by Nick Oldham
Over a coffee he tried to focus his mind on the day ahead.
Briefings were at eight a.m. at Preston nick with regards to interviews, and then nine a.m. at headquarters, and he had to be very prepared for them, which was why, only a couple of hours after climbing into bed, he had climbed out again, trying not to disturb his wife and going down to the kitchen.
He had sat with his coffee in the dining room with a pad and pen and tried to get his brain around things.
He had been back in work at seven a.m.
Once the prisoners who had hit Mulligan with the stolen BMW, and their two girlfriends, had calmed down and passed out, the cells at Preston nick, though full, became relatively quiet and no other prisoners were brought in that night. The custody sergeant could get his paperwork in order and the gaolers prowled the cell corridors, eyeballs regularly to peepholes.
Most prisoners were asleep under their rough blankets. Ex-doctor Sam Rawtenstall and arsonist Ben Dudley slept soundly, glad of the change of venue. Also, although they had been rumbled in their association with Brian Tasker and the events of that night (and everything leading up to it), nothing would change for them. They were both lifers and if they ever got out they would be old and haggard. Both were resigned to dying in custody anyway.
In another cell was the prison officer who had been bribed by Tasker to do the dirty work. He had initially tried to deny any wrongdoing, but the weight of evidence was against him, especially when the other two blabbed. And, like them, he was guilty of murder, plus many other things.
He knew he was right royally screwed, so he cried and whimpered pitifully all night and did not sleep.
Another prisoner in another cell not sleeping for a whole different reason was called Lawrence (Loz) Digson.
He was too busy working out percentages and odds, and the dangers and benefits of a decision he had yet to make.
‘Steve, Rik Dean.’
‘Morning.’
‘Just a contact call.’
‘Contact made,’ Flynn said coolly.
‘You finalized your plans?’
‘You mean my “fuck off out of town” plans?’
‘No … yeah … sort of.’
‘I’m returning to Ibiza tonight … I’m just on the way to see Jimmy Blue at his farm in Bacup. He wanted to have a heads together and a chat through things, but he seems OK. Local cops have been to see him, so thanks for that … oops.’
Flynn negotiated a tight right hander at Broad Clough on Burnley Road, one controlled by double white lines. As he did this a car coming in the opposite direction inadvertently crossed the lines, causing Flynn to swerve to avoid a collision. In so doing he dropped his phone at his feet when he grabbed the wheel with both hands.
By the time the manoeuvre was over, the sharp swerve had made the phone slide underneath the seat, out of reach of Flynn’s fingers.
‘Steve … Steve … shit …’ Rik Dean shouted down the phone, and looked accusingly at the device when it showed the call had been disconnected. He redialled, muttering to himself, ‘I haven’t said anything to the local bobbies yet.’
The line came through as engaged.
Flynn slowed right down and took a left turn on to the very narrow and steep Bacup Old Road. He knew this was a section of the ancient route from Bacup to Burnley, superseded many years ago by the A671 and still only just about wide enough for a horse and cart.
The road climbed steeply and Flynn had to slow down to a crawl to negotiate the bumps caused by old water run-offs that siphoned water off the adjoining fields in diagonal channels across the road. He scraped the sump of the Punto on one, but didn’t seem to have done much damage, so he continued without even checking whether he was leaking oil. The road carried on rising until it eventually levelled out at its highest point, where he pulled in and looked across some quite magnificent moorland in all directions, west across Lancashire and east over Yorkshire, and he really could believe that he was in the land of the gods. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land on which about the same number of sheep seemed to be wandering.
‘Mm,’ he thought, selected first gear and drove on, looking for a farm track which, according to Jimmy Blue, had a hand-painted sign on it pointing to Cunliffe Clough Farm. A couple of hundred metres further, there it was, and he stopped to look at it. ‘Cunliffe Clough Farm. James and Ruby Blue and family. Fresh free range eggs. Please drive in.’
