Low Profile

by Nick Oldham

  He turned to the local detective chief inspector, who was called Woodcock and had been with him throughout the investigation. ‘Bloody hell, Henry, you’re good,’ the DCI complimented him genuinely.

  Henry acknowledged the accolade with a modest tilt of his head but admitted, ‘He was stuffed whether or not he admitted it. The forensics would have scuppered him.’

  ‘Yeah, but you didn’t let it go, and you could’ve.’

  ‘I never like to chuck away an unopened oyster,’ Henry said enigmatically as he signed the custody record, and the DCI chuckled. ‘I’ll leave it with you from here, Pete,’ Henry told him.

  Henry strolled out of the custody office into the back yard of Blackpool police station, where he inhaled a long, stuttering breath and massaged his tender shoulder.

  It was midnight and Henry needed rest. He had been on the go since six that morning, eighteen hours straight, coffee and fast food his stimulants. His mind was now fuzzy, his body weak. He owned a house on a small estate in the Marton area of Blackpool but now spent most of his time living with his fiancée, Alison, at the Tawny Owl, the pub she owned in Kendleton, a village set far in the northern reaches of the county of Lancashire, at least thirty miles from where he stood. His own house in Blackpool was for sale but it still served as a handy crash-pad for Henry, particularly on days like these.

  He really wanted to head up to Kendleton and snuggle up to Alison but wasn’t sure he would be able to stop himself from falling asleep at the wheel. Sadly he realized that he would be spending the night alone in a partly furnished house that had once been his marital home, though the memory of that life was slowly starting to diminish. His life had moved on since the tragic death of his wife, Kate, and he knew he had to let go; keep her in a special place in his heart and soul, but wave adios to most of the possessions they once shared. At least the ones that didn’t mean anything.

  He sighed and shuffled out his mobile phone from his jacket pocket. It had been in silent mode during the interview and the screen showed three missed calls and a text.

  One of the calls was from Alison, two from his sister Lisa, and the text was also from Alison. He went to this first, read it with a smile. It was one of those ‘Thinking about you, lover’ ones. The missed calls from Lisa puzzled him slightly. He knew she was away on holiday with her groom-to-be Rik Dean, who was now a DCI on Lancashire Constabulary’s Force Major Investigation Team (FMIT), which Henry headed jointly with two other detective superintendents.

  The fact that the pair of them were away was not what puzzled Henry. It was that, over the last few months since their mother had died, Lisa hadn’t really spoken to Henry at all. She had been too engrossed in putting her private life with Rik back together after a stupid fling with a local businessman.

  But, there and then, after a sixteen hour day, Henry wasn’t curious enough to call her back.

  His first call, anyway, had to be to Alison. He knew she would still be up in spite of the late hour. Running a country pub with guest rooms meant she was rarely in bed before one a.m. – and usually up again at six. That was a normal day. Her energy levels made Henry’s look like he had the genes of a sloth.

  Alison answered quickly, knowing it was Henry calling.

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  ‘Hi hon, how’s it going?’

  ‘Busy … last minute in-rush of locals who then basically refused to leave at closing time – in a nice way – so I smiled a lot, took their money, y’know? And the guest rooms are all fully let tonight, so there’ll be a dozen full Englishes to cook tomorrow morning.’ Henry smiled as he listened to her voice. ‘And how about you?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, y’know … nailed a child killer … all in a day’s work,’ he said mock-casually. Then, ‘Look, babe …’

  ‘You’re getting your head down in Blackpool?’ she guessed correctly, Henry’s tone of voice telegraphing what he was about to say.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. I’ll be on this thing again straight away tomorrow.’

  ‘No probs. But if you come back here …’

  ‘I know, I know … warm bum on offer.’

  The call ended after a long-drawn-out lovey-dovey exchange as Henry walked through the dimly lit police car park to his car. As he pointed his remote control lock at his Audi convertible, his mobile rang.

  Henry frowned at the phone, considering whether or not to answer it.

  Henry knew exactly where Percy Astley-Barnes lived. He knew this because, a couple of years before, Henry had been involved in investigating what is known as a tiger kidnap involving Percy. This is where a criminal gang takes members of a family, or employees of a business, hostage and holds them under threat of death or serious bodily harm whilst another member of the family or head of the business, acting under duress, carries out the instructions of the gang. It was a method the IRA had used on several occasions to acquire funds for their cause.

  Henry had become involved with Astley-Barnes when the police received information that a brutal, well-organized gang was going to hold some of the staff who worked in Percy’s jewellery shops hostage, whilst Percy himself was going to be forced to act under the gang’s instructions.

  Fortunately the police lay in wait for the gang and arrested them before they struck. Subsequently they were convicted of virtually all the offences Henry could think of to chuck at them and no staff member, or Percy himself, was ever put in danger. A great result.

  Which was why Henry knew where Percy lived.

  He had tried to call him, having been given the number by Lisa – who sounded more drunk than concerned – but got no reply. Reluctantly Henry decided to drive out to Percy’s house which was on the outskirts of Poulton-le-Fylde, a small, pleasant town about three miles east of Blackpool.

  He was only going because Lisa’s story sounded slightly odd.

