Violent Ends

Book 5: Connor Fraser

by Neil Broadfoot

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Having the wrong client can be murder...

The voice was smooth, cultured, almost tender as it oozed from the phone into Connor Fraser's ear. "I've heard about you, Mr Fraser, and I'm very impressed by your work. So I've decided to employ you. I am going to kill Father John Donnelly sometime in the next seven days. And you are going to stop me - or die trying. "

The thought it's a sick joke lasts for as long as it takes Connor to find that £70,000 has been deposited into his PayPal account, and for him to receive an email with a picture of his grandmother. With no choice but to make a deal with the devil, Connor races to unmask a killer before he strikes and uncovers a mystery that stretches back decades, threatening the people closest to him.

Praise for Violent Ends

'Line of duty meets Backdraft' -- Bloody Scotland, listed as one of Bloody Scotland's 12 Books of Christmas

'A heart-pounding thriller that's also a brilliantly twisty mystery that keeps you guessing to the last page' Derek Farrell


Praise for Neil Broadfoot:

'Tense, fast-moving and bloody. Broadfoot's best yet' Mason Cross

'A true rising star of crime fiction' Ian Rankin

'Beautifully crafted . . . There's no filler, no exposition, just action, dialogue and layering of tension that'll hold you breathless until the very end' Helen Fields

'Wonderfully grisly and grim, and a cracking pace' James Oswald

'A frantic, pacy read with a compelling hero' Steve Cavanagh

Release date: October 27, 2022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 327

Sample

He had been taught it was nothing more than the by-product of a chemical reaction, energy expressing itself in heat and flame. Over the years he had studied it, and the ways in which it could be controlled and suppressed. He had seen the devastation it could wreak on homes mapped out in the gutted, blackened skeletons of collapsed roofs and scorched walls, seen what it could do to bodies shrivelled into a foetal position by heat, faces pulled taut in rictus grins, hands palsied talons, the muscles and skin sloughing off the bones, like slow-cooked chicken, the bodies filling the room with a smell that was at once acrid and sickly sweet.

He had fought it in tenements and staircases, cars and forests, developed a grudging respect for it. But lying there, he suddenly knew the lie at the heart of all his years’ facing fire. It was not merely the result of a kinetic reaction, fuelled by oxygen until it was starved of fuel or doused.

No. The truth was the fire was alive.

And it was laughing at him.

He could hear it even over the laboured hiss and spit of his respirator, a rumbling chuckle that accompanied the flames that danced and capered across the floors and up the walls surrounding him. He braced his arms again, pushed with all his strength against the beam that had fallen over his chest when the roof had collapsed on him. He closed his eyes, filled his mind with images of Caroline and his son as he pushed, bit back the scream that was clawing up his throat as he willed the beam to move. After a moment, he sagged back, arms shaking and spent, heard the fire’s laughter grow harsher, crueller at his latest failure.

He tried again to reach for the radio on his chest, found he still could not slip his hand between the beam and his bulky overalls. Considered, in a moment of desperation, removing one of his gloves to try to squeeze through the gap. Knew he could not. The world around him was a roaring flame, hell made real. His hand would blister and burn the moment his naked skin touched the air.

And he would be damned if he was going to give the fire something else to laugh at.

He sagged back, forced himself to breathe slowly and regularly, just as he had been trained to. Used facts to hold back the rising terror that threatened to overtake his thoughts, like a tide overtaking a beach. He had entered this building as part of a three-man team. The control team outside knew he was here, had his tally to prove it. They would come for him. Find him. Save him.

After all, wasn’t that what they were all here to do?

A splintering bang shook his world. The fire roared its approval and seemed to swell in the room. He swivelled his head desperately, trying to see through a visor quickly blackening with soot and the charred remains of whatever had been in the room before it had been transformed into a scene from Dante. Could feel the heat for the first time now, pressing on his protective jacket and trousers, probing for weaknesses, vulnerabilities. He felt a sudden, desperate thirst, ran his tongue over lips that were cracked and dry, any moisture vaporised by the fire.

‘Please, God,’ he whispered, the words thick and alien in his mouth. He had been told this was all a part of His great plan, a holy undertaking. He was one of the chosen, the anointed. It was his destiny to be in this building now. Why shouldn’t God help him?

Another shuddering crack, this time closer, louder. He craned his head back, the world turning upside down. Barked a harsh laugh that sounded more like a scream as he saw boots stomp towards him. Felt a flash of shame at his earlier doubt. They had been right. He was the anointed, the chosen. God had not forsaken him. After all, this was a part of his plan.

