by Nick Oldham
Wright’s car in a lay-by on a country road, engine still ticking over and, from the report of the first officer on the scene, with the indicator still blinking away.
Did this mean Wright had pulled in willingly, or did it have no significance?
On his pad, Henry wrote, Someone he knew? Road rage incident?
Henry went back on to the internet and Google-mapped his way to the scene, then switched to satellite view and then the street level one so he was actually on the road, and then, using his mouse, he travelled along the same road and reached the lay-by, where he pulled in and looked around, 360 degrees. It was a flat, agricultural area, ploughed fields on either side of the road. Henry noticed this image had been recorded two years earlier, but at least it gave him a sense of location.
He returned to the murder book and completed his skim-reading, noting that DCI Runcie had been the first senior detective on the scene on the night of the murder, obviously having been called out to it. He thought nothing more of that.
What did catch his eye was the final undated entry, written by the late Jack Culver. It was scribbled and not signed, but by now Henry recognized the dead man’s handwriting.
It said simply, What is going on here?
The final words Culver had written in this murder book.
Henry frowned. It seemed a strange question to be asking.
He closed the book, leaned back, rolled his shoulder to ease some movement back into it, then stood up and glanced at the wall clock: 11.15 p.m.
In spite of licensing hours now almost being a thing of the past, Alison was strict about closing time for non-residents in The Tawny Owl. They were booted out of the doors by 11.30 p.m. on weekday nights, which gave Henry quarter of an hour to hobble into the bar and maybe catch a last drink with some of the regulars.
Chief Constable John Burnham enjoyed a pleasant early evening meal with FB at an Indian restaurant on the A59 at Much Hoole, a couple of miles away from Lancashire Police headquarters. He had a lot to discuss with him, but only had time for a quick, bullet-point chat because Burnham wanted to get going. He intended to call in and stay the night with his widowed mother at her house in Bacup, close to the West Yorkshire border. He did not see her enough as his new job of breathing life into a seriously poorly police force kept him overwhelmingly busy. But he’d seen an opportunity to visit her on his way back and wasn’t going to renege on his promise.
After leaving FB, Burnham headed east, finally picking up the M65, which took him into the depths of Lancashire before coming off the motorway and taking the Grane Road over high, desolate moorland and dropping into the Rossendale Valley. He wound through to Bacup, took the Todmorden Road and stopped outside the house in which he’d been born almost fifty years earlier.
It was a spacious, three-story terraced house and, as Burnham stepped in and announced his arrival, he felt warm and comfortable instantly – and suddenly very hungry, too. Even though he’d eaten a curry a short time ago, the aroma of his mum’s baking had its usual effect on his taste buds.
She fussed over him, served her beautiful sticky parkin and tea, and they had a lovely catch-up before her head began to nod after the soap operas had finished and she retired to bed.
As far as Burnham was concerned, it was still early, even though his old bed in his old bedroom was beckoning him with its warmth and familiarity. Though exhausted, he still had paperwork to do before allowing himself to retreat upstairs. He muted the TV, poured himself a tot of his mum’s favourite tipple – cheap whisky from Spar – and opened his case that was bursting with paperwork, all requiring his immediate attention, or so it seemed.
At least he’d got one thing sorted that had been preying on his mind for too long: unsolved murders.
He remembered Henry Christie from the police training centre – but only because he’d thought of him not so much as one of the class idiots but as a wild young man who was more interested in bedding policewomen (and, as in one famous, ‘true’ myth, having sex with a very willing young lady cop on the bonnet of the centre commandant’s car) than taking his work seriously. Although, if he recalled correctly, Henry was pretty much a natural cop whereas he, Burnham, had to graft bloody hard at it.
From what he knew of Henry’s history since then, his life had been a series of ups and downs, but the driving force behind him was his absolute dedication to catching killers and his incorruptibility: two things Burnham knew would be key to Henry’s review of the murders if he took them on. He screwed his face up with a bit of discomfort, feeling slightly guilty that he hadn’t been completely open with Henry about some of his worries regarding the two cases.
He put those thoughts to one side and opened a new report on intelligence-led policing in the Central Yorkshire Police (or the lack of it), and began to scan its uncomfortable conclusions. To say the least, his force was a good ten years behind all the other forces in the region.
‘Shit,’ he breathed, then took a sip of the harsh whisky.
Much to Henry’s astonishment, the bar at The Tawny Owl turned out to be quite light in respect of the punters he liked to spend time with, so he did a swift exit and returned to the living accommodation with a tot of his own whisky.
He got changed for bed, slid between the cool covers and opened up murder book two. He began to read the report of a murder that had happened almost six months earlier.
The rather stilted way in which the modus operandi had been written went no way to summing up what had happened that night and, as Henry read it, he knew that, quite possibly, he would never know for certain.
Tom Salter’s office was spare, an old desk, old filing cabinets, grubby mugs and a cheap coffee machine gurgling away, dripping as he stood by the window, looking through the slats of a Venetian blind on to his extensive yard below. The office was on the first floor above an industrial unit packed with HGV tractor units in various stages of repair. Corresponding low-loading trailers were parked in the yard, and beyond them were a few rows of stacked containers which could be offloaded from ships on to the trailers, their contents dispersed across the country.
