man who had had his brains shot out right in front of him.
He took a deep breath, pulled himself together and got to work — directing, delegating, informing those who had to be told, going into automatic crime-scene management. He was aware, again, that his acting rank meant that everyone was waiting for him and that as senior detective on the scene, he was in charge. It gave him a slight feeling of excitement and, if he’d been questioned about it, he would have admitted enjoying it. The role, that is. Not this particular situation.
Once everything was underway, he went next door to where Annie was being comforted by a policewoman and a neighbour. A GP had administered some calming drugs to her, with a prescription for more. The doctor was just leaving when Henry arrived.
He sat down next to Annie on the edge of the settee. Luton’s widow stared blankly ahead, her fingers twisted into tight fists. A mug of tea, untouched, was on the coffee table.
‘ Annie,’ he said softly. He placed an arm around her shoulder. She jumped as if she’d been pinched, looked at Henry and realised who he was. She turned into him, gripping him, burying her head into his chest. She released a wail-cum-scream which shook her whole being from head to toe and held on tighter to Henry as the tears began to pour out. Henry held on, too, making reassuring noises, stroking her hair and trying not to cry himself.
He spent much of the morning with her, not wishing to delegate this particular unenviable task to anyone else. Not that he was a great one for dealing with grief. Actually he was very poor at it.
In over six hours’ gentle coaxing, Annie did not say anything which was of any use to Henry. She was a bubbling wreck, unable to string two words together without bursting into tears. Henry did not push. That would have been counter-productive. By the same token it meant the police were getting nowhere at a fast rate of knots. And Annie was the only witness they had at that moment in time.
Whilst Henry was grappling with the problem of having to draw information out from a distressed witness, another problem which he had wrongly assumed might have gone away reared its head in the form of an ugly skinhead called Shane Mulcahy.
Since his discharge from hospital, Shane had spent the last remnants of his and his girlfriend’s dole money on a concoction of drink, drugs and a Chinese takeaway — this despite her protestations that they needed the money to buy food for them and the baby. He’d simply smacked her open-handed across the face, then given her a kick up the arse when she hit the floor. ‘Don’t fuckin’ tell me how to spend our money.’
For fourteen hours he had been in a state of inebriation coupled with the combined whizz-bang effect of amphets and the monosodium glutamate in the sweet-and-sour chicken. ‘Near total bliss’ would have been Shane’s poetic attempt to describe his condition; however, there was little that was poetic about Shane and he chose to describe it as, ‘Great, been outta my fuckin’ ‘ead.’
He awoke face down on the bare floorboards of the bedsit he shared with Jodie Flew and their offspring. His nose was pressed against the hard wood with dribble having collected in a pool around his cheeks. He wiped his face as he pushed himself into a sitting position. He felt rougher than a bear’s arse — a comparison he often used because it suited his sense of humour — and in his mouth there was a taste he could not quite place: somewhere between vomit and sugar. A pain bolted across his head behind his eyes, like a surge of electricity between two electrodes. He swore.
It did not occur to him to wonder why he was on the floor. It was a position he often awoke to.
Jodie was asleep on the mattress.
The baby gurgled happily in a cot in the corner of the room. Shane heard it fart.
He tried to stand up. When he moved he winced. His lower abdomen felt as though a scalpel had been left in by the surgeon. But in comparison to the previous day, the pain was ebbing.
He dressed himself in the jeans he’d worn for the last two months — he was proud of their unwashed state — found a crumpled T-shirt underneath the TV set and put his denim jacket and stolen Doc Marten boots on. Ready for the day ahead. He left the meagre living accommodation without bothering to disturb Jodie or the baby. He didn’t really want to have anything to do with either of them.
Next stop was his solicitor.
The stop after that was Blackpool Central police station.
It was busy at the enquiry desk. Lots of press and TV people seemed to have camped out there, covering the spectacular crime wave which was coursing through Blackpool that week.
Shane and his legal representative were kept waiting for twenty minutes. The skinhead became increasingly agitated. When at last the Civilian Public Enquiry assistant beckoned to him, he stalked across, leaned on the counter and put his aggressive face right up to hers. His red-raw eyes were wide and menacing, his features distorted into a snarl, examples of which had been captured by media photographs of skinheads many, many times over the years. ‘I want to make a complaint of assault against the police, luv,’ he said.
She recoiled in disgust from his pungent breath and body odour and the threat of violence. ‘I’ll get the Duty Inspector,’ she said. Her nose was screwed up because there was a bad smell under it.
‘ So that leaves Munrow,’ Conroy said. ‘I mean, what’s the fucking judicial system coming to these days? That bastard got nineteen years, f’fuck’s sake. Shouldn’t nineteen mean nineteen? The guy is a menace to society — and that’s a quote direct from the judge himself.’
‘ That’s what you paid him to say,’ interjected McNamara with a laugh. He was feeling better now that some action was going to be taken on his problem.
‘ Yeah, he did a good job, God rest his soul. Pity we didn’t have any influence on the prison board,’ whined Conroy. ‘So,’ he said, turning to Morton, ‘come on, Mister Problem-solver Extraordinaire — put your mind to this one.’
‘ He either needs to be brought into the fold, rather like Henry Christie, or possibly paid off — or eliminated,’ Morton responded, counting his fingers as he ticked off the choices.
‘ Well, I can’t talk to the man. He makes me wanna stick an iron bar around his head as soon as I see him, so the first one’s out of the question,’ Conroy replied, using his own fingers. ‘Secondly I don’t want to pay him one single chuffin’ cent, so you can forget that one.’ He held up three fingers. ‘I like the sound of the third option — kill the cunt.’
‘ But you’ve already said you haven’t got anyone capable of going up against him,’ McNamara pointed out.
‘ Doesn’t mean I don’t want the bastard rotting in hell,’ Conroy said sullenly.
Silence descended on the room and the three men watched each other thinking.
‘ He does need to be sorted,’ Morton said. ‘One way or the other, for the sake of credibility. No one’s going to do business with us if we can’t keep our house in order.’
They fell silent again.
McNamara lit another cigar. Morton poured a coffee. Conroy bit his nails and played with his pony tail.
‘ How about a professional?’ suggested McNamara.
‘ Be just my luck to hire an undercover cop. To be honest with you, boys, I don’t actually know any professionals, believe it or not. I know people you can pay as little as five hundred dabs to. They’re ten a penny in Salford, and any nigger in Moss Side’ll have a crack — but they’re all so fuckin’ unreliable. Munrow would probably drop them first. The only person I know who could do it properly, if he was wound up enough, would be John Rider. But he doesn’t want to get involved. He’s gone completely cuckoo. In his day I would’ve put him on a par with Munrow, maybe above for being a violent sod. Now he’s a bit of a wreck, really.’
‘ He saved your life,’ McNamara said.
‘ True, true.’
‘ If he had a reason to kill Munrow, do you think he would?’ Morton asked.
‘ What d’you mean?’ Conroy looked puzzled.
‘ What I’m saying is — give him a reason and he might just do the job for you. But give him a reason. Quick.’
‘ This is getting to be Nightmare City,’ said Detective Chief Superintendent Fanshaw-Bayley. He and Henry were walking down the rear yard at Blackpool police station. ‘I appreciate you’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment, Henry, but you need to pull out the stops and solve this one PDQ. The Chief Constable is going berserk.
