One Dead Witness hc-3

by Nick Oldham

  The last bottles did not have a great effect because most of the damage had been done, the first explosions having sucked and burned up most of the available oxygen.

  Trent did not wait. As the last bottle left his hand he turned and hared for the steps which would take him down to his level. He knew the majority of people would make their way up onto level two from the opposite direction, from the steps nearest to the association area.

  In order to aid his passage, he ripped the wet protective strips off his head and screamed, ‘Help! Fire! Get some help! People hurt!’ as he tore down the walkway, pointing frantically in the direction from which he had come.

  He pushed his way through the gathering number of people running towards the scene of the inferno. No one seemed to take a blind bit of notice of him.

  He landed back in his cell probably forty seconds after the last petrol bomb had exploded. He was breathless, shaking. He ripped his clothing off and stuffed the wet garments underneath his mattress, jumped into his own clothing, pulled up his shirtsleeves and sat on the bed.

  His arms were bleeding nicely.

  They needed to bleed some more.

  He reached for the tin of pig’s blood.

  Danny had been a naughty policewoman over the years. In more ways than one.

  Regulations state that all officers must hand in their pocket-books for safe storage purposes each time one is completed. Danny had only ever handed pocket-books in during her two-year probationary period. She preferred to keep them in her locker and now, fifteen years on, she had a stackful on the top shelf which she would be hard- pressed to explain if called to account.

  It was, in essence, a complete history of her police service, minus the first two years.

  She reached right to the back of the shelf and found the one she was looking for. Pocket-book number 12. The twelfth book issued to her in her third year of service, showing how busy she had been in those days when she had been bright, keen and conscientious. Twelve in less than three years was pretty good going.

  Of late, Danny recorded little in her pocket-books, just the bare necessities. The book she was using at that moment was over two years old.

  She smiled when she saw the pink-covered, dog-eared log. Her memories flooded back fifteen years to those simple, uncluttered days of her first posting at Blackburn police station in the east of the county. Flicking the book open to the last page she glanced down the index of names and incidents she had attended. As she read them to herself, standing in a locker-room at Blackpool police station, she found she remembered each one.

  Amongst the names were:

  Loughlin: Burglary (he’d broken into a sweetshop on Eanam.)

  Alexander: Parking offence (that bitch had been a real cow to deal with.)

  Allcock: Prostitution (one of the many Blackburn hookers.)

  There were numerous other names, all invoking their own particular reminiscence.

  Eventually she saw the name she had been searching for.

  Lilton: F/arm cert.

  Danny riffled to the entry on page 21. Her memory was now well and truly jogged. She read the entry, then her eyes became misty as she visualised the day.

  Visiting people who had applied for firearms certificates was a routine job usually carried out by more experienced officers. That particular day Danny’s shift was 2 p.m.-l0 p.m., and the guy who usually covered the outer rural beats of Blackburn had reported in sick. Much to Danny’s surprise, the Sergeant allocated her his beat for the day. She had been expecting to spend another eight hours trudging round the town centre, picking up shoplifters and drunks. The chance to work a mobile beat was pretty rare for a woman in those days, especially at her length of service. It was a beat usually given out to the older ‘lads’ as a bit of a sweetener.

  She was handed the keys to the Panda car and the stack of routine enquiries and told to come in for her refreshments at six.

  Danny could see herself marching confidently down the corridor. Twenty-two years old, slim as a beanpole. A non-smoker who hardly drank at all but enjoyed lots of uncomplicated sex with a variety of guys, mainly detectives. Fit as a flea and a regular member of the County Athletic Team.

  What great days.

  As she went out to the car she collected her PR from the comms room. Whilst fiddling with the radio harness she accidentally dropped the pile of enquiries onto the floor. The Constable who had issued her radio, and who was desperate to find his way into Danny’s knickers, picked them up for her, like the gentleman he was, or purported to be.

  He noticed the Lilton firearms enquiry on top of the pile.

  Danny could not quite recall the exact words. They were along the lines of, ‘I wouldn’t trust him with a catapult, never mind a thirty-eight.’ A remark which set Danny’s alarm bells ringing.

