The Burning Girl-4 Read Free Page A

blood-trails running from two deep, diagonal cuts left shoulder to right hip and vice versa.
    "Stil not sure about the blade, though. I thought it might be a Stanley knife, but I reckon it could be a machete, something like that."
    Thorne nodded. A machete was the weapon of choice with a number of gangland enforcers. "Yardies or Yakuza, maybe .. ."
    "Wel , whoever's paying him, he's enjoying the work. He shoots them pretty quickly afterwards, so I can't be a hundred per cent sure, but I think he does his bit of creative carving while they're stil alive."
    The man responsible for the death of Mickey Clayton, and three men before him in the previous six weeks, was like no contract kil er Thorne had ever come across or heard about. To these shadowy figures men who were wil ing to kil for anything upwards of a few thousand pounds anonymity was everything. This one was different. He liked to leave his mark. "X
    marks the spot," Thorne said.
    "Or X as in "crossed out"." Hendricks drained his can. "So, what about you? Good day at the office, dear?"
    Thorne grunted as he stood up. He took Hendricks' empty can and went through to the kitchen to get them both fresh ones. Staring aimlessly into the fridge, Thorne tried in vain to remember his last good day at the office .. .

    His team of which Hendricks was the civilian member at the Serious Crime Group (West) had been seconded to help out the Projects Team at SO7 the Serious and Organised Crime Unit. It had quickly become apparent that organised was one thing this particular operation was not. The resources of SO7 were stretched paper thin -or at least that was their story.
    There was a major turf war between two old family firms south of the river, and an escalation in a series of ongoing disputes among Triad gangs that had seen three shootings in one week and a pitched battle on Gerrard Street. Al the same, Thorne suspected that he and his team were basical y there to cover other people's arses.
    There was nothing in it for him. If arrests were ever made, the credit would go elsewhere, and anyway, there was precious little satisfaction in chasing down those responsible for getting rid of pond life like Mickey Clayton.
    The series of fatal "X' shootings of which Clayton's was the fourth was a major assault on the operations of one of north London's biggest gangland families, but the simple fact was that the Projects Team hadn't the first idea who was doing the assaulting. Al the obvious rivals had been approached and discounted. Al the usual underground sources had been paid and pumped for information, none of which had proved useful. It became clear that a major new operation had established itself and was keen to make a splash. Thorne and his team were on board to find out who they were. Who was paying a contract kil er, quickly dubbed the X-Man, to hurt the Ryan family?
    "He's making life hard for himself, though, isn't he?" Thorne started talking from the kitchen and continued as he brought the beers into the living room. "This X thing, this signature or whatever it is, it limits what he can do, where he can do it. He can't just ride up on a motorbike or wait for them outside a pub. He needs a bit of time and space."
    Hendricks took a can. "He obviously puts a lot of effort into his work. Plans it. I bet he's bloody expensive."
    Thorne thought Hendricks was probably right. "It's stil cheap though, isn't it? When you think about it. To kil someone, I mean. Twenty, twenty-five grand's about top whack. That's a damn sight less than the people putting out the contracts pay for their Jeeps and top-of-the-range Mercs."
    "What d'you reckon I can get for a couple of hundred quid?" Hendricks asked. "There's this mortuary assistant at Westminster who's getting on my tits."
    Thorne thought about it for a second. "Chinese burn?"
    The laugh was the first decent one that Thorne could remember sharing with anyone for a few days .. .
    "How can it be the Yardies?" Hendricks said when he'd stopped