Substantial Threat

by Nick Oldham

  Henry nodded, processing this information. He glanced down at his notes. ‘This would be Thomas Dinsdale, would it? He’s the manager?’

  ‘Was at the time,’ Burrows corrected him. ‘He quit shortly after the girl got killed.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Absolutely no idea.’

  ‘No forwarding address? Contact number? New place of work?’

  She shook her head and pouted.

  Henry was just about to get very annoyed with her because he knew she was lying. He opened his mouth but his words were cut short by the pager affixed to his belt, which began to ring. Frustrated he unhooked it and read the scrolling message. He sighed and fitted it back on to his belt, then looked at Jacqueline Burrows.

  ‘Saved by the bell,’ he said coldly. ‘But just for the record, Miss Burrows, I don’t believe you didn’t know anything about the dead girl, nor do I believe you haven’t got a clue as to the whereabouts of Mr Dinsdale.’ He finished his tea and struggled out of the settee. ‘So I’ll just have to find him myself, won’t I? And, as a muscular movie star once said, “I’ll be back.” I’ll find the front door myself, thanks.’

  Burrows, stony-faced, let him go without uttering a word. She watched him from the living-room window as he got into his Vectra. She was feeling very nervous, dithery almost, as though her blood sugar was low. There was something about Henry Christie which made her very wary indeed. It wasn’t as though she had not been cautious of the detectives who had interviewed her initially, but she had not felt challenged by them in any way. In fact, when she had lured one of them into her bed, she had known she was completely safe. But Christie was different. There was something about him that worried her and gave her the feeling that even if she could get him into bed, he would still be a danger to her.

  She picked up her phone and dialled a mobile number.

  Annoyingly the call was immediately transferred to the answer-phone. She slammed the receiver down and swore.

  They made their way to a small terraced house in South Shore, not far away from the Bloomfield Road football ground used by Blackpool FC.

  Crazy dropped Ray and Marty off at the front door and parked the Astra some distance away and walked back to the house by another route, checking for any signs of surveillance by the cops. It was time to be careful because things were about to get very serious. He walked down the back alley behind the house and entered through the rear door.

  Ray and Marty were already upstairs in the front bedroom where they had stripped off and were naked. They were folding their clothes into black plastic bin liners. Crazy joined them and stripped off too, placing his clothes into a third bin liner.

  ‘It’s all in the back bedroom,’ came a voice from downstairs. ‘When you’re ready.’

  The three naked men trudged down the short hallway into the room where everything was laid out on the uncarpeted floor for them.

  Each man had a pair of jockey shorts to put on, a pair of black socks, a fairly tight-fitting pair of dark-blue overalls, latex gloves and a ski-mask. Their feet were to be covered by Hi-Tek trainers. It had all been newly bought, but no two things had been purchased from the same supplier, with the exception of the latex gloves, which came in a box of a hundred pairs.

  All dressed, but without the masks, they trooped downstairs to the kitchen where the man who was known as the Supplier waited patiently for them, brew in hand, a selection of handguns laid out neatly on the Formica-topped kitchen table.

  ‘Fuckin’ World War Three,’ exclaimed Marty.

  ‘Everything fit okay?’ the Supplier asked, appraising the men.

  ‘Yeah, good,’ said Ray. He stared greedily at the guns.

  ‘Got a bit of a choice for you here,’ the Supplier said proudly, displaying his wares on the table with a regal waft of the hand. ‘And every one is guaranteed to be as clean as a whistle.’

  ‘How do we know that for sure?’ Ray asked cynically.

  ‘Stole them myself. Every gun here is clean and cannot be connected to any other criminal act.’ The Supplier smiled. ‘Guaranteed.’

  Ray nodded.

  The Supplier selected one of the handguns – a 9mm Glock, very light and compact. He removed the magazine, showed the three men that it wasn’t loaded and handed it to Ray, butt first. ‘Used by a lot of police forces in the country. Easy to use, reliable, kills people.’