He dropped his hands from the beam across his chest, reached back towards his saviour.

‘Please,’ he shouted, his throat burning as though the air from his respirator had become toxic. ‘Trapped. Help me move this beam, we can get …’

The figure beside him crouched, features hidden behind a breathing mask and visor that danced with reflected flame. He felt a pressure on his helmet, realised his saviour was assessing for injuries, trying to stabilise his neck. Relief flooded through him again, and tears sprang into his eyes. A professional, acting just as they had been trained. He would be safe now.

‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘Spine is intact, can feel my extremities, even with this bastard weight on me. I just need you to …’

A sudden harsh jerk and the world became a thing of searing agony and blurred images as his helmet and mask were ripped off. He felt a momentary scalding as the heat of the room crawled over his now-exposed flesh. Tears streamed down his face as the smoke bit into his eyes, blinding him. He coughed and gagged, head thrashing from side to side as the bitter, acrid air that filled the room forced its way into him.

He felt a shape being drawn on his forehead, a momentary coolness that gave way to a terrible, final numbness. And in that moment, he knew. Knew he would never see his family again. Knew that he was not one of God’s anointed after all. He had been chosen, yes, but not in the way he had thought. He was not a saviour doing God’s work. He was a lamb led to the slaughter. A sacrifice to the flame.

Even as he felt his mind crumble and fracture under the crushing weight of this new certainty, he called out to God. Begged, pleaded. For his life. For his sister. For his child. Forced his eyes open, his frantic, begging sobs giving way to a hoarse, rasping scream as he saw something cold and bright flare across his vision, as hard and final as the voice that still spoke.

The respirator’s rasp drowned the fire for an instant as the figure loomed over him, closer now, intimate, almost as if there were great secrets to share.

A scorching fire flashed across his throat. Then the numbness again as his vision dimmed, as though the fire was now burning the very light in the room. But even as the suffocating blackness took him, he heard it again, knew he was right.

The fire was a living thing. And it was laughing at him.

Strong hands clamped around the back of Connor Fraser’s neck, their touch as cold as the steel he could feel in their grasp. They forced his head down, bending him over. Instinctively, he brought his hands up to his face, blocking the knees directed at his chin and temple.

He heard a grunt of laughter as his opponent changed tactic in response to Connor’s defence and started stabbing at his side with knee strikes. Connor rolled away from the kicks as much as he could, focused on his breathing. Closed his eyes, felt the blows pepper his ribs. Ignored the pain, searched for the rhythm.

There.

He dropped his guard, grabbed the knee aimed for his left side. Felt his opponent stagger back, pirouetted with the sudden shift in weight and swept his leg out, shin scything his attacker’s legs from under him. A moment of weightlessness as the pressure on his neck eased as his opponent crashed to the floor. Connor twisted, pounced. Grabbed his attacker’s shoulder and dragged him onto his back, then fell on him, his knees pinning him as he sat on his chest. Connor grunted, pulled back his fist, ready to strike, to destroy the face of the man who had dared attack him.

‘Jesus, big lad, catch yerself on! You look like you’re gonna fuckin’ do me one!’

Connor blinked, lowered his fist slowly. Simon McCartney grinned up at him warily, as though he was laughing at a joke he knew he should find funny but somehow couldn’t.

Connor rolled off his friend, bounced onto his feet, then stretched down, offering his hand.

Simon took it, hauled himself upright, the wariness in his smile now bleeding into his eyes.

‘Thought you said this was going to be a bit of light sparring, nothing serious?’ Simon said, as he peeled off his boxing mitts and threw them to the floor.

‘Says the man who was trying to rearrange my teeth with his knee,’ Connor replied.

Simon gave another smile, this time more genuine. ‘Aye, fair play,’ he said. ‘Though you’re getting better all the time, Connor. Not sure how much more I can teach you here.’

Connor shrugged off the compliment as he headed for his kit bag at the far end of the room. He had found the place three months ago: a slightly tired, utilitarian gym on an industrial estate on the western edge of Stirling. He had been looking for a place to train that was free from the ghosts and painful memories of the gym he had used on Craigs Roundabout. It was nothing more than it said it was: an industrial unit filled with weights and machines, a place to work, not spend two hours between sets as you updated Facebook or Instagram or TikTok with a livestream of how well your workout was going.

It was on one of his early-morning visits to the gym, a visit fuelled by a night of bad dreams and a vague, unformed dread about how Jen’s rehabilitation was going, that Connor had met Dean Lawson, the gym’s owner. About fifty, with a smile that was full of teeth and devoid of humour, Dean was essentially an extension of his gym – all business, no bullshit. He had been a prison officer for eighteen years, and decided a career change was in order after an inmate tried to give him some free cosmetic surgery with the end of a sharpened toothbrush.

