by Nick Oldham
Henry saw the look. ‘I’ll tell you why you can trust me.’
‘ Go on, astound me.’
‘ Do you think I’m doing this shite willingly? Well, I’ll tell you, I’m not. I’m doing it because if I don’t, I lose my job, my wife, my pension, my reputation, everything — and may even end up in prison. Yeah, it’s true. I’ve been set up too. In a different way, for a different reason — or maybe the same reason, I dunno. Maybe there’s some connection between us two. But there’s something I do know. If I convict you on false evidence I’ll be trapped for ever and I’ll be a bent copper for ever, unless I do something about it… and you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life. We could be the key to saving each other.’
Henry had been leaning forwards, becoming more and more intense as the words torrented out. ‘But if you’re not interested, let’s go down the road to hell together.’
The next official interview was over fairly quickly, much to Siobhan’s disgust. They presented Rider back to the custody officer and he was returned to the cells.
‘ Speaks,’ Siobhan demanded.
They adjourned to the interview room and closed the door.
‘ That was a poor performance, Henry. You didn’t seem to be trying very hard.’
‘ Just feeling my way, getting used to the situation.’
‘ Find anything useful at the flat?’
‘ Don’t know yet. Going to go back and check. Then we’ll move onto his club and do that.’
‘ Leave the club!’ Siobhan said sharply.
‘ Why?’
‘ Just leave it, that’s all. It’s an order. We’re not interested in the club.’
‘ Sure, fine,’ he said. ‘Who am I to argue?’
‘ Exactly. Who are you?’
Henry left her in the custody office, telling her he was going for a dump, which might take some time.
Instead of going into the station, he turned right out of the custody office, after checking Siobhan didn’t see him, and sprinted down the rear yard to get into a CID Metro for which he had the keys in his pocket. He gunned the small car out of the garage and into Blackpool town centre where he whizzed up and down a few streets, including going the wrong way down a one-way street. He wanted to know if he was being followed and was fairly satisfied he wasn’t.
He pointed the car in the direction of Lytham.
Behind him, Jim Tattersall tapped Tony Morton’s mobile number into his own, hardly able to suppress a laugh at Henry’s anti-surveillance tactics.
Morton told Tattersall to stick with him.
Morton ended the call and placed his mobile on the desk. He drummed his fingers agitatedly and asked himself what the significance could be of Henry’s departure from the police station without Siobhan, his chaperone.
The internal phone rang.
‘ Morton.’
‘ Siobhan, boss. Just seen the custody record. Henry’s had an unscheduled conversation with Rider before I got here. It says on the record it was in connection with a matter unrelated to the investigation.’
‘ Do you know where he is now?’
‘ Having a shit.’
‘ Wrong, you stupid bitch! He’s in a car and he’s heading out of town, for fuck’s sake. I thought you were supposed to be keeping an eye on him?’
Morton slammed the phone down.
Morton had ordered a two-car tail on Donaldson. And Mr Donaldson, FBI employee, didn’t spot it until quite late because they were good. By the time he saw them, he and Karen had visited the other two witnesses and taken statements.
He swore when he realised, but there was nothing more to be done about it — other than to lose them for the fun of it.
But by then, both addresses were on a piece of paper in front of Tony Morton.
Morton asked Siobhan to check the voters’ register to put names to them. He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable; also that he had been too generous with Henry Christie by allowing him to live. The challenge of corrupting an incorruptible officer was proving to be a headache of epic proportions.
It would have been far easier to have had him whacked straight away.
Henry drove quickly, pushing the Metro hard through the mid-morning traffic which, due to the season and the weather, was fairly light.
He picked up the coast road and was soon in Lytham. He had a vague idea of where he was going because a few years ago he had delivered a message there, about what he could not recall. He did not know the town well, but it was only a small place and he trusted his memory and sense of direction.
He found the road in about ten minutes. Thirty seconds later he stopped outside the house, a large, bow-windowed semi.
