Low Profile

by Nick Oldham

  Henry and Woodcock had spent most of the last hour working on the strategy for the investigation and starting the murder book properly, in which all decisions, actions and reasoning would be recorded as it all progressed.

  Within the hour everyone was deployed and Henry retreated to the SIO’s office just off the main briefing room. As he went he beckoned DC Jerry Tope in with him. Tope was from the force intelligence unit and had worked for Henry on several recent cases. Although he was regarded as a bit of a ‘surly bleeder’ and was insubordinate on too many occasions for comfort, Henry liked the guy and knew he was a particularly valuable asset, not least for his impressive computer skills.

  Tope was going to run the intelligence cell on this investigation.

  He trudged glumly behind Henry into the office. DCI Woodcock came with them.

  ‘Mornin’ Jerry.’

  ‘Henry.’ He nodded. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good – sit.’ The pleasantries were over. Tope sat, Woodcock sat. Henry poured them both a coffee from the filter machine that came with the office (coffee not included), then sat behind the desk and considered Tope. ‘Quite a few things for you to be doing here.’

  Tope nodded.

  ‘Just off the top of my head,’ Henry said, looking skywards and counting off with his fingers. ‘Phone records … Percy’s mobile wasn’t found at the scene but we have his number.’ Tope nodded: easy enough. ‘Percy and Charlotte went away recently … Canaries and Florida … could these trips be connected to their deaths? Let’s find out where they went, when they went, et cetera.’ Tope nodded: easy. ‘Finance and business records need unearthing and analysing. Was the business OK or going tits up? That could be a big factor, and maybe what he said when he phoned Lisa.’ Henry shrugged. ‘Know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Who else, family-wise, is connected to the business?’ Tope asked.

  ‘Father was, but isn’t now. As far as I know Percy was the sole owner, but I’m not one hundred per cent on that. Find out, eh?’

  ‘Will do,’ Tope said confidently as his mobile phone rang. He balanced it on his folder and peered at the screen with a frown.

  ‘You need to get that?’ Henry asked.

  Tope picked up the phone and peered closely at the screen. Henry saw his eyes widen with shock and then Tope quickly stabbed the ‘end call’ button to sever the connection. ‘Nope,’ he said brusquely, but gave Henry a sheepish look, placing his hand guiltily over the phone.

  Henry returned a puzzled expression but said, ‘Right, let’s get on … I’m going to have a few more minutes with the e-fit people, then head off to the post mortems.’ He looked at Woodcock and screwed up his face. ‘Will you just kick ass around here for the time being, then go out and see Percy’s father again? I think we’re going to have to keep plugging away at him and hope for some lucid moments because I think he knows more than he’s capable of telling us … that OK?’

  Woodcock looked slightly discomfited by the request, but said, ‘Yeah, no probs.’

  ‘OK – meeting over.’

  Tope and Woodcock left the office. Henry sighed and began checking through his action plan for the day before setting off to see the e-fit people again at Blackpool nick. From there he would be going to the hospital for the PMs.

  Outside the office, Jerry Tope stalked angrily across the incident room, out into the corridor beyond, where he tapped the keypad on his phone and returned the call he had refused to take a couple of minutes earlier. He put the phone to his ear, waited for the connection, then whispered dramatically, ‘What the hell do you want? Thought I told you never, ever, friggin’ call me again … bastard.’

  TEN

  ‘That’s no way to speak to an old mate, is it?’

  When Scott Costain and Trish did not show up at the allotted time for their charter, Flynn declared to Adam Castle, who was waiting with him, ‘They’re not going to return to the scene of their crime, are they?’ Flynn got their address from Karen’s booking records, memorized it and, with a snarl firmly fixed to his face, set off back to his villa on foot. Here he intended to jump into his Nissan Patrol, parked up under an awning around the back, and drive to Costain in order to confront him.

  On the way he made the call.

  ‘You,’ the man at the other end said nastily, ‘are no friggin’ mate of mine … and, would you believe it, I was in a meeting with your nemesis when you rang.’

