by Nick Oldham
‘What about asking Julie Clarke if she remembers him?’ Henry suggested.
‘I have an even better plan,’ Blackstone said. ‘Why not do that, yeah, but look her in the eye while asking her and see if she squirms?’
Which meant another trip to Blackpool, making the pair of them feel as though they were attached to some sort of elastic band.
It wasn’t such a long journey and twenty-five minutes later they were using the doorbell to Clarke’s children’s charity’s office on Granville Street. There was no response this time and Blackstone said, ‘Maybe we should have rung ahead?’
‘Nah,’ Henry said, ‘always catch people on the hop if you can – but we were coming to Blackpool anyway, so it’s not a wasted journey.’ He checked his watch, then looked at Blackstone. ‘What say we see if we can find that caution file, then let’s call it a day?’ He was feeling jaded. ‘That said, maybe we should give Clarke a ring now anyway? We have her mobile number. At least it might give us a feel for things, even if we’re not looking her in the eye.’
‘Hi, sorry to bother you again, Julie … this is Debbie Blackstone; me and Henry Christie called earlier.’
Blackstone glanced at Henry who was driving. She was holding her phone upright in front of her and had it on speakerphone so both could hear the conversation.
‘No problem. What can I help you with?’ Clarke sounded relaxed.
‘You recall we spoke about a man we had in custody for rape?’
She said she did.
‘Well, we were just doing some background checks on him, and it turns out that you and he crossed paths about eleven years ago.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, amazing what a small world it is. Anyhow, he went missing from his home in Preston and turned up a few weeks later in Blackpool – got picked up for shoplifting and you cautioned him.’
‘As I did many juveniles. Do you have a name that might jog my memory?’
‘Ellis Clanfield. He’d be thirteen and he’d been missing from Preston for about six weeks.’
There was a pause. Blackstone assumed Clarke was thinking. She looked at Henry and winked.
Then Clarke said, ‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘If it helps, he was stealing aftershave.’
‘No – nothing.’
‘OK, thanks.’
‘Before you go, what’s happening with this man?’
‘Court in the morning, remand in custody and then we’ll really have time to get into his ribs,’ Blackstone said enthusiastically.
‘Right, OK … sorry I can’t help.’ Clarke hung up.
Blackstone ended the call at her end too, then sat pensively in the passenger seat.
‘You didn’t mention the tattoo,’ Henry said.
‘She didn’t need to know,’ Blackstone said. ‘She’s an ex-cop.’
‘You’re learning.’
‘Feels a bit uncomfortable, though.’
‘It’s just a path we have to take. If it’s a dead end, which I hope it will be, nothing’s lost. No accusations made. No falling out.’
Once again driving through Blackpool, this time heading back to the new police station from which Blackstone said she needed to collect the keys for the archive warehouse, Henry reached the junction where Church Street met Whitegate Drive at Devonshire Square. He hit a queue of traffic at the lights. It was a busy time, approaching rush hour, so there was a build-up.
Blackstone swore. ‘Now I get what you were saying in that convoluted way of yours, which I obviously put down to dementia!’ she blurted out and twisted to face him.
‘You’ve lost me.’ She had smashed into his train of thought which, admittedly, had reached the equivalent of Crewe Station – many lines, some running parallel, some crossing others, others coming to a thumping halt in the sidings.
‘Your daft rant about Victorian crime reporting,’ she clarified.
‘What about it?’
‘Now I know what you meant. The salvationist saving fallen women.’
‘What did I mean?’ Henry was only half paying attention because his thought-train had left the station and was now going intercity at full lick.
‘Poacher turned gamekeeper … no, got that wrong: gamekeeper turned poacher! A proverb turned on its head.’
Henry acknowledged her brilliance, but as he was about to pass the lights on Whitegate Drive, they turned red on him and he shot through.
‘What’re you doing, Henry?’ Blackstone said, searching for the inner door handle to cling on to, missing it with her fingers and being thrown sideways by centrifugal force as Henry went left at the lights instead of right, just making it through. He put his foot down, then slammed on the brakes and veered into the top of Granville Street again.
He was shaking his head and tutting.
He said, ‘The tattoo – the box with a triangle on top of it, what does it look like?’
‘Duh – a house drawn by a kid, or by me.’
‘Bear with me.’
He shot down the street and instead of finding somewhere legal to park, he stopped on the double yellow lines outside the building that housed Julie Clarke’s office on the first floor above a row of shops.
‘I could be wrong,’ he admitted. ‘Often am.’ He got out and dashed to the door, next to which was a panel of intercom buttons for the businesses up on the first floor. He ran his finger down the business names next to the buttons.
Blackstone leaned across the driver’s seat, watching him.
Henry then spun 180 degrees and looked at a display of all the business names behind a Perspex sheet screwed to the opposite side of the doorway.
Then he breathed out and beckoned to Blackstone. ‘Come and have a look at this.’
FOURTEEN
They went their separate ways when they got back to Hutton Hall, Henry heading off back to Kendleton, Blackstone going for the docks.