He looked at the building for a while just to make sure he wasn’t mistaken.
Yep. It was the right one.
He got out of the Metro and went through the garden gate, failing to see the car which had drawn up two hundred metres behind him.
Tattersall was quickly on the blower.
‘ Boss… we could have problems here.’
Morton paced his temporary office. Siobhan was sitting watching him with a fearful expression.
He had four names and addresses on his desk which still meant nothing to him.
And Henry Christie had spoken to Rider alone for about twenty minutes. And now he was at an address which sent goose bumps down his spine.
‘ I don’t like this one little bit.’ He rubbed his chin.
‘ He’s wriggling,’ Siobhan said. ‘That’s all.’
‘ He should’ve been killed like the two others. I regret not having him done now. I protected him and he could well be causing me problems.’
Gallagher came in bearing the statements which had been amongst Luton’s other paperwork in the plastic bag.
‘ Got the statements back,’ he said triumphantly.
He handed them to Morton who glanced at the top one and tossed them onto his desk. Then his neck craned down as he saw the name on the top one. He fanned all four out, his face turning ashen.
‘ These are the people that Donaldson guy has just been to see. He’s been visiting the witnesses again on Henry’s behalf.’
‘ What?’ asked Gallagher, who had not been privy to these developments. He’d been making a show of running the murder enquiry.
‘ Some guy called Donaldson and a woman have been visiting our witnesses again. Where have you been for the last twenty-four hours, numb-nuts?’
‘ Somebody has to make it look like we do policework occasionally,’ he griped.
‘ Yeah, yeah.’
‘ Did you say Donaldson?’
‘ Yeah, why?’
‘ Name rings a bell.’ Gallagher was thoughtful for a moment whilst he wracked his brains, the tip of his tongue resting on his lower lip. ‘Got it! FBI agent linked to that big trial Christie was involved in about eighteen months, two years ago. The mafia guy, remember? Yeah, I’m sure Donaldson was the name of the FBI agent who was a major witness.’
‘ So an FBI agent and a female who we don’t know are going round visiting witnesses?’ Siobhan wanted this to be cleared up.
‘ Probably his wife. She’s a policewoman, ex-Lancashire now in the Met. Works at Bramshill these days, I think.’
‘ I know her,’ Morton declared. ‘She was one of my course tutors on the senior command course.’
Morton looked at the statements again. His mouth sagged as something else dawned on him. ‘These are photocopies of photocopies.’
Gallagher’s brow creased.
‘ Luton screwed his copies up when I caught him. These should be creased, for God’s sake! Look, look at them. You can see that the ones they’ve been copied from were creased. I am surrounded by imbeciles.’
‘ Let me look.’ Gallagher took them from his boss. It was true. They were photocopies of creased statements. Gallagher’s despair showed on his face. ‘So they’ve still got the copies Luton made?’
‘ It fucking well looks that way, doesn�
�t it?’ screamed Morton. He took in a deep breath. ‘Seems we’ll have to sort Henry Christie out properly this time.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘ I don’t suppose for one moment you’ll remember me, sir…’
Before he had a chance to finish, the older man said, ‘Course I bloody do, you’re Henry Christie. I don’t forget faces like yours in a hurry.’
The former ACC of Lancashire Constabulary, Roger Willocks, stood to one side and allowed Henry into the house. He pointed to the lounge and Henry went in.
Henry could not fail to see the large number of sympathy cards around the room, filling every available flat surface.
‘ I’m sorry, Mr Willocks. If I’ve come at a bad time…’
‘ No, no, no, nothing of the sort. My wife died nearly a month ago Cancer. Just haven’t got round to taking the cards down yet. Seems such a final thing to do.’
He smiled sadly at Henry.
‘ It’s good to have a serving cop round. Most of my friends are retired now and I don’t have any particular connection with the Top Team now. Coffee?’
