Scarred

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Am I speaking to Henry Christie?’

  Henry instantly recognized the sultry female voice. ‘What can I do for you, Hortense?’ He was on the defensive straight away.

  ‘Firstly,’ Hortense Thorogood, solicitor, said, ‘I would like to thank you for your complimentary remarks about me and my profession.’ From sultry, the voice became chilly.

  ‘Pleasure.’ Henry was now wondering if this call was the precursor to a complaint about his behaviour which, even if it went nowhere, would probably end his tenure as a civilian investigator.

  ‘You’re right – I do defend scum, but usually they are illiterate toe-rags from the streets who, guilty or otherwise, need some weight behind them to deal with a justice system that will fuck ’em royally if it gets the chance.’

  Henry kept his thoughts to himself. In his experience, it was the victims who were royally fucked over. ‘And secondly?’

  ‘I didn’t defend Clanfield. I just made sure he was able to contest what is usually a done deal. In fact, if you delve into my record, I’ve never actually defended anyone charged with rape or other serious sexual offences. I hate them.’

  ‘But you’ve just put a rapist back on the street,’ Henry protested.

  ‘Admittedly, but I was asked to step in and couldn’t really refuse. It is my job, after all.’

  ‘But you’re based in Blackpool, not Preston.’

  ‘Like I said, I was asked.’

  Henry swallowed. His notes were still in front of him, but he got hold of a pad of Post-it notes and scribbled Clanfield on it.

  The solicitor went on, ‘I have not made this call, Henry – OK? Do you understand? In fact, I’m using a burner phone that one of my clients gave to me, and once I’ve used it, the SIM will be snapped in two and the phone dropped down a drain.’

  Henry kept silent.

  ‘You may think I’m a shit, and I assure you, the feeling’s mutual, but I’m not happy about what I did today for reasons you will never discover … but what I’m about to say breaches all client/solicitor confidentiality. I’m going to tell you who hired me to deal with Clanfield’s remand hearing … but I haven’t told you, OK? I need your word on that, Henry, because these are very scary people, and if it ever came out I told you, I’m pretty sure my tits would be toast.’

  ‘You can trust me,’ Henry said. His pen hovered over the sticky notes.

  ‘I know I can. Now I’m saying this only once and you do with it whatever you will.’

  ‘Got it.’ Henry scribbled down the time.

  Thorogood said, ‘David Hindle.’

  The line went dead.

  SIXTEEN

  The thing about Henry Christie was that when he’d been a ‘real’ cop, whatever rank he was at – and he’d reached (what he cynically called) the less than heady heights of detective superintendent before retirement – he had always been one to lead from the front. There were stages in his career when he could, probably should, have taken things more easily, become a desk-jockey and delegated more stuff, but that had never been him, especially when he was part of or leading investigations into serious offences. He revelled in being involved with the front line, coming face to face with criminals and pitting himself against them.

  Which is why, following the ‘anonymous’ phone call from Hortense Thorogood, he stared at the names scribbled on the sticky note – Clanfield and David Hindle – with an arrow from one to the other, and felt his anus twitch, expanding and contracting as though it was keeping the beat to a rock ‘n’ roll song – that ‘thing’ his arsehole did when he became truly excited and knew he was on to something.

  ‘David Hindle,’ he whispered to himself, then underlined and encircled it in pen.

  Then he stood up and said to no one, because the CCU office was empty, ‘I may be Christie, Henry Christie, Civilian Investigator, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go out and ruffle feathers.’

  He banged on the door, hard, repeatedly. Bent down to the letterbox and peered up the stairs beyond, then put his lips to the open slot and shouted, ‘Ellis Clanfield, open up. This is the police.’ He let the flap shut with a clatter and said, ‘Sort of.’

  Then he bent low again, opened the letterbox and continued to peer up towards Clanfield’s flat.

  He had no idea whether or not this was a good idea, but because Clanfield’s flat in Preston was the closest port of call of the several he planned to make, that was why he was now knocking even harder because he was pretty sure the guy was in and he wanted to put the awkward question to him: what is your relationship with David Hindle?

  He shouted again.

  This time he heard some movement, and with his eyes to the letterbox he saw a pair of feet step on to the small landing at the top of the stairs.

  ‘What do you want? I’m a free man. I’m going to show up for interview, so stop harassing me,’ Clanfield called down.

  ‘Let me in, let’s chat,’ Henry said.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘It’s a condition of your release that you allow the police in to see if you are at home,’ Henry bluffed.

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘You were too excited being allowed out. Now come on, show yourself properly and let me talk to you.’

  ‘You know I’m here, so fuck off.’

  ‘Ellis, I’d hate to start thinking you have something to hide.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Blackstone finally managed to bring some semblance of normality to her day. A CSI had been, done a fairly perfunctory sweep of the apartment and said he was certain whoever trashed her place had been wearing gloves. He held out little hope of a result.

  By then she was past caring.

  All she wanted was to return to her version of normal.

