by Nick Oldham
He had never thought he would have to look at such things again, yet here he was.
After about a dozen, he’d had enough. He’d started off thinking he had a thick skin, but it was already showing signs of seepage. Maybe he wasn’t as tough as he used to be; maybe age had softened him up.
‘Enough,’ he said. He picked up the stack with one hand, opened the bin bag with the other and dropped the photographs back in – except that didn’t quite happen. The latex gloves made his fingers slippy and he lost grip of the photos, flipping them all over the floor and underneath Blackstone’s desk as if he was throwing down a pack of playing cards.
Cursing, he slid off the chair on to his hands and knees and started to collect them up and drop them in the bag, not really looking at the images any more, except for the very last one he was about to put in.
Down there on his knees, he went very tense and very cold. He slid the photograph on to the desktop and hauled himself creakily to his feet using the edge of the desk. He stood and looked at the image for many seconds before getting out his mobile phone and dialling Blackstone’s number.
‘What?’ she answered curtly.
‘Where are you right now?’
She was in the dining room where the breakfast serving was just finishing for the few residential students at the training centre. COVID had shut down the centre, but as restrictions were eased, one or two courses for smaller numbers were beginning to run again.
She was hunched over an empty plate that may have accommodated a very large breakfast and was drinking a cup of coffee while messing about with her mobile phone.
Henry approached her cagily. ‘Can I get you another brew?’
Without looking up, she nodded, and Henry was sure he could feel the heat of wrath radiating from her. She was still mad at him.
He went to the coffee machine, bought two white coffees, and carried them back to Blackstone who, as far as he could tell, still hadn’t raised her head, although he guessed she may well have watched him walking down the dining room and fired laser daggers from her eyes into his back.
He pushed a coffee towards her as he sat down opposite, just far enough away from her to avoid the arc of her punches and infection from COVID.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said genuinely.
She grunted something; he wasn’t exactly sure what.
‘I said I’m very sorry.’
This time she raised her head slowly. Henry half expected it to swivel 360 degrees.
‘What do you want – a carrot?’
Henry blinked.
‘You know what? I’ve only known you a day and a bit, but even so, in that short space of time, I actually expected more of you today – much more. I know you’ve been a hotshot detective, murder solver, used your gun, got shot, took on paid assassins and terrorists and all that sexy shit … yeah, I did my homework on you, and I thought you’d just be a jumped-up dickwit know-it-all. And, this morning, lo and behold, you proved to be just that, Henry Christie.’
‘Yeah, OK, I get you,’ he said shamefacedly. ‘But, y’know …’ He was struggling to put across what he wanted to say in a way that might mean they could actually continue to talk to each other.
She didn’t give him the chance. Instead, she cut in: ‘I’ve been shat on for the last four years, give or take, because I went on about a big conspiracy. I’ve been kept down, like being fucking water-boarded, just because I had the temerity to suggest that – yep – there’s a conspiracy going on that involves cops, businessmen, crims, counsellors, judges – you name it, all pissing in the same pot. And it’s fucking organized, too, Henry, and I’ll lay odds it’s been going on even before, and certainly since, you chased Tommy Benemy out of that shop in 1985. Thirty-five-plus years – and you know what, I got sidelined, told to forget it. And I thought you were better and would listen and take me seriously, Henry Christie. Obviously not.’
She raised her head even more, tilted her chin and pulled down the scarf she was wearing, showing Henry the burns on her neck again – which she still had to explain to him.
‘I’m no hotshot analyst, Henry. But I look for repeating patterns, even if they’re not frequent. I wasn’t any good at maths, but I can add up and subtract, and I read stuff and I see through the dross. Doing that drove me down a dark corridor four years ago …’
Her eyes showed Henry she was once again reliving this, but now she was verbalizing it for his benefit. ‘Accidentally, more than anything, but I knew I was on the brink of something that had been bugging me, and it led me to an unlit corridor … and the screams of a kid … and the shadow of a man, I think … then the flash and burn of sulphuric acid.’
