Текст книги "American Devil"

Автор книги: Oliver Stark

Соавторы: Oliver Stark
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Chapter Eight

Upper East Side Crime Scene

November 16, 6.45 p.m.

Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper drove in silence from the cathedral into the wealth and privilege of the Upper East Side. Harper looked up at the darkening sky between the towering buildings. His greatest memory was lying beside Lisa on the side of a razor-edged ridge with a view of the stars, watching the flocks of migrating raptors in the dark. Some things were still magical in the world; it was just getting harder and harder to find them.

The rain clouds had gathered by the time they turned on to East 82nd Street. The two detectives felt the strain of the news as the car lurched through the pull and push of rush hour traffic. Finding a third dead girl so soon was highly unusual, even with the worst of killers. Harper wasn’t sure what they were dealing with. He felt his own ignorance and chastised himself for not taking up Lafayette’s offer the day before. Up ahead, they saw the familiar parade of police cars beating out a frenzy of red and blue lights.

As Eddie pulled up to the kerb, Harper took a quick look at his cell phone. No messages – there never were any more. He closed his eyes momentarily. Life must go on.

They jumped out on to the street. It was a buzz of activity at the scene and the first officers had managed to close off both ends of East 82nd. The Crime Scene Unit had secured the area with blue screens and put up six strong floodlights that filled the air with an unreal glow and caused steam to rise from the damp sidewalk.

Harper and Kasper found the entrance to the car park and hurried down to the underground lot. Their footsteps echoed against the bare concrete walls and they could hear the low murmurings of the cops from two levels below.

Just beyond the entrance, Harper’s eyes scanned left and right, up and down. He noticed that the parking lot had limited exit points, maximum exposure, valet parking and cameras at every corner, making it a very visible and difficult spot to escape from. This killer wasn’t afraid to choose a high-risk location. Except with crimes of passion and anger, which could happen wherever those emotions exploded, such openness was highly unusual.

‘If this is the same killer he’s changing quickly,’ he said to Kasper as they moved down through the dark underground lot. ‘This is a far cry from the lonely waters of Ward’s Island.’

‘Well, we’re about to find out.’ Eddie pointed towards the rest of Blue Team gathered around a metal railing at the far end of Level 2.

Nate Williamson and Detective Mark Garcia were standing apart from the others, talking closely. Williamson was big and strong, but his hair had mostly left him; Mark Garcia was handsome and well dressed, and smelt of cologne. Together they looked like a veteran cop with a pimp informer. Harper walked across. He and Williamson had some history. Harper was given the lead on the Romario case after Williamson had got nowhere with it.

‘How’s it going?’ Harper asked. ‘What’s the situation down here?’

‘Fuck me, what’s brought you back from the dead?’ said Williamson. ‘Jarvis dropped his charge or what?’

Harper shrugged. ‘Don’t know about that. I’ve just been asked to take a look. See if I can help out.’

‘Well, we need all the help we can get,’ said Williamson, and put out his hand.

Harper took it and shook. ‘You’re not pissed with me?’

‘I’m three weeks off retirement. Let sleeping dogs lie is what I say. How about it?’

‘That’s good to hear, Nate, but you know they won’t let you retire in the middle of a case.’

‘That’s the only reason I’m happy to see your ugly face, Harper. I’m hoping you can get me a quick arrest and a ticket for the Bahamas.’

Kasper had a look of surprise on his face. ‘Hey, this isn’t a love-in. What’s the story here, Garcia?’

Mark Garcia leaned over a steel railing and pointed. ‘There’s a body in the arch at the far end. White girl, early twenties. Similar to the girl on Ward’s Island, but this one’s worse. A whole lot worse.’

‘What kind of injuries?’ Harper asked.

Williamson jumped in. ‘It’s like this. Victim’s unidentified at present. She’s been stripped, probably raped and cut like the others. It’s our very own Jack the Ripper.’

Their faces lit by the overhead fluorescent tubes, Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper stepped across to the large brick arch. The body was at the base of three steep steps that led to an old metal service door. Harper ran his hand over the worn curved tread on the top step and then looked down at the body.

It didn’t matter how often you’d stared at the aftermath of violence, it always took your breath away. The victim’s pale corpse was lying flat on the wet concrete, half under the arch, the skin of her abdomen and chest peeled back on either side of her torso as if she was on display in some sidewalk anatomy class that had been suddenly abandoned.

