by Robert Innes
The fact that Woolf clearly had some sort of serious drug problem, and that he clearly knew how the car in the tunnel had disappeared, was enough for Harrison to decide that he needed to let Blake know right away. He turned to leave the room and gasped loudly; Woolf was standing right in front of him, blocking the door. His eyes were narrowed, flashing with anger.
“Oh dear,” he growled as he slammed the door closed. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”
Harrison backed away, his eyes wide. He opened his mouth to shout for Blake, but before the words had even left his lips, Woolf had picked up a lamp from the bedroom cabinet and swung it around. Then, everything went black.
12
Blake woke up the next morning face down on the sofa in Juniper Cottage. It took him a few seconds to realise what had woken him up. Betty the goat was butting the back door, angrily glaring at Blake through the glass.
“Shut up you stupid animal,” Blake murmured.
He rubbed his head and groaned. The red wine his mother had insisted on repeatedly pouring into his glass had given him the most horrendous hangover. The night had gone on far longer than Blake had intended, mostly because Stephanie had gotten so drunk, she had become emotional. By the time Blake and his father had calmed her down and put her to bed, it had been almost two in the morning. So, when Blake arrived home, he decided to sleep on the sofa so that he did not wake Harrison up.
He looked up at the clock on the wall and was horrified to see that he had to be at work in five minutes. With no time to shower, he quickly put on the clothes that he had haphazardly thrown on the armchair the night before, and grabbed his keys off the table, grateful that he had had the sense to throw them somewhere visible before he had passed out on the sofa. As he was leaving, he realised that the dining room table was still set up from dinner the night before. Both bowls were still full of pasta, and the garlic bread that Colin had taken a bite out of was still lying untouched on Blake’s plate. Blake stared at it for a few moments, but he did not have time to consider the matter. He decided that Harrison must have been tired and gone to bed early without eating it, and hurried out of the cottage.
“Before you all begin today,” Angel announced in the meeting room. “I have had a call from Detective Woolf. He’s unwell so won’t be in today. He has asked me to pass on his apologies, and he hopes to be back with us tomorrow. Now then, carry on.”
The team gave a brief murmur of acknowledgment and continued with what they were doing. Angel then turned around in the doorway to his office, his skeletal frame barely filling the gap. “DS Harte? A brief word, if I may?”
Blake, who had been trying to stifle a long yawn while Angel had been speaking was caught off guard and turned to him with his mouth wide open. Ignoring Mattison laughing at him, he followed Angel into his office and closed the door behind them. “Sir?”
Angel sat down at his desk and smiled brightly up at him. “I was just wondering how you’re getting on with Detective Woolf?” Blake was not entirely sure on how to answer. He certainly saw no point in informing Angel about any of his suspicions regarding his new colleague, especially as he did not actually have any evidence to support them. Angel seemed to notice his hesitation. “DS Harte?”
“Well, let’s just say I find him slightly unorthodox, Sir.”
“In what way?”
“We haven’t made a huge amount of progress on the case.”
Angel raised an eyebrow. “Considering one of the suspects has turned up dead, I don’t think you can really call it the same case, do you?”
Blake bit his lip. He did not feel up to bandying details with Angel at this moment.
“I had heard nothing but good things from any superior that Detective Woolf has worked under,” Angel continued. “Are you trying to tell me that they are incorrect?”
Blake sighed. “He can be difficult, Sir. I find him difficult anyway. Perhaps me and him just have different ways of working.”
“Difficult, how?”
Blake considered how was best to word his answer. “I find our personalities clash. Maybe we’re both just very used to our own way of working.”
“Could it be that you feel like he is treading on your toes?”
Blake stared at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Just as I say,” Angel replied. “I have invited this well recommended detective to work with us, and you feel like he is taking over, that the other officers are looking up to him a bit too much?”
“Considering that I don’t think the other officers like him that much either, no, I don’t think that, Sir,” Blake shot back. “Now, if there was nothing else, I’ve got a team meeting.”
Angel narrowed his eyes for a few moments, looking thoughtful, then waved his hand to indicate that Blake was free to leave. Blake wrenched open the door to the office, and had to use every fibre in his being to prevent him from slamming it loudly behind him.
“Okay, listen up,” he said sharply as he strode to the front of the room. “I’d like us to try and go over what we know, what we think, and what our next move is. Everyone here?” His eyes darted round the room to check that everyone he needed was present and then continued as the room fell quiet. “Right. Since our last meeting, which was led by the delightful Detective Woolf…” The scribbled notes that Woolf had scrawled on the white board were still facing the room, so Blake swiftly pulled the board down to reveal his own notes from a previous meeting, then continued. “… we have somehow lost one suspect.” He picked up the board marker and drew a line away from James’ name. “James Pennine was found dead in an old house just on the outskirts of Harmschapel. He was hanging from the ceiling of a cellar located on the property. Do we have the forensic report?”
