by Nick Oldham
‘OK — get out and let’s go do.’ He slid the gun into his jacket pocket, keeping hold of it with his right hand.
‘Don’t blow your foot off,’ Henry said. ‘No, sorry — please blow your foot off.’
Barlow shook his head at Henry and said, ‘Move, funny guy.’
Henry got out and the two men entered the station. There was no one in the foyer, but a PEA was leaning on the desk, filling in some forms. She looked up and smiled at Barlow. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi, Jane.’ He sidled up to her in a curiously intimate way, reminding Henry of himself a little. Jack the lad, streetwise detective. ‘Just in a bit of a rush, so we left the car on the double-yellows.’ He pointed outside. ‘We’ll be about five minutes, tops… but we need a quick getaway.’
‘I’ll keep nicks,’ she said conspiratorially.
‘Buzz us in, will you?’ he asked. She reached under the desk and pressed the button that unlocked the entrance door. Barlow pushed it open and allowed Henry through ahead of him.
Mobile phone in hand, Flynn was sitting in the mortuary office with Professor Baines. There was still no reply from Henry and while this wasn’t a problem he was beginning to find it increasingly odd due to the nature of the fast-moving investigation Henry was in charge of: surely it was incumbent on the SIO to remain readily available. Going off and being a lone wolf was all well and good — and he had no doubt Henry was capable of doing that — but not at this moment in time.
‘Ah well,’ he sighed, ‘best get going.’
‘Henry needs to know about this,’ Baines insisted. He pointed to the tooth on his desk. ‘Discovering the crime scene will be crucial in this case.’
‘I know,’ Flynn said. ‘I wonder if it might be worth bobbing into Lancaster nick. Maybe they have another number for him, or might know of his whereabouts.’
‘Good idea.’
Flynn had walked out to Alison’s car and seeing it, he had a minor brainwave. He sat in it and dialled the landline number of the Tawny Owl. Perhaps he’d contacted Alison and spoken to her recently.
The number rang out for a while and he was just about to hang up when a slightly breathless voice answered, ‘Tawny Owl, Kendleton.’
It wasn’t Alison, but Flynn recognized Ginny’s girlie voice. ‘Hi, Gin, it’s me, Steve Flynn.’
‘Oh, Steve, I’m really glad you called.’
‘Problem?’
‘Have you still got Mum’s car?’
‘Yes, actually. Does she need it back? Sorry.’
‘No, no, it’s not that,’ she said. Flynn noted a slight tremor in her tone.
‘What, then?’
‘If she had the car back and it wasn’t here, I’d know she was out in it. As it is I don’t know where she is.’
Flynn frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I know she got up this morning soon after Henry left for work and she did some stuff down in the cellar. Then she got the kitchen fired up and made herself a brew… and now I don’t know where she is. It’s like she disappeared, vanished. And the brew is half-drunk on the bar and her toast is still here, cold.’
‘Is your car still there? She hasn’t gone off in that, has she?’
‘No — it’s still here.’
‘Perhaps she went off with Henry.’
‘No — he definitely went to work alone.’
Flynn pouted. ‘Has she popped into the village for some supplies?’
‘I don’t think so. We don’t need anything — and I do that, anyway.’
‘Have you spoken to Henry, just in case?’
‘I tried his mobile, but there was no reply.’
‘Right — OK,’ Flynn said, frown deepening. ‘First off, don’t worry. There’s probably a simple explanation, but if you like I could come across. I’m just in Lancaster now at a bit of a loose end.’ And a shop to open and run, he thought.
‘Please… I’m a bit worried. It’s not like her just to disappear.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Flynn assured her. ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so.’ He swung his legs into the car and started the engine, reversing out of the parking slot.
They waited in the inspector’s office for the duty inspector to make his way up from the custody suite where he had been tied up doing prisoner reviews. His name was Drummond, a fine name for a fine man who did a good job and had no ambitions beyond that role. Henry had known him for a long time and Drummond nodded pleasantly at him, but came up short when he saw Barlow. His eyes narrowed fractionally. No doubt news of the arrest would have spread quickly, but of the release perhaps not too fast.