She took a juddering breath. ‘And that’s why I had that panic attack last night.’
Henry gulped and said, inadequately, ‘Demons.’
‘Scarred,’ she said. She tapped her temple. ‘Up here.’ Then she touched her neck. ‘And down here.’ Then she touched her chest over her heart. ‘And in here, too.’ Then added, ‘For life.’
Henry said, ‘Right, OK … let me just say something and don’t get mad with me.’
‘Look, I’m not a flat-earther, for fuck’s sake!’
‘I said don’t get mad.’ His voice was calm.
‘OK, OK.’ She backed off.
‘Thing is, conspiracy theories are usually unfounded. You know, like the government child sex accusations in the seventies …’
She opened her mouth to interrupt.
Henry held up a finger. ‘Mostly, they come to nothing, especially those concerning institutions and organizations. Yep, I’ll have it – like-minded, evil individuals linking together, maybe, but not really coordinated, if you get my drift? I get organized crime, I do … I’ve been chasing it all my life, trying to bring it down, and I did wonder about Tommy Benemy and the amount of stuff he stole, but … meh.’ He shrugged. ‘Unconvinced … but I do have an open mind – honestly.’ He smiled. ‘Right – mansplaining section of the day done; now down to you.’
‘Bottom line?’ she said.
‘Bottom line.’
‘Cops, businesses, councillors, crims … missing children, undetected crime waves – yes, coordinated evil. And no one wants to know.’
‘Like a modern-day Fagin?’
‘Up to a point. Kids stealing to order, being abused, being murdered, maybe … certainly intimidated to keep schtum because it’s the only thing they know.’
Henry considered her words.
‘I haven’t done this,’ Blackstone went on, ‘but I’ll bet if you get hold of Blackpool’s crime figures for the last thirty-five years, I can do exactly what I did with those from 1984 to 1986 … because I also researched them for a two-year period when I was a DS in Blackpool four years ago.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Yes, because I am not nuts.’
‘How far up did you take it?’
‘I worked my way up from my DI to the chief constable and they all told me I was seeing things that didn’t exist. There was no “real” pattern to the shoplifting figures, just blips. They covered up their ears and sang the “blah-blah” song to drown me out. Didn’t want to know. Too scary to even contemplate, especially when I suggested that cops might be involved. “Cops don’t do abuse,” they said. Looked at me like I was a hysterical woman, because that’s the world we still live in.’ She looked devastated.
Henry leaned back and rolled the base of his coffee cup on the table. He uttered an expletive quietly and said, ‘You think this is still going on? Even now?’
Blackstone also sat back and looked at him. ‘Maybe. I just saw … similarities, shall we say? Thing is, what if this is true and it’s been going on for years in front of our noses and we haven’t seen it? Anyway, why did you come and apologize?’
‘I had an epiphany,’ he said mysteriously.
‘Don’t talk like a wanker. One thing I don’t do these days is suffer dickheads gladly – ask the civvie investigator whose place you took.
He was an ex-Jack, up his own fat arse … bit like you.’
‘Was that my induction-stroke-welcome speech?’
‘Part of it … so, why?’
‘I was going through your things …’
She glared at him. ‘You went through my things?’
He gave her a nice smile, hoping to deflect any more hostility from her. ‘And came across this.’
He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket, took out the photograph he’d picked up from the ones he’d knocked on to the floor under her desk. He checked there was no one else in close proximity to see the disturbing image – the dining room was all but empty now – and pushed it over to Blackstone but kept his hand over it.
‘This kind of makes sense of what you were telling me,’ Henry said. ‘Possibly.’
He took away his hand to reveal it: a naked young boy but with his face scratched out.
She looked at it. ‘And?’ She shrugged. ‘Just like a thousand other photos in that bin bag.’
‘It isn’t.’
Blackstone waited.