Flynn nosed the Punto on to the track and passed two other farms before reaching the farmyard named Cunliffe Clough. He turned in between the huge concrete gateposts and parked in front of the farmhouse, old stone built and very substantial. From the back he guessed there would be great views across the moorland at all times of year.
He got out and stood by the car, looking around the yard and beyond to where a number of sheep were grazing, and a chill wind made him shiver.
Something slotted into place, but before he could make sense of what he was thinking he heard a voice behind him.
‘Flynnie! My man!’
He turned and saw Jimmy Blue emerge through a Judas gate in the large barn door across the yard. Jimmy waved and started across to Flynn. He was in a wax jacket and wellingtons, looked the part of a farmer.
Flynn could not help but smile, and he walked to meet him.
Jimmy’s face was round and red but healthy-looking and the two men hugged and patted each other’s backs. He was as tall as Flynn, but heavier and rounder and less fit.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said effusively to Flynn. ‘Thanks for coming, marvellous to see you after all these years. Very grim situation, this.’
‘Good to see you, Jim … this place looks great.’
‘Thanks, it is.’
‘And how are you doing, you and the family?’
‘Making a real go of it … best thing I ever did.’
Flynn watched him carefully because his body language did not seem to fit the verbal language. His face, in particular, did not match the words coming out of his mouth. His eyes were red raw and his expression serious.
‘Good,’ Flynn said. ‘I’m pleased, mate.’
‘Hey, come and have a look at the family first … we’re all in the barn, just doing something. Then we’ll go have a brew and you can tell me just what the hell is going on; how does that sound?’
‘Yeah, good.’
He beckoned with a jerk of his head, but again his expression, Flynn thought, was odd. It was as if he was trying to convey some sort of message to Flynn, but he was perplexed by it and followed Blue to the door inset in the bigger barn door.
Once there, Flynn paused as Blue opened up and waved a hand for Flynn to step ahead of him. Flynn stepped over the high threshold with his right leg and then stopped and frowned at Blue as that ‘something’ he had been churning over in his mind suddenly became clear, now that he had driven past the livestock in Rawtenstall town centre and then seen sheep in fields, where they should be.
‘Jim, I thought you said your sheep were lambing? I don’t see a lamb anywhere.’
Flynn was halfway through the door when he said those words, one foot in the barn, the other still in the yard, so he was slightly off balance as he turned to Blue and posed the question.
‘Sorry, Flynn,’ Blue said darkly, and as he spoke he pushed Flynn hard through the door into the barn, causing him to trip and stumble to his knees. Blue came in behind him and closed the door.
Flynn was on his hands and knees but was raising his head to complain when another man came on his flank and smashed him hard on the side of his head, stunning him. He rolled sideways, clutching his head, knowing that whatever had hit him had been hard and metallic and had caused a deep cut on his scalp-line.
‘Sorry, sorry, mate,’ Jimmy Blue said, and knelt down next to Flynn, ‘I kinda tried to warn you.’
Even through the haze that was his brain Flynn understood what was being said, and he replied with a moan, ‘I’m not a fucking farmer.’
‘I know. I’m
sorry.’
‘What’s going on?’ Flynn asked. His vision was a little blurry and he moaned again as he moved and took his hands away from his face to see blood in his palms from the wound.
Blue eased Flynn into a sitting position. His head and vision cleared and he looked around the barn. Then everything really did slot into place.
Rik Dean had made his phone call to Flynn after he had conducted two fairly swift briefings and had returned to Preston cells to see how the interviews were progressing with the contingent from Lancashire Prison. One of the items on Dean’s to-do list was to put a call through to Jimmy Blue. He had intended to back up the call by getting a local bobby to pop around to check that all was well with Blue, but because of pressure of work he hadn’t quite got around to it. He would have made the call after talking to Flynn, even if Flynn hadn’t dropped the bombshell that Jimmy Blue had already been visited by the local police.
