Facing Justice

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘And strength – the desire to put villains like you behind bars, people who think they’re above the law, who intimidate and kill . . .’

  Cain raised a finger. ‘Have to stop you there, Superintendent . . . I don’t kill people.’ He smiled.

  ‘A matter of conjecture.’ Henry stopped as Danny Bispham was raised unsteadily to his feet and assisted out of the dining room, past Donaldson who had a cheeky grin on his face.

  ‘And I don’t talk to cops.’

  ‘Not even the one who just saved your life?’

  A forkful of fried onion paused on the way to Cain’s mouth. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘The fact that some guy with a shotgun tried to shoot you, and I stopped him. Silly me.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ The onions went in.

  ‘He went for you as soon as you appeared.’

  ‘Nah, don’t think so.’

  Henry wasn’t fazed. He hadn’t expected Cain to be anything other than obstructive and a liar. People like him did not like cops getting into their lives under any circumstances. But Henry had a message to get across. He leaned over the back of the chair. ‘I don’t know why you’re in this village and I’ve no doubt that you won’t share it with me, but let me tell you something. Whatever it is, it better not spill out and affect anyone else. You’ve already been shot at and, yes, I saved your life, but don’t count on it happening again, because next time I might not be there.’

  Cain smiled broadly and said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Henry and Donaldson were back in the living area.

  ‘Figured you’d need a helping hand. A guardian angel.’

  ‘Or a pet gorilla. That was a hell of a punch.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have cussed me like that, not with ladies in earshot. He got what was coming and he knows it.’

  ‘I just hope we haven’t poked a stick in a hornet’s nest,’ Henry said.

  ‘We will’ve done.’ Donaldson eased himself slowly into an armchair.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Henry asked him.

  ‘Bad. Ankle’s swollen up to twice its normal size and I know I’ll need to rush to the toilet again very soon.’

  ‘Thanks anyway.’ Henry regarded his friend who, despite his incapacitating illness and injury had turned out, unbidden, to back him up, just in case things got hairy. Donaldson had fought the stomach cramps, covered up his limp and appeared behind Henry as though nothing was ailing him. Then he’d landed a killer punch that had poleaxed Bispham, a man who, without doubt, was tough and mean.

  Now that the moment had passed, Donaldson was debilitated again and a kid with a feather could have knocked him for six.

  ‘And on that note,’ the American said, grabbing the chair arms and propelling himself to his feet. Half running, half limping, he hobbled out of the room, his last words being ‘Need to go.’

  Alison returned from the bar, standing aside to allow him past.

  ‘Now you two are good mates, not like you and Steve.’

  ‘Up to a point.’

  ‘To infinity, I’d guess.’

  Henry took a quick but detailed look at her. She was probably fifteen years younger than him, a thought that jolted him somewhat, made him realize how old he was getting. He had passed fifty, was too quickly approaching the middle of that decade, and sixty – sixty – was just over the horizon. By the way time was passing so quickly, he’d be there sooner rather than later. Most of his landmark birthdays hadn’t bothered him, but the prospect of six-zero scared the crap out of him.

  Alison came towards him. ‘I’m sorry about before, being a bit forward.’

  ‘Don’t be. I’m very flattered that someone as gorgeous as you would even give a grizzled old bugger like me a second glance.’ Oh God, he thought, so smooth.

  She scrunched her lips thoughtfully together. ‘I might be sorry, but that doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind.’

  They smiled at each other, knowing that anything between them had gone as far as it was going. It was an unsaid conclusion.

  ‘There is still an overnight problem to solve,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’ll be spending the witching hour looking after Callard,’ Henry said. ‘He’s my responsibility and I don’t want Flynn to do it.’

  ‘You’ll be up at the police house?’

  ‘That said, I’d be really obliged if you could still look after Karl.’

  ‘I’ll put him up in Ginny’s room. She can sleep with me tonight – I’ve got a huge king-size bed.’ She looked longingly at Henry. ‘I’m sure Ginny will be fine with that. What about Steve, though?’

  ‘What about Steve? He didn’t book a room here, did he?’

  ‘He’ll need somewhere to get his head down.’