  She asked why.

  The PC told her. ‘Always beating his wife up. Real volatile git.’ He handed her the enquiries and changed tack to a more favourable subject. He asked Danny out for the tenth time.

  And for the tenth time, she politely refused.

  He sighed despondently and waddled his short twenty-two-stone frame back into the radio room.

  So that afternoon, before going out on patrol, Danny sat in the report room and leafed through all the messages, reports and any references whatsoever to do with Joe Lilton of Head Bank House, Osbaldeston, Blackburn.

  She got the impression the overweight Constable had a point.

  After she turned out from the station, she enjoyed half an hour tootling round the country lanes, not having a single deployment. Then she got bored and made her way to Osbaldeston, a quiet village close to the River Ribble.

  There was a fair smattering of wealth in the area and Head Bank House was a large, detached building surrounded by a couple of acres of landscaped gardens. Danny knew from his firearms application form that Lilton described himself as a self-employed trader. Further digging had revealed he owned six shops which sold High Street seconds at knock-down prices.

  Danny drove down the wide, arcing driveway laid with white chippings crunching under the tyres of the battered Ford Escort. She drew up outside the front door next to a brand-new Jaguar and a slightly older Mini. Danny was calling on spec. It looked as though she’d struck lucky.

  As soon as she stepped out of the car she heard raised voices from inside the house. A big argument. Man and woman. She stood and listened and tried to work out what it was about. It seemed to be about infidelity.

  She walked confidently to the front door and jammed her thumb on the doorbell. The shouting continued. She kept her thumb on. It rang loudly. The shouting stopped. Footsteps. The sound of crying. Footsteps getting closer to the door. The door opening.

  The woman was very glamorous in a tacky sort of way. She was in her mid-thirties. Her mascara had run, making her look like a surprised owl.

  This was Mrs Lilton, Danny assumed. She looked puzzled to see a uniform at her door. ‘What d’you want?’ she asked sharply. ‘No one’s called the police, have they?’

  Danny shook her head. ‘I’m here on another matter… but are you all right? Do you need some help?’

  The woman stared disgustedly at Danny. ‘Yeah, I’m okay — no thanks to you lot. As if you care.’ Her breath reeked of alcohol fumes. ‘You’ve never cared yet, have you? So what d’you want?’

  ‘ To see Joe Lilton, please.’

  ‘ Why? Won’t it wait?’

  ‘ Not unless he doesn’t want to get a firearms certificate.’ As she finished the sentence, Joe Lilton appeared behind the woman.

  ‘ Come in, come in,’ he said graciously to Danny. ‘There’s nothing going on here but a little family disagreement.’ He looked at Danny and their eyes locked ever so briefly and he knew she knew he was lying to his back teeth.

  Danny remembered that face well, now, fifteen years later. Those pinched, mean features, now fleshed out by ageing.

  At the door of the house in Osbaldeston, he had placed his hands
on his wife’s shoulders. She had juddered visibly at the touch. ‘Come on,’ he said gently to her. To Danny he stated, ‘A misunderstanding, that’s all.’

  Yeah, no mistaking it, Danny thought, closing her pocket-book.

  It was the same Joe Lilton who was now Claire Lilton’s stepfather.

  What a small world.

  ‘ Oh, fucking hell, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig, for God’s sake!’ the young, blood-covered prison officer screamed to the paramedics. ‘And he’s got internal bleeding too, for some reason,’ he blabbered. ‘Christ!’ he mouthed. ‘The bastard puked a whole gob-full all over me!’

  The young man looked down his chest. He retched at the sight of the thick red globules all down the front of his uniform shirt which had once been white.

  ‘ God, I’ve never seen anything so foul. Taken a load of pills too.’

  He was blithering these words to the green-jacketed paramedics whilst they stretchered the supposedly dying Trent expertly through the twists and turns of the prison, along walkways, down steep stairwells.

  Finally they emerged at the yard behind the front gates of the prison where three ambulances, a couple of fire tenders and two cop cars were drawn up.