Dean had always been interested in fitness (‘In my line of work, I’d be a fool not to be, son’), so he had opened the gym. Simply called Lawson’s, it had started off with Dean and a few of his friends. Over time, the clientele had grown, and soon Dean had leased the nextdoor unit and expanded. With the explosion of housing developments around Stirling as families were driven further from Glasgow and Edinburgh by rocketing property prices, he was soon inundated with a flood of young professionals who thought they should look like their favourite movie stars, retirees with too much time on their hands and bored stay-at-home parents who mistook a trip to the gym for an afternoon coffee and catch-up with their friends. The place had been so successful that Dean had partnered with a local martial-arts dojo and started offering classes in the expanded gym.

And then the pandemic struck. Overnight, Dean saw his business collapse. He kept the place going, first with his own money, then with government aid, until in desperation he started dragging pieces of equipment outside and offering workouts in the car park. Lawson’s survived, barely, but the martial arts school didn’t. Which meant a dojo with punchbags, mats and all the other equipment you could ask for was lying empty.

Until Connor found out about it. He made a deal with Dean to rent out the dojo, then persuaded Simon, who was staying with him on leave of absence from the Police Service of Northern Ireland, to train him in mixed martial arts, kickboxing and anything else he knew. Connor had always known how to handle himself, but with Jen slowly recovering, Duncan MacKenzie lurking in the shadows and the sex-abuse ring he and Simon had exposed months earlier no doubt baying for his blood, Connor wanted to be more than just competent in a fight.

He wanted to be lethal.

‘So what’s the plan now, then?’

‘Huh?’ Connor grunted, as Simon’s words pulled him from his thoughts.

Simon smiled, shook his head. ‘You know, for a smart guy, you’re an idiot sometimes, Connor. I asked what you wanted to do now. We could go and get a—’

He was cut off by the shrill ring of a phone in Connor’s kit bag. Connor gave him an apologetic shrug.

‘Thought you were going to leave that bloody thing in the car,’ Simon said.

‘Sorry, force of habit,’ Connor replied, the lie sounding hollow in his ears. They both knew that, with Jen at the spinal rehabilitation unit in Glasgow and his gran in a nursing home in Bannockburn, Connor was never going to be more than six feet away from his phone.

He peeled off his gloves, the Velcro rasping as if in competition with his ringtone, then fished his phone out of his bag. Frowned when he saw the name of the person calling, then hit answer.

‘Robbie? Wasn’t expecting to hear from you today, my day off.’ He winced at the harshness of his words.

‘S-sorry, boss,’ Robbie Lindsay was one of Connor’s employees at Sentinel Securities. ‘It’s just that, well, something’s come up. And we thought you should know about it.’

‘Oh?’ Connor said, a wisp of unease cooling the sweat he could feel trickling down his back. ‘And what would that be?’

‘Well, there’s two things, boss. We’ve had a payment made into the main business account. Only reference on it is your name and what looks like a four-digit code.’

‘Could be anything,’ Connor said. ‘We’ve plenty of invoices outstanding, and it’s not unusual for me to be referenced in them.’

‘True,’ Robbie replied, his tone telling Connor he had already thought of that and was waiting for his boss to catch up. ‘But there’s nothing outstanding to the tune of seventy thousand pounds.’

‘What?’ Connor said. ‘You mean someone’s just paid seventy grand into our business account? You checked with the bank? Must be a clerical error.’

‘Yeah,’ Robbie said slowly. ‘That’s the second thing, boss. The bank this transfer came from is in Delaware, United States. We’ve not had any dealings with US-based clients in the last three months.’

Connor heard a chirp at the other end of the line. Ignored it. ‘Must be some kind of mistake,’ he repeated, even as his gut whispered that it wasn’t. ‘Check again with the—’

‘Oh, shit,’ Robbie said, cutting Connor off.

‘What? Robbie, what—’

‘Just got an email, boss,’ his tone indicating he was talking more to himself than Connor now, ‘about the money we received. Email address is generic, could be from anywhere. But the header is, well, it’s addressed to you, boss.’

‘For me?’ Connor said. He felt Simon drawing closer to him, as though he had sensed something was wrong.

‘Yeah. The title of the email is “FAO Connor Fraser. Contract and commission. Use code to read.”’

‘“Use code to read” – What the hell does that mean?’ Connor said, his mouth forming the words a second before his brain made the connection. ‘The code in the bank reference. Must be that. Is the email password protected?’