Harper took his time looking at the corpse. It was hard to see a human being turned into this mess, but he tried to see through it, to notice what was logical about the death scene and what stood out. At this scene, a lot stood out.

Eddie moved across to Tom, who crouched by the body and stared at the woman’s bloodied face. Her eyes were intact this time but it was the same killer. Harper saw that right away.

‘What’s your take, boss?’ said Eddie.

‘No idea yet. Poor girl. She went through a helluva lot of fear and pain. That’s all I got. Give me a moment, Eddie.’

They looked down at the naked body again. It remained horribly still. The harsh fluorescent lights of the underground garage lent the corpse a greenish glow. The only movement was a couple of insects buzzing around her chest. Harper thought it looked like the killer had opened up her torso for a reason. Another trophy. Not only that, but he wanted everyone to see what he’d taken. Harper looked up at his partner. ‘The girl’s heart is missing,’ he said.

Eddie walked away. It was too much to think about. Alone, Harper sat on the bottom step and looked at the corpse. So what happened to you? Her hands were so caked in blood that he couldn’t tell if she’d put up a fight or not. Did you come down here of your own free will? What did he do? Threaten you with his knife to keep quiet and go along with his plans? Did he make you undress – promise to let you go? Or did he sap you and drag you here while you were out cold? Did you know this bastard?

Harper looked carefully at the marks on the floor. The ground in the arch was wet from a leak that seemed to come from a crack in the concrete above. There was a layer of black carbon from traffic fumes which scuffed up easily and left light marks. Harper looked at the pattern of marks at the bottom of the steps. Two long straight lines extended about forty centimetres from the bottom of the step. Heel marks as the killer had dragged his victim across the ground holding her upper body. That meant he’d probably sapped her. Harper saw another set of marks. Three oblong shapes scratched around as if looking for the right spot. The tripod, no doubt. Whoever it was, he had filmed or photographed these gruesome final scenes.

Harper continued to think it through. He hit you and dragged you to the arch. Then he turned you. The heel marks twist and then stop. He laid you flat out here, half in view. Why? Why leave your body visible? Wasn’t that dangerous? Why not pull you all under the arch? Was that because he wanted to see what he was doing? Needs the buzz of seeing your face as he hurt you?

Harper looked carefully for any other scuff marks. There were none. He looked at the shallow puddles of blood that had pooled across the concrete. He peered into the darkness of the arch with a flashlight. More blood was thick across the back wall and a few drips hung above him. Harper was no blood-pattern expert, but the arterial spray was unmistakable. The killer would’ve left the scene covered in her blood. There were flecks of blood-covered paint under her fingernails and scratch marks at the base of the wall. He raped you and mutilated you out here in the light while you were semi-conscious, then pulled you inside.

Harper leaned across to the wall. The scratch marks were all in the same place. How did he keep your arms from moving? He’d held her down, somehow. Harper imagined the scene, letting the images pass through his mind as a mass of sudden, bloody fragments. He had his knees on your arms as he cut you, didn’t he? He sat there, muffling your screams and watching you real close.

It was nearly an hour before Harper finally emerged to allow the Crime Scene Unit to get the body bagged and out to the lab. He was just leaving when he spotted something else. It was easy to miss, written faintly in yellow chalk with part of the lettering removed by the dripping from the ledge above. He couldn’t read it as it was, so he called the photographer down to get some good shots. Then he went back to the team.

‘So what does the clairvoyant say?’ said Williamson with a sneer that showed off his gums.

‘She was tortured to death down there while shoppers were returning to their cars.’ Harper looked at Williamson hard. ‘It’s unbelievable.’

Nate Williamson felt it too. ‘No ligature this time. She didn’t survive the surgery, is my guess.’

Harper nodded his head. ‘Yeah, I agree. He hit an artery and it will have killed her more quickly, thank God. But listen, the arch down there is large enough to conceal the body, if he’d wanted to. But he hasn’t, so there’s something important to him in how he’s left her, half in and half out. Visible.’

‘He might’ve been interrupted,’ said Williamson.

‘Yeah. Or he wanted the body found. I think maybe he wanted it found just like it was – posed.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it looks like he’s been particular in how he’s left her and how he’s opened her up.’

‘Particular, as in flat on her back? How else is he going to leave her?’

‘Particular, as in ...’ Harper took another look over the edge of the railings. He could see her head in a circle of blood and the flaps of skin stretched out beside her. ‘He’s showing us something. The missing heart. I don’t know yet. Give me time. What’s the Medical Examiner say?’