  ‘Perhaps he could use your settee?’ He wasn’t too concerned about Flynn’s sleeping arrangements.

  ‘I’ll offer it to him.’

  The phone rang and Alison answered, listened for a moment, looked sharply at Henry and then handed it to him.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Henry, Flynn. You’d better get back up here right now. Tom James has turned up.’

  SIXTEEN

  With a touch of longing, Flynn watched Alison and Henry climb into her car and drive back to the Tawny Owl. He closed the door slowly and touched the repaired cut on his head, so tenderly fixed by Alison’s gentle fingers.

  It had been some time since Flynn had been with a woman. He had lost interest, become bored and wary of the ‘man-woman’ love thing, preferred to concentrate on his job as skipper of the best sportfishing boat in the Canaries. He had a lot of ground to make up with Adam Castle, the owner, and had paid him back by effort and dedication to the cause, that being bringing in the biggest fish most consistently. The last customer had been somewhat unfortunate. Never assault a customer. Never – even if they deserve it.

  Flynn had done some playing about in the foggy aftermath of the relationship with the woman he had so unexpectedly fallen in love with. One night stands, meaningless fornication with a succession of willing ladies, easily seduced by the hot weather, a muscle-bound, suntanned skipper and jugs of Sangria. But Flynn had soon tired of it. It was a lifestyle he’d once enjoyed, but the glint of the future he’d seen with ‘that woman’, as he now referred to his tragic lover, now made him want much more from a – the hated word – relationship. He’d retired into his shell and concentrated on work instead.

  But Alison’s touch, her closeness, her breath, had stirred something inside him. And the signal it gave was that he now wanted to move on in his life, and possibly Alison might be just the lady to drag him out of his emotional doldrums.

  That’s if he read her right. He knew he was a bit of a Neanderthal when it came to sussing out what the female of the species meant or wanted. So perhaps he’d got it wrong. Maybe she was just being nice.

  And, he thought realistically, what chance would there be of any relationship with her? It would, by simple fact of geography, be a hit and miss job. She didn’t strike him as someone who would want a long-distance relationship, and to be truthful, nor did he.

  ‘Think I’m getting ahead of myself here,’ he muttered as he walked back into the office and checked on Callard. Still affixed to the radiator, asleep and making one hell of a medically dodgy noise. Flynn backed off into the hallway and picked up the sawn-off shotgun that had been left propped up there. He hooked his thumb under the trigger guard and carried it through to the kitchen, laying it gently on a worktop.

  As he inspected it his mind shuffled back over the day he’d just had. He blew out his cheeks as his intuition told him that something very horrible was happening in this village. Not a great insight, bearing in mind what had happened so far on his watch, but incredible just the same. He dearly wanted to speak to Tom James again, because he knew, gut feeling, that he had a lot to answer for.

  He was aware of the lights, the sound of a revving engine, the slammi
ng of a car door.

  Flynn stirred listlessly, shaking his head, not even remembering falling asleep on the settee in the front lounge. It must have come over him without warning. He rubbed his eyes, wondering how long he’d been under. He sat forward, trying to recall what had woken him, then jumped up and almost went headlong over the prone figure of Roger, spreadeagled at his feet, oblivious to any noise, in a deep slumber, not even reacting to Flynn’s feet.

  Then he heard the front door crash open.

  ‘Cathy, Cathy, where the hell have you been?’ Tom James shouted angrily as he came into the hallway.

  Flynn’s mind clicked into gear. Cathy’s Shogun was parked outside. The sound that Flynn had heard must have been Tom returning from wherever he’d been. He twisted into the hall and came face to face with the detective.

  Flynn’s appearance caught him unawares. ‘You! What the hell are you doing here? Where’s Cathy?’ Then he saw Callard laid out by the radiator in the office. ‘What the fuck’s been going on here?’ he demanded. ‘Who’s that? What the hell’s—?

  ‘Hey, man, calm down,’ Flynn said peaceably. ‘That bloke’s a prisoner.’

  Tom glowered. ‘Whose prisoner?’

  ‘Hey, long story, pal . . .’

