by Nick Oldham
But he still would not stop.
Behind them all, Donaldson kept up. ‘He’s gotta stop now, surely,’ said the agent. ‘Don’t he know when he’s beat?’
‘ Crazy young bastard.’
The traffic cars edged him onto the hard shoulder. Now he was completely trapped and all they had to do was slow right down to a stop — then he was theirs. Or so they thought. He did have one avenue of escape open to him, which was to drive up the steep grass banking by the side of the motorway.
He reckoned he could probably make it to the top of the grass, where he could abandon the car then leg it on foot across the fields. From his wide experience of traffic cops he thought this would be the best move because he knew how much they hated getting out of their big, warm, fancy cars and chasing people on foot.
Abbot peeled away from the formation like an ace fighter pilot and gunned the car up the slope.
The manoeuvre took the traffic officers completely by surprise, which was fortunate for them. It meant that none of them lost their lives.
Halfway up, the steepness of the slope meant that the mercury tilt switch attached to the detonator in the half-pound block of Semtex strapped to the underside of Henry’s car was activated.
Contact was made.
Kovaks listened hard to Damian’s story. How he had been to his mother’s in Clearwater, but had returned early to surprise Sue. They had made passionate love within moments of his arrival and afterwards he’d gone to the en-suite bathroom to answer a pressing call of nature. Whilst in there, he’d heard someone at the apartment door, then voices in the lounge. Discreetly, he’d crept out of the bathroom and listened to what was going on. He had recognised Ritter’s voice and clearly followed the accusations he made to Sue about her knowing he was on Corelli’s payroll, then some talk about his condo and his boat. Sue had denied it all, saying she wasn’t keeping any sort of a file on him. Then things had got nasty. Sue had screamed for help. Damian had crept to the bedroom door and looked through the crack. To his horror, he’d seen a knife in Ritter’s hand plunging repeatedly into his girlfriend’s body, blood spurting everywhere. Frozen in fear and panic, unable to help her, he’d eventually scuttled under the bed where he’d hidden until it was all over, sucking his thumb, curled up in a foetal ball.
When the attack had stopped he’d heard Ritter moving around the apartment, felt his presence in the bedroom. Then Damian had pissed in his pants.
He’d lain there shaking, eyes closed, praying that Ritter wouldn’t find him and kill him too.
Then he heard the front door open and close.
And, when he was sure Ritter had gone, he forced himself to go and see Sue.
‘ And then I was sick and then I ran.’ There were a lot of ‘thens’ in Damian’s story. ‘Every time I close my eyes, she’s there: dead,’ he said hoarsely. ‘What a mess — and all my fault.’ Tears poured down his tortured face.
‘ Don’t punish yourself, Damian,’ Kovaks said. ‘You’re only human.’
Damian looked up with pleading eyes. ‘Do you believe me?’
‘ Yes, I do. One or two things have sorta slotted into place here.’ Kovaks’ nostrils dilated as he thought. ‘Yeah, I believe you.’
‘ So what do we do now?’
‘ First we get you somewhere safe where you can get a decent meal and a shower — and a change of clothes. Then we’ll have a good long talk over a beer, get a few things written down. Then I have to think. Probably go to the cops first, let ‘em know what’s what.’
‘ But what if they’re in on it too?’ Damian shook uncontrollably. ‘What if Corelli has them in his pocket, like he does Ritter?’
‘ No one could get Ram Chander in their pocket,’ said Kovaks confidently. ‘C’mon, trust me, Damian. We’ll go to my place first. Chrissy won’t mind and it should be safe enough for a few hours.’
They started to get to their feet.
‘ I think not,’ came a familiar voice from behind Kovaks’s shoulder. ‘Sit back down, gentlemen.’
Kovaks reached for his gun, but before he could draw it, he felt the cold muzzle of a revolver jammed into the back of his neck.
‘ Sit down, Joe, or I’ll make your brain into tomato catsup for their hamburgers. ‘
Kovaks sat down slowly. A wide-eyed Damian followed suit. Ritter edged in next to Kovaks, and with his free hand removed Kovaks’ revolver.
