Dead Heat

by Nick Oldham

  Charlotte raised her head and looked at Henry. She was an exhausted mess, hardly able to keep her eyes from shutting down. It did not help, Henry thought, that she had been taking drugs earlier and had then been raped. The night would have been bad enough without those added bonuses. He wondered who would be available to give her some immediate care. Obviously she could not go home.

  ‘Hi,’ she croaked weakly.

  ‘Hi.’ He stepped over to her and took her hand. ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘Totally out of it. I’ve never seen anyone like this before. She’s really, really ill, I think.’

  ‘She’s been through a lot.’

  ‘Henry, what happened? What was it all about? Where’s my dad?’

  She didn’t know and Henry found himself at a loss. ‘Look,’ he said, not wanting to duck out of the responsibility of telling her, but believing it was the better course of action at this moment in time. ‘I’m not completely sure myself. Don’t worry your head about anything at the moment, other than looking after your mum, eh? She needs you right now.’ Charlotte looked devastated and unable to cope with that. He lifted her chin. ‘How are you?’ he asked tenderly.

  She raised her chin off his fingertips and then stared at the floor, making no reply.

  ‘Your mum’s going to get looked after in here, but you need to be looked after too, Charlotte, at least for a few hours.’

  ‘I’m staying here,’ she bristled. ‘I’m staying with my mum.’ Her eyes watered. ‘Is Dad dead?’

  Henry nodded. ‘Sorry.’

  She took that initial blow well, looking more puzzled than anything. He knew that sooner or later, no matter how bad the situation had been at home, Wickson’s death would hit her hard. No matter which way it was looked at, he had been her father all her life, even though he wasn’t biologically. She would be unable to think of him differently, ever, Henry guessed.

  ‘Your mum’s going to get transferred on to a ward shortly and all she’ll be doing is sleeping all day. There is nothing you can do to help her here. You really can’t stay. They’ve nowhere to put you.’

  ‘I want to,’ she protested.

  ‘You need to get some sleep yourself. You need somewhere to crash out, because when your mum wakes up, she’ll need you to be strong and if you’re a wreck, you won’t be strong, will you?’

  Even through her bewildered thinking, Charlotte could see the logic of this. ‘I don’t want to go home, though . . . I saw Jake,’ she said. The expression on her young face made Henry want to get hold of her, hug her and reassure her that it would be all right, that the memory of the horror would fade in time.

  He hoped he did not live to regret his next offer. He hoped also that it did not sound perverted. ‘Would you come to my house? You could crash out on Leanne’s bed. She wouldn’t mind. My wife’s there. You’d have a good sleep, some food and then get back here refreshed. That’s what your mum will need.’

  ‘Please . . .’ Charlotte started to crumble. ‘That would be nice.’

  Henry led her out of the hospital via Dr Caunce. Henry gave her his home and mobile numbers and told her to instruct staff not to let the police interview Tara before Henry had had a chance to speak to her.

  Caunce gave him a strange look, wondering what was going on. ‘But you’re a cop, aren’t you?’

  Henry winked. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said the doctor, ‘because I now have your mobile phone number.’

  There was no natural-looking way of disposing of a gun and a bag of drugs, Henry realized. He had driven out past Poulton-le-Fylde and over Shard Bridge, which spanned the River Wyre, which flows into the Irish Sea at Fleetwood. He was relieved to see that the tide was in and the river, consequently, was high. Just what he needed. He parked the Astra on Old Bridge Lane, just on the northern side of the river, and strolled back along the bridge with a plastic bag in his hand containing the said illegal items.

  He walked as casually as he could, trying to give the impression he was out on a morning stroll. He could not get rid of the feeling that everyone who drove past him was looking at him and knew he was a villain.

  There were no other pedestrians on the bridge.

  He stopped half-way across, leaned on the parapet and gazed down the river toward the meandering right-hand curve on which the Blackpool and Fylde Yacht Club was situated. He then stared directly down at the water below him. It was a muddy brown colour, as ever. He had passed over the Wyre hundreds of times during his life and never seen the water any different colour. He would not have liked to swim in it. It was not the least inviting.

