by Adam Croft
‘I couldn’t give a shit if they pay her in bloody Pokemon cards. The point is the pressure’s going to be on us to get a result.’
‘Which is even more reason not to have to spend time introducing someone else to the team,’ Culverhouse said, his tone of voice changing to one that Hawes was more than familiar with. ‘We need to be able to move quickly. I don’t think the Inquirer will be particularly chuffed if they find out I’ve spent the first couple of days teaching an office junior how to photocopy a witness statement.’
Charles Hawes stood up. ‘Jack, Ryan Mackenzie is a bloody good officer. Fantastic track record in a short space of time, lots of ambition, just the sort of person you need.’
Culverhouse knew exactly what sort of person he needed on his investigation team, and he also knew that person wasn’t going to be working on it again.
‘No ifs, no buts,’ the Chief Constable continued. Ryan will join you later this morning. Understood?’
Culverhouse ground his teeth, feeling the muscles in his neck tense. ‘Understood, sir.’
11
By the time John Henderson had got back to Mildenheath, Wendy had managed to swing a room next to the specialist ward his wife was on. It was neatly furnished but still had that look of a hospital trying and failing to make a room feel homely. There were two sofas, both of a coarse yellow fabric and not particularly comfortable, positioned at right angles to each other. A fern in a big brown plant pot was placed in one corner, and a kids’ play area took up another corner. This was where families and relatives were given bad news, Wendy realised. And it was about to happen again.
PC Stuart Easton, whom she’d wanted to be with her when she met the husband, had been called away to deal with another incident in town, leaving her on her own.
As Wendy was busy writing up her notes into longhand, ready for logging back at the station, John Henderson was brought into the room by a ward nurse.
‘Where is she?’ he asked, clearly distressed, and seemingly a little confused as to why he’d been ushered into this room rather than being taken straight to his wife.
‘She’s on the specialist ward. The doctors are looking after her. John, isn’t it?’ Wendy replied, holding out her hand and smiling at the man in front of her.
‘Yeah,’ came the soft response as Tanya Henderson’s husband shook her proffered hand.
‘Firstly, it’s important to try and think clearly and calmly. I’ll speak to the doctors about taking you through to see your wife, but first of all we need to try and ascertain what’s happened, okay?’
John swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Yeah, okay.’
‘So you were working away, were you?’ Wendy rested the nib of her biro on top of the notepad, jotting down everything he said.
‘Yeah, I have to work away quite a bit. I work for the Financial Conduct Authority. I do spot checks on banks and lenders to make sure they’re complying with FCA rules. All very boring, really.’
‘No, it sounds really interesting,’ Wendy lied. ‘So you were away from the house between which dates?’
‘I left the night before last and had three days in various places up north. I was due to come back the day after tomorrow. Are the kids alright?’
‘They’re fine,’ Wendy said. ‘They’re with a neighbour.’
John Henderson nodded slowly.
‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm your wife?’ Wendy asked, as gently as she could.
John looked up at the ceiling and sighed. ‘Yeah, plenty. We always said this would happen one day. I kept telling her, we needed to get CCTV put on the house or something, but she wouldn’t have it. She said she didn’t want them to think we were intimidated.’
‘Them?’
‘She’s an investigative journalist. “Them” is just about everyone she’s ever written about or looked into.’
Wendy didn’t say anything, but in her mind she thought it unlikely that Tanya would’ve been attacked by someone she’d written about in the past. It would be too obvious. After all, where was the first place the police would look? Besides which, investigative journalists rarely went to press unless they had a pretty cast iron case to print. In that situation, what would be the point in having her attacked or killed afterwards? The damage would’ve already been done. All that would do is point another big finger at themselves. Wendy doubted whether anyone with enough of a brain to get involved in large scale corruption would simultaneously be stupid enough to resort to revenge. No, there had to be more to it than that.
‘What about current investigations?’ she asked. ‘What has she been working on recently?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ John replied. ‘She never says a word to me about her work. She never says anything to anyone. Not until it’s all out in the open, anyway.’