‘Yeah, boss, it is. Hold on.’ Silence on the line, quickly filled with the chattering of keys as Robbie turned to his laptop.

‘Go on, then, Robbie,’ Connor said, impatience sharpening his tone. ‘What does it say?’

‘Boss,’ Robbie said, his voice cold, sterile, almost clinical. Connor had heard the tone too many times before, usually when he had been taking statements from someone who had witnessed a horror that was beyond their comprehension.

‘Robbie, what is it? What’s—’

‘Boss. Get to your gran. Now. Jen’s in Glasgow, right? It’ll take you longer to get there. We’ve got people in the area. I’ll make sure she’s covered. Just get to your gran, now.’

Connor felt panic stab into his guts, freeze his blood. The world took on a harsh, metallic hue as his eyes developed an almost supernatural focus. ‘Robbie, you’re not making any sense. What—’

‘The email,’ Robbie replied, his voice somehow colder now. ‘It’s got a contract attached to it. Along with pictures of Jen and your gran. Says one of them will die if you don’t sign this contract. So get to your gran in Bannockburn. It’s only ten minutes from you. I’ll keep Jen safe, I promise. But get moving. Now.’

Connor ended the call, looked desperately around the room. Saw Simon staring at him, fear and determination painted into the set of his jaw and the way he was bouncing softly on the balls of his feet.

‘Connor, what the hell is going on? What do you need?’

Connor opened his mouth. Closed it. Found he couldn’t articulate the maelstrom of rage, terror and confusion that was screaming through his mind, like a tornado.

Instead, he took Robbie’s advice. He got moving.

The car seemed to give a sigh of relief as Connor pulled to a halt in the care home’s car park and killed the engine.

Simon could sympathise.

After ending the call to Robbie, Connor had paused for a moment, as though digesting what he had been told. Then he got moving with that lithe grace that always unsettled Simon: watching a man of Connor’s size move like a dancer was a little like watching a great white shark swim through the ocean.

He turned to Simon, tossing the phone to him as he did so.

‘You read, I’ll drive,’ he said, as he strode towards the gym door.

Outside, the sky was a canvas of azure blue, marred only by the bone-white slash of a jet trail from a plane. Simon sprinted to Connor, got a hand on his shoulder and pulled his friend back.

‘Connor, wait,’ he said, forcing his voice to remain calm even as he saw the naked fury and, yes, hatred, spark in Connor’s jade-green eyes.

‘What the fuck?’ he hissed. ‘Simon, we’ve not got time for this. We need to get to—’

‘Exactly,’ Simon said, eyes not leaving Connor’s. He was taller than him by about three inches, but what Connor lost in height to Simon, he made up for in bulk. Simon had seen how effectively Connor could use that bulk, had no desire to be on the wrong end of his wrath.

‘Come on, man,’ he said. ‘Think about it. We get a call, you charge off straight for the car. No time, got to get there now. You hop in, start the engine then … what?’

‘Even in peace time, you always check under the car,’ Connor rumbled absently, repeating the mantra Simon had taught him years ago when they were police officers in Belfast.

‘Exactly,’ Simon said, and felt something ease in his chest as the fury in Connor’s eyes slowly abated. ‘Look, big man. This could be a hoax, it could be real. But we both know you’ve got few friends and a lot of enemies at the moment. What if this is their way of getting to you? Wind you up, get you running to a booby-trapped car. Sure, we saw it enough times in Belfast.’

Connor gave the slightest of nods, his jaw set tight, a muscle fluttering in his cheek, as though he was chewing on something vile. ‘Okay,’ he said softly. ‘We check the car.’

Five minutes later, they were on the move, having checked under the wheel arches, the exhaust track, the engine block, anywhere a device might have been hidden. Simon was glad of the distraction of Connor’s phone as they drove, the V8 of the Audi roaring like a wounded animal as Connor red-lined every gear.

The email Robbie had forwarded to Connor originated from an email address so generic it might as well have had ‘delivered from a dark web server’ watermarked on it. Attached to it were three items: a password-protected document labelled ‘CONTRACT’, and two jpegs, ‘OLD BITCH’ and ‘YOUNG SLUT’.

Opening the images, Simon found pictures of Connor’s grandmother, Ida, and his girlfriend, Jen MacKenzie. Pushing his revulsion and panic aside, he forced himself to examine the pictures as dispassionately as possible, see them as evidence, not intimidation.