  From the direction of the flow, he could tell it was on the ebb.

  Several cars drove past. Then there was a gap in the traffic. He scanned around furtively. No one in sight. No cars, no people.

  He acted quickly, opening the bag and tipping out the contents into the river.

  The gun dropped into the water with a splash and sank immediately.

  The bag of drugs fell on to the surface and kind of settled there, floated away like a tiny boat towards the sea. He watched it sail away, then sink.

  A big sigh of relief made his body shudder.

  ‘She’s still asleep,’ Kate whispered to Henry on his return home. ‘She had a shower then went straight to bed. She’s exhausted, poor soul. Just what has been going on, Henry?’

  ‘Don’t really know where to start,’ he said, ‘other than I would really like a massive hug.’

  There was no need for a second request. She needed one as well. Kate fell into his arms and they both squeezed tight.

  It felt very, very good.

  Henry needed his bed too, so following a long, hot power shower, he fell on to the kingsize, closed his eyes and was instantly asleep. He was deep out of it for about four hours but when he woke to visit the loo he could not get back. He tossed and turned for an hour, thoughts and plans tumbling through his brain, some jumbled, some very clear.

  In the end he gave up and got up.

  Kate was downstairs, pacing the house on pins. ‘She’s still asleep,’ she answered Henry’s question. She gave him another hug and then held him out at arms’ length. ‘Now are you going to tell me what’s happened? It’s all over the TV news. It sounds horrible.’

  ‘It is, was,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ll tell you over a brew.’

  They sat in the conservatory and he told her what she needed to know, stunning her with the violence of the night. Her mouth regularly drooped open as he recounted the grim details.

  When he had told her enough, she asked, ‘And how are you, love?’

  He thought about it for a long time, then nodded. ‘I’m OK, actually,’ he said, surprising himself. He knew that not long ago he would have been very deeply affected by the night’s events, that they could have sent him over the edge, but now he was a much stronger man. He looked into Kate’s eyes and knew why. He felt like he could face anything with her behind him. She was his rock and it had taken him a long time to realize it. Kate and the children. They were all he needed.

  ‘I love you,’ he said simply.

  ‘And I love you.’

  They leaned forwards and kissed each other, pulling apart when a noise from the dining room make them look up. It was the pathetic figure of Charlotte, wearing Leanne’s dressing gown.

  They were back at the hospital at 5 p.m., wending their way through endless corridors to the ward on to which Tara had been transferred. It was not official visiting time, but they were allowed in. She had been placed in a side room and Henry stiffened when he saw a uniformed cop on the door. A barrier because Henry knew him and he knew Henry. But did he know that Henry was suspended? He braved it, nodded at the officer and ushered Charlotte in ahead of him. ‘It’s her daughter,’ he whispered into the officer’s ear as he went past.

  ‘OK,’ he whispered back.

  Tara was propped up in bed, awake, tired, but looking much better than she had done. The big wrap-around bandage
had been removed from her head and replaced by a more practical-looking dressing. Most of the left side of her head had been shaved and Henry could see how swollen it was.

  She was overjoyed to see Charlotte, who rushed into her arms.

  ‘My baby,’ Tara cried, hugging her closely.

  Henry hovered in the background, shuffling, letting them have their moment. Finally they parted and looked at him.

  ‘Thanks for looking after her,’ Tara said.

  ‘She was almost well behaved,’ he laughed. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Better . . . sore . . . still a bit dazed.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘Ready to face the music, I think.’

  ‘Have you been seen by the police yet?’

  ‘Briefly. They’re coming back to see me later this evening.’

  Henry scratched his head whilst he thought things through, something that required him to make a decision that went totally against the grain of his career as a police officer.

  ‘Charlotte, would you give me and your mother a few minutes alone?’

  Tara and Charlotte exchanged glances. It was apparent Charlotte did not want to leave, but Tara squeezed her hand. ‘Please, love.’

