by Nick Oldham
The house would never be the same again, physically or spiritually.
Annie was in the lounge with her mother and a male police officer who had replaced the policewoman. Both seemed to have no clue what to say or how to deal with her.
She was in the middle of one of her trance-like states. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the gas-fire from her position on the settee. Heavy rain lashed against the window. Snow doesn’t last long in Blackpool. Henry sat next to her.
‘ Annie? I need to ask you some questions. Important questions. Things we need to know quickly. Annie?’ He found it hard to tell if he was getting through to her. ‘Annie, do you hear what I’m saying?’
No response.
He laid a hand softly on her shoulder. She shivered and came back from wherever she’d been, blinked at him for the first time in the half-hour he’d been there. He kept her gaze locked into his. ‘Annie, we need to talk.’
She swallowed, nodded and ran the back of her hand across her nostrils and sniffed up.
‘ What did Derek say when he got home from work last night?’
She screwed up her pretty face and tried to concentrate. Her brain was making this difficult. She put a hand on his and squeezed it, then collapsed against him. Deep sobs shook her whole being, like a monster struggling to free itself from inside her. Henry put his arms around her. She crushed her face into his chest and cried.
In twenty minutes she’d cried herself out.
For the moment.
Henry’s shirt and tie were soaking wet, a mix of tears, snot and saliva.
Annie sat upright. Henry handed her a paper handkerchief. She wiped her face with it and blew her nose.
‘ Questions,’ she stated. In answer to his look, she said, ‘Ask them now, Henry, while you’ve got the chance. I’m in control of myself at the moment. Not sure how long it’ll last.’
‘ What did he say when he got home last night?’
‘ Very little.’
‘ Did he seem his normal self?’
‘ No… odd, distracted.’
‘ He must have said something, Annie.’
‘ Kept muttering about a statement, how he couldn’t believe it. He’d been there, yet it was different, changed… something like that, anyway. He was waiting for you to call. He was sure you would. I didn’t know what he was on about.’
‘ He’d left a note on my desk, but I went straight home last night. I didn’t go into the office.’ Like maybe I should have done, Henry thought agonised. Then: Fuck that for a thought. What’s done is done. ‘And what happened after that?’
‘ We went to bed round about midnight. He read for a while, then he was tossing and turning, going to the loo. I was aware of it, but I was asleep. D’you know what I mean, Henry?’
He nodded.
Annie stopped talking. He hoped she wasn’t about to weep again.
‘ I don’t remember anything else,’ she said faintly.
‘ Think, Annie,’ he encouraged her softly. ‘It could be important.’
She stood up and crossed to the window, staring at the rain. There were two police cars and a van outside. The whole of the garden had been taped off. Officers from the Support Unit were on their hands and knees, searching for evidence in what was quickly becoming a quagmire.
‘ There is something,’ she said eventually. ‘He got up. I mean, obviously he got up or he wouldn’t be dead now. Hang on, hang on, let me get a grip.’ She put her head into her hands and pummelled her forehead with the base of her hands, wracking her brain, shimmering with frustration. She turned to Henry again. ‘Yes, that’s it. He got up. Someone was knocking on the door. He went to the window. He said it was two o’clock. Then he went downstairs. I turned over and went back to sleep.’ Her eyes rested accusingly on Henry. ‘He thought it was you at the door. He thought you’d come to see him… only it wasn’t.’
Her face creased like a screwed-up ball of paper.
‘ Did he bring anything home with him?’ Henry asked quickly.
‘ I don’t know.’ Her bottom lip, her whole chin quivered. She was trying vainly to keep control, but was slowly losing the struggle.
‘ Annie, we need to have a look through his things. There could be something to help us. May we?’
‘ Yes, sure, but someone’s already done that.’
‘ What?’ said Henry, perplexed. ‘Who?’
Annie didn’t know.
Henry turned to the policeman. ‘Who?’ he demanded.
‘ Two detectives from that lot in Blackburn.’
‘ The Organised Crime Squad?’
