by Nick Oldham
Psycho Alley
( Henry Christie - 9 )
Nick Oldham
Nick Oldham
Psycho Alley
FRIDAY
One
The last thing Henry Christie needed to be doing on a bitter, wind-chilled Friday evening was traipsing from pub to pub around Fleetwood town centre. Not that he had a problem with Fleetwood, though it did seem to be over-populated by surging masses of extremely inebriated young women, many of whom appeared to be pregnant, with a desire to fight, and could well have been descendants of fishwives; nor did he have a problem with a pub crawl. In fact, that was one of his favourite pastimes.
What was bothering him was the fact that a three-month major crime investigation he’d been heading had come to this: trawling through dens and dives in an effort to root out a suspect, and only a suspect at that, who had constantly been eluding him. ‘Clutching at straws’ was the negative phrase which kept whirring through his grey matter. And on top of all that, because he was on duty he could not drink any alcohol and he was in the company of someone he would rather have avoided.
‘Don’t see him in here,’ Henry said. His eyes scanned the faces in the Trawlerman public house situated at the top of Lord Street, Fleetwood’s main shopping thoroughfare. He had spoken both for the benefit of the person he was with — she was much smaller than he and his height gave him an advantageous viewpoint — and the tiny microphone affixed to his bomber jacket, connected to the personal radio (PR) covertly fitted under the jacket. This was transmitting on a frequency exclusively allocated for the use of his team of cops dotted around other Fleetwood pubs in this farcical search. The bar Henry was surveying was throbbing with hundreds of sweaty Fleetwoodians and the ear-bursting din from the house DJ whose equipment was set up at the far end of the room, playing thumping music which sounded like mobile phone ringtones to Henry’s uneducated ears.
He sipped his iced mineral water, then blew out his red cheeks as a wave of exhaustion swept over him. He had been heading this investigation for over eleven weeks without a proper break, often toiling twelve hours a day, and he needed some respite. He decided that if tonight’s search was negative, he would take a minimum of three days off. Put some charge back into his lifeless batteries.
‘You all right?’
Henry turned to look at Detective Inspector Jane Roscoe standing next to him. ‘Yeah, why?’
She shrugged. ‘Looking a mite peaky.’
‘I’m OK.’
‘Sure he isn’t here?’ Jane was a good head shorter than Henry and was forced to stand on tippy-toe to get any sort of view. She was therefore having problems seeing through the crush of bodies.
‘As eggs,’ Henry said.
‘Ever seen him in the flesh?’ she asked, having to compete with a classic record sung by a crazy frog.
‘Nope.’
‘So how can you be sure?’ Jane quizzed him, as was her way with Henry these days. He was always on the ropes, a legacy of their past intimate relationship.
He paused, blinked, sighed impatiently. ‘I’m sure.’
Jane’s tut of disbelief was carried away by the shrieking laughter of a gaggle of noisy women. One of them staggered drunkenly into Jane, only to be heaved away and subjected to one of her fleeting, but killer, put-down glances.
If there was one thing Henry Christie was certain of, it was his ability to pick out someone he might only have ever seen in a photograph, recent or otherwise. His aptitude to recognize faces was one of the few ‘gifts’ he considered he had as an investigator. Though he had never come face to face with his elusive suspect, George Uren, predatory paedophile of this parish, he was convinced he could pick him out of a crowd.
‘If you’re so sure, shall we move on?’ Jane shouted into his ear. ‘This place is doin’ my head in and the people are horrid.’ She looked disgustedly at the group of women.
‘Let’s.’ Henry emptied his glass, ice-cubes clattering against his teeth. He yanked up the zip of his jacket and turned to leave. Jane slotted into his slipstream as he threaded his way out between revellers. On reaching the double exit doors, he became aware that Jane was actually not at his heels. He looked back. Squinting through the cigarette and cannabis smoke he saw she was head to head with a scantily-clad female who wore a miniscule skirt, had fat thighs and acres of tubby belly-flesh on display. The woman was making broad, aggressive gestures towards Jane, her face twisted into a menacing snarl, the like of which Henry had often seen associated with alcohol.
‘Shit,’ he uttered and pushed his way back.