‘Hi, Jack,’ Barlow said affably.
‘Ralph,’ Drummond nodded unsurely.
‘We’ve come to pick up some property from the safe,’ Barlow explained. Henry noticed his right hand was still in his jacket pocket, holding the gun, but trying to appear calm and normal. Henry wanted to believe that this was the weak point, but he felt powerless to act, to rush Barlow and pin the fucker to the wall. He knew he could and if he had been alone in this shitty mess he would have done. Alison, he called, I’ll sort this. Be brave.
Barlow went on, ‘It’ll be marked for Detective Superintendent Christie only. It’s a mobile phone and some passports.’
Drummond nodded. ‘Yeah, I know — a support unit sergeant booked it in earlier.’ He had a set of heavy looking keys on a detachable fob linked to his leather belt. He unhooked them and selected one, a long, but sturdy one.
The big old safe was in the back corner of the room, not fixed to anything, but unlikely that it would ever move. It was far too heavy and would need specialist lifting equipment to drag it anywhere. It was used mainly to keep any monies that came into police possession and other small valuable items. Most everything else went into the property store.
Drummond bent down and slotted the key in the lock.
Barlow grinned at Henry. ‘You OK?’ he mouthed.
‘Fuck off,’ Henry mouthed back.
The safe door opened easily and the inspector pulled out the items, plus a single, cut-off Wellington boot. Henry swallowed at the sight of this and felt his fists bunch up. The phone and the passports were in separate envelopes across which had been written ‘ To be handed to Det. Supt Christie ONLY ’. Drummond ripped them open.
He handed the property — seven passports, mobile phone and boot — across to Barlow, still eyeing him suspiciously. ‘You need to sign for it all.’ Drummond gave Barlow the form, which he in turn handed to Henry.
‘You’ll be wanting to sign this, boss.’
‘I don’t have a pen,’ Henry said awkwardly.
‘Here.’ Drummond gave him one from his shirt pocket. Henry signed the form.
‘Thanks, Jack,’ Barlow said. ‘We need to get going now. Bodies to deal with.’ It was the sort of thing any cop might have said, but to Henry the words sounded ominous: whose bodies?
They walked out of the office and down the corridor. Henry saw Barlow drop the boot into a waste bin, something else so disrespectful to the dead that a shiver of horror went through him. Then they exited through the enquiry office door.
Once in the foyer, Barlow spun to the lady behind the desk who was now dealing with a member of the public.
‘All quiet, love?’ he asked her.
‘No sign of the yellow peril,’ she confirmed.
Henry went ahead of Barlow out to the car and walked around to the driver’s door, where he paused and leaned on the roof with his forearms.
The Mercedes was still there. Barlow gave the occupants a quick nod and said to Henry, ‘Get in.’
Henry stared in the direction of the Mercedes. Someone sounded an angry blast of a horn further down the street and it looked as though a car had pulled up without warning in front of another car, causing a problem.
Henry got in, as did Barlow.
‘That was nice ’n’ easy, wasn’t it, Henry?’
‘Jack Drummond wasn’t happy. He’ll be making phone calls now, you kno
w. He’s not stupid.’
‘Fuck him. Drive,’ Barlow ordered and drew the gun out of his pocket. ‘Head north.’
Henry started the car, checked his mirrors and over his shoulder and set off. The Mercedes moved out to follow.
Flynn drove off the mortuary car park and onto the A588, where he turned left up to Pointer Island. The traffic seemed worse than normal, irritating him. He couldn’t remember the last time there had been a traffic jam in Puerto Rico, although it did have its moments.
His mobile phone rang and he answered it, securing it between his right shoulder and ear.
‘Flynn, it’s Rik again. Have you made contact with Henry yet?’
‘Tried but failed. I think he’s gone AWOL.’
‘Shit.’
‘Why? Is there a problem?’
