by Nick Oldham
‘What do you think, Henry?’ Bill asked in his ear.
‘Keep your hand on your weapon and don’t shoot me in the back.’ He moved off, walking alongside the trail as it snaked its way across the carpet to the kitchen door. He held his breath as he pushed open the left side of the swinging door, then stepped in, just knowing this was as far as it went. Here would be answers, he thought — and more questions.
‘Hell,’ he said dully at the sight that greeted his eyes.
Behind him, Bill pushed to get a look. Henry heard the breath gush out of his colleague’s lungs. He turned when he heard a further groan to see Carly, whose knees had buckled under her, pirouette away in a faint. Henry lunged for her and managed to get his hands under her arms and ease her to the floor, ensuring she didn’t smack her head on the descent. He left her in a swoon and regarded the tableau in front of him.
A terrible scene. Two people lay sprawled on the floor in a kitchen aisle between a sink unit and a large fridge-freezer. A single-barrelled sawn-off shotgun was discarded next to them and it was that weapon that had caused the damage.
Henry approached carefully, thinking ‘evidence’ all the time, and even though he knew instinctively that this was a tragedy that would go no further than a coroner’s court, it still had to be dealt with as though it were a murder, which in part it probably was.
The first body he came to was that of a male, maybe forty years old, dressed in what had once been a white T-shirt and jeans. There was a massive shotgun wound to his neck, a whole chunk of it as big as an apple having been blown out; there was another horrific wound to his lower abdomen, just above the groin area.
He swallowed and glanced at Bill, who rose from attending the woozy Carly.
‘I don’t know this man,’ Henry said. ‘Could turn out to be Darren Langmead, maybe?’
‘I think Carly knows him.’
Henry stepped carefully past the dead male. ‘I do know this one, though.’
‘Jackie Kippax?’
Henry nodded, a bitter taste in his mouth.
She was a mess, and on the face of it, it was obvious what had happened to her: she had committed suicide.
There was a perfect hole in the soft, fleshy part underneath her chin. Henry knew it would be the exact size of the barrel of the shotgun, which had been held there before being discharged. The shot had entered her at a slight angle, leaving her face virtually intact, or as intact as it could be when the back half of the head had been blown off and was stuck on the ceiling as though a pan of Bolognese had exploded. Henry looked at it and sighed.
More awake than he should have been, Henry sat opposite Angela Cranlow in the deserted canteen at Blackburn police station and handed her a black coffee from the machine. He had worked out that coffee to him was like blood to a vampire — the only thing that kept him going. Their kiss, only a few short hours earlier, was a distant memory, one he was trying to forget completely, pretend it hadn’t happened. Unfortunately, he had to admit that despite her tired eyes and hair scraped dramatically back off her face, his boss looked pretty damned good — even at two in the morning. As though she’d just rolled out of bed, which she had.
He reckoned what she was seeing wasn’t quite so alluring, though.
‘Thanks, Henry. Reckon you’ll ever get to bed again?’
‘I think I’m capable of living without sleep from now on. Sleep’s just a bad habit. All you need is a bit of willpower … and amphets, obviously.’ He swigged his own coffee and winced. ‘Just kidding.’
‘Where are we up to, then?’
Henry took it to mean the investigation into Eddie Daley’s death and the subsequent double deaths of Jackie Kippax and Darren Langmead, erstwhile manager of the Class Act, now closed down for the foreseeable future. He hoped she did not mean him and her.
‘Seems that Jackie believed Langmead was Eddie’s killer and she’s taken the law into her own hands, gone out to challenge him about it before we got the chance to do it properly. A quick PNC inquiry showed that Eddie was the holder of a shotgun certificate, which accounts for her access to the weapon, though I doubt it should have been a sawn-off one.’ He paused. ‘Trying to put it all together isn’t easy, but looking at the scene, it seems she’s gone to see Langmead at the Class Act, they’ve had a discussion which has obviously gone pear-shaped. I’m guessing he probably denied killing Eddie, she disagreed and produced the shotgun and blasted him in the gut. They were upstairs in the living quarters at this point. Probably mortally wounded even at that point, Langmead has managed to do a runner and she’s gone after him and pumped another into his neck in the foyer, which killed him outright. Somehow and, for the moment, for reasons unexplained, she has managed to drag his body all the way into the kitchen then topped herself. How she had the strength and why she dragged him I don’t know. A tragedy on top of a tragedy. But she had nothing to lose, I suppose. She said she was dying of cancer, Eddie had gone and she had nothing left to live for. I’m guessing …’ Henry shrugged uncertainly.
