by Nick Oldham
He shrugged his leather jacket on and made his way out past the custody office into the car park.
‘Sir, sir,’ came a voice behind him. It was PC Taylor, holding an index file card. ‘I’ve found the name of the neighbourhood watch co-ordinator,’ he panted.
‘Well done.’
‘It’s a Captain Blackthorn, lives more or less opposite Joey Costain’s flat. It could even be the person DI Roscoe spoke to. Sounds like a military type.’
‘Yeah, it’s a possibility.’
‘Anyway, whatever,’ said Taylor, eager to please, ‘I’ll go round now and speak to him, rather than phone. It’d be better, wouldn’t you think? If he’s in and has any useful information, should I contact you?’
‘Yeah. I’m going home now. My number’s on the board in communications. If you think there is anything, give me a call.’
‘OK, sir – if you don’t hear from me, it’s a dead end.’
Taylor sauntered smugly back into the building and went up to the CID office, humming to himself. The office was empty and he helped himself to a set of car keys on the rack by the door. He thought it would be more discreet to go and see Captain whatever-his-name-was in a plain car. It would draw less attention than a bright marked one. PC Taylor did not really like drawing attention to himself.
No one saw him take the keys or leave the station.
Five minutes later, in South Shore, he pulled up away from a street light, got out of the car and left his hat inside it.
The house in which Captain Blackthorn lived was divided into a number of good-quality flats, unlike most of the others in the area which were nothing more then glorified bedsits. Taylor pressed the door bell and kept his thumb on it.
‘Who’s that for goodness sake?’ a sleepy voice said groggily.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ Taylor said into the intercom. ‘I’m PC Taylor from Blackpool police station. Can I speak to you on an urgent matter, please? I really do apologise, but it is extremely urgent.’
‘Yes, yes, suppose so.’
The buzzer release sounded. Taylor stepped into the building.
Captain Blackthorn was dressed in a thick, mustard-coloured dressing gown over a pair of flannelette pyjamas. His feet were slotted into a pair of zip-up slippers. He came out of the small kitchen bearing two mugs of tea, one of which he handed to PC Taylor, whose leather-gloved hand took it and aligned it on the exact edge of the coffee table.
‘As I say, I don’t mind being disturbed at all. Gives one’s life a sort of purpose. All part of the responsibility, eh what?’ He snorted and sipped his tea. ‘Ahh, that’s good. You not drinking?’
‘I’ll just let it cool.’
The captain cradled his mug between the palms of his hands. ‘Anyway, yes, it was me who spoke to your detective inspector – nice woman. Is there some kind of problem?’
‘There is, actually,’ Taylor said. ‘She’s gone missing and we’re very worried about her. Obviously we’re trying to trace her movements. It’s possible you were one of the last persons to speak to her.’
‘Oh, I say, you don’t think that I . . .?’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’
‘Thank goodness for that.’
‘Could you tell me what exactly you said to her?’
The captain accompanied Taylor to the door of the flat and let him out.
‘You’ve been very, very helpful, sir.’
‘I do hope she is all right.’ The captain was very concerned.
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ Taylor reassured him. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘Not a problem, not a problem.’
‘Good night.’
The captain closed his flat door. Taylor walked down the dark hallway to the front door of the building.
David Gill emerged from the shadows.
He had been curious as to how Roscoe had found him. He had not asked her yet, had not had the time for a long, loving chat. That would come. But now he knew. A nosy neighbour. A man with nothing better to do with his life except sit by a window, watching, making notes on other people’s comings and goings. Prying into the private lives of others. The sad fucking bastard. Gill approached the front door of the captain’s flat and tapped on it. As expected, he opened up immediately.
‘Sorry about this,’ Gill said. His left hand shot out and grabbed the captain by the throat. He barged in, forcing the old man down the short hallway, kicking the flat door closed behind him.
The knife in his right hand curved upwards, plunging deep into the captain’s chest, under the ribcage and up into the old man’s already weak heart. He drove the blade in harder, hard, hard, twisted, pushed more, twisted, withdrew and let the captain fall. He was already dead. The frail body crimped to the floor.
Even though Gill knew he was dead, this did not prevent him kneeling down next to him and repeatedly stabbing and slashing the body in a frenzy of anger.
‘No one,’ slash, stab, ‘no one – tells on me,’ stab, ‘no one gets away with it you silly – fucking – idiot – mad, old cunt!’ Stab, stab, stab. ‘Now you try to finger me.’
Jane Roscoe thought she was going to suffocate. Gill had wrapped the parcel tape tightly around her head and face in his anger at her screaming. It had gone round and round, covering her nose and mouth, leaving the smallest of slits through which she could breathe.
She lay there. In his lair. That was how she had come to know it. What, in her mind, she called this living tomb in which he kept her. A lair.
She lay there, trying to control her breathing, to keep her heart rate down, to stay in control. She knew that inner control was the only way in which this ordeal could be survived. She had to control herself and then she had to control him, even if it meant subjugating herself to his will. If he wanted to rape her, fine, let him do it. Anything to survive. Unfortunately she didn’t think he wanted sexual domination.