At first Rik Dean thought that maybe someone else had made the call, and after he could not reconnect with Flynn he’d called the Major Incident Room at headquarters and asked the office manager whether someone had made the call to Blue without telling him. The man assured Dean that no one from the MIR had contacted Jimmy Blue.
Stalking down one of the cell corridors with his mobile phone to his ear, Dean redialled Flynn’s number. It rang out but was not answered and then clicked on to voicemail. He left a brief message for Flynn to call back as soon as possible. Next he keyed in Jimmy Blue’s home number which had been lifted from his old personnel record. But there was no reply. There was no other contact number listed for Blue.
He strode back down the corridor with a horrible creeping sensation in his guts.
‘Boss, boss.’ One of the prisoners rapped on his inspection hatch. Dean stopped and looked at the name by the door, but did not drop the hatch. The inmate was called L. Digson. Dean knew he was one of the Aquarius prisoners on remand, one of the big drug dealers caught by Craig Alford’s textbook operation. He ignored him and carried on back to the custody office where he scooped up a phone from a desk and dialled an internal number connecting him to the patrol sergeant based at Rossendale police station, now the only cop shop covering the whole of the valley.
‘Sorry, Flynnie,’ Jimmy Blue said. ‘They were going to kill my family if I didn’t.’
Flynn said sourly, ‘I get it.’
He wiped blood from his eyelids and looked at the hooded man who had smashed him on the head with a heavy calibre pistol. Slim – young, he guessed. Flynn gave the man a venomous look, then tore his eyes away and looked beyond, around the barn, at a situation which reminded him of the photographs he had seen over the years of Nazis and their atrocities.
Three people were on their knees in a line, facing towards Flynn. Their hands were bound behind their backs and duct tape had been wound around their lower faces, over their mouths, over their noses, round and round their heads.
Jimmy Blue’s family. Flynn recognized his wife, Ruby, and assumed the other two were his teenage children, a girl and a boy. Flynn could see abject terror in their eyes as well as disbelief.
All that was missing was a grave for them to fall into.
Another man stood behind them, a gun in his hand resting at his side. He was dressed in similar attire to the one who had struck Flynn, dark clothing, zip-up jacket, black jeans, lightweight black boots and a balaclava pulled over his head with eye and mouth slits.
Both guns, Flynn noticed, had some kind of mini telescopic sights affixed along the tops of the barrels, at least that was what Flynn assumed them to be.
‘I did what you asked, I got him here,’ Jimmy Blue pleaded to the men. ‘Now let them go, please, please.’
Each of the three hostages was crying; tears rolled down the outside of the duct tape. Flynn felt outrage course through him because he knew that no one in this barn was going to live. Brian Tasker had achieved his revenge.
‘Let them go,’ Flynn said. ‘They’ve done nothing.’
The man nearest to him simply shrugged, rotated his head slightly and nodded to the man behind Blue’s family.
He moved quickly, without hesitation or warning, and with cold precision.
Three shots, loud and echoing in the confines of the barn, one fired accurately into the back of the head of each kneeling family member. Their bodies pitched forward one after the other, legs twitching in death, and the man then coldly leaned forward with the gun and repeated the move, firing one more shot into their heads; then none of the three moved. He stood back.
Jimmy Blue must have been too shocked to react for a moment, but then he exploded.
‘You bastards!’ He went for the man closest to him, his arms outstretched, but the man simply raised his gun and fired into Blue’s face three times, the bullets entering around the vicinity of his nose and cheekbones and exiting horrifically through the back. Jimmy dropped to his knees and slumped forward and the man put two more into his neck.
Flynn recoiled as Jimmy Blue’s blood and brain matter flicked across him, but he made no other move as the man slowly revolved and pointed the gun at his face.
Flynn looked deep into the muzzle. The man leaned towards him and shoved the gun into his forehead, screwing it tightly into Flynn’s skin.
‘If you’re going to pull it, pull it,’ Flynn growled.
