by Nick Oldham
‘ Another, boss?’ he enquired.
Rider shook his head. He was relaxed now. He’d gone through that lightheaded, nervy phase that always seemed to affect him after a confrontation. Jacko took the glass away.
Conroy returned from the pay-phone in the entrance foyer, made his way to the bar and told Jacko to get him a Bell’s. He scowled into his drink as he tipped it back down his throat then proffered his glass for another, this time a treble. His head was throbbing.
‘ Left me fuckin’ mobile in the car,’ he said. ‘Just phoned the driver to tell him to pick me up.’
‘ How’s the ear?’
It was clanging like Big Ben.
‘ I’ll survive.’
He took a mouthful of the whisky, ran it round his mouth, swallowed and gasped. He stared at the smooth liquid for a moment and at length said, ‘Haven’t seen that move for a while, John.’
‘ Mm?’
‘ Disarming — yanking a gun outta someone’s hand. Used to be your party trick, that, dinnit?’
‘ Not especially,’ said Rider. He had done it twice before, though the gun hadn’t gone off on those occasions. He was getting slow. ‘One day I’ll miss and some fucker’ll get blown away.’
Conroy appraised Rider critically.
‘ You never lost your bottle, did you? All you did was become a drunk.’ ‘I got out of it, that’s all. I’d had enough.’
‘ Everyone said you’d lost your bottle.’
Rider squirmed uncomfortably. Conroy was getting under his skin and he didn’t like it. ‘A few things happened. I got a conscience, I got pissed off looking over my shoulder for cops all the time, wondering when you were going to grass me up. I saw how bad the whole scene was and I realised I needed to get out of it before it killed me, or I ended up as a lifer. I was thirty-five, a junkie and a piss-head. I suddenly thought, "Let’s get outta here and try to get to forty-five, preferably not in a prison or a coffin". Now I’m just a piss-head, got a life of sorts, some brass and no ties to bastards like you. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t loan people money at extortionate rates. I don’t beat people up any more just because they’ve looked at me funny, and I don’t get other people to maim or murder for me.’
‘ Very bloody deep,’ said Conroy sarcastically. ‘You sound like a complete angel.’
Rider bristled. His lips puckered angrily.
Conroy emptied his glass. He shook his head sadly as he spoke. ‘Sorry, mate, but you’ve been involved in it for too long. You owe too many people and too many still owe you, good and bad. And you wanna run from it? No chance, because it’s all just caught up with you today.’
‘ How?’
‘ Talk about ironic. Here’s you, eh? Quits the big time, wants to be left alone, get respectable — if you can call being a DSS landlord respectable. To me it stinks. Selling dope to ten-year-olds is more fucking respectable than what you do. But then today I come along — someone you haven’t seen for years — and bang!’ He pointed his right forefinger at Rider’s temple and clicked his thumb like a hammer. ‘Some bastards with a gun turn up, try to slot me and you save my life and half kill one of ‘em. Talk about ironic.’
‘ Why?’
‘ You want to know what this is all about? It’s about me and Munrow-’
Rider raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought he was still inside.’
‘ You thought wrong. The bastard’s out and he’s after my territory. They were his boys today, no doubt about that, so word’ll get back to him and you’ll be linked to me. And you know what he’s like — bull in a friggin’ china shop.’
‘ You mean you’re in dispute with him?’
‘ Dispute? That’s a pretty little word. Nah, we’re at war, John.’ He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘It’s just starting, but it’ll be big, bad and ugly — just the kinda rumpus you used to enjoy.’
Chapter Four
There is one thing about Blackpool, Henry Christie thought whilst driving south down the sea-front. It is never a dull place.
Completely unique. The world’s busiest, brashest, trashiest resort, attracting floods of tourists every year. It is a finely tuned machine, expertly geared to separating them from their hard-earned dough.
Even in the low season when all the residents — police included — can take midweek breathers, the weekends draw in thousands of day-trippers, eager to enjoy themselves and throw their money away.
