LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      WHEN A CHILD DIES, everybody hurts – family, friends and strangers alike. When a child is murdered, anger mixes with the pain. The only difference is that more strangers are drawn in. Doctors have to work out how it happened. Police officers have to figure out who is to blame. Reporters swarm all over the case like wasps round jam. Everybody takes it to heart.

      That’s how it was when Katie Farrell died. It was clear from the start that the fire that killed her was no accident. The firemen could smell the petrol as soon as they got there. Plus, the fire had started right outside her bedroom door, a place where no petrol should ever have been. The other people in the house that night escaped easily – her mother, her father and the Spanish girl who cooked their meals and took care of Katie when her parents weren’t around. But not Katie. She didn’t stand a chance.

      My name is Andy Martin and I am a cop. I heard about Katie Farrell’s death in a phone call that woke me around two in the morning. I don’t normally cover this sort of thing. My beat is serious crime and my team builds cases against serious villains – gangsters, people smugglers, drug dealers, big-time robbers. Scumbags, yes, but not normally the sort of scumbags who burn a nine-year-old girl to death in her own bedroom.

      They called me because Katie Farrell wasn’t just any nine-year-old girl. She was the daughter of Jack Farrell, and I was the world expert on Jack Farrell. Whenever his name hit any police computer, a big flag would go up saying, Call Detective Chief Inspector Andy Martin. Farrell had no criminal record, but that didn’t mean he was an innocent man. Farrell’s crew ran just about every dirty racket you could think of: drugs, guns, hookers, porn. You name it, they were into it. They bought and sold human lives like they were bargains on eBay. We’d been after Jack Farrell for years, but we’d never been able to lay a finger on him. He was still what we call a cleanskin – somebody who had no criminal record, meaning he had all the rights and freedoms available to decent citizens. But I knew the truth. And I wanted Jack Farrell so bad I could taste it.

      So of course they called me. Because Katie Farrell was dead. Dead in a way that said somebody was out to hit her father where it hurt most.

      When I got down to Hampshire, Jack Farrell was standing barefoot outside a house about half the size of Wembley stadium. He was naked apart from boxer shorts and a blanket someone had thrown over his shoulders. He looked like he was the one who had died.

      I saw two things that night I had never seen before. I saw a man whose beautiful life had been shattered with one blow. I also saw Jack Farrell’s tattoos.

      Others had described them to me – vivid colours, dramatic patterns, the finest examples of the skill of the tattoo artist. A dragon covered his torso, its tail disappearing into the waistband of his boxers, only to re-emerge on his left thigh. Every green scale was cleanly etched. A scarlet tongue of flame licked across the right side of his chest, climbing up to his shoulder. On one arm, I could see a samurai warrior, sword raised as if to attack the dragon. On the other arm, a beautiful woman covered her nakedness with hands and a long mane of red hair. It was a story without words, written on Jack Farrell’s body.

      It was also a story that he mostly kept hidden. In all the time I’d been watching Farrell, I’d never seen him in short sleeves. Unlike most villains, who display their tatts as if they were visible proof of how hard they are, Farrell’s body art was kept private. I’d heard it said that he took his shirt off when he was about to kill in cold blood. The word on the street was that Jack Farrell’s tatts were the last thing quite a few bad boys had seen in this world. It was yet another way of making sure he kept the opposition in fear.

      But that night, Jack Farrell wouldn’t have scared anybody. The fire had robbed him of more than his Katie. He was a hollow shell, all the fire inside him snuffed out. I tagged along with the cop who was officially in charge when he went to speak to him, and it was like talking to a man who was already gone for good.

      We got through the routine questions. Farrell responded like a robot. Then the cop said, ‘Had you noticed anybody hanging around who shouldn’t have been?’

      Farrell’s eyes lost their dullness and his body tensed. ‘If I had, I would have dealt with it,’ he snarled.

      ‘What do you mean, “dealt with it”?’ I asked.

      Farrell’s gaze raked me from head to toe. He seemed almost to gather himself together, as if he had just realized Katie’s death might not be the only bad thing that could happen tonight. ‘I would have called the police,’ he said. ‘What do you think I meant?’

      I said nothing, holding his hot stare with my eyes. At last, I broke the silence. ‘What about enemies?’ I said. ‘Is there anybody who might have a grudge against you? Somebody you might have provoked?’ I kept my voice calm and steady, acting as if I didn’t have a clue about the sort of life he led.

      ‘Are you trying to say this is my own fault?’ The robot was gone and a man in pain had stepped out of the shadows. His face twisted with emotion. ‘This isn’t normal. This isn’t what happens when you piss somebody off. This is some nutter that’s done this.’ He turned away, pulling the blanket close as if he’d only just noticed how cold it was. ‘Leave me in peace to grieve for my Katie,’ he said, so quiet I almost didn’t catch it.

      He walked away. I went to follow him, but the local cop grabbed my arm. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, looking at me like I was less than human. ‘The man’s just lost his kid.’

      I shrugged his hand off. ‘You really have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you? Let me tell you something about Jack Farrell. If he thought killing somebody’s kid was the best way to get their attention, he’d do it without a second thought. The only surprise is that somebody had the balls to do it to him first.’