  Ray weighed the gun in his hand. ‘Very light,’ he admitted.

  ‘Accurate, deadly,’ the Supplier confirmed.

  ‘Will it jam?’

  ‘No,’ he said with confidence.

  Ray handed the weapon to Marty, who appraised it, nodded sagely and passed it to Crazy, who did the same.

  ‘Twelve rounds in the mag, one in the chamber.’

  ‘Unlucky for some,’ smirked Ray.

  ‘Eh?’ said Marty, a quizzical expression on his face.

  ‘Nowt,’ said Ray, shaking his head. ‘What else you got?’ he asked the Supplier, looking down at the table full of guns.

  ‘I think you’ll like this one, too,’ the Supplier said. He picked up another weapon and showed it to Ray Cragg.

  By the time Henry Christie arrived it was all over. He parked some distance away from the flats and sauntered to the scene, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Now that he was a member of the ‘circus’ – the HQ team brought in to assist the local cops to investigate serious crime – he did not like arriving in the time-honoured traditional fashion, bursting into crime scenes, throwing his weight about like they did in days gone by. He liked to do things his way, a way that reflected his personality: quiet and sneaky. So he came on foot, approaching from an oblique angle, taking his time, letting his eyes, ears and nose do the work; coming up from below as opposed to pouncing from above as some senior investigating officers had a reputation for doing.

  There was a lot of activity at the flats. Ambulances, fire engines and police cars and all their occupants. It all looked pretty confusing, but Henry was pleased to be able to pick out one of the local jacks, Rik Dean, doing some directing and supervising, getting the uniformed branch to push back gawping members of the public and generally make some room.

  Rik saw Henry approaching. He cut off from what he was doing and scurried to meet him.

  Henry liked Rik. As a uniformed bobby he had been a good thief-taker with a superb nose for rooting out villains. His transfer to CID could not have come soon enough and he showed himself to be a very capable detective, having recently been promoted to sergeant.

  ‘Hi, Henry.’

  ‘Rik.’ The DCI nodded.

  ‘Hope you didn’t mind the call . . . just seemed to be a bit of an odd one, that’s all.’

  Henry shook his head. He never minded the call. ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  He led Henry round two fire tenders, stepping over hoses which were coiled like an annual convention of boa constrictors, up a flight of steps leading to a block of flats. Henry had expected to be taken up to the fourth floor where he could see a lot of activity taking place on the landing.

  ‘We’re not going up there?’ he asked.

  Rik shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

  Henry frowned, but kept an open mind.

  ‘Come on, John, get those kids away from there,’ Rik shouted at one of the uniformed PCs who was having problems keeping a bunch of youths away. He continued to walk around the perimeter of the flats, taking Henry to the back where even more things were happening. A group of people – paramedics, firefighters and cops – were gathered around an object on the ground. They all looked up as Rik and Henry came towards them, parting as they got nearer. Henry saw they were standing around a body which had been covered by a green sheet from the ambulance.

  Instinctively, Henry glanced upwards, seeing smoke drifting out of a fourth-floor window.

  Rik reached the covered body and pulled back the sheet for Henry to see.

  At first he thought it was Ronnie Wood f
rom the Rolling Stones, the body looked so similar, but on second thoughts he said, ‘Johnny Jacques.’ Henry had been a detective in Blackpool on and off for many years and he knew most of the local low-lifes. He had had some fleeting dealings with Jacques in the past, but nothing too complicated. Henry had always thought of JJ as a pathetic ageing junkie on the periphery of the drug-dealing scene in town who would, one day, wind up dead through an overdose, as opposed to flattened from a fall. ‘Okay,’ he said to Rik Dean, ‘what’s the crack?’

  ‘Ambulance get called to a splattered JJ. They arrive and find him dead, look up and see flames shooting out of that flat.’ He pointed upwards. The fire brigade arrive, douse the fire and find another dead body in the ashes, that of a woman, believed to be Carrie Dancing⎯’

  ‘JJ’s old lady,’ interjected Henry. He knew Carrie, too.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Okay – hypothesis?’

