by Nick Oldham
Henry stepped into this room from the mortuary, O’Connell behind him. The Costains waited, muted and afraid.
Old man Costain rubbed his face continually, stretching his features. Monica stood there numb.
Henry took a deep breath. ‘Look, you don’t have to do this. I’ve got enough in terms of identification. The coroner will be happy with that.’
‘We want to see him,’ Costain said firmly.
‘OK, OK, but I need to reiterate…’
‘Reiterate nothing, Henry,’ Costain cut in. ‘We’re ready, so just do it.’
Henry tapped on the glass and the mortuary technician drew back the curtain.
‘I expect you’re pleased.’
Henry was outside in the mortuary car park, standing next to Costain at the Mercedes. Mrs Costain was already in the passenger seat, still as shell-shocked as she’d been in the viewing room, the death of her son probably not yet having hit her properly. She was shrouded in grey cigarette smoke.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’ll be pleased, eh? Three Costains down…’
‘No, I’m not,’ Henry said.
‘Less trouble for you and the rest of the cops, though.’
‘Mr Costain, I’m truly sorry you’ve lost another son.’
‘Hey — not to mention my niece from the car crash. I don’t suppose you’ll be putting much effort into this, will you?’
‘I’ll tell you what pleases me: catching killers. I’ll put as much effort into this as I would any other murder — which means I’ll work around the clock until I get a result — OK?’
Costain shrugged, disbelief written all over his face. ‘You say he was with someone?’
‘It looks that way… two lots of chips, looks like he was walking across the car park with a mate, yes. But like you said already, you don’t know who he was out with. It’s vital we find this person, y’know? It could even be his killer, who knows?’
‘Have you been to the chippy? That might be a good start.’
‘Yes we have, but the chip shop owners are new and they don’t live over the shop like the last ones did, and they haven’t seen fit to give their name and address to the police as yet, so we can’t contact them.’
Costain considered the information, then said, ‘I’ll see what I can do — I honestly don’t know who Rory was with, but I’ll find out.’ He climbed into the Merc and the big car rolled smoothly away. Henry watched it go wondering which poor soul would end up with the unenviable task of being the family liaison officer. The role would have to be given to a seasoned detective, one who had the bottle to brave things out with the Costains, if they would even allow an FLO into their lives. Henry guessed there would be a huge firewall of reluctance from the family at having a cop assigned to them full-time.
Henry walked back to the mortuary where he found O’Connell inspecting Rory’s naked body. She was speaking into a hand-held tape recorder and stopped when she saw Henry.
‘What d’you think?’ she asked.
‘I think we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way in terms of the bodies and we should schedule the post-mortems for this afternoon. That way we can both get a few hours sleep. On top of that, I need to get a pre-briefing meeting together at eleven this morning, followed by a full murder squad briefing at noon.’
‘Not much sleep for you, then?’
‘Doubt if I’ll be going to bed at all.’
‘I’m not remotely sleepy, myself, so I don’t see bed as an option just yet… could you handle a coffee with me?’
Henry checked his watch, then looked at the dead boy. He was standing at his head at an angle of about forty-five degrees and his eyes caught something on the scalp. His brow furrowed and he stooped for a closer inspection.
‘Have you seen this?’ he asked. Without touching, he indicated what he was looking at. O’Connell came around to see.
‘Admittedly. I haven’t.’
They were looking at a recent cut on Rory’s head, just on the scalp line above his left eye, a thin red mark where it looked like something had struck him, or his head had struck something.
‘Could he have done that when he fell after being shot?’ Henry asked.
She pulled a face. ‘Not sure about that. Looks like he might’ve caught his head on something, a door maybe, possibly the sort of injury you get when you crack your head on a car bonnet, or something. Know what I mean?’
Henry’s mind stirred. ‘Unconnected with the murder?’
‘That’s an assumption I won’t make. I’ll present you with the facts as I see them after the PM.’
