by Nick Oldham
‘Crikey!’
‘Since you’re off the bench and it’s looking like this could be a murder, I’d like you to come up and take a look as you are involved with the guy.’
‘I’m on my way.’
Almost before she had finished saying those words, Rik said, ‘And find Henry, OK?’
As she hurried back, she phoned Henry’s mobile but got the metallic female voice saying, ‘The person at this number is unable to take your call, please leave a message after the tone.’ Blackstone did: a terse, ‘Call me, old guy.’
Then she called him again, just in case. It still reverted to voicemail.
‘Fuck you up to, Christie?’ she said. ‘Or have you just gone home and shut up shop for the night?’
She had to look up the number of The Tawny Owl on the internet via her phone. Two numbers were listed, a landline and a mobile.
Blackstone phoned the landline.
‘Hello, this is Ginny at The Tawny Owl, can I help you?’
‘Ginny, it’s Debbie Blackstone – I crashed at Th’Owl last night?’
‘Oh, yeah, hiya, Debbie. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine now … Is there any chance of speaking to Henry? I can’t seem to get through on his mobile number.’
‘Erm, he isn’t here … well, not that I know of, and I haven’t spoken to or seen him all day.’
‘Any chance of speaking to Diane if she’s knocking around?’
‘Sure. Hold on.’
By this time, Blackstone was at the door of her Mini in the basement garage.
‘Hiya, Debbie, it’s Diane.’
‘Hiya, love, sorry to trouble you. Any idea where Henry is, or how I can best contact him? I’ve tried his mobile – no deal.’
‘I haven’t heard from him … I thought he’d be with you.’
‘Uh, no, long story … So you’ve no idea where he is?’
‘No,’ Diane said cautiously. ‘Do I need to be worried?’
‘About Henry? Nah, don’t think so.’
They said goodbye. Blackstone got into the Mini and screamed her way up to Preston.
The street outside Clanfield’s flat had been sealed off with cordon tape, and an evidence tent had been erected over his body. Blackstone had to park almost a quarter of a mile away and jog the remaining distance. She shouldered through a crowd of gaping onlookers, most of whom were not wearing face masks, and then flashed her warrant card so the bobby on duty at the cordon tape lifted it for her to duck under.
She weaved her way through an overload of cop cars, uniforms and detectives, most, she guessed, probably having descended on to the scene for its gruesome content rather than to add value to an investigation; and the sight of a young uniformed cop throwing up into a grate by the kerb seemed to prove this assumption.
A pale-looking Rik Dean emerged from the tent.
He looked at Blackstone and blew out his cheeks.
‘You really don’t have to,’ he warned her.
‘I should.’
‘Be my guest.’
She was in and out in a matter of seconds. ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ she said to Rik. ‘You can hardly tell it was a human being!’
Blackstone glanced across the street to the open door and the stairs leading up to Clanfield’s flat. ‘Anyone checked the place, yet?’
‘Just a cursory glance. We’re waiting for the circus to arrive.’
Circus meaning CSI, forensics, search teams.
‘Mind if I …?’ Blackstone gestured towards the flat.
‘Gloves and mask and don’t touch anything,’ Rik told her.
She was already pulling on a pair of latex gloves. ‘Any witnesses yet?’ she asked.
Rik shook his head.
Blackstone went through the door and trod carefully up the steps, bearing in mind this could easily be an extension of the crime scene until it was found to be otherwise. The flat, obviously, was exactly as she remembered it – a grot-bag hovel for a grot-bag of a man who had just met a more than grotty end. Blackstone wished she felt a bit sorrier for him, but she didn’t, although she would fight tooth and nail to be on the squad to catch his killer.