They chatted briefly about the good old days — which Henry was glad to see the back of, actually — and Henry told him of the sweeping changes which were taking place today in the job.
Willocks was not impressed. ‘Glad I got out,’ he said. He put his coffee down. ‘So, my lad, to what do I owe this honour? I don’t suppose you’ve dropped by just to delve into the past, have you?’
‘ Yes and no.’ Henry paused and gathered his thoughts together. ‘A few years ago you headed an enquiry into the North-West Organised Crime Squad.’
Willocks’ face blackened over. ‘I’m not sure I want to talk about it,’ he said stiffly.
‘ I need your help,’ Henry begged him. ‘Two police officers have died within the last week, another has been shot, and another is having his balls squeezed — and the thread through them all is that squad. The more I find out about it, the less I like — and my testicles are starting to hurt quite badly.’
Willocks’ gaze drifted around the cards in the room, all sent in sympathy for his departed wife.
He laughed to himself and said, ‘Don’t suppose it matters now she’s gone.’ He turned to Henry.
‘ You’ve only scratched the surface,’ Willocks commented, when fifteen minutes later he had listened to Henry’s very edited version of events. ‘Come with me, Henry, let’s go to my thinking shed.’
He led the detective through the house and out into the garden at the rear. The rain had stopped and the cloud had thinned considerably. They walked down a path to the garage and entered it by means of a door at the back. Inside it was dark and Willocks pulled a light switch. A series of three spots came on, revealing a workshop with lots of pieces of furniture scattered about the place in different stages of renovation. A workbench was covered in tools of all descriptions. Fumes which Henry assumed were paint-remover or turps pervaded everything.
‘ Don’t light up, whatever you do,’ warned Willocks with a laugh. ‘Leave the door open, it’ll clear. This is where I spend my spare time. Buy crap, make it look good, sell at car boot sales. My hobby,’ he said proudly.
Henry, to whom anything in the sphere of DIY was an anathema, tried to look impressed. He sat on a newly renovated chair, while Willocks perched on a stool.
‘ The NWOCS is a police unit which is out of control,’ the former senior officer declared. ‘It’s like a private army and its little Adolf Hitler is Tony Morton. It was a badly conceived set-up in the first place, one of those knee-jerk reactions to a particular problem which existed at that time in the mid-1980s. You know the sort of thing — let’s set up a squad.’
Henry nodded. The police service’s answer to everything: set up a squad.
‘ It has no parameters, no terms of reference, no rules by which to work, and most importantly of all, no control. It stood alone, ostensibly an offshoot of the Regional Crime Squad, but in reality it declared UDI. There was no one to oversee it, probably because no one thought it belonged to them. It did what it wanted to do, and still does. It continues to have good results against organised crime, but in reality those results mask something that is very, very bad. This is because the man who championed its formation and the man who runs it are corrupt and in co-hoots with organised crime.’
Henry found himself becoming angry. ‘Well, why didn’t you do something about it? It was your job, wasn’t it?’
Willocks smiled at Henry. He understood the detective’s annoyance.
‘ I was asked to investigate when some doubt was cast about unsafe convictions. I looked at a handful of people the squad were responsible for convicting, and each claimed they had been framed. Some lied, of course, but some told tales which began to hold water. I delved. I was devious. I bugged places and people… and the more I did so, the more I uncovered — until I began to realise that here was a group of police officers who were controlled by, acted with and protected criminals — particularly Ronnie Conroy.’
‘ What, everyone on the squad?’
‘ No. Most of them are pure, honest, good cops. But there is a nucleus of officers who are corrupt. They all circulate around Tony Morton. Never more than ten officers, I suspect, but because they’re backed by Morton they carry the weight and control and monitor what the clean officers do.’
‘ So, again, why didn’t you do anything?’ Henry accused him.
‘ What did they do to you, Henry?’ Willocks asked, looking directly at him, evading the question.
