by Nick Oldham
Contents
Cover
Recent Titles by Nick Oldham from Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Recent Titles by Nick Oldham from Severn House
The Henry Christie thriller series
CRITICAL THREAT
SCREEN OF DECEIT
CRUNCH TIME
THE NOTHING JOB
SEIZURE
HIDDEN WITNESS
FACING JUSTICE
INSTINCT
FIGHTING FOR THE DEAD
BAD TIDINGS
JUDGEMENT CALL
LOW PROFILE
EDGE
UNFORGIVING
BAD BLOOD
The Steve Flynn thriller series
ONSLAUGHT
AMBUSH
HEADHUNTER
BAD COPS
A Henry Christie thriller
Nick Oldham
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY
This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
Copyright © 2017 by Nick Oldham.
The right of Nick Oldham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8767-2 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-882-8 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-944-2 (e-book)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
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For Belinda
ONE
The woman had to travel a long way to pick up the killer.
Not that driving across the breadth of northern England and Wales, then back again, coast to coast, was a problem as such. It was motorway and dual carriageway for the most part, though circumnavigating Manchester was slow and painful, but the journey was an inconvenience, if a necessary one, she could well have done without, particularly as the distance and timing of the pick-up meant an overnight stop had to be factored in. Having to meet the overnight ferry into Holyhead from Cork ensured she spent a lonely but thoughtful night at the Premier Inn just outside Bangor in North Wales, before driving over Britannia Bridge, which spans the glorious but deadly Menai Straits, then across Anglesey on the A55 to meet the ferry.
It was a beautiful dawn, the sun flashing gold and platinum across an unusually flat, calm Irish Sea, but the breathtaking vista was all but lost on the woman. Her mind churned with more important matters.
Her face blank, she watched the ponderous arrival of the ferry as it nudged into the port, the ramps and gangways clattering down, car and foot passengers descending like beetles and ants and exiting through the arrival gates.
She brought her hawk-like eyes into focus and tried to pick out the killer among the crowd, her only clue being the knowledge that he would be travelling solo. But there were many men disembarking and she failed to spot him or even hazard a guess as to which one he was. His forte was melting into backgrounds.
Maybe it was for the best, never to look him in the eye.
With a shrug, she made her way back to the Citroën Picasso in the car park, got in, sat and waited.
He would come to her.
He had been contracted, and paid good money to carry out a grim task at which, supposedly, he was very good at indeed.
The foot passengers began to filter through the customs building, neither challenged nor even document-checked by the tired staff, who lazily waved everyone through with irritable gestures to hurry up. They met waiting loved ones, maybe business associates or friends, made their way to their own vehicles or simply walked into Holyhead itself.
The woman did not turn to look when the door opened, but was aware of a rucksack being lobbed across the back seat directly behind her and the dip of the suspension as the man slid on to the rear nearside seat and gently closed the door.
‘Going east?’ he inquired.
‘All the way,’ she responded, concluding the short, slightly awkward but previously agreed exchange of words to confirm they were both the right people and everything was OK.
Then, despite trying not to, she glanced quickly into the rear-view mirror and, just for the most fleeting of moments, her eyes met his in reflection in the instant before he slid on a pair of Aviator-style sunglasses, pulled his hood down over his forehead and effectively obscured his features in shadow.
She tore her gaze away.
‘Best we see as little of each other as possible,’ he drawled. An American accent. She supposed it would be New York because she assumed that was the point of origin of his journey, though did not know for certain. ‘It won’t be easy, but we should try.’
‘I know. I get it, but you can see me.’
‘Yep,’ he said. That was how he liked it. Psychological advantage.
She sensed him making himself comfortable.
‘Got it?’ he asked.
‘Under the seat in front of you.’
He reached forwards between his legs and picked up the large, padded, quite bulky and heavy envelope.
She started the engine. The car began to roll.
Once clear of Holyhead, back on the A55 – the road that effectively sliced Anglesey in half – the man put on a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and opened the envelope, sliding the contents on to his lap. One automatic pistol, one spare magazine, full.
‘That’s the gun you’ll have to use,’ the woman said unnecessarily, glimpsing into the mirror again but still not seeing his face.
He inspected the weapon, keeping it under the line of the windowsill, out of sight.
It was a nine-millimetre Makarov that had seen better days. The serial number had been filed off, though the man knew this was generally a fairly useless undertaking, as for years ballistic scientists had been able to read such numbers because of the way gunmetal was indented during manufacture. But there wasn’t a problem in this case; it wouldn’t matter if the number could ever be
read.