The public face of Blackpool is that of a happy-go-lucky place where everything is perfect: funfairs, candyfloss, the Tower, the Illuminations and children’s laughter.
Henry Christie rarely saw this side of Blackpool.
He dealt with the flipside which most people never experience but which, as a cop, he could not avoid. There was the massive and continually expanding drug culture and the criminal manifestations behind it — burglary, theft, violent robberies and overdoses; each weekend the influx of visitors who attended the nightclubs left a legacy of serious assaults by itinerant, untraceable offenders; there was the growing problem of child sex and pornography; and the explosion of a huge gay culture had brought its own problems to Blackpool, related more to the prejudice of others, resulting in many gays being the subject of beatings or even rape by heterosexual males.
Then, of course, there was murder.
Murder was a frequent visitor to Blackpool.
Mostly the deaths were down to drunkenness and street brawls between youths, unlike yesterday’s carnage in the newsagents. And unlike the one Henry was en route to now, that Sunday morning just before noon.
He slowed and drove off the road, across the tram-tracks and onto the wide stretch of Inner Promenade opposite the Pleasure Beach — a huge funfair — in South Shore. Parking in the shadow of one of the world’s hairiest roller-coaster rides — the Pepsi Max Big One — he looked up at it and shivered. He’d once been bullied into riding it by his wife and daughters, and was convinced he was going to die when the trucks plunged vertically and corkscrewed impossibly on the tracks at speeds of up to 80 m.p.h.
The souvenir photograph of them all holding on for dear life revealed the terror in his face.
Never again.
Several police cars and an ambulance were parked on the Promenade, all unattended. A long black hearse was in amongst them, with two pasty-looking body-removers on board, eating burgers. A small crowd had gathered and were peering with interest over the sea wall, near to the pier.
He pushed his way rudely through them, ducked under a cordon tape, nodded to the policewoman standing by it and made his way down the slipway onto the beach.
The sand was firm and dry, fortunately. Henry did not want to spoil his suit nor take the chance of getting his shoes messed up. Just like a detective.
The tide had gone out about two hours before and the edge of the sea seemed a mile away. The beach gave the appearance of being clean and golden, very much like the town it fronted. The reality was that it was one of the dirtiest beaches in Europe.
However, it was a peaceful and pretty winter’s day with a low sun rising in the sky. One of those days when it felt good to be inhaling breath.
Not a day to die.
A small group of police officers and a couple of paramedics were gathered around what, at first sight, looked like a bundle of rags at the foot of one of the pier struts. There was an obvious pathway in the sand leading to and from the scene.
Henry tried to psych himself into the right frame of mind to be the senior detective at a scene. The one who would have to make the decisions. The one everybody else would look to for a lead.
Oh joy, he thought.
She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. It was difficult to tell for sure. She was five foot five inches tall, very thin with spidery arms and legs, all bones, no muscles.
Henry watched as the deathly-faced undertakers lifted her body easily from the trolley and onto the mortuary slab, dumping her there unceremoniously.
Her drenched outer coat had been remove
d and searched, revealing nothing. Now she was lying there in what she had been wearing underneath: a T-shirt top, a short one which was nothing more than a piece of cloth covering her breasts, and a micro-skirt in what had once been stretchy black Lycra and would have only just covered her lower belly and the top of her thighs. There was no underwear.
Henry closed his eyes briefly. Stay detached, he ordered himself. She’s a piece of meat, nothing else. Then he opened his eyes and allowed himself to look again.
But no matter how he tried he could not view her as a carcase. That was probably the reason why she was here, dead, because some bastard had thought she was nothing more than meat — something to be used, abused and discarded.
A scenes of crime officer videoed the body from all angles, focusing in on several areas. Then he took a few stills, the flash giving her pale damp body a sickly glow.
‘ Shall I cut her clothes off’?’ a female voice said into Henry’s ear. It was Jan, a mortuary technician. She smiled brightly and held up a large pair of scissors, opening and closing them like a seamstress, indicating her eagerness.