‘Fair enough.’ Henry said, unable to think it through, his mind just a mush now. ‘How about that coffee?’
‘Sorry about that.’ Henry slipped his mobile phone into his jacket pocket after having dropped a text to Kate telling her he would not be home for some hours yet, and could she sort out the last bits ’n’ bobs for the holiday. He added, ‘SOZ’, and put a whole bunch of kiss crosses, hoping to appease her a little.
‘Wife?’ O’Connell said.
He nodded. ‘Supposed to be off on a romantic break tomorrow. I said I’d be a bit of a Teflon pan and pass all this on to someone else, and I will,’ he said, meaning it, ‘but I’d like to get as much done as possible before I hand anything over. And I only turned out for one murder, not two.’
‘You’re just a man who can’t say no, aren’t you?’
He glanced at her, wondering just what he was doing here. They’d driven across town in their own cars to the twenty-four-hour McDonald’s on Preston New Road, both collected a McMuffin breakfast, hash brown and coffee at the drive-thru, then headed down to the seafront at Blackpool south where the prom meets Squires Gate Lane. They were on the car park adjacent to the go-kart track at Starr Gate, which was also the southernmost terminal of the famous Blackpool tram system that plied up and down the prom.
They’d eaten their breakfasts together in O’Connell’s Mazda RX8.
He tried to tell himself this was just a business chat in an unusual location to discuss unusual business — murder. But he was only half convinced by that argument.
It seemed all too easy in the cops — if you wanted it to be.
Throughout his entire career, now spanning thirty years plus, Henry had been amazed at just how easy it was to get laid. The situations, often dealing with vulnerable people, or those who just could not turn down a man in uniform or a smooth detective — and the relationships with colleagues, working strange hours, being involved in stressful situations — brought you close to people in an extraordinary, often sexual way. And since his early days as a rookie, right up until very recently, he had been an avid follower of his penis, and that relatively small piece of equipment had dragged him into hot water on too many occasions. It had taken him to a divorce, an often penniless existence in grubby flats, and now that he had fairly recently remarried Kate he had sworn he would never go down the route of weak flesh again.
Yet here he was — and nobody but a fool would say there was any other reason for him to be there sitting in O’Connell’s fancy sports car, other than to get his hands on her tits, which he had to admit were just about right.
‘Oh, I can say no if I want to,’ he said weakly, turning to her and going short of breath.
‘I’m not sure I can.’ She wound towards him and slid her right hand along his inner thigh, a movement that sent a shimmer up inside him, made him groan as a rush of blood left his head and coursed south. The hand moved further up, then even further and grabbed him through his jeans.
Henry pulled her to him and they kissed savagely, a moan escaping from O’Connell’s throat as her hand tightened on him. Henry’s left hand slid over her blouse. She fumbled for his zip. He could feel himself straining against his underwear, trapped at a wonky angle, desperate to be freed. As he heard the first unzipping noise, something came into his head that counteracted the testosterone, like oil on water.
He drew sharply a
way. ‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped.
‘What is it?’ she asked unsurely. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No — it’s tight, but no… I’ve just thought of something.’ He opened the car door and rolled out, remembering why he wasn’t keen on sports cars. He wasn’t built for them. ‘Follow me back to the morgue,’ he said, leaning inside briefly, then he walked over to his own car with a slight crab-walk motion and tried to adjust himself discreetly.
O’Connell watched him open-mouthed, blew out a long breath, readjusted herself and muttered, ‘Follow me back to the morgue. Just what a woman wants to hear.’
‘Two things,’ Henry said, opening the body-chiller and withdrawing the sliding tray on which the very dead Rory Costain lay, wrapped in white.
O’Connell watched impatiently, hands on hips. ‘This better be hellish good.’ Her foot tapped.
Henry shot her a glance, then turned his attention back to Rory and pointed to the injury he’d noticed earlier on the boy’s head.
‘And?’ O’Connell said, her hands flipping out with impatience.
