by Nick Oldham
The mistake the attackers made in those first, brutal moments was that they didn’t hit him across the head, to at least disorientate him, so by the time Flynn hit the floor, he was retaliating.
Using the forward momentum of being kicked down, he went for the man’s legs in front of him, finding purchase with his own foot against a cabinet and propelling himself forwards.
He grabbed the legs and in a moment the guy was toppled over onto his back and Flynn was scampering across him, chin in, head down, working on his strategy as he went.
There wasn’t much choice in the matter. It had to be this one, then the other. The one on the floor had to be dealt with instantly, then maybe used as some sort of shield against the other.
Flynn dropped on him, chest to chest, face to face, combining the fall with a powerful head-butt. Head-butts were not the best means of attack. There was no escaping the fact that the move entailed the clashing of two heads and if the deliverer of the blow didn’t connect accurately — forehead to bridge of nose — both parties suffered.
Flynn had delivered his fair share of head-butts in his time, mostly well aimed and timed, and, of course, in his younger days when he was faster and sharper.
So even though this head-butt was powerfully delivered, the man underneath saw it telegraphed and dinked his head sideways. Flynn connected with fresh air, missed him completely. This man was faster. Big realization.
By this time, still only a few seconds into the conflict, the man behind who had kicked Flynn into the boat was moving quickly to help his mate and Flynn lost his advantage — the advantage he had hoped to achieve by showing them this was no pushover and they’d bitten off more than they could digest.
Flynn’s head came back, and, angled slightly so that his face gave a perfect target, the men made up for their earlier mistake of not putting him down straight away. Something hard, heavy and metallic was smashed down hard across his head. It was like being hit by a frying pan — in fact, it could have been a pan from the galley. Flynn tumbled sideways off the man, who spun and rolled up onto his feet with ease, whilst Flynn’s brain was sent into free-fall by the blow.
Then the blows began to connect.
He rolled into a foetal ball, forearms covering his head, trapped tight against a bench seat, unable to do anything now but cower and try to protect himself.
They hit him hard, one with a baseball bat, the other with the butt of a gun.
Then they stopped. Next thing Flynn was hauled roughly into a half-seating position and the barrel of the gun — it was a machine-pistol of some sort — was rammed underneath his chin, then forced upwards so he looked along it, along the hands and arms of the man holding it, who squatted in front of him, up to his ski-masked face.
The ski mask. One of the simplest forms of terror inducement that existed. A hood with eye holes and a mouth hole. An innocent garment that, worn under the right circumstances — usually during a violent robbery — was so terrifying that it immediately gave offenders a massive psychological advantage over victims and witnesses.
The eyes behind the mask. The obscene mouth.
Flynn’s head was swimming from the blow, but he also felt fear.
‘Jeez… what… hell!’ he gasped, trying to give the impression of total incomprehension, although he was trying to work out the angles and odds now.
The man pushed the muzzle of the gun deep and hard into the soft flesh under the V of Flynn’s jaw.
‘OK, tough guy, you finished fighting?’
‘Yuh,’ he said and his brain clicked: accent.
‘Good.’ The man’s head moved closer to Flynn’s face. Flynn could smell his breath and sweat and cheap deodorant. An unpleasant combination.
Flynn looked to his right and saw the other man standing there slapping a baseball bat into the palm of his hand, a corny but effective gesture.
‘Now… where is it?’
‘What? Where’s what?’ Flynn sneered.
‘Whatever you took from the dead woman. We want it.’
‘I didn’t take anything.’
The gun was jammed further into his throat and in a concurrent line of thought, Flynn worked out that if the trigger was pulled, the bullet would rip up through his tongue, behind his teeth, up through the roof of his mouth. His brain would be removed, the top of his skull would explode outwards and there would be a hell of a mess inside the boat.
‘You did. Do not lie!’
‘I’m not in a position to lie,’ Flynn protested. Then he lurched forward instinctively and grabbed the man’s ski mask and ripped it off, and stared directly into his face.
The man laughed harshly, said, ‘Fool,’ and slammed his weapon sideways across Flynn’s face with such force that it had the instantaneous effect of knocking him into oblivion.
Henry shifted on the settee, settled, closed his eyes — then almost leapt out of his skin when his mobile phone, left in his trouser pocket, vibrated as a text message landed.
It was unexpected because he’d forgotten the phone was there and with the signal in this area being so poor and unreliable, it was rare for anyone to get through anyway.
He pulled it out and slid it open, peering at the screen. He visualized the text having been sent, then loitering in space for a while before suddenly seeing a chance to swoop down to his phone. This was the same person who was convinced that a text could be sent with a nifty wrist-flick of the phone, like throwing a Frisbee, but not actually letting go of the phone. Henry had a fairly childlike view of the new age of technology.
The sender was Professor Baines, the Home Office pathologist. It read simply, ‘Call me.’
Henry had been on the verge of serious slumber. The ice-pack had helped stem the expansion of his swelling and the painkillers plus a second JD had made him sleepy.
He forced himself into a sitting position, picked up the landline phone and dialled Baines’s number, gently touching his face as the call connected.
‘So they didn’t keep you in overnight?’ Baines said immediately.