He recognized the woman as the one Jane had propelled away and been the subject of one of Roscoe’s ‘looks’ moments earlier. Obviously she had taken umbrage and was now challenging Jane in the best traditions of Fleetwood, something confirmed by the first words Henry heard when he emerged from the crowd.
‘Come on, you stuck-up, snooty old bitch!’ she was yelling insanely into Jane’s impassive face. ‘Who the fucking hell do you think you are, pushing me — me! — and giving me a look like I was shit on your shoe?’
Jane stayed cool, passionless. ‘Sorry,’ she said sensibly, aware it was probably the best tactic to back down, though without losing face — and get out in one piece. To stand up to her would have meant being torn to shreds by a pack of hyenas, as the woman’s group of friends hovered dangerously, expectantly, hoping for a fracas. Jane knew of too many people who had ended up with a broken glass gouged in their face in A amp; E because of a ‘look’; she also realized that her warrant card would offer no protection in these circumstances.
If only she could extricate herself.
Unfortunately, her apology wasn’t good enough. The woman was on the scent of blood.
‘Sorry, you ancient bitch?’ she wailed, which was rich coming from someone aged somewhere between forty and forty-five, dressed twenty years younger than was sensible, with a fast-expanding midriff, tattoos, and an array of cheapo golden jewellery adorning her. She also had a bottle of WKD in her right hand and Henry’s eyes were fixed apprehensively on it as he approached from downwind. ‘You will be, you stuck-up cow!’
To her credit, Jane remained chilled.
Henry edged into a position where he could easily grab the drunk from behind if necessary.
Then it happened very quickly. The woman’s right arm arced through the air, bottle in hand, aimed at Jane’s head, accompanied by a scream. Jane ducked. Henry lunged for the woman, his left hand grabbing the neck of her skimpy tee shirt, his right trying to stop, deflect or otherwise interfere with the trajectory of the bottle heading towards Jane. He yanked her off balance as Jane did a neat side-step and the bottle whizzed harmlessly through mid-air and Henry discovered he now had a tigress in his hands … and another one on his back as one of her friends launched to her defence, scratching, kicking, kneeing, trying to rip off his ear with her teeth.
Henry roared, spun round, threw the original assailant to one side, tearing her tee shirt as she went, exposing a large, floppy bosom — whilst doing his utmost to dislodge woman number two from his back, who was riding him for her life. She seemed capable of clinging on there, like a lioness on the back of a zebra, despite his attempts to shake her off.
The whole pub erupted with a roar of delight.
Henry and Jane found themselves in a vortex of punches, kicks, screams and beer glasses being thrown everywhere. Henry was the recipient of numerous, but ultimately useless, boots, thumps and slaps, and he caught a quick glance of Jane stumbling under the weight of two women who had piled into her.
It seemed that the whole of Fleetwood was up for a fight that night, and it was a long time since Henry had witnessed such fun.
However, though he rode his assault without too
much pain, he was worried that one of the hands at him might be holding a knife and he knew he had to get himself and Jane out of there quickly. He surfaced mightily from beneath an avalanche of blows, bellowing as he found the inner strength of self-preservation. He grabbed hold of Jane’s arm — the one she wasn’t using to punch another woman’s lights out — and howled, ‘Let’s do a runner!’
Out of the corner of his eye he’d caught sight of a trio of black-suited bouncers elbowing their way fairly nonchalantly, but effectively, through the crowd. Best to get a move on, he thought, tugging hard at Roscoe.
At that precise moment, Henry took a punch delivered by he knew not who. It landed smack-bang on his left cheekbone, jarring something at the back of his head and behind his eyes, sending a pulsating shockwave through his brain, spinning him backwards between several women. As he fell he saw once more the floppy breasts of the drunken female who’d started it all, followed by the flashing disco lights whizzing past his eyes, then he landed hard on his coccyx and caught the back of his head on the edge of a table.
After that, things became slightly less clear.