Henry’s voice was hesitant, shaky, and his heart began to up its rhythm. ‘I can’t see the face, but look at his right forearm.’
She picked up the photograph and peered closely at it, seeing a thin arm with some marks on it. ‘A tattoo?’
Henry nodded.
Blackstone looked even closer. ‘Of what?’
‘A house.’
‘Just looks like a square with a triangle on it.’
‘It is. A box – the house – with a point on it, like a kid might draw, I suppose. And, if you look closely enough, it looks like a line slashed across the box at a bit of an angle. I’ll bet the tech people can zoom in on it and make the image clearer if we ask them.’
‘To what end? Just another photo of a kid being abused. Clanfield will get charged with possession of them and that’s probably as far as it’ll go.’
‘Not in this case,’ Henry said. ‘What if we actually knew who the kid was? A name, an identity to work from, something that could open up a can of worms, something that might help to prove or disprove your totally outlandish flat-earth theories,’ he teased her.
She blinked at him.
Henry said. ‘I’ll lay my three-hundred-quid-a-day pay on it – a pound to a pinch of shit, to quote a gambling term – that this is Thomas James Benemy.’
Blackstone rocked forward. ‘Are you sure?’
Henry nodded. He clearly remembered Trish Benemy whingeing about her son’s stupidity in having the ‘house’ tattoo etched on his arm. ‘What we have now is the confirmed identity of a lad who stole thousands of pounds’ worth of goods from a shop who then’ – he put his forefinger on to the photograph – ‘got abused and disappeared. Thirty-five years ago, admittedly, but it doesn’t make it any less real, as his mother’s suicide proved yesterday. The wounds are still very raw.’
‘Shit.’
‘And, like I said, it adds some credibility to your preposterous conspiracy theory. Just kidding,’ he finished quickly, seeing her expression change.
‘Where do we take it from here, then?’
‘I’m not certain.’
‘I am,’ Blackstone said forcefully. ‘And it’s just the kind of thing a civilian investigator is paid to do. Three hundred a day, did you say?’ She supped the last of her coffee. ‘Number crunching is always a good start.’
‘OK, boss.’
She pushed the photograph back to Henry and said, ‘Poor lad,’ at which moment her mobile phone rang. ‘Rik Dean,’ she mouthed to Henry, then answered it and listened as Rik asked her where she was. ‘Having a brew with Civilian Investigator Christie … dining room at the training school … OK.’ She glanced at Henry while listening intently to what Rik was saying, responding occasionally. ‘So that’s happening now? You want us to attend? Yep, OK, boss.’
Finally, she terminated the call.
Henry didn’t like the look on her face.
‘That was your brother-in-law. Ricky boy.’
‘I gathered.’
‘He wants us to get over to Blackpool now.’
‘Why?’
‘The post-mortem’s being done on Trish Benemy.’
Henry nodded. ‘As expected.’
‘Thing is, it’s not suicide. It’s murder.’
TEN
‘Well, well, well, as I live and breathe,’ the man said. He was holding up a pair of smoke-ravaged lungs in front of him, the blood from them dripping into a stainless-steel bowl in a sink. He was dressed in pathologist garb from head to toe, including a skull cap, face mask and wellington-type boots. The lungs he was holding had just been removed from the body on the slab, the torso wide open, displaying no internal organs whatsoever as the heart, liver, kidneys and stomach had also been removed and laid out on the dissecting table as though being prepared for a meal. The lungs had already been sliced open and the man was just holding them up for further inspection. He had looked over his shoulder as Henry and Blackstone entered the mortuary at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, both in scrubs and fitting their medical face masks in place of their personal ones. ‘As I live and breathe,’ the man said again, ‘if it isn’t that there Henry Christie.’
Even under the camouflage of his protective clothing, Henry recognized Professor Baines, the head Home Office pathologist for the North West region, whom Henry had first encountered for the very first time in the same public mortuary thirty-five years before. And since then Baines had become a ‘sort of’ friend to Henry. Baines had performed many post-mortems for Henry’s cases and the two men had got to know each other well. Baines was also always interested in Henry’s often entertaining love life.