  Trent was dumped in the back of the nearest ambulance.

  Having listened to the screw babbling on, Trent was having difficulty keeping a straight face. He desperately needed to belly laugh, sit up and say, ‘Fooled you, you stupid set of cunts.’

  Instead he continued to play the part of someone who has just tried to end his own life with a concoction of drugs and the old opening-of-veins ceremony.

  When he heard the ambulance doors clunk shut, he was satisfied. Then more so when he experienced the forwards motion of the vehicle. Then orgasmically so, when through his rolling eyes, he saw the blue lights begin to flash and rotate.

  He was on his way to freedom.

  It had worked perfectly.

  The prison officers, as Trent had rightly predicted, had reacted to the crisis like a bunch of headless chickens, running around the prison, not knowing whether they were coming or going. The fire in Blake’s cell, the discovery of the four bodies — two burnt-out in the cell, one knifed to death in the adjacent cell and the other toasted alive whilst suspended above an audience — had thrown them into utter confusion. No one seemed able to take control of the situation. Having a suicide attempt thrown in on top of all that was the last straw.

  When they had seen how bad he was, Trent was certain they would not mess about by transferring him to the woefully inadequate medical wing. It did not have the staff or facilities to deal with someone who had tried to shred his arms and taken such a lethal dose of junk he was bleeding internally and puking blood.

  He knew their reaction would be to get him out of the way, cart him off to the nearest Casualty unit.

  Which is exactly what they did. And to speed things up in the chaos, they cut corners. Obviously they could not handcuff Trent because of his injured arms, but nor did they search him. They seemed happy to believe that the small penknife they found next to the bed was the one with which he had mutilated himself.

  An absolute dream.

  Having said that, the task of keeping a mouthful of pig’s blood ready to cough out onto a screw had created a few trying moments. That had been a case of mind over matter. It was a good job the screw had raced into the cell when he did (urged by Vic Wallwork, playing his part in the scenario), because Trent was about to puke anyway.

  And now he was in the rear of the ambulance.

  He moaned. He groaned. He writhed and twisted his body in agony, ensuring they could not quite find his pulse or clamp an oxygen mask on him or stick a tube up his arm.

  ‘ OOOARH — urgh,’ he uttered with deep pain, loving every moment of it.

  ‘ Come on, pal, keep still, you’ll be okay,’ the paramedic fussed caringly and tried to clean him up.

  Less than thirty seconds later the ambulance had negotiated its way through the narrow prison gates, accelerating away smoothly, then screeching around a roundabout onto a dual carriageway.

  The prison officer who had been tasked to remain with Trent — the one covered in pig’s blood — looked on with an expression of worry and repulsion. Over the paramedic’s shoulders he said, ‘I hope the bastard’s not got HIV, with all this fucking blood over me. He’s an arse bandit, you know.’

  The paramedic put him straight immediately. ‘If you’ve had unprotected sex with this man and drunk a pint of his blood, you might have cause for concern. If not, don’t worry.’

  Trent continued to squirm realistically, feeling the need to put more distance between himself and the prison before he took matters to their logical conclusion.

  When he judged the moment right, he suddenly sat up with a scream as though a great pain had burned through his abdomen. He reached behind himself, his hand went underneath his shirt and his fingers closed on the hilt of the knife fastened to his spine with a couple of Band Aids.

  He ripped the instrument from its moorings.

  The paramedic, surprised by the sudden sitting up, stepped back. The roll of the ambulance unbalanced him slightly.

  Without hesitation, Trent drove the knife into the unfortunate man’s neck. The razor-sharp blade pierced the jugular vein as Trent dug it in and rived it round and round. He withdrew the blade as the man screamed dreadfully and a glorious crimson fountain flowered into the air, splattering the inside of the ambulance with deep red swathes of blood. The paramedic’s hands reached instinctively for his neck to try and stop the flow.

  Trent grabbed the man’s overalls at the chest and threw him sideways. Then he jumped to his feet and leapt across the small space at the prison officer. That man’s senses had not been capable, in those brief seconds, of taking in what had just happened to the paramedic.