Flynn edged forwards in the car and was two cars away from the roundabout. It was then he saw a car he knew pull onto the roundabout from the A6 and sail past him, some fifty metres away and then onto South Road towards the city.
Flynn said quickly, ‘Isn’t that DI Barlow supposed to be in custody?’
‘Ahh… why do you ask?’
‘Answer the question, Rik.’
‘He got released first thing this morning, as did Sunderland. Nothing to do with Henry. A done deal. Again, why?’
The word Fiasco rang in Flynn’s ears.
‘Because Henry’s just driven past me towards Lancaster — and Barlow’s sat right beside him. What going on, Rik?’
‘Double murder in Bispham,’ Rik said succinctly. ‘Two females, one of which is Joe Speakman’s daughter, Melanie. The other is her friend. Both shot in the head — and Henry’s warrant card was found at the scene.’
Flynn reached the roundabout, zipped around a more sedate driver and gunned Alison’s car down South Road, but was immediately caught up in more snail traffic at the red lights outside the front of the hospital — and he had lost sight of Henry.
He still had the phone to his ear. ‘You still there, Rik?’
‘Still here.’
‘I’ve lost him.’
‘Shit — try the nick.’
‘Will do. Oh, by the way, don’t know if this is significant, but Alison’s gone missing this morning. Henry’s Alison, that is. Done a disappearing trick. I’ll call you back.’ He cut the connection.
The lights seemed to stay on red for ever, but it was far too busy for Flynn to do anything rash, like race down the wrong side of the street against two lanes of oncoming vehicles.
Instead, he had to wait. Then they changed and he tailgated the car in front through the lights, veered into the outside lane on King Street, and then bore right into Penny Street and next sharp right into Marton Street where he almost ran into the back of a black Mercedes parked illegally on the double yellow lines on the left. He swerved, drove on and saw that Henry’s classy pool car was parked just as illegally on the double yellow lines outside the police station.
Flynn winced, not quite able to make a decision, but by the time he did he was at the junction at the one-way system again and because of vehicles behind him, he had nowhere to go but forward and edged out into the traffic stream again.
He cursed and picked his mobile phone up from the dashboard, where it was wedged. He didn’t have Rik’s number, so he had to go through the rigmarole of finding the ‘ recently received ’ calls menu to unearth it, then call him back. By which time he had moved a good twenty metres. Progress was not good.
‘Yeah, Flynn,’ Rik answered quickly.
‘The pool car’s parked outside the nick… I couldn’t find anywhere to park up, so I’m looping back round to see if I can on this run.’
‘Right… Flynn, what the hell’s going on?’ Rik asked.
‘That question gives me a feeling of deja vu,’ Flynn said. ‘I don’t know, is the answer… but nothing pleasant, I suspect. Why the hell would he be with Barlow?’
He was back at the junction with King Street again, and moving slowly north, into Sun Street, then ninety degrees right into Marton Street again, at which point the motorist in front of him jammed on his brakes and came to a sudden, unexpected stop, obviously unsure where he was going. Flynn almost upended Alison’s car as he slammed the brakes on.
Up ahead he saw Barlow and Henry emerge from the police-station door and go to the pool car. Henry walked around it and leaned on the roof, talking across to Barlow, looking back down the street in Flynn’s direction.
Flynn honked his horn at the guy in front, who still hadn’t made up his mind. The man’s arm appeared through his window and he gave Flynn the middle-finger salute. Flynn pipped again.
The car edged forwards and Flynn could not decide what the bugger was up to — and then it kangarooed to a stalled stop.
‘I don’t believe this,’ Flynn said and he saw now that Henry had got into the car with Barlow and was moving off and joining the traffic Flynn had just left. And behind was the black Mercedes.
Flynn was trapped. He crunched the car into reverse, lurched backwards, stopping only an inch from the car behind, which honked with an angry warning. He gave a ‘sorry’ wave, spun the wheel, mounted the footpath with two wheels and passed the dithering car driver.
By the time he reached the junction, Henry was just turning right, heading north up through the city.
