so far gone that he couldn’t appreciate what a wonderful body she had and he was already regretting not completing the act.
‘ Is it me?’ she demanded. ‘Am I not good enough for you?’
‘ No, it’s not you. I mean — oh damn! You’re great, brilliant. I couldn’t think of anything better than making love to you. God, it’s me. Definitely me.’
He was slightly off-balance, hopping about on one foot whilst pulling a trainer on.
The hard, open-handed, perfectly-aimed slap which sent him winging across the room, crashing into the cabinets, caught him completely by surprise. It jarred everything that was hurting and made the punch Anderson had laid on him pale by comparison.’
‘ Jesus,’ he yelped, in a pathetic heap on the floor. ‘There was no need for that.’
Still naked, quivering with resentment, she stood over him, her eyes ablaze.
‘ I’ll tell you one thing you are right about, Henry fucking Christie, you out-and-out bastard. It has all gone horribly wrong. For you, that is.’
She stooped down, picked up her clothes and strutted into the other office to get dressed.
They met, as ever, at the Country Club, all arriving at different times. This, however, was purely a business meeting and no time was spent in the pool. They had use of a small conference room which had been swept for listening devices prior to their arrival.
Drinks and sandwiches were laid on. All very civilised.
Morton. McNamara. Conroy.
The three men who had met many years before, when each had been at the beginning of their chosen career, and since then their lives and fates had intertwined.
Morton and Conroy went back to 1960s Manchester. They had met when Morton had been a Salford city beat bobby and Conroy was running a couple of streetwalkers and a very iffy protection racket on a few Pakistani shopkeepers. Each assisted the other to mutual benefit. Morton made things easy for Conroy by feeding him information about police activities which might impinge on his business interests; in return Conroy offered up one or two sacrificial lambs by way of good quality prisoners which enhanced Morton’s professional standing.
Both had prospered.
Conroy grew as a criminal. Morton was promoted as a detective.
Now Morton was close to retirement. At fifty-four he had thirty-five years’ service, having been rotten for thirty-four of them. At his rank he could have stayed until he was sixty, but mid-fifties had always been his aim.
And fifty-five it would be.
When he said goodbye to the job next year he would step into a world of secretly acquired wealth, amassed cautiously over the years, in particular the last ten or so during the life of the NWOCS when he became virtually autonomous, being able to operate how he saw fit. And also Conroy had become much more profitable over these years, mainly due to Morton’s protection.
Now Morton owned a villa in Spain, an apartment in Barbados and a holiday cabin in Eire. The Spanish home came with a pool, Porsche and maid; the Caribbean one with a Mini-moke, the Irish one with a small lough, brimful of trout. All had been bought covertly through third parties.
When he retired he intended to split his time between the three, pretending they were rented if anyone should ask. His life would be financed — on the face of it — from his police pension and savings, and some legitimate stock-market dealings. This, in fact, would only be pin money, the icing on the cake of a career of corruption: his association with Conroy had placed?2.2 million in Channel Island and Cayman Island bank accounts. He reckoned this would provide him with about one hundred and fifty grand a year in interest.
Life would be very sweet.
All he needed to do was see the next twelve months through.
Multi-millionaire Sir Harry McNamara had come into the equation in the 1970s during a shady land deal associated with Conroy, which was fortunately being investigated by Morton who was then on the Fraud Squad. By some wily manoeuvring, Morton prosecuted some of the tiddlers and allowed the fat fish to swim away. Craftily Morton made this appear to be a successful operation through police eyes.
The land deal had been ratified by a certain local councillor called McNamara, as he then was. All three men benefited from the sale of the land which was purchased for an inflated fee by a national company who built a multi-storey car park on it. The spin-off in terms of building contracts were enormous. All from a piece of scrubland that Conroy had bought for next to nothing from an old bloke who needed to have a gun shoved into his mouth before he signed the contract.
From that inauspicious start an empire grew.
Soon afterwards, Conroy started supplying McNamara with women in payment for certain favours. A couple of these women mysteriously disappeared. Conroy asked no questions, but warned McNamara. No more disappeared — until Marie Cullen.
When McNamara became an MP and, for a short time, a big noise in the Foreign Office, it wasn’t long before Conroy urged him to look into the possibilities of dealing in guns. Towards the end of the 1980s Conroy, who had always dabbled in the British underworld scene of arms dealing, had a flourishing trade based on selling arms stolen in America or bought in Eastern Europe to warring African countries. He’d made a real killing selling to Ethiopian warlords. They always seemed to have enough money to buy guns and whisky.
In essence, McNamara used his position of influence whilst in the Foreign Office to bring about arms deals, usually right under the nose of the PM, who had a soft spot for him. There were many photographs of the Premier shaking hands with overseas dignitaries — usually African — whilst in the background McNamara could be seen standing next to a government official, smiling, chatting, arranging deals.
In his own constituency McNamara was a staunch proponent of law and order and policing issues. When gang warfare came to Lancashire and Manchester in the mid-1980s, it was McNamara’s pressure and his mouth to the PM’s ear, that the Home Office should fund a regionalised unit, an extension of the Crime Squads, to tackle the problem head on.
And who better to run it, McNamara recommended, than that excellent detective with a wealth of experience in dealing with gangsters — Tony Morton, then a Detective Superintendent.
Fully dressed, Henry said, ‘Which car are we going to Blackpool in?’
‘ I don’t give a shit. Use which you want. They’ve all got their keys in the ignition. I’m not coming with you.’
‘ Yeah… Look, I’m sorry, Siobhan. Nothing personal.’
‘ Fuck off, Henry,’ she said sourly.
He nodded. Tight-lipped, hot and flustered, he went swiftly down the stairs to the garage below. He opened the electrically controlled doors and got in the first car he came to. There was a piece of material in the driver’s seat which reminded him of a bikini bottom. He tossed it into the passenger footwell and then adjusted the driver’s seat which was pulled forwards for a short person. Then he reached for the ignition key. It wasn’t there. He checked the sun visors. Not there either.
Siobhan rapped her knuckles on the window.
‘ Not this one,’ she said in a tone which made him feel stupid. ‘It’s a stolen car, been seized for evidence.’
‘ Oh, right,’ he said. How was he supposed to know? Where was the property label that should be prominently displayed on it?
‘ Use that one,’ she said, pointing to the next one along, a Vauxhall Vectra.
He got out, sidled past the stolen one, wondering how he could ever have mistaken an Alfa Romeo for a police car.
Minutes later he was on the road, heading west out of Blackburn. Away from Siobhan and a big mistake that might have been.
‘ Right about now he should be getting his end away, if it’s all going to plan,’ Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Morton declared after checking his watch. ‘And,’ he added with aplomb, ‘I have no doubt it is going to
