Even though he had been ordered not to hand out overtime, he did so. By the end of the first month each man had worked in excess of eighty hours, totalling over eight hundred hours which had to be paid from somewhere.
And yet the investigation seemed to get nowhere.
He was losing all control of it; couldn’t keep his mind on it. He regularly had to confront a sea of blank faces as detectives under his direction floundered and turned to him for inspiration — inspiration which never came.
The pressure grew on him from all sides.
Family — work; wife — daughters; Detective Constables — Detective Chief Superintendent; wife — lover.
All breathing down his sweaty neck.
He did not know which way to wriggle for the best.
Yet he thought he had a bolt-hole of sanity to escape to, or so he believed.
He eventually left home after a particularly fraught period with Kate when, at the end of it, he confessed everything. She took it all with great dignity and poise. She cried, of course. She was devastated. Her life had suddenly crumbled around her, although if she were ruthlessly honest with herself, she had seen it coming but had avoided it.
She forgave him immediately. She knew that you didn’t just fall out of love with someone, but he couldn’t see that. She held him in her arms that night and rocked him gently as he cried too. But he found he could not stay. His betrayal had been too great and the cracks it had caused too wide to paper over. And he loved Natalie.
‘ We can’t ever go back to what it was,’ he remembered telling Kate.
‘ But we can go forwards,’ she insisted.
He was having none of that. His foolish stubborn streak could not be shaken.
He moved in with Natalie.
Bliss. Initially.
Then the nightmares started again as the stress of his marriage bust-up and the disintegration of the murder investigation crept clammily on to and all over him.
He woke up with a start, sweat pouring down him.
He’d seen the faces again. Those children clawing at the windows. Begging him for help. Fish caught in a bowl. Yet he couldn’t help them. He had been powerless and they had died.
There was something new, too.
The head of that drugs dealer exploding all over his chest. Brain and snot and blood. The way his head had been distorted before finally bursting open. Frame by frame, in slow motion.
Then Ralphie’s execution by the wall. Then that breathless chase down Blackpool Front, his clothing splattered with blood.
The woman taking the bullet meant for him.
Pointing that shaking gun at Hinksman — then having to fire it.
In his dream he could see his forefinger curled around the trigger, pulling it. He could see the hammer going backwards, the cylinder slowly revolving and the hammer falling and bang! He had shot someone.
He woke with the sound of the gun going off reverberating around his cranium like thunder.
At first Natalie was wonderful and understanding. She couldn’t do enough for him. Comforted him. Held him. They made ferocious love after that first nightmare and he slept well afterwards, drained of all his strength. It was a black sleep.
After a dozen nightmares the sheen began to wear off for Natalie. She wasn’t so wonderful after all. She grew tired and irritable and told Henry to pull himself together. She began to wonder exactly what she’d taken on here, as though she’d been deceived. A man possessed by demons? He was supposed to be tough. He was a hero, wasn’t he? Not a wimp.
The love-making after the nightmares fizzled out. Instead she turned over and yanked the sheet over her head. He would lie there awake, dreadfully tired, but terrified of sleep.
Then he would get up and tiptoe to the tiny lounge of her flat where he would slide into the warmth of a bottle of whisky — and remain there.
In the end Natalie asked him to leave. She didn’t understand, as it turned out, didn’t want to understand. She had her life to live and didn’t want the burden of a man verging on middle-age, who actually hated going to nightclubs if the truth were known, and who was probably having a nervous breakdown.
He moved into the flat over the vet’s surgery. It was small, cheap, adequate, warm, slightly smelly, furnished.
Here he could indulge himself without infringing on other people’s needs or emotions. Here he began a life clouded by alcohol and cheap sex whilst considering the question — Am I having, or have I had, a nervous breakdown?
Never having had one before, he couldn’t be sure.
When FB called him to his office at Force Headquarters and dismissed him from the murder enquiry, and also told him he was being transferred from RCS back to normal CID duties, Henry broke down.
He cried like a baby in front of FB.
The astounded Detective Chief Superintendent immediately called the Force Welfare Department who dispatched a counsellor to FB’s office. Within minutes she confirmed Henry’s worst suspicions.
‘ You mean I have had a shed collapse?’ he blurted. ‘That’s a relief. I thought I was going barmy.’
Henry was allowed to park outside the Crown Court after his car had been searched for bombs.
After several further searches of his person, he entered the building and settled himself down in the Shire Hall to wait for the trial to begin.
He truly believed he had got over the worst of it. The nightmares were still there occasionally, but they were less of a problem now and much more vague, less real.
All he needed to do was get his drinking under control and then his sexual excess — not necessarily in that order — and maybe, just maybe, he could regain control of his life and get back with his wife and girls, whom he missed desperately.
He knew that the trial would be the first test of his mental state.
Here, he would find out if all those ghosts and devils he believed were being laid to rest would get resurrected to haunt him when he stood up to give evidence and relive those experiences once again.
Chapter Eighteen
Agent Eamon Ritter had made a conscious, considered decision.
He was going to kill Sue Mather.
His life had become intolerable since she had seen him down at Bayside. He kept bumping into her, or so it seemed to him, both in the FBI building and out of it. Every time he turned a corner or came out of a door, she was there. Fat and unmistakable.
Too many times for it to be a coincidence.
She was definitely following him, of that he was in no doubt. And she knew, or at least suspected, he was on the take.
Yet why hadn’t she done anything about it? Over six months had passed since Bayside. Perhaps she was tormenting him, toying with him. Then when she was good and ready, she would either bubble him or go for a piece of the action.
He’d actually considered approaching her and offering money, but he soon put that out of his mind. Just supposing she was straight? He would have played right into her hands.
No, he decided to stick at the viewpoint that she was upright and honest and what she was doing was building up a file of evidence against him before moving in for the kill. Bitch.
He sat at his desk in his office, rocking back and forth, pursing his lips as he considered his position.
There was no way he was going to give up Corelli’s money. He was tied to it.
