Substantial Threat

by Nick Oldham

  Henry stood up wearily. He chatted about the case for a few minutes with the pretty lady prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service, knowing it was best to keep her sweet, then left court and headed to Blackburn police station, which adjoined the court building. After ironing out what still needed to be done post-charge with the local DI, such as the case file, custody remands, the inquest, reviews and family liaison, he phoned his own office to see if there was anything outstanding for him to deal with. There was nothing that needed immediate attention, so he jumped into his car and decided he fancied a trip to Blackpool.

  He could do some work on the cold case he had been given to review, then he could have lunch with Kate. Surprise her.

  Johnny Jacques had been in bed with Carrie, his lady friend, when the knock came on the door. He had been awake, but groggy and bleary-eyed, still sluggish from the effects of the night before’s drink and drugs binge. It had not been anything too dangerous. Lots of lager, one ecstasy tab and a nose full of coke, or two or three. He’d lost count. But it was all having its hangover effect now and not for the first time. He thought that at the age of forty-five he was getting a little old for it, his body did not seem to have the resilience it once had.

  The sound of hammering on the door made him roll over and pull a pillow over his head. The knocking persisted.

  ‘Shit,’ Carrie said. She was suffering equally.

  The knocking went on. Carrie heard the letterbox flap open with a clatter and a voice shouted through it. She recognized it immediately.

  ‘Fuck!’ she said this time, shooting bolt upright, shaking JJ by the shoulder. ‘It’s Marty Cragg,’ she hissed.

  ‘Wha⎯’

  ‘It’s fuckin’ Marty, and if it’s Marty, it’s Ray too.’

  ‘Shite.’

  The knocking grew into pounding.

  Carrie’s breathing was short and desperate, her heart pounding. ‘They must know you’re here.’ Suddenly, with a clear head, she jumped out of bed, grabbing her towelling dressing gown and wrapping it tightly around her. JJ stayed in bed, having removed the pillow from his head. He stared up at her, eyes wide as a bunny caught in the glare of headlights on main beam. ‘I’ll do my best to keep them at the front door. You get dressed and scarper out of the back window.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, right.’ JJ twitched, but still lay there as if stunned.

  Carrie leaned over him and spoke as though he was retarded. ‘Get fuckin’ moving,’ she said, exaggerating her lip movements so he would understand.

  Marty shouted something obscene through the letterbox.

  JJ shot upright, jumped out of bed and began to scrabble for his scattered clothing as Carrie left the bedroom and walked into the hallway, shouting, ‘Keep yer friggin’ hair on.’

  Dressing quickly was no picnic for JJ. He managed to find his underpants and slotted one leg through a hole, then put his second leg down the same hole, only to discover they were not his underpants at all, they were Carrie’s knickers. He ripped them off as fast as he could and threw them furiously across the room. He dived for his jeans and hopped into them, pulling a grubby T-shirt on at much the same time. Picking up his trainers, he dashed through to the living room at the exact moment Carrie opened the door on the security chain.

  JJ ran to the window, slid it open and peered out.

  ‘C’mon,’ he panted to himself, trying to get it together. It looked a very long way down to the ground, which was a large, asphalt kids’ play area, though with no equipment left in it. It would hurt.

  He heard the sound of Ray Cragg’s voice at the front door. A motivator to action if ever there was one.

  Ray Cragg kept the tone of his voice reasonable, calm and dangerous.

  ‘Just let us in, Carrie,’ he said. Ray could see just one fearful eye looking through the narrow gap allowed by the security chain. He knew she was bricking it. ‘We just want to have a chat with him, that’s all Carrie,’ he said smoothly.

  ‘No, just get to fuck. You’re not coming in here, you set of twats,’ she said, now wishing she had not been so foolish as to open the door in the first place because Ray was leaning on it and she doubted she had the strength to close it on him. ‘Anyhow, he isn’t here, so you might as well piss off and leave me in peace.’

