‘ Well now, how are you feeling, young man?’ the consultant asked, checking the notes.
‘ How would you fucking well feel if you’d had one of your bollocks kicked off?’
‘ Not terribly well, I imagine. Having said that, I’d probably be much less of a pain in the arse to everyone.’
Shane sneered up at him, folded his arms and looked away, his lips muttering silently, his face in a sulk.
‘ Let’s have a look then.’
A nurse drew the curtains around the bed, pulled back the bedclothes and removed the dressing.
‘ Like what you see?’ Shane sniggered, trying to cover his embarrassment in a show of bravado.
The nurse took a deep breath, looked coldly at him and said, ‘I don’t like anything about you.’
‘ Twat,’ he hissed.
The consultant bent over and inspected the shaved and swollen genital area. He probed around more harshly than necessary. Shane let out a yelp of pain and a tear formed in his eye.
‘ Sorry,’ said the consultant.
‘ Like fuck you are.’
‘ You’re fit to go. Make an appointment at Out Patients for Friday. A couple of weeks and you’ll be as right as rain. It won’t affect your manly functions in any way.’
‘ Good. An’ I want you to be a witness against the cops for me. I’ll be seein’ me solicitor as soon as I get out of here and I’m gonna sue those bastards for every penny they’ve got.’
‘ I shall do what I have to,’ the consultant said. He wrote something on the notes and hung them back over the end of the bed. ‘Though I deplore what happened to you, I would make the observation that you probably deserved what you got.’
At 10.30 a.m. they were in an unmarked CID car heading east out of Blackpool along the M55. Henry was driving; Lucy Crane was passenger. ‘What do we know about this guy?’ Henry asked.
He actually knew as much as Lucy, having discussed the man at length in the bar the night before, but wanted to hear it all again.
Lucy riffled through the papers on her knees and extracted a photocopied entry from Who’ s Who. She read out a few salient points, ad-libbing occasionally, about Sir Harry McNamara, multi-millionaire businessman.
‘ Educated Lancaster Grammar,’ she was saying, ‘then Oxford… blah blah… owns a big transport company, worldwide business… went into politics mid-80s… became an MP in ‘83, but retired in ‘87 to pursue his business interests. Supposedly donated lots of money to the Tories and is a good friend of the former Prime Minister, who visits him privately from time to time. Lives in Lancashire. Has homes in London and the Channel Islands.’
‘ Rich bastard in other words,’ commented Henry. ‘Not that I’m envious, you understand.’
‘ Nor me.’ She turned up some newspaper cuttings and skimmed through them. ‘Second wife an ex-model… been linked with a couple of glamour pusses — and prostitutes. Weathered a storm a couple of years back linking him with a hooker. Wife stood by him and they declared their undying love for each other… how touching… arrested in Blackburn last year for kerb crawling and drink driving.’ The last piece of information came from police reports.
‘ The Marie Cullen connection… makes you wonder,’ sighed Henry.
‘ Doesn’t make him a killer,’ Lucy warned him.
‘ Makes him a good starting point.’
They came off the M6 and headed towards Blackburn.
After having kicked it around the office for a while, Henry and Lucy had decided on the direct approach, to treat McNamara as if he was nobody special, just another member of the public who knew the murdered girl.
Henry had considered making an appointment to see him, but chose not to. Like all witnesses, he wanted to catch him unprepared. Judging by what little he knew of the man, the element of surprise would probably be short- lived anyway. McNamara was no one’s fool and he would recover quickly — in seconds, probably. Henry wanted to savour that tiny stretch of time before McNamara became the overbearing, obnoxious sod he apparently was when dealing with ‘lesser’ people.
Prior to setting off Henry had phoned Blackburn police and by pure luck managed to speak to the officer in the plain-clothes department who had arrested McNamara.
The officer recalled the incident vividly.
McNamara had been one of the most difficult prisoners he had ever dealt with. He had demanded to speak to the Chief Constable, belittled the officer, threatened legal action and refused to be searched. He stalled, demanded every right — which he got — spoke to some high-flying Manchester solicitor who gave him ‘certain advice’. Then he played the system. He claimed himself to be unable to give a specimen of breath because of a lung infection, unable to give blood because of a medically documented fear of needles and unable to give a specimen of urine because of a bladder infection. He vehemently denied the kerb crawling, stating he was having car trouble.
Eventually he was charged and bailed with both offences.
In court he was represented by a barrister who specialised in drink driving legislation; he produced two doctors who testified as to his medical conditions and a motor mechanic who swore blind that McNamara’s Bentley was having mechanical problems that night — something to do with a fuel-line blockage.
Rent-a-witness.
The charges were dismissed by Magistrates who did not believe a word but had no choice other than to accept the expert opinions.
McNamara then instituted civil proceedings against the police for a variety of matters, ranging from malicious prosecution to assault and a myriad of other things. As civil claims tend to, it was still going on.
‘ All in all,’ the officer admitted to Henry, ‘it amounts to the fact he’s got money, power and influence. If you’re dealing with him for anything, watch out. He’s a slippery sod and he bears grudges.’
Henry thanked the officer. He and Lucy then began their trek across the county, intending to combine an on- spec visit to McNamara with a few enquiries around Blackburn about the dead girl.
They skirted Blackburn on the arterial road. Henry picked up the B6232 Grane Road, which would take them up onto the moors.
Five minutes later they pulled into the long driveway which led up to McNamara’s farmhouse. Henry said to Lucy, ‘Just so you know, I’m dropping the word 'Acting' when I introduce myself. Plain “Detective Inspector” rolls off the tongue better and he has no reason to know I’m really just a Sergeant.’
‘ OK,’ she smiled. ‘Delusions of grandeur, maybe, but OK.’
The bulky figure of Sir Harry McNamara, former MP for the South Blackburn and Darwen constituency, stood thoughtfully at the conservatory doors of his restored farmhouse on the moors overlooking Blackburn. It was another clear winter’s day, no cloud or mist, and he could see the Lancashire coastline some forty miles to the west and the little blip that was Blackpool Tower.
Usually days like these made him appreciate what a wonderful part of the country he lived in, with scenery to rival anywhere else in Britain, indeed the world. And he had seen much of both.
He placed the expensive, bulbous cigar between his fat lips and took a long draw, blowing the resultant smoke out into the atmosphere where it wisped away.
Today, however, he was not considering the countryside. He was thinking deeply about the conversation he’d had with a police Chief Inspector from Blackburn who had earwigged a phone conversation between the cop who arrested him last year and some detective from Blackpool. The police in Blackpool, it would appear, were investigating the murder of a prostitute and McNamara’s name had cropped up.
He stepped out of the conservatory and walked across the patio to the edge of the lawn. Even though the grass had not been mown since the onset of cold weather, it looked well. He dropped the cigar butt onto it and crushed it to death with the sole of his shoe.
Philippa, his second wife, who was twenty-two years younger than him at thirty-five, appeared in the conservatory. She had picked up his mood following the phone call and — as other minions did (and she was under no illusion that she was anything more than just another minion) — had withdrawn to a safe distance. She was wary of her husband’s temper, which could be violent at times. This time, however, there was something different in the air. He was angry, that much was obvious, but there was fear there too.
‘ Harry,’ she called sweetly, ‘can I get you anything?’