  When everything was tidied up, she went down to the garage to have another look at the damage to her car – which looked worse than before: the boot was staved in and the rear bumper twisted. It almost made her weep, but she knew a guy who did body repairs and managed to book the Mini in for the following week. Then she phoned up for a pizza and killed a bit of time strolling around the dock until the delivery guy arrived.

  She tipped him, then retreated to her flat where she intended to hole up for the evening; she’d previously nipped out to a nearby supermarket and bought herself a new TV which was big enough not to have to squint at but small enough for her to carry. It would suffice until the insurance claim was settled and she could replace the smashed-up one with a huge new one.

  Her intention was: feet up, drink wine, watch a crap film and journey into herself to come to terms with the fact she was, as Henry put it, a jackass.

  She’d been called worse.

  With the new TV set up and ready to go, she opened the pizza, which was far too big for one; she would do her best with it, though, because the act of stuffing herself made her feel a whole lot better.

  However, two large slices into the New Yorker, she decided she’d had enough. She closed the box lid and switched the TV off because the film she wanted to watch wasn’t on until later. Something about Armageddon, which seemed just about right for her mood.

  Suddenly, she was bored.

  Until her courtroom outburst, the last three days had been the best three consecutive days of her life for a very long time.

  More by accident than design, she had to admit.

  She had been dreading having Henry Christie foisted on her, but he’d been a revelation of sorts, not least because he stood his ground against her onslaughts, gave as good as he got and didn’t suffer her nonsense. He had taken her as he found her but had also, in some strange way, made her look at herself properly for once and come to realize that she didn’t have to be the image she projected.

  It was complicated, she knew.

  She didn’t see him as a saviour – that’s definitely not what he was – but maybe someone who, for the first time in a while, she could rub along with and not feel the need to intimidate or bully just because she fel
t crap about herself; she was always either on the defensive or the attack – never seemed to have a nice equilibrium to her.

  ‘Enough introspection!’ she chided herself.

  That said, although she had been forgiven by others for her unprofessional outburst in court, she was struggling to forgive herself. She’d allowed her thin veneer to slip and she didn’t like what she saw underneath it.

  She went into the bathroom – the intruders had broken the mirror over the washbasin. Standing in front of it, she removed her T-shirt and regarded herself critically in the cracked image which cut across like the zigzag of forked lightning.

  And she smiled.

  Because she didn’t detest what she saw.

  She was different, yes. Not the twee, pretty woman she used to be with nicely bobbed, trimmed hair, but a scarred version of that person with whacky hair, piercings, tattoos – although she didn’t really have pierced nipples as she’d claimed to Henry.

  She smirked at that, visualizing his face.

  ‘Like I said, enough introspection for the moment. There’s a long way to go yet before we get into here’ – she tapped her forehead – ‘but I think we’re en route.’

  She slid the T-shirt back on, returned to the lounge and plugged in her work laptop. She rubbed her hands and said, ‘Now, where was I?’

  Henry’s impatience grew as he waited for Clanfield to come to the door. He wasn’t rushing – not that he was obliged to, but the delay made Henry suspicious.

  Finally, the door opened.

  Clanfield stood there in a ragged rugby shirt and equally tatty shorts. ‘What?’

  ‘What are you up to?’ Henry asked: too many years as an over-suspicious cop made him pose that one.

  ‘Nowt.’

  ‘Who have you got up there?’

  ‘No one.’

  Henry looked into his shifty eyes which tried to avoid contact. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, fuckin’ really.’

  ‘You won’t mind if I have a glance, then?’

  Clanfield instantly became jittery. Henry saw the mouth twitch, but most of all he saw panic in his eyes.

  ‘Help yourself,’ Clanfield said. He stepped aside to let Henry pass in the confined space of the tiny vestibule at the foot of the stairs. Then he gave Henry an almighty shove, pushing him into the steps. Henry’s right arm shot out to stop himself crashing down, while at the same time he tried to grab Clanfield with his left and missed – because the guy was out of the front door like a greyhound out of the traps.

  As Henry pivoted, he lost balance and plonked squarely down on the third step with a bump and saw Clanfield’s back as he legged it across the street.

  But Henry’s expression, which started off as one of huge annoyance with himself for being hoodwinked by Clanfield and then changed to anger at seeing him flee, became one of complete horror – all in the space of perhaps three seconds.

  Horror because when Clanfield reached the middle of the street, he was mown down by a huge, speeding, black Range Rover that crashed into the man’s hip, slammed him down to the ground, went right over him with bone-chilling crunches as the wheels crushed his head. As Henry still looked on, dumbfounded, the vehicle screeched to a halt, then reversed back over Clanfield’s body as though going over a badly constructed speed bump – and then pulled up.

  Henry shot to his feet and ran out of Clanfield’s front door to the edge of the pavement where he stopped, teetering as though on the edge of a precipice, his arms windmilling, completely stunned by what he’d just witnessed.

  A terrible accident, he’d thought at first as his mind whirred.

  Clanfield running across the road without looking.

  Served him right.

  The car careering down the street too fast. Shit happens.

  But then – no! Not a terrible accident.

  A deliberate act, proven by the reverse over the – probably – already dead body of the fleeing man, if his crushed head was anything to go by.