Both were exhausted, and despite what they thought they’d learned, they decided to call it a day and begin the next one, refreshed, at Preston Magistrates’ Court where they wanted to witness Clanfield being remanded to police cells. After that, they would beg, borrow and steal any opportunity they could to interview him on the record – although they also knew that detectives from all over the North West would be queueing up to get into his ribs.
In spite of the distance he had to travel, Henry was looking forward to the journey alone for two reasons.
First, he was on the way home to spend time with Diane and Ginny at The Tawny Owl, and maybe there was a way he might be able to douse some of the simmering issues between the two women in his life; second, he was driving a good, fast car and could listen to high-quality, surround-sound audio on the hi-fi system; he was going to sit through something he hadn’t listened to in a while, the Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers.
As he settled into the car he said, ‘Sticky Fingers, please,’ and the first track was selected: ‘Brown Sugar’.
They left headquarters at the same time, Henry peeling left out of the gate to make his way to the motorway, Blackstone going straight on to the A59 in her Mini.
She was ahead of him and flipped him a fond finger over her shoulder. Henry waved back and grinned. One thing he hadn’t expected was to be paired up with someone as completely outrageous as Blackstone, although he already had a soft spot for her and could see what a bloody good detective she was. So, so vulnerable – but hard-edged with it.
One thing was for certain – she was a real, volatile mix.
Within a couple of minutes, Blackstone was calling him.
‘Is that my new partner?’ she asked.
‘It is,’ Henry said on his hands-free.
‘Clanfield’s mum just got back to me about the tattoo – and guess what? Like we thought, he didn’t have the tattoo when he went missing but had it when he got back from his adventures. She remembers having a barney with him about it – after which he hit her in the face for the first time. Something to talk to him ab
out tomorrow.’
‘What a nice lad he was.’
‘Who grew into an evil young man. Anyways, see you in the morning, old guy.’
‘Yeah, have a good one,’ Henry said and ended the call. The music had paused while he was on the phone and picked up on track two, ‘Sway’.
The tattoo had really become something of interest now, having been on Tommy’s forearm and now Clanfield’s, and clearly it had some significance that he and Blackstone were now getting to the bottom of. Possibly a gang thing, Henry guessed, although it was an image that spanned thirty-odd years. A long time.
And whether what Henry had driven back to Granville Street in Blackpool to show Blackstone was just another coincidence (and he was trying to be generous enough to believe that, away from criminal investigations, such innocent things were possible), what had suddenly occurred to him at the traffic lights in Blackpool had felt serious enough for him to do an ‘about-face’ and drive back to the door of the children’s charity and look at the list of businesses which also occupied some of the offices on the first floor – one of which was Hindle’s Builders.
‘Hindle’s Builders,’ Henry thought aloud.
The building company that had gutted the Belmont Hotel and renovated it to become the swish, swanky Park Lane Hotel on the North Shore seafront.
Henry had recalled fleetingly seeing the name as he and Blackstone had left Julie Clarke’s office, and alongside that name was the company logo which was a square with a triangle on top with a line slashed diagonally across the middle of the square to rise at a slight angle, obviously designed simply to represent a house or a building. Simple, but effective. Nothing special, but designed in such a way that it took only a small leap of the imagination to link it – possibly – to the tattoos on the arms of two individuals, many years apart, both of whom had been missing persons in Blackpool at some time in their lives and both of whom had been caught stealing a lot of perfume.
Blackstone had uttered her usual expletive as she looked at the logo and its possible significance fell into place for her.
Henry had stared hard at the image as they stood in the doorway. Again, something stirred in his memory but he couldn’t quite pin it down. He’d seen this before somewhere, many years ago, other than on Tommy’s arm, but try as he might, it wouldn’t come back to him.
‘Something worth following up?’ Henry asked her.
‘Absolutely,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘Tomorrow,’ Henry said. ‘There’s nothing spoiling tonight.’
Reluctantly, she agreed. There was no one in any of the offices anyway – at least no one was responding to her thumb on any of the intercom buzzers. She took a photo of the logo with her phone and said, ‘I’ll do a bit of research tonight, you know, while you’re being wined and dined and I’m on pizza.’
‘You’re welcome to come and stay if you want,’ Henry offered. ‘All our rooms are vacant, but there would be every chance of catching COVID from the natives up there. You just don’t know where they’ve been.’
‘I’m sure Diane would love me turning up – another addition to your harem. Not.’
‘I like to think of it as my COVID bubble … and actually, I think she would like to see you. It’s been a long recuperation for her and any new face is a treat … and I’m always looking to add to the harem – sorry, bubble – as you say.’
‘I’ll take a rain check and just hunker down with my computer and maybe do a few laps of the docks to get a sweat up.’