Her mind wandered uncontrollably. She thought of her husband and her failing marriage and wanted to cry. She had been so unfair to the man. Was there anything that could be salvaged? Lying in this cold place she realised she’d had plenty of opportunity to put things right, to make an effort, and had never done a thing. She had allowed them to drift apart. He had a responsibility too, but the biggest part of the blame was on her shoulders. Why had she let it go? Maybe love had fizzled out. Passion certainly had. No fire any more, but wasn’t that the way of marriage?
And Henry Christie? What of him? The first man in years who had got under her skin. One whom she had wanted to hate but who, instead, had made her feel something she hadn’t felt for years. The only man who could send a shiver down to her sex . . . she had to force herself to stop thinking like this and start thinking about how to get out of here alive. Then you can start making life choices.
She listened to her surroundings for some clue. Nothing seemed to make sense. Was it day or night? If she could only remember what had happened, but all she could bring to mind was knocking on David Gill’s door, it being opened by a guy in a motorcycle helmet then – zap! – a huge jolt of something against her chest, the blackness of unconsciousness then awakening here, wherever here was.
Footsteps. A door opened.
He was back. Gill had returned to his lair.
Twenty-One
The detective inspector from Cheshire was better than his word. A police motorcyclist dropped a thick file off at the front office at Blackpool police station with Henry Christie’s name on it at 7 a.m. It was in Henry’s hands five minutes later because, try as he might, he hadn’t been able to sleep. He had dropped off for about an hour at 5 a.m., but awoken with a start at 6.15 when one of Fiona’s patients started howling down below.
The police station was hectic. Seven was the turn-around time for officers working on the conference.
Henry collected the package from the front desk and gravitated to Jane Roscoe’s office which, not long ago, had been his own. Not much had changed in it. His own personal belo
ngings and mementoes had been replaced by Roscoe’s. Everything else was as it had been. He eased himself behind the familiar desk – under which he had found Jane Roscoe searching the other night with her bottom swaying provocatively in the air, trying to reach a piece of paper. Briefly, the memory made him smile.
He ripped open the package from Cheshire, while thinking that the DI down there must have been another early riser. He shuffled the contents out.
‘Graveson: Lucinda and Thomas. Murder’ the file was headed.
Inside were several bound books of crime-scene photographs which Henry flicked through, then put to one side. He picked up the written materials and started to scan them. He had read many murder files. On some murders he had worked specifically in the capacity of statement reader, dedicated solely to reading and rereading statements for clues, connections, leads and discrepancies. He could read a murder file quickly and be certain at the end of it he knew as much about it as anybody.
There were many statements to go through here.
With a note pad by his side, pencil in hand, he started.
Three-quarters of an hour later he picked up the crime-scene photos again. Shots of the Graveson house in Wilmslow, Cheshire, a very different part of the world than South Shore, Blackpool. This time he looked closely at every picture. When he had finished he knew he had something, but did not know what. It was something from the photos. Something that did not quite gel properly.
At 8 a.m. he did not have the answer. He got on the phone to Cheshire and spoke to the DI again.
As soon as Donaldson and Makin arrived, Henry hustled them down to the garage without any explanation and hurried them into a plain, traffic enforcement car. It was a Vauxhall Omega, the fastest and best car he could blag at short notice with the promise to the traffic sergeant that, honestly, he would bring it back in one piece.
He almost had his first accident speeding out of the garage doors, but managed to avoid the bread delivery van.
‘Oops,’ he said, giving the white-faced van driver an apologetic wave.
‘Oops, my ass,’ Donaldson growled, taking his hands slowly away from his face. ‘Is it safe to look now, you reckless son of a bitch?’
‘Sorry,’ Henry said, jamming the brakes on at the first junction, then accelerating left to put the car into a slot in the early morning traffic which did not look wide enough for a mini. ‘Here, have a look at this.’ He picked up the envelope from his lap and tossed it across to Donaldson. ‘The murder of Louise Graveson and her husband.’
Donaldson picked it out of the footwell and extracted the contents. As he read each statement he passed it over his shoulder to Makin in the back seat.
Henry pushed the car hard and unlike most police cars it revelled in it. He enjoyed the experience, whizzing past every other car on the motorway and not caring whether or not he was caught on a speed camera. This was a business trip. The firm would have to write off any fixed penalties that came his way. He motored along the M55, then south on the M6, through Lancashire and down into Cheshire.
His two partners were silent as they ingested details of the double murder, each giving the occasional exclamation of horror, particularly when they got to the crime-scene photos, which were appalling in their depiction of the violence suffered by the victims.
‘Poor people,’ Makin said sympathetically. ‘What a way to die.’
She handed the file back to Donaldson who repackaged it neatly into the envelope.
‘Well?’ Henry said. He had stayed quiet while they had read the file. He glanced at Donaldson, then quickly over his shoulder at Makin.
‘Well what?’ she asked. ‘Looks like it could be the same offender.’
‘Anything else strike you?’
‘She could’ve been a target for right-wing extremists,’ Donaldson suggested. ‘Looking at her line of work – bit OTT, though.’