She moved across the flat, touching nothing, able to hear pretty clearly what was going on down the street as more police vehicles arrived and voices barked instructions. There wasn’t much space in the flat – no room to swing a cat, she thought. The bedroom in which she’d found the necklace belonging to Melanie Wooton, his rape victim; the living area with the sofa; the kitchen sink with a cupboard underneath it. There was a half-eaten pizza, now cold, on the coffee table. Off to one side was a door to the shower which she glanced into and screwed up her nose: even through the face mask it stank.
So, nothing to see; not that she’d expected anything.
She went to the door, looked down the steps to the pavement and pulled off the gloves. As she placed her foot on the first step, she stopped mid-stride, stock-still, listening, frowning, certain she’d heard something.
A murmur or a whimper.
Then nothing. The foot went on the step.
And the sound came again.
Blackstone backed up, listening hard, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. She re-entered the living room, standing just over the threshold, another of those times she wished she had ears that swivelled – and she heard the noise again.
Then she rushed across the room, going down on one knee by the cupboard under the sink and yanked it open.
‘He literally snatched her on his way home from court,’ Blackstone said to Rik Dean. It was two hours later, the evening was getting on, and they were at Preston police station. Blackstone was managing to keep it together but teetered on rage. ‘Opportunistic bastard,’ she added through her clenched teeth. ‘The little lass just happened to be walking down his street and he caught her and bundled her up his stairs, just like that!’ She clicked her fingers, made Rik jump. ‘She was overpowered, trussed up within seconds, punched in the face, tied and gagged with tape, then further taped to a radiator while he went out and bought a pizza.’
Even as she was saying it, Blackstone was reliving the recent, vivid memory of opening the under-sink cupboard to see the tiny, terrified figure of an eleven-year-old girl in school uniform who had been crammed into the small space with her hands behind her back, secured by parcel tape, ankles too, and a length of it over her mouth – and the look in her eyes.
Blackstone had eased her gently out, carefully removed the tape and then, because she had to, she held the little, sobbing lass tenderly in her arms, telling her she was OK now.
She had reunited her with her mother – who was just on the verge of calling the police to report her daughter missing – at Preston police station and had been able to get a good statement from the girl when her mum had eventually managed to calm her down.
‘But he didn’t assault her sexually in any way?’ Rik asked.
‘No. That was next on the agenda after the pizza. He’d come back with the food, released her from the radiator and sat her down on the floor at his feet, stroking her hair, while he ate the pizza – the git,’ Blackstone said.
‘So what stopped him?’ Rik asked.
‘A knock on the door and somebody shouting up through the letterbox. The girl said that sent him into a panic, saying – and I quote – “The fucking pigs are at the door.” The lass didn’t know what he meant by “pigs”. That was when he shoved her under the sink and threatened to slit her throat if she moved or made a sound.’
‘I’m surprised he didn’t anyway,’ Rik commented.
‘Me too.’
‘So – who was at the door, Debbie?’
‘I’ve checked with comms and there are no logs or record of anyone going to the address. Comms has asked over the radio since and it’s a negative.’
‘Could it have been Henry?’
Blackstone shook her head. ‘I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me, although I don’t know why he would have been there.’ Blackstone took the opportunity f
or a dig. ‘Now you know why I was so incensed at Clanfield being released from court.’
‘I get it, but you were still wrong to act the way you did.’
‘Will I get an apology from the magistrates for their huge mistake?’
Rik looked at her as if she’d lost it again. ‘Don’t even go there.’
‘So not a cat in hell’s chance?’
‘Nope! Anyway, what do you think? Someone comes to Clanfield’s door, either is or isn’t a cop, Clanfield panics, shoves the girl under the sink and then ends up under the wheels of a black car.’
‘A black car? I didn’t know that … How?’
‘The traffic man says there’s black paint on Clanfield’s trousers,’ Rik explained.
‘Any witnesses yet?’
‘No … but from what the girl says, do you really think it was a cop at the door?’
‘According to the girl, Clanfield shouted down to whoever it was, something about him being a free man now, but she was too frightened to take it all in properly, other than the “pig” reference. So he sticks her under the sink, goes down to answer, and we don’t really know what happened then, other than he was run over and the next person on the scene was another driver who just about managed not to run over his body again.’
