Low Profile

by Nick Oldham

  Henry shook his head, feeling it gingerly with his fingertips – nothing broken or cut, though he did feel somewhat woozy. He fought through this sensation and heaved himself back on to the chair behind the wheel. He saw lights either side of the river and tried to work out exactly which point he had reached. He knew the tide was ebbing – fast – and therefore he was Irish Sea bound and if he got that far he would pass the port of Fleetwood on his left and the small town of Knott End-on-Sea on his right (or was that port and starboard?). His grasp of nautical terms was minimal to say the least, his water-borne experience limited to a couple of cross-channel ferries.

  He rocked the wheel: it was locked.

  The prow of the boat dipped scarily, then ploughed through a wave to emerge upright on the other side of it. Henry clung on to the wheel with one hand and searched his pockets with the other for his phone, which he found, but it refused to turn on.

  He tried to clear his head and shivered as a gust of ice-cold wind whipped around him, causing his sodden clothing to mould tightly to his body like an icy coat.

  The boat turned a slow forty-five degrees and hit another wave, rocking dangerously. It came through the turbulence, but made Henry get his act together and realize that the boat would probably survive being chucked around and stay upright – he hoped – but if it dipped, swung and tipped and he went overboard he would certainly die from either drowning or hypothermia.

  At the very least he was determined not to drown.

  In a container next to the chair he found a life jacket which he looped over his head and shoulders and tied in place with tape, noting that his fingers were beginning to go cold and lose their flexibility, the middle joints starting to freeze up.

  He glanced around again, trying to work out his location, just as the boat rocked and dipped into a swirling current and rose out of it unscathed.

  He recognized where he was. On the left bank were the ICI works, lit up like some sort of science fiction film set. That meant next stop was Fleetwood, then the open sea that was Morecambe Bay, then maybe the Isle of Man.

  He tried to stem his rising panic. Not too successfully.

  His eyes dropped and came to rest on the flare gun. He slid off the chair and scooped it up, opening the breech like an old-fashioned revolver and pulling out the remnants of the discharged flare, rather like a huge shotgun cartridge, which in essence it was. He looked into the flare box and found a second one, slotted it into place in the chamber and snapped the gun shut.

  He raised the flare skywards and pulled the trigger.

  It whooshed out of the barrel, leaving a smoke trail behind, and at a height of maybe a thousand feet it burst into red and orange.

  Henry watched it hang there for a few moments from his position on his knees until a scraping noise from underneath the boat roused him. Another sandbank, he guessed. The boat skimmed across it and twisted, but did not stop. Henry pulled himself back on to the chair behind the helm, noted his position again, seeing Fleetwood docks and the widening river mouth.

  Almost as if the speedboat had seen the same and wanted to go to sea, it surged ahead with the ebb and was drawn quickly past the docks, which Henry stared at in desperation, hopeful someone would spot him. But he didn’t see a single figure.

  He looked the other way, remembering there was a coastguard station at Knott End, overlooking the estuary. It was unmanned and in darkness and Henry knew that cutbacks in that particular service meant the station was rarely staffed and all emergencies were routed through Liverpool.

  Almost like it was showing off, the boat did another complete circle and a bow, then was dragged into a particularly fast current out into the deep central channel used by the car ferries in and out of Fleetwood. The harbour lights became very distant, very quickly.

  Henry’s terror grew apace as he watched the lights grow dim.

  ‘I’m fucked,’ he thought.

  In his life he had been in a few situations where he thought he might die, but he had never thought his end would come in Davy Jones’s locker.

  Henry tried to keep warm, but eventually gave up. The boat drifted quickly into the bay and into even rougher water, rocking perilously and causing spray to come over the side, pelting Henry’s face with what felt like buckets full of frozen pebble-dashing, and though he tried there was really no place to hide from the onslaught. The door to the cabin was locked and Henry could not budge it, although it did seem to him that he would be foolish to go under cover even if he could. He knew he needed to be on deck to be aware of what was going on around him … but it would have been nice to be able to see what was in there. Maybe waterproof clothing or blankets. But that was not to be. He was at sea in his thin work suit from Marks & Spencer and his best shoes, and that was how it was.