  Ray inhaled and breathed out through his nose. His temper was starting to go but he held on to it. He leaned into the gap, his face only inches away from Carrie’s. He could smell her breath and the dank flat beyond: sweat, cannabis, spermicidal lubricant. ‘Listen, you cunt,’ he said evenly, ‘if you don’t open up, we’ll kick this door down and then I’ll get really annoyed with you. I’ll smack your face in, just for fun . . . and I don’t have any axe to grind with you, love. It’s JJ I want.’

  Carrie desperately fought for time so that JJ could get out of the window, shin down the drainpipe, along windowledges, drop to the ground and leg it, even though it was four floors up. He was an agile guy and had done it before when the cops came calling.

  ‘I said he’s not here. You deaf or summat?’ she stalled brazenly. ‘Now piss off.’

  Ray moved back quickly and with a flick of his head towards the door said, ‘Crazy, Marty.’ He leaned against the wall and folded his arms.

  The two had been waiting for the moment with keen anticipation. Marty went first, going for the gap in the door. His hand shot through it and reached for Carrie’s face, or whatever he could grab. Crazy, just behind, shouldered the door with all his weight.

  Carrie was expecting the move. She slammed the door on Marty’s wrist.

  He howled like a demon in pain and rage, but it didn’t really matter because it meant the door was still open and Crazy, who had stepped back, braced himself and flat-footed the door. It flew open on the second whack, releasing Marty’s trapped limb and sending Carrie stumbling and screaming backwards as the badly fitted security chain snapped and splintered off the door frame.

  And they were in.

  ‘You cow,’ Marty yelled. He went straight for Carrie’s cowering form, enraged by having his wrist trapped. He powered into the hall and kicked her in the face with as much force as he could, breaking her jaw. She rolled away, blood pouring out of her mouth, trying to protect herself. Marty continued to lay into her, overcome by anger, as Ray and Crazy strode past, their minds focused on catching JJ.

  JJ heard the crash, the scream, the shouts as the front door was booted in.

  He had to move now.

  He lifted his body and sat astride the windowledge before twisting round and lowering his feet blindly until his toes touched the ledge which jutted out from the wall about three inches, several feet below.

  This was the position in which Ray and Crazy found him as they burst into the living room.

  JJ panicked as Crazy strode across the room towards him, a menacing look on his countenance, Ray Cragg behind him. JJ reached out his right hand for the soil pipe, which he knew he could shimmy down if he could just get to it. But before he could even touch it, Crazy grabbed the front of his T-shirt in his fists and pushed him outwards away from the wall. JJ screamed. His arms flailed like a demented windmill but he managed to grab the window frame, though his fingers slipped as Crazy threatened to push him away again.

  The two men were focused on each other’s faces, both with determined expressions. Crazy’s look was one of sheer glee at what he was doing; JJ’s, by total contrast, was a look of terror. The thought of hitting the ground headfirst reeled through his mind, the prospect of his skull splintering through his brain.

  ‘This is gonna hurt you.’ Crazy grinned twistedly.

  JJ’s fingers slipped even more on the window frame. He knew that all Crazy had to do was push and let go of his T-shirt and he would go plummeting down.

  ‘Your head’ll smash like a tomato. What d’you think, Ray?’ Crazy looked back over his shoulder. ‘Push the thieving fuck or what?’

  ‘It’s a tempter.’ Ray leaned out of the window, judging the distance to the ground be
low. ‘Pull him in,’ he said. Crazy looked disappointed. Then with a shrug he hauled JJ back into the flat.

  ‘I need words,’ Ray Cragg said to JJ.

  The murdered girl’s flat was on the sort of grubby street where Henry Christie had done so much of his police work in the past. Same old story, same old people, he thought jadedly as he gazed out of the car window up at the five-storey terraced block of flats, each one probably inhabited by a dolie or a junkie or a loser. Henry prodded himself mentally for forgetting that there were also many good people caught up in it as well. It just seemed that he did not meet them that often.

  The house was structurally solid, having stood the test of time on the outside. It was its innards and inhabitants that had changed.

  He climbed out of the Vectra and made sure it was locked before leaving it unattended.

  He wanted to get a feel for the scene of the murder. He walked up to the front of the house and stood at the bottom of the steps leading to the main door. To his left was the flight of steps which descended to the basement flat.