‘Didn’t see that one coming,’ Henry admitted with a short and bitter laugh, then groaned as a sharp needle of intense pain seared through his cranium. ‘Dear me,’ he added stiffly. He was sitting on a low wall surrounding flowerbeds in Fleetwood town centre, holding the side of his head, cradling it in his left hand. The front of his face below his left eye was tender, already slightly swollen, his eye starting to close. His cheekbone felt like it could have been fractured, but then he was always one to exaggerate the extent of an injury. ‘I can’t take you anywhere,’ he moaned.
An unruffled Jane Roscoe sat on the wall beside him, philosophically inspecting the knuckles on her right hand, which were grazed and sore. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It was an instinctive thing. I just swung in the direction of whoever grabbed me. Unfortunately it just happened to be you.’
‘You pack a good punch.’
‘Sorry, again … but then maybe I actually knew it was you who got hold of me and maybe punching you good and hard is something I’ve been wanting to do subconsciously for a long time. Y’know — a sort of Freudian thing?’ She grinned maliciously. ‘But I guess neither of us will ever know, until maybe I go for some deep counselling.’
‘Let’s hope it’s out of your system, then.’
She shrugged doubtfully. ‘Who knows?’
Henry touched his face gingerly and winced. ‘Gonna be a shiner,’ he said. ‘God, I hate fighting women. So much nastier than blokes.’ He checked his watch: ten thirty-five p.m. ‘What d’you think about calling it off for the rest of the night?’ he asked Jane. ‘Maybe we could get a drink somewhere decent on the way home?’
‘You asking me out?’
‘For a drink … in the workplace sense, not the romantic sense … I thought we’d moved on from that,’ he said, hoping it didn’t sound too cruel.
She nodded. ‘OK, I’ll have that.’
Henry spoke into his new Generation 2 TETRA personal radio. He ensured the rest of his team, who were scattered about in various hostelries about town, were receiving and stood them down with instructions to resume duty at nine a.m. on Monday. They all acknowledged Henry and he breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Phew — a weekend off. I think I’ll have Monday, too.’
‘Going to surprise Kate?’ Roscoe probed, her mouth twisted rather like the metaphorical knife she was holding.
Henry shrugged, not wanting to answer. The affair he and Roscoe had was a thing of the past, for him at least, but there were still some raw nerve endings exposed. He could tell from the tone of her voice that she still had ‘issues’ to deal with and put to bed, so to speak. It didn’t help matters that they worked in such close proximity. Sometimes it was hard to get away from each other, as tonight had proved.
They walked in silence back to Fleetwood police station where their cars were parked in the back yard. Henry’s eye throbbed painfully, the swelling growing, maybe a visit to A amp; E on the cards, but not tonight. Friday meant busy with drunks, accident victims and a long wait. Maybe he’d get Kate to run him in in the morning if it was still a problem.
‘We did well to get out of that place,’ Henry said, breaking the silence. He had a hazy memory of himself and Jane staggering out of the pub — which had been still fighting in lumps — as the uniformed police contingent arrived en masse. ‘We’d have looked pretty stupid in a cell, wouldn’t we?’
Jane did not respond, her face cold, her attitude now icy.
Once in the yard, he and Jane stood awkwardly by their cars. Jane scraped the toe of her shoe on the ground and looked up at Henry. ‘I know I’ve given you a hard time since we … y’know … since you dumped me, but that’s because it hurt… it hurt me so much, you hurt me. I thought we were on the verge of something,’ she said quietly. ‘But it didn’t happen. I fell in love with you and it hurt, OK? Still does.’
Henry nodded dumbly. He was trying not to do ‘feelings’ any more, because he was basically very bad at ‘going there’. All he wanted to do now was get on with his life, not get involved with anyone again, concentrate on making his life good with Kate, buy an expensive hi-fi system, maybe indulge in a plasma screen TV, collect films on DVD and go away for as many foreign holidays as possible; he was due to retire in three years — when he reached the grand old age of forty-nine — and he wanted to approach that time with a light heart and an easy existence. He’d had enough trauma with feelings, enough of making a fool of himself over women, he hoped, yet he did have a weakness of character that meant he had a tendency to press the self-destruct button without thought of consequence. Something he had to fight.
He sighed. ‘Maybe going for a drink isn’t a good idea.’