  The cold invaded mercilessly, cutting through the material of his suit, through his skin, into his bones.

  He was certain he could feel them freezing. His nose was about to drop off and he was sure his fingers had frostbite and would soon be brittle enough to snap off like a Kit Kat.

  It surprised him just how cold it was. The end of September was not far away, the very tail end of summer; the weather had been half-decent and he would have expected it to reflect that at sea.

  But no.

  The chatter of his teeth echoed around his skull as his battle to keep the cold at bay was being lost.

  He slithered off the chair and curled up on the deck in a foetal position, that elemental position from the womb that people in desperate situations often turned to. He hugged himself tightly and fought the urge to close his eyes, believing that drifting into sleep would mean death.

  He began to drift mentally and hallucinate, suddenly believing there was an overwhelming whump-whump noise above him, then a downdraught, then a strong bright light bathing him in a white glow – until he realized there was a rescue helicopter hovering over him.

  He looked up, his mind fuzzy but functioning just enough to wonder if this rescue would feature on TV sometime in the future.

  By nine a.m. Henry’s body had just about returned to its normal temperature – mostly. His toes were still like little chunks of ice, his nose red raw and constantly dripping, and he refused to relinquish the foil body wrap his rescuers had trussed him up in like a turkey. Underneath he was wearing a surgical gown and a nurse had kindly fitted a Tubigrip bandage over each foot to keep them warm.

  He was sitting in a cubicle in the A&E unit at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, feeling exhausted and sorry for himself as well as completely embarrassed by the way things had turned out. His hands encircled a mug of steaming hot, sweet tea and though he was desperate to pee he did not want to move.

  The curtain around the cubicle was drawn back, revealing his fiancée, Alison. She had an assortment of clothes folded over her left arm, a pair of trainers in her hand. Following her initial visit to Henry earlier, she had been to his house in Blackpool and found a change of clothing for him.

  He gave her a ‘sorry for himself’ grin.

  ‘Hello again.’ She stepped into the cubicle and drew the curtain. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ he moaned. ‘I’m not feeling. I’m a block of ice.’ He gave an exaggerated shiver.

  ‘You were lucky.’

  ‘On more than one front … at least I’m alive.’

  ‘Yeah, thank God.’ Alison lay out his clothing on the bed, then hugged him tightly, making the foil surrounding him crinkle and crackle.

  ‘They’re making “get out of here” noises,’ Henry told her, ‘so I suppose I’d better comply. They’ve finished with me.’

  Alison backed away. He stood up and reluctantly unwrapped himself.

  ‘I’ll let you get dressed,’ she said and reversed out of the cubicle.

  Henry removed the surgical gown, unrolled the Tubigrip socks and got into the clothes Alison had brought for him – underwear, jeans, socks, a T-shirt and a zip-up jacket. He then picked up the large plastic bag hi
s original, sodden clothing had been stuffed into, opened the curtain and revealed himself. His expression said it all.

  Alison sighed. ‘Despite what you’ve just been through, you’re not coming home, are you?’

  ‘You know me so well.’

  She shrugged. It wasn’t unexpected. Henry had stumbled on a double murder, a gangland style execution, had almost become a victim of the killer himself, so there was no way he could even contemplate going home, even though he had not now slept in over twenty-four hours.

  Once Henry had been formally discharged, Alison drove him in her Suzuki four by four out to Pool Foot Lane. She could not turn into it because it had been sealed off at both ends, so pulled up on Garstang New Road to let Henry get out and walk back to Percy’s house. He leaned across and kissed her. For a fleeting moment she was brittle – annoyed that Henry wasn’t coming home. Anyone else in their right mind would have – but then she capitulated, melted, turned to him and gave him a passionate kiss on the lips, almost dragging him back into the car. When the kiss ended, they looked into each other’s eyes for a moment.

