Backlash

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Urrggh!’ Taylor pitched himself out of the office, holding his guts with one hand, the other clamped over his mouth.

  ‘Poor sod,’ Byrne said.

  ‘You’re too bleedin’ soft,’ Henry muttered. He plonked himself down next to Byrne on the sofa, clasped his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. He cogitated awhile, arranging his thoughts.

  ‘We can’t afford to wait for the circus to turn out. I want to get a start on names and addresses of everyone in A&E at the time of the murder and I want statements to start being taken. Staff, patients – anyone. I want you to get going with that, Dermot. I know we haven’t many spare bods, but let’s start the ball rolling, get a tick in the book.’

  ‘Sure, boss.’

  ‘And get PC Bloody Taylor to do his statement immediately – I want it to be as detailed as possible from the moment I gave him the instruction until you arrived on the scene, OK?’ Henry paused. ‘What do you think of him?’

  ‘PC Taylor?’ Byrne shrugged. ‘He’s OK. I don’t really know him all that well. Bit long in the tooth and needs motivating, but still gets stuck in now and again. He’s just had a good job up at court, a date-rape, which the CPS binned on a technicality, much to his annoyance. He’d done a lot of work on it, so I think that’s pissed him off quite a bit.’

  ‘I read about it,’ Henry said, now bored with the subject of PC Taylor. He changed the subject. ‘You managed to get here pretty quickly,’ Henry observed innocently.

  Byron reacted to the comment by stiffening slightly and pulling at his collar. ‘Happened to be driving past – purely by accident.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever . . .’ Henry’s ponderings had drifted on to the crime scene. Being in a clean and hygienic hospital made it unlike most of the murder scenes he’d had the pleasure of visiting over the years. Henry was aware he would have no further part in the subsequent investigation which had already been allocated to the on-call senior investigating officer from headquarters who was already on his way, but it did not stop him from slipping back into CID mode for a few precious moments.

  Detailed analysis of the crime scene was crucial to any murder investigation. At every crime scene the offender leaves messages about him-or herself, indicating what the motivation and drive is behind the crime. As a seasoned investigator, Henry consciously tried to reconstruct what had happened to try and find the links between the location, the victim and the offender and the other things he could not even guess at yet, such as what the forensic and post-mortem investigations would reveal.

  Already, this murder troubled him deeply.

  He started putting together some hypotheses: firstly that the victim could have been a source of potential danger to the offender; that the crime had links with the dead girl’s knowledge of activist right-wing groups; that she had known too much and was a danger – these would all be areas for detailed investigation. However, Henry realised that to be rail-roaded by such a narrow band of thought could skew the investigation into a direction which could be totally misguided. It could be that this was simply an opportunistic crime: some passing loony who, feeling murderous, might have seen a chance and gone for it. It sounded a faintly ridiculous premise to Henry, but he knew it could not be overlooked. Which brought him back full circle to his initial conjectures. And the one big question which needed to be answered if the girl’s death was connected to the dangerous knowledge she might have possessed about right-wing groups.

  ‘How the hell did whoever killed her know she was here, at the hospital?’ Henry asked and quickly explained his background reasoning to the question.

  Byrne shrugged. ‘Radio transmissions?’ he suggested. ‘Could well have been listening in. We thought they’d been scanning us earlier on Shoreside.’

  ‘Possibility.’ Henry chewed the inside of his mouth, making a squelching noise. ‘And if that is true, then they also stalked the A&E department until Taylor – God bless his socks – went for his fatal coffee break.’ Henry thought about what he had just said. Something clicked in his brain, then went. Probably nothing.

  ‘It’s a busy department,’ Byrne said. ‘People come and go all the time. It wouldn’t be difficult to blend in and hang around.’

  ‘My head hurts,’ Henry said prophetically – because just then he was hit by a stinking headache which came from nowhere and lurked nastily behind his eyelids.

  David Gill grinned happily to himself. He loved it when a plan came together – and this one was coming together easier than a children’s jigsaw: slot, slot, slot, all the pieces fitting snugly together – fucking wonderful.