He slid out the magazine, thumb-flipped each bullet on to the envelope resting on his lap and did the same with the spare mag, then, after checking each round, he reloaded them. Next, he dismantled and reassembled the gun expertly, checking the springs and the action – still nice and smooth despite the wear and tear; it was satisfactory and would not let him down, adequate for the task ahead. He slotted one of the mags back into the gun.
‘Does it have provenance?’ he asked.
‘It has whatever provenance we need, I’ll see to that,’ she assured him. Then added, ‘But I’m sure it won’t come to that.’
‘You think you’ll be able to control this?’
‘I’m certain.’ She glanced in the mirror again.
A moment later, the woman felt a hard jab in her ribcage. The man leaned forwards between the front seats, his mouth close to her ear, and she felt his hot breath on her cheek.
Inside, she curdled, but continued to drive.
‘Do not try to look at me,’ he whispered. ‘Ever.’
‘Got it,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘Good.’ He breathed out, and she could smell his breath. He needed to clean his teeth. He sat back, put the gun back into the envelope and placed it down in the footwell between his feet. After removing the latex gloves, he settled into the seat and wriggled himself comfortable. His chin dipped to his chest and he fell instantly asleep. It had already been a long journey.
There were many things at play in Tom Salter’s mind, but the recurring nightmare was the one about the eyes.
Almost all the violence he could endure, live with.
But the eyes had got to him, just one pair.
As the shaft of fluorescent light had cut diagonally across the girl’s face, he had seen the fear.
More than fear, actually.
Sheer terror.
That was the moment he knew he could not go on.
Yes, he had seen many, but his head had been in the sand, he had been in denial, and it was just that one single moment, lasting maybe three seconds at most, that had changed everything within him.
The girl had started on what she had believed would be the journey of a lifetime, all her hopes and dreams about to come true. Some wealth, maybe; a better life for definite. Some money to send home. Although she had not known it at the time, these were all promises that would never be kept, and she only realized how terribly she had been lied to once the journey had begun, her passport had been ripped from her thin fingers and her travelling money taken from her, by which time it was all too late. She had been sucked into the system.
She was in the pipeline. And like oil in a pipeline, she would not escape until the very end.
Tom Salter jerked awake from sleep. His own eyes flashed open and he sat up quickly, sweat dripping from his close-cropped hair. Then, slowly, he lay back, the eyes burning him still, swirling around his brain.
The woman next to him stirred and woke up.
‘You all right?’
‘No, not really.’
‘You’re all jittery again and clammy.’ She touched his back. Her name was Miriam.
‘I know.’ He swallowed something thick and horrible in his throat.
Miriam edged closer to him, shuffling up tightly, crushing her soft breasts against his ribs. She kissed his shoulder and her right hand slithered across his hairy chest, brushing a nipple before slowly traversing his body.
Salter was trying to control his breathing and heart rate, all to no avail.
Miriam’s fingers took hold of him and, in spite of the situation, he began to react – fairly sluggishly – to her gentle but firm manipulation, more, he guessed, due to the Viagra still sluicing around his bloodstream than from a real desire to fuck again.
For a few moments, he enjoyed the sensation. She excelled at this.
But then he took hold of her hand, unpeeled her fingers and stopped the movement.
‘No, babe, no,’ he said softly. ‘I can’t concentrate on it.’
‘Which is exactly why you need it,’ she insisted.
‘No, please,’ he said. They had made love an hour earlier, a fumbling, too-quick function on his part, leaving her puzzled and dissatisfied and a little tearful. This was unusual for Tom. Normally he was a good lover, often gentle, sometimes brutal and exciting, so for once she could live with this.
‘I know it’s a big night,’ she said.
‘Fucking right it is,’ he blurted as his erection waned. ‘It’s not every day you try to extract yourself from a business deal with the New York underworld, but enough is enough.’
Miriam propped herself up on one elbow. ‘I know,’ she said gently.
‘If I can pull this off …’ he said, not finishing the sentence. He blew out his cheeks. ‘There’s gonna be some angry people out there. Shit.’ He closed his eyes tightly.
‘I’ll be with you all the way,’ she promised.
‘I know … Then we have another issue to contend with,’ he said pointedly.
He sat up on the edge of the bed. ‘I need to go. Got to kick this thing in motion, set it all up, just in case it goes pear-shaped, and get my head together before this meeting.’
