Had Mark known anything about stereotypes, he would have sneered at the social worker’s car. A completely knackered old Citroen with a gear lever coming out of the dashboard, which was built as flimsily as a paper house in Japan. Instead, he sat glumly in the front seat, his mind in turmoil.
‘Is my mum really dead?’ Mark asked at one point.
‘I’m afraid so, Mark.’
‘Whatever.’
They drove up the promenade, passing the Norbreck Castle Hotel on the right, until they came to Little Bispham where the social worker pulled the car across the road into the wide driveway of a large detached house opposite the tram stop at Melton Place. It was a big, old, imposing building, erected some time between the world wars, called Cleveley House.
‘Here we are.’
Mark eyed the place and sighed. ‘This isn’t secure accommodation, is it? I mean, I don’t have to stay here if I don’t want to.’
‘In theory, Mark, you can walk out anytime.’
‘Which means I can’t, obviously.’
‘It means that if you do, next time you will end up in a secure home. You see, there is a bit of trust needed here. We know you’re a sensible lad and that you know it’d be silly to walk away because of the consequences.’
‘Some bloody situation.’
‘Come on, let’s make the best of it. Let’s get you settled in, then let’s go out and get a takeaway, my treat, then come back and watch TV for a while and try to chill our beans. There’s satellite TV on a forty-two-inch screen in one of the lounges, so we could either watch a film that’s on, or hire one for the night. Up to you.’
‘Tch.’ Mark shook his head.
‘I’m Barry, by the way.’
‘Whatever.’
The social worker unlocked the front door of the house and they entered a grand hallway, with a central staircase that split either way on the first floor. He showed Mark to a bedroom at the end of a long corridor up the stairs.
‘This is yours. If you want to get a shower, then maybe come down to the kitchen at the back of the house?’ The social worker, Barry, nodded reassuringly as he spoke, trying to be infectious in his positivity. ‘There are towels and soap and stuff. No change of clothing yet, but I’ll sort that in the morning.’
And that was something Mark had not really thought about. Tomorrow. He sat on the bed, brooding, his brain churning. Part of him wanted to walk out, another part craved the security that this place, and Barry, offered. He also needed to sleep. Tiredness overwhelmed him. A night in a coal-hole and a shed hadn’t really been all that comfortable. He decided to forego the shower and go straight for the food. He fancied a Chinese. He was famished and very thirsty all of a sudden. Wearily, he stood up and sauntered back along the corridor to the top of the stairs. He paused here, wondering if he really wanted to spend any time with the good-natured Barry. There was every possibility he would drive Mark mad. Maybe being alone would be the best end for the day. Let it all roll and tumble through his mind.
But he was still starving and the thought of a Chinese chicken curry was appealing, and things would feel so much better on a full stomach.
He placed his foot on the first step down — which is when he heard the crash from the kitchen at the back of the house.
‘Are we sure this is the one?’
‘Down to three metres, or so I’m told,’ Henry said to Donaldson. ‘This was the location of the last pulse before the phone signal went dead.’
‘Are they ever gonna answer the door?’
Henry pounded on the front door of the house to which the phone company had directed them. They had been standing outside the terraced house on Cornwall Avenue in North Shore for a couple of minutes. Henry’s car was at the kerb, as was the Galaxy driven by Bill Robbins, containing the others.
Henry was getting impatient, thinking the occupants could have seen who was knocking and decided not to open up. He rattled the door, but it was firmly locked.
Then he regarded Donaldson and said, ‘I am about to exercise my power of entry.’
‘Which power is that?’
Henry could have reeled off the many he knew that gave him the right to burst into peoples’ homes unannounced, but just said, ‘I’ll think of one that fits.’
He took a step back, braced himself, then flat-footed the door just underneath the Yale lock. It was a powerful, well delivered kick, but only rattled the door in its frame. He repeated the action, but it still held firmly.
‘Lost my touch,’ he muttered angrily. ‘Getting old.’
Donaldson elbowed him out of the way. ‘Allow me.’
His first mighty kick almost took the door off its hinges. He stepped aside and allowed the English detective to enter the vestibule, shouting ‘Police’ as he barged in, through the inner door into the narrow hallway where he almost tripped over the body that lay diagonally across the floor, slumped half against the wall. Henry just managed to stop himself from pitching headlong on to the floor.
Lee Clarke had a neat bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. He’d obviously been standing when shot, answering the door, facing the person who had killed him. The bullet had entered his skull an inch above the bridge of his nose and removed the back third of his cranium. He’d probably staggered a couple of steps, spiralled and fallen. The remaining pieces of his brains had dribbled out underneath him and he was now lying untidily in a thick, disgusting pool of blood and other matter.
Donaldson peered past Henry. ‘You know this guy?’
‘No — but I know her.’ Henry was looking into the living room.
Still in her PEA uniform, Ellen Thompson was as dead as her drug-addled boyfriend. The crimson flowers of blood on her white shirt were still blossoming and the fingers of her right hand were jerking spasmodically in after- death. She had been shot at the door to the living room, maybe coming to see what was going on in the hall, only to be greeted by a gunman who had stepped over Clarke’s body and killed her just as mercilessly. She had fallen back and was sitting upright on the settee, arms and legs splayed at wide angles and, despite the twitching, dead.
‘Shit,’ Donaldson said. The eyes of the two men locked as they both had the same, dreadful thought. The witness, Mark Carter.
SEVENTEEN
Henry Christie moved into gear, excitement and fear coursing through him, coupled with the experience of thirty years as a cop responding — occasionally — to life and death situations. Of course, there was nothing to say that Mark Carter’s life was really in danger, but at that moment Henry was furious with himself for just allowing the lad to be handed over to social services without adequate protection. Like everything else in the police, it was usually better to do things over the top than to look stupid and investigate a death that might have been prevented. Henry kicked himself for underestimating the ruthlessness, cunning and resources of the people who had killed Rosario Petrone and any witnesses to their crime.
Somehow they had been able to beat the police in tracking the mobile phone signal. Whether that was through the unguarded way in which the location of the pulse had been transmitted via radio communications, or because they too had access to mobile phone companies and tracking equipment, Henry could not be certain. But from what he knew of Karl Donaldson’s suspicions, he guessed it was both, which made him even more irate at himself. How could he have forgotten the lesson he learned that resulted in the death of Billy Costain? How could they possibly have known that the radio transmissions were about the mobile phone that had been used to take the photographs of the murder taking place? Henry was sure that was never mentioned over the air, but he would have to listen to a recording of it to make sure.
