Edge

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Did he kill her?’

  Jake nodded.

  ‘And you didn’t try to stop him?’

  ‘I–we …’Jake stuttered pathetically. ‘We couldn’t.’

  ‘I remember times,’ Henry Christie said nostalgically, ‘when I was on crime patrol way back here in the valley, all those years ago, when me and one partner in particular used to have musically themed evenings.’

  FB gave Henry a look of disbelief. ‘Musically themed evenings?’

  ‘Yeah, you know? A Beatles night, or a Stones night … even country.’

  FB shook his head sadly.

  ‘Simpler times,’ Henry said wistfully.

  ‘You fancy a sing-song now?’ FB asked. ‘I’m an opera buff, incidentally. I do a very creditable “Toreador”.’

  ‘I only know the rude version of that one,’ Henry admitted. Seeing FB’s look of puzzlement, he added, ‘The one about masturbation.’

  They were in Whitworth and Henry had driven the Land Rover up past the Cock and Magpie, heading up the hill, retracing the route from earlier when Annabel had been directing him towards Britannia Top Farm. The Land Rover bounced lumpily over the rough track and in a fleeting thought Henry wondered why he’d been stupid enough to take the Audi on the same route. He could have ripped the sump open.

  He bore right at Cowm Reservoir and reached the point where he had stumbled on Johnny Asian being attacked.

  He drove on slowly until the farm track split at a staggered T junction. To go right would take him back towards the Cock and Magpie – the route he had taken earlier ahead of the ambulance – so he turned left and stayed on the track past Abel Kirkman’s place, ignoring any turn-off, of which there were a couple. He knew the moor was criss-crossed with tracks and paths, some suitable for vehicles like Land Rovers, others only just about suitable for sheep. He only glanced at Kirkman’s place, but pointed it out for FB’s benefit. The route then really did start to become steep and Henry knew that if he kept on going he would reach the moor top on which were huge sandstone quarries, once the biggest in Europe, hacked into the landscape, leaving scars that would be there until the end of time.

  A few hundred metres along they came to the first farm with a sign saying ‘Welcome to Red Pits Farm’. The farmhouse was set back and Henry turned through an open gate into a farmyard. He stopped outside the farmhouse.

  The front door opened and a man appeared in typical farming gear: an oilskin coat, flat cap, wellington boots. A sheepdog panted at his heels.

  Henry slid back the window.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he shouted across the divide. ‘I’m looking for Britannia Top Farm.’

  ‘Never ’eard of it,’ the man said gruffly.

  ‘Oh.’ Henry turned to FB. ‘He says he’s never heard of it.’

  ‘I might be old, but I’m not deaf,’ FB said sarcastically.

  Henry poked his face out of the opening. ‘Can you tell us what other farms there are up ahead?’

  ‘Yeah, I can.’

  Henry hissed quietly, ‘Fucking farmers,’ then asked, ‘What are they called and how do I get to them?’

  ‘Next one up’s Lower End Farm, then after that, just before t’ old quarry, is Whit’orth Top Farm.’

  ‘But no Britannia Top Farm?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said lugubriously.

  ‘And you don’t know Britannia Top Farm?’

  ‘Not as such, no.’

  ‘What does that mean, sir?’

  ‘Well, Whit’orth Top Farm used to be called Britannia Top Farm years back an’ a lot of folks still call it that. It’s interchangeable.’

  ‘Oh, so when you say Whit’orth Top Farm, do you mean Britannia Top Farm?’

  ‘That’s what I said, din’ I?’

  No, Henry thought, you didn’t, wondering why the farmer didn’t just freakin’ tell him. ‘Who lives there?’ he asked.

  ‘Bunch o’ scrotes,’ the farmer said colourfully.

  Jerry Tope knew he functioned best between the hours of nine a.m. and one p.m., at his headquarters desk, and after eight hours of good, solid sleep. He was nowhere near this peak when hauled out of bed after a long day and given a job to do with a frazzled brain, gritty eyes and not much information to go on.

  The main problem with this scenario was his power of recall.