  She left the room and sat in the corridor outside.

  ‘Do you feel up to talking?’

  ‘Think so.’

  ‘Do you remember everything that happened last night?’

  ‘Up to a point. The point where I shot Jake and tried to shoot John. Everything after that is a mess.’

  ‘Do you feel strong enough to be told?’

  Tara swallowed, nodded. Henry gave her the facts very succinctly, not glossing over anything, but not going into great detail. There was silence at the end whilst Tara digested the information. She sighed and tears formed on the edges of her eyes.

  ‘John’s dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does Charlotte know?’

  ‘Only that he is dead, not how he died. Someone’ll have to fill in the gaps for her at some stage,’ Henry said.

  ‘Yes. So now I’ve got to be questioned about Jake Coulton’s death.’

  ‘You’ll be questioned about the whole night. The police are going to need a lot of answers.’

  ‘I’ll get charged with murder, won’t I? Then I’ll lose Charlie for good. I’m only just clinging on to her as it is.’ A note of panic crept into her voice.

  ‘Well,’ Henry said hesitantly, going down his chosen road at last, ‘that remains to be seen.’

  Tara’s eyes flicked open. Henry took a deep breath and said again, ‘That remains to be seen.’

  Next morning Henry sat in an interview room at Blackpool Central Police Station. He was on one side of the table and on the other was Jane Roscoe and Detective Superintendent Anger. Both had frustrated faces of stone and were not particularly impressed by Henry. Henry had spent some of the time looking at Jane, assessing how he felt about her, puzzled by the conclusion he came to.

  They had worked their way through Henry’s statement fairly superficially to start with and were now going through it with a detective’s toothcomb. Anger was asking the questions. Jane was looking as hard as she could. Hard cop, hard cop, Henry thought. Good combination.

  ‘So you arrive at the Wickson house, having had this frantic phone call?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Tara Wickson saying that she thought there was a prowler around the house and stables?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why didn’t she call the police?’

  ‘As I’ve already explained, I was looking into some shenanigans at the stables involving the mutilation of some of her horses. She thought the prowler, if there was one, might be connected with this. Jane knows all about my connection with the Wicksons, don’t you, love?’

  Her face did not change.

  ‘You arrive there and make your way to the kitchen . . . What did you see?’

  ‘A man called Verner, the guy who took potshots at John Wickson earlier this week, then killed two of our officers and a nurse. He was holding a shotgun, pointing it at Jake Coulton, John Wickson and Tara.

  ‘I stepped into the scenario from hell, suddenly found myself being covered by a shotgun too.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Verner stuck the gun under Coulton’s chin and blasted his head off.’

  The interviewing officers did not say anything for a few moments.

  ‘Pretty bad, eh?’ said Anger.

  ‘Understatement.’

  Under further questioning he told them that Verner smashed Tara on the head with the butt of the shotgun because she was making so much noise after seeing Coulton murdered. She had been hysterical. Henry went on to describe the way that he and Wickson had been marched out to the crusher and then Wickson’s messy death. There was nothing fabricated in that, nor the fact that someone then started shooting at Verner from the hillside.

  The next fabrication came when Henry was questioned about the moment he and Verner faced each other next to the Bentley.

  ‘You see, Henry, the post-mortem showed that Verner had been shot in the shoulder by a completely different type of round to the ones fired by the sniper. The bullets from the sniper have been identified as 7.62 NATO calibre, but the one in the shoulder is more likely to be a .38 calibre, snub-nose, fired from a revolver or a pistol.’ Again, it was Anger explaining this.

  Henry shrugged. ‘Your point is?’

  ‘Are you saying that when he appeared at the Bentley, he was already wounded in the shoulder?’

  ‘I would say so. Look, it was dark, it was very stressful, lots of very nasty things had happened. I’m pretty sure that when he came round the back of the car and surprised me, he was already wounded, OK?’

  ‘What were you doing at your car?’ That was Jane. ‘You left the two women in the house while you went to the car for something. What?’

