doubt that the man, one of his FMIT colleagues, would do a stand up job.
He stepped into the lift. As the doors closed his mobile rang, but as the steel plates came together and sealed him in, they sliced off the signal and Henry was unable to take the call from the Chief Constable.
Henry shrugged. The little fat bully would have to wait.
The lift clanked upwards and the doors reopened on the sixth floor. As he came out, his mobile chirped annoyingly. In the short space of time he’d been in the lift rising up through the building, he’d had two more missed calls, one from Kate, one from a number he didn’t recognize.
He called Kate first, fearing her ire way above that of the Chief.
‘Hi, babe,’ he cooed, hoping he could soothe her savage bosom. It seemed such a long time since they’d had that morning quickie.
‘Don’t you ‘hi, babe’ me. Why the hell haven’t you called me? We go away tomorrow in case you’ve forgotten.’
He held the phone away from his ear, cringed and resisted the temptation to get back in the lift. ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he simpered.
‘Have you handed it all over to someone else, like you said you would?’
‘Hon, I was just about to do that, honest.’
‘I’ve packed for us both. Everything’s ready. Money, passports, tickets.’
‘Hey, you’re a good gal,’ he said. ‘I should be home in an hour.’
‘I won’t hold my breath.’ She hung up.
Henry screwed his face up at his phone. Carrying it in his hand with an almost crushing grip, he walked into the MIR in which Alex Bent was hard at work in an otherwise deserted room. The DS acknowledged the superintendent with a nod and a ‘Boss’, and Henry wandered into the office he’d claimed, seething at himself after Kate’s call.
His desk was an array of sticky notes, reminders and ‘call-me’s’, including one from Keira O’Connell, the Home Office pathologist, giving a landline and mobile number. He inspected it and muttered, ‘Professor Baines, wherefore art thou?’ wistfully. It was so much easier working with a male pathologist who had stuck out ears and who he didn’t fancy the pants off. The time noted on the sticky was since he’d last seen O’Connell. For a moment Henry wondered if he could juggle getting the paperwork done, brief the superintendent who was taking over from him by phone, race over to O’Connell’s house near Kirkham, fuck her, and get home before midnight. Then go on holiday tomorrow with Kate.
It was a serious consideration but then he laughed. Days, times, like that, were long gone. He screwed up the note and tossed it in the bin.
He opened the murder book and held his pen aloft.
His phone rang again: the Chief Constable.
As Henry thumbed the answer button, Alex Bent appeared at the office door, pulling on a jacket, eager to tell Henry something. Henry shushed him with a finger across his lips.
‘Hello, sir.’
The Chief Constable, Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, known as FB to friends and enemies alike, had known Henry over twenty-five years. For some reason Henry had started calling him ‘Bobby Big-nuts’. He couldn’t explain why, but he’d said it once and it just seemed to fit. He would never say it to his face, of course, not if he wanted to live. Their relationship had begun when Henry was a mere PC working the crime car in Rossendale and FB was a lording-it-over-everyone DI back in the days when detective inspectors were ferocious Gods. Since those early days, FB had used Henry ruthlessly to achieve his own aims, then discarded him coldly when it suited. That said, Henry would not be in the position or rank he was if it wasn’t for his involvement with FB, so the hate-hate relationship continued to this day.
‘Do you never answer your phone?’ the increasingly portly Chief whinged to his subordinate.
‘I got cut off in the lift.’
‘What’s that a euphemism for?’ FB asked, no amusement in his voice.
‘Just losing the signal.’
‘Anyway, you should’ve called me back immediately. I shouldn’t be the one chasing you up, Henry. I’m the friggin’ Chief Constable, after all.’
‘Point well made, sir.’ Henry watched Bent jigging excitedly at the door. He gave him a hang fire gesture.
‘How is the murder inquiry going?’ FB asked.
‘Good. Things happening all the time.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. You can give me a full update in the morning.’
‘I’m handing over to Dave Cottam,’ Henry said. ‘He’ll be i/c tomorrow.’
‘Well, there’s a thing,’ FB said. Henry’s heart sank. ‘I take it you haven’t heard about the murder-suicide over in Burnley?’ FB said.
‘No,’ Henry replied cautiously, drawing out the single syllable. His eyes narrowed.
‘It’s Dave Cottam’s territory,’ FB said, a fact Henry knew well. There were four detective superintendents on FMIT and each had a geographical area of responsibility. Henry’s was the Fylde coast and the northern part of the county. Cottam covered the east, the other two central and south, but these divisions were often blurred. No detective superintendent would refuse to cover a job just because it happened off his allocated patch, because each of them loved dealing with murders and other serious crimes. And they always covered for each other in cases of leave, sickness and other unavoidable commitments. However, Henry knew what was coming: Dave Cottam was just as snowed under as he was and to expect him to take on Henry’s complicated double murder and a murder- suicide would be a very big ask. ‘I’m going on holiday tomorrow,’ Henry said firmly.
‘Leave’s for wussies,’ FB said. ‘There’s no way you can go away at this moment in time.’
‘Boss, I’m going.’ He stood his ground bravely.
‘Cancel it — it’s just a mini-break, as I understand.’ FB’s voice was as cold as stone.
‘And lose almost a grand? Don’t think so.’
Silence came on the line.
‘Boss?’ Henry said. ‘Let’s put a chief inspector in — at least until Dave Cottam can get free.’
‘You need to think about what you’re saying here, Henry,’ FB warned him. ‘You’re a superintendent now, and I put you there.’ The line clicked dead.
‘Hell,’ Henry uttered, looking at Alex Bent. ‘I’ve just seriously pissed off the Chief.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘What is it, Alex?’
‘Mark Carter… up on Shoreside.’
Before Alex could finish, Henry’s phone rang again. He answered it without thinking.
‘Mr Christie, it’s Billy Costain… I phoned you a few minutes ago, you didn’t answer, so I phoned your incident room and spoke to that Bent guy.’
‘What is it, Billy?’ Henry rose from his desk, and closed the murder book and put his pen away.
‘You said you wanted me to find out who Rory was with?’
‘Yep,’ Henry said, not letting on that he now knew this fact.
‘It’s that little shit, Mark Carter — and I’ve got the little twat here in my hands…’ In the background Henry heard scuffling sounds. ‘You’d better hurry up, he’s struggling to get away. I might have to punch his lights out.’
‘Don’t do that. Where are you?’
‘Shoreside Drive, near the old shops on the square.’
‘On my way.’ Henry ended the call and didn’t add, ‘Oh, you mean the shops your family vandalized and destroyed?’ He looked at Bent. ‘What are we waiting for?’ Henry picked up his personal radio and called into Blackpool comms, telling them to get patrols up on to Shoreside urgently.
Having watched the coppers leave his house after annoying his mother, Mark retreated back into the coal- hole where he’d stashed crisps, chocolate, some packed sandwiches and a bottle of Coke from an easy shoplifting venture earlier. He settled back into the blackness, which was warm and comforting, to wait until his mother left the house, as he knew she would. She was seeing a guy who owned a pub out on Preston New Road, and as soon as she’d showered and changed, she would be out on the razz.
It didn’t take her long. The lure of booze and sex made her hurry. She didn’t spend a lot of time getting tarted