Kovaks looked at Ritter, then beyond. He was not alone.
Ram Chander stood by the door together with two of Corelli’s goons.
Kovaks closed his eyes.
Henry Christie was disgusted with himself.
Two minutes earlier he had been clinging to a toilet bowl at Blackpool Central police office and had been violently sick. Now, after swilling his face with cold water, he was looking at himself in a mirror over the washbasin..
And he did not like what he saw.
He should have been sick for the boy, Abbot. He should have been sick because a stupid young teenager had been blown to pieces on a motorway verge, his remains scattered far and wide.
But he wasn’t. Henry had been sick for himself alone. A single idea dominated his thoughts.
That bomb had been meant for him, dammit! He glared angrily at his reflection, but behind the grimace he saw pure terror in his eyes for the first time in his life.
Hinksman was going to kill him and there was probably nothing that Henry could do to stop him.
With that thought Henry turned away from the mirror and dashed back to the toilet cubicle.
To the best of their abilities, the remains of John Abbot had been collected from the scene of the explosion by the police, ambulance and fire brigade. They had been bagged and sent to the mortuary where they had been unpacked and distributed over the tops of two post mortem slabs.
Henry Christie, together with Karl Donaldson, Karen Wilde, FB, a couple of high-ranking local detectives and a Scenes of Crime officer who was recording the PM on video, watched a pathologist pacing around a third slab. She had been brought in from Merseyside as Dr Baines was still busy in Lancaster.
Now the pathologist picked up a piece of charred flesh that could have been part of a hand or foot. She thought for a moment, surveying the reconstruction work, said ‘A-ha!’ with glee, danced round the slab and placed it. It was a foot. She was enjoying herself.
‘ I don’t think I want to watch this,’ said Henry. The smell of burned flesh was overpowering. He ducked out of the room without apology.
Karen followed him out.
‘ I just want to thank you for putting my name forward for this investigation, Henry. I appreciate it. And FB’s been really nice to me too. He’s even talked to Karl.’
‘ Good. I’m glad,’ said Henry.
‘ You OK?’ She linked arms with him.
Surprised but touched, Henry gave her a lopsided grin and admitted, ‘No, not really.’
They were standing in the room where a large refrigerator took up the whole length and height of one wall. Inside it, bodies were stored on sliding trays. At the far end of the room a PC and an undertaker had just placed a body on one of the trays. The PC was writing a name on the leg with a felt-tip pen.
‘ I suppose,’ said Henry, ‘that I didn’t really expect him to try something. It’s shocked me. And a bomb again, on the motorway. That’s just reopened a wound I thought I’d sewn up pretty well. Obviously I haven’t. I keep seeing the kids on the bus again.’
‘ We’re dealing with a madman.’I
‘ One who knows exactly what he’s doing,’ Henry suggested. ‘He’s dangerous rather than mad. Don’t forget, he kills people for a living. Madmen don’t.’
They had been walking slowly towards the PC who, as they drew level with him, pulled a white sheet back over the body on the tray. Henry did a double take.
‘ Let me see,’ he said quickly.
The PC obliged. ‘Jane Marsden, local prostitute, shoplifter, drunk, and all-round lowlife,’ he summed up. ‘N
o great loss to society.’
‘ What are the circumstances?’ Henry asked.
‘ Found about an hour ago at the bottom of a flight of stairs in the fleapit doss house she lived in. Probably been lying there all day from the state of her. She took some major straightening out.’ The PC chuckled at the memory. ‘Looks like she fell down drunk and broke her neck. Post mortem’ll tell.’
‘ Anything suspicious?’ Henry probed. He was trying desperately to recall some of the things Jane had been saying to him, things he hadn’t really been taking in because he’d been too engrossed in his own thoughts.
‘ Not on the face of it. Why?’
Henry ignored the question. He drew the sheet further back. There was some bruising across her throat. Then he pulled it all the way down to reveal her naked, now wax-like body. He looked carefully at it and saw further bruising on her arms. It could have happened during the fall down the steps — the post mortem should be able to establish that — but Henry wasn’t happy.
He covered her up.