  ‘I love you, Henry.’

  ‘And I love you too, babe.’

  ‘Mm.’ Her lips pursed.

  ‘I don’t intend to stay here all day,’ he said, seeing her expression. ‘Just want to catch up on things, see what I didn’t see last night, make sure it’s all running smoothly. Then I’ll collect my car and head back to your place. It’s curry night … how could I miss that?’

  ‘Rogan josh.’

  ‘My fave … see you later.’

  They pecked. Henry stepped back on the grass verge as she pulled away, waving, him waving back. Then he turned to make his way to the crime scene, his mind still churning with what had happened over the last eight hours or so.

  He had no reason to look up and see or notice the Nissan Note that had been parked up on the forecourt of the petrol station at the nearby junction. No reason to clock it and remember it. No reason to see it drive off the forecourt, shoot through the lights and follow Alison’s four by four.

  He ducked under the cordon tape and walked down the lane. On his right were fields but on the left were the houses, each one large and detached, all different and some, like Percy Astley-Barnes’s, with grounds that spread all the way back to the lazy curve in the River Wyre. It was a small enclave of wealth and peace – but last night someone had brought terror and murder to it.

  The whole lane was jam-packed with police cars, marked and unmarked, specialist and general, uniform and detective. Henry’s car had been blocked in by these other vehicles and he knew he would have trouble finding the drivers of the offending ones when he wanted to move.

  Despite what he’d told Alison, however, he was in no hurry.

  He was exhausted, had brushed with death and damn near frozen his bollocks off, but the fact remained he had stumbled into a double murder and let a killer go, so he still had his job to do.

  Although he’d been fleeing for his life, he was still very annoyed he had let the bastard go. He just hoped he’d injured him with the flare and maybe dinked him with the Maglite.

  At the front gate a uniformed cop was keeping a log of all the comings and goings. Henry dragged out his sodden wallet and slid out his warrant card, which fortunately was laminated and had survived the dunking intact. The officer noted down his name and directed Henry to the back of a Crime Scene Investigator’s van where forensic suits and elasticated slip-on shoe covers were being dished out. Basic kit for a serious crime.

  He dipped under the crime scene tape and walked up the gravel driveway towards the house, as he had done the night before.

  Percy’s Aston Martin was still there, as was the Fiat 500 which, he had since learned, belonged to Percy’s girlfriend, who was called Charlotte Bowers and, he had also learned, had been shot dead alongside Percy.

  The black Porsche was gone. The killer’s car. The rental.

  Henry paused on the driveway, trying a bit of cognitive recall from the night before, retracing his steps in his mind and wondering if he had seen anything of importance before he reached the point of contact with the killer, after which things were just a bit blurry because all he’d been focused on was saving his own skin, not gathering evidence. He hadn’t even known what he’d walked into at that point in the driveway and had only learned for sure what had actually gone on when he was later lying freezing in the hospital, teeth still clattering, bones shaking, and he’d been visited by the night duty detective sergeant. The DS had come, first to check how Henry was, then to brief him about what had happened and, most importantly, to glean any evidence from Henry that might be useful in catching a fleeing assassin.

  The sergeant confirmed that this did look like a professional hit, a hypothesis given extra kudos by Henry’s description of a killer who was even professional enough to wear a protective forensic suit, someone who didn’t want to leave anything behind.

  The guy was probably a hired hit man, and at that moment in time Henry knew more about him than anyone else because he had looked him in the eye, at least before concentrating on the gun in his hand. He was definite he could recognize him again and point the accusing finger at him.

  And I will, Henry thought grimly. He continued on his walk up to the front door of Percy’s house where another uniformed constable hovered, clipboard in hand, recording all arrivals and departures into the actual crime scene. Whilst the officer wrote down his name, Henry glanced across the garden from the top of the short flight of steps, back to the electronic gates, then over the wide, well-trimmed lawn that dipped to the river, and the tiny jetty where Percy’s speedboat had been moored. It wasn’t there now but Henry knew an RNLI lifeboat had towed it into the small marina at Fleetwood.