  ‘Don’t you freakin’ “pal” me . . . where’s Cathy? Is she here?’ Flynn couldn’t find the words for a reply. ‘Well, come on, numb-nuts, what’s going on, where the hell is she?’ He barged past Flynn into the kitchen, calling her name and coming to a jarring halt when his eyes clamped on the sawn-off shotgun.

  Flynn was behind him, at his shoulder.

  ‘What is that doing here?’ Tom asked coldly and turned slowly to Flynn. ‘What’s going on? Why is this gun in my house? Where is Cathy? What’s that bastard doing in my house? And why are you here?’

  Roger, having eventually been roused from his deep sleep, snaked around Flynn’s legs, came between him and Tom, then rose delightedly on his creaky hind legs, placing his massive front paws on Tom’s chest, giving a little ‘woof’ of greeting.

  Tom’s right forearm drove the dog roughly sideways, twisting his arthritic hips, so Roger went down awkwardly with a squeal of pain.

  ‘Fuck off, dog.’

  ‘Hey – no need for that,’ Flynn said.

  Roger cowered, ears back, tail turned inwards between his back legs. If there could have been an expression of disbelief on his face, it would have been there.

  Tom jammed a finger into Flynn’s chest. ‘My house, pal – now where is she?’ He had a rage that was becoming uncontrollable and Flynn was wondering why. Why would he be so incensed to find his wife’s car back home? Even if they’d parted on bad terms, surely Tom wouldn’t be so annoyed to have her return? OK, a drunken prisoner in the house might well infuriate him, especially as the stench emanating from that direction was telling them he had pissed himself. But under the circumstances, with the weather having cut the village off, Tom would surely have understood that if Cathy had been obliged to make an arrest, then she would have been just as obliged to keep the prisoner here.

  Obviously Flynn knew what had happened to Cathy. But, he speculated as he listened to the policeman’s rant, did Tom also know? And was the sight of her Shogun and the shotgun a warning that her body had also been found? Was he now putting on an act?

  ‘You need to calm down,’ Flynn said evenly.

  ‘Why, exactly? Why do I need to calm down? I come home and find my house violated and you here.’ He pointed at Flynn, his face ugly with hatred. ‘Someone my bitch of a wife called and blabbed to, who then turns up like a puppy dog, because you shagged her, didn’t you?’

  Flynn coloured uncomfortably. ‘That’s not why I’m here – and you know it.’

  ‘So why are you here? And where is she? And what’s going on with that prisoner? Who arrested him? It can’t have been—’ He stopped himself mid-sentence. ‘Start talking.’

  Flynn sighed. ‘You need to calm down. Look, come and sit in the lounge and we’ll get all this sorted. I need to make a phone call.’

  ‘To Cathy? Where the hell is she?’

  ‘Just sit down, eh?’ Flynn was frantically using his hands in calming gestures. ‘Let me phone Henry Christie – it’s down to him to explain everything.’

  Flynn had to be quick to see it because Tom covered it up well – a look of horror at the mention of Henry’s name. But see it he did, and it made him think this outburst from Tom was a complete charade. ‘Why Henry Christie?’ Tom demanded.

  ‘He’s down at the pub.’

  ‘Why him?’

  ‘Just let me call him.’

  ‘What the fuck is Henry Christie doing here?’

  ‘He’s probably asking himself the same question . . . come on, Tom – try to chill for a few minutes and I’ll get him up here to explain things.’

  ‘Why can’t you explain things?’

  ‘Because Henry’s a cop and I’m an innocent bystander.’

  He arrived in Flynn’s hired Peugeot, which he noticed now was missing a driver’s door mirror. He parked behind Tom’s Golf and his heart sank a little at the task that lay ahead. He always thought that delivering a death message chipped away at something inside every cop, even though every cop knew it came with the territory. Henry had delivered many in his time – too many. Some of the toughest ones were linked to murders or suspicious and sudden deaths. By the nature of his role he often had to break the most awful news to families of people who had been brutally killed, their lives brought to unnatural and violent ends. Additionally, unless there was a suspect in mind, Henry also had to realize that the person he was delivering the news to could also have been the offender. It was a fine balancing line between empathy and cold calculation, compassion and evidence gathering, all these things running in parallel.