  He looked around. The street was pretty quiet. A couple walked down the other side. A car waited at the junction to pull out. He could easily have stepped down to the flat without being seen . . . or could he?

  If nothing else, Henry’s experience as a detective had taught him that very few crimes are committed without witnesses. Somebody always sees something. The trick was to find that somebody and bleed them white. In the nicest possible way, of course.

  Henry stood where he was and rotated slowly on his heels, allowing his eyes to rove, to try and spot someone watching him. He saw no one.

  It was very tempting to go down to the girl’s flat, but he wanted to keep that experience for later. First things first. He would check out the owner of the property who, he remembered from the file, lived in Lytham, in a very desirable location.

  He got back into the Vectra and thought seriously about going into the property rental business.

  JJ made himself a roll-up. Though his hands were shaking, he put the cigarette together expertly.

  Ray Cragg leaned forward eagerly with a lighted match and a smile. ‘Calm down,’ he said as JJ chased the flame with the end of his cigarette. ‘There’s no need to worry.’

  ‘No need to worry? How d’you work that one out?’ JJ retorted, inspecting the lighted end of his cigarette and blowing gently on it. He put the thin stick between his lips and drew deeply on it. Almost one half of it disappeared with the drag. ‘You’re gonna kick my head in and you tell me not to worry?’

  JJ’s narrow eyes darted nervously around the room, taking in each face, then, looking at Carrie, his face creased in pain. She was huddled in one corner, whimpering pathetically, cradling her busted face in the palms of her hands, nursing her shattered jaw.

  ‘She needs a hospital, Ray,’ JJ wheezed through a cloud of smoke.

  Cragg shrugged. ‘As and when.’

  JJ tried to hold his eyes to Ray Cragg’s, but they flinched fearfully away from the confrontation.

  ‘So what do you want?’ JJ asked.

  ‘I think that’s fairly fuckin’ obvious, don’t you?’ Cragg grinned. ‘Otherwise, why try and leg it?’

  JJ shrugged his thin shoulders, looked down between his knees and flicked ash on the carpet. He took another drag on the cigarette and blew smoke out through his nose. It was all but gone now. Sitting there, head bowed, eyes blinking at the floor, his jaw rotating, JJ did not see the blow coming.

  Cragg put almost all he had into it and really JJ should have expected it because he had witnessed Ray do it several times before. It was his trademark, a long, powerful, open-handed smack across the side of the face, the palm of his hand cupping over the ear. It lifted JJ off the seat and dumped him in a sprawl on the carpet. The pain in his ear was so severe, he wondered if the drum had burst. The butt of his cigarette rolled away underneath the settee.

  Before JJ could react or even scream, Marty and Crazy dragged him off the floor and flung him back across the settee.

  ‘When I ask you a question, you answer it,’ Ray Cragg said mildly. ‘Are you with me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ JJ answered quickly. A booming, painful sound ricocheted around his cranium.

  ‘Right. Now we’ve got that settled, let’s get down to business,’ Ray said. ‘I’ll let you have it right between the eyes, figuratively speaking,’ he went on. ‘I don’t give you much to do, do I? Bit o’ this, bit o’ that. Enough to pay for your dirty little habits and keep the wolf from the door – and then some. Carry this, deliver that.’ He swayed forwards again. He could smell JJ’s fear. It smelled dank, but he liked it. ‘All in all, nothing very arduous, and I trusted you JJ.’

  JJ closed his eyes for a long moment.

  ‘Trusted you for a long time . . . but why is it that people get greedy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ JJ’s words were barely audible.

  ‘Fuckin’ astounds me.’ Ray shook his head sadly and pulled away from the stench of JJ’s terror. ‘I keep tight books, JJ, and I know for a fact you’ve lifted two grand off me⎯’ JJ opened his mouth to protest. ‘Ah, ah, ah.’ Ray wagged a warning finger at him. ‘I know you have, okay? I am not stupid.’

  Ray glanced at his two companions, who stood one behind each shoulder, then stared back at JJ. ‘You gonna tell me about it?’ Ray’s head twitched in a gesture of encouragement.