‘Wait.’ Henry gave her the double-handed gesture that meant, ‘Stay right there.’ He went to the far end of the room where the bank of steel property lockers was fixed up against the wall. He found the key he’d taken for the one containing the property belonging to the old man and opened it. He rooted out what he wanted and returned to Rory’s body — brandishing the old man’s walking stick. He showed her what he had seen on the cane shaft when he’d been recording the old man’s belongings, pointed at it, rotating the stick carefully to reflect the artificial light.
‘Hair and blood,’ O’Connell said. Henry handed her the stick and she held it up for a close inspection. ‘Hair and blood,’ she confirmed.
Henry pointed to the injury on Rory’s hairline. ‘Could that have been caused by the cane?’
O’Connell held the cane a couple of inches above the wound, careful not to let it come into contact with the flesh. Immediately she said, ‘Yes, and it’ll be easily confirmed.’
Henry gave her a triumphant smirk. ‘Two shootings on the same night in the same town… even for somewhere as lawless as Blackpool, that’s some going.’ His head began to spin a little, but he managed to level it as a wall of exhaustion rushed through him. Suddenly he was very tired, but he pointed at O’Connell and said, ‘Something else, too.’
This time he went to the locker containing Rory’s clothing and pulled out a brown paper bag in which the boy’s trainers had been placed. He broke the seal, knelt down on the floor and carefully extracted the footwear, looking at the soles of the trainers. O’Connell joined him, peering curiously over his shoulder. He tilted the left one.
‘Excuse the lingo — but there might be dog shit on here.’
‘Eh?’
‘I can’t quite see any, and it might have all come off in the rain, but deeply ingrained in the ridges, I’ll bet some lucky scientist will find doggy-doo.’ He sniffed gingerly.
‘I’m perplexed.’
Henry explained. ‘When I was at the scene of the old man’s death, a bobby said there was some dog muck in the alley that had been stood in. He asked if he should protect it, just in case there was some sort of connection to the murder. I told him to do it. Let’s hope he did — because even if there isn’t any pooh left on the sole — ’ he shook the trainer — ‘if there is an imprint of a shoe in the shit, we can make a match.’
‘So Rory was at the scene of the old man’s murder? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘I’m not leaping to conclusions yet — but if we get tie-ins to the cane and the head wound, and the footwear pattern in the dog muck, there’s every chance he was there. And if he was, did he see it happen? And if he saw it happen, did he get killed because of that?’ Henry shrugged. ‘Just tossing stuff up in the air, here. It makes it vital to find out who was with him…’ The detective and pathologist blinked at each other. ‘I don’t completely believe in coincidence… old man run over and shot, young lad shot… what I do believe in, as James Bond once said, is enemy action. I’ve got a little feeling in the pit of my guts that whatever remains of bullets we find will be the same in both heads. And if Rory did see the old man get killed, then got murdered himself, that other person needs tracking down, because if we don’t get to him first, he’s going to get a bullet in the skull just like Rory…’
‘Sounds a bit melodramatic.’
‘That’s me, Mr Melodrama.’
‘I wouldn’t care if you were dealing with the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre… we go on holiday tomorrow, the taxi’s booked, etcetera, etcetera… nuff said?’
‘I have no intention of doing anything more than ensuring the investigation is up and running properly.’ Henry emerged from the en-suite shower room, towelling his close-cropped hair dry, into the bedroom and into the tiny walk-in dressing room. He was completely naked and Kate watched him, her eyes sparkling at the sight, even though she was laying down the law with him.
‘Besides which you must be completely exhausted.’
‘I’ll be OK,’ Henry said, bending down to his sock and underwear drawer, revealing a view that Kate would rather not have seen. She winced.
However, it did not stop her from standing up and sidling in behind him, wrapping her arms around him and pushing her nose into his back. ‘You smell great,’ she murmured, throatily, one hand sliding across his stomach.
‘The heady fragrance of pure soap,’ he said.