‘ Yeah, them.’
‘ We couldn’t find anything, boss,’ Siobhan Robson said to her Detective Chief Superintendent.
‘ What sort of a search did you do?’
She sighed with frustration verging on anger. ‘Cursory — that’s all we could do. We couldn’t very well tear the place apart, could we? It would have looked a bit too suspicious.’
‘ Maybe he didn’t have anything with him.’ This was a suggestion made by a Detective Inspector called Gallagher, who had been with her during the search.
‘ Oh he did, I’m sure of it. Copies of the original statements at least. That’s what the little bastard did — made copies, as we have seen from his locker. So where the hell are they? We need to find them — soon. And my bet is that they’re in his house — somewhere.’
Henry stormed into the murder incident room. Two policewomen were inputting details into the HOLMES terminals. DC Robson and DI Gallagher were in deep, muted conversation with Tony Morton. As Henry closed in on them, they looked up and stopped talking. A smile appeared on Morton’s face.
‘ Henry, good to see you. I’ve been looking for you.’
Henry liked and admired Morton. He thought he was a good cop who got results. But at that moment in time, Henry was enraged and when something annoyed him, his mouth had a nasty habit of speaking quicker than his instincts for self-preservation.
Without courtesy, he launched into a tirade of invective which stopped all activity at the HOLMES terminals. ‘What the fuck right do you have to go rummaging about in Derek Luton’s belongings for? Not only have you been heavy-handed about it and upset his widow, you could easily have tainted valuable evidence. You had no right, no fucking right.’
Morton’s false smile fell from his face instantaneously. His expression hardened.
‘ And you, DS Christie, have no right, no fucking right whatsoever, to talk to a senior officer like that. I’ve a good mind to slap you on paper, but from what I gather, discipline enquiries are not unknown to you.’
‘ I personally don’t give a flying fuck what you do, Mr Morton. You and your elite squad of wankers are bang out of order. We’ll probably never know what damage you’ve done. What the hell were you looking for that was so important anyway?’
Gallagher, the DI, who had silently witnessed the exchange, cut in. ‘I can answer that, boss. After all, it was me who went to the house with DC Robson here. We thought he’d gone home with some important documents that we needed for this investigation. Some house-to-house logs he’d been doing.’
‘ House-to-house logs?’ said Henry incredulously. ‘What the hell was he doing on house-to-house? That’s for numpties!’
‘ He was assigned to my murder squad, and how I use my officers is my business, not yours,’ Morton said stiffly. ‘Now, Henry,’ he went on placatingly, ‘if we’ve trodden on your toes, we apologise, but we needed to find what he had. We did it carefully and with consideration and compassion for Mrs Luton’s feelings. There’s no chance we spoiled any evidence and if you feel Craig and Siobhan here were heavy-handed, I’ll go round and see Mrs Luton and apologise. How’s that?’
Shut up Henry, he told himself. Take a breath. Count to ten. This man’s a Chief Super. He can knee-cap you if he wants.
‘ All right,’ Henry accepted. ‘Did you find the logs?’
‘ No,’ said Gallagher. ‘We’ll simply have to rev
isit all those homes again.’
‘ Unlucky,’ Henry could not resist saying.
There was a moment of strained silence. Gallagher’s eyes narrowed slightly as he weighed Henry up.
The smile that was originally on Morton’s face reappeared. To his two officers he said, ‘Leave us,’ and flicked them away with a wave of his hand. Gallagher nodded. He picked up a pile of papers, his eyes never leaving Henry’s. Siobhan smiled nicely at him. Then they both went.
The two HOLMES operators resumed their tasks.
‘ Now then Henry,’ said Morton. ‘Come and sit over here.’
He guided Henry to two chairs next to a table on which was a coffee filtering machine. Henry smelled the rich aroma of a newly brewed pot and his body demanded a cup. Fortunately Morton poured one for him. He handed him the cup and both men sat down.