‘What about notes? She must have filed things away somewhere.’
‘No, she does everything digitally. She uses code names and pseudonyms for people and encrypts all of her data. Even if you got hold of her computer, you wouldn’t be able to do anything with it.’
Wendy winced inwardly. The last thing she wanted was to have to deal with the tech boffins. She wondered if she might be able to call on Xavier Moreno up at Milton House to help her out. Even though it wasn’t technically his job, Xav had used his expertise in administrating the force’s computer network to help her out once or twice before, and if she was being completely honest, she had quite a large soft spot for him. ‘Do you know what sort of encryption she uses?’ she asked John Henderson.
‘No idea. I’m not really up on all the technical stuff. Look, can you take me to my wife please? I want to see her.’
Wendy very much doubted whether John would really want to see Tanya in the state she was currently in, but she told him she’d see what she could do. A few minutes later they were standing at the side of Tanya’s bed, looking down at her bruised body.
‘She’s in an induced coma,’ Julian Mills, the senior consultant, told John. ‘The idea is to slow her brain down, reduce the electrical activity and start to reduce the swelling. It’s something we have full control over, and when we’re confident that she’s responding positively we’ll be able to reduce the sedatives and slowly bring her round.’
‘Can she hear us?’ John asked.
‘We don’t know at this stage. Obviously she’s not able to respond, but the early signs are that her brainwave activity has some way to go yet. That’s quite normal after the sort of trauma she’s endured. Now, we’ve also inserted a probe into her skull to monitor her intracranial pressure. She’s at the upper end of what we’d usually be comfortable with, but it doesn’t seem to be rising at the moment. We’re keeping a watchful eye to make sure that continues, and hopefully the induced coma will bring it back down to normal levels.’
‘Are there risks? John asked, unable to take his sad eyes away from his wife.
‘There are risks with any medical procedure, but this is quite a common thing to do in this situation. The risks won’t usually be connected with her brain, though. We’re talking about things like chest infections.’
‘Chest infections? How would a head injury cause a chest infection?’ Wendy asked.
‘The injury wouldn’t,’ Julian Mills replied. ‘It’s the induced coma. The high levels of barbiturates that bring about the comatose state also affect the cough reflex, so there’s a possibility of matter building up in her lungs. She can’t cough to clear it, see. There are some people who state that barbiturates lower the immune system, too, but I wouldn’t be too worried about that unless the patient was already immunocompromised.’
‘No. No, she’s always been a very healthy person,’ John said.
‘Then I’m quite sure she stands the best chance possible. As I say, though, it’s still very early days. Your wife is very ill.’
Wendy looked down at Tanya Henderson, lying there with tubes going to and from her mouth, controlling her breathing. There were wires connected to her sk
ull, which was partially covered with a bandage and partially shaven, her long blonde hair reduced to mere stubble. And as she looked down she thought a thought she often had when faced with a particularly brutal and inexplicable crime: who in their right mind could ever want to do a thing like this?
12
There was no sweeter sound to soothe Jack Culverhouse’s soul than the sound of a buzzing incident room. He’d just come to the end of his morning briefing — something he would rather have had DS Knight on board for, but she was at the hospital, speaking to John Henderson.
The idea of the morning briefing was to assemble his team and tell them what was known so far. At the moment, that was very little, as was usually the case at the first morning briefing. After all, it was the responsibility of the investigation team to get to the bottom of what had happened, and the first morning briefing generally resembled square one.
There was always a surge of adrenaline at this stage of the investigation, mainly fuelled by the realisation that there was a major, serious crime to investigate. It was the excitement of the unknown. It also meant that they wouldn’t simply be going through the motions, following up on the usual fraud and white-collar cases, or, in Jack Culverhouse’s case, doing all he could to finally try to link the local white-collar crimewave to Gary McCann, a man who was widely known as one of the dodgiest bastards in the area, but who was cagier than an aviary and more slippery than an eel.
