by Nick Oldham
He went past the closed en-suite door into the bedroom area. The huge bed was rumpled and unmade and there was no sign of anyone.
He breathed a sigh, then back-tracked to the en-suite door, which he pushed open with his fingernail. It swung easily to reveal an expensive-looking fully tiled room, half of which was a walk-in shower.
In which was the naked body of an adult male, crumpled up.
Henry edged across to look into the shower cubicle properly.
Like his wife, Joe Speakman had been blasted to death by a shotgun. Blood, brains and water mingled down the pure white-tiled walls.
Henry was putting all this together.
Speakman showering. The wife preparing breakfast. A run-of-the-mill domestic scene. Not a murder-suicide, because Speakman had not blown his own head off.
Someone else had.
Henry heard something behind him.
He spun.
And the hooded man filled out the bathroom door, a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun pointed directly at Henry’s chest.
Flynn saw the dead dog at the same time as Henry. Up to that point he hadn’t really been too concerned about proceedings. Visiting the scene of a six-month-old murder that he knew zilch about, then going on spec to see a retired SIO, even though he was vaguely curious to see what his old boss was up to, held no great interest for him.
His mind had been on plenty of other things. Primarily the fact that he’d been almost killed the night before – and was still hacking up smoke-tinged phlegm – and how he could start tracking down the two bastards who’d left him to die in a blazing inferno. Something he was planning on doing with or without Henry’s help.
Then he had to think about Diane and Colin and how he would tell her properly about the fate of the canal boat. He had tried when he phoned her earlier, but it wasn’t a successful attempt at passing a message. She had not been ‘with it’ at all.
And also the shop. It had to be opened for business, which was the main reason for him being in the UK in the first place . . . and also his need for accommodation. Now he had nowhere to bed down. The thought of crashing out nightly at the Tawny Owl was very appealing, even though it was hardly in the most convenient of locations. Maybe he’d get one more night out of it, but anything beyond that would be very unfair to Alison – and Henry, he supposed. At some point he would have to pay and that was money he didn’t have. He was not a wealthy man at all.
But when he saw the dog, his rusty but still functioning cop instincts surged to the fore.
He had been a good detective. Maybe not in Henry’s league, he was reluctantly forced to admit, but one rung above competent and hard and ruthless with it.
He made his way around the perimeter of the house on the gravel path, carefully looking into each room and seeing nothing.
Then he found himself at the kitchen window, where he saw Henry looking at something on the floor. From his position, he could not quite see what, but the expression on Henry’s face was grave and thoughtful as he backed out of the kitchen without even spotting Flynn at the window.
‘Ten out of ten for observation skills,’ Flynn muttered, about to move away from the window – until he saw the door to the utility room open slowly at the far end of the kitchen.
A man emerged.
Henry had once been winged by a shotgun blast, dozens of pellets hitting his shoulder like pebbledashing. After the numbness and disbelief, the pain had been incredible, right off the scale. But he’d survived.
He knew he would not survive this one.
Whatever was loaded in the shotgun would hit him in the sternum and drive a massive hole through the centre of his body and shatter his spine on the way out, after shredding his heart and lungs on the way.
As he faced the man in the door and his mouth dropped open, and the thought about taking a shotgun blast in his chest went through his mind, he was already throwing himself sideways.
Then there was a roar and a blur combined as Steve Flynn powered into the man, roaring like an attacking lion and using all his brute strength to take him down. But in so doing the shotgun jerked up and a barrel was discharged, splattering shot at an upwards angle into the top corner of the en-suite shower room.
Henry saw the men disappear and roll through to the bedroom.
The man held grimly on to the shotgun as he and Flynn tumbled untidily across the carpet, Flynn completely aware that the weapon between himself and the gunman was still loaded with one barrel.
They hit the floor and rolled, grappling desperately for control of the weapon, the man trying to tilt it away from him just enough so he could take Flynn’s head off; Flynn, totally knowing this was what he intended, and fighting the opposite way. The man had one big advantage, though: his right forefinger was hooked into the trigger guard.
Then they struck the corner of the bed hard and they came apart.
Flynn knew it was over.
The man still held the gun. He contorted, trying to aim the weapon, but Flynn saw that his finger had come out of the trigger guard. He reacted. In that nanosecond before the finger once against instinctively found its place on the double trigger, Flynn’s right hand shot palm-out and smashed the barrel upwards just as the finger jerked on the trigger.
The sound of the blast was incredible.
Flynn’s face was only inches away from the discharge. He heard the hammer connect and hit the cartridge. He felt the kickback of the explosion within the chamber, but at that exact moment he was forcing the gun hard against the man’s chest, so it was pointing upwards under his chin.
Flynn cowered away as the man’s face disintegrated, completely removed by the force of the blast that went straight up into his lower jaw and lifted his mouth, nose, eyes and forehead away from the rest of his head.
Flynn rolled away, came up on to his knees, gasping, horrified, but unable to tear his eyes away from the bloody, faceless mask, who, although twitching horribly, and his right forefinger was still pulling back the triggers, was dead.