Flynn pushed the nose of the car into the junction, but no one was willing to give way, so he simply barged out, causing a concertina of braking cars and a cacophony of horns which made it sound more like Rome than a Lancashire town.
Even though he had forced his way in, he was still restricted by the sheer volume of traffic. The only way he could have made quick progress would have been to get all four wheels on the footpath this time and mow down a bunch of pesky pedestrians.
Instead he had to seethe.
There was no way, either, that Henry could rush through the morning traffic, and its slowness was compounded by a set of roadworks on the one-way system that for about a hundred metres reduced two lanes into one and almost brought everything to a halt.
Not that he was rushing. He was purposely going as slowly as he could, not taking any advantage of gaps, but crawled deliberately, feeling a surge of positivity in him because he had seen Flynn in Alison’s car and for a moment longer than necessary he had kept his face turned towards him in the hope that Flynn would see him. Surely he had.
He checked his rear-view mirror. The Mercedes was right behind now and he tried to see inside it, but all he could make out were two male figures, a driver and back-seat passenger. Alison, he realized, must be being held down in the space behind the front and rear passenger seat.
‘What’s the plan?’ Henry asked.
‘Wait and see.’
‘You know that the last person seen with a murder victim is usually the one who did the killing,’ Henry said. ‘If I turn up dead, which I presume is the plan, they’ll come a-knocking on your door, pal.’
‘That’s if there’s a body,’ Barlow said scarily, sending a tremor of fear through Henry which felt like all his blood had rushed out of his feet.
Henry swallowed. ‘You know you have no chance with this, don’t you?’
‘I’ll control it,’ Barlow said.
‘Like you did Jennifer Sunderland?’ Henry sneered. ‘That went tits-up straight-off, dinnit?’
Barlow snapped. He slashed the gun in his hand sideways into Henry’s face, into his broken cheekbone, then forced the muzzle into Henry’s groin, twisting it hard into his flesh.
‘A mistake I won’t make again.’
Flynn, stationary, was still on the mobile phone to Rik Dean. ‘Sorry, pal, this traffic ain’t moving.’
‘Do your best to try and stay with him.’
‘If I can lay eyes on him, I will,’ Flynn said. He used the term ‘laying eyes’ when sighting a marlin out sport-fishing off the Canary Islands. ‘Hey, one thing, there’s the possibility of another car tagging on with him, a black Mercedes.’
‘There was one parked on Marton Street and I saw Barlow give it a thumbs-up when he and Henry came out of the nick, then it set off behind them.’
‘Could be… Look, I need to speak to some people. I’ll call you back.’
‘Ditto, when I’ve got something to tell you.’
Flynn got through the lights and on to King Street at last, but was met by two solid lanes of cars stretching down through the city and in the distance he saw a ‘ roadworks ahead ’ sign and groaned with the injustice of it all. There was literally no way of making progress. He could possibly cut across the traffic at this point and then do a rat run around the western side of the city, but there was no guarantee it would be any quicker.
But Flynn preferred to be on the move and it surely could not be any slower. He signalled left, nudged his way across the traffic and on to Aldcliffe Road that ran down by the Lancaster Canal and, hoping he could remember his way through the back streets and byways of the city, he threw the car quickly along these streets, over the railway line, down by the back of the castle, winding his way down on to St George’s Quay where he had spent a short morning of passion with a paramedic in her tiny flat overlooking the river. He knew he would have to rejoin the traffic at the bottom of the city at Cable Street.
He did keep moving and probably it was quicker and as he waited to turn left onto Cable Street, he knew he had jumped the queue a little.
But he could not see Henry’s car — and he also knew that he was making an assumption as to where he was headed. It was possible that he could have actually gone in a different direction and cut east across the city centre, but Flynn had the feeling he would still be heading north. Possibly heading towards Sunderland’s haulage depot.
But he could have been wrong.
He edged into the traffic which was moving more freely down here after bursting free from the city-centre bottleneck and Flynn motored along slowly, turning on to Greyhound Bridge to drive across the Lune. Traffic here had thinned out considerably and was moving quickly now across the one-way bridge.