“Got it here, Sir,” Patil said, passing him the file. Blake rummaged through it till he found the picture of James’ body that had been taken at the scene.
“So, as we can see from the lacerations round the neck, his body was found with the rope tied tightly around it, however, Sharon does not believe that’s what killed him. She’s confirming in her report that he died from an overdose of heroin.” He pulled another picture from the file. It was a close up on an injection mark on James’ arm. “Okay, what we have here is the wound that Sharon believes was where this lethal dose of heroin was injected.”
“I thought he had quite a few injection marks on his arm? Hardly surprising, coming from that family,” put in Gardiner.
Blake held up the forensic report. “Seems that the story Caroline gave us about James being a diabetic who frequently injected insulin was true. If you look at his arm, those aren’t track marks. If James was a constant user of heroin, we’d expect to find bigger and more obvious entry wounds, but she believes that these were made by an insulin needle.”
“So, we don’t even have a murder weapon?” Mattison clarified.
“Certainly looks that way,” Blake replied. “And of course, just for fun, the room we found James in was locked from the inside, with padlocks and a big old key that was still in the lock. So, what we’ve got to ask ourselves is who would want to murder him?”
“That’s not exactly difficult, is it?” Gardiner scoffed. “We’re talking about the Pennines here. We’ve been after them for months. We obviously weren’t the only ones. These drug addicts make enemies.”
“You’re missing the point, Michael,” Blake replied. “James was not a drug addict. He was maybe helping his Dad with the dealing and everything else, but according to the post mortem, insulin was about the most toxic drug he ever put into himself.”
“So what?” Gardiner insisted. “Maybe some lowlife used him to get to his dad? You’re not trying to tell me Keith bloody Pennine was as pure as the driven snow?”
“I can’t tell you anything about Keith bloody Pennine,” Blake said bitterly, turning around to face the board again. “Because Keith bloody Pennine has apparently vanished off the face of the earth. Which brings us to this!” He produced the photo of the burnt out c
ar and placed it onto the board.
“Ah yes.” Gardiner smirked. “The car you and your new best friend managed to lose in the middle of a tunnel. Very careless.”
“Shut up, Michael,” Blake replied. “But, as you say, this car, a crimson Honda Accord Aerodeck, managed to completely evaporate in the middle of Clifton Moore tunnel. About a mile further down the road, the car was then found burnt out in the middle of a field. I would welcome any suggestions.”
The room went silent again. Blake glanced around at the perplexed faces.
“It’s impossible,” Mattison said at last. “There’s absolutely no way for it to have vanished in the way you say it did.”
“He’s right, Sir,” Patil added. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know he’s right, Mini,” Blake replied hotly. “But it doesn’t make it any less true.”
“I looked into the history of the tunnel,” Patil said, opening her notebook. “To see if there was any construction work done on it recently.”
“And?”
“The last time any work was done of the Clifton Moore tunnel was in 1999 when the foundations were checked for any damage following a flood. Apart from that, it hasn’t been touched since.”
“They couldn’t go under it,” Gardiner said. “They couldn’t go over it, so they had to have gone through it.”
“Are you absolutely sure that they didn’t just put on an extra burst of speed before the headlights on Detective Woolf’s car came back on?” Patil asked. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
Blake sighed and stared at the photo of the burnt out car. He could hardly blame them for being sceptical. If he had not witnessed it himself, he would have been asking exactly the same questions.
“We were chasing the Pennines in Woolf’s car,” he said slowly, more to himself than anybody else. “We were going at high speed, it was dark, the rain was lashing down. The tunnel was approaching. Maybe a couple of hundred metres before the entrance to the tunnel, the Pennines’ car slowed down, and we rammed into the back of them, which Woolf originally thought had smashed his headlights because we were then thrown into complete darkness. The rear lights on their car then went out. Then we entered the tunnel. A few seconds later, their rear lights came back on again, and then so did ours. When ours came back on, we were in the middle of the tunnel and the road in front of us was completely clear. Their car had disappeared. The road in the tunnel is too narrow for us to have accidently overtaken them. There were no secret holes or anything in the road or the walls surrounding us.” He stared at the board in front of him. His head was aching, but slowly, an idea was starting to form in his head. He had absolutely no way of proving it, but there was one conceivable way that it could have been achieved.
“Where were you even chasing them from anyway?” Gardiner asked, breaking into his thoughts.
Blake snapped his fingers and turned around to face them. “The petrol station on the other side of the village. And that’s exactly where me and you are going right now, Michael. Get your coat.”
