shuffled through the mountain of paperwork and scanned the array of yellow post-it stickers which desecrated his desk top. There was nothing that couldn’t wait.
Yawning, stretching, he stood up to go. The phone rang shrilly.
It was Eric Taylor, the Custody Sergeant.
‘ Glad I caught you, Henry. Thought I’d better let you know: that lad, the one with the flick-knife?’
‘ Shane Mulcahy,’ said Henry.
‘ You really should’ve written something on the custody record, like I told you to.’
Henry mouthed a swearword. An empty, achy feeling spread through his stomach. He hadn’t written anything in the record because he’d been so eager to get out to the robbery; it had completely slipped his mind. ‘Problem?’ he asked cautiously, knowing there would be, otherwise Taylor wouldn’t be phoning.
‘ You could say that. We had to get an ambulance out to take him to hospital- and he’s still there. Looks like he might have to have a testicle removed. If they can find it, that is. Apparently it’s somewhere up in his throat.’ Taylor chuckled.
Henry groaned. He slumped back into his chair, closed his eyes despairingly and slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.
‘ And there’s nothing on the custody record which covers what happened between you and him. I booked him out into your care so you could document him, then came along twenty minutes later to see him squirming on the floor, clutching his bollocks. And you gave me that knife and that’s all I know. I’ve had to write down what I saw and it doesn’t look good, Henry. Sorry.’
‘ Couldn’t you have left a line or two for me to write something?’
‘ Yeah, right, Henry. You know damn well I couldn’t do that. I asked you to write something and you didn’t. Now he’s in hospital with a double Adam’s apple. If he makes a complaint — and he’s just the sort of little shit to do so — you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Sorry, pal.’
Jack Daniel’s did not help Henry to get to sleep. His mind kept spinning from the sight of all that death, right round to his complete stupidity in not carrying out such a fundamental task as writing up an entry in a custody record. Bread and butter stuff. It was so easy not to do it, and detectives had a poor history where custody records were concerned. They were seen as something that got in the way of detection, some bureaucratic tool to be treated with contempt. But not by Henry Christie. Normally so diligent, careful… professional. He fully understood the possible legal ramifications of not being meticulous and recording everything. And he always stressed the importance of custody records to his detectives. They protected both officer and prisoner.
He tried to make excuses for himself.
He’d been busy. He was turning out to a multiple killing.
But if he were honest and critical, they were thin, paltry excuses.
Now he faced the possibility of an assault complaint, followed by a tedious investigation and maybe — he grimaced at the thought — a court appearance facing a criminal charge.
All because he hadn’t covered himself.
The thought appalled him, but it was the worst case scenario, he assured himself. He’d be very unlucky if it came to that.
His wife Kate turned over and draped an arm across his chest.
She smelled wonderful, having dabbed herself sparingly with Allure by Chanel after her bath. He stroked her arm with the tips of his fingers. She smiled and uttered a sigh of pleasure. She loved to be stroked. Like a cat.
‘ I forgot to tell you,’ she murmured dreamily. ‘We won ten pounds on the lottery.’
‘ Aren’t we the lucky ones?’
He purged all thoughts of death and prosecution from his mind, snuggled down into the bed, took gentle hold of Kate and felt himself harden against her belly.
Chapter Three
At ten o’clock the following morning, Sunday, John Rider emerged unsteadily through the front door of his basement flat situated in the South Shore area of Blackpool.
He walked stiffly up the steps to pavement level, then turned and surveyed the building which towered above his flat.
In its better days it had been an hotel, but over the past thirty years had undergone a series of changes — to guest-house, back to hotel, to private flats, back to guest-house… until in the early 1980s it had been completely abandoned, quickly becoming derelict. By the time Rider saw it advertised for sale, deterioration through damp and vandalism had set in and the building was nothing more than a shell. He bought it for almost nothing and set about refurbishment with as little outlay as possible. He turned it into a complex of twelve tiny bedsits and, after getting a Fire amp; Safety certificate, filled the rooms with unemployed people drawing dole who needed accommodation and breakfasts, but who always paid the rent. Or to be exact, had the rent paid for them by the Department of Social Security.
So, in colloquial parlance, the newest metamorphosis of the building was a ‘DSS doss-house’.
This had marked the beginning of a new and lucrative career for Rider, who had subsequently bought three similar properties and converted them into little gold mines.
Though he had done well out of the business, the lifestyle was nowhere near as exciting as the one he used to have. But it was safe and divorced from his past. The most difficult things he had to deal with these days were the damage to his property, caused usually during drunken squabbles between his tenants, or drug-taking by the same people — a pastime he abhorred and clamped down on firmly, sometimes violently.
Looking up at his property that morning he was pleased to see that there didn’t seem to be any windows broken, the usual for Saturday night.
Glad about this, Rider walked across to the only remnant he possessed of his previous life. It was a maroon- coloured Jaguar XJ12, bought new in 1976. A real gangster’s car which had seen much better days.
He and the car complemented each other. Both were slightly tatty, worn at the edges — ravaged, even — with a rather cynical air about them and an aura of aloofness which had a sinister undertone of danger and power.
And both of them smoked and drank too much and took a long time to get going first thing in the morning.
The engine fired up after a prolonged turn of the ignition. The twelve cylinders rumbled unevenly into life, coughing and spluttering until they caught fire and settled into a steady, burbling rhythm.
Rider let the car warm up for a few minutes. Realising he had forgotten to bring his cigarettes, he slid the ashtray open and poked distastefully through its overflowing contents until he found a dog-end which contained at least one lungful of smoke in it. He lit it with the electric lighter and took a sweet, deep drag.
He pressed the button on the console and the driver’s window creaked open, jamming halfway down as always. He blew out the smoke from inside his chest, flicked the fag-end out onto the pavement and set off.
He drove down onto the Promenade, turned right, heading north. It was one of those clear, crisp January mornings with a fine blue sky, no clouds and a silver sea.
The Promenade was quiet. A few grimy locals meandered around. Traffic was light. A council truck lumbered down the inner promenade, emptying dog-shit bins.
He turned off at Talbot Square and headed inland, picking up the signs for the zoo, where he’d arranged to meet Conroy.
It was actually Conroy who wanted the meet. He who suggested the zoo. More informal, more natural and convivial, he’d said. And he hadn’t been to a zoo since he was a kid.
Rider, out of curiosity more than anything, had agreed.
It had been a long time since he’d seen Conroy and although he’d no wish to re-open old wounds, he was intrigued.
He wondered exactly how ‘convivial’ the man would be. To the best of his memory, conviviality was not one of Ronnie Conroy’s strongest points.