He gazed into space and pursed his lips. ‘Did you get Scenes of Crime to photograph the body at the scene?’
‘ Yep.’
‘ Right, when that officer in there has finished videoing the PM, get him to take some shots of her, will you? Point out those bruises on her neck and arms.’ The PC nodded. ‘Did you search her flat?’
The PC shrugged. ‘Not really. Had a glance round, nothing more.’
‘ Is it locked?’
‘ No, couldn’t find a key.’
‘ Henry, what’s going on?’ Karen interrupted.
‘ This gives me the willies,’ he said. ‘I actually saw this woman last night and gave her a lift as far as my place. She walked to her own from there.’
‘ Henry!’ Karen said, shocked.
‘ No, I didn’t, I’m not that desperate… it’s just that when I last saw her, she wasn’t all that drunk. She’d actually just been kicked out of the cells at Central… Look, something’s not quite right here. She told me some half-baked story about ripping off a Yank who’d beaten her up.’ He spread his hands. ‘Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree, but Hinksman likes beating up and killing prostitutes. And if my memory serves me right, he specialises in breaking their necks. Probably practising a technique learned from his Delta Force days. Perhaps here,’ he pointed at the covered body, ‘he’s finishing off something he started a few months ago. I hope I’m wrong, because if I’m not, he’s committed two murders since escaping.’ He raised his eyebrows at Karen. ‘Fancy a drive round to her flat? Might answer one or two questions.’
‘ Sure, why not? They’ll be hours in there.’
The aroma of bedsits hit them as soon as they entered the ground-floor hallway through the open front door. It was a mixture of cigarette smoke, sweaty socks and underwear, and the unmistakable smell of lubricant used on male contraceptives intermingled with cannabis smoke. Here, in addition, was the musty tang of dampness.
They turned into the narrow staircase and began the ascent. It was almost 9.30 p.m. and it was getting dark. The stairs were lit by low wattage bulbs operated by switches that sprang off after about twenty seconds in order to save electricity. They trod carefully, as some of the treads were carpeted; some not.
On the last flight up to Jane’s flat Henry inspected each step carefully. This was actually the only part of the staircase on which the carpet was well-laid and fitted. There was nothing on which a person could have tripped. Even so, the stairs were still steep and narrow, and possibly treacherous to someone who’d had a drink.
As expected, the door to Jane’s flat was unlocked. They went in.
‘ Very salubrious,’ remarked Karen.
Henry stood still and allowed himself to look the room over, his eyes taking in everything: the mattress, the bottles of booze, the sink, the settee, cooker and cupboards. Eventually his attention returned to the bottles which stood side by side on the draining board. He stepped over to them, and picked one up carefully by inserting his forefinger into the neck. He held it up to the light and rotated it carefully, inspecting it at different angles. He did the same with each bottle.
Karen was standing behind him. ‘Got something?’ she asked.
‘ Well… if she was drunk when she fell down the steps, it’s safe to assume she’d been drinking after she left me — presumably from these bottles. I don’t see any glasses about, so she must have swigged straight from the bottles… ‘
He moved aside for Karen, who bent down and looked at the bottles in situ.
‘ They’ve been wiped,’ she stated, puzzled.
‘ Exactly. Even if she didn’t take a drink from these last night, there would have been some marks on the bottles.’
Henry surveyed the room again. Years before he’d searched it for drugs and found some, but he couldn’t quite remember where the stash had been. His eyes lit on a ventilation cover on the wall above the cooker. He smiled. Now he remembered.
The cover was metal with a sliding opener. He looked at it carefully and saw that there were recent marks in the screws which held it to the wall.
‘ Don’t suppose you’ve got a screwdriver?’
Her reply was a wilting look.
Tut-tutting, he opened the kitchen drawer and rummaged through the meagre collection of utensils for something suitable to remove screws. All he could find was a flimsy table knife which twisted and buckled when he put it to use.
After much patience he managed to remove three screws from the ventilation cover, which then swung free on the remaining screw, revealing a square hole in the wall about eight by six inches.