  From Henry’s interaction with Percy over the tiger kidnap attempt he recalled that, despite his posh sounding double-barrelled name and obvious wealth, Percy came across as a down to earth, level-headed businessman, certainly not prone to making spurious claims about his life being under threat. Unless it was.

  Which was why Henry decided to touch base with him.

  He drove out of Blackpool, was soon on the road out towards Poulton, until he reached a major junction controlled by a set of traffic lights. By bearing left, he crossed into the very rural Pool Foot Lane where Percy’s house was situated in about four acres of high-walled, landscaped gardens sloping all the way down to the banks of the River Wyre. The house was only accessible through remotely controlled security gates operated from the house itself or from Percy’s car.

  Henry had expected to find the heavy wrought iron gates secured and closed. He stopped on the lane and squinted up through the windscreen of the Audi, seeing they were actually wide open. This, he thought, was unusual. Certainly since the attempted kidnap, and following some very strong crime prevention advice, Percy was now ultra-cautious about security, and leaving the gates yawning wide open was a definite no-no.

  He paused for a moment, then drove past the entrance and pulled on to the grass verge. He called Percy’s mobile number again. It remained unanswered and clicked on to voicemail, at which point Henry ended the call. He reached over to his glove compartment and found his Maglite torch.

  TWO

  Hawke placed the silenced muzzle of the .38 gently against Lottie’s left temple. Although he had wrapped the parcel tape around her head, leaving only a slit so she could see, he could see the ultimate fear in the eyes and was happy he had reached this end point on his continuum of terror. At least as far as this woman was concerned.

  He had thought that at some stage in his life he might try and sell this model – this continuum – to some criminal psychologist. Academics would love it, he believed. Perhaps he himself might become a criminologist in the future, imparting his knowledge from first-hand experience. He’d even thought that he could combine the professions. Remain an executioner and, at the same time
, teach. An appealing prospect. That said, he’d probably end up killing his students.

  Away from those daydreams, the one thing he felt was important in all this was that when this end point was reached, it should be over quickly. There was no point in dragging it out now. He wasn’t that cruel.

  Hawke glanced across at the kneeling and bound target who was to witness this, gave him a wink, then pulled the trigger.

  The bullet entered her temple, did its damage in a microsecond, then exited, the force of the impact driving the light-framed woman sideways. She died as instantly as it was possible to die, and her blood back-sprayed on to Hawke’s paper suit, flecking across him like a modernist painting. He stepped back as though shocked, but laughed as he looked down at himself.

  Then, even though he knew she was dead, he made absolutely certain – as a professional killer he always did. He stood astride her like a colossus and fired one more bullet into her already pulped brain.

  The target reacted to this horrific scenario, toppling sideways from his kneeling position and, although he too was bound with parcel tape at his wrists and ankles, his head also wrapped in a similar way to Lottie’s, he began a desperate wriggle towards the door like a huge python. A terrible but muted sound came from his throat.

  Then the killer’s feet were in front of him, obstructing his way.

  All the target could see from his prone position was the pair of paper shoes and the elasticated hem of the paper suit around Hawke’s ankles, and the specks of Lottie’s blood on them.

  Percy Astley-Barnes stopped moving. He heard the rustle of the paper suit and sensed that the killer had squatted down on his haunches over him.

  ‘You had to see that,’ the man’s soft voice explained. ‘It was necessary for you to see your loved one die so you know just how seriously your threat and your transgression were taken.’

  Percy retched with fear and vomited into his mouth, the sickness trapped there, unable to be ejected and finding its only exit up through his nasal passages, out through his nostrils, and flowing backwards down his throat as he desperately swallowed and gagged and choked. Hawke watched from above, a sneer of contempt on his face. Then he realized that his target might actually die from suffocating on his own vomit unless he acted quickly.

  That would not do. There was no pleasure in watching such an undignified death, the kind of death an alcoholic might suffer.

  Hawke reached down and tore away the strip of tape from Percy’s mouth. Percy convulsed and coughed and managed to spit out the chunky sick on to the carpet on which he lay until he reached the point where he was breathing normally again, if raggedly.

  ‘Have I made my point?’ Hawke asked.

  Percy uttered something completely incomprehensible.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Hawke grinned.

  He hauled Percy back on to his knees, steadying and balancing him there. Hawke did not want to shoot Percy whilst his head was on the carpet – at least not the first shot. This was because it was something else Hawke quite liked – the action/reaction of placing a gun against a target’s head whilst they were upright, then shooting them. There was, he thought, something almost poetic and balletic in the movement. The tightly squeezed face (why, he thought, did people scrunch up their faces like that? It made not one jot of difference. You could squeeze up, anticipate as much as you wanted, but the result was the same), then the touch of the muzzle to the head, held there for just the tiniest of seconds, then the trigger pull and the discharge, the bullet entering the head, the brains being blown out and the physical reaction of the body.

  Pure fucking poetry, he thought.

  Over in a jiff, but implanted in his mind for leisurely replay, over and over again.

  So, having balanced Percy, Hawke simply did what he was supposed to do – killed him – then stood over the dead body and put another round into him.