‘Look, seriously, let me do this thing for you,’ Miriam insisted. ‘It will chill you, calm you down, help you focus … honest … I know these things.’
Tenderly, she drew him back down, then began kissing him from the neck down, until she had him in her mouth and he submitted to the inevitable.
TWO
Six months later
Henry Christie’s scream of agony reverberated around the empty house, then died away.
He swore a little – a lot, actually – as he peeled the dressing away from the gunshot wound in his right shoulder. Though the injury seemed to be healing well some three months after taking the bullet, it still had a tendency to seep somewhat after any exertion, then dry up, and it was the removal of the dressing from the caked blood that made him emit what even he admitted was a pathetic scream.
He had allowed himself to do it because, like a tree falling in a forest, there was no one else around to hear him and roll their eyes at what a wimp he, a detective superintendent in Lancashire Constabulary’s Force Major Investigation Team (FMIT), was.
He stepped on the foot pedal of the waste bin in the bathroom and dropped the blood-speckled dressing into it. Then, from his sitting position on the edge of the bath, he stood up and surveyed his sorry reflection in the large, circular mirror on the wall. If he contorted his head he could just about see the wound, but it was easier to inspect using the mirror.
Firstly, though, he looked at his face.
Without doubt, he had lost a lot of weight since the incident.
He shook his head. What a hell of a way to shed the pounds.
When he’d joined the police all those years before – almost too many to contemplate – it had been drilled into him that as a cop you can never predict what lies around the corner, and he had found that to be true, pretty much. He might have imagined it, but he thought that somewhere in his subconscious this little nugget, which had stuck with him throughout his less-than-glorious career, surfaced when – unexpectedly around that very corner – he’d been ushered at gunpoint into a storeroom at Blackburn Royal Infirmary and then been shot by a very angry, nay, livid and deranged young lady who he had quite liked up to the point when he had discovered her nasty little schemes. She had been brandishing a snub-nosed six-shot revolver of indeterminate manufacture. Fortunately for Henry, as he lunged wildly in an attempt to disarm her, only the first bullet fired. The remaining five (she had tried to fire a full load into him, so had clearly meant to kill him) had all failed to discharge. Long live homemade ammunition, Henry had toasted at a later date.
Or, as the young woman had said, ‘Shitty fucking ammo.’
She had escaped, gone on the run, only to be cornered some days later by French Gendarmerie in Marseille where, in a bloody but short siege, she had met a gor
y end in a hail of bullets. Henry had seen the crime-scene photographs much later and watched bodycam footage of heavily armed cops bursting through the door of a squalid bedsit (or was it a pied-à-terre? Henry speculated). She had been almost sliced in half by a stream of bullets from machine pistols.
Henry had survived and, in recovery, his weight had cascaded from him, leaving him grey-haired and gaunt. His eyes were set deep and dark in cave-like recesses, giving him a hunted look.
When he’d dived at the woman in the vain attempt to disarm her, he had been around the fifteen-stone-plus mark. Now, without trying, the scales just about tipped thirteen.
One of the most effective and quickest ways of losing weight: get shot, shed the pounds.
Henry thought he could maybe make money from a DVD of it, although it would be a fairly dull watch after the blood-soaked opening.
However, now that he had regained his appetite, he was eating like a horse again, and realized the weight, if unchecked, would soon pile back on.
Hence this morning’s attempt at jogging for a while.
He had done three laid-back, loping miles around Blackpool – flat terrain but still tough going, especially when he reached the invisible brick wall after the first mile and almost called it a day.
He stared back at his eyes, then glanced at the wound.
After the bullet had been removed, it had been cleaned up, disinfected and repaired, and now it looked like a pair of puckered lips, slightly deformed and not kissable. Fortunately, the bullet had only caused mainly muscle damage, though it had just clipped his right clavicle – that strut of horizontal bone between the shoulder blade and sternum. But he had lost a lot of blood; the whole area remained stiff and tender, and he had to continually and gently roll the shoulder to stop it from seizing up.
He exhaled, a steam-like hissing noise through clenched teeth.
‘You look like I feel – shit,’ he complimented his reflection.
He slid out of his running shorts and stood naked for a moment before grabbing the bath towel hanging over the radiator and wrapping it around his middle as he walked out on to the landing. He was going to take a shower in the en suite next to the main bedroom, and had stopped off in the family bathroom because there was more space for self-inspection and introspection – and the mirror on the wall was bigger.