Karen dragged a wooden kitchen stool across for him. He stood precariously on it and put his arm all the way into the ventilation cavity. He immediately found something. He gave a cry of victory and carefully, so that he would not drop it, extracted what he’d found.
‘ How did you know where to look?’ asked Karen, impressed.
‘ Cheated,’ he confessed. ‘Did the place a few years ago for dope and found this hidey-hole then. There’s a sort of lip a couple of feet down where she stored her stuff. Very tricky and pretty secure. I couldn’t quite remember how far down the lip was.’
What he’d pulled out was a brown A4-sized envelope. He opened it and shook out the contents on the cupboard top.
‘ Jane’s nest-egg,’ he said sadly. ‘Her passport to the better life.’
There were three bundles of Bank of England notes totalling about?2,000. What was more interesting was the wad of dollar traveller’s cheques, a driving licence and six credit cards.
Henry handled them carefully. ‘Voila,’ he said. ‘Recognise the name on the driving licence?’
‘ Yeah,’ said Karen sheepishly. ‘It’s that poor guy I locked up after raiding his house with the support unit.’
‘ The innocent man, you mean?’ said Henry wickedly.
‘ Don’t rub it in. It’s the driving licence Hinksman used to hire cars with. Don’t recognise the names on the credit cards.’
‘ No, I don’t either. Hinksman probably has plenty of identities, but he’s used his own name on the traveller’s cheques.’
‘ So she stole all this from Hinksman?’
Henry nodded and sat down on the settee. ‘What we’ve got here is this: a dangerous man on the loose who will not tolerate anyone getting the better of him. Jane got the better of him by stealing from him — so he murdered her; I got the better of him by arresting him, and shooting him, and he’s tried to murder me. The question I ask is this: has he finished yet? Has he made his point?’
Karen slumped down heavily next to him. ‘I’d like to say yes.’
‘ But we know what the real answer is, don’t we?’ Henry said grimly. The terror was creeping up on him again.
‘ I’ll say this for you, Joe, you’re one hell of a cool son of a bitch.’
It was Ritter talking. He was sat next to Kovaks in the back seat of the Bucar. Ram Chander was in the front pa
ssenger seat; one of Corelli’s men was driving. Behind them was another car in which Damian was being transported. They were heading south towards Miami.
‘ This must be a pretty big shock for you, after all.’
Kovaks gave Ritter a contemptuous sidelong glance, then gazed back out of the window. He’d decided that to lose his temper would lose his life. Inside though, he seethed with anger and sadness. After a pause he said, ‘How long you been working for him?’
‘ Long enough,’ admitted Ritter. ‘Long enough to have a healthy bank balance and a bolt-hole in the Caribbean.’
‘ Lucky ole you… and you, Ram? How about you?’
Ram twisted round and dangled his right hand across the seat-top. He was holding a gun which jerked dangerously around as he talked. Kovaks thought bleakly about the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction. ‘A long, long time, Mr Joe,’ he said.
Kovaks shook his head. ‘Sad… fucking sad. So, Eamon, why kill Sue?’
Ritter’s mouth twisted down at the corners. ‘Simple — she was on to me. I had to do it.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, I really enjoyed sticking my knife up her cunt.’
‘ Sick bastard.’
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Ritter crashed his gun into the side of Kovaks’ head.
‘ Aaah!’ It felt like his brain had come loose from its fittings.
‘ Never ever call me that,’ said Ritter angrily.
‘ She wasn’t onto you,’ Kovaks mumbled. ‘You were paranoid.’
‘ Crap,’ said Ritter, dismissing the statement. Suddenly he became buoyant. ‘Hey, that Lisa Want! What a fuck, man! She gives head ree-al good… But you already know that, don’t you?’I
‘ Right, so you’ve been feeding her stuff too,’ Kovaks grumbled through the palms of his hands.
‘ Couldn’t resist, man. Just could not resist. She needed an inside source, so she got me. A fuck for information. Fair trade, I’d say.’ He laughed heartily.
‘ You have very high morals,’ said Kovaks. His mind rattled: so that was how Ms Want was always up to the minute with Bureau news and information. Wow — she was really scraping the barrel with Eamon Ritter.