  First Mohammed Khan’s death – better late than never – then the riots where the detective got torched – a bonus – and now the extra problem solved, the one that could have been a difficulty – the girl. It was unfortunate that she had been arrested in the first place, but because of the liability aspect, she had had to be dealt with.

  He was not proud of the way in which he had killed her, though. Because it was something that had had to be done quickly, it had lacked finesse. A pillow over the face, for Christ’s sake. Where was the panache with that one? Just a means to an end, a functional tool. No flair. No fun. He loved to talk to people first. Loved to explain things to them, to outline the reasons for that ultimate question they all asked: Why? Why me?

  Because you have to get killed, that’s why. Because you are a cog in the machine and the machine needs to be destroyed. And this week powerful moves were going to be made to destroy the machine and show the country that a sea-change is about to take place. The balance of power was about to shift and return to where it belonged. The old order is going to be restored and revamped for the people.

  So he regretted not having had the chance to tell the girl why she had to die. He also regretted that she had been drugged up to the eyeballs because that meant she could not struggle – although there had been the faintest blip of self-preservation when her body found the air had been cut off, but it had been nothing really, just a twitch, a reaction.

  Still, David Gill took some solace from the fact that Joey Costain had known full well why he had to be murdered. Gill had talked to Joey for quite a while.

  Gill picked up the telephone.

  Time to alert the police. What a shame. They were so busy.

  ‘Here.’

  Henry’s eyes opened. He had allowed himself to wallow in his headache and had sat back on the sofa in the staff rest room, closed his eyes and drifted. He hadn’t heard the door open. The next thing he knew was that Dermot Byrne was standing over him, PC Taylor just behind him. Two paracetamols were in the palm of Byrne’s outstretched right hand, offering them to Henry, a glass of water in the other.

  ‘Thanks.’ He took the tablets and threw them down the back of his throat, swallowing them with the water, which was very cold. ‘Right, let’s get things up and running.’

  ‘I’ve told John he can go back to the station and get his statement written,’ Byrne said, ‘if that’s all right.’ He looked at Taylor, then back at Henry. ‘I don’t think he’ll mind me saying, but it might be the best use of his time at the moment.’

  Henry stared at the constable who looked dreadful.

  ‘I think you’re probably right,’ Henry said. ‘Best place for him.’

  ‘Blackpool to inspector,’ the personal radios shouted in unison.

  ‘Receiving.’ Henry almost tutted. He was beginning to detest having to carry a radio around with him all the time. There was no hiding from it. Not like when he had been a DI, back in those balmy, rose-tinted days, when Henry had only used the radio when it suited him. Being at everyone’s beck and call did not sit easily with him.

  ‘Can you give me a landline number where I can contact you, please? Or can you phone in?’ the radio operator requested. ‘It’s urgent and not something I want to put out over the air in case of scanners. Don’t want to call your mobile for the same reason.’

  ‘Give me a minute,’ Henry said. ‘Wonder what it is
now?’ he said to his officers. He hurried out of the rest room to the charge nurse’s desk where the charge nurse regarded his approach with some hostility.

  ‘What d’you want now?’ she asked. ‘Should I close the hospital while you dust it down for fingerprints?’

  Henry smiled ingratiatingly. ‘If I was a bit assertive before, I apologise.’

  ‘Aggressive, not assertive,’ the nurse corrected him.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And now you want something else, don’t you?’

  Henry gave her his best boyish grin. ‘Just a little thing.’

  ‘A little thing, dearie,’ she said flirtatiously, showing Henry a surprising trait to her personality, ‘is all I’ve got. What d’you want?’

  ‘Borrow your phone?’

  She actually looked disappointed. ‘Be my guest.’ She slid the phone across her desk. ‘Nine for an outside line.’ She resumed browsing through the patient notes.

  ‘Appreciate this.’ He perched one cheek of his backside on the desk and stabbed the direct dial number in for Blackpool Communications. ‘Inspector Christie here.’

