John Rider stood on the Promenade at South Shore. He wasn’t dressed for the weather, being in jeans, trainers and a flimsy blouson. The rain was plastering his hair flat on his head and rolling down his face, intermingling with the tears he had thought himself incapable of crying.
He had fucked up everything.
The chance of a settled, normal life, with a woman who loved him and had done so for years. And he had been unaware of it, so obsessed had he been with his macho gangster image, his drink, drugs and other women.
In the space of a couple of days he’d been given the opportunity of a real life, but instead he’d reacted to a difficult situation like the Rider of old, which Isa could not handle.
Straight to Violence. Do not pass Go.
A wave crashed against the sea wall and broke over him, drenching his soul with its icy, salty blobs.
He hardly noticed.
He wanted to drown. To throw himself into the dangerous water.
But he didn’t have the courage even to do that.
‘ It’s good to be working with you again, Henry — honestly.’
Siobhan was sitting in the passenger seat whilst Henry drove the NWOCS Vectra. His face was stony and unresponsive. He couldn’t believe that Morton was making him work with her again. Humiliating him, rubbing it in.
‘ I was really disappointed when you didn’t fuck me, you know. I was really looking forward to it. I’d have come as soon as you got your dick in me, then lots of times after that. You missed a real treat. I’m so easy to satisfy.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘All these problems and you didn’t even get a jump for your trouble. Poor Henry.’
They had reached their destination. Henry drew the car into the side of the road, stopped and kept the engine running. The windscreen wipers were on double speed to cope with the downpour. He kept his hands firmly on the steering wheel, rotated his head slowly and glared down his nose at her.
‘ I’d just like you to know that the decision not to screw you was made because I’m a married man and your supervisor. There is another reason why I didn’t even entertain shoving my clean cock into you. I was frightened of catching something nasty.’
She slapped him very hard across the face.
Or at least she tried to. This time he saw it coming. His hand whipped up and grabbed her wrist before she connected. His face displayed all the anger and repulsion he felt towards this woman.
She whimpered, ‘Let go, you bastard.’
He flung her arm away from him.
‘ Don’t ever tempt me to hit you, Siobhan. I don’t feel like I’ve got very much more to lose at the moment, and it’d give me a great deal of pleasure. A charge of assault on top of everything else wouldn’t matter a rat’s fart to me.’
He glanced into the rearview mirror. A double-crewed police car pulled up behind. Their assistance was here.
It was time to make an arrest.
Donaldson drove north up the Promenade towards Fleetwood. Karen had slipped the statements out of the envelope. On one knee she balanced Luton’s photocopies and on the other the typed statements Henry had appropriated. She read them all carefully and compared them.
‘ This is incredible, Karl,’ she said nervously. ‘The statements have been changed, but it’s fairly subtle and well done. I’d say that this DS Tattersall knew what he was going to do when he took the statement initially, so that the subsequent changes wouldn’t be easily apparent. When these come to be presented at court in six, eight, ten months’ time, whoever made them won’t know any different. They’ll just go along with what has been written. Particularly if the prosecutor is on the payroll. This really worries me. If they’ve done it for this one, how many more times have they done it? How many more people have been wrongly convicted?’
‘ How many more people have been killed?’
‘ Do you think they killed Sergeant Driffield?’
‘ It all points to it, from what Henry says.’
‘ We need to tell someone.’
‘ The problem, as I see it, darlin’, is that we don’t know who to tell. How far does this cancer spread? If we talk to the wrong people, we put ourselves in jeopardy and Henry too. Let’s just take it step by step and see what happens. Now, get that street map out, babe. I don’t know my way around Fleetwood.’
He checked his rearview and his eyes narrowed.
Hands thrust into his jacket pocket, thumbs overhanging, a very wet and bedraggled John Rider came round the corner. He had been walking against the driving rain, head down, not looking ahead. As he turned into the road where his flat was situated, the force of the rain lessened and the wind dropped because of the high buildings on either side.
He looked up.
Two uniformed cops, Henry Christie and a woman cop (he assumed) were standing in a huddle on the pavement.
Their faces lifted simultaneously and saw Rider. Christie pointed at him and shouted something that was lost in the rain. Rider did not hesitate. His finely honed survival skills clicked into place.
He ran.
Three of the four officers gave chase.
Henry let them go. He climbed back into the car and flicked the heater fan onto full blast. Normally he would have been quite happy to join the chase — but nothing was normal any more. He decided to do it from the comfort of a vehicle. No point getting too wet. After all, it was only an NWOCS job.
He executed a leisurely three-point turn and went in the general direction of the disappearing officers.
It soon became apparent they had lost Rider.
Other patrols were being called to the area to assist in the search. Over the radio, Siobhan called Henry and asked to be picked up. Henry guffawed. Some hope. Maybe when the bitch was thoroughly wet through and completely pissed off. He switched his radio off.
Revenge of some sort and quite sweet in a childish way.
Yet even though he had a desire in him not to make any effort, it was an interesting scenario.
John Rider, Henry had been told by Morton, was suspected of putting two bullets into the brain of a no-hoper gangster called Munrow who had died whilst getting a new suit in Debenhams, Preston. This interested Henry because of his previous dealings with Rider — whom he did not like very much. The man might have been involved in the gorilla-shooting in the zoo and the wounding of a man in the leg — and these things kicked Henry’s arse into gear. Even if Rider had not popped Munrow it would give Henry a chance to speak to him at length about these other matters.
Fuck! Henry cursed his conscientiousness. Once a detective, always a detective.
He combed the streets for John Rider…
… Who had panicked when he saw the cops outside his flat.
He sprinted into an alley, skidded on the cobblestones and pushed himself as hard as he had ever done, with only one thought in mind: evasion.
He concentrated on putting distance between him and his pursuers, knowing that the first couple of minutes were usually the critical ones. If they hadn’t caught you by then, your chances were pretty good.
His other problem was that he didn’t have the fitness or stamina to sustain himself over more than two minutes of hard running. Within the first hundred metres he started to feel a tightness in his chest as his lungs worked at a pace not experienced for probably twenty years.
Now he was over forty, unfit, with too much charcoal in his lungs and alcohol deposits in his veins.
He emerged out of the alley, did a right down the next street, crossed over and zigged out of sight into