  Between nine and one he was as sharp as a knife, could accumulate information both in his head and on the computer, see links, churn intelligence over and make connections based on the most tenuous of reports, sightings and statements.

  He was good at his job.

  He prided himself on just how good he was.

  But not just now with a thick head from tiredness, and it was frustrating the life out of him.

  It wasn’t as though he had even unearthed very much information for Henry. He ran it through his mind. All he had done so far, since Henry had rudely woken him, was run a name search on two individuals, a male and a female, find out some information and pass it back over to Henry.

  Still, there was something missing and his brain could not pinpoint it.

  He rose from the laptop in his study and wandered back to the bedroom door, behind which his much-beloved wife Marina was soundly asleep and snoring loudly.

  From there he retraced his steps, mentally and physically.

  On the phone to Henry … downstairs … blah, blah … taking a few scribbled notes … listening to Henry’s over-dramatic retelling of the night’s events … going back to his computer, which had still been logged in to the HOLMES system regarding the suspected murder of a prison officer … closing down that link, then starting to search for the names Henry had given him.

  It was there, somewhere.

  He went back to his laptop, stared blankly at it, willing his scrambled-egg brain to kick into gear.

  He took a long drink of his now tepid coffee.

  Johnny Asian. Annabel Larch.

  Stared at the computer screen for inspiration.

  It was here, somewhere.

  He swore, one word, continually, trying to drive his brain, tapping his forefinger on his desk with the rhythm of his chant.

  Then he had it.

  It was in Henry’s verbal description as to what had happened at the hospital when the two men had arrived and attacked Johnny Asian, and also in a snippet from a witness who had seen the prison officer get run over and murdered. That was the connection Tope’s brain was searching for.

  Tope’s throat dried up as he re-entered the HOLMES system and retrieved the two witness statements.

  ‘Yes!’ he murmured victoriously.

  And there was something else, too, an item he had seen earlier on TV, the North West News. There had been the on-scene report of the death of the prison officer in Lancashire, followed by breaking news of an armed robbery in Rochdale in which a shopkeeper had been brutally gunned down and his daughter badly assaulted by a gang.

  On the face of it, no link as yet.

  A murder in Preston. A robbery/murder in Rochdale.

  And Henry Christie’s account of an assault at Rochdale Infirmary.

  Slowly the pieces slotted together for Jerry Tope.

  He snatched up his phone.

  Johnny looked past Jake’s shoulder and Jake himself spun guiltily.

  The stable door had opened and Charlie entered, Luke at his shoulder, the shotgun cradled in his left arm.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Charlie said on seeing the tableau in front of him. Johnny kneeling down by Annabel’s unmoving figure, Jake standing close by. ‘Looks like a Christmas card,’ he sneered. ‘Definitely a scene I’ll be putting on my Chrissie cards this year.’

  Removing his hands from underneath Annabel’s head, Johnny rose slowly to his feet.

  Jake backed away, his body language distancing himself from the couple.

  ‘Did you know he was here?’ Charlie said to Jake.

  ‘No, honest … I just saw some movement—’

  Charlie chopped his right
hand down through the air like an axe falling, cutting off Jake’s explanation. He did not want to know anything now as he looked across at Johnny.

  ‘Come back to rescue her?’ he asked.

  ‘Actually, yeah – but she’s dead.’

  ‘Ah well, such is life. Now you can join her, Johnny.’

  ‘You killed a baby too, by killing her.’

  Charlie smiled at that. ‘I’d already killed that. I killed it before she died, and I enjoyed it. I made her lose it.’

  Johnny’s face registered his horror. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Yeah, what about that, eh? How does that feel – to have it all come fucking crashing down around you, EH?’ He slapped the shotgun into the palm of his left hand, the forefinger of his right around the triggers.

  Johnny raised his hands.

  ‘If I shoot from here, I’ll probably just splatter you with buckshot, but you know what I want to do, Johnny? Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what … I want to relive a dream I had. I want to put both barrels of this gun right up against your heart and pull the triggers. I want to blow your heart to shreds because of what you’ve done to me. In the dream, I couldn’t see the face of the man I killed, but now I know it was you … I can see into the future.’