  Flynn stopped dead. He had reached the digital time/day/date/temperature display board on the promenade at the back of the beach, not far from his villa. The temperature had already reached twenty-eight degrees.

  ‘Henry Christie, you mean?’

  ‘The very same.’

  Flynn sneered at the name – a conditioned reflex. ‘Why were you in a meeting with him?’

  ‘Got a double murder on our hands … argh, bah! Why am I telling you this? What the hell do you want? It better not actually be anything because I think you’ve taken all this using me too far, all this phoning me when you want something. I’ve given you too much already. Almost lost my job over you.’

  Flynn listened slightly guiltily to the tirade, surmounted his guilt and said, ‘Are you still happily married to the lovely Marina?’ There was silence at the other end of the line.

  Flynn knew how cruel and unfair he was being.

  He and Jerry Tope went back a long way and somewhere in that dim, distant past, the two had once been good friends. So much so that Flynn had once taken the blame for an indiscretion on Tope’s part when his wife, Marina, suspected Jerry of an infidelity. Flynn had stepped up to the mark and saved the marriage. Of course, Tope now owed Flynn a big debt and rather cheekily Flynn had used the threat of revealing the truth about one sordid night in Preston to make Jerry, occasionally, tell him things that he shouldn’t. Like stuff that can only be discovered on police computers.

  ‘Yes, I am still happily married,’ Tope said frostily.

  ‘And would you like to keep it that way?’ Flynn teased.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case you need to look into your crystal ball – i.e. your computer – and tell me everything there is to know about Scott Costain.’

  ‘Why, what’s Costain got to do with you?’

  ‘Nothing you need to know about. In fact, the less you know, the better.’

  ‘I don’t know … I could get in the crap …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Flynn said heartlessly, ‘either way, personally or professionally. At least you can justify an Intel search on Costain, whereas there is no way of you justifying a grab-a-granny night twenty years ago in Squires, Preston, is there? You know what to do. Get back to me.’ Flynn ended the call. He realized that he needed to stop holding the infidelity card over Tope’s head when it suited … but it was so useful to have tucked up his sleeve in times of desperation.

  Flynn continued to his villa wondering what the best approach was with Costain. Part of him warned, back off. Flynn had unwittingly become involved with some seriously nasty people and common sense told him he should go to the cops and throw himself on their mercy. Problem with that was that it would probably lead to more complication and, maybe, the rest of his life rotting in a Spanish jail cell. He did not have much faith in the Policía and to go looking for them and say, ‘I’ve just killed two men’ might be a step too far. He did not want to find himself in the horrible grind of the Spanish justice system.

  Another option was to do nothing and see what happened.

  If the people who kidnapped him were real players then it was always possible they were into something so deep they might have disposed of the two bodies in the villa or simply left them, done a runner, and possibly nothing would ever come of it with regard to Flynn’s involvement.

  Except that Flynn would always be waiting for that tap on the shoulder and he might turn round and see cops or he might turn and see villains.

  To Flynn, therefore, doing nothing was too iffy. He knew he had to make the running because it was in his
nature. He had to go and rattle cages, because that was how he’d always operated. He liked kicking shins … and the appearance of Jack Hoyle on the scene was an added factor in that equation. Just what and who had the double dealing, wife stealing, thieving bastard got himself involved with? Flynn wanted another confrontation with him, but one where he could take his time over beating the living crap out of his ex-partner. There was a lot of pent-up anger in Flynn where Jack Hoyle was concerned and it had just been reignited.

  As Flynn unlocked the Nissan Patrol, he had pretty much decided what he was going to do.

  First – crack Costain’s skull open and finish off what he’d started yesterday. Second – trace the boat he’d encountered, the one where the people on board had not welcomed him with open arms. Third – and maybe at the same time as number two – track down Jack Hoyle; fourth – get some answers.

  Flynn didn’t immediately get into the Nissan. Instead he slid back the driver’s seat and unlocked the hidden panel under the carpet in the floor of the car. It opened into a long, thin, specially engineered space running underneath the front seats. A good place to hide things – such as a Bushmaster rifle, cushioned in bubble-wrap.