  ‘Fire gets started somehow. They get trapped, JJ jumps for his life to escape being burned to death, she bottles out and gets fried. How about that?’ He sounded doubtful.

  ‘Sounds okay, so why the hesitation?’

  ‘Paramedics arrived and found the body here and only then did they notice the flames up above, so it doesn’t look like he jumped to escape the flames, because it seems they came after the jump.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  The local detective shrugged. ‘Could be.’

  ‘But you’re not convinced.’

  Rik scratched his head and screwed up his facial features. ‘Mm, could be. But why is she dead? Did he kill her after some domestic or other, or some suicide pact, or what? Did he set the place on fire, then jump? . . . Dunno. Some things don’t add up, Henry.’

  Henry patted him on the shoulder in a terribly patronizing manner and smiled in a fatherly way. ‘Let’s go and have a chat with the fire people.’

  ‘Home Office pathologist is up there, too. Professor Baines . . . I thought it wise to get him in early.’

  Henry smiled at the prospect of bumping into Baines.

  They were each given a new (stolen) pay-as-you-go mobile phone just in case they needed it for the job. They would be disposed of later, along with their clothing.

  Ray switched his on and waited for it to register, then keyed in a number, but disguised his own number by putting ‘141’ in front of it first. He put the phone to his ear and eyed Marty and Crazy as he waited for the connection. They were alone in the house now, the Supplier having left a few minutes before. They were drinking water from plastic bottles.

  ‘Me,’ Ray said when the call was answered. He listened intently for a few seconds, said ‘Thanks’ and ended the call. ‘It’s on,’ he said to his two companions.

  Crazy stayed outwardly calm. Ray knew that inwardly he would also be calm, because despite his nickname, Crazy loved action, thrived on it.

  Marty twitched nervously, making Ray wonder – and not for the first time – whether or not to ditch Marty from the big scheme of things and promote Crazy into his place. He knew it would mean killing Marty if he did that, but such was the way of the world.

  ‘Your call now.’ Ray nodded to Crazy.

  Crazy tapped a number into his mobile, had a short conversation then announced, ‘Be here in ten minutes.’

  Henry and Rik Dean met the chief fire officer at the front door of the fourth-floor flat. His name was Grant, a large, gruff man who did not really like the police but did not allow this to detract from his professionalism. Henry knew Grant of old, they had once put a serial arsonist away for twelve years by working closely together.

  Grant had been inspecting the scene of the fire. He had been a firefighter for as long as Henry had been a cop and he knew what he was talking about, so Henry listened carefully as they walked into the flat.

  ‘The fire was very much contained in the living area due to the living-room door being closed,’ Grant explained. ‘Closing doors is a simple but effective way of holding back a fire.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ Henry said.

  Grant gave him a stern look which cracked into a little smile.

  The living room was a blackened, burned, charred mess. Everything had been touched by flames. The walls were black, the TV had melted where it stood and the furniture was completely destroyed with the exception of any metal parts, such as springs.

  Henry stood on the threshold, not wanting to enter and disturb evidence. He let his eyes wander. At first glance he could not distinguish a body. He looked harder and saw the outline of what had once been a living, breathing human being among the charred debris of what had once been the settee.

  He gasped. Though death was his trade, it never failed to touch him somewhere inside. He could be as cold and clinical as anyone while dealing with it, but he was unable to ever quite detach himself from the thought that he was dealing with something that had once been alive.

  A firefighter was still dousing down the mess which smouldered with the possibility of re-ignition. This was okay and necessary, but it didn’t half destroy evidence. Henry winced at the thought.

  ‘Had a good look,’ Grant, was saying. ‘It was an extremely hot fire because of the foam in the settee, which was also the seat of the fire. Until everything has been doused down, I can’t say for sure, but I’ll lay my career on it being a discarded cigarette underneath the settee. Caught hold of the rubbish underneath, then whoosh!’ Grant’s hands explained his words with an explosive gesture. ‘They don’t put this sort of filling in furniture these days. It was a very old piece, to say the least – and she was lying on it, poor bugger.’