  ‘Thanks for calling in so quickly, sir.’ He had managed to get straight through to the radio operator who had talked to him on the radio. ‘We’ve just received an anonymous call from a male person, untraceable, to say we can find Joey Costain at an address in Withnell Road, South Shore.’ He gave Henry the house and flat number of the property. It was not far away from the address which they had searched earlier without success. ‘The caller said we should get there now because Joey’s in a bit of a mess.’

  ‘Joey’s in a bit of a mess? What does that mean?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. Those were his exact words.’

  ‘And he didn’t say what was meant?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘When did you get the call?’

  ‘Exactly six minutes ago.’

  ‘Any details from the caller at all? I take it you spoke to him?’

  ‘Yes, sir, me.’

  ‘Stop calling me sir,’ Henry said with a tone of annoyance.

  ‘Sorry sir – oops!’

  ‘Caller details?’ Henry reminded him.

  ‘None. All refused. Sounded like an Asian or someone pretending to be one.’

  ‘Was it a treble nine?’

  ‘No – direct dial. Tried to trace it, but the caller must have used 141 before calling. Not recorded, either.’

  Only 999 calls were recorded as a matter of course.

  ‘And, “Joey’s a bit of a mess”. Those were the exact words?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Henry went quiet. In the distance a casualty nurse called out a patient’s name. Henry was thinking it would be very nice to have Costain ready and waiting in a cell for Jane Roscoe in the morning. Not only because arresting Joey was one of life’s great pleasures, but because it would be one over on Roscoe, and no matter how much he had begun to like her, he could not resist the temptation to come up smelling of roses.

  ‘OK, give me a few minutes to sort things out up here, then I’ll let you know what we’re going to do about it, if anything. And well done for not broadcasting this over the air.’ He hung up.

  Byrne and Taylor were behind him, having listened to his end of the conversation. Byrne looked eager, Taylor like death warmed up.

  ‘Got an address for Joey Costain,’ he told them, ‘from an anonymous source.’

  Acting on anonymous information, not backed up by other intelligence, was fraught with the danger of going shit-shaped, as so many police operations had shown in the past. There was always the possibility the information was simply being misleading or malicious, often the result of someone getting back at someone else for purely personal reasons. There was also the chance of booting down the wrong door and giving some innocent old granny heart failure, or shooting a kid. It was a position very difficult to defend in the arena of a Coroner’s Court. And it was always newsworthy.

  ‘I don’t think we need to go in with all guns blazing,’ Henry conjectured, biting his top lip while his mind ticked over. ‘Right,’ he said abruptly, coming to a decision. ‘You carry on up here, Dermot, and make sure everything’s ready for the senior investigating officer, and I’ll take John, here –’ he cocked his thumb at Taylor – ‘back to the station, but we’ll go via South Shore and check out this address softly, softly. If Joey is there, all well and good. I’m sure we can handle the little shit between us. If he’s not, we’ll make profuse apologies and leave and at least we haven’t gone OTT. Come on then,’ he said to Taylor, who for the second time looked less than enamoured by another of his inspector’s instructions. ‘Let’s hope that car of mine has enough juice in it to get us back. You be OK here?’ he asked Byrne.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Byrne indicated something beyond Henry’s shoulder: the on-call SOCO team arriving at the hospital.

  The circus was rolling into town.

  South Shore, known nationally and internationally as the location of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach and the roller-coaster ride, ‘The Big One’, was interlaced with thoroughfares such as Withnell Road. They all looked very similar, with long, multi-storeyed terraces of houses, most of which were either bona-fide guest houses, or had been divided up into tiny flats to house ‘doalies’ – unemployed people drawing state benefits.

  Generally, South Shore was the fairly seedy backdrop to the colour and brashness of the promenade. Car crime, burglary, muggings were rife, all symptomatic of an out-of-control drug culture which pervaded the whole resort, not just the south.

