by Nick Oldham
Henry grinned. ‘No, just a psycho and I’m anal.’
He expected the quip to break the tension that had somehow formed between them.
It didn’t.
Instead, her face became very serene and expressionless. Her eyes played over him in a challenging way, though Henry couldn’t decide if she was challenging him or challenging herself.
He found out.
There were no tears in those eyes in among the thick mascara.
Slowly, her fingers moved to the scarf wrapped around her neck. She unravelled it slowly and removed it, placing it on the table, covering the suicide note.
All the while, her eyes were fixed on his.
He felt himself holding his breath.
Then she unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse, each one very slowly, very deliberately.
Then, with the first two fingers of each hand hooked around each side of her blouse, she slowly pulled the blouse apart and downwards and showed Henry her neck and upper chest.
Then her tears fell.
NINE
They sat in silence as Blackstone drove back to headquarters, both consumed by their own thoughts, memories and deficiencies.
In the car park, Henry climbed out – he had felt as if his arse had been dragging on the floor of the Mini and he had to haul himself out – and he gave her a quick wave. She looked blankly at him and drove away. He got into the luxury of his Audi and set off home, calling Diane on the hands-free Bluetooth and talking to her for the whole length of his journey back to The Tawny Owl.
She waited up for him and met him at the front of the pub where they embraced tenderly – he didn’t squeeze too hard – and kissed long and soft before breaking off to sit out on the front patio area with a nice Japanese whisky each. There was no sign of wildlife on the village green.
It was only then, as Henry sat there alongside a woman he had come to love – if ‘love’ was the right word at his age and after losing both his wife and then his fiancée (on balance, he thought it was) – that he finally chilled properly in the balminess of the late night as they talked about each other’s day.
Although Diane had only been an onlooker on the first day’s proper trading of Th’Owl, she had helped out where she could. It had been a steady day, she said, and she’d seen a wariness in most of the customers, until they’d had a few drinks, at which point all social distancing guidelines seemed to be quite forgotten. The feeling was that they were all very happy the place had reopened, not least because it was the only decent pub in the district and the social hub of the village. Its closest rival in a nearby village had shut its doors well before lockdown, never to reopen again.
Finally, their conversation dwindled into a comfortable silence.
‘Hell of a first day,’ Henry muttered. He sipped the fine, mellow whisky.
‘They never pan out how you expect.’
‘No.’ His brow creased. ‘Never.’
They were sitting side by side on a chunky wooden bench, their legs touching gently.
Diane laid a cool hand on Henry’s inner thigh and he slid his hand over hers. He couldn’t deny that a little shimmer went through him. He turned and they looked at each other, almost nose to nose.
‘Err,’ he said nervously and swallowed.
As Diane’s recuperation had been slow and sometimes non-existent for weeks on end, they hadn’t dared to re-establish any sort of intimacy beyond gentle cuddles and caresses. She had been in too much pain from the wounds, but over recent weeks there had been some progress as the pain diminished a little more each day.
‘I know you’ve had a long day,’ she said quietly, ‘and I’ve really missed you.’
‘Well, y’know, working man bringing home the veggies.’
‘So macho.’ She grinned. ‘Thing is, I’d like to try something that we’ve only really done the once.’
Henry swallowed again.
‘How do you feel,’ she said in a low, seductive voice, ‘about you grabbing a shower and then us taking our time over it?’
Henry could already feel himself responding. He nodded eagerly, not trusting himself to actually speak. He finished his drink, got to his feet and held out his hands to bring Diane up to hers.
Ten minutes later, he was in the shower, soaping himself down, when the glass door opened and Diane stepped in alongside him and said, ‘I couldn’t wait.’
Henry slept soundly for five hours, with Diane tucked up tightly against him for most of that time. He woke at six forty-five, hearing noises from inside the pub which told him the second day of trading had already begun. He rolled quietly out of bed, had another quick shower – alone this time – dressed and made his way to the kitchens where Ginny was already preparing the breakfasts.
‘The two gamekeepers are coming in again,’ she told him. ‘They’ll be in at seven and a couple of the Duke’s estate workers will be in a little later.’ She was referring to the Duke of Westminster’s Lancashire estate which was nearby. ‘I hear your day was somewhat fraught … Diane was telling me.’
Henry saw something cross Ginny’s face.
He knew that bringing Diane home had crossed some sort of line with Ginny. The Tawny Owl had originally been owned by Alison, Ginny’s stepmother, who had transformed the pub from a neglected wreck into a thriving business; when Alison had died, even though she and Henry were not married, he had inherited the pub but subsequently gave Ginny a fifty per cent share in it … so he knew that the spirit of Alison still lived in the place, was ingrained into every fibre of it. Although Ginny had tried hard to accept Diane – whom she actually liked a lot – Henry knew she was finding the presence of the new woman in his life hard to deal with. It perhaps didn’t help that in the aftermath of Alison’s tragic death, Ginny had started calling Henry ‘Dad’.
‘Everything OK, darling?’ he asked her.
Her nod was rigid.
‘Hey, let’s talk later, eh?’
He gave her a hug, then said, ‘Coffee and a Cumberland sausage bun?’