She was nothing like the stereotypical mortuary attendant. In her mid-twenties she had ashen, pretty features, jet-black hair rolled into a bun, and large, black-rimmed spectacles. She wore a green smock which hung from her neck almost to the floor, and though deeply unsexy as a piece of clothing, it could not disguise her large, round bosom. She was a constant source of puzzlement to the majority of male police officers, most of whom fancied the pants off her but never dared ask her out.
Henry had heard them make many jokes about necrophilia and sex on mortuary slabs, but he knew no one had ever made any progress with her. He also knew she was happily engaged to a local jeweller and was working towards a career as an undertaker. She was odd — definitely — off the wall and a little bit whacky, but she was also pleasant and good-natured.
‘ No,’ said Henry. ‘Let’s take ‘em off and bag ‘em.’
‘ OK,’ she shrugged brightly.
In the past Henry had experienced some real struggles removing clothing from dead bodies: those stiff with rigor mortis being the classic ones. This girl was easy, pliant, almost cooperative.
He and Jan hoisted her into a sitting position. Jan held her there whilst Henry shuffled the T-shirt over her head and eased her arms out one at a time.
It was like undressing a drunk, though this one would never sober up. Next he eased her skirt down over the hips, down her legs and off. Jan placed a wooden block under her neck, like a pillow.
Henry’s eyes surveyed the naked body… and the injuries.
The sea had washed the blood away, but even so, it was apparent she had been subjected to a violent, sustained attack. Henry tried to imagine her last moments and felt vaguely sick.
Before he could inspect the body more closely, the Home Office pathologist, Dr Baines, came into the mortuary dressed in a smock, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves.
He looked dreadfully worn out. Henry knew he’d been up most of the night carrying out post mortems from the shooting. There was still two more to do, and dealing with the body of this female was something he could well do without. Had it been any other detective than Henry, Baines would have said, ‘No, get somebody else in.’ But he and Henry were old friends, sometime drinking partners; and they owed each other favours.
‘ Bad business last night,’ Baines commented.
Henry nodded.
‘ So, big H, what’ve you got for me here?’
Baines walked to the slab and cast a critical, professional eye over the body.
‘ Found on the beach this morning by a jogger, near to South Pier. No identification yet, but we’re working on it. She had an overcoat on, a skirt and T-shirt. No knickers.’
‘ Nothing else?’
‘ Nope. Got a search team scouring the beach now before the tide comes back in. If they don’t find anything we could be struggling.’
Baines sighed. ‘Nasty. Very nasty.’
‘ How long would you say she’s been in the sea?’
Baines eyes looked up and down the body. He touched her skin, parted her legs and inserted a thermometer inside her rectum. He checked the reading. ‘Hardly been in, if you ask me. Doesn’t show any of the usual signs of long-term immersion. Possibly been tossed about by the tide, but nothing more.’
He picked up the girl’s left arm and twisted it gently outwards so he could see the soft skin on the inner elbow. He tucked the arm back and moved his attention to her legs, looking behind each knee.
‘ Junkie?’ Henry asked.
‘ Junkie,’ confirmed Baines. He began to count, ‘One, two, three…’ pointing as he did.
‘… Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four,’ he concluded a few minutes later. ‘So that’s twenty-four-stab wounds in the chest, stomach, upper arms, upper legs,’ he said, very matter-of-fact. ‘Probably had a knife up her vagina by the looks. Her face is a real mess too.’ He counted the number of punctures around her head and neck. ‘Twelve facial and neck stab-wounds at least. See?’ he said to Henry. ‘It looks as if the left eye socket has been repeatedly pierced. Impossible to say how many times the attacker plunged the knife in there.’
He turned his attention to her arms again. ‘Numerous incised wounds — slash-wounds, if you like — on her arms and the palms of her hands where she tried to protect herself from the onslaught. She went down fighting for her life; if nothing else. The attack continued long after she died.’
‘ Can you tell me anything about the knife at all?’