The officer Jack tended to work closest with was Wendy Knight. They didn’t always see eye to eye, to say the least, but he couldn’t deny that they seemed to work well together. Secretly, he admired her for the way she worked: always within the rules, but still always getting results. Besides which, she was a hard bitch; she always bounced back and never let anything finish her off. He’d come far closer to admitting defeat in recent years than she ever would.
Also on the team were Frank Vine, a Detective Sergeant who never seemed far off retirement but who didn’t seem to put enough energy into anything to ever need to retire; DS Steve Wing, a man in his forties who was happier munching his way through the office vending machine and drinking gallons of coffee than he was going out on the beat; and Debbie Weston, a Detective Constable who quietly but assiduously kept the team on track and often provided the breakthrough in investigations — not that Culverhouse would ever admit it. Today, though, the five were to become six again.
‘I had a chat with the Chief Constable this morning,’ he said, addressing the team, ‘and he told me we’ve got someone new joining us. Young lad by the name of Ryan Mackenzie, apparently.’ He looked around the room. ‘Although he’s not exactly made the best first impression by not bloody being here.’
‘Do we need someone else?’ Steve Wing asked, his narrowed eyebrows making it clear that his answer to his own question was an emphatic no.
‘Preaching to the choir, Steve,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘Not my choice. Quite what the idea is with taking bodies off the streets when they’re already short staffed, I’ve no idea, but management need to earn their wages somehow. A shit decision’s better than no decision, apparently.’ He shook his head slightly before getting down to business. ‘Right, Debbie, I want you looking into Tanya Henderson’s work. Get online and look into the archives, see what you can find out about the articles she’s written before. Frank, I need you to start looking at phone records and financials. See if there are any anomalies.’
Culverhouse was interrupted by the door to the incident room opening. A young, short, slender woman peered around the door. ‘Ryan Mackenzie?’ she said.
‘What about him?’
The young woman raised an eyebrow at Culverhouse. ‘He’s here.’
‘Right. Good. Send him in then,’ Culverhouse replied, turning to head back to his desk. As he went he heard the sound of the door closing behind him, shortly followed by Frank and Steve chuckling to each other. When Culverhouse turned, he saw the young woman standing a few feet further forward from where she’d been a moment before. ‘Sorry, am I missing something?’ he asked.
‘I’ve no idea. You asked me to send Ryan Mackenzie in. So I came in.’
Culverhouse blinked a few times. ‘You’re Ryan Mackenzie?’
Ryan looked herself up and down mockingly. ‘Last time I checked.’
‘You’re a bird,’ Culverhouse replied.
Ryan placed a hand over each of her breasts, as if noticing them for the first time. ‘Bloody hell. So I am. Whaddya know? Although we do tend to prefer “woman”.’
‘You’re the new officer?’
‘Well I can see the tales of your legendary skills of detection were all true, Detective Chief Inspector. This my desk?’ Ryan pointed to an empty workstation.
Culverhouse looked at Ryan, raised his eyebrows in defeat and walked over to Steve Wing.
‘Steve, I want you to go door to door on Tanya Henderson’s street. Speak to the neighbours, see what they heard and what they saw. Keep your eyes and ears peeled, and get the neighbours checked out, too. See if any have previous. And you can take Ryan with you, too,’ he added, saying her name as if she’d just invented it thirty seconds earlier.
Ryan smiled at Steve and opened the door behind her, waiting for him to follow. Steve took one look at Culverhouse and decided to do as he was told.
There were a few moments of silence after Steve and Ryan left the room, until Frank Vine decided to try and break through the atmosphere.
‘Looks like you’ve met your match there, guv.’
Culverhouse stared at the door. ‘Not fucking likely.’
13
Steve Wing was particularly proud of his BMW 3 Series. It was a car he’d wanted for a long time, and even though he’d now had it for three years or so, it still felt like a brand new car to him. It also meant he didn’t have to walk anywhere, which was nice.
