by Nick Oldham
‘You’d never have caught me. It would have been put down to some other town drunk – a bit like another close encounter you and I had years ago.’
‘Which one would that be … ah, yes, I know … homeless guy in the hotel?’ Henry said, taking a punt. That was another investigation early in his service where he’d been sidelined off the main enquiry and it all came to nothing – another unsolved murder, when the hypothesis, which was never veered from, was that the vagrant had been killed by other vagrants and set on fire. No one was ever convicted of that one. ‘One of your first property development schemes, Abingdon Road. What had he done to you?’
‘Stumbled on to what I was engaged in, made a run for it, so he had to be dealt with.’
‘Murdered, set on fire … nice,’ Henry said. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Lifting the floorboards.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Burying the bodies.’
‘What bodies?’
‘Couple of kids, no one special.’ Hindle shrugged. ‘He’d obviously been holing up there for shelter, stumbled on us.’
Henry’s eyes darted from one to the other.
Clarke shrugged her shoulders. ‘Sometimes they had to go,’ she said. She sounded reasonable, as if she was disposing of trash: one of those things that had to be done.
‘What?’ Henry said in numb disbelief. ‘And here’s me thinking you were just running a Fagin-like operation, getting kids to steal for you.’
‘That too,’ Hindle said. ‘In fact, you know the term “county lines”? Yeah? We’ve been doing that shit for years and years. Nothing new under the sun.’
‘Guess you’re right – using kids, abusing kids,’ Henry said. He looked at Clarke. ‘You’ve been working with children all your life. Vulnerable, easy targets. Missing from home or just local kids on the streets of Blackpool. You targeted them, didn’t you?’
‘Of course I did. Ninety-nine per cent of the time I did the right thing by them … just used the occasional one who was useful to us.’ She smiled at Hindle. ‘Useful to you, dear.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘Not just me – many others, obviously. I mean’ – he looked at Henry now – ‘how on earth do you think I continually get permission to renovate properties in and around Blackpool and make millions from it?’
‘Councillors,’ Henry guessed as all parts of this five-hundred-piece jigsaw began to slot into place. Up to then, it had all been edges and corners, not the centre of the picture – and Blackstone had been so right, after all: a terrible conspiracy that spanned thirty-odd years.
‘And cops,’ Clarke added. ‘You’d be surprised by the appetites of some high-ranking officers. Ravenous bastards!’
‘And others,’ Hindle added.
‘The Leylands!’ Henry gasped, guessing.
‘An integral link in our little set-up, but they got careless with it. Those two kids should have been under the floorboards like all the others, not left out to rot; then we wouldn’t have had to deal with them so severely,’ Clarke said.
‘You gave them the tools to kill themselves,’ Henry accused her. Even then, his mind skimmed backwards, seeing her in the old cell complex at Blackpool police station, leaning into Cressida Leyland’s cell as he walked down the corridor towards her, obviously giving Cressida the razor blade with which she then committed suicide. Clarke had been brought in to search and look after the female prisoner, and no doubt she’d also managed to sneak down the male cell corridor and give Terry Leyland a length of garden twine long enough for him to hang himself from the door.
She nodded. ‘Rumbled.’
‘You must have been laughing your socks off at me at the post-mortem of the homeless guy,’ Henry said vehemently, feeling as if he had been taken for an immature fool.
She snickered. ‘You were being so nice – and we even flirted a bit. I would’ve let you, you know.’
‘Would have been like dancing with Mrs D,’ Henry said.
‘And I would have watched, obviously,’ Hindle said creepily.
Henry didn’t even want to think about that. Instead, and to keep them talking, he said, ‘By floorboards, I assume you mean under the floors of the properties you’ve renovated?’ Both smiled at him and he knew he was right and they were proud of whatever they’d achieved. ‘How many? How many have you killed?’
‘Hmm … like we said, about a hundred, give or take,’ Hindle said. ‘But if it is one hundred, you’ll be the one hundred and first, Henry, and, like them, your body will never be discovered, nor your car, come to that.’