  Henry cut the engine and the lights and coasted in to what he hoped would be a silent stop at the end of the street. He cringed, but was not at all surprised, when the brakes grated and squealed. He climbed out with a ‘Come on,’ for PC Taylor. ‘Leave your helmet in the car. Let’s go and have a shuftie.’ He closed the door quietly. Taylor did likewise.

  Several street lights had been smashed or were simply not working which ensured there were many shadows for the two cops to flit between as they edged their way to Joey Costain’s alleged address. It was quiet. Four thirty in the morning, the most peaceful time of day in Blackpool. The sky was showing the faintest grey-grittiness of the sluggish approach of dawn. A chill was in the air. Less than 200 metres away, Henry could hear and smell the sea as it lapped against the sea wall.

  The officers paused outside the address given by the unknown caller. The information said Costain would be in flat number 3 on the first floor. The whole building was in darkness. Nothing stirred on any of the three floors; however, number 3 could easily be at the back. Concrete steps led up to the front door.

  Henry led Taylor up, treading carefully but still failing to spot a broken syringe which Henry’s boot crushed.

  ‘Shit,’ he whispered, looking down.

  ‘Fucking junkies,’ Taylor added, startling Henry with his language.

  On the wall next to the front door was an array of doorbells, each connected to a flat inside. Henry counted them: twelve. The flats must be minute, he thought. Some of the bells had the names of the occupants next to them, most did not. Anonymity was easy to attain and retain in South Shore. Henry flicked on his pen-like Maglite torch and read them. Number 3 was a blank. Number 8 seemed quite interesting, Henry thought in passing: Maria. French Lessons. ‘Merci beaucoup,’ he said under his breath.

  He tried the door knob, which did not turn, but amazingly the door opened when he gave it a firm shove, opening to reveal a dark, unlit vestibule. On the left was a narrow, steep set of stairs leading to the first floor. Straight ahead was a high-ceilinged hallway with three closed doors off it.

  Henry had been in many such dives. In his time as a cop he had probably been in thousands and hoisted out hundreds of criminals from them. Inevitably all these premises were much of a muchness: similar layouts, similar facilities, similar smells and similar occupants. The truth was that the same social template could be laid over most of the people he’d had dealings with
over the years in these properties: mostly mid-teens to late twenties; they all drew their giros, never paid into bank accounts because bank accounts were for rich people; all smoked and drank, although they never had two ha’pennies to rub together; they were drug abusers, thieves; often with lives that were overshadowed by their own violence or abuse against themselves; they were usually from broken homes – and yet, despite these common characteristics, each was an individual. Henry had even quite liked some of them and had some sympathy for their predicaments, but it stopped short when their deprived backgrounds and shortcomings meant other people suffered.

  His thin torch beam shone at the first door he came to in the hall. Number 1. Next was number 2 and the one at the far end of the hall was 2A. Taylor had crept down the hall behind him. When Henry turned after checking the number on the last door, he bumped into Taylor. Both nearly fell into a tangled heap of manhood on the sticky carpet.

  ‘Hell fire!’ exclaimed Henry, only just keeping his voice down.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Shaking his head angrily and muttering, Henry brushed past the constable to the foot of the stairs. He peered up into the darkness, beckoned Taylor to follow – not too close this time – and went up, using his torch intermittently until both of them were on the first-floor landing.

  Henry stood still, his heart pulsating with excitement. He was enjoying himself, having forgotten how much fun policing could be. He put a finger to his lips and added a ‘Shh’ just in case Taylor didn’t understand the gesture. Too late: both their radios blared out a distorted message with plenty of static. They turned them off immediately and waited for the inhabitants to start coming out of the woodwork like forest animals in the night.

  No one came.

  The officers listened. Someone, somewhere, was snoring loudly. Music was coming from one of the flats. Henry cocked his ear to it, concentrated – it was barely audible, but he recognised the riff with a flush of pleasure: The Rolling Stones, ‘Midnight Rambler’. From the floor above he heard footsteps and another unmistakable sound, a couple having sex. Henry adjusted his hearing to listen, a quirky smile at Taylor who grinned back with embarrassment. Henry quickly realised the couple consisted of two men.