‘And if it isn’t Professor Baines,’ Henry said, recognizing the voice rather than the person underneath the gown.
‘As you’re no longer officially a police officer, I’m assuming this little lady is in charge of the investigation and you’re just tagging along?’
From the corner of his eye, Henry saw the change in Blackstone’s demeanour at the ‘little lady’ remark and he thought that Baines might be lucky if he made it out of the mortuary without having anything chopped off.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Blackstone … and I assume you’re the quack,’ she countered frostily.
Baines’s ears rose half an inch as he smiled under the mask. ‘Touché.’
‘What have you got for us?’ Blackstone went on, all business. She walked ahead of Henry past the mortuary slab to where Baines was still holding the dripping lungs aloft.
Henry followed but stopped momentarily at the empty body shell of Trish Benemy. He’d been to many PMs since his early days as a cop and knew they could be brutal affairs. Some pathologists treated dead bodies as lumps of meat, with disrespect and detachment, which Henry hated. He had even called a couple of them out on their attitudes, which had not endeared him to the police hierarchy, but despite having had the occasional flea in his ear, ironically about showing due deference to the pathologists concerned, Henry was ferociously on the side of the dead and realized that he and people like pathologists and undertakers had a huge responsibility towards their subjects. Baines was always fairly light-hearted in his approach, but Henry knew he took his work very seriously and had the utmost respect for the dead.
Henry gave a little sigh of sadness and went over to where Baines carefully laid out Trish’s lungs.
‘The police report stated this woman had been found with a plastic bag pulled over her head,’ Baines was saying. ‘And that she is suspected of having committed suicide.’
‘Correct,’ Blackstone confirmed.
Baines nodded. ‘Her lungs have been decimated by a lifetime of heavy smoking,’ he said, ‘hence their colour – black. And there are cancerous growths in the lower right lobe.’
Baines prised open the right lung and pointed at several spots and said, ‘Cancer. Untreated, it would have led to her death some way down the line – two years maybe. But she died of asphyxiation and
putting a bag over her head would definitely have smothered her. I’ve performed post-mortems on many people who have committed suicide in this manner. Mainly women, I might add.’
‘Why women?’ Henry asked.
‘Not sure, but it seems a more common method for a woman to take her own life … and this lady did die of asphyxiation by smothering – but not because of a plastic bag. I would suggest she was smothered by a pillow or a cushion. Her larynx, oesophagus and the bronchial tracts that make up her lungs have tiny fibres in them consistent with having inhaled them from something used to smother her, such as a pillow or cushion.’
‘There was a fluffy cushion next to her,’ Henry said.
‘Then I suggest you seize it for evidence, Henry, my boy, because something like that has been held over her mouth and nose and she has inhaled some of the loose fibres from its surface as she struggled to stay alive.’
All three turned to look at Trish Benemy’s cadaver.
‘She was murdered and whoever did it tried to make it look like a suicide,’ Baines said.
Henry and Blackstone returned to the bedsit in which Trish’s body had been discovered. This time, Blackstone had no problem walking along the corridor to the room with Henry. It had been abandoned intact by the police who had immediately assumed suicide rather than murder, rather than the other way around, which was the standard operating procedure – Think murder! – but as Henry looked around the room, he guessed, hoped, there was no harm done in terms of evidence gathering.
On the floor beside the settee was the cushion Henry recalled having seen. It was pink and fluffy and looked to match the fibres Baines had tweezered out of Trish’s respiratory system. A forensic comparison would be required, but in his heart Henry knew there would be a match.
Baines had also mentioned the smell of alcohol and had taken blood samples. He believed she would have been quite drunk and therefore easily overpowered, being such a lightly built person. Two empty gin bottles were on the floor.
‘Thoughts, Henry?’