while, if that’s OK with you? I’m not sure what it might entail, going to have to suck it and see.’
‘Fine by me, but I’ll have to run it past my boss… I’m just about to start running an initial firearms course — hence the superb demo. Any idea how long you’ll want me for?’
‘Not long, hopefully… I might just need you on tap, that’s all. If you have any problems with your boss, tell him to call me.’
‘OK… then what?’
‘My office at FMIT, say half an hour? Refreshments provided.’
‘I’ll be there.’
Henry and Flynn left the range. Outside, Henry said, ‘Something else entirely down to you, Steve, but the offer’s there… I’ve arranged for two rooms to be available for us here on the campus, en-suite bedrooms, TVs, desks, all nicely refurbished. I’d really like you to move in for the time being. It’ll be safer down here.’ Flynn blinked. ‘Obviously you’d have to pay for your own food.’
‘Substantial threat?’ Flynn said, quoting from the witness-protection policy and procedure documents he had once known off by heart.
‘Down to you,’ Henry said. ‘I know you can look after yourself, but until I bottom whatever the hell’s going on around here… I know you have the shop to look after, but that won’t be a problem. I’ll stick a uniformed bobby outside when you’re there as a deterrent.’
‘Deterrent for what?’
Henry shrugged. ‘We’re into seriously dangerous territory here and I’d rather be safe than sorry.’
‘I didn’t know you cared.’
Henry weighed this up. ‘I care more than I did before, put it that way… but on a scale of one to ten, we’re still in pretty low numbers.’
‘That’s reassuring. You say there’s a room here for you too?’
‘I don’t want to drag Alison into this. Haven’t told her yet.’
‘She’ll go ballistic.’
‘Understatement,’ Henry agreed. ‘So what do you want to do? Offer’s there.’
‘I’m touched and I accept — only problem being transport.’
‘My plan is to let you use Alison’s car. I’ll try and prise one for me out of HQ Transport and Alison will be OK because she can use Ginny’s car for the time being.’
‘Something else you haven’t quite run past her?’ Flynn smirked.
Henry shot him a sullen look.
They returned to Henry’s office, where Henry set his coffee filter machine going, then brought in some extra chairs. Flynn sat on one, shuffled it to the back corner of the office and crossed his legs.
Henry dragged a flip-chart board in from another office, found a clean sheet and started to brainstorm his thoughts, Flynn observing with interest, saying nothing.
As Henry worked, Jerry Tope arrived carrying a file of papers — almost collapsing from shock when he saw Flynn sitting in the corner. Then Bill Robbins landed followed by Rik Dean, a DI from Blackpool that Henry knew well. In fact Rik was due to marry Henry’s flaky sister Lisa next year, so he and Henry would soon be in-laws — for at least as long as the marriage lasted. Henry gave it three months.
Finally the chief constable landed, the very portly Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, a man with whom Henry had had a very mixed relationship over many years. He was known as FB.
Henry finished his jottings and folded the front cover sheet over the flip-chart pad to hide what he had written for the moment. He nodded at his little assembled team — a group of people he trusted implicitly, both with secrets and his life… with the slight exception of FB, who he didn’t trust with anything except his own agenda.
Rik Dean, who hadn’t set eyes on Henry for a few days, was wide-eyed at his appearance. ‘Your face is a mess.’
‘Really… I didn’t know… in what way?’ Henry said.
‘And so is yours,’ Rik said, turning to Flynn, Henry’s sarcasm sailing right over his head.
Flynn grinned. The two men knew each other quite well.
‘Right, folks,’ Henry began, running a hand across the crown of his head. ‘Quite a lot been going on in the past couple of days, as you’re probably aware. Myself and Steve have, unintentionally, been at the vortex of things. It’s a story that involves violent death, Russian hoodlums…’ Henry started to enjoy this little opening slot, speaking in a bit of a pantomime voice. ‘Unidentified bodies, attempts on the life of a police officer — me — and innocent members of the public — Steve…’
They’re eating out of the palm of my hand, he thought.
But the moment was broken by a knock on the office door.
‘What?’ Henry snapped.
The door edged open an inch. It was the FMIT secretary, a lady who had an office on the same floor. She looked apologetic.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she said meekly. Henry bit his tongue and held back from telling her that he’d said no interruptions, which he had. ‘It’s just that there’s someone at HQ reception who wants to see you. I thought you’d want to know.’
Henry knew the secretary well enough to realize she would not have interrupted unless it was urgent. ‘Who?’
‘It’s the daughter of Joe Speakman.’
He could have done without the intrusion. It seemed that just as he was in a position to get his thoughts back in line, something came along and barged him off track. It was very frustrating, mainly because he knew there was so much going on and he didn’t want to forget anything, which was a distinct possibility based on the way his brain was spinning now and how tired he was. He knew he had some very important nuggets and to forget them would be catastrophic.
But the family of a victim could not be ignored.
Henry apologized to the men in front of him, bowing and scraping to the chief constable especially, who breathed out long and hard down his hairy nostrils and said, ‘Just give me a call when you’re ready to go again.’
Five minutes later Henry led a very clearly distressed lady from reception into a meeting room just inside headquarters, and asked one of the receptionists to go and buy some tea and biscuits with the fiver he handed her.
The woman was red-eyed from crying.
Henry regarded her, wondering if he remembered her at all. He was usually excellent with faces and places — one of his few attributes as a detective — but it was usually where criminals were concerned, not people he might have met socially in the dim, distant past.
‘I know you,’ she said.
‘I think I know you.’
‘You came to my twenty-first, just after we’d moved into the barn — you know, Mum and Dad’s house in Halton.’
Henry racked his brain cells. That was it! He vaguely knew he’d been to Joe Speakman’s house before, but he’d been finding it impossible to say where, when or why. It was for this woman’s coming-of-age party, over ten years ago, and he realized why he didn’t have a clear memory of it.
‘You’re Melanie,’ he said, ‘and I was drunk.’
She nodded. ‘And you’re Henry Christie and you were drunk to start with, then got very drunk. You did that “Mule Train” thing with a metal tray.’
‘Oh God,’ Henry said shortly. ‘Embarrassing.’ In days gone by that had been his little party piece, smashing his head with a tray to represent the whip-crack in the cowboy song ‘Mule Train’.
‘And you tried to hit on me.’
Oh-oh, he thought.
‘I’m really sorry.’ Now he remembered going out with the CID from Lancaster and Morecambe for some reason. They’d been for a meal, drinking steadily, then ended up at Joe Speakman’s, where they drank even more and… from that point Henry wasn’t sure. He knew he’d woken up in a friend’s front room with his head halfway underneath the sofa, staring at a frightened cat.