‘He thinks he’s used something like a filleting knife and some kind of bone shears – not the kind of thing you carry around in your pocket. Definitely premeditated.’

‘Any witnesses? Anyone hear anything?’

‘We’ve got near thirty officers from Nineteenth and Twenty-fifth going round the blocks, but nothing yet.’

‘How do you read it, Harps?’ Eddie said. ‘Who is he?’

‘It’s not spontaneous. It was planned. He humiliates and likes hurting. He’s posed the body. It looks to me that he’s got the whole thing figured out – where he kills, how he kills, how he escapes. He’s been dreaming this a long time. My take on the victim is that she’s just like the others. She’s rich.’

‘And how can you tell that?’ Williamson asked.

‘She’s got a half-carat diamond in each ear, she’s had a nose job, her hands and feet are unused to work, and she looks like she spent most of her life in a gym.’

An hour later the scene was a buzz of police activity. NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit was fast, thorough and precise. Staffed, unlike some CSUs, with police detectives – they knew the importance of speed.

The next twelve hours were crucial. If they got a quick lead, they might be able to run this killer down before he got to dispose of his bloody clothes and put his trophies away. Williamson reckoned that he had a car and would put her clothes in the trunk and then maybe leave them until the heat calmed down – but that was a long shot.

Harper stayed at the scene and sat on the low wall at the edge of the lot. He pulled out his sketch pad. A sleek dark greckle stared across the page from a couple of days earlier at the Ramble. He turned over and drew the crime scene with a few quick lines. The dead woman appeared on the page in front of him. Thoughts of Lisa flittered into his mind but he stopped himself. The imagination could be a cruel thing. He focused on the sketch. Without the shock-red blood and bruising, she looked serene – she was positioned with her arms across her pudenda like a Renaissance nude, the butterfly wings either side of her, strange and otherworldly.

What was he doing, this maniac killer? The posing was important. Harper knew that much. It was an act of communication. He was saying something. As yet, Harper didn’t speak the killer’s language. But something was happening. This was the second kill in two days. His rate was escalating dramatically. Why? Was it some kind of kill frenzy? Time would tell.

‘Hey, Harper!’ a voice at the far end of the parking lot called out. Harper looked up and saw the tall, thin figure of Eddie Kasper, dressed in his low-slung pants and bubble jacket, his hair braided tight to his scalp.

‘Yeah, what?’

‘It’s just like old times, ain’t it?’

Chapter Nine

The Station House

November 16, 9.14 p.m.

Harper had a quick decision to make if he was going to make a difference to the case. He drove straight from the parking lot back to the precinct, the mass of information from the crime scene turning in his mind. He needed to know the deal.

Captain Lafayette was not in his office. He was down in the gym, sweating out his frustrations. He’d been working round the clock on the case, trying to get the breakthrough from Blue Team while keeping the executives from breathing down everyone’s necks, but nothing was biting.

He’d left a message for Harper to go down to the gym if he turned up. Tom Harper was the one hope he had of turning down the heat, and talking to Kasper had been his last-ditch effort to pull him into the case.

When Harper arrived in the gym Lafayette was alone. Everyone else was out hunting down witnesses and following up vague possibilities. Lafayette was on the weights. He saw Tom and huffed through another five repetitions. Always one to make people wait.

‘Heard you showed up at the crime scene. I was first down there. Worst I’ve come up against. How about you?’

‘Yeah, it’s brutal.’

‘Serial homicides usually escalate like this, Harper?’

‘No. Not quite so quickly, but there are no fixed patterns. They usually take a longer cooling off period between kills. For some reason, the killer got hungry real quick this time.’

‘Same guy, right?’

‘Almost certainly. As long as you keep the specific injuries and the cherry blossom detail out of the press, we should avoid copycats.’

‘What’s wrong with plain old-fashioned murder? You want to kill someone, take a gun. One shot. Be tidy, you know.’ The chief towelled his shoulders dry. His thick moustache was also dripping. He licked the sweat off the bristles and then towelled his face. ‘Offer still stands, Harper. Where are you now?’

‘You’ll have to be more specific.’

‘Look, I can be specific. Do you want to try to save any part of your career by taking the clean slate and helping us nail this case? You’d have to apologize and sign up to some therapy for the aggression, just to keep ourselves in the clear. Rainer is gunning for you, Harper. You need to know that I had to go over his head for this one.’

