Fighting for the Dead

by Nick Oldham

  Sniggers went round the room like a little Mexican wave.

  Flynn spoke up. ‘Colin had loads of boxes stacked up there and just didn’t notice anything. It had been cleaned up, scrubbed and that, but if you looked I suppose you could tell. The tooth wedged under the skirting gave it away.’

  The sniggers died. Each of them had seen the horrific video of three grown drunken men kicking a young girl to death and stamping on her face. At one point Barlow had even dragged her across the floor with his tie noosed around her neck. Rik and Henry had been forced to watch it over and over for professional reasons. The others had seen it once – and that had been enough.

  ‘It would seem that Jennifer Sunderland found the video for some reason. Maybe she was suspicious of her hubby anyway, and went through his stuff. We’ll not know until we find Harry, who has done a very good disappearing trick. She ended up in the river, but we can only surmise how that happened – but finding her Wellington boot in the garden – I don’t know,’ Henry said. ‘She could’ve been chased, she could’ve committed suicide – but whatever, she clearly wanted the phone to be found. I guess we’ll never know for certain.’

  ‘And Joe Speakman?’ Jerry asked. ‘What was his involvement?’

  ‘He had to investigate the murder of the girl, her body dumped in woodland near junction 34. My feeling is that he pretty quickly got a line on Harry Sunderland as being one of the suspects . . . his problem was that his son, Tony, was involved with Malinowski via the estate agency in Cyprus, and he was an acquaintance of Sunderland, too – and, although we’re still looking into it – he may have got a property at a knock-down price in Cyprus. I think he was pressured to drag his feet, ensure the investigation got nowhere. And that’s why he retired so suddenly. It wasn’t something he could do. He was a detective and finding himself in a position like that was untenable for him – so he went.’

  ‘Why kill him?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Because he couldn’t keep it bottled up. It was eating away at him. Joe spoke to Ralph – who he didn’t suspect of involvement in the murder – and said he was going to give Harry Sunderland an ultimatum – hand yourself in, or else. He was even going to come clean about the property deals in Cyprus. Big mistake. Ralph conveyed this to Sunderland, who spoke to Malinowski, who ordered one of his goons, who was in town to steal the newest batch of Range Rovers, to whack him – which is what me and Steve tripped over, dog and all. Then the deeply upset remaining goon came after me and Steve.’

  FB inhaled all this. ‘The Speakman family have suffered greatly,’ he said.

  ‘Barlow can’t stop talking now, but he maintains he doesn’t know where Sunderland is, or Malinowski – but we think both might be in northern Cyprus.’

  Henry would very much have liked to sit back and relax then, but he had to remain bolt upright like Lurch, the butler from the old US TV series The Addams Family.

  ‘And on top of all that, Headquarters Transport are very angry with me for not doing an oil check on that shed of a vehicle they let me have. Fortunately no one was injured in the pile-up caused when the bloody thing ran aground.’

  FB rocked forwards on his chair. ‘I’m going to be speaking to Tom Gledhill later today,’ he announced. ‘That could be another retirement sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Mm,’ Henry said. He had discovered that Gledhill, the chief superintendent at Blackpool, had recently bought a house in Cyprus at well under market value, via Tom Speakman’s estate agency; a house built by a company that was suspected to be a front for Malinowski. ‘The two guys helping out Barlow, incidentally, were two more of Malinowski’s hoods, one in custody obviously, the other still at large. They were just low-level nothings.’ Henry paused and took a breath. ‘Have I missed anything?’

  Bill Robbins said, ‘What about the tooth connection? Anything significant in that . . . you know, Jennifer Sunderland and the girl?’

  ‘Our Cypriot colleagues have been to see the dentist in question, who is legit, by the way. His records show that Jennifer was one of his clients, probably from when she spent time out there with Harry. She had some work done last time she was out there. As regards the girl, who we think was trafficked from somewhere in Russia, she was given treatment under what has turned out to be a false name. This dentist also happens to have Oscar Malinowski as a patient.

  ‘We’ve a lot of things to do, a long way to go with this,’ Henry said, ‘and you guys, plus a few more detectives, are going to be “it” for the foreseeable future. Any objections?’

  They all shook their heads.

  ‘Good, that’s settled, then.’

  ‘Seriously, I would have driven you,’ Henry said to Flynn as they stood by the taxi that had arrived to take him to Liverpool Airport.

  ‘I don’t think so – you shouldn’t be driving yourself. You can hardly move.’

  ‘I know.’

  The two men looked at each other.

  ‘Hey,’ Henry said and held out his hand. ‘Thank you.’

  They shook.

  ‘Give my love to Alison,’ Flynn said.

  ‘I will. How is Colin, by the way?’

  ‘It’s looking pretty good, by all accounts. At least the pressure’s off them for the moment, even if I did destroy their boat and help myself to most of their stock – and turn their shop into a crime scene for a day.’ Flynn checked his watch. ‘Need to dash . . . this time tomorrow I’ll be out on that boat, reelin’ ’em in.’

  ‘Lucky you . . . maybe one day I’ll come out there.’

  ‘You’d be welcome.’

  Henry watched the taxi disappear out of headquarters.

  ‘You know, not long before that man turned up I was thinking about you.’

  It was hard for her to talk. The punches she had taken to the front of her face had broken every bone the knuckles had touched, the nose, both cheekbones, and had also dislodged four teeth and there was the chance that she would need her face reconstructing, but it would be impossible to tell immediately. There would be a wait until the swelling had subsided completely before any judgements could be made by surgeons.

  Painfully, Henry leaned over the hospital bed, listening to Alison’s quiet words.

  ‘I was thinking how much I loved you, part of the reason being because you were so passionate about your work.’

  She swallowed and her breathing juddered in her chest.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said inadequately. ‘This should never have happened.’ This was the first proper conversation they’d had in the last week, and Henry was dreading it.

  ‘No, it shouldn’t,’ she whispered and swallowed again. Her eyes were puffed up to the size of Kiwi fruits and much the same colour. Her injuries were terrible and when Henry had scrambled across the back seat of the Mercedes to her, he had thought she was dead at first.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’ Her lips hardly moved as she spoke, they were so swollen. He touched the back of her left hand, into which a drip had been inserted. It felt frail and cold. She might have said those words, but there was no way on this earth did Henry feel that it wasn’t his fault. It was. Intent, effect, all that crap. It had to be his fault and he was creased with guilt and worry.

  ‘Henry,’ she said, ‘Henry . . . listen to me.’ He leaned over even closer so his ear was only inches away from her lips. ‘It doesn’t matter . . . not to me, not to me . . . know why?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I saw your face at the window when that man was showing me to you, at that house. I saw your face . . . and I knew . . .’

  ‘Knew what?’ The memory of that moment would be forever etched into Henry’s mind’s eye.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t stop. I knew you’d come for me and not let them win. Sounds pretty corny, eh?’

  ‘No, sounds good. So . . .?’

  ‘Are we still in a relationship? Is that what you want to know?’

  ‘Are we?’ he asked, terrified of the a
nswer.

  ‘Bet your arse, copper.’