  ‘Why didn’t she get off, try to escape?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Drink? Drugs? Who the fuck knows?’ said Grant. ‘Post-mortem’ll tell you that, no doubt.’

  ‘Would you say the fire was accidental or deliberate?’ Rik Dean asked Grant.

  There was no hesitation in Grant’s response. ‘Accidental. You don’t start a deliberate fire by discarding a cigarette and hoping it’ll burn a house down.’

  Henry turned up his nose doubtfully. That was unless you were a very tricky person, he thought to himself.

  ‘Still doesn’t add up,’ said Rik. ‘Why did JJ go out of the window?’

  ‘Do we know for sure he went out of this window?’ Henry put in. ‘At the moment it’s only an assumption.’

  ‘Yeah . . . but . . .’ Rik protested.

  ‘I know, I know.’ Henry raised his hands. ‘This is his girlfriend’s flat and it’s more than odds on he did go from here, but it’s not a racing certainty as yet, not until we get our house-to-house teams to knock on every door in this building.’

  Rik accepted this. ‘I’ll get a couple of guys on to that now.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘And I’ll go and clean up,’ said Grant.

  They left Henry standing alone by the door of the living room. He was still amazed by the devastation that fire could bring in such a short time. It was still an assumption that the body on the settee belonged to Carrie Dancing, but he was pretty certain that subsequent examination would reveal that to be the case. Henry liked to deal with facts as opposed to supposition whenever possible. He knew that assumptions did have to be made, particularly in the early stages of an investigation into a suspicious death. The trouble was that assumptions tended to have fangs which had a nasty habit of biting you where the sun don’t shine.

  He sniffed. He could smell charred flesh. It turned his stomach, making him feel queasy. It was one of those aromas that once inhaled never purged.

  Suddenly he was whacked between the shoulder blades. He staggered a couple of steps from the unexpected blow and spun to face his unknown adversary, ready to fight.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, fists raised defensively.

  It was just as well he did not lash out, otherwise he would have punched a Home Office pathologist into next week.

  ‘Henry, you slimy old twat.’ Professor Baines beamed. ‘Back in plain clothes? I knew that uniform busin
ess would not last.’ He was referring to Henry’s recent short but sharp time as a uniformed inspector.

  ‘Yeah, I’m on the SIO team now,’ said Henry, trying to rub his back from the friendly, but hard blow delivered by Baines.

  ‘Oh, that’s handy.’

  ‘Why?’ Henry asked suspiciously.

  ‘Well, not being one to jump to conclusions . . . but I’m pretty sure this female was dead before the fire cremated her.’

  The van arrived on time and drew up in the alley at the back of the terraced house. The driver stayed behind the wheel. He did not sound the horn, just waited with the engine ticking over smoothly. He was not being paid to do anything else.

  The three men left the house quietly, walked smartly across the back yard, through the gate and climbed quickly into the back of the van. Ray banged the side of the van and the driver let out the clutch gently and drove away.

  A couple of minutes later another vehicle arrived at the back of the house. The man driving it parked in the alley, let himself into the house and collected the three bags of clothes which had been left in the front bedroom. He carried them to the car and threw them into the boot.

  Before leaving he checked the house was locked and secure. It would not be used again.

  ‘Let’s assume that JJ and Carrie were at the flat,’ Henry said. He was sitting on a low wall some distance away from the block, Rik Dean next to him. Both were sitting on their hands like little lads. They were going through the hypothesis stage of the enquiry, that stage when there were few facts available to them beyond a scene of crime as yet unexamined, and two bodies, neither of which had been post-mortemed. ‘So they have a barney, JJ kills her and then, in remorse leaps to his own death from the window . . . and just by accident, the flat catches fire from a discarded fag.’