‘ Disarming — yanking a gun outta someone’s hand. Used to be your party trick, that, dinnit?’
‘ Not especially,’ said Rider. He had done it twice before, though the gun hadn’t gone off on those occasions. He was getting slow. ‘One day I’ll miss and some fucker’ll get blown away.’
Conroy appraised Rider critically.
‘ You never lost your bottle, did you? All you did was become a drunk.’ ‘I got out of it, that’s all. I’d had enough.’
‘ Everyone said you’d lost your bottle.’
Rider squirmed uncomfortably. Conroy was getting under his skin and he didn’t like it. ‘A few things happened. I got a conscience, I got pissed off looking over my shoulder for cops all the time, wondering when you were going to grass me up. I saw how bad the whole scene was and I realised I needed to get out of it before it killed me, or I ended up as a lifer. I was thirty-five, a junkie and a piss-head. I suddenly thought, 'Let’s get outta here and try to get to forty-five, preferably not in a prison or a coffin'. Now I’m just a piss-head, got a life of sorts, some brass and no ties to bastards like you. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t loan people money at extortionate rates. I don’t beat people up any more just because they’ve looked at me funny, and I don’t get other people to maim or murder for me.’
‘ Very bloody deep,’ said Conroy sarcastically. ‘You sound like a complete angel.’
Rider bristled. His lips puckered angrily.
Conroy emptied his glass. He shook his head sadly as he spoke. ‘Sorry, mate, but you’ve been involved in it for too long. You owe too many people and too many still owe you, good and bad. And you wanna run from it? No chance, because it’s all just caught up with you today.’
‘ How?’
‘ Talk about ironic. Here’s you, eh? Quits the big time, wants to be left alone, get respectable — if you can call being a DSS landlord respectable. To me it stinks. Selling dope to ten-year-olds is more fucking respectable than what you do. But then today I come along — someone you haven’t seen for years — and bang!’ He pointed his right forefinger at Rider’s temple and clicked his thumb like a hammer. ‘Some bastards with a gun turn up, try to slot me and you save my life and half kill one of ‘em. Talk about ironic.’
‘ Why?’
‘ You want to know what this is all about? It’s about me and Munrow-’
Rider raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought he was still inside.’
‘ You thought wrong. The bastard’s out and he’s after my territory. They were his boys today, no doubt about that, so word’ll get back to him and you’ll be linked to me. And you know what he’s like — bull in a friggin’ china shop.’
‘ You mean you’re in dispute with him?’
‘ Dispute? That’s a pretty little word. Nah, we’re at war, John.’ He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘It’s just starting, but it’ll be big, bad and ugly — just the kinda rumpus you used to enjoy.’
Chapter Four
There is one thing about Blackpool, Henry Christie thought whilst driving south down the sea-front. It is never a dull place.
Completely unique. The world’s busiest, brashest, trashiest resort, attracting floods of tourists every year. It is a finely tuned machine, expertly geared to separating them from their hard-earned dough.
Even in the low season when all the residents — police included — can take midweek breathers, the weekends draw in thousands of day-trippers, eager to enjoy themselves and throw their money away.
The public face of Blackpool is that of a happy-go-lucky place where everything is perfect: funfairs, candyfloss, the Tower, the Illuminations and children’s laughter.
Henry Christie rarely saw this side of Blackpool.
He dealt with the flipside which most people never experience but which, as a cop, he could not avoid. There was the massive and continually expanding drug culture and the criminal manifestations behind it — burglary, theft, violent robberies and overdoses; each weekend the influx of visitors who attended the nightclubs left a legacy of serious assaults by itinerant, untraceable offenders; there was the growing problem of child sex and pornography; and the explosion of a huge gay culture had brought its own problems to Blackpool, related more to the prejudice of others, resulting in many gays being the subject of beatings or even rape by heterosexual males.
Then, of course, there was murder.
Murder was a frequent visitor to Blackpool.
Mostly the deaths were down to drunkenness and street brawls between youths, unlike yesterday’s carnage in the newsagents. And unlike the one Henry was en route to now, that Sunday morning just before noon.
He slowed and drove off the road, across the tram-tracks and onto the wide stretch of Inner Promenade opposite the Pleasure Beach — a huge funfair — in South Shore. Parking in the shadow of one of the world’s hairiest roller-coaster rides — the Pepsi Max Big One — he looked up at it and shivered. He’d once been bullied into riding it by his wife and daughters, and was convinced he was going to die when the trucks plunged vertically and corkscrewed impossibly on the tracks at speeds of up to 80 m.p.h.
The souvenir photograph of them all holding on for dear life revealed the terror in his face.
Never again.
Several police cars and an ambulance were parked on the Promenade, all unattended. A long black hearse was in amongst them, with two pasty-looking body-removers on board, eating burgers. A small crowd had gathered and were peering with interest over the sea wall, near to the pier.
He pushed his way rudely through them, ducked under a cordon tape, nodded to the policewoman standing by it and made his way down the slipway onto the beach.
The sand was firm and dry, fortunately. Henry did not want to spoil his suit nor take the chance of getting his shoes messed up. Just like a detective.
The tide had gone out about two hours before and the edge of the sea seemed a mile away. The beach gave the appearance of being clean and golden, very much like the town it fronted. The reality was that it was one of the dirtiest beaches in Europe.
However, it was a peaceful and pretty winter’s day with a low sun rising in the sky. One of those days when it felt good to be inhaling breath.
Not a day to die.
A small group of police officers and a couple of paramedics were gathered around what, at first sight, looked like a bundle of rags at the foot of one of the pier struts. There was an obvious pathway in the sand leading to and from the scene.
Henry tried to psych himself into the right frame of mind to be the senior detective at a scene. The one who would have to make the decisions. The one everybody else would look to for a lead.
Oh joy, he thought.
She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. It was difficult to tell for sure. She was five foot five inches tall, very thin with spidery arms and legs, all bones, no muscles.
Henry watched as the deathly-faced undertakers lifted her body easily from the trolley and onto the mortuary slab, dumping her there unceremoniously.
Her drenched outer coat had been removed and searched, revealing nothing. Now she was lying there in what she had been wearing underneath: a T-shirt top, a short one which was nothing more than a piece of cloth covering her breasts, and a micro-skirt in what had once been stretchy black Lycra and would have only just covered her lower belly and the top of her thighs. There was no underwear.
Henry closed his eyes briefly. Stay detached, he ordered himself. She’s a piece of meat, nothing else. Then he opened his eyes and allowed himself to look again.
But no matter how he tried he could not view her as a carcase. That was probably the reason why she was here, dead, because some bastard had thought she was nothing more than meat — something to be used, abused and discarded.