‘No, I’ve got my own nurse, free, on tap, works behind a bar… all the best attributes of a good health-care worker.’
‘Lucky you… how are you feeling?’
‘Grog and cross,’ Henry muttered. ‘What can I do you for?’
‘Well, I haven’t done any post-mortems yet, but I have found something that might be of interest to you.’
‘Are you still at the mortuary?’ Henry asked incredulously, his eye glancing towards the fireplace clock.
‘Death never sleeps,’ Baines said mysteriously. ‘Yes, I am still here, surrounded by the dead — and from the looks of the mortuary assistants, the undead too. But needs must.’
‘What have you found?’
‘As you know, I’m a tooth man. I look at dead people’s teeth for various reasons, mainly selfish.’
‘Hence the OBE.’
‘And maybe a knighthood, if rumour is to be believed.’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’
‘OK — banter over. These days I tend to head straight for the mouth first. Which is why I had a peer into the mouth of the woman who was pulled from the river, who has now been identified, I believe. Post-mortem now scheduled for ten-thirty tomorrow, by the way.’
‘Great.’
‘She’d had some bridge work done, some fillings.’
‘Not unusual.’
‘Not in itself, but what I consider to be unusual is that there are now two dead bodies in this mortuary who have had work carried out by the same dentist.’
Henry waited.
‘The work done in the mouth of… ahh… Mrs Sunderland was done by the same dentist as the work carried out in the mouth of the unidentified girl, the murder victim we looked at earlier. Now what do you think about that?’
Flynn was woken by a combination of two things — smell and heat.
The smell was that of petrol.
The heat was from the fact that the petrol had been set alight a
nd flames were whooshing up, along and around the interior of the canal boat.
Flynn was face down, cheek pressed into the wooden floor.
The smell was horrendous, invading his nostrils.
He moved his head, opened his eyes and looked down the length of the boat, burning with intense heat, bright flames crackling and heading quickly in his direction.
He attempted to raise himself, but slid back down on weak, rubbery arms that would not hold his weight.
‘Bastards,’ he groaned.
They’d set the boat alight with him still in it, unconscious.
Flynn pushed himself up again, head swooning, disorientated slightly, but knowing he had to crawl backwards to the door.
Then his brain cells started working again and he realized that he hadn’t been left in the position where he’d been bashed unconscious. The men had dragged him through the galley area, along the floor, through the living room, the full length of the boat and into the bedroom where he’d been dumped. Then they’d doused the boat in petrol and lit it.
Leaving him trapped by the flames.
To get out of the door would mean running through a tunnel of fire, thirty feet long, which was now fearsomely hot and would roast him instantly.
Flynn rose to his knees and peered through the flames at the door beyond, the one which had been kicked off its hinges by the men, and had been loosely pulled back into place when they left.
He felt heat on his face, scrambled backwards against the bed. He kicked the bedroom door closed, and smoke hissed through the gap underneath it.
Now the situation had slightly changed.
Instead of being burned to a crisp, he was probably going to die in the way most people do when trapped by fire — by inhaling noxious smoke. Both were gruesome, terrible deaths.
The bedroom door, thin and not very substantial, even started to glow.
Flynn scrambled across the bed, which almost filled the small room. He ripped the flimsy curtains away from the window, unlatched and opened it and started to squeeze himself out like toothpaste in a tube. It was a very small window. But in his haste to escape the flames he’d forgotten the geography of the boat. It was only when he was halfway out of the window did he realize he should have crawled out of the one on the other side, which would have given him the chance to drop onto the canal bank.
Instead, as he slithered out he dropped straight into the ice-cold muddy waters of the Lancaster Canal just as the flames in the galley burned through the rubberized taps that connected the gas cylinder to the cooker and the boat exploded.
SEVEN
Henry was about to pour his third generous measure of Jack Daniel’s when the phone rang. He picked it up, instinctively checking the time as he did — that ingrained reflex hammered into cops from day one: ‘ Time, time, time. ’ It was one of those simple but fundamental things that can always be challenged. If you got the time wrong, what else did you get wrong? A good defence lawyer could easily slide his stiletto into that crack and prise open what should have been a watertight case.
He saw it was 11.12 p.m. Mentally noted it.
He recognized the voice of DI Barlow at the other end and exclaimed, ‘Why are you calling me?’ He didn’t mean it negatively, just that he expected Barlow to be home by now, off duty.
‘You know how it is,’ he said. Henry knew. Detectives worked ridiculous hours. It was in their nature and, mostly, didn’t even get paid for the overtime worked. They did it because they liked it. ‘I just happened to be earwigging the PR when a job came up. I recognized the name and wasn’t a million miles away, so I checked it out.’
‘Job being?’
‘That guy Flynn, the ex-cop?’
Henry’s heart lurched at the mention of the name. ‘Go on,’ he said guardedly.
‘Says he’s been attacked and that the canal boat he’s been staying on has been blown up.’
‘Are both statements true?’
‘Well, I’m standing here on the canal side. Flynn looks a mess and there’s bugger all left of the boat… and he’s demanding to see you.’
‘Bloody drama queen,’ Henry thought.
