And tell your fucking clodhopping arse-bandit mates not to make too much of a mess, or I’ll sue the fucking lot of you.’

‘Some chance,’ Peabody retorted. ‘You’re going to jail, pal.’

‘Yeah?’ Mahoney guffawed. ‘Good. I could use a five-month holiday … you spotty-faced lump of dogshit.’

Peabody lurched forward, but Lucy physically restrained him.

‘Get him out of my sight,’ she said.

Mahoney laughed loudly and brashly as he was led away.

Lucy shook her head. ‘Last of the old-school charmers, eh?’

Peabody scowled. ‘It’s right what he said though. We’ll be lucky if he gets any more than a slapped wrist for this. We should drive the bastard around a corner somewhere and smack the living crap out of him … just in case he gets a free ride later.’

Lucy watched as they assisted the cuffed Mahoney into one of the vans. ‘What’ve I told you about getting too involved, Malcolm? You won’t go the distance if you let this job screw with your head. Those things back there … they’re just animals.’ She patted his cheek before walking away. ‘Wait till you see it done to humans.’