‘Maybe not,’ she agreed. ‘Get a bit of alcohol down me and next thing you know, we’d be shagging. See you Monday.’
‘Oh, about Monday … can you cover for me?’
‘Cheeky bastard,’ she uttered through gritted teeth. She regarded him chillingly and exhaled a long, aggrieved breath, very close to telling him where he should stick it. ‘OK,’ she relented.
‘Thanks, appreciate it.’
‘I wonder what Chief Superintendent Anger’ll say about you not being there on Monday?’ she teased.
Anger was Henry’s boss. Jane and Anger had formed a close alliance, both seeming to want to get Henry ditched, each for their own reasons. ‘Depends on what you tell him, I suppose. You could just say I’ve worked like hell for the past three months and I deserve a break. How about that?’
‘Or I could tell him you’re a lazy git who hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of getting a result and should be replaced as SIO. Mm,’ she said, tip of her forefinger on the cleft of her chin. ‘I wonder which one?’
‘Follow your conscience,’ he said abruptly. ‘Whatever, I won’t be in on Monday.’ He strutted angrily to his car, his brittle mood not made any the better when he saw how busy the seagulls had been on his windscreen.
He watched Jane reverse, or lurch, her car out of the parking bay, slam it into first with an angry crunch and screech dramatically out of the police yard with a squeal of rubber. He had a friend, a frequently divorced friend, who had once told him without a trace of irony that women were not worth the hassle. ‘Henry, me old mate,’ he’d said drunkenly once, ‘losin’ it all for the sake of a wizard’s sleeve is bloody crass stupidity.’ He’d gone on to explain what he meant by ‘wizard’s sleeve’, but with a bit of imagination Henry had already worked out what he meant. Henry believed that if he and Jane had tipped over the ‘verge’, as she had called it, he would now be living to regret it. He would have lost his family, which included two great daughters, and would have been nowhere near buying a plasma screen TV … all for the sake of a wizard’s sleeve. He allowed himself a chuckle at his friend’s crude metaphor, started his car, cleared the screen of bird shit and allowed it to warm up before setting off into the night.
&nbs
p; He drove to the Esplanade, Fleetwood’s seafront promenade, then did a right past the North Euston Hotel on to Queen’s Terrace, the Isle of Man ferry terminal to his left. Way across the mouth of the River Wyre were the lights of the sleepy village of Knott End on Sea, and in the far distance to the north the hulking structures of the nuclear power station at Heysham, illuminated by an eerie orange phosphorescent-like glow.
His intention was to trundle down on to the romantically-named Dock Street, cut right across town then head south towards Blackpool and home, hoping he could make it safely with just the one good eye.
Henry’s bleat to Jane about having worked long, hard hours for the past three months had only been partially true. With the exception of a two-week family holiday jaunt to Ibiza, he had actually been hard at it for nine months. For the first six he had been running a complex and particularly dangerous investigation into large-scale corruption and murder within the ranks of some Greater Manchester Police officers. This had entailed much overtime — all unpaid, of course — and several trips to Spain. During the course of the investigation, headed nominally by Lancashire’s chief constable, but run directly by Henry, his life had been threatened twice and his firm’s car had been regularly damaged whilst parked unattended in Manchester. These worrying occurrences had not deterred him from completing a job which had sent shockwaves through GMP. There were some loose ends, as there always are in such a far-reaching enquiry, but Henry was as satisfied as he could be at the outcome … and then he returned to the force, immediately being handed the reins of his present investigation and a new posting to boot.
He was currently a temporary detective chief inspector, a member of the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) team which was based at force headquarters near to Preston. Or at least he had been. Whilst busy in Manchester, there had been some changes to the SIO team and its remit. It had been renamed the Force Major Investigation Team (FMIT) and in order to ensure there was an even better response to serious crime, the staff had been divvied up and given responsibility to provide cover to specific police divisions in the county. In the shuffle, during which Henry had no say, nor was consulted, he had ended up with responsibility for ‘A’ and ‘B’ Divisions, covering the west and north of Lancashire. He had been turfed out of his comfy headquarters office and relocated to Blackpool nick, where he had ended up in a shoe-box of an office with no heating and initially no phone or computer.