Hindle looked at the pipette in his hand, then at Henry. He bounced back down on to his haunches and said, ‘Sulphuric acid … lovely stuff, been a fan of it for years.’ He twitched and his face jerked. ‘Do you know what kicked off my fascination?’
‘Do tell,’ Henry said. He was just about managing to control the pain of the drips on his shoulders and nipple but was dreading more.
‘Chemistry lessons. Back in the day before health and safety, it was easy to sneak into the storeroom at the back of the chemistry classroom where all the acids were kept, supposedly under lock and key, and steal an undiluted bottle. I’d seen a lad drop some of the diluted stuff we used in class on to the back of his hand. Should’ve heard him scream! Then I thought I’d like to get the class bully, except with undiluted acid. I made it look like an accident, and somehow he spilled a whole bottle down his leg … he was in short trousers, too.’ Hindle smiled at the memory. ‘Scarred the little runt for life.’
‘You like hurting people, then?’ Henry observed. Suddenly, the trio of pinpricks of acid on his skin came alive again all at once and seared his skin in unison. He grimaced and squirmed against the wrap holding him down. But he then settled and got a grip of himself, fought through the sizzle.
Keep the bastards talking, he thought to himself.
‘You chucked the acid at DS Blackstone, I presume,’ he said. ‘Scarring her for life, too.’
Hindle dinked his head. ‘She got too close for comfort.’
Then Henry stared at Clarke. ‘And you hit her on the head.’
‘Needs must.’
‘She was just unfortunate enough to stumble on to where we’d taken the girl,’ Hindle admitted.
‘And you,’ Henry said to Clarke, ‘sent the hounds off chasing an imaginary fox, didn’t you?’ remembering how Blackstone had told him Clarke said she’d spotted a van matching the description of the one in which the girl had been abducted on the other side of Blackpool. ‘You never saw a van, did you?’ He could hardly hide his revulsion for this woman. Not that he needed to. That time had long since passed. ‘You sent the cops off in another direction and then you came to warn your … brother.’
Clarke shrugged. ‘That’s about right. I got to the Belmont just after Debbie, followed her in and gave her a whack just as David threw the acid at her. We could’ve killed her too,’ she concluded. ‘Just like we could’ve killed you.’
‘On reflection, I suppose you wish you had,’ Henry said.
‘Something that’s about to be rectified – in your case, anyway,’ Hindle said grimly. ‘Just like those two girls – and so many others – you’re going to end up under the floorboards, wrapped in plastic with your face burned off by the acid, never to be found again.
‘People,’ Hindle said, hardly able to contain his mirth, ‘will literally be dancing on your grave, Henry. This, y’see,’ he said, pointing down at the floor and opening his arms in a wide gesture to indicate the room they were in, ‘is going to be a ballroom, and this bit’ – he pointed down again – ‘will be the dancefloor, nice and springy, and your nose will be just inches below it, almost touching as people boogie the night away.’
Henry then realized where he was: Hindle’s Builders’ latest acquisition – a dilapidated old mansion called Treales Manor that had once been a country house hotel and fallen into disrepair, now with plans to be converted into a high-end wedding venue. Henry ha
d read about it when he’d been surfing for information about the company. The latest boast by a cruelly twisted man.
‘Boss, we got a problem.’ Henry heard the voice of the man who’d been one of the two who’d bundled him into the Range Rover, the one who’d threatened to blow his head off. From where he lay in between the floor joists, though, he could not see him.
Hindle stood up and walked away. ‘Problem being?’
‘I couldn’t stop him,’ the man whined a bit pitifully.
‘Stop who?’
‘Cohen.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Took the guy’s car for a spin. He couldn’t resist it, wanted to really hammer it. I thought he’d be back by now …’ His voice trailed off.
Henry shouted, ‘If he damages my car, there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘How long has he been gone?’ Hindle asked.
‘Ten minutes, maybe.’
‘Idiot … We need to find somewhere to bury it.’ Henry heard Hindle emit a very pissed-off sigh.