NINE
‘Here.’ Henry handed Flynn coffee in a mug. Flynn took it with a murmur of thanks and had a sip. It was hot and bitter. Good. ‘How’re you feeling?’
Flynn was sitting half-in, half-out of Diane’s Smart Car, still parked in the driveway of Joe Speakman’s house, now surrounded by an array of police vehicles of various descriptions.
He pouted and considered Henry’s question.
There was no doubt about it, Flynn was a tough guy.
As a teenager he had served as a Royal Marines Commando in the Falkland Islands conflict with Argentina and beyond that in various well-known and not so well-known campaigns.
In his subsequent police career, on the streets and as a detective in CID and the drugs branch, he had mixed it and faced up to some of the hardest, meanest guys out there, people to whom violence was second nature. Flynn’s physical prowess, courage and sheer determination – and delight at confrontation – had always seen him through. He had once been led away by two very professional hit men for questioning and then a bullet in the brain. He had emerged victorious and their bleached bones lay undiscovered, and probably would for another hundred years.
Not much got to him. He could dole it out and take it.
But a shotgun going off between himself and a man he was fighting to the death had made him a bit dithery.
Had the weapon been angled a few more degrees in his direction, it would have been his face removed, not the attacker’s. He would have been dead and no doubt Henry Christie would also have been dead.
‘I’m fine,’ Flynn responded. He took another sip of the coffee and the tiny shake of his hand was noticeable to no one except himself. He eyed Henry and wondered, ‘Are you going to arrest me for murder? I’d expect nothing less from you.’
‘Mm, good point,’ Henry toyed with him. ‘Are you going to do a runner, leave the country?’
‘Course I am . . . I live in the Canary Islands, not here.’
‘W
ill you make a statement before you go and then come back for any court hearings?’
‘Yep.’
Henry shrugged. ‘In that case, no arrest.’ His face became serious in a way that Flynn had never seen. He touched Flynn’s shoulder. ‘I know what you did. Thank you.’
‘I’d have done the same for any arsehole.’
‘I know you would.’
They held each other’s look for a deep and meaningful moment but broke it off before it became embarrassing.
‘I will need your clothing for forensics.’
‘You want me to strip now? I’m kinda running low on things to wear . . . I’m down to socks and underpants and I don’t think it would be a good idea to help myself to anything from the shop again. Running up a bit of a tab there.’ Flynn glanced down at himself. ‘Although I think I’m going to have to.’
Even though the shotgun had gone off away from him and the force of the blast was also away from him, he had been splattered with blood as though someone had flicked a big paintbrush full of red paint across his upper chest.
Henry said, ‘If I get someone to follow you to the shop with some forensic bags, can you get changed there? How does that sound?’
Flynn nodded. Good idea. He had expected Henry to be awkward and demand he strip right there and get into one of the paper forensic suits and slippers that balloon out like the Michelin Man.
‘I’ll have that,’ he said. Then, ‘So – who is that up there minus his head and what is this all about, Henry? Because he ain’t no burglar, that I do know,’ he concluded.
‘I don’t know who he is,’ Henry admitted.
‘And,’ Flynn pushed on, ‘how is this linked to Jennifer Sunderland’s death?’
Henry blinked. ‘I don’t know that it is. Why do you say that?’
‘Because . . .’ Flynn pointed to the house, ‘that is one of the guys who tried to fry me up last night. He’s the one whose mask I ripped off.’
It was going to be a very long day at the scene. Fortunately, because the house was detached and a little isolated, it was easy to seal off and the police were under no pressure to hurry up any processes and get the job done because someone was waiting. They took their time – and Henry made certain nothing was missed.
He turned out the whole circus: forensic and crime-scene investigators, search teams – including dogs – and detectives. Uniformed cops were tasked with house to house in the village.
Henry made it all happen with ruthless efficiency and once the wheels were in motion he appointed a detective inspector from FMIT to manage the whole scene and secure and preserve evidence.
At ten that morning, Professor Baines rolled up in his E-type Jaguar at about the same time as Ralph Barlow arrived in the CID Focus.
Barlow sought out Henry and said, ‘I’ve put the post-mortems on hold, like you asked, and I’ve told Harry Sunderland we’ll get back to him as soon as we can. I said something major had come up and he seemed to understand.’
Henry thanked him, then walked over to Baines, who was easing into a forensic suit over his clothes from his supply in the boot of the E-type.
‘Morning,’ Baines said, grim-faced.
Henry said, ‘Do you mind?’ He picked up one of the unopened forensic suits from the boot and ripped the packet open, started to climb into it.
When they were both suited, Henry gave him a nod and said, ‘Shall we?’
It was time to walk through the crime scene with the pathologist.
By 6 p.m., the bodies of the Speakmans had been transferred to Lancaster mortuary and their dog taken to a vet – to be examined later by Baines and the vet. In order to avoid any allegations of evidence cross-contamination the as yet unidentified body of the gunman had been taken to the mortuary at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, a decision Henry made. He had also decided that a cop would stay and guard it for the time being.
The scene at the house was still undergoing scrutiny but everyone was coming close to wrapping up for the day. It would be sealed and guarded overnight and the examination would continue next day.