Rik’s mouth twisted. ‘I get the feeling we need to speak to Henry sharpish, don’t you?’
At which moment Blackstone’s mobile rang. It was Diane Daniels.
SEVENTEEN
‘Debbie, have you heard from Henry yet?’ Diane asked tentatively.
‘Not a sausage. Have you … well, obviously not.’
‘No, but the thing is, you might not know, the phone signal up here in Kendleton varies from appalling to very appalling, although Henry does assure me it has got better … Anyway, a message has just landed on my voicemail from him.’
‘Oh, right, that’s good.’
Diane did not reply.
‘That’s not good?’
‘Even though it’s only just arrived, it’s timed two hours ago.’
Blackstone swallowed dryly.
‘He said he was going to be late back home … he was going to “ruffle some feathers” – his exact words.’ As Diane spoke, her own words were becoming distinctly shaky.
‘He didn’t say whose feathers?’
‘No, just that he’d see me later and call on the way home.’
‘OK, Diane, leave it with me. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, love. I’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve tracked him down. He’s probably in the office with the phones off the hook.’ She ended the call and looked at Rik Dean who’d eavesdropped every word. They eyed each other uncertainly. Blackstone dialled the CCU office number and, while it rang out, said to Rik, ‘Maybe he is back at the office?’
There was no reply. The call went on to the office voicemail.
‘Worth a try.’ She hung up.
‘What do you reckon?’
Blackstone opened her hands and shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘Like you say, maybe it’s nothing. Henry just doing his thing,’ Rik said hopefully. ‘Like he always did and clearly still does.’
‘I do know he spent most of the afternoon slobbing about in the office … I wonder if there’s something on his computer search history that would give us a clue?’
‘Worth checking, I suppose,’ Rik said less than hopefully.
Blackstone jogged to her car and gunned it all the way back to Hutton Hall. Before going into the office, she did a fast sweep around all the car parks on which Henry might have parked up to see if his Audi was around, but she couldn’t spot it.
Then she parked as close as possible to the FMIT building, went into the CCU office and sat at Henry’s empty desk. His computer was on and when she shook the mouse the screen came to life but – and she realized she hadn’t quite thought this through – she did not have Henry’s password. As she sat there pondering this predicament, her mobile rang.
‘Hi, boss,’ she said to Rik Dean.
‘Anything?’
‘Nope … just realized I can’t access his computer. I’ll need the on-call IT bod to help, whoever that may be. Comms will know.’
‘OK.’
There was a pause. Blackstone sensed something. ‘You OK, boss?’
‘Look, I just got a call from the Telephone Unit. I asked them to track Henry’s phone.’
‘And?’ Blackstone could almost visualize Rik Dean standing wherever he was with his phone clasped to his ear and his other hand clamped to the top of his head.
‘They’ve managed to do it.’
‘That’s good, then.’
‘Meh! Not so much,’ he said. ‘They can tell he made a call somewhere between headquarters and Preston.’
‘That would be the one he made to Diane that went to voicemail.’
‘Yeah, probably … and they’ve also managed to pinpoint a pulse from the phone which puts him within five metres of where I’m standing now.’
‘Which is where?’
‘Outside Clanfield’s front door. So it definitely looks as if he came here to see Clanfield.’
‘That’s brilliant! So where is he now? In a pub?’
‘Well, that’s just it, Debbie … that was the last pulse. Since then nothing, other than the exact time that pulse was sent from his phone, which seems to indicate that Henry was here at the exact time Clanfield was run down. Like I said, though, that’s the very last thing from his phone. I’ve sent a few cops to nosy around the streets to see if they can spot Henry’s car, but there is no trace of it around here.’
‘Henry and his car have gone missing then, for sure?’
‘Look, Debbie – I’m trying not to overreact to this, but my gut tells me this is crappy information.’