Henry heard footsteps retreating, then Hindle reappeared over him.
‘If he damages my car …’ Henry began again.
‘Gosh, you’re a funny guy, Henry,’ Hindle said as he squatted down again. He placed the acid bottle and pipette on the floor and took out an extra-large plastic food bag from his pocket and shook it out. It looked big enough to go over a small turkey or, Henry thought, my head. Hindle placed the bag carefully on the floor and picked up the bottle again, inserted the pipette into it and drew out a syringe-full of acid.
NINETEEN
Blackstone switched off her engine and lights and cruised the last fifty metres in neutral before stopping silently by the sign at the entrance to the driveway up to Treales Manor: Hindle’s Builders’ latest acquisition, it read. THE wedding venue to be seen at – due for completion Spring 2021. There were several computer-generated images of what the place might look like and under them was the Hindle’s Builders logo which made her seethe.
The entrance to the manor was through a pair of stunning gateposts that looked two hundred years old and then along a sweeping gravel driveway bordered on either side by an eight-foot-high hedge.
She was on the phone to Rik Dean. ‘I’ve got to go and look, boss.’
‘No, wait … I’ll be there with armed back-up in less than ten minutes.’
She screwed her nose up and ended the call abruptly, quietly opened her car door and got out, closing it just as quietly before going through the gateposts and walking quickly up the drive at a crouch, keeping to the dark shadow cast by the hedge and trees. After about a hundred metres, the driveway opened out to become a large, circular turning area at the front of the once magnificent Treales Manor, with a stone pond and a fountain in the centre; the pond was empty and the fountain was not spouting water.
Two vehicles were parked at the front entrance of the manor house: a black Range Rover and a fabulous-looking sports car. Blackstone didn’t know the make, but it could have been a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, something of that ilk.
A man leaned on the Range Rover, smoking.
Blackstone scooped up a large stone in her right hand from the edge of the driveway. As she did, from somewhere inside she heard a scream. A man, screaming – Henry Christie.
Suddenly, she knew she was right. Waiting ten minutes for back-up was not an option.
Keeping the bulk of the Range Rover between herself and the smoking man, she made it unnoticed across the last twenty-odd metres of open ground; if he’d turned, it would have been all over, but she did it and dropped out of sight on the opposite side of the car and crept slowly around the rear of it for more cover, gripping the stone which was slightly too large in her palm for comfort. She could only just curl her fingers around it.
She heard Henry scream again. And as clichéd as it was, the noise was blood-curdling and terrifying.
‘C’mon, gal, keep this together,’ she told herself silently as she reached the back corner of the car, maybe only just over a metre from the man, whose smoking reeked like noxious gas.
He was lounging against the car. He took a deep drag on the cigarette, tipped his chin up and blew out a long, satisfying lungful of smoke – at which moment, Blackstone moved.
She spun around the corner of the car, pivoting as she brought her hand around in an arc and smashed him in the face with the stone. Stunned, he sagged sideways; Blackstone continued with the attack, and as the man fell, she slammed the stone on to the crown of his head and he pitched forward, face first into the gravel.
He didn’t move.
In a parallel thought, she was already imagining her court appearance for the assault. In response, she thought, Fuck them.
That prospect did not deter her moving on towards another scream from inside the manor. She flew up the front steps and through the front door, pausing in the tiled vestibule, then ducking behind a screen as she heard footsteps approaching and a man shout, ‘Boss says we need to bury the Audi when Cohen gets back with it,’ presumably calling to the guy outside who, at best, could not hear him.
Blackstone backed tight against the wall just as this man walked past, calling, ‘Boodie, you hear me?’
He stopped moving at the threshold of the door, having spotted his mate splayed out by the front wheels of the Range Rover.
‘Shit.’
He must have sensed a movement and turned as Blackstone emerged from the shadow and pounded the brick into his face in a haymaker-like punch, the power coming from the combined twist of her waist and shoulders, which unleashed a mighty blow.