By then Henry was feeling pretty rocky.
He had powered himself through the day, focusing on the crime scene, pulling everything together in terms of a murder squad – even though it seemed the murderer had been apprehended. He wanted to ensure he went through the motions and setting up a Murder Incident Room would ensure that happened, even if it was only short-lived. He also had the press to deal with, issuing a holding statement to keep them off his back for a few hours, and his own bosses who had to be briefed, all of whom knew Joe Speakman and his wife well. Some had been good friends.
He had not allowed his mind to wander to the possibilities of what might have been if Steve Flynn hadn’t bravely rugby-tackled the shooter and put his own life on the line. It didn’t bear thinking about, so he hadn’t.
But there was a dark shadow at the back of his mind that kept telling him it would hit him at some stage, that all the little brain barriers he’d erected would come tumbling down.
It didn’t help him that as the day progressed his face hurt more and more, despite the painkillers. What had begun as a controlled pulse grew steadily into a throb like a bass drum, especially as he became more tired and stressed.
At seven he was at Lancaster police station, having cadged a lift there from a section patrol.
He slid into the DCI’s office, the usual incumbent nowhere to be spotted, and settled into the comfortable chair behind the desk.
He exhaled, causing his face to twinge, and found a couple of tablets in his jacket pocket which he tossed into his mouth and swallowed with water from a bottle he’d bought from a dispensing machine.
‘Jeez,’ he hissed, all the energy draining out of him like air from a punctured tyre. He tried to concentrate again and not dwell on the fact that instead of sitting in an empty office he could easily have been laid out naked on an ice-cold mortuary slab with his friend Professor Baines about to perform a post-mortem on him. Sat there, he realized he wasn’t a particularly brave man.
‘It’s no good,’ he intoned to himself, ‘I’m here, I’m alive, I’m not dead – OK, same thing – and the bad guy is dead. So c’mon, move on.’
He sat forward and pulled a sheet of paper out of the tray in the desktop printer and hovered over it with pen in hand, marshalling his thoughts. There was a lot to do, to consider.
He scribbled five headings: VICTIM, OFFENDER, LOCATION, SCENE FORENSICS, POST MORTEM.
He divided the sheet into five columns, one underneath each word, and started to jot down some lines of enquiry, firstly under the heading of ‘Victim’.
—Lifestyle
—Routine
—Associates
—Relationships
Then he threw the pen down and leaned back in the chair, unable to prevent his mind from wandering, sifting over everything that had happened over the last couple of days. Starting with the cold-case review, the unidentified girl in the mortuary. Then Jennifer Sunderland’s drowning – if it was! The attack by masked men at the mortuary, the same two – probably – who almost murdered Steve Flynn in an unimaginably horrendous way, destroying his friends’ canal boat at the same time. The visit to Harry Sunderland . . . and the ‘something’ that wasn’t completely right about that . . . teeth . . . and stumbling on the double murder (triple, if dog included) and Steve Flynn’s claim that the guy with the shotgun was one of the two who’d tried to kill him the night before. Flynn said he was the one whose ski mask he’d ripped off. And if that was the case, he was also one of the two men who’d smashed Henry in the face at the mortuary searching for something that Jennifer Sunderland might have had with her when she drowned.
Dead girl. Teeth. Jennifer Sunderland. Robbers – one still at large. – Joe Speakman/wife. Harry Sunderland.
Henry scribbled it all down, hoping he hadn’t forgotten anything.
There was another name he was tempted to add, but did not want to commit it to paper
. Yet.
He sat back again in the DCI’s chair, which was nice, big and comfortable, knowing his day was not yet over.
Then a grim thought hit him. He quickly got out his mobile phone.
The display showed many missed calls, the ones he’d chosen not to take, including four from Alison, together with three unread texts from her, and a voice message, all asking him to call.
Guilt cascaded through him and he punched his face mentally. One of the many ways in which he’d failed his late wife was that he did not keep in touch, keep her updated as to where and what he was up to, when he would be home, or when he was actually on his way home. He would get so engrossed in his work, so blinkered that everything else simply went out of the window. He didn’t want to make those mistakes again, or any of the others because he didn’t want to lose this gem . . . but a ghastly feeling came over him as he looked at the list of missed calls and texts.
Maybe the leopard couldn’t change its spots.
He called the number and it was answered quickly. Almost as quickly Henry said, ‘I’m really sorry. It’s been a hell of a day, but no excuses.’
‘Maybe you’d better tell that to my mum,’ came the frosty voice of Ginny, Alison’s stepdaughter. ‘Shall I put her on?’
‘Better had.’ Shit.
The phones changed hands. ‘Henry?’
‘Babe, I’m really sorry . . .’
‘Just wanted to know you’re OK . . . I’ve seen the news. It looks awful, and you looked exhausted when you were talking to that TV reporter.’ She didn’t sound too furious.
‘I’m OK . . . I just got sidetracked . . . and there was a bit more to it than was on the news,’ he said. The police had held back the details concerning Henry and Flynn for the time being. ‘I’ll tell you when I get home.’