‘Thanks, Captain. I appreciate your faith in me.’

‘Fuck faith, Harper. I looked up the stats. You’re a closer. The best we got.’

Harper looked around him. ‘I’m not sorry for what I did to Lieutenant Jarvis. He called Lisa a slut, and everyone knows I’ve got a short fuse. He knew what he was doing.’

‘I know, I know. Divorce is a pig of a business. He said the wrong thing. Listen, one day he’ll realize what an ass he is, but until then you’ve still got a life to lead. Look, I can probably apologize on your behalf, but will you help us stop this scum from terrifying half of New York?’

‘What do they want from me? They’re not going to rip up the charges, are they? And Jarvis won’t like it, either. He’ll take it as far as he can.’

‘Jarvis will hate it, but let me worry about him,’ the captain said. ‘He’s got his own troubles. A lot came to light during the internal investigation – he’s been intimidating the new recruits and anyone else not able to stand up to him. He’ll be lucky to keep his own fucking job. And as for the charges, we can maybe get away with a Letter of Instruction. With psychological assessment and therapy for that temper of yours, I think we can get that signed off by the deputy commissioner.’

Harper rose. ‘I can do without the psychological assessment. ’

‘Just go through the motions for me, will you? It’s part of the deal.’

‘I got my own way of handling it.’

‘I know, and look how successful it is. Come on, give yourself a break. Jump on board. You could do with the focus.’

Harper stood silently, then nodded once and the two men shook. ‘Good to have you back on the team, Detective Harper. You get signed up to the department shrink and you’re back on Blue Team. Dr Levene works at headquarters. She knows you’re coming. Just don’t take a pop if things get tough. Keep your fucking hands in your pockets, Sugar Ray.’

‘Sure,’ said Harper. ‘If people lay off me, I’ll lay off them. Simple laws of physics, Chief.’

Chapter Ten

Blue Team Major Investigation Room

November 16, 11.15 p.m.

For the first twenty-four hours of each homicide, the focus was on three main points of investigation – victim identification, witness search and forensic leads. Back at Blue Team, Tom Harper went straight from the gym to his old desk and started working on victim ID. He’d not been happy with the speed of ID on the previous victims. It took them eight hours to ID the Ward’s Island corpse as Grace Frazer and those eight hours were lost hours.

Harper insisted on going through the CCTV images himself. He knew two things for certain from his visit to the crime scene: one, the woman in the parking lot drove there in a car, and, two, that car had disappeared. Simple conclusion was that the killer didn’t use his own car. He’d gone to the lot on foot and after the murder he’d driven the victim’s car out of there. It was the only way he could’ve left in such a bloody state without being seen.

It only took an hour of searching the tape before he spotted the victim’s car arriving in the lot. He paused on a single frame and wrote down the licence plate on a brand new silver Mercedes SUV. He called it through and within a few minutes he was looking at the victim’s ID. She was called Amy Lloyd-Gardner, and she was twenty-four years old. A quick check on the various databases showed she was a PR executive married to a wealthy young banker.

Tom pulled up a photograph of Amy Lloyd-Gardner from a social networking website and leaned back into his seat. He stared at her face. She was another beauty with long blond hair, similar in looks to Mary-Jane and Grace. The killer was fixated on a certain kind of look and this was his trigger: a bright-eyed, blond-haired innocence.

Harper turned round to look at the room full of officers working methodically through the case details. Somewhere out in the city, Amy’s husband was waiting up for her, as yet unaware that his young wife was a murder victim.

She had been on a lazy afternoon shopping trip. She would’ve had no idea as she wandered around the shops that there was a killer tracking her and waiting for an opportunity. No idea at all. Her car, her clothes, her shopping had all disappeared. That meant that the killer had taken everything away in the silver Merc. But the killer didn’t take the body and he didn’t need to take the clothes. He wants to keep the clothes, Harper thought, and added it to a growing list of the killer’s predilections. He called across to one of the detectives and asked him to get the car details sent out to the team and called through to patrol. Within minutes, the car’s plate and description was radioed all across Manhattan and New York State. Finding the big shiny car was just a matter of time.

Harper walked through to Williamson to give him the heads-up on the ID. Williamson took the printout. ‘Thanks, Harper. Listen, I’ll take Garcia and go and see Mr Lloyd-Gardner myself. Shit, what a night call this is going to be.’