  JJ nodded. He felt nauseous. It was all he could do to stop fear from squeezing his entrails and forcing him to vomit.

  ‘Good man,’ Ray acknowledged.

  The landlord’s house was on a recently built exclusive development of executive-style homes in Lytham. There were about a dozen houses on the estate, all detached, each with five or six bedrooms and double or triple garages, but not much land for the half million or so they cost to buy. Henry, an aficionado of the property pages in the glossy Lancashire Life magazine, recalled reading the adverts for the development. They were very nice houses, well out of his price bracket, but he could dream.

  He parked at the end of the driveway and gazed at the house, which was a far cry from the class of property the landlord rented out in Blackpool. A totally different world. Not even on the same planet. There was a canary-yellow Mercedes sports car in the driveway, which seemed slightly incongruous to Henry. Not that the car did not belong, it was just that he’d expected to see a Jaguar or a big Lexus there, as these were often the cars that the local well-heeled landlords tended to use. There was something effeminate about the neat yellow Mercedes which did not sit right with Henry’s, admittedly, stereotypical view of the greedy landlords he knew and despised so much. He shrugged. Maybe it belonged to the guy’s wife.

  He checked his notes then climbed out of the Vectra and meandered up to the front door, past the car, his eyes missing nothing. His finger pressed the doorbell and he heard chimes inside. He waited, handed clasped behind his back, humming tunelessly to himself. After a few moments someone appeared at the other side of the door and opened it.

  Henry took a step back, caught his breath, then introduced himself.

  The collections were going well that day. Harry Dixon trotted away from the council house and eased himself into the passenger seat of the car waiting for him at the kerbside.

  ‘Done,’ he said to the driver. ‘Next one . . . should be a fun one,’ he murmured under his breath.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed the driver. ‘Want me to come in with you?’

  Dixon smirked. The driver was a big guy called Miller. He was as tough as anyone Dixon had ever met and, allegedly, had a certain way with a carving knife and a cheese grater, the thought of which made Dixon shiver. Miller had been driving Dixon for a couple of months on the weekly collection runs, but there had never yet been any need to call on his skills, much to the big man’s disappointment as he was eager to show them off. Dixon did not want to start now. Though he was smaller in stature than Miller, Dixon preferred to use his charm and tongue as opposed to brawn. But he knew the
next address would be a toughie. It always was, but he felt he could handle it himself.

  ‘Nahh, you’re okay – just be ready if I need you.’

  ‘Sure. I will be,’ said Miller.

  Dixon reached for the sports bag slotted tightly behind the driver’s seat and pulled it on to his knees. He unzipped it and dropped his latest collection into it. He had a wicked grin on his face as he thought about the word ‘collection’. It had a kind of religious tinge to it, sounded like something done at church on Sundays. There was actually nothing religious about the £500-roll of banknotes he dropped into the bag, each one of which he knew would have traces of cocaine on it.

  He totted up the total in his notebook. That made just short of five grand he had collected that morning. Dixon’s heart began to beat a little faster at the thought of the amount of money he would have in his possession at the end of the day. The palms of his hands began to sweat. By 5 p.m. there would be about twelve thousand stuffed in the sports bag. He shook his head to rid his mind of impure thoughts – twelve Gs was not enough to go out on a limb for – and replaced the bag behind the driver’s seat, and in so doing his eyes caught those of Miller.

  Miller smiled. It was as though he had been reading Dixon’s mind.

  Dixon coughed and pulled himself together, swallowing nervously. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Miller.

  As the car moved away from the roadside, Dixon leaned forwards and, for luck, touched the barrel of the sawn-off shotgun which was tucked out of sight underneath his seat.

  Ray Cragg was sitting next to JJ on the settee with an arm around his shoulders, talking in little more than a whisper, almost reassuringly.

  ‘It’s always best to tell the truth, JJ, because you always get caught out when you lie, don’t you?’ Ray cooed.

  JJ nodded his head painfully, the pounding, searing pain from Ray’s open-handed blow across the side of his face was making each movement horrendous.