  It was a doozy of a question and almost floored Henry, who knew that he could not hesitate in his reply. ‘I went to get the wheel brace, actually, so that I could use it as a weapon to defend us while the police arrived, if necessary. Problem was, though, there wasn’t one there, just like there wasn’t a spare tyre, because you gave me a shit car to use to do a shit job.’

  ‘How do you explain Verner’s shoulder wound?’ Anger insisted.

  Henry snickered. ‘I can’t explain it . . . I haven’t got any explanation for it . . . perhaps someone else was out there after him with a gun . . . perhaps the guy on the hill did it . . . perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.’ A lyric for every situation, Henry thought.

  ‘Impossible,’ said Anger. ‘We found the sniper’s exact position, where he’d been laid up. He was too far away to have shot him with a pistol or a revolver.’

  ‘Are you saying I shot him?’

  ‘It’s something we need to clear up, Henry,’ Jane said. ‘A loose end.’

  She stared at him. He felt the hairs tingle on the back of his neck. She knew he was lying.

  ‘I am not impressed with you, Henry,’ Anger said.

  ‘Have you caught the sniper yet?’ Henry asked.

  Neither detective answered.

  ‘No, didn’t think so.’ He smiled winningly. ‘Not impressed with you. You’ve got the guy who killed two police officers, and many, many more people. I doubt you’ll ever find the sniper, but that’s the way it goes. All right, Verner’s dead and burned, but why don’t you look upon it as a glass that’s half full as opposed to half empty? There’s no need for a long drawn-out trial, just a few inquests . . . think of the money that’ll be saved.’

  Anger stood up and stalked out of the room, leaving Henry and Jane sitting across the table from each other. There was a sub-zero silence between them which seemed to go on forever.

  ‘Is that it, then? Have I done my public duty? Come in voluntarily, answered your intrusive and very uncomfortable questions, when it was me who went through hell. And you have the audacity to disbelieve me.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Jane said, �
��and I’ll let you know something, Henry – it stinks. I have a very bad feeling about this whole thing. My intuition tells me this statement is a pack of lies. When Kate called me she said Tara was the one pointing a shotgun.’

  Henry swallowed and fended the accusation by saying, ‘Did you see Tara Wickson? Did she say anything different?’

  Jane bit her lip. ‘No.’

  ‘Well in that case, Jane, I’ll be off.’ He got to his feet and walked to the door.

  ‘Henry,’ Jane blurted. She turned to him, tears forming in her eyes. ‘Is there any hope for us?’

  His shoulders dropped. He shook his head. ‘No, no there isn’t,’ he said softly.

  Epilogue

  ‘I should’ve been a bloody cop.’ Troy Costain took a mouthful of lager, swallowed it, wiped his mouth and said, ‘Should’ve.’

  Henry looked sardonically at him. ‘Sure you should.’

  ‘Well . . . I’m as bent as a nine-bob note, whatever a nine-bob note is – before my time – so that’s one ability; and I can get information out of people.’

  ‘Yeah, all the competence you need to be a cop,’ Henry agreed.

  ‘Yep . . . I tell lies, I nick things, I hit folk who aren’t bigger than me and I get people to open up to me.’

  ‘A natural charmer.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s my Romany background.’

  ‘My arse!’ said Henry. He ordered himself and Costain another pint. They were in a little pub in the village of Singleton near to Poulton-le-Fylde where it was unlikely that their tryst would be witnessed by anyone of significance to either of them. Even so, Henry was wary. It was often the meets like this in out-of-the-way places that went belly up. Sometimes it was better to do it right in the middle of town, to hide in a crowd.

  They wandered out to the beer garden and sat at a table. It was just about warm enough to be outside.

  ‘What sort of bullets are in that gun of yours?’ Henry asked him.

  ‘Eh? Fuckin’ hell, that’s a bit of a heavy opening question, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well . . . ?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he shrugged. ‘I bought the whole kit and caboodle from a guy from the smoke who was up here selling stuff. Didn’t ask. Just bullets – why?’