Harper was pleased that Williamson would take this one. He needed more time to go through the information from the crime scene. When he returned to his desk, his email blinked with a new arrival, from the guys at the crime scene lab. Harper had requested the photographs as soon as they’d been downloaded and categorized. He clicked through the images one by one. The story retold itself on his computer screen. A sad end to life in a grey concrete garage. The violence of the poor woman’s end was there before him in cold close-up. He felt the anger rising and took a moment to detach himself.

He clicked backwards and forwards through the pictures of the corpse. From a certain angle, the naked body with the skin stretched out either side of her torso looked like some kind of butterfly. Was that accident or design? He stared at the screen. Amy’s toenails were painted red, and there was a little black ace of spades on her left hip. Her eyebrows had been plucked thin and then drawn in pale eyebrow pencil, and her lips still retained a translucent pink lip gloss. Even on a mutilated corpse, the little marks of recognition and individuality demanded to be known. Harper noticed a mark just below her lips. Smudged lipstick. Maybe the killer had left a print. He zoomed close to her lips, until they covered the entire screen. It wasn’t a fingerprint. A faint outline of a kiss lay half across her lips in her own lipstick. The killer must have kissed her, coated his lips in her lipstick and then kissed her again. There was a half-print of the killer’s lips sitting right there.

He gave Latent Prints a call and suggested they get a print. Everything needed to be processed, every tiny detail. He never knew, down the line, what would help him nail this bastard and get him locked up. Sometimes it was a single hair, sometimes a significant coincidence, sometimes a cell phone call that put the killer at the scene, sometimes something as simple as a kiss.

What were they dealing with? A sociopath? A thrill seeker or a sexually sadistic serial killer who wouldn’t stop until someone stopped him? The team didn’t talk much as they wandered in and out of the precinct late into the night. Not even the jokes were flowing yet, just the grim sense of a difficult journey and the knowledge of how much pain and suffering these victims had been through.

Harper picked up the congealed dinner of chicken noodles that had been half eaten a few hours earlier. He was halfway through the first mouthful when he caught the image again in his mind’s eye.

Harper moved back to his desktop and clicked on her photographs again. The hands in prayer, he was thinking. That little detail from Grace Frazer’s murder was sitting right there in Harper’s mind and the link to the parking lot killing flashed into his mind. He found the image he wanted. The woman’s corpse was shining bright. Her skin was so pale it was almost iridescent, the wings were blood-dark, and the fluorescent lights glistened gold on the bloody circle around her head.

Harper stopped mid-chew. A halo?

Yes, he knew that there was something in that image, something that connected it to Grace Frazer. The killer had started to express himself, let himself be known a little. First a woman with her hands in prayer and now he’d made wings and a halo. Amy looked like an angel with her heart torn out.

Harper was fired by the thought and quickly printed three photographs, one of Mary-Jane Samuelson, one of Grace Frazer and one of the Angel. He went up to one of the big boards that had been set up in the investigation room and pinned the pictures side by side. Garcia looked across from the computer he was working at. ‘What you looking at, Harper?’

‘He’s signing his corpses.’

Harper picked up his coat and walked down the stairs. He needed some fresh air and a chance to think. A killer’s MO was one thing – it was what he needed to do to kill – but an MO could change, as it had in this case. He had cut them to different degrees, but the signature was what he needed to do to fulfil himself, what he couldn’t kill without doing. The angelic wings and the hands in prayer were part of a ritual, just like the cherry blossom, which struck Harper as almost bridal. The killer needed to pose his corpses like dead angels. Harper felt that he knew something about the killer now. He hated goodness and religion. Like a devil, he needed to degrade it all.

Harper stepped across the street towards a coffee shop. It was close to midnight. Outside, the air was good and cool. The winter migrants who had stayed in New York would appreciate the break from the harsh cold wind. Harper’s footsteps echoed in the quiet night air. Then he spotted a guy up ahead staring at him.

Harper turned and behind him saw two more big guys walking towards him. All three were over six foot and burly. They looked like security guards, or maybe even police.

‘I guess this isn’t social, so what do you want?’ Harper said, cold-eyed.

‘Into the alley,’ said one of the guys. His face looked like the side of a mountain.

‘Read the shield, gentlemen,’ said Harper, flashing his ID. ‘I’m a cop, so you might want to avoid trouble and get yourselves home to bed.’

They didn’t move, but looked down into the dark alley. Harper thought they were motioning for him to make a move, but from the alley he heard footsteps. His eyes twisted towards the sound and he saw the problem. Its name was Lieutenant Jarvis, and everything suddenly clicked into place.