Despite Alison’s protestations, he commandeered her four-wheel-drive monstrosity, and with her gentle but insistent haranguing echoing in his ears, he picked his way along the jet-black country lanes, realizing just how hard it was to drive safely with only one good eye and two JDs. Street lighting began to appear spasmodically as he motored into the environs of Lancaster with a sigh of relief, finally dropping into the city from the fells.
He felt haggard and tired and knew he should have left it until morning. He could easily have delegated it to Barlow and the local CID and nothing would have been spoiled or lost. But Henry was insatiably curious, even more so the older he got. He loved to know, see, feel things first hand. This trait actually made him a poor, but popular, manager, always leading from the front, never asking someone to do something he could not tackle himself.
He knew that ‘real’ managers delegated, got others to do the dirty work. They dealt with strategy, not tactics, but Henry loved being hands-on, loved ‘playing out’ as he called it. So far, by dint of a careful balancing act, he’d managed to survive as a detective superintendent, but occasionally he’d had words in his lugholes from his own bosses. Rein back, let others do.
On that night he knew he could have let others ‘do’. Maybe should have done. But couldn’t, especially when Steve Flynn’s name was in the pot. To have him involved twice in one day… a coincidence even Henry found hard to swallow.
Traffic in Lancaster at that time of night was almost non-existent, in complete contrast to its daytime state of total gridlock. Henry made it through easily and less than ten minutes later was at Conder Green, near to where Jennifer Sunderland’s body had been heaved out of the river. Passing the Stork, he then turned right onto the road that led directly to Glasson Dock.
This was a place Henry knew well, somewhere he had a personal history. A place where, over a dozen years earlier, he’d almost died when he came face to face with a Mafia hitman who’d been after his blood.
He shivered at the memory. Even though it was so long ago it occasionally still came back to haunt him. Not simply because of the personal danger he’d faced, but because of the jeopardy his wife Kate had been put in, through no fault of her own. She too had been lucky to survive.
Mentally shrugging off the cloud, he drew onto the rough stone surface of the large car park adjacent to the yacht basin and parked the nose of the four-wheel-drive facing the water.
He climbed stiffly out and was immediately struck by the biting, unforgiving wind coming in from the estuary. It was tinted, though, with a whiff of smoke and petrol which he could smell clearly even through his facial injury.
He palmed a couple more paracetamols into his mouth, swallowed them using saliva and hoped they would complement the painkillers he’d already taken that night. Last thing he needed was to overdose.
Then he started to walk the hundred or so metres to the point where the yacht basin and the Lancaster Canal joined.
There was a line of emergency vehicles nose-to-tail, crammed onto the canal towpath, together with emergency lighting. Two fire tenders headed the queue, so wide they virtually blocked the path. Two marked police cars were behind, then a plain car and then an ambulance on the grassy area at the end of the car park. Lots of blue lights flashed, lots of people scurried around, and it was apparent that the explosion had brought out most of the local population, eager to see some fun. A police crime-scene tape had been stretched across the path to keep the onlookers back.
A little further on, just out of Henry’s eye-line, thick, heavy smoke plumed upwards into the atmosphere, visible even against the dark night. He assumed this was from the remnants of the barge.
He walked towards the ambulance which had its back doors open, activity going on inside. As he got closer he could see two people, a female paramedic, clad in the usual hospital gr
een overalls, and a casualty: Steve Flynn.
Flynn was leaning back on the bench seat inside the ambulance holding an oxygen mask over his face whilst the paramedic squatted in front of him, gently dabbing the side of his face that Henry could not see with an antiseptic cloth of some sort. Henry recognized the paramedic as one of the two who had been at the drowning scene earlier and he wondered quickly what sort of hours they worked.
‘That’s nice — cool,’ Flynn’s muffled voice said through the mask, commenting on the work being done by the paramedic. He didn’t seem to have noticed Henry yet.
‘You really should let us take you to hospital… you need looking after,’ the lady paramedic said. The last four words were spoken with more than an undercurrent of suggestiveness and, maybe, Henry thought sourly, a little unprofessional.
‘You’re doing a great job as it is,’ Flynn said. ‘Lovely touch.’
‘Thanks,’ she gasped and dropped her face so she had to angle it at Flynn with a look of lust tempered with shyness.
Henry, trying not to vomit, cleared his throat.
The paramedic’s head turned quickly, guiltily.
Flynn turned less quickly and Henry realized he’d known he was there all along and was just winding Henry up by flirting with the lady medic. Henry saw the injuries to Flynn’s face and saw they looked similar to his own, though clearly not as serious.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
The blast had ripped the canal boat apart. The roof had been blown off, scattering debris across a wide area, and what remained of the boat, basically just the hull, had keeled over and sunk into the canal, which was about six feet deep at this point. It reminded Henry of the German merchant vessels that had been blown up in Bordeaux harbour in a commando raid in World War Two. The boat had slumped over, torn apart by a ferocious blast, and was obviously beyond any sort of repair.
Henry had listened to the early conclusions of the chief fire officer at the scene, which supported Flynn’s version of events, at least as to the cause of the explosion, if not what happened beforehand.