was, it sounded stupid and needy, and he thought he might change it back to something more upbeat later. Crazy Frog, maybe. Something to make him smirk, not make his guts lurch. He needed to smirk.
His mobile lay next to his house phone and he fumbled for it with his right hand, the slight contortion and stretch hurting his mostly healed left shoulder, and answered it, mumbling something.
‘Detective Superintendent Christie?’ It was the voice of the FIM, a female inspector.
‘Yuh.’
‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but…’
Henry sat up stiffly, pushing the duvet back, taking the pad and pen from the cabinet top and jotting down the gist of what she was telling him: ‘Murder… female… teenager… not yet identified… strangulation, maybe… Poulton-le-Fylde… near Carleton crematorium.’ Henry wrote down the exact details of the location, the circumstances of the discovery of the body, asked if an arrest had been made — no — and if there was a suspect — not yet. Which detective was at the scene? After further questions, Henry ended the call with a time check — 2.38 a.m. — his thanks and an ETA.
He rubbed his eyes, making them squelch, then stood up and made his way to the en suite bathroom. There was a light knock on the bedroom door, which opened an inch.
‘Dad? You OK?’ It was his youngest daughter, Leanne, now twenty-three years old, so no longer young in that sense, and starting a career as a pharmacist. She had moved back home temporarily. To keep an eye on Henry had been the excuse, but the high cost of living and a bad on-off relationship made it seem to Henry that she was back for good. Whilst he loved her to bits, having her home again, mothering him, was not what he wanted or needed.
‘Just a call-out.’ He looked at her in her night things, still wearing jim-jams covered with bears cuddling each other. She was heartbreakingly beautiful, the spitting image of her mother. She moved into him and gave him a hug, asking if he wanted a brew doing.
He didn’t, but she wanted to feel useful, so he said that would be great.
He had a very quick shower and a wet shave, timed to take only five minutes between them, and came out of the en suite with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was about to say something to Kate, his wife, purely out of conditioning. She often had some pithy remark about his turn-outs, something negative, usually funny. But Henry snapped his mouth shut. He hadn’t got used to the fact she was no longer there and the sight of the empty bed made his chest jar sickeningly.
With anger he threw down the towel and entered the walk-in dressing room, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Henry actually enjoyed the mug of tea made for him by Leanne, even though he could only manage a few hasty mouthfuls before stepping out into the night, just before three. It was late spring, still chilly, making him shiver. He sniffed the air and smelled the sea two miles west of him. A good smell. If he found time he thought he would get down to the front and take a bracing stroll. It was a nice thought, but not very realistic. In his experience of turning out to murders at three in the morning, there was rarely any time for breaks in the day ahead. He would happily lay odds that he would be working till gone seven that night. Only sixteen hours away.
He had treated himself to a new car, thought he deserved it and the pleasure it gave him, even though its cost was crippling. A rare smile came to his face as he pointed the remote and unlocked it with a satisfying clunk. Then he climbed into his Mercedes E-Class coupe and reversed it carefully off the driveway.
There wasn’t far to go. A few miles through the mainly bare streets of Blackpool, then out towards Poulton, cutting across the southern edge of that fairly affluent town to a small village called Carleton, making his way along narrow roads to the entrance to the crematorium, at which there was much police activity.
He purposely parked his car a couple of hundred metres away. Not just to ensure it didn’t get scratched, but because he always liked to get the feel of a crime scene on foot. Too many detectives, he thought, rolled up and rolled out. If pressed he would probably struggle to provide concrete evidence that his considered approach ever proved fruitful, but he knew intuitively that good detectives liked to feel crime scenes. To inhale them. To taste them. It was maybe a way of getting somehow into the mind of a killer because crime locations often had some significance to either the killer or victim.
He hunched deep into his wind jammer, zipped it up, slotted his hands into the pockets, and approached slowly.
Henry had seen too many murder scenes like this one. The frail body discarded on a grass verge by the roadside. The tangle of thin limbs. The blood-soaked clothing. The battered face and head. Long hair splayed and matted with mud and blood. Eyes wide open. That last look of terror and disbelief on the face.
Henry had stepped into the zoot suit and paper shoes, the forensic overalls required of everyone attending the scene, logged in with the constable holding the clipboard down the road who was noting all comings and goings, then walked as directed on the chosen route that all officers had to take to the body and back.
He was standing perhaps six feet away from the body. His torch beam played over it from toe to head, then hovered on the girl’s face.
She had been pretty and petite. Maybe sixteen, eighteen, he estimated. He glanced around at the location, the body next to the crematorium gates, trying to get his mind working.
The local detective inspector appeared at his shoulder. His name was Rik Dean, a man Henry knew well, not least because Rik was now living with Henry’s feckless sister Lisa in a smart flat in Lytham. And because Henry had been instrumental in getting Rik on to CID years earlier as a detective constable. Henry had seen Rik’s early potential to become a jack because as a PC in uniform Rik had been a superb thief-taker. Rik’s subsequent rise through the ranks had been all his own doing — he was also a natural boss — and now Henry was trying to get Rik a place on FMIT — the Force Major Investigation Team — of which Henry was joint head with three other experienced detective superintendents.
‘What’ve we got?’ Henry asked.
‘You probably know as much as me,’ Rik replied. ‘Body of a female teenager found by a uniformed PC on patrol. Thought it was fly-tipped rubbish, just a bundle of rags. On closer inspection turned out to be a body.’
‘Which PC?’
Rik pointed him out, leaning on the bonnet of his unmarked patrol car. ‘Paul Driver… a bit shaken by it.’
‘What was he doing around here? A bit out of the way, isn’t it?’
‘Part of his normal route,’ he said.
‘Uh, huh,’ Henry said. ‘ID?’
‘Not as yet, but there is a girl missing from Blackpool who fits the bill. A Natalie Philips, just turned eighteen, attends Shoreside College, doing a hairdressing NVQ. Reported missing by her mum last evening just gone, but had been missing a day before. I’m just waiting for the file to be brought up from Blackpool Comms, but…’ Rik produced his BlackBerry, ‘I got them to e-mail me a photo of her.’ He pressed a few buttons and turned the screen around for Henry to see. A pretty young lady pouting at the photographer. ‘Looks like her.’
Henry nodded, his face tightening. Something strange was churning inside him, making everything wrench up. His stomach was getting the cramps, and his chest seemed to be contracting around his heart, squeezing it. His legs felt abruptly weak.
A look must have come across his face.
Rik said, ‘Henry, are you all right?’
The feelings dissipated as he breathed in and out slowly.
‘Yeah, yeah.’
Rik laid a steadying hand on Henry’s arm. ‘You sure? You don’t look it.’
‘Hundred percent.’
‘I know it’s early days…’
‘I said I’m sure,’ Henry snapped. Rik, a hurt expression on his face, pulled his hand away. ‘Sorry,’ Henry said. ‘Let me look at the body before the circus moves in, please.’ He wondered just what the hell he’d felt inside him. Whatever it was, it was extremely unpleasant.
Then, as his torchlight played over the dead body, the sensations started again. His whole torso felt like it was in a vice, legs weak and rubbery; a deep bass pounded in his head as if a hand was inside his skull squeezing and releasing his brain; then dizziness and a roaring sound in his ears, and all he could hear was the rushing of the waves…
He had no recollection whatsoever of how he ended up in Rik Dean’s office at Blackpool police station. Just a
