FIVE
As stunned as he was by Henry’s revelation, Old Man Costain’s mistrust of the police, ingrained and inflexible after fifty years of living on the wrong side of the law, made extracting any information from him a tortuous process. In spite of the reassurance that, for once, the forces of law and order were on his side, blood didn’t come easily from the stone that was William Patrick Costain.
Eventually, Henry had had enough. Even getting Costain to tell him what clothes Rory had worn the previous evening had been hard work, but he was ninety-nine per cent certain now that the corpse of the car park was the aforementioned Rory. One hundred per cent would only come with a formal family identification, or a photographic and/or dental comparison, which Henry would have preferred. As much as Henry had ‘issues’ with the Costains, even he didn’t want to have to put Billy through the trauma of having to identify Rory’s body. The lad’s head was a disfigured mess and not something he would have wanted any family to see.
But Costain insisted. ‘He’s my boy, I have a right.’ And despite the less than subtle warning from Henry, Billy was going to have his way.
The ID took place at the public mortuary in Blackpool Victoria Hospital at six thirty that morning.
Costain drove to the hospital in his huge old Mercedes, accompanied by his wife of many years, the adorable Monica. She was quite a bit younger than him at fifty and had once been a real stunner, a raven-haired, green-eyed beauty. But the carriage and birth of seven children (plus two stillbirths), heavy drinking, smoking and the long exposure to the sunshine of the Costa del Sol, had ravaged her looks and body.
It had been a rush to get Rory’s body in a fit state to be gazed upon, an undertaking that entailed cleaning up the face without compromising any evidence, and then wrapping his head in a muslin towel to hide the horrific wounds on both sides, the entry and exit. All that remained to be seen were his distorted features. The creepy mortuary technician, who Henry noticed had a lazy eye, making him even scarier, carried out this prep. A hump would have completed the tableau wonderfully. He did the job under the supervision of O’Connell. The rest of the body was covered with a sheet and was then wheeled on a trolley into the viewing room, and positioned underneath the curtained window on the other side of which was an anteroom for relatives to gather in.
Henry stepped into this room from the mortuary, O’Connell behind him. The Costains waited, muted and afraid.
Old man Costain rubbed his face continually, stretching his features. Monica stood there numb.
Henry took a deep breath. ‘Look, you don’t have to do this. I’ve got enough in terms of identification. The coroner will be happy with that.’
‘We want to see him,’ Costain said firmly.
‘OK, OK, but I need to reiterate…’
‘Reiterate nothing, Henry,’ Costain cut in. ‘We’re ready, so just do it.’
Henry tapped on the glass and the mortuary technician drew back the curtain.
‘I expect you’re pleased.’
Henry was outside in the mortuary car park, standing next to Costain at the Mercedes. Mrs Costain was already in the passenger seat, still as shell-shocked as she’d been in the viewing room, the death of her son probably not yet having hit her properly. She was shrouded in grey cigarette smoke.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’ll be pleased, eh? Three Costains down…’
‘No, I’m not,’ Henry said.
‘Less trouble for you and the rest of the cops, though.’
‘Mr Costain, I’m truly sorry you’ve lost another son.’
‘Hey — not to mention my niece from the car crash. I don’t suppose you’ll be putting much effort into this, will you?’
‘I’ll tell you what pleases me: catching killers. I’ll put as much effort into this as I would any other murder — which means I’ll work around the clock until I get a result — OK?’
Costain shrugged, disbelief written all over his face. ‘You say he was with someone?’
‘It looks that way… two lots of chips, looks like he was walking across the car park with a mate, yes. But like you said already, you don’t know who he was out with. It’s vital we find this person, y’know? It could even be his killer, who knows?’
‘Have you been to the chippy? That might be a good start.’
‘Yes we have, but the chip shop owners are new and they don’t live over the shop like the last ones did, and they haven’t seen fit to give their name and address to the police as yet, so we can’t contact them.’
Costain considered the information, then said, ‘I’ll see what I can do — I honestly don’t know who Rory was with, but I’ll find out.’ He climbed into the Merc and the big car rolled smoothly away. Henry watched it go wondering which poor soul would end up with the unenviable task of being the family liaison officer. The role would have to be given to a seasoned detective, one who had the bottle to brave things out with the Costains, if they would even allow an FLO into their lives. Henry guessed there would be a huge firewall of reluctance from the family at having a cop assigned to them full-time.
Henry walked back to the mortuary where he found O’Connell inspecting Rory’s naked body. She was speaking into a hand-held tape recorder and stopped when she saw Henry.
‘What d’you think?’ she asked.
‘I think we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way in terms of the bodies and we should schedule the post- mortems for this afternoon. That way we can both get a few hours sleep. On top of that, I need to get a pre- briefing meeting together at eleven this morning, followed by a full murder squad briefing at noon.’
‘Not much sleep for you, then?’
‘Doubt if I’ll be going to bed at all.’
‘I’m not remotely sleepy, myself, so I don’t see bed as an option just yet… could you handle a coffee with me?’
Henry checked his watch, then looked at the dead boy. He was standing at his head at an angle of about forty-five degrees and his eyes caught something on the scalp. His brow furrowed and he stooped for a closer inspection.
‘Have you seen this?’ he asked. Without touching, he indicated what he was looking at. O’Connell came around to see.
‘Admittedly. I haven’t.’
They were looking at a recent cut on Rory’s head, just on the scalp line above his left eye, a thin red mark where it looked like something had struck him, or his head had struck something.
‘Could he have done that when he fell after being shot?’ Henry asked.
She pulled a face. ‘Not sure about that. Looks like he might’ve caught his head on something, a door maybe, possibly the sort of injury you get when you crack your head on a car bonnet, or something. Know what I mean?’
Henry’s mind stirred. ‘Unconnected with the murder?’
‘That’s an assumption I won’t make. I’ll present you with the facts as I see them after the PM.’
‘Fair enough.’ Henry said, unable to think it through, his mind just a mush now. ‘How about that coffee?’
‘Sorry about that.’ Henry slipped his mobile phone into his jacket pocket after having dropped a text to Kate telling her he would not be home for some hours yet, and could she sort out the last bits ’n’ bobs for the holiday. He added, ‘SOZ’, and put a whole bunch of kiss crosses, hoping to appease her a little.
‘Wife?’ O’Connell said.
He nodded. ‘Supposed to be off on a romantic break tomorrow. I said I’d be a bit of a Teflon pan and pass all this on to someone else, and I will,’ he said, meaning it, ‘but I’d like to get as much done as possible before I hand anything over. And I only turned out for one murder, not two.’
‘You’re just a man who can’t say no, aren’t you?’
He glanced at her, wondering just what he was doing here. They’d driven across town in their own cars to the twenty-four-hour McDonald’s on Preston New Road, both collected a McMuffin breakfast, hash brown and coffee at the drive-thru, then headed down to the seafront at Blackpool south where the prom meets Squires Gate Lane. They were on the car park adjacent to the go-kart track at Starr Gate, which was also the southernmost terminal of the famous Blackpool tram system that plied up and down the prom.