  Hawke exhaled as he stood in the centre of the living room, pulled off the hood, one dead body either side of him; then he breathed in the reek of blood and cordite in the air as though he was sniffing a flower glade in spring.

  He glanced at his handiwork. Job well done, money well earned, he congratulated himself.

  Until he suddenly tensed up when he heard the noise.

  Henry walked through the open gates and up the fifty metre long driveway, the packed gravel scrunching underneath the soles of his shoes. The house ahead of him, illuminated by discreetly placed ground level lights, was a modernized executive detached property; from the rear Henry knew there were sweeping panoramic views of a wide curve of the River Wyre. He recalled there was even a small jetty where Percy kept a speedboat, though access to the river was dependent on tides.

  Three cars were parked on the wide turnaround at the front of the house. He recognized Percy’s Aston Martin with the personalized number plates, but not the black Porsche 911 or the brightly coloured Fiat 500. None of the cars seemed to be out of place, just the sort of array Henry would expect to see outside a wealthy person’s home in this neck of the woods.

  On the face of it, therefore, nothing unusual.

  Except for the open gates and the fact that a person who had made a desperate phone call was not now answering his phone.

  The instinct acquired over thirty years of being a cop gave Henry a bad feeling about it all. He paused at the back of the Aston Martin, glancing at the registered number, fleetingly thinking about the amount of money the car had cost, plus the number plate. Henry had gone to town with his Audi, but the cost of the Aston dwarfed what Henry had forked out. It took real wealth to run one of these beasts. But these were only passing thoughts, running parallel to everything else going on in his mind.

  He walked past the car, placing his hand on the sleek, low bonnet, feeling the heat from the engine, then alongside the Porsche. He flashed his torch beam across its glossy, but slightly ugly and squat, black bodywork. He registered the stick-on sign in the back window indicating the car was actually a rental. He touched the rear bonnet and it was cold, no heat from the rear-engine car.

  Then he went past the gaudy Fiat. In a very sexist thought, Henry saw it as a woman’s car, and when he saw the pink, dangling, fluffy pair of dice hanging from the rear view mirror, and the eyelashes on the headlights, his stereotype was only reinforced.

  He went up the steps to the front door, all frosted glass, which opened into a large vestibule. Henry pushed the door and found it to be open, another little, almost inconsequential factor to add to the growing list of inconsequential factors, which made his nostrils dilate and his senses click up a gear, his tiredness replaced by tension. The front gate open, the front door open, at this time of day.

  He swallowed drily, realizing how dehydrated he was from his long day, which had included a lot of coffee but no straight water or juice. And crap food.

  He stepped into the intricately tiled vestibule, ten feet to the next, inner door, beyond which was a wide entrance hall, stairs off to the right and access to the reception rooms, dining room and kitchen. He placed his hand on the door knob, turned and pushed it open with a click and a slight creaking sound.

  First the noise, then the voice: ‘Mr Barnes? Percy? This is the police. Can I come in, please? Mr Barnes, this is the police … Detective Superintendent Christie.’

  Hawke froze, standing between the bodies of the two people he had just executed. He shot a glance at Percy’s body, which gave one last quiver from head to foot. A death jerk.

  Hawke’s quick calculation: he had fired four of the six rounds in the Smith & Wesson, two remaining in the chamber. He had two speed loaders in the pocket of his paper suit, so twelve more there; he knew he could reload in seconds.

  ‘Mr Barnes,’ the cop shouted again. ‘I’m concerned about your welfare and I’m entering your house.’

  More calculations: one cop? Or many cops?

  Either way, Hawke had to find out.

  He stepped over Lottie’s body and went to the living room door, moving c
onfidently into the hallway, happy that he was ready for whatever was before him.

  He almost burst into laughter.

  One man, one cop, a dishevelled, tired looking individual, crumpled jacket, trousers and crumpled face to match. The guy looked old, tired and ragged, his skin a weary grey colour, more like he should be in a retirement home than in the cops.

  That said, he thought, I probably look more like I should be advertising tyres rather than someone paid to kill people.

  Both men straightened up, dramatically tense.

  ‘Drop the gun,’ Henry said. ‘I’m a police officer.’

  Hawke shook his head and gave a short laugh. ‘You shouldn’t have seen me, you should’ve arrived five minutes later. I’ve nothing against cops,’ he added in some sort of explanation.

  Henry said, ‘Put the weapon down.’ His voice was calm and authoritative, although inside his heart had instantly started to beat rapidly. His eyes were focused on the gun in the man’s hand, not on his face or eyes. He had seen and learned enough in the last ten seconds to know that submission was not on this man’s agenda, so why look into his eyes? It was the gun that would be the problem, particularly for a knackered old cop unlucky enough to have stumbled into this scenario on his own. A firearms team might have brokered a different result, maybe. Henry had put everything together now. The forensic suit, the blood splashes on it, meaning the deed had already been done and Henry was too late to save anyone, but just in time to get himself killed. Percy was undoubtedly already dead as, probably, was anyone else in the house, and killing a dumb cop probably wouldn’t make too much difference to this man who, by the looks of him, was not the sort of person who got caught.