The journey from Mildenheath Police Station to Tanya Henderson’s house took a little longer than usual with the morning traffic, and it seemed even longer due to the fact that Ryan apparently wasn’t the sort of person to make small talk unless she absolutely had to.
‘So. You into cars?’ Steve asked as he pulled on the handbrake at a set of traffic lights.
‘Not really.’
Steve nodded. ‘You drive?’
‘I can, but I don’t.’
‘How do you get to work then?’ he asked.
‘Bike.’
Steve could see he was getting nowhere fast. ‘You mean a motorbike? Or—’
‘Pushbike. Zero carbon.’
He nodded again, trying to look interested. As far as he was concerned, carbon was something the scientists could deal with. His pleasure was in driving fast cars. ‘So do you live local, then?’
‘Not far,’ Ryan replied. ‘Ten minutes on the bike.’
‘That’s not bad. Probably take you twice that in a car. This your first job in CID then?’
The traffic lights turned green and Steve accelerated away.
‘Yep. It’s where I want to be. Put my skills to good use for once.’
Steve allowed himself a cheeky smile. ‘So what are your skills exactly?’
‘Focus. Determination. Spotting a bullshitter a mile off.’
‘Nice,’ Steve said, unsure what else to say. ‘We could do with a good-looking woman around the place.’
Ryan raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that what it takes to be a good detective, then? A pair of tits and a cutesy smile? And there’s me thinking you had to be, like, good at detecting or something.’
Steve could feel himself getting a little flustered. ‘Well, no, that’s not what I meant,’ he said, trying to backtrack. ‘I mean we need some young blood. We’re not sexist or anything. Well, I’m not. Far from it. Couldn’t be further from the truth. I love women. Not like that, I don’t mean. I mean, we’ve got a few women in the team now. Three in fact. Half of us are women.’
‘Good. Way it should be,’ Ryan said.
‘Yeah. That’s what I’ve always said. Make i
t all equal. I mean, we’re the same, aren’t we? Men and women, I mean.’
Ryan looked over at Steve with a look on her face that said ‘in your dreams, mate’.
‘So, are you into all this sort of equality and stuff?’ Steve asked.
‘If by “into equality and stuff” you mean do I think that people shouldn’t be discriminated against based on how many testicles they have, then yes. And so does the law.’
‘Well yeah, obviously,’ Steve replied. ‘I just mean that—’
Ryan decided to do Steve the courtesy of not letting him dig himself into a deeper hole. ‘So, this case. What leads do we have at the moment in this case?’
Steve breathed a silent sigh of relief. ‘Not many, to be honest. Well, that and just about everyone in a position of power.’
‘Narrows it down nicely. So what’s this? Illuminati conspiracy?’
‘I doubt it somehow. I imagine if we’re talking about the people at the top they’d at least do it properly. Not send some lowlife who can’t finish the job properly and who panics and runs off when he sees a child appear.’
‘What, so you’d rather he’d just carried on and bludgeoned the woman to death in front of her daughter, then?’ Ryan asked, sternly.
Steve could feel himself getting flustered again as he stammered, ‘Well, no. I didn’t— That’s not what I—’
‘Relax,’ Ryan said, smiling for the first time during the journey. ‘I’m kidding. I know what you mean.’
Steve parked the car on Manor Way, a little way down from Tanya Henderson’s house. The road had been blocked off a few yards further on, the cordon of police tape intending to stop passers-by from getting too close and having a peek at what was happening.
Steve flashed his warrant card at the uniformed officer on the boundary. ‘She’s with me,’ he said, thumbing a gesture at Ryan.
‘Where do you want to start?’ Ryan asked.
‘Probably best to stick with the neighbours closest to the Hendersons and then move outward. The ones nearest will be most likely to have heard something,’ he replied, walking up the path of the house next door to John and Tanya Henderson’s place. ‘An elderly couple lives here, apparently. They’ve been looking after Tanya’s kids.’