  Charlie took his right hand off the butt, holding the shotgun with his left. He bunched his fingers into a fist and banged it against his own chest to reinforce his next words with a gesture.

  ‘I—’ bang – ‘have—’ bang – ‘no—’ bang – ‘heart—’ bang. ‘You took it and danced on it.’

  ‘We didn’t mean to hurt you,’ Johnny pleaded. ‘These things happen, it wasn’t planned, no way.’

  ‘Did you know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction? I learned that in my GCSE physics class I took when I was in prison. That’s when I was in prison being humiliated by you two. Remember that?’

  His voice had started to rise uncontrollably up to a shriek. He brought the shotgun up and like an infantry soldier rapidly advancing, he stormed over to Johnny and forced the side-by-side barrels hard up against his sternum, then drove him backwards against the wall of the loose box and pinned him there, so they were eye to eye.

  Then he laughed as he pulled both triggers and blew Johnny’s chest apart, and because Johnny was pressed so hard against the wall, the recoil and back-blast were incredible and Charlie was splattered with Johnny’s blood and shredded organs.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ Jerry Tope said meekly.

  There was a groan at the other end of the line as DCI Rik Dean attempted to wake up. He sat up, then walked naked over to the en suite bathroom, hoping not to disturb Lisa, fast asleep still, but also silently cursing because in the location he was in – a bedroom at the Tawny Owl – it was usually impossible to receive a mobile phone signal.

  ‘It’s all right, Jerry,’ he slurred. ‘I just hope it’s good.’ He yawned and scratched.

  ‘Me too,’ Tope said, still trying to arrange his own thought processes.

  ‘Spit it out; it’s been a long day and going to be another long one tomorrow.’

  ‘Tony Dawson, the prison officer? One of the witness statements, the one from the window cleaner?’

  ‘Un-huh.’ Rik put the toilet lid down and sat on it.

  ‘He says he got a glimpse of the occupants of the Toyota that did the deed.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Said he thought they were wearing baseball caps backwards and face masks.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Er, could the masks have been like, y’know, doctors’ masks? I know the guy describes them as making their faces look like Voldemort in the Harry Potter films.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but he didn’t get that good a look. It was more of an impression. Why? Why is this important at this time of day? Couldn’t it have waited?’

  ‘Well, I dunno …’

  ‘Jerry!’

  ‘Well, I’ve been speaking to Henry about this job he’s got sucked into over in Whitworth. You know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, while he was at A&E in Rochdale with an assault victim, two guys in back-to-front baseball caps attacked the guy again – and Henry, who chased them off, but they had another go at him when he caught them.’

  ‘Right. Lots of yobs wear back-to-front baseball caps.’

  ‘And surgical face masks?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Rik became interested.

  ‘Something else, too,’ Jerry went on. ‘Mid-afternoon today, there was an armed robbery in Rochdale when, guess what? Offenders were wearing baseball caps on backwards and surgical masks. They killed a shopkeeper with a shotgun.’

  Rik waited. He knew there would be more.

  ‘I did a bit more digging and discovered that a team of robbers who always wore face masks and reversed baseball caps committed a ton of jobs over the Greater Manchester area. They got the nickname “The Surgeons”.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Then I thought I’d have a look at this guy Charlie Wilder. He was released today from Preston Prison, as you know. The one his cell mate said had made some threats to the prison officer.’

  ‘Yeah. But I checked him out. It wasn’t him,’ Rik said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because he’s out on licence and has been tagged. I spoke to GuardSec, the security firm who monitor tagged offenders, and his read-outs show he wasn’t even in Preston when my guy was crushed by the four by four.’

  ‘Mm, yeah … I checked that out, too, in a roundabout sort of way.’

  Rik didn’t ask. He knew Jerry’s computer hacking skills were legendary and that he’d probably been looking in the security firm’s system.

  ‘According to the records, he was nowhere near the armed robbery in Rochdale, either.’

  ‘So – dead end?’

