After their questioning, they had allowed him to get dressed and cleaned up in a bathroom which adjoined the office. Then, although he wasn’t fit for anything other than a visit to a Casualty Department, they had wanted to talk business with him.
He had difficulty maintaining concentration, but he kept in there, even though he was quickly working his way through a toilet roll in an effort to stem the blood flow from his nose.
‘ I hope you understand why we had to do that, Frank,’ Gary Thompson had said on Henry’s return from the toilet. ‘We can’t be too careful in this game, as you well know, and we don’t have time to arse around asking nicey, nicey questions.’
Henry muttered something from behind the bog roll.
‘ So, nothing personal? No hard feelings?’ Thompson slapped his thighs. ‘Down to business, eh?’
They were all seated on the Chesterfields; Thompson next to Henry on one, Gunk and the mysterious stranger on the other.
Henry sniffed up and a blob of blood shot down his throat. He hacked it up into the tissue and wiped his mouth. He looked round at them.
Gary — ‘Gazzer’ — Thompson, was the one with the majority of the peanut brain. Or at least he talked a good story, and had the less intellectual Gunk under his thumb, although they were obviously a team. He was a cool-looking guy, well-dressed, lots of gold, with furtive eyes and a moustache which gave Henry the creeps. Henry imagined that Gazzer was pretty good with women.
Then there was Edward — ‘Gunk’ — Elphick. Short, squat, powerful, built like a Sherman tank and probably just as intelligent. His nickname had come from his juvenile tearaway days when he spent much of his time with oily hands from stealing engine parts from cars. He wore an array of earrings either side and was dressed rather unoriginally in a black dinner suit and bow tie, though the latter featured Disney characters. He had a smirk on his face as Henry’s eyes momentarily caught his. Henry was very uncomfortable with Gunk. Not just because of his physical power, but because he had a violent sexual deviance streak in his character. His previous convictions detailed two horrific assaults on young boys. Now Henry had the very real perception that Gunk saw him as a potential conquest; he had an unpleasant feeling that Gunk might try to chance his arm. Henry was not a violent man, but he knew that if there ever came a legitimate chance of beating the living shit out of Gunk, he would do it and enjoy it.
Next along was the mystery man. Henry looked at him for an instant, then back to Thompson.
‘ What’s the score now, Gazzer? Now that Jacky’s gone to gangster heaven? I need to know before I do business.’
‘ It was very sad that Jacky got taken out like that. Despite what you might think, Frank, we had nothing to do with it. We both miss him very much. He was a good boss, a fair man.’ Thompson made a valiant effort with his body language to convey grief. Henry covered his mouth with tissue and tried to hide a smile. ‘But the sad fact is, he’s gone. Yes, gone to gangster heaven, I would guess. But the business still has to run. Me and Gunk have stepped into Jacky’s shoes to keep the momentum going. A dirty business, but someone has to do it. So that’s the score, Frank.’
‘ And who is this personality?’ Henry pointed at Mr Mystery with a gesture of his blood soaked tissues.
‘ A friend, a business partner.’
Henry looked at him. The man’s deep-set eyes returned the stare. Henry though he looked deadly and cold.
‘ Look, Gazzer, I’m not being funny, but I really don’t like doing business with people I don’t know. Commonsense, really. I could be compromised. I need to know who he is, and if I can trust him.’
‘ Fair enough. I’ll introduce you. Frank Jagger — Nikolai Drozdov. Him and us are in business together now. He’s from Europe.’
Drozdov offered his pale hand to Henry, who shook it. It was cool and small, like a woman’s. But there was no time to talk further. There was an urgent knock from the office door. Gunk opened it to a man who tumbled into the room, breathless.
‘ Trouble… down at the door. Some heavies from Moss Side are causing problems. We need you down there to sort it, otherwise it’s going to get out of hand.’
Thompson nodded. ‘Right.’ He turned to Henry. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
Now, as he lay in the bath in his hotel room a few hours later, running these events through his mind, Henry began to marshal his thoughts.
Firstly he needed to get a grip on Rupert Davison, that two-faced bastard of a Detective Superintendent who had lied bare-faced to him and got him beaten up. Secondly he had to do some research on Nikolai Drozdov, who Henry suspected was a fully paid-up member of the Russian Mafia, and to bone up on the Russian Mafia itself; he had heard lots about them and their ever-spreading influence, but had never yet met one face to face, except… Henry had a very disturbing thought: maybe he had come face to face with the Russian Mafia before, not so very long ago, and did not realise it at the time. Maybe the guy who had done the business on Jacky Lee had been one of them and maybe the incomprehensible words he had uttered at Henry were Russian words. And maybe Jacky Lee had been ousted by the Russians so that they could move in and control his little empire, working alongside Thompson and Elphick.
Wow, Henry thought. He settled deep into the bath, the hot water having a soothing effect on his wounds, and tried to remember exactly what the killer had said. Henry had thought it gibberish at the time.
Another person suffering that morning, though not in exactly the same way as Henry Christie, was Danny Furness.
She sat at her desk balancing her forehead on her forefinger, swallowing in an effort to hold back the contents of her stomach which threatened to burst forth at any moment, and wishing she was dead. Being so would end all her suffering. As well as her stomach being bad, her head was no better, being the cranial version of hellfire; and she was also suffering from the acute embarrassment of having a man’s erect penis almost in her mouth and him running out on her because it was all too weird.
Surely that could not have happened to any other woman, anywhere, ever?
Danny took a chance and lifted her head off her finger to look around the office through a pair of eyes which refused to open properly. No doubt about it, she should still be in bed, suffering her physical and mental anguish — alone.
The phone on her desk rang. She let it. It stopped eventually.
She had missed the daily murder briefing at eight, not having landed until well after nine, and that had been a miracle, so she had no idea if there had been any overnight developments.
‘ Oh God.’ Her mouth fell open; her bottom lip sagged heavily. She got to her feet slowly, steadying herself on her desk, and walked, one measured, controlled step at a time, out of the office. She ignored the lift. The very thought of it made her queasy. She went up the stairs to the MIR, one tread at a time, pausing on each one to regain equilibrium.
Eventually she made it to the right floor and shuffled into the Incident Room which was very quiet. Everyone who should be, was out investigating. Everyone but her.
She went across to the Receiver’s desk. The Detective Constable assigned to that role raised his eyes.
‘ Anything doing?’ she enquired.
‘ This has just literally arrived by fax — results of the dental identification on your man.’ He held up a sheet of paper. Danny snatched it from his hand and read with glee. At last, a major step forwards.
Except that her excitement was halted quickly by a loud gurgle from her intestines.
She clamped a hand over her mouth and raced out of the room to the ladies’ toilets, where she burst into a cubicle and sank down to her knees over the toilet bowl. Almost before she had finished vomiting, she was scrambling like mad to drag her skirt up, knickers down, to plonk herself down on the loo and empty her bowels.
‘ Oh my God,’ she moaned again just as a stomach cramp creased her guts.
Just her luck. Insult to injury. On the most important day of the investigation for her, she was sick, had diarrhoea and was about to start her period.
Henry Christie locked his hotel-room door, trotted down the stairs and wandered into Manchester city centre.