‘All supposition at this stage?’
‘It’s called hypothesis in the world of investigation, ma’am.’
‘Guessing, you mean?’
‘Absolutely. She didn’t trust me to bring in Eddie’s killer, so she did the job herself.’
‘What about the phone call?’
‘Er, well, perhaps she had him bang to rights, admitting everything under the duress of a shotgun, then he went for her, although I did hear a man in the background say “You got it wrong” when she phoned me …’
‘Do you think Langmead killed Eddie?’
Henry leaned back and gazed at the high roof above. ‘I don’t know. I’m not convinced, but it’s something I need to follow up.’
‘You’ve still got a few days left before it all gets handed back to Anger. Use the time constructively.’
‘I will, boss.’
She yawned, covering her mouth and saying, ‘Sorry,’ in a girlish way. ‘I need to get some sleep … got meetings all day from eight … no rest for the wicked … no chance to be wicked, actually.’ She grinned. ‘I’m off. Night.’
She left and Henry was still buzzing. He toyed with his plastic cup, knowing that the journey home would give him time to wind down, but something still nagged at the back of his mind.
He picked up his PR and called Bill Robbins, asking him to ring back on the mobile phone facility on the PR, which he did.
‘Bill, thanks for tonight.’
‘No probs, boss,’ he said laconically.
‘How’s Carly?’
‘Shaken, but OK. Gone home.’
‘Did you fix up the RSPCA for the Hound of the Baskervilles?’
‘Done.’
‘What time’re you finishing?’
‘Round about now … why?’ he enquired cautiously.
‘Fancy a quick peek round at Jackie Kippax’s flat?’
There was a pregnant pause. Then, ‘You authorizing the overtime?’
‘Yeah, why not. See you at the back door of the nick in ten.’
Henry entered the flat using the key found on Jackie’s body. It was a typical council flat, plain, functional, not modern, but quite well looked after by Jackie and Eddie. They seemed to have had everything they needed and although not luxurious, there was a nice suite, TV, DVD and video player/recorder, a computer, a decent CD player and lots of discs. The kitchen was basic and clean. Henry imagined they rubbed along all right, despite the fact he had allegedly ruined their lives all those years before.
Henry let his eyes wander as Bill drifted through the flat, but not touching anything. Later in the morning the CSI team would be in doing a full job on it.
‘Owt in particular?’ Bill asked.
‘Dunno.’ Henry scratched his head, aware that he did that far too often. He flattened his short hair down and wandered around the flat, feeling that the visit was probably useless. The he went round it again, that ‘something’ nagging at his mind.
On the third sweep, he had a Eureka moment, one of those moments that can affect the whole direction of a murder investigation when there is a realization that the most simple thing has been missed. Henry gave himself a contemptuous mental kick up the arse.
Ten
Henry was hard pressed to recall a time when he had been more exhausted, but the regular slush of adrenaline and/or caffeine pumping into his system kept him going through the night and into the morning, right up to the briefing with his Special Projects Murder Squad, now the ‘SPMS’ to the people in the know. It reminded Henry of something vaguely Roman.
Although his mind was a mush, he forced himself to present the bright-eyed bunch with the developments that had taken place overnight.
‘… but despite all that, this investigation continues until we ascertain whether or not Darren Langmead is Eddie Daley’s killer. Once we have done that, then, yeah, it’s over bar the paperwork, but we need to keep an open mind about it. Just because Jackie Kippax thought he killed Eddie doesn’t mean to say he actually did and we need to keep all lines of inquiry open.’