The man stopped the screwdriver motion, then slowly drew the weapon across Flynn’s face, stopping at his mouth. Flynn gritted his teeth as the man, using the muzzle, parted Flynn’s lips and tapped the gun against his teeth, sending a reverberation around his skull. Then he continued on the journey down Flynn’s chin, and underneath into the soft flesh of his neck where he twisted the gun again before placing the muzzle against his Adam’s apple.
Flynn braced himself as he stared into the man’s eyes behind the mask.
The other man had joined his colleague and was standing about ten feet away, covering Flynn.
‘Shoot me, you fucker,’ he said.
He could tell that the man was smiling.
The gun continued to pass downwards across Flynn’s body, pausing over the heart, then down across his stomach to his groin, where the man jabbed the muzzle a few times into his cock and balls before moving on and stopping on the hard muscle of Flynn’s outer right thigh, where once more the man shoved the muzzle in and then fired the gun.
Flynn screamed and rolled away, clutching his leg as blood pulsed from the wound between his fingers.
The last thing he remembered was the stunning blow to the side of his head and the feel of a hypodermic needle being inserted into his neck just below his left ear, before complete blackness engulfed him but did not take away the pain.
‘Six-three-seven receiving?’
‘Yep, go ahead,’ PC Dale Allen responded to the radio call from his patrol sergeant. Allen’s beat that morning, with only one other mobile patrol out and about, was to cover the east side of the Rossendale Valley, the towns of Bacup and Whitworth, with just a smidgen of Waterfoot thrown in for good measure. It had been a steady morning, two break-ins and a minor road accident, giving Allen a bit of spare time to follow up on some other burglaries he had attended the day before and was investigating. He had a pretty good idea who the offender was, but proving it was just a tad difficult.
‘Are you free, Dale?’ his sergeant asked.
‘I’m free.’
‘Good … got a little job for you … just a welfare check, if you don’t mind.’
‘No probs, fire away.’
They bundled a now loose-limbed but still heavy Flynn into the back of a Renault van. His hands were now bound behind his back with tape, as was the whole of his face, the tape wrapped around from his chin to his forehead with just a gap under his nostrils. An Adidas polyester school pump bag had been forced over his head and the string drawn tightly around his neck. His ankles were also bound together and he was trussed up, his ankles taped to his wrists.
He lay on his side – there was no othe
r way to lie – and the van set off from the farm.
PC Allen took the same route as Flynn up the very narrow Bacup Old Road to Cunliffe Clough Farm and did the same thing with the police Astra as Flynn had done with the Punto, bottoming the sump with a clunk on one of the diagonal water run-offs. The grounding of police cars in Rossendale was a perennial problem, though few police drivers actually admitted it when it happened.
Allen found the turn-off and drove slowly down the even tighter track, arriving at the farm a minute or so later.
He pulled into the farmyard behind a Fiat Punto – Flynn’s hire car, although Allen did not know that at the time. There was also a Land Rover parked next to the barn and a small tractor by the farmhouse.
To Allen, it all seemed too quiet.
He got out of the Astra, fitted his flat cap – he was a smart cop – and walked across to the front door of the farmhouse. He knocked on it: a hollow, no one home sound. He tried the door handle and it opened. He did not go too far because the snout of a seemingly friendly sheep dog snuffled in the gap; although he could see the waft of the tail, Allen never trusted dogs.
He called through. No reply. He drew the door shut behind him and looked around the farmyard again. He set off over to the barn.
Rik Dean sat in the inspector’s office at the police station with a feeling of dread beginning to enshroud him, hoping that he was completely wrong. That Flynn’s phone had just run out of battery life, that Jimmy Blue was not answering his phone because he was in the fields, shearing sheep or something.
The custody sergeant poked his head around the door.
‘Mr Dean?’
He nodded.
‘That prisoner in number eight wants to speak to you. He says it’s urgent.’
‘Oh, that Digson guy?’
The sergeant nodded.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Won’t say, other than it’ll be beneficial for you.’
For a few minutes, Rik Dean had nothing better to do.