Henry had dashed home for a revitalizing shower and a change of clothing with a view to getting through the day. His head had been thumping and he’d taken a couple of Nurofen to ward off the worst effects of a tiredness headache. His intention had been to be in and out of the house within a few minutes, but the stand-up ‘discussion’ with Kate about the holiday had delayed him somewhat.
She’d backed off a little and now Henry felt guilty on two fronts. Firstly, today was actually a leave day — and he was working. It was a day on which they’d planned to do all the last minute holiday prep, a bit of shopping, a lingering coffee at Starbucks, stuff like that. Kate had been looking forward to it. He also felt terrible about the encounter he’d had with Keira O’Connell and berated himself for being so weak in the flesh — still. He had almost returned to his bad old ways. Could so easily have done. He thought he was better now.
With those thoughts in mind, he turned into Kate, pushed himself against her, kissed her face, lips and neck, and felt himself harden, legally this time.
‘If you’re interested,’ he said — as she squeezed his testicles gently — ‘I might have time for a quick one.’
One thing was certain, he thought, the old Henry knew how to appease a woman. But even as he pushed Kate back on to the bed and peeled off her tight jeans, he was thinking how dearly he would love to run this double murder that had all the hallmarks of a professional hit. So juicy.
The everyday sounds of the morning had not woken Mark Carter. The estate coming to life. The whirring and clattering of, possibly, one of the last milk floats in existence trundling by. Cars passing, kids yelling, bin men shouting to each other as they made their way by with their noisy truck.
None of that woke him.
The sound that jerked Mark Carter awake was that of footsteps creeping past the door, someone sneaking about.
He came to, suddenly and sickeningly, cursing himself for having fallen asleep in the first place — into a slumber of shadows, flashes, bangs and death.
And now, in real darkness, he was sure he had heard footfalls.
Although his heart was slamming against his chest wall, he tried not to move, to remain immobile, hardly breathing, watching the line of light around the ill-fitting door to see if anyone walked past. Then he heard a knock on the door.
Mark shivered.
After having locked himself in his bedroom on arriving home, there was no way he could get to sleep. He didn’t even try, but kept a vigil at the window, watching the avenue appre
hensively.
Alone in the house he began to feel even more vulnerable. So much so that just after two a.m., still wide awake, but exhausted, he collected up his quilt and pillow and went downstairs, where he let himself out the back door and went to the side of the house. Out here were two outbuildings with a lean-to roof connected to the house, making a tight passageway up the side. One of the buildings had once been a utility room and even though there was still an old sink in it, it was no longer used. Now it was basically a rubbish tip for things Mark’s mother couldn’t be bothered to take to the dump. Adjoining that was another ‘room’, a space where, in days gone by, coal was delivered to and stored. With the advent of gas central heating, this was also somewhere no longer used and because it was still full of coal dust, it wasn’t even used as a dumping ground for rubbish. It was into this ‘coal-hole’, as it was still referred to, that Mark sneaked, thinking he would be safer here than in the house. He wrapped himself in the quilt and fitted his pillow between his head and shoulder.
The door, poorly fitting, rotting at the bottom, still had an old mortise lock on it that worked and Mark was able to lock himself in.
His reasoning was that if the killers somehow managed to identify him and discover where he lived, he’d be better able to escape from the coal-hole than his bedroom because they wouldn’t be expecting him to be hiding there.
He made himself as comfortable as possible in the cold, brick-built, dusty space — then looked at the cordless phone he’d brought with him from inside the house, wondering if it still worked out here. There was a dial tone, so he entered 141 and then dialled treble nine and asked for the police. When the connection went through, he said, ‘Have you found the body in the car park behind Preston Road shops?’
The operator seemed taken aback. ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’
‘You heard — send a patrol to that car park.’ Then he hung up. He stared at the phone a while longer, fully expecting a call back, believing they had the technology to trace any call, even if it was a withheld number. No call came.