‘ I’ll come straight to the point, lad. As you know, life goes on in this job of ours. When a vacancy arises, it gets filled, however it occurred. And sadly we now have a vacancy on this squad.’
‘ You mean Geoff Driffield — your guy in the newsagents?’
Morton nodded. ‘We need people of a high calibre, as you well know. We have an enviable reputation of crime-busting to maintain and only the best will do for us.’
He regarded Henry with meaning.
‘ You mean me?’
Morton nodded. ‘You fit the bill. I want you on the squad.’
Chapter Thirteen
A certain club in Manchester city centre on the periphery of China Town played host to John Rider that evening. He arrived shortly after eleven and established himself in a position at the bar which gave him an unobstructed view of everyone entering and leaving. He ordered a pint of Boddington’s bitter as a gesture to Manchester, and after a long satisfying swig, began to sip it slowly.
The whole place was a dive. An unprepossessing doorway at street level, which could easily be missed, led down a tight set of steps into the foyer. The cashier was in a booth protected by armoured glass and two bouncers stood nearby — dinner-jacketed, bow-tied, black-shoed, fingers interlocked at groin level, thumbs circling.
The admission was five pounds — cheap for Manchester — the facilities limited and the drinks expensive. They were served from a three-sided bar. The dance floor was minute, or intimate depending on your point of view, and music pounded down from speakers suspended precariously from the ceiling. The disco lights ensured it was difficult to see the fixtures and fittings, which were in poor condition. Carpets were tatty, walls peeling.
Just like Rider’s own club, money needed to be spent.
But unlike Rider’s, the place was packed with punters.
Rider saw her arrive. Toni Thomas.
She was stunning. Long blonde hair, beautifully made-up face, off-the-shoulder strapless dress in glistening blue which stopped just below decency to reveal long shapely legs in silver stockings. The front of the dress plunged into a cleavage to be proud of.
She came in and drifted around the place like a goddess. All eyes followed her progress. She waved with soft gestures, acknowledged looks with pert smiles, some flirting, dainty laughter.
She was beautiful.
Rider almost fell for her there and then.
Toni Thomas, the person who in the last fifteen years had been Munrow’s accountant and who Rider believed had kept some of his businesses going for him whilst he was inside. The legitimate ones, that is the off-licence and the two launderettes. The person who might know where Munrow was to be found.
Because Rider wanted to pay him a visit.
He watched her smooch onto the dance floor with a man. The music had turned slow and sensuous. She unashamedly rubbed her genital area up and down the man’s thigh, kissed him, touched his backside and squeezed his balls. His face was a picture of ecstasy.
When the music went up-tempo they came off the floor hand in hand, then parted company.
Toni went towards the toilets, straight past Rider without noticing him.
He put his glass down, slid off the bar stool and pushed his painful way through everyone to the Gents.
The toilets were apparently empty.
They were grim and unsanitary. The urinals were cracked and germ-laden. The cubicles looked ready to collapse like a house of cards. The stench hit Rider’s nostrils. His face curled up in disgust.
Only one of the cubicles had the door closed.
Rider crept softly along the tiled floor, stopping outside the cubicle. He could hear rustling inside and some softly spoken whispers.
Two voices. Toni was not alone.
Rider laid a hand on the door and tested it gently. Locked.
For a moment he hesitated and thought about his actions. Something he would not have done ten years earlier.
He knew the soft approach would be useless. The only time for questions would be when Toni’s head was being forced down the U-bend of the toilet and she was almost drowning in shit. Violence was the only method these people knew how to respond to. The quiet word, the exchange of pleasantries, was alien to them. Seen as spineless. But to have your head rammed down a bog, boy, they really understood and responded to that.
Rider nearly turned away and went home to his poxy little bedsits and his dreams of a big-time strip club. That’s where he knew he should be, where he felt comfortable. This world wasn’t his any more. He’d grown out of it.
Then he steeled himself and tried to forget the pain his body was still experiencing.
He was going to do it.