‘But a possibility,’ Henry said. ‘Anything else?’
They each put forward several thoughts, none of which seemed to satisfy Henry. Eventually Donaldson became irritated. ‘Look, buddy. I think you’d better tell us what you’re thinking, because it’s darned obvious something has hit a note with you and neither of us two idiots seem capable of seeing it.’ He leaned across to Henry. ‘So tell us, put us out of our misery, or I’ll smash your face in, one hundred miles an hour or not.’
Henry deflated visibly.
‘I’m not sure,’ he said hesitantly. ‘There’s something there, but I can’t quite see what it is – sorry,’ his voice was pathetic. ‘That’s why we’re going to visit the scene, see if I – we – can pull that “something” out of the ether.’
With the parcel tape over her eyes Roscoe could not see him, but she knew he was there. Nor could she speak to him, the tape having been wrapped under her jaw and over her head as well as across her mouth, sealing her lips, making her jaw immovable.
He had said nothing. He’d come into the room and remained silent.
Roscoe’s whole body was rigid with terror and she began to feel the loss of control again, this time down in her bladder and bowels. She had managed to hold on for all this time – somehow – but it would be impossible to do so for much longer.
She tried to speak. The sound was trapped at the back of her throat.
‘Are you trying to make contact?’ Gill asked brightly.
She nodded.
‘If I take the tape off your mouth, you will not scream, do you understand?’
She nodded again.
‘If you do, I’ll just kill you, OK?’
She could sense him moving nearer. She could smell him and then she felt him touching her face, trying to find an end of the tape.
‘I’ve wrapped you up too well.’ He laughed. ‘I’m going to have to cut a hole where your mouth is. At least where I think your mouth is. If I get it wrong, you’ll have two mouths. Then I’d have a real problem shutting you up, wouldn’t I?’
She felt a sharp point press onto her face. The tip of a knife. He jabbed it deliberately into her cheek.
‘Is your mouth here?’
She flinched.
‘Or is it here?’ He prodded her forehead with the instrument. ‘Or here?’ The knife jabbed the top of her head. ‘Or here?’ She sensed Gill moving, but this time he did not press the blade into her for a few moments. She waited, trying to anticipate whereabouts on her head it would be pressed next. Then jumped when she felt a sharp jab on her inner thigh and he dragged the knife upwards towards her vagina. Just then it did not matter any more because the abject fear she was experiencing made inner control impossible.
‘Oh, you fuckin’ bitch,’ Gill cried. ‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’ Fuckin’ women! Fuckin’ bitches. I hate you all.’
This was it. Roscoe knew she was going to die. She waited for the blade to pierce her. Where would it enter her body? What would it feel like?
Gill placed the tip of the blade under her chin and pressed.
‘We appreciate this,’ Henry Christie said to DI Harrison who was waiting outside the Graveson house where the double murder had taken place.
‘Not a problem. We need to work together on this one,’ the DI said.
Henry introduced Donaldson and Makin, then they all turned and walked up the driveway to the house.
‘As a murder scene, we’ve finished with it, handed it back to the family and everything, but I know they haven’t been able to touch the place. Nothing’s been moved since we withdrew, I know that for a fact. The family are devastated and can’t bring themselves to do anything with the house,’ Harrison explained.
‘Understandable,’ Makin said.
‘And fortunate,’ Henry said, ‘for us, that is.’
At the front door the DI asked Henry, ‘What do you expect to find here, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Henry shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
No house which had been the scene of such tragedy could ever be the same again. The nature of what had taken place had se
eped into the very fabric of the building and destroyed what was once a happy and loving environment. Now ghosts drifted around, demanding justice. Not revenge, but justice. And until it was achieved there could be no rest for them.
Henry walked around the house alone. From the kitchen where the husband had been murdered, into the lounge, then up the stairs to the bathroom where Louise Graveson had been butchered. Dried blood was everywhere. It was a mess.
He closed his eyes and wished both dead people peace, and made a vow to them, there and then, that he would do his best to find that justice for them. When he opened his eyes, the DI Harrison came into the bathroom.
‘Not pretty,’ he commented. ‘We’ve offered to get cleaners in for them, but the family have refused.’
Henry thought he understood why. ‘As gruesome as it is, it gives them some sort of lifeline to their loved ones. To get it cleaned up, wash the blood away, would be like washing their memories away.’
‘I suppose so.’ The DI shrugged. ‘So – found what you’re looking for?’
C’mon Henry, time to get operating, he told himself. ‘Let’s go back downstairs,’ he said, ‘I think it’s there, but I’m not sure.’
Makin and Donaldson were in the living room.
Henry stood by the hi-fi, a modern Bang and Olufsen contraption which would have looked more at home in an operating theatre. ‘The cleaning lady found the bodies, yeah?’ Nods all round. ‘She doesn’t mention any music playing in her statement. I think she needs asking if there was any.’ Henry was musing out loud. ‘She came in the front door and though her statement doesn’t say it, I’ll bet she came into the lounge before she found the husband in the kitchen.’ He looked at Harrison. ‘You say this crime scene hasn’t been touched, nothing been moved?’
