‘Henry, you brilliant bastard,’ he said begrudgingly. He dropped even lower, to mouse eyeline, stared into the darkness, gave a short laugh and reached inside.
Henry tossed a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt at Tom. He had found them in a wardrobe.
‘Not exactly a zoot suit, eh?’ Tom smirked, turning his back to Henry, bending down and pulling up the pants. He was referring to the forensic paper suits given to prisoners when their own clothing had been taken for scientific analysis.
‘It’ll do. I imagine you were wearing something different when you killed Cathy.’
Tom turned slowly, putting his arms in the T-shirt. ‘Is this an interview? Is that an allegation? I don’t see my brief present, do you, Detective Superintendent? In fact, I don’t see much in the way of any police procedure so far, do you?’ He sounded cocky and self-assured.
‘Things will work out for the best, you mark my words,’ Henry smiled.
Outside, a large lorry went past the house, one of the few vehicles that had driven past. Tom turned and watched it, then looked back at Henry and slitted his eyes. ‘Best hope you don’t nod off tonight, eh?’ he taunted.
Henry held up a cable tie. ‘Time to fasten up.’
Tom approached Henry with arms outstretched, inner wrists touching. ‘Something else not quite right, eh?’
‘The handcuffs?’ Henry looped the plastic around the wrists and crimped them up. ‘Violent and unpredictable prisoners get them.’
Tom simply raised his eyebrows. ‘Not too tight. You wouldn’t want me to lodge a formal complaint about excessive force, would you?’
‘Be my guest,’ Henry said. And with each passing second and each interaction, Henry was more and more convinced that Tom James was a corrupt and dangerous individual. He gave a flick of the thumb and Tom went out of the room ahead of him. A sudden shock of pain in Henry’s shoulder made him scrunch up his face.
Flynn withdrew his hand, his fingers wrapped around the barrel of a Skorpion machine pistol, black, ugly, dangerous looking, a twenty-round curved magazine slotted in it. He placed it carefully on the kitchen floor and slid his hand back inside the secret compartment.
‘If there’s any spiders in here, I’ll scream.’
‘You’ve already found a scorpion,’ Alison said.
‘You know your guns,’ he said.
‘Afghanistan does that to a girl.’
Next he withdrew a semi-automatic pistol, indeterminate make and origin, but probably Chinese, Flynn guessed. He placed this next to the Skorpion and went searching again, pulling out a box containing shotgun cartridges of the exact type used in the sawn-off shotgun taken first from Callard and then from Tom. The next handful was a medium-sized plastic food bag stuffed with 9mm calibre rounds of ammunition. Another foray produced a tight roll of twenty-pound Bank of England notes, causing him to give a whistle of appreciation. The last find was a bag of white powder, about as big as a kid’s pencil case.
‘That’s it,’ he said, pushing himself on to his knees and smiling at Alison’s astonished face. ‘Welcome to the land of the corrupt cop.’
Tom reached the bottom of the steps ahead of Henry. Flynn stood in the hallway by the kitchen door and he and Tom exchanged venomous looks. Henry came down the last step and pushed Tom gently ahead of him towards the office door.
‘Do you want to see what I’ve found?’ Flynn asked Henry.
‘Is it interesting?’
‘Very.’
‘Does he need to see it?’ Henry nodded at Tom.
‘You probably need to see his reaction.’
Tom said, ‘What’s this, another set-up by my wife’s lover?’
‘Let’s look anyway,’ Henry said and gripped Tom’s elbow. He walked him along the hall to the kitchen. Flynn backed into the room, Alison already standing at the back door, then revealed all: the two weapons, the ammunition, the roll of cash, the white powder, all still on the floor next to the panel that plugged the hidey-hole underneath the cupboard.
Henry took in the find, then looked at Tom. ‘Let me remind you, you’re under caution. Anything to say at this moment?’
‘Yeah — this is all bollocks and I’m being set up by this twat here.’
‘And I did it all from Gran Canaria,’ Flynn said.
Henry said to Alison, ‘Can you back this up? Can you be a witness to what Steve found and how he found it?’ She nodded. Henry, who had not released Tom’s elbow, tightened the grip and pulled him back out of the room and steered him towards the office. They walked past the open living-room door in which the young woman with the missing boyfriend still sat, hunched up, looking wretched on the settee, Roger’s head still in her lap.
Tom spotted her. She saw him at exactly the same moment. The expressions on both their faces changed dramatically. But then they passed and Henry edged Tom into the office, sat him down in a chair.
‘Some big questions coming your way, Tom,’ Henry warned him. He made no reply.
‘Sir, excuse me.’
The young woman was now standing at the office door, a fearful look on her face, her eyes darting from Henry to Tom and back again.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ Henry said. ‘I had some things to do. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Sit down, just give me a few more minutes.’
‘No — you don’t understand. Him!’ Her forefinger pointed accusingly at Tom. ‘It’s him… he’s one of them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My boyfriend,’ she blabbed, trying to find her words, but everything in her mind was obviously jumbled.
‘You need to think very carefully about what you’re going to say, darlin’,’ Tom said. There was more than an undercurrent of menace in his voice, accompanied by a pointed, meaningful look.
‘Shut it,’ Henry growled. ‘This man’s your boyfriend?’ Henry asked.
‘No, no… last time I saw my boyfriend,’ she tried to explain, ‘he was with him, he was one of them…’
‘One of who?’
‘One of the ones that came for him, to take him away.’ She got a grip on herself and said clearly, ‘Last time I saw my boyfriend, he was with this man.’ She jabbed her finger at Tom again. ‘And I’ve never seen or heard from him since.’
‘And what’s your boyfriend called?’ Henry asked.
‘Massey,’ she said, her lips quivering, ‘Wayne Massey.’
NINETEEN
On the morning of his death Massey had woken up heavy-headed from the previous night’s excess. He had disturbed his girlfriend when he jumped quickly out of bed and teetered to the toilet, where he vomited noisily and copiously. After swilling out his mouth, he came back to bed, sat on the edge, head in hands, making soft moaning noises. He looked around at her when she reached across and touched his naked back with her fingertips.
‘You OK, babe?’
‘Yuh,’ he answered. They had been together a couple of months now, much to everyone’s surprise. Laura Binney was a quiet, reserved girl who had pretty much avoided the pitfalls that came with an upbringing on one of Lancaster’s most deprived council estates. She was not the most intellectual of girls but could see beyond the prospect of living on benefits, like her older sister Linda, or getting a dead-end job on a supermarket till. A streak of stubbornness inside her got her work in administration with the local council. It wasn’t the greatest job in the world, but there was the possibility of advancement and it provided enough money for her to rent a little flat on St George’s Quay by the River Lune. Cash was tight — only occasionally did she allow herself a blast night out with the