Jarvis’s jaw was no longer wired up but his face was still misshapen down one side. ‘Detective Harper,’ he said in a slow slur. ‘I thought your police time was over. Now someone tells me I’ve got to eat humble pie while you get the glory spot. After you leaping on me with those fists of yours, doesn’t sound fair, does it?’

‘No, Lieutenant, it doesn’t sound fair.’

‘So, what was it you objected to, Harper? You didn’t like my insinuations?’

‘I didn’t like any part of it at all,’ said Harper, ‘or your tone of voice.’

‘Really. My tone of voice. Hey, guys, he doesn’t like my beautiful voice.’

They laughed like eager sycophants. Harper looked around quickly. This wasn’t good news. These four guys were all strong, and people fighting together tended to get all excited like a pack of hounds and do real damage. They could bust him up pretty bad. He couldn’t see a way out. There were too many of them. He let his arms hang down by his sides.

‘These your men, Lieutenant?’

‘These guys are just visiting the city. They stopped by and offered me a helping hand.’

‘Let it go, Jarvis. I hit you because you called my wife a whore.’

‘I still say she’s a whore. She’s shacked up with a lawyer over in New Jersey. She made that move real quick. Makes you think, doesn’t it, Harper? I heard the reason she left is because you used those fists of yours once too often. Well, me and my boys are going to make it hard for you to ever use those fists again. In the name of public safety and women’s liberation.’

Harper bristled. But it was just what Jarvis wanted. The bad cop throwing a punch.

‘Didn’t you hear me, Harper? Lisa Vincenti was fucking every guy in the department while you were out all night chasing Eric Romario. She got real lonely. Liked it every which way, I heard. Now she’s done with the department and has moved on to the courts.’

Harper’s two hands were fists now, and the anger was rising. He took a step forward. Then stopped. ‘I ain’t gonna rise to it.’

‘You don’t need to,’ Jarvis spat.

One of the three gorillas stepped forward, then another. They grabbed Harper at each elbow and shoulder and marched him down the alleyway. The third gorilla opened a long canvas bag that was sitting by the dumpster and took out a serious-looking sledgehammer. Harper was held fast as Jarvis moved in.

‘You know what this is, Harper?’

‘I know what it is and I know what you are – a fucking coward. You do this, Jarvis, and I’ll hunt you down.’

‘With what? You going to slap me with your big flat hands?’

‘I’ll hunt you down, Jarvis, and every one of these monkeys.’

‘You do that. I just want you to remember the last person you hit with those fists and what a stupid thing that was.’

‘Jarvis, this is way beyond necessary. I’m working the case because they need me. There’s a killer out there.’

‘Put his arm on the dumpster,’ called Jarvis.

Harper resisted and strained with all his strength as the three men held him and prised his arm from his side, but they were too strong. Against three of them he couldn’t do anything, not with his hands held firm.

They held his wrist down on the lid of the dumpster, so that his fist was lying ready to be mashed to pieces. Jarvis picked up the big carbon-steel sledgehammer. ‘Let this be a lesson you don’t forget.’

He pulled the long handle up over his head and then held it for a moment. ‘Ready?’ The hammer flew down at speed. Harper’s skill, learned from hours in the ring, wasn’t just in the extra pound per inch he could force down those four knuckles, it was in the ability to keep his eyes open when facing danger and to make split-second decisions.

As the hammer fell, the three gorillas closed their eyes and leaned away from the point of impact. It was the natural thing to do. The gorilla holding his wrist even moved his hand up Harper’s forearm.

It was a tiny miscalculation on their part, but enough. Harper watched the sledgehammer fall and twisted his wrist and hand about three inches to the right. It was enough to move out of the line of the hammerhead, which thudded with a massive shock into the steel dumpster, the loud bellow of sheet metal against carbon steel echoing both ways down the alley. The four assailants flinched in the aftermath and gave Harper enough of an opening. Harper pulled his left arm free. He already had his targets mapped out. Four blows. He could get four shots off in under two seconds. Trained to do it.

At his best, Harper could throw a punch at around ten metres per second. None of the four guys was more than a metre from him, which gave the first about a tenth of a second to see the straight left coming at him and parry or duck. He had barely clocked it when the full force of Harper’s 300 kilograms of pressure burst on to his jaw in the form of a clenched fist. His head flew back, his neck jolted and he was flat on his back, out cold.