  And he was dead, almost instantly. Henry saw the devastatingly flattened head, unrecognisable as a human being.

  And then Henry’s mind processed the black Range Rover.

  And he thought of Debbie Blackstone. And a black Range Rover out to run her off the road.

  Henry was in a whirl as the front and rear nearside doors opened and two men jumped out of the car.

  They were wearing face masks.

  Both were holding handguns, pointed at Henry.

  ‘In the car,’ one of them ordered him.

  Henry didn’t move. Considered running.

  Didn’t.

  His hesitation seemed to anger them. The one who’d dropped out of the front seat stepped over and jabbed him hard under the ribs with the barrel of the gun, grabbed his right arm, dragged him over to the car, shoved him through the open door, face down, over the back seat, and held the gun to his head. The other man went through Henry’s pockets quickly, found his car keys and phone, took them, and both men bundled him into the back seat.

  ‘Get his car, ditch the phone,’ one of them said – Henry wasn’t sure which, as he was forced into the centre of the seat while one of them got in alongside him and crushed him against another person who was sitting by the opposite door.

  The back door slammed as Henry squirmed and tried to lurch forward between the seats but was clubbed across the side of his head with something that hurt and stunned him.

  The Range Rover set off, mounting Clanfield’s body again.

  It was only then that Henry, his vision swimming, turned to the other person by the opposite door who, up to that moment, had been in shadow, but now angled forwards and brought their face into the light.

  ‘Now that was a happy coincidence,’ the person said.

  Julie Clarke was holding a snub-nosed revolver pointing at Henry’s guts and wearing a terrifying smile, but he only saw her for a moment because the man next to him pulled a thick hessian bag over his head and tightened a drawstring around his neck.

  Where Blackstone had been in the cyber world was logged remotely into the constabulary’s computer system. That was before she’d set out for a Big Mac and got somewhat diverted by an angry Range Rover. She had actually been looking at various aspects of the comms room log from the night four years ago when she’d had an acid shower, the night that had surely changed her forever, although she knew she’d been lucky in one respect – that the acid had missed her face and hit her on the underside of her chin and below.

  If she’d had a face full, she knew she would not have been able to handle it at all.

  She would still be in hiding.

  Or dead, hanging from a noose.

  She shook off that feeling and continued to look at the logs of the incident that began when she’d been approached by the member of staff from the amusement arcade and taken to see a distraught young girl whose friend had supposedly been dragged into a car by three men and driven away.

  That, through a series of events, had resulted in the acid attack.

  ‘In a hotel being done up by Hindle’s Builders,’ she mumbled to herself.

  That thought took her on another trajectory, leaving the comms log behind and delving once more into the Hindle’s Builders company website.

  The story of a local lad made good. ‘From little acorns and all that shit,’ Blackstone said to herself.

  She then managed to track down a long article in a local business publication from a couple of months earlier in 2020 when David Hindle, the managing director, was interviewed in some depth. In it, he seemed to bare all. In a frank interview, he admitted he’d had a troubled youth in that he’d gone through the care system following some (alleged) abuse from his parents. At some point, he had been fostered long-term by a good couple in the Stoke area and taken on their surname – Hindle – although the article did not say what his birth name was. However, he’d done poorly at school, been a runaway on several occasions (although Blackstone could find no police reports on this
) but had been good at practical things and knuckled down to study building, joinery and associated trades and crafts in the 1980s before setting up a business restoring decrepit hotels in Blackpool and old farmhouses on the Fylde coast.

  Definitely a success from an underprivileged background.

  There were some photos of Hindle standing proudly in front of some of his projects. The most recent one was of him outside a very big old country house near Preston which he intended to turn into a posh hotel … there was also a black-and-white photograph of him standing in front of one of his first ever projects, the renovation of a small hotel on Abingdon Street in Blackpool in 1986.

  Blackstone looked at this one for a long time, willing something to come to mind, something Henry Christie had spoken about. It didn’t.

  Finally, she gave up thinking … it was hurting her head, and she returned to the comms log for the night of the acid attack.

  And there was something here that didn’t seem to add up either, another thing she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Maybe it was time for a stroll around the docks to clear her mind.

  It was just over a mile and a half to circumnavigate the Albert Edward Dock, once the thriving commercial heartbeat of Preston – now, not so much. No big ships, just a small marina and the water, seemingly constantly polluted by green algae which gave it an unappealing tinge.

  Blackstone had only made it from her apartment to the dock side when her mobile phone rang. Rik Dean. ‘Evening, boss.’

  ‘Where are you now?’ he snapped.

  She told him.

  ‘Where’s Henry?’

  ‘Don’t know. Not seen or spoken to him for a while … I assume he’s gone home.’

  ‘OK.’ Rik sounded harassed.

  ‘Is there a problem, boss?’

  ‘Ellis Clanfield has been mown down by a hit-and-run driver on the street outside his flat.’

  ‘Really? How is he?’

  ‘Very, very dead. Looks like he was run over a few times, back and forth if you will. Made a real soupy mess. I’m not at the scene yet – traffic are covering – but I’m en route.’