At first, the news of the shooting incident at the Class Act had deflated the team, but Henry’s belief that Eddie’s killer could still be at large reinstated their enthusiasm. There was something to aim for, not just a lot of paper sifting, which they did anyway.
Henry had managed to snaffle two cars from the HQ transport by sneaking into the office in the garage, purloining two sets of keys and then driving the cars to distant points of the car park so they would not be found that easily. He knew he could get into trouble for it, but he was past caring. The newly formed SPMS needed transport because he was intending to send them out to Blackburn to do some knocking on doors and digging around and there was no other alternative than to steal vehicles. He knew that the lack of staff numbers was a big drawback to the investigation, but he intended to achieve as much as possible in the short time he had left, by targeting them at a few important facets as he saw fit.
He dispatched two pairs and handed them car keys, sending them wide-eyed into the big, nasty world, and hoping they wouldn’t get into too much trouble. He deliberately held back the ex-detective Graeme Walling and the WPC with attitude, Jenny Fisher, to task separately. As they then departed, leaving Henry alone in the office, Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Anger entered, smirking.
Henry, lounging back in an office chair, purposely swung his feet up on to the desk and remained lounging. Anger sauntered over and balanced on the corner of the desk and adjusted his Gestapo-style spectacles.
‘The sick, lame and lazy murder squad, I understand,’ he said. Henry chose not to respond. ‘A bunch of seasoned incompetents, led by a major incompetent.’
‘Captain incompetent, if you don’t mind,’ Henry said, fancying a verbal joust. He was determined to stay calm.
‘Sounds like the job’s solved itself, which is a good thing. At least it means you won’t have egg all over your mush when you hand it over to a real murder squad after Friday — a team which, by the way, I’m starting to pull together now. As soon as the lovely Condoleezza Rice has gone, we’ll take over and start tying it up.’
‘Fine by me.’
‘Just make sure it’s all settled paperwork-wise, etcetera, etcetera … otherwise I’ll continue to humiliate you, even if you think you have Angela Cranlow’s ear.’
They glared at each other like a couple of savage dogs, each wanting to rip out the other’s throat.
Anger eased himself to his feet. ‘Good progress on your last case, by the way,’ he said, trying to rub a bit of salt in.
‘The TV appearance on Crimewatch?’ Henry chuckled. ‘You go on that programme when a job’s gone tits up, don’t you? And by the way, you look even porkier on the box.’
Anger chortled. ‘That could’ve been you,’ he taunted.
‘Nah … I would’ve solved it long ago.’
Anger breathed in unsteadily and Henry wondered if they would ever come to serious blows. He relished the thought of pounding Anger to a pulp, but knew it would never happen. And, regardless of his desire to stay cool, he was finding himself becoming more and more worked up by Anger’s presence and could not resist saying, though he knew it was childish, ‘In case it’s eating away at you, your missus does give good head.’ He immediately regretted it, particularly as Anger rushed him, grabbed his legs and with a remarkable burst of strength, tipped Henry backwards off the chair into the wall. He toppled off, catching his head on the rim of a metal wastebasket, caught napping by Anger’s speed.
Henry was quickly on his feet, ready to go for it, but Anger had already reached the door where he turned and growled, ‘You need to watch your balance, mate.’ Then he was gone.
Henry rubbed the side of his head, feeling ashamed of himself at falling to Anger’s primeval level. Not good.
Shaking his head in disbelief, he walked across to his office in the corner and sat behind his desk, determined to do some brainwork. Suddenly, though, his thinking became blurred with fatigue.
It was just after 10 a.m., so he swooped down to the canteen, constructed a crispy bacon sandwich from the self-service counter, washed it down with tea for a change, then felt himself begin to chill. He had about four hours before any of his team were due to report back and the post-mortems of Kippax and Langmead weren’t due to take place until after 5 p.m.
In the meantime, Henry knew exactly what he was going to do.