  ‘Sir?’

  Henry turned back to the PC, who had stepped aside to allow him into the house. Henry gave him a nod and walked into the crime scene.

  In the expansive hallway beyond the vestibule, Henry saw two men in forensic suits talking head to head. One was DCI Woodcock, head of the local CID, who had helped Henry interview the child killer the day before. The other was the Home Office Pathologist, Professor Baines, whom Henry knew well.

  Woodcock nodded as Baines explained something to him, listening intently to an expert opinion on something. Then they both glanced sideways and saw Henry watching them. Baines’s serious face turned brighter at the sight of Henry. The two men had known each other for too many years and they had lost count of the number of dead bodies across which they’d faced each other.

  ‘Boss,’ Woodcock said. Pete Woodcock was definitely in line for a job on FMIT. He was a good, solid detective in his mid-thirties, also a decent leader and decision maker, someone who, Henry guessed, would make a brilliant senior investigating officer (SIO) in due course. Henry liked him and was slowly beckoning him to FMIT.

  ‘Morning, guys,’ Henry said, joining them.

  ‘How are you, boss?’

  ‘Cold, embarrassed – but generally shipshape.’ He smiled.

  ‘Better cold than dead,’ Baines said, ‘and on my slab.’

  ‘Good point,’ Henry agreed. He gave Baines a pat on the arm and said, ‘Glad you’re here for this one, mate.’ He looked back at Woodcock. ‘Where are we up to?’

  Henry swallowed as his eyes took in the actual murder scene. The two bodies lying on the plush-carpeted floor of the lounge, not yet moved, still lying in the exact positions in which they’d fallen.

  Knowing the forensic and crime scene work had been done without having moved the bodies so far, Henry allowed himself to circle them slowly from a distance of about two metres, taking his time, pausing, crouching, hands in pockets, simply using his eyes and brain while Woodcock told him what they had so far.

  Which was precious little, and most of it related solely to the scene in front of Henry.

  ‘Blood pattern analysis suggests the female was killed first, then the male,’ the DCI was saying. ‘Both bound and gagged … we
think the killer was holding the female hostage until the male arrived home … then she was murdered in front of him …’

  Henry nodded and thought, she let the killer in.

  ‘He vomited, as you can see,’ Woodcock said.

  Henry frowned, looking at the two bodies, trying to re-imagine the sequence of events and work out why or how things had happened in a certain way. Percy had made the frantic call to Lisa. Meanwhile the killer had arrived at the house in the Porsche (good choice of car to allay suspicion), held the female prisoner, waited for Percy to land, which he did, overpowered him and tied him up, then killed them both, woman first. (Was Percy made to see this? Was this getting a message across to him? Henry thought.) It was all fairly easy to work out.

  He rubbed his face, looking at the horrific gunshot wounds and the spread of blood underneath and around the bodies. Then he looked at Baines. ‘Any observations, Prof?’

  ‘Nothing you haven’t already been told or worked out, I suppose. But the victims were both in kneeling positions when they were first shot in the temple. The second shot came when they were on the floor, although I’m pretty certain I’ll find that the second shot wasn’t necessary to dispatch either victim. The first one did the job.’

  Henry’s mind became fuzzy all of a sudden and he knew he had to sit down. He perched on an armchair next to a small round table on which was a cup and saucer. He glanced into the cup and saw cold tea covering the bottom of it.

  His head cleared.

  ‘A guy who doesn’t make mistakes,’ he ventured. ‘A pro, a murderer, who ensures he stays forensically clean, even down to the fact that he uses a revolver instead of a pistol which chucks shell casings all over the place; they have a tendency to roll into places you can’t always recover them from. But he’s made a few errors here, not least when I turned up and cocked it up for him. I saw his car, I saw him, I think I hurt him, hopefully, and, best part of all, he didn’t wash his tea cup.’