They were professionally framed shots, the faces of both women clear and distinct. In the first, Ida Fraser was seen through the window of her care-home flat, grey cardigan draped around increasingly slender shoulders, her head crowned in a tight halo of permed grey curls, her left shoulder drooping slightly as she leant on her walking stick. In the second image, Jen was sitting in her wheelchair, a woman pushing her, long hair frozen in streamers as it was caught by the wind. She was, Simon realised, smiling in a way he had not seen in a long time. Carefree, happy, almost as if someone had not tried to kill her to settle an old score with her father.

He took a moment, considered. Two pictures. Both seemingly at long range. So a zoom lens, then. He thought back to his visits to Ida’s care home, a grand old converted Victorian townhouse that sat nestled behind a thick copse of trees to protect it from the outside world. Easy enough to conceal yourself in those trees with a camera and wait for the perfect picture to present itself. The same held true for Jen. She was outside in the picture, her face bathed in early-afternoon sun, the same flawless sky above her that Connor and Simon had seen when they left the gym.

Simon flicked between the pictures, looking for a date stamp, anything to give him a clue as to when they were taken. There was nothing, apart from Jen’s hair, which she had been growing out for a few months now. He felt a chill twist down his spine at the realisation: these images were relatively new, which meant the danger, whatever it was, was present and active, now.

He was startled from his thoughts by Connor shifting in his seat, the car rocking gently. He leant forward, eyes strobing across the front of the care home.

‘All looks normal enough,’ he muttered. ‘But I’ve got to get inside, see her, make sure …’

Simon nodded, placed a hand on Connor’s forearm. ‘Connor, take a breath. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. But the last thing your gran needs is you barging in there like the Terminator. Be calm. Go to Reception, see if anything feels out of place. Get to your gran. If something doesn’t fit, call me.’

Connor looked at him, confusion flitting across his face. ‘You’re not coming in with me?’

‘No,’ Simon replied. ‘Think about it. If I go in there with you and there’s a problem, we’re trapped, and whoever’s running this shitshow has us locked down. You go in alone, I stay behind, gives us two possible lines of attack. Besides …’ he paused, flicked at Connor’s phone, then passed it back to him ‘… there’s something I want to check out.’

Connor nodded, his impatience to reach his gran obviously overwhelming his desire to get any more answers from Simon. They got out of the car and Simon watched as Connor approached the care home, looking for signs of another car door opening or someone emerging from the grounds to follow him.

Satisfied that his friend was not being followed, Simon pulled his phone out of his pocket, called up the picture he had forwarded from Connor’s phone and slowly wandered around outside of the care home. To the left of the main house, connected to it by an umbilical-like glass corridor, was a smaller, more recent building. The architects had obviously tried to blend it in with the imposing sandstone-and-glass façade of the main house, but no amount of sympathetic cornicing or stone pillars could hide what the second building was: a block of flats.

Simon closed his eyes, recalled previous visits to Ida. She was on the second floor of the building, on the south elevation. Simon glanced in that direction, smiled slightly as he saw that that side of the house faced directly onto the towering pines and oaks that surrounded the facility.

He walked briskly to the trees, then stepped into them, glancing back occasionally to orient himself. He remembered Ida serving them tea late one afternoon, the light dancing off the ornate silver teapot she used. He closed his eyes again, tracing the setting of the sun across the sky, trying to match the angle of that afternoon. That, coupled with Ida’s room number, gave him a fairly good idea of the room’s position. About twenty metres into the copse, he found an old oak, its bark like soot-stained silver. It was similar to the dozens of other trees around it, except for one difference: a massive branch at the bottom of it, fingers of wood stretching back to the main bulk of the tree, as though silently pleading with the trunk to bring it home. Simon bent down, examined the end of the branch. Felt excitement and adrenalin quicken his pulse and sharpen his senses as he ran a finger over the smooth, cut end. It was still slightly tacky to the touch with sap.

He took a breath, held it. Strained his senses for the smallest hint that someone was there with him. But, no, he was alone: he could feel it. Whoever it had been had done their job, then left.

Simon didn’t want to think about where they were going next.

He glanced up, saw another thick branch jutting out from the trunk, about eight feet up. Stood up and studied the tree, then jumped, grabbed a branch and hauled himself up. Felt no surprise when he saw fresh grazes in the bark: boots scrabbling up it. He kept climbing, found the branch he wanted, sat down. Looked up and saw another fresh cut mark on the tree, the same smooth saw marks where the branch that was now on the ground below had been cut from. Took out his phone, held it up. It wasn’t conclusive, but the angle and the height seemed right. Whoever had taken the picture sent to Connor had come here, cut down the branch above him to clear his line of sight, then taken the sho. . .