‘Coming right up.’
Ten minutes later, he was on the road, heading south for his second day as a civilian investigator.
‘Civilian Investigator Christie,’ he said aloud, wondering how best to introduce himself to prospective suspects and witnesses. ‘CI Christie?’ he tried. ‘Or maybe just Christie, Henry Christie, civvie dogsbody.’
Somehow Henry was not surprised to see Blackstone’s Mini Cooper in the car park even though it was not yet eight a.m. when he pulled up. Unlike him, he guessed she might have had a troubled night.
He entered the FMIT building, amused that the key code for the door was still the same combination as when his office had been there years before. For all that cops pounded on about security for others, they were often lax with their own. He walked down the ground-floor corridor to the CCU in the corner office and, as expected, found Blackstone at her desk.
This time she did not acknowledge him, busy concentrating on something.
Henry went to the desk he assumed belonged to him – which was stacked with other people’s discarded crap, propped against which was a brown A4 envelope with his name on it. He tore it open and tapped out a parking permit and an ID badge on a lanyard with a swipe card, which he knew gave him restricted access to the headquarters building. His temporary computer access code was on a slip of paper.
This was the first time he’d been at his desk, having been dragged out by Blackstone the previous day before he had even set foot in the office.
It reminded him a little of that time, many years before, on his first day on CID: he’d been given the worst desk, in the worst spot, the crappiest chair and, from the looks of it, the oldest computer.
He sat in the chair which hissed down a few inches in protest on its pneumatic strut. When he was almost certain it wouldn’t collapse under his weight, he used his feet to spin around and look over at Blackstone who still did not raise her head.
‘Morning, boss.’
She continued to read, head down in the documents in front of her, ignoring him. He noticed that, overnight, she had changed the colour and style of her hair. It was now orange and as spiky as a conker shell.
Henry didn’t mind a waiting game. He was getting decent enough money for his trouble, so sitting around doing nothing for a few minutes was no hardship, although it wasn’t his natural state. He could relax as much as the next person but preferred to be ‘doing’.
Presently, she looked up. ‘What fucking time do you call this?’
‘My contracted hours are nine to five, actually.’
‘Just guidelines, those.’
‘Ahh,’ Henry said.
Her expression had been surly up to that point, but now they both smiled as the ice broke.
‘How’re you doing?’ he asked.
‘All good,’ she said primly. ‘Yourself?’
‘Yeah, would say so. You know how it is – old folk don’t need much sleep. What’s today’s plan?’
Henry glanced at the files in front of Blackstone.
‘Tell me more about Thomas James Benemy,’ she said.
‘I thought I’d already said enough.’
‘No, I mean from the start. What happened?’
Unsure why she was asking, Henry began again, repeating and filling in the blanks from the story he’d told the previous day. The shoplifting deployment way back in 1985, spotting Tommy helping himself to perfume; the chase through the streets and finding him in an alley, then being beaten unconscious; keeping Tommy’s ID to himself, arresting him; then Tommy going missing.
‘So you got beaten up, then woke up surrounded by people in white coats and you didn’t put much effort into catching the people who did it to you?’ Blackstone grimaced.
‘There was an investigation, but it dwindled to nothing, and anyway, I was on the Support Unit and we didn’t really stay in one place long enough for me to keep following this up. Y’know – join the Support Unit, visit every town and village in Lancashire, cause mayhem, then leave? A great life.’ Henry shrugged. ‘I was young, carefree! So he got away with it – they got away with giving me a good kicking. Shit happens.’
For the first time in a while, his thoughts returned to Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, the man who was his DCI back then, later to become the chief constable and always remain Henry’s nemesis. FB was dead now, having suffered a massive heart attack some time ago. Henry had been with him when he died and he kind of missed him now. Not much. Just a bit. He had been a huge part of his life for so many years.
‘And he stole two grand’s worth of perfume?’ Blackstone asked.
Henry nodded.
‘A lot for a shoplifter – especially a lad.’
‘Fenced it on, I assume,’ Henry guessed.
‘In an organized way?’ Blackstone asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t you mean something?’
Blackstone laid her left hand flat on a stack of A4-sized forms. She said, ‘I had an early start this morning.’
‘After the hair re-dye?’
‘That’s a whole different story … Anyway, I went over to Blackpool and got the key to the archive building.’
‘The archive building?’ Henry said in disbelief. ‘Didn’t know such a thing existed.’
‘Well, as you know, there’s a new police station just recently opened, and when they were transferring shite from the old one to the new one, they didn’t want to fill the new one with boxes and boxes of files and other bollocks, so, in their wisdom, they’ve somehow acquired a secure industrial unit just off Marton roundabout where they now store all this crap. You know what cops are like for not chucking stuff, even when they can? Anyway, I found all these crime forms for 1984 to 1986 from Blackpool Central.’
Henry wanted to say something to show he was intrigued.
He kept quiet.
‘I sifted out all the reports of shoplifting over those years.’
‘Ones where offenders were arrested?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘But shoplifting, if someone isn’t caught, rarely gets reported,’ Henry pointed out.