13
The petrol station seemed just as deserted when they arrived as it had done when Blake and Woolf had been watching it on the night they had pursued the Pennines. When they walked in, the woman behind the counter was slouched over it, flicking through the pages, looking bored. When she glanced up and spotted Blake and Gardiner, she looked surprised to see that she actually had some customers.
“Hiya,” she said, throwing the magazine aside. “What pump number, please?”
“We haven’t come about petrol,” Blake replied, producing his ID. “Detective Sergeant Blake Harte, this is Sergeant Michael Gardiner. We’re actually here to ask you or anyone who works here some questions about James Pennine?”
The girl scoffed. “Don’t talk to me about him right now. I wasn’t supposed to be in today, they had to call me in. He’s a no show.” She looked over her shoulder and leaned in further. “Between you and me, they’re not bothered. I had plans today, but they don’t care here. So long as the management don’t have to get up off their arses. I’m looking for another job.”
“There’s actually a very good reason James didn’t show up for his shift today,” Blake replied. “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news.”
“If you could persuade whoever is your manager today to ‘get up off their arse,’ we need to speak to them,” Gardiner added from behind Blake.
The woman appeared dumbfounded for a second but quickly ran out the back. As she went, Blake looked at Gardiner and shook his head in disbelief at his lack of tact.
“What?” Gardiner asked.
Before Blake could reply, the woman returned with a man wearing a shirt and tie.
“Good morning,” he said. “I’m Nick Brown, manager. Sophie says you wanted to speak to me?”
“Hi, Nick,” Blake said. “I’m sorry to have to inform you that we found the body of James Pennine yesterday.”
Nick stared at Blake, his eyes wide. “Are you kidding me? James? Are you sure?”
Blake nodded. “I’m very sorry.”
“Oh my God,” Sophie gasped, slapping her hand over her mouth. “That’s awful. He was such a nice guy! What happened to him?”
Blake was not entirely sure that Sophie was going to be much help, so he asked Nick if there was somewhere more private they could talk.
Once in the back office, Blake and Gardiner sat opposite him. They could see Sophie on the screens of the security cameras. Despite her initial grief, she seemed to have gone back to her magazine.
“We were wondering if you could tell us anything that might help us,” Blake said to Nick, who had sat down, looking shaken. “We think he was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Nick repeated. “My god. The poor guy. I mean, for what it’s worth, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about him. He was a good bloke. Bit of a Jack the Lad, he could be a bit lazy around here, but then look at what I’ve got in today.”
Blake nodded. “Did he give the impression of somebody who might have dabbled with drugs in the past?”
Nick raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Not that I ever saw. He came in hungover a couple of times, but name me someone who hasn’t done that at work.”
Blake smiled briefly, as his own head throbbed. “Did you ever come across his father, Keith?”
“Yeah,” said Nick, his face dropping. “In fact, he’s barred from here.”
“Why?”
“He’s come in a couple of times, off his head. Shouting the odds, causing trouble for James.”
“’Off his head?’ repeated Gardiner. “What do you mean?”
“Drunk,” Nick told him. “Though in all honesty, if you’re looking for someone who was mixed up with drugs, Keith would probably be your man. I’m no expert, but he often looked like he was on something to me. Weird behaviour, out of nowhere aggression, that sort of thing. But James was nothing like him. In fact, I rather got the impression that he was saving up to move out of his parents’ house. I mean, he was only sixteen, but when you’re surrounded by that as a family, who can blame him?”
“We do have evidence and witnesses saying that he was involved in drug dealing with Keith,” Blake replied.
“Really? Well, I don’t know,” Nick said. “All I can tell you is that that surprises me. I mean, from what I’ve heard, Keith could be quite violent and threatening. Maybe he was forcing James into it?”
Blake looked at Gardiner who just shrugged. The idea of Keith intimidating his son into helping him with his own dealings certainly fit the theory that James was more of an innocent part of proceedings, but at this stage, that was still all it was; a theory.
“Alright, thank you,” Blake said, standing up. “If you think of anything else, anything at all that might be of help to us, get in touch with the station.”
“Of course,” Nick said. “It’s all such a terrible shock.”
Blake and Gardiner were just on their way out the office when Nick sai
d, “Oh, there was one other thing. The other day, some bloke came in looking for James. I don’t know if it’s any good to you. I’d never seen him before.”
“What bloke was this?” Blake asked him.
“I think he was American,” Nick replied. “Older guy. He just asked if James was available, but he was out on his break. I asked if he wanted me to try and get hold of him, but he said it didn’t matter and walked out.”
Blake turned to Gardiner. “An American man? Can I see him on the cameras?”
“Sure,” Nick said. “Won’t be a sec.”
After a few clicks on the computer, Nick had got up the previous day’s footage up on the computer. “And he turned up about half past twelve. There he is.”