It was slightly strange and a little bit decadent to be easing himself into bed at ten thirty in the morning, but also fantastic. He had managed to appropriate one of the newly refurbished rooms in the student accommodation at the training centre, which even had an en-suite toilet and shower, a kettle and a TV. Truly luxurious in comparison to how the rooms were years before, when he came on courses. Then they were basic and uncomfortable and after a night on the razz the choice was either to pee in the sink in your room, or traipse all the way to the cold, tiled-floored toilets at the end of the corridor, then back again, shivering, possibly to find that the room door had mysteriously locked behind you. Henry had peed in many sinks in his younger days.
The sheets were crisp and cool and as he pulled the duvet over his head to muffle the sounds of the centre, he was soon asleep.
The reconstructed face of the murdered and horrendously burned female featured in Henry’s bleak dreams. He talked to her and she replied with tears in her eyes. The words were indistinct, but Henry could see the woman was happy, but worried at the same time. Then the torture came — the drowning, the strangulation, the beating, the flames and out of the fires emerged Dave Anger like a deranged phoenix who leapt into a Rover 75 and drove it at Henry, jarring him into reluctant wakefulness … but only for a moment before he slid back to sleep and the dream evaporated … until he found himself walking down a cell corridor, responding to the soft knocking of a prisoner in a cell. He opened the door, but the cell was empty … yet the knocking continued … until he realized it was not a dream and the tapping was coming from the other side of his own door.
He twisted, picked up his watch from the bedside cabinet and squinted at it. He had set the alarm for 1 p.m. … it was 12.45 p.m. He sighed — he could have had fifteen minutes more — and with a curse he rolled out of bed, putting his eye to the peephole in the door.
‘One second,’ he called. He massaged his face quickly, grabbed his trousers and dragged them on before opening the door to the deputy chief constable.
Underneath her trench coat, which she quickly removed, she was in full regalia, with all the ‘bird shit’ emblems associated with her rank on the epaulettes on her narrow shoulders and lapels, which seemed to weigh her down. She looked bright and fully awake, very well turned out and sweet smelling. Her eyes did a quick once-over of Henry’s bare stomach and chest, making him inhale quickly, suddenly devastatingly aware he had far too much loose skin and flab hanging around. Her eyes rose.
‘I thought I’d see how things were progressing,
’ she explained. ‘I’ve got a short break before my next meeting.’
‘Oh, OK,’ Henry said, holding his left arm across his chest, feeling vulnerable. ‘It’s going all right,’ he began.
‘I know it is,’ she said throatily, her eyes sparkling with lust. She eased herself past Henry, her soft hands touching his arms as she moved him gently aside. He watched her as she switched on the TV, turning the volume up slightly, then turned back to face him. It was only a small room and there was very little distance between them. ‘Unfinished business,’ she said.
Her right hand went to the back of his neck, pulling him down to her and forcing her lips on to his. At first he resisted — slightly — but she tasted and smelled delicious and he couldn’t hold himself back. His arms encircled her and she crushed against him, her hands running up and down his naked spine, sending shocks through his nerve endings, making him shiver. Finally they broke apart, Henry almost bursting out of his trousers.
‘This is so dangerous,’ he said.
‘I laugh in the face of danger,’ she said mockingly, throwing back her head, exposing her neck. ‘And in case you hadn’t worked it out, I get what I want. My looks deceive people.’
She bit Henry’s left nipple, making him utter a tiny squeal like a kettle, then she divested herself of her uniform in what seemed to be a well practised manoeuvre. In a moment she was standing there in a functional white bra, frilly knickers and — completely amazing Henry — stockings and suspenders.
‘Dear God,’ he slavered.
She unhooked her bra and tossed it aside, then slid her hands into the waistband of his pants and drew him towards her, unzipped him and eased them down his legs, kneeling in front of him.
Not completely sure it hadn’t all been a dream, Henry grabbed a prawn mayo sandwich and coffee-to-go at the training centre canteen. He guessed there was a Race and Diversity course running because he recognized a transvestite and transsexual sitting together at one of the tables, then hurried back to headquarters. He was still wearing the clothes he’d had on for the last two days, but at least he’d had a shower and had quickly ironed everything in the laundry room before putting it all back on, hoping the steam would force a bit of freshness back into his gear. He had plans to dash home and get changed before this afternoon’s post-mortems.