  He thought briefly about what he knew of Tom James, detective and husband of the deceased. He knew Tom distantly in the way that SIOs knew the detectives who worked in the geographical areas for which they were responsible. Henry’s area included the north of the county, which therefore included the city of Lancaster, where Tom worked as a DC. Henry had come across him on a couple of straightforward domestic murders that he’d overseen in his SIO role. Tom had been professional and his performance had been excellent. He guessed that one day, Tom might become a DS, maybe a DI in the fullness of time. He seemed steady, diligent and reliable, could talk to people, the latter skill being the most important criteria in a decent detective.

  So, nothing much, nothing outstanding. Except for the additional information fed to him by Steve Flynn, a man of dubious character himself. He’d told Henry what Cathy had said in a desperate phone call: the marriage was going south and Tom was corrupt. And it could all be bullshit. Henry didn’t know Cathy James well, could not comment on her character, but Flynn thought highly of her, for what that was worth.

  Henry decided simply to bear these things in mind and, as ever, wing it. OK, he was dealing with the murder of a cop, but he didn’t know her, nor did he know Tom well, so that was good – nothing personal to queer the pitch. No preconceived notions that would sway him. He would simply deal with this as he would any other case. Thing was, of course, as he had already discussed with Flynn, murder victims usually knew their attackers and often the killer turned out to be a close friend or relative.

  He hoped that would not be the case here. He opened the car door, stepped out into the deep snow, trudging and leaving footprints all the way up to the front door. ‘Open mind,’ he told himself firmly.

  ‘Christ boss, what the hell’s happening?’ Tom James asked desperately, having rushed to the front door to greet Henry, worry and fear pasted over his face.

  ‘Need to sit down and talk,’ Henry said.

  ‘What’s going on? Tell me, please.’

  ‘Living room,’ Henry said firmly.

  ‘OK,’ Tom said, tight-lipped. He walked stiffly into the front room.

  Flynn was standing in the hallway. He gave Henry
a shrug and Henry returned it with a shake of the head, followed Tom into the lounge and closed the door softly.

  Tom sat primly on an armchair, wringing his hands.

  ‘This is going to be bad news, isn’t it?’ Tom said.

  ‘Tom, I want you to bear with me. I need to ask you some questions, to establish some facts. You know the score.’

  ‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Tom,’ Henry said firmly, trying to judge the best way ahead, part of the balancing act. If Tom knew nothing, if he and Cathy had simply had a barney and she’d stormed out and he didn’t know where she’d gone and it was as simple as that, Henry should just tell him that her body had been found and all the rest. However, if Tom was responsible for blowing his wife’s brains out, Henry had to get some details first. Henry knew he really had no choice. Whatever he believed, Tom James had to be up there in the top two prime suspects, alongside the mystery poacher, if indeed that person did exist. It was like defusing a bomb. Lots of wires, one of them lethal. ‘When did you last see Cathy?’

  ‘Oh God,’ he wailed, ‘she’s dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘You being here. All this.’ He waved his arms around wildly. ‘Her car, Flynn – I don’t fuckin’ know!’

  ‘I’m here by accident.’

  ‘Then if there’s nothing going on, you don’t need to be involved, do you? Can you see where I’m coming from?’

  Henry pursed his lips. ‘Yeah, except I am here and I am involved, and you’re right to be concerned.’ Henry stopped a moment. ‘What has Steve Flynn told you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Henry nodded. ‘Right – just answer me, when did you last see Cathy?’

  ‘Uh, yesterday, OK. We had a row, she split . . .’

  ‘And? Is there anything else I should know? What time did she go? What did she say when she left?’

  ‘Called me a tosser . . . and she said she was going to check out the report of a poacher, then she was leaving me. That was about half three, I guess.’

  ‘OK . . . Steve went looking for her because he was worried about her. He found her car in some woods near Mallowdale House . . .’ Tom leaned forward tensely. Henry made a judgement call and went into bluff mode to gauge the reaction. ‘But there was no sign of Cathy, so I am somewhat worried about her. With the weather, the deep snow, it was obviously impossible to do any sort of search. It may be that she did challenge a poacher in the woods who could’ve been armed . . . maybe.’