But the man reacted quickly, instinctively jerking his head back and the stone glanced off his jaw. Blackstone dropped it but, realizing she hadn’t connected with force or accuracy, she blasted into the shocked man, using her momentum, pounding him with her fists repeatedly, using a power surge from her core until he went down and did not move.
Murder number two, she thought, gasping and standing astride him, wondering if her kung fu training had been useful or not there. She was pretty sure it was mostly anger combined with her survival instinct that kept her going, because she knew that if she had hesitated even slightly, he would have taken her.
But he didn’t. And she was the one still standing.
She did not pause to admire her handiwork; she stepped across him into the reception foyer of the old manor, then into the long hallway from which she heard Henry scream again. At the far end was a door from which light shone.
One thing she knew was that there could be no hesitation as, even then, the thoughts of that time four years earlier flooded back and engulfed her – that moment when her life had changed, seemingly irrevocably. And perhaps this was the new moment she needed in order to save herself as well as Henry Christie.
Henry’s screaming stopped.
Blackstone trod quietly along the uncarpeted hallway, aware that the floorboards could creak and give her presence away.
She paused at the door. Swallowed. Took an unsteady breath, steeled herself, then stepped across the threshold and looked into the room beyond and took it all in.
Julie Clarke standing with her arms folded and a smile on her face as a man, who Blackstone guessed was David Hindle, squatted over Henry Christie, who was lying trussed up in the space between two floor joists. Hindle held a plastic bag over Henry’s head, in the process of suffocating him.
She saw Henry’s face as he tried to breathe, but all he was doing was drawing the plastic into his mouth and over his nostrils, and she heard the noise he was making: a gagging, gurgling, desperate sound as he panicked, unable to fight against the process, other than to squirm and twist within the confines of his wrapping.
Clarke saw Blackstone at the door, but the detective was already hurtling across towards her.
Clarke seemed transfixed as Blackstone grabbed her, swept her feet from underneath her and dropped her hard, followed up by a debilitating punch to the side of her head. Blackstone then turned on Hindle, w
ho dropped Henry back into the floor space with the plastic bag still on his head. He scooped up the bottle of acid from the floor and advanced on Blackstone threateningly.
‘Glad you could make it,’ he said dangerously.
‘Yeah, well, there’s more than me coming.’
Her eyes flicked between Hindle, the bottle in his hand, and Henry, who was drawing breaths that sounded like a chisel being sharpened.
‘Nevertheless, I assume you want another face full of this?’ Hindle held up the brown bottle and Blackstone’s heart sank. ‘Sulphuric acid – your friend.’
‘Put it down,’ she ordered him, ‘and don’t test me, because I will put you down.’
‘Ha!’ Hindle jerked the bottle threateningly towards her and some of the liquid flipped out.
Blackstone flinched back in a moment of terror.
Down to her side, she was aware Henry had stopped moving, that there was no longer the sound of that rasping breathing.
Her eyes turned back to Hindle, locking with his for a second. Then, in a blur, she covered the distance between them, fending away the bottle with her left forearm and kicking Hindle in the groin with her right foot – a driving, powerful, yet balletic blow that made him drop the acid – the bottle shattered – and sink down to his knees, emitting an unworldly howl of pain and cradling his balls with both hands as, Blackstone prayed, his testicles were driven a foot up into his lower intestine. She followed this up by spinning on her left foot and slamming the sole of her right into Hindle’s face, sending him toppling backwards.
She instantly turned to Henry, kneeling down alongside him and grabbing the plastic bag between the fingertips of both hands and ripping it apart.
For one moment, she thought she was too late. There was no reaction, but then Henry inhaled with a huge, shuddering breath and almost choked as air surged back into his lungs.
She saw the acid burns on his shoulders and nipple and across his chest.
‘Oh God, oh God,’ he gasped, coughed and spluttered. ‘I honestly thought that was it.’
She gave him a quirky smile and said, ‘Well, old guy, it wasn’t. Welcome to the acid-burn club. I’m the founding member.’