Salter’s fingertips opened up a gap in the blinds.
He blinked and gasped as his heart pounded remorselessly, terrified of what he was about to do.
The gate to the yard was unlocked and wide open.
Behind him, the coffee machine hissed steam, announcing the filtering had stopped.
Salter stepped back into the office, poured a black coffee and laced it with brandy. His fingers dithered as he picked up the cracked mug and took a sip. It was hot and harsh, burning its way down his chest, and he gasped again, his heart pounding.
Part of him hoped he would simply have a heart attack. At least it would give him an easy way out if it killed him.
He sat down on his office chair, feeling it rock unsteadily on its fulcrum. It needed to be replaced. One day soon, it would collapse.
Closing his eyes after another sip of the coffee, those other eyes came back to haunt him again.
Even in that short glimpse, he had seen their colour and their terror.
Brown. Dark brown. The colour that Tom Salter now associated with that terror.
He knew very little of the girl’s actual journey, only that his involvement with her began in Turkey and had ended here, almost a week later, in his yard in Portsea, when the aerated container had been unlocked and prised open. Up to that point in Turkey, he could only guess at what she had endured, could only slot information together based on snippets of truckers’ gossip. What he did know was that she had already been abused, and once he’d handed her over for the next stage of her journey – destination Manchester – she would become a household sex slave for a wealthy Mancunian businessman who was currently building two new skyscrapers in that thriving city.
And after that? When the limit of her usefulness had been reached?
Salter had no idea. Nothing good is all he knew.
There were five other girls with her, al
l from different backgrounds, countries and cultures but each sharing a similar story – hope dashed by dangerous unscrupulous villains, not all men – the life of promised riches and freedom never to materialize.
Salter was part of that.
His own foolishness had made him a cog in the wheel, but now he wanted out.
The mug trembled in his hand.
The sound of a car, a flash of headlights through the blinds, the car stopping, the engine switched off.
She was here.
He placed the cup down and walked back to the window. Her Citroën was parked alongside his car. He could see two figures in it – one in the front seat and one in the back. There was a pause, then the woman got out, followed by a man. The security lighting above the office door came on, illuminating them harshly in the yellow glow. The woman raised her face briefly, then entered ahead of the man, who did not look up. Salter frowned, unable to determine exactly what the man was wearing. His first thought was that it was a white tracksuit with the hood pulled over his head.
He heard footsteps on the wooden, uncarpeted stairs. The woman came in. Her face was set hard, like granite.
The man was just behind her.
It was not a tracksuit he was wearing. It was a full-body crime-scene suit.
‘I’m glad you could come. I need to talk,’ Salter said. He and the woman were on opposite sides of the desk. Her expression had not changed – it was still as cold as steel. In fact, Salter never recalled her letting that mask slip, which was a shame because she was too good looking to keep the hard look fixed all the time.
The man stayed by the door, leaning on the frame.
His face was hard to distinguish with the hood pulled tight around his head, and Salter’s eyes continually flickered past the woman’s shoulders, particularly now that he had worked out what the man was wearing and what was in his hand.
‘You worried me; you worried us,’ the woman said.
Salter nodded. ‘I know.’
She gave him a, Go on, then, gesture.
‘I want out. I can’t go on.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘There’s a difference. Can’t means you’ve got terminal cancer – won’t is a self-made decision,’ she said, defining the terms.
‘All I’m saying is this: it’s over. I’m out. My involvement is done. You’ll have to find a new transporter.’ He said it quickly, with more conviction than he felt.
The woman sighed with annoyance, then shook her head. ‘You need to remember that you owe everything to me … your freedom and your wealth. I saved you from going to prison for a long, long time and you owe me – us – big time.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he admitted.
‘And you do not have the right to pull out of this … too many people are involved in this enterprise now. Too many people who do not like being fucked around with … especially Mr Tullane. I wouldn’t have thought you needed reminding of that, Tom.’
‘I’m presuming that guy is from Tullane?’ Salter gestured to the man by the door. ‘Here to intimidate me?’
What he could see of the man’s face remained impassive.
Salter took in the man’s clothing again and swallowed.
‘Here to kill me?’ he asked.
The man by the door folded his arms. Salter’s nostrils flared at the sight of the automatic pistol in his hand. He could feel his chest constricting. Casually, the man pulled a surgical mask down to cover the lower half of his face.
‘Not necessarily,’ the woman said.
‘Nothing’s changing,’ Salter said boldly. ‘I’m out. I can’t stand the suffering, can’t stand being part of it. I don’t like being a people trafficker among all the other stuff I do for you and Tullane. I appreciate what you did for me, but I’ve got a conscience and I can’t go on living with this shit! I won’t say anything to anyone … just cut me loose.’
‘If only it were so easy,’ she said. ‘Not gonna happen. Business is business, promises are promises.’
‘And preying on the vulnerable is unforgivable,’ Salter cut in.