Henry gunned it up the motorway, taking what he thought were calculated risks with the speed, touching an easy ninety occasionally, but hovering just below eighty mostly. By the time he pulled up outside Th’Owl, the last strains of the final track, ‘Moonlight Mile’, were playing out heartbreakingly, and Diane was on the front steps waiting for him. She hated the Rolling Stones with a vengeance, but Henry, old romantic fool that he was, thought the song was the perfect accompaniment to his arrival home and he climbed out, clasping his palms to his heart, serenading Diane with the chorus as if he was an Italian opera singer, but without the voice.
Blackstone left her Mini in the secure underground car park, which was the basement of the converted warehouse where her apartment was located, a block called Edward Mansions, although none of the apartments could really be called mansions.
The two-bedroomed flat she had bought on the top floor was one of the larger ones. She rode up in the lift and entered her living space, now glad to close the door on the world, although conversely she’d had a good day working with Henry who, quietly, had proved to be something of a revelation to her – ish.
She stripped off, took a tepid shower, ensuring the water more or less missed the burns, though at the end of the shower she turned it to cold and angled her body so the jets cascaded on to the burned area, cooling it. Even after four years, it stung terribly all night, all day, despite aloe vera lotion and painkillers; generally, she managed to get through most days without taking analgesics, but night-time was usually a problem in terms of comfort in bed, and she almost always took something to help her sleep. On a good night she could manage four hours straight, but mostly it was in fits and starts.
After dabbing herself dry and treating the burns, she changed into loose clothing. She planned to do a few circuits of the docks before bed, but for the moment, she put a Sloppy Giuseppe in the oven, fired up her laptop and began to dig.
Within minutes she’d found something of interest.
‘Henry – you near a computer?’
‘I’m near a bar if that’s of any use?’
‘No – get to a computer now, then call me back.’
Henry ended the call with a thumb-press of annoyance if there was such a thing.
He really was near a bar – behind the main one at The Tawny Owl where he’d been pressganged into service to help serve drinks that evening because a member of staff had been forced to self-isolate. All customers were required to register their details on entering and were shown to tables from where they placed their orders with the waiting staff, and the food or drink was then brought to them. Impractical but necessary to keep people from clustering around the bar as they used to in the good old days.
Because the usual barman was the one with COVID symptoms, Henry had stepped into his shoes and was enjoying pulling a pint.
Diane was also helping with waiting duties and enjoying it, especially as she was allowed to flirt outrageously with the boss who, in turn, knew he could get away with making lewd remarks at the staff. Well, just her.
His phone had rung just as he’d finished pulling a pint of perfect Guinness, shamrock and all in the froth.
Blackstone’s message was curt, straight to the point.
‘Gonna have to leave it with you for a while,’ he told the other barman, who nodded.
He went into the private accommodation area and settled himself on the sofa with his laptop and logged in. There was already an email in his inbox from Blackstone (her email address began D.B.BURNEDFLESH) which Henry opened. There were two links for him to follow.
The first took him to a website on which fairly basic company details and accounts could be accessed for free, such as names and addresses of directors, turnovers, profit and loss. More detailed information could be seen on payment of a fee. The link took him to Hindle’s Builders (Blackpool & Fylde Coast) Ltd, which, to Henry’s untrained eye, looked to have a fairly healthy turnover in the low millions and with little debt. The business had been established in 1984.
He clicked on the page that listed the company officials.
Two directors were listed, the first being David Hindle. It gave his date of birth, and his place of residence was listed as the office address in Granville Street, Blackpool. He had been a director since the company was established.
The next one listed, who had been a director since 2016, was Julie Clarke.
Although seeing this jarred Henry, he wasn’t completely sure if that meant anything.
‘You looking at this shit?’ she demanded.
‘Looking at company accounts at the moment.’
‘See what I see?’
‘I assume so, but I’m wondering what it might mean, if anything.’
‘But interesting,’ she insisted. ‘C’mon.’
‘Definitely.’
‘Now have a look at the next link I sent you – it’s the company website.’ She hung up.
Henry did so and entered the company website. On each page, in the top right-hand corner was the company logo, which made Henry wince. Surely gang tatts didn’t look like the Play School house, he thought, recalling the popular tots’ TV show from the 1970s.
There was a potted history of the company, from its origins as a one-man band doing any job that came along, via a few notable milestones, to its present-day work of predominantly renovating hotels and office buildings, building new ones too; the blurb proudly cooed about the company’s work in doing its bit to transform Blackpool and the Fylde.
The major current project was the refurbishment of a huge country hotel near Kirkham, turning it into a swish hotel and wedding venue with a pool and extensive leisure facilities.
It looked impressive.
Then Henry blinked and went back to the start of the article where David Hindle, company director, proudly boasted about his first ever full renovation of a small hotel in Blackpool town centre.
It was called the Dolphin Hotel and was on Abingdon Street.
Henry returned to the bar and helped out until closing time. He then spent half an hour cleaning up before deciding he’d had enough, helped himself to two double whiskies and went to join Diane who was sitting outside, knackered from her stint as a waitress. Her wounds took everything out of her, but she knew she had to keep moving, pushing herself in order to get better.