‘ What d’you mean?’
‘ You said they had you by the balls. You weren’t very specific. What was it? Did they con you into taking a bribe? Set you up with a woman and film it, then threaten to tell your wife?’ Henry coloured up and the wily old man knew he had hit a nerve. ‘Does that begin to answer your question, Henry? I fell foul of them. I was naive enough to think I could pull a woman who was almost three times younger than I was. In fact, she was only fifteen. Looked nineteen. Acted thirty. And I did it, God, I did it… then I saw the still photos, then I saw the video footage, and then I saw the written statement complaining of rape and the doctor’s testimony to go with it… And then I saw Tony Morton’s face and thought about my wife. I caved in immediately.’
‘ They know how to intimidate, lie, cheat, cover their tracks. They are very dangerous, completely ruthless.’
‘ Do you think they’d murder?’
They were back in the living room, chatting over a cup of tea.
‘ Maybe, though I never uncovered it,’ said Willocks. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they’d murdered people to silence them. Usually they’re a bit more subtle, like they were with you and me. Put people into impossible situations, or pay them off, or frighten or harass people, do whatever suits their circumstance — and don’t forget the double-edged sword. They’ve got cops and criminals doing the work for them. It’s bad enough being leaned on by a cop. Having a criminal do it as well…’
‘ So that’s what I’m up against.’
‘ No, it’s more than that. There’s the political angle too with McNamara. He’s very influential and can bring pressure to bear in other ways.’
Henry blew out his cheeks. ‘You’ve blitzed me.’
‘ I thought I might.’
‘ How do they operate?’
‘ They facilitate crime. They allow Conroy — who is probably one of the biggest and wealthiest criminals in the country — to operate unmolested. In return they get paid big money from his gun and drug dealing and all other sorts of criminal activities. And Conroy gives them a succession of sacrificial lambs — sometimes spectacular busts which boost the standing of the squad. Which is why it has been allowed to continue for all this time. It gets results but they are not as a consequence of police work, they’re as a result of corruption.’
‘ I’m going to get them,’ Henry said firmly. ‘I’m not going to allow them to beat me.’
Willocks looked sadly at H
enry. ‘Don’t put yourself in peril, lad. These men will not give up and they can destroy you far easier than you them. You tell me two cops are dead, so if you make a mistake and they find out what you’re doing, you could be dead too. In the name of justice these people need to be stopped… but for God’s sake don’t do it at the expense of your life.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
The sky was very dark. Out across the Irish Sea, forks of jagged lightning scorched down into the water. Henry drove back slowly along the Promenade. Big spats of rain splodged onto the windscreen, slowly and almost thoughtfully at first, then grew heavier. Henry flicked on the wipers and headlights.
It was 2 p.m. He had eaten no lunch and his empty stomach gurgled noisily in accompaniment to the thunder which suddenly roared overhead.
He drew into the kerb opposite the Big One on the Pleasure Beach and sat there with the engine idling. The car which pulled in seventy metres behind him went unnoticed by Henry, for his thoughts, black as the sky, dominated his whole being. They were in a whirl of conflict and disbelief.
A police department out of control. Working alongside criminals and bent politicians for financial gain, apparently capable of killing people who got in their way. Or so it seemed.
Yet what about the trigger to this last week’s events, the murder of Geoff Driffield and others in the newsagents? What had Driffield done to incur their wrath? Had he uncovered something and had he told anyone else, or had they got to him before that and silenced him?
Henry realised he might never know.
The thunder overhead seemed to rock the small car. The rain was so dense, Henry could hardly see.
And now he was in the middle of all this corruption. He had been corrupted. Fallen hook, line and stupidity.
He explored his options.
The first was to carry on with what he was doing and involve the Donaldsons in a game which might get them hurt. Or perhaps he should just accept his lot, concentrate on getting Rider convicted and then plead to be freed from his obligation to them.