His eyes went to the man again, who remained immobile. Maybe he was just there as an idle threat.
As though the woman could read his thoughts, she smiled and said, ‘This man kills people for a living, especially people who double-cross Mr Tullane … Ah, ah, ah,’ she said, raising a finger as Salter opened his mouth to defend himself. ‘Letting him down, letting me down, is akin to a double-cross in Tullane’s world,’ she explained, defining the terms again.
‘I said I won’t go to the cops, the real cops, DCI Runcie.’
He saw the woman’s face twitch. ‘You used my name. Why did you do that?’
‘No reason.’ His mouth had gone very dry.
‘Y’see … can’t happen … this cannot happen,’ she told him.
Trying to take command, Salter said, ‘I’ll tell you what – if you don’t get out of here now, I will call the cops, right here, right now. So take your fucking scary henchman with you and go – that’s it, done, dusted. Tell Tullane I’m sorry but I don’t fuck twelve-year-old kids, nor do I condone anyone else doing it. I’m not part of this now, DCI Runcie.’ He saw her wince at the mention of her name again. ‘I made a big fuckin’ mistake, but now it’s over, end of.’
‘You’ll regret this. Not for long, but you will.’
Salter believed her. Something like this would haunt him forever.
He took out his mobile phone from his jacket pocket and placed it on the desk between them. ‘I’m a fool, but not stupid. It’s all been recorded.’
The woman’s eyes dropped to the device. She licked her lips. ‘So we can’t actually trust you.’
‘You can. This is my insurance. I give you my word so long as you go now.’
‘I’m afraid you have commitments. Packages are en route as we speak.’
‘Packages?’ spat Salter. ‘Is that what you call them? To distance yourself from the horror you perpetrate?’ He jabbed a finger in her direction. ‘These packages are people – kids for fuck’s sake!’ He was bereft of further words.
‘And there are also goods leaving these shores,’ Runcie informed him, unfazed by his tirade.
‘Well, they can fucking well stay where they are,’ he said and leaned back in his chair, which creaked. ‘Out,’ he said. ‘Now.’
There was a pause as the protagonists either side of the table surveyed each other.
‘You really are a fool,’ the woman said at length.
She crossed to the window and stood with her back to it, arms folded.
Salter saw the miniscule jerk of her head and knew he was about to die.
The man in the forensic suit moved swiftly. No preamble, just straight to business. He was across the room in a flash, unfolding his arms, extending his right arm as he reached the edge of the desk, with the pistol pointed directly at Salter. He pulled the trigger four times, no hesitation or gap between the shots, firing into Salter’s face and skull – two just above the eyes, one on either side of his nose. They were soft-tipped bullets, designed to mushroom on impact, destroy flesh, bone and organ tissue, tearing a huge exit hole in the back of his head, smashing the man against the back of his chair with blood and brain matter spraying everywhere, on the chair and on the wall behind, leaving an almost cartoonish silhouette outlined on the wall.
Salter may have slammed backwards, but there was also the forward splatter of his blood, which flicked up the killer’s right arm and chest.
Runcie watched the murder without compassion.
A thin pink mist rose from the back of Salter’s chair.
Runcie exhaled and crossed over to the desk, taking out a large plastic ziplock bag, which she opened and the killer dropped the weapon into it. She did not make eye contact with him.
Next, she picked up Salter’s phone and deleted the recording he had just made.
Burnham didn’t even know he had fallen asle
ep until he jerked awake having heard a noise. The heavy whisky glass thudded on to the floor from his grip, but that wasn’t what had wakened him. He exhaled with a snort-cum-snore and wondered what had done so.
A creaking noise of some description.
‘Ugh.’ He rubbed his neck, then placed the sheaf of papers he had been reading – and dozed off over – from his lap on to the coffee table.
Then he froze, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling.
Another noise.
Burnham could not have identified the first one, a sort of cracking sound of some sort, but the second one was obvious. The metallic clatter of the letter box in the front door.
He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Almost one a.m.
He rose from the chair and stepped into the hallway, looking towards the front door just at the moment the letter box flipped shut: someone was peering in from the road outside.
Burnham went completely still, wondering if whoever it was had spotted him.
Then there was a repeat of the first noise that had awoken him, and Burnham recognized it for what it was.
A jemmy or some such similar implement being inserted between the door frame and the lock, slowly splitting the wood as an intruder gently eased the wood away from around the mortice lock. It was a solid hardwood door, without any windows, that had been in place as long as Burnham could remember. The lower edge had rotted and been repaired by a joiner a few years ago, so there was a likelihood that more of it was rotten, too, even though he did try to treat it with preservative every year.
As such, it was an easy obstacle for a half-determined burglar to negotiate.
In his career as a cop, Burnham had not yet met a burglar he could not tackle.
He crept towards the door, staying close to the wall.
There was more ‘crowbarring’ activity, wood splintering and hushed voices, so at least two of them, he thought as his blood started to surge through his veins with the excitement and rage of the situation. It was a while since he had come face-to-face with a burglar – one of the most despicable types of criminal in his eyes, an invader of property.