‘I get that – unless, of course, a whole ton of stuff gets stolen all at once. I mean, if a bottle of aftershave is stolen, even if the store notices, it’s not that bothered, yeah? All big stores have a margin to deal with stolen goods … but if the volume of goods stolen all at once is substantial, then they will report it. Like, if Boots had two grand’s worth of perfume stolen and no one was arrested, they would most likely report it.’
‘Possibly,’ Henry agreed.
‘Anyway,’ Blackstone said, gathering momentum and enthusiasm, ‘I’ve looked at all the town-centre shoplifting reports for that era, eighty-four to eighty-six, eliminated any which an offender was arrested and any under five hundred pounds in value, and I’ve put the results on a spreadsheet.’
Henry’s ‘spreadsheet’ face came on. The one in which his indifference was apparent for all to see. He wasn’t great at covering that up. However, he leaned forward, feigning interest.
‘Bit of context first … there were forty thousand crimes, give or take, committed in Blackpool in that period of time. Shoplifting – or, to give it its official Home Office term, “stealing from shops and stalls” – is one of the minor ones, so it doesn’t surprise me that what I’ve found has been overlooked – and is still being overlooked.’
‘And that is?’
‘There were over a hundred reports from shops in town with goods worth more than two thousand pounds stolen on each occasion – so quite big crimes, but still shoplifting and not a sexy crime, shall we say?’
Henry calculated: ‘Two hundred grand.’
‘And mostly expensive perfumes or designer clothing.’
‘So, branded goods?’
‘All branded goods,’ she confirmed. ‘So over that period of time, a lot of stuff of high value has been stolen … and that includes your incident with Tommy.’
‘OK,’ Henry said, wondering where this was going.
She looked at him expectantly, as though he should know where it was going.
He said, ‘OK,’ again.
‘I thought you were supposed to be a detective?’
‘Once … now I’m just Christie, Henry Christie, Civilian Investigator.’
Blackstone’s head sagged despondently as though she was banging it against a brick wall.
‘Just tell me,’ Henry said.
She tried to motivate herself again. ‘Right, right … another thing: how often did the Support Unit go to Blackpool to run anti-shoplifting operations that you can remember?’
Henry shrugged. ‘When I was on the unit, maybe half a dozen times?’
‘I’ll tell you – twelve times.’
‘OK, I’ll have that,’ Henry accepted.
‘And with that one exception when you arrested Tommy, not once were any of those high-value thefts ever committed when you guys were in town. I’ve cross-checked the dates. I mean, shoplifters were arrested but they were just the usual lot because shoplifting’s a blight on the town anyway … but I’m looking for something different within the dross of it all – some pattern.’
Henry waited.
‘So – question – why were none of the “big” offences committed when you lot were in town?’ Blackstone posed.
Henry thought about it, then said something that, a moment later, he wished he hadn’t. ‘You’re not one of those who think there’s a conspiracy around every corner, are you?’
As soon as he said it, he regretted it from the instant look of horror and hurt on Blackstone’s face. A look coupled with disappointment.
She rose from her chair and said, ‘Fuck you, Henry Christie.’
Henry watched her storm out of the office, heard her footsteps thudding down the corridor in her pink Doc Marten boots, then heard the door open. She obviously then left the FMIT building in a fury directed at him.
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br /> He moved across to her desk, looking at the computer screen still displaying the spreadsheet she had been talking about, plus the stack of handwritten crime forms she had rooted out from the archives, a building Henry assumed must have looked a bit like the warehouse at Area 51. Henry had to admit she had been very busy.
Next to her desk were two bin bags, one of which was sealed around the top with an evidence tag, the other open. Henry recognized them as the bags containing the obscene pornographic photos seized from Clanfield’s flat the day before. Henry realized that Blackstone must also have been to Preston police station to get these from the property store, making Henry wonder why. Not only that; he also wondered just how little sleep she must have had if she had dyed her hair, travelled to Blackpool and also to Preston, and then been in work before Henry arrived – and he had been early.
He sat in her chair, then picked a pair of latex gloves out of the box on her desk, pulled them on and dipped his hand into the open bag and carefully extracted a handful of photographs.
He placed them on the stack of old crime reports and tapped them into place so they formed a neatish pile – they varied in size – then began to look at them. He didn’t really want to, but knew it was one of the necessary parts of his job.
In terms of the age of the photographs, there seemed to be a lot of variation. Some were in black and white, though most were colour, and some had obviously been taken with a Polaroid camera; some could have been fifty years old, some could have been taken yesterday – and maybe were. Even with the few he had taken out of the bag, it was quite a collection. Henry could only guess how many thousands of images Clanfield had on his computer as well. He was a seriously perverted guy.
Although Henry took in each image he looked at and could only conceive what hell the victims in each were going through, he was curiously detached from what he was seeing, although not desensitized. They were sickening, but over the years he’d seen the likes of such things many times and could handle it emotionally, tough though it was.
What it did to him was give him a drive to bring the offenders down.
The majority of the photos did not show the faces of the abused victims – these were scrubbed or pixelated out – just what was happening to their bodies. Nor were the faces of the abusers ever shown.