  Trent was on the officer, yelling, ‘I’m not an arse bandit, I’m a fucking paedophile, you pig-bastard.’

  He plunged the knife into the officer’s right eye which burst with a pop as the blade entered the pupil, its watery contents spurting out. Trent pushed the blade further in, right up to the hilt, angled it upwards into the brain, killing him the instant the soft tissue was pierced.

  Trent held the knife in there, grinding it round. The dead man’s jangled nerves reacted by making him dance like someone possessed by the devil. Then Trent extracted it as the man’s legs gave way.

  Trent slid casually next to the ambulance driver, reached for the radio and ripped the handset out. He leaned across to the driver who had not even realised what was going on and pushed the point of the knife into his neck. A trickle of blood popped out from the prick.

  ‘ Taxi,’ Trent said with a smile.

  Chapter Seven

  Lieutenant Mark Tapperman was a very big guy, even in comparison to Steve Kruger who was no midget himself. Tapperman was six-four, built like the frontal elevation of a very substantial building and kept himself incredibly fit — necessary qualifications for policing the crime-ridden streets of Miami where a cop needed all the edge he could get… and then some.

  Despite these credentials, Tapperman looked sheepishly at Steve Kruger as the ex-cop walked towards him with a slight limp and an expression of seething anger stamped across his face.

  ‘ Oh shit,’ Tapperman mumbled under his breath. ‘He’s mad.’ He suddenly had the thought that maybe coming to this particular restaurant for lunch was not the best of choices. Granny Feelgood’s was not the right place for someone who’ probably wanted to rip a twelve-ounce steak to shreds; it was more suited to a person on a diet who wanted to pig out on tofu or spiced tea. Arbetter Hot Dogs would’ve been a more appropriate place to meet and eat, Tapperman thought too late.

  ‘ Mark,’ Kruger nodded curtly. He slumped down on the chair opposite Tapperman and slung his jacket across the back of another. He loosened his neck-tie and unfastened his collar, his face distorting as his fingers eased the button out of its hole. He tugged the collar loose.
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br />   Once again Miami was like a fan oven and that, combined with his tiredness — for Kruger had not yet had any sleep — meant he was mega-irritable.

  It showed in his body language.

  ‘ Herb tea?’ Tapperman enquired hopefully.

  Kruger eyed the detective critically for a moment. ‘Nooo,’ he said quietly with an exaggerated pursing of the lips. ‘Just tell me what you’ve got.’

  Tapperman sipped his Perrier to clear his dust-dry throat.

  ‘ Nothing we could do about it,’ he said helplessly. ‘Bussola’s lawyer, Ira Begin, was waiting at the stationhouse when we arrived. Couldn’t stop Bussola talking to him — y’know, prisoner’s rights and all that crap; couldn’t stop his lawyer makin’ phone calls either, could we?’ Tapperman sighed. ‘Anyways, we got the process going… then we find out there ain’t no process to get going.’

  Kruger waited impatiently.

  ‘ Somehow, probably through the lawyer, he’d got to the girl’s parents.’

  ‘ So?’

  ‘ Well, that little girl he was ridin’ when you found him was only eleven years old. She’d been on the run from home ‘bout three weeks and somehow got herself sucked into Bussola’s porn system. Thing is, though, the reason why we got nowhere, was because there ain’t no complaint. Bussola’s organisation got to her parents before we did — and this is only an assumption, Steve. I think they were paid off and delivered a bottom-line threat at the same time. “You’re dead if you testify”. They’re poor people from Homestead. Ain’t recovered from Hurricane Andrew yet. In those circumstances, Bussola’s money is as good as anybody’s.’

  ‘ Even if he raped your daughter?’ Kruger was incredulous. He went on, ‘Why not indict without them? It’s serious enough. Do it on the girl’s behalf.’ Kruger’s voice was cold, hard. He had not liked one word of what had been said.

  ‘ If we did, Steve, Bussola would kill the family. You know he would, and that would not achieve anything.’