  Tope winced. ‘Maybe not – but I also did some digging on our intel re the address that Charlie Wilder has offered up as his home address, which is where the tag-tracker has shown him to be all day, since about an hour after his release. It’s a council house on Eastgate, on the Wallbank estate in Whitworth.

  ‘Current occupant according to the Burgess List is Monica Lee Goode. Henry was dealing with an assault on a lad he thought was called Johnny Asian, whose real name is Johnny Goode. Monica is his sister.’

  Rik sighed. ‘Where is all this going, Jerry?’

  ‘It’s just dots, I know; but another person Henry was dealing with is called Annabel Larch, and she is Johnny’s girlfriend, according to what she told Henry. She has a few minor convictions going back a while and on GMP’s intel database, they have her boyfriend down as one Charlie Wilder and she gave evidence of his character at his trial.’

  ‘Head hurts, Jerry. Bum’s cold, too.’

  ‘OK, OK. The last time this gang, the Surgeons, hit anywhere was just over two years ago. Charlie Wilder gets out today and, lo and behold, there is a robbery, and a serious one at that. The Surgeons are suddenly back in business. And we both know that Charlie was sent down for a serious assault two years ago … huh? Huh?’

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘When he was arrested for that offence by a Whitworth bobby, his address was Whitworth Top Farm.’

  ‘Fuck! So?’

  ‘Whitworth Top Farm, according to council and Post Office records, was previously known as Britannia Top Farm.’

  ‘And the guy has an electronic tag on his friggin’ ankle, Jerry, which tells us he was nowhere near a murder in Preston or a blag in Rochdale at the appropriate times.’

  ‘Um, yuh, bit of a stumbling block that,’ Jerry agreed.

  The two men fell into a concurrent, silent cogitation.

  ‘Unless—’ Rik started to speculate.

  ‘He had the tag removed,’ Jerry concluded for him.

  ‘Is that possible?’ Rik asked.

  ‘Anything is possible.’

  ‘Which now beg
s the question, why are you telling me all this? It could have waited until the morning briefing and you would have looked almost brainy. And why not tell Henry in the morning, too?’

  ‘What d’you mean,’ Tope asked, puzzled, ‘tell Henry?’

  ‘Well, he’s in bed, isn’t he?’

  ‘Uh – no.’

  Rik blinked. He had gone to bed quite late, after having spoken briefly to Henry on the phone, then waited up with Alison and Steve Flynn, but as Henry didn’t show, Rik had gone to bed with Lisa, knowing he’d need a decent night’s sleep to set him up for the next day, which would be long. Sitting there on that cold toilet lid, Rik had just assumed that Henry had landed at some stage and was tucked up with Alison.

  ‘Where is he, then?’

  ‘On his way to Whitworth Top Farm. I’ve tried to contact him on his mobile without success and spoken to Burnley comms to shout him and tell him to hang back, but neither of us can get through. I just thought that it would be prudent for him to go in mob-handed, as opposed to just him and the chief constable. He could be there now for all I know. I mean, it might all be OK, but—’

  ‘Have Burnley deployed anyone to go and check?’

  ‘No one available.’

  ‘Well, he can look after himself, Jerry, and him and FB are pretty formidable.’

  ‘I know what you’re saying, boss, but if these are the guys he’s already had run-ins with, they don’t mind going for cops. He’s already been assaulted by them and if he shows up on their doorstep out of radio and mobile range, it might just get dicey. That’s all I’m saying … I just wanted your thoughts on it.’

  ‘All right,’ Rik said assertively, ‘you get back on to Burnley comms and ask them to keep trying Henry and also to deploy a patrol as back-up, even if it means leaving an area without cops. I’m going to turn out unless I hear things are different.’

  Charlie wiped the blood splatter from his face, flicking it away with disgust, but also with a grim smile of satisfaction. Luke stood just behind him, staring at Johnny’s rag-doll body.

  Smoke rose from the barrels of the shotgun.

  Jake sank slowly to his knees, horror-struck.

  Suddenly Luke’s head flicked sideways. ‘Hear that?’

  ‘Hear what?’ Charlie said.

  ‘A car, a vehicle of some sort … on the lane … listen.’