Shuffling back a few paces, he kicked the cubicle door open. It flew back with hardly any resistance and revealed the sordid tableau beyond.
Toni was kneeling in front of a man who was sitting on the toilet, his trousers down around his ankles. It was a different guy to the one on the dance floor. His hard cock was three-quarters out of sight in Toni’s mouth. Very quick work. Must have been a pre-arranged tryst.
Toni kept the prick firmly where it was, as though interruptions like this were commonplace. With her mouthful she turned and looked sideways up at Rider. She recognised him immediately. The organ popped out of her mouth and swayed unsteadily in her hand.
Rider waded in.
He reached across Tom, grabbed the shirt-front of the man on the toilet, and with no great effort — because the man was small and slightly built — lifted him bodily off the pan. He dragged him out of the cubicle and propelled him towards the Gents door, trousers around his ankles, penis having deflated instantly, now a shadow of its former self. He fell to his knees.
‘ Fuck off out of it,’ Rider’s voice said in a tone not much louder than a whisper. ‘Now, if you know what’s good for you.’
The man didn’t argue. He jacked up his trousers and bolted.
Rider knew he had only a short time.
He stepped menacingly into the cubicle where Toni was hanging onto the toilet bowl as if she’d been violently sick in it. Her big blue eyes looked fearfully up at Rider; ten years ago she had lived in absolute terror of him and now he’d come back to haunt her. He had been very cruel to her in those days. Treated her badly, verbally, and once physically abused her. He had made it clear he despised people like her. And Munrow had laughed and failed to protect her. All he was interested in were her numeracy skills, otherwise she could be treated badly by anyone. He hadn’t cared a fuck. She’d hated Munrow, but stuck it because the money and hours suited her lifestyle.
Quickly Rider snarled, ‘You have a choice, Toni. Answer my question now, or I smash your beautiful face to fucking pieces… then you answer.’ As he spoke, Rider knew he’d gone soft. In the few seconds since making the decision to act with violence and then going into action, he’d already backed off. Ten years ago her head would have been down the toilet already.
‘ Where is Munrow?’ he asked, eyes blazing at her.
‘ John, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he came out,’ she cried. Her voice was deep, gravelly and could arguably have been descr
ibed as sexy. Tears appeared in her eyes. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’
‘ You had the choice.’ Rider grabbed her hair with the intention of pulling her head back before driving it into the porcelain. He’d forgotten she wore a wig and all that happened was his hand came away with a finger-load of blonde silky hair. ‘Fuck!’ he hissed and threw it over the partition into the next cubicle where it landed with a splash in an unflushed toilet.
Toni cowered. She huddled in the corner with both hands covering the embarrassment of the short cropped hair underneath. She started to cry with short, jerky whimpers.
Rider stood back. ‘Tell me where he is and I’ll leave you alone. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will, Toni.’
Through her tears, she informed him.
‘ Sensible fella,’ Rider said. He couldn’t resist patting her head patronisingly. ‘By the way, get a better razor. I can still see your five o’clock shadow, even under all that make-up.’
Seconds later Rider was pushing his way towards the club exit. Racing in the opposite direction were the two bouncers, on their way to break up the reported fight in the toilets.
Once outside, Rider breathed deep. He was relieved to be out of that atmosphere and the clientele in particular. Call it prejudice, he thought, but I hate transvestites.
The pub was situated in the Little Harwood area of Blackburn, about two miles from the centre of town. Twelve men had assembled in the back room. One of them stood at the door in order to prevent any unsuspecting member of the public from bursting in. The remainder sat facing the large TV screen, watching the live transmission of a Blackburn Rovers match on Sky. The Rovers were one down.
A serving hatch connected the room to the bar, but all the necessary drinks had been bought and the shutter had been drawn and bolted down. This business had to be conducted privately.
Charles Munrow pushed himself out of his seat and walked across to the TV. He switched it off. Silence descended on the room.
The other men watched him nervously. They were all tough, uncompromising individuals, but Munrow left them standing in terms of sheer brutality and animal violence.