The doctor pondered thoughtfully. ‘Probably not.’ He bent forwards and peered at one of the stab-wounds in her stomach. ‘My guess’ll be very imprecise,’ he warned. He put a thumb and forefinger to either side of the wound and parted it gently. Henry felt slightly sick when it popped open.
‘ Problem is,’ Baines continued, ‘skin stretches before a knife actually pierces and when the- knife is pulled out it springs back into place. Sometimes the hole can look smaller than the knife which caused it.’
He stood slightly back and looked at the open wound which reminded Henry of a tiny, thin-lipped doll’s mouth. ‘This wound is one of the neatest on the body: the knife was plunged straight in and pulled straight out. Looks like a knife with two sharp edges — here, you can see the wound has two acute angles at each end.’
He allowed the hole to close. ‘Probably a slim instrument, but it’ll be difficult to tell how long the blade is. Might get some indication when I open her up, but don’t hold your breath. It’ll be guesstimates. The knife has obviously been twisted about and rocked backwards and forwards in many of the other wounds. Basically, a fuckin’ mess — sorry, Jan,’ Baines acknowledged the quiet attendant, ‘but this girl died a brutal and horrific death and though it’s a cliche, it was a frenzied attack. Nobody deserves to die like this.’
‘ Thanks,’ said Henry. He’d been jotting down a few notes in his unofficial pocketbook. He closed it and slid it into his pocket which began to chirp like a bird, making him jump. He extracted the pager with an apologetic look on his face and walked to a corner of the room where he picked up the phone on the wall and dialled Blackpool Communications.
‘ I know you’re busy with that suspicious death,’ the woman said, ‘but do you recall that other job I mentioned to you?’ Henry said he did, but thought it had been a joke of some sort. ‘No, no joke,’ the comms operator said. ‘Can you possibly attend? There’s a uniformed patrol there and a Detective Sergeant who’d like you to go. Apparently there’s more to it.’
Henry hesitated. For evidential reasons he felt he should stay for the post mortem, but it wasn’t strictly necessary. ‘OK, I’ll go,’ he said and ended the call.
Baines and Jan were standing on either side of the corpse, whispering to each other about the plan of action for the PM. They looked at Henry as he finished the call.
‘ I’ll have to leave you with this for the moment,’ he apologised. ‘Got to have a
quick look at another job, then I’ll be back.’
‘ Anything interesting?’ asked Baines.
‘ Someone’s shot a gorilla up at the zoo.’
‘ Really? Never done a PM on a gorilla.’
‘ Sorry to disappoint, but I think it’s still alive — just severely pissed off.’
Chapter Five
Once Conroy had gone, Rider sat and ate a late breakfast at the bar. Croissants and tea.
For the first time in his life, Rider was content with his lot. He liked the club and the ‘guest-houses’, as he preferred to call them, rather than DSS doss-houses. His basement flat underneath the first property he’d bought was an oasis of sheer luxury in a desert of basic living. It was his permanent home, the first he’d ever owned. He had the financial means to buy a luxurious detached house, but he’d grown accustomed to the flat which was perfectly large enough for him and his occasional guests. He had never put roots down anywhere before and he was loath to upstakes just for the hell of it. There was no need to.
He thought bleakly about his criminal past.
Back then his life had been a continual series of moves from one house to the next; to some dive of an hotel room to some flea-pit flat, then maybe a night in the back room of a pub. All in the mean streets of Manchester or some depressing East-Lancashire mill town.
Even when he’d started making real money from drugs, guns and lending money, the lifestyle didn’t change, just the quality of places he could afford. One thing he vividly remembered about it all was the constant indigestion, probably brought about by stress, though he didn’t realise it at the time.
He could never recall spending a full year in anyone place because the whole nature of the existence made continuous movement a necessity.
Standing still in those days meant you became an easy target, maybe of the law, or some toe-rag with a score to settle — and there was always plenty of them about.
He sipped his tea. Christ, he thought with disgust, twenty years of living like that.