‘Well, I am going to overreact because my gut tells me the same, boss, and I’m very worried.’
The call ended.
Blackstone rocked back and forth in Henry’s chair. As she tilted forward, she saw a sticky note under the desk which had obviously wafted down. She heeled the chair backwards and picked it up. The writing was spidery but legible, as was the little sketch on the bottom of the note.
There was a time: 1649.
There were two names – Clanfield and David Hindle with an arrow from one to the other and a double circle around Clanfield.
The sketch was of something she had come to know well in the last few days – the square with a pointed roof and a diagonal slash across the square.
She swore. She knew Henry had spent virtually no time on this chair or at this desk since he’d started on Monday morning; it had all been go, go, go, non-stop. Which meant he’d had no time to write anything or jot stuff down, so what she was looking at was the only thing he could have written and must have been done that afternoon. Then she looked at the jotter next to the phone and opened it to see Henry had been scribbling down some notes maybe to free up his creative process. She scanned through them, then her eyes returned to the sticky note.
Why was there a time on a Post-it note?
Something drilled into all cops from day one, real bread-and-butter stuff, was always Make a note of the time; it was something she did almost without thinking about now, even when she received a call in the office.
Had Henry taken a phone call?
Had he received a call while sitting here doodling his meandering thoughts? And did that call spur him out of his creaky chair and send him to Clanfield’s address?
Blackstone read that name again – David Hindle – then jumped over to her desk and logged into her computer. She’d done some digging into Hindle at home; maybe she needed to dig deeper?
Blackstone ran out of the FMIT building to her Mini. She fired up the engine after slotting her phone into its cradle. She sped off, screeching to a halt at the horrendously slow-opening main gate, revving impatiently because it didn’t rise anywhere near fast enough for her. She almost caught the roof on the bottom edge of the gate when she shot
out on to the road, then accelerated up the A59 before looping under the bridge to head back to Preston.
She was on the phone to Rik Dean.
‘He wasn’t convicted up here,’ she said breathlessly. ‘That’s why he’s never been on our radar. As a lad, he ended up in the care system and he committed his one and only recorded crime in Staffordshire.’
‘Who the hell are you talking about?’
‘David Hindle.’
‘Who?’
‘Look, boss, just go with this. Thing is, he wasn’t called Hindle when he was a kid – at least not to start with; it was a name he took from foster parents … I found it all, but it’s very old stuff,’ Blackstone said hurriedly.
She was now speeding towards the city, swerving the Mini through and past other traffic.
‘Thing is, his original name, his birth name was Clarke …’
She waited for it to register with Rik Dean.
It didn’t.
So she almost shouted, ‘As in Julie Clarke? Yeah? Ex-policewoman, inspector, now charity worker?’
‘Gotta be a coincidence.’
‘Now you sound like Henry Christie, boss. And maybe it is, maybe it isn’t … but the offence he was convicted for, and he was only twelve, was abducting a young lass off the street, sexually abusing her and dripping sulphuric acid into her face and watching her burn. Fuck off, dickhead!’ she screamed as a guy in a swanky Jag cut her up at a set of lights. ‘Not you, boss … Jeez, I need a blue light for this car. Can I have one?’
‘No. Keep talking.’
‘I think Clarke and Hindle are siblings,’ she said. ‘David and Julie, but I haven’t had time to dig that deep. It took me long enough to find that shit about Hindle. Be interesting to know her background before joining the cops.’
‘I’ll get someone from Intel on to that now,’ Rik said.
‘Cheers.’
She crossed the bridge over the River Ribble south of Preston, then forked left to take the road through Preston docks, virtually past her apartment.
‘What’s your thinking, Debs?’ Rik asked.
‘That me and Henry have lucked into something big that’s been going on for a lot of years right under our noses – by instinct and mistake, obviously, but I think we’ve upset some really nervous, jittery and dangerous people.’