  All Flynn did was touch the weapon to reassure himself it was still there if needed. It was and he knew it was loaded. Not the most practical weapon in the world, especially for close-quarter work, but reassuring nonetheless.

  He clipped the panel shut, pulled back the carpet and then climbed into the car and started the diesel engine. It was about a twenty minute drive to Costain’s address; time, Flynn thought, to mull things over properly.

  The night it all went sour was branded into Flynn’s brain. The drug raid that went wrong when a cop got shot and a million pounds’ worth of takings went missing – into Jack Hoyle’s pocket. Then, subsequent to all that, the revelation that Hoyle, Flynn’s trusted partner in the cops, had also been screwing his wife behind his back. Then the year of shame and denial until Flynn decided it was best to leave the job because the pressure on him – driven by a certain Henry Christie who had been tasked with investigating the allegation of the missing money (and could not prove that Flynn had had any part in its disappearance) – was so intense.

  Which was why Flynn fled, virtually penniless, to Gran Canaria and cadged a job on a fishing boat owned by Adam Castle. Flynn was due some police pension but it was a long time before he could draw it – age fifty-five – and money had been tight. But he had worked hard and eventually cleared the air and his name with the ever suspicious Henry Christie, whom he’d encountered a few times since in the intervening years.

  At one point, Flynn had actually tracked down Jack Hoyle. Having faked his own death, Hoyle had made his way to the United States, forged a new identity and was working on a sportfishing boat out of Key West.

  And how fucking ironic was that, Flynn thought bitterly.

  He and Jack Hoyle had shared two passions in their lives.

  They had been mad-keen fishermen.

  And both had been sleeping with Flynn’s wife, Faye.

  At the memory, Flynn punched the steering wheel as he drove the Nissan east along the coast towards Maspalomas along GC1.

  ‘Bastards, the both of them,’ he said.

  Although Flynn had managed to track Hoyle down, he had fled before Flynn could properly confront him and had not been seen since.

  Until now. Until he had abducted Flynn off the streets and tried to talk to him like he was an old mate. The feel of his forehead crashing into Hoyle’s nose was amazing.

  Henry was quite pleased with the likeness generated by the e-fit and circulated it straight away so that within minutes all the operational cops in Lancashire had the image on their mobile devices. He also sent one, via his phone, to Karl Donaldson.

  Next for Henry were the post mortems.

  He drove across the resort to Blackpool Victoria Hospital and parked close to the public mortuary alongside a very spiffing restored E-Type Jaguar that belonged to Baines, the Home Office pathologist, who was already kitted up and pulling a pair of latex gloves on to his bony hands. Percy’s naked body was laid out on the stainless steel slab.

  Henry nodded at Baines, put on a smock and a face mask just as one of the forensic team members came in, her job to collect items for analysis. Also present was a CSI to record the whole of the PM on video and she was already setting the scene with a few shots of Percy’s body and close-ups of the head wounds.

  Baines, with his own recording microphone fitted to his ear, began talking into it so that everything said over the course of the PM would be recorded. He began by describing Percy’s body in a cold, clinical manner … name, sex, age, weight, height, general appearance, skin colour, race and any identifying marks or scars … then looked closely at the bullet wounds and said what he thought of them.

  Henry watched and listened, asking and recording questions as they occurred to him, making his own notes and feeling quite sad, as ever, at being present at the post mortem of someone who had been taken before their time.

  The villa was on a small estate in Maspalomas, almost on the immense and justly famous sandy beach near the lighthouse at El Oasis. Flynn knew this urban district, a small enclave of nice villas, mostly holiday rentals, in an area surrounded by similar estates, all quite pleasant. He’d had charter parties staying around here and it had been part of his service to pick them up and take them down to the boat, then do a return journey at the end of the day’s fishing.

  Flynn climbed stiffly out of the car, feeling his battered body tightening up. He took a moment to rub the caked-up pus out of his left eye, picking it off delicately, like grit. He could just about see through the swollen lid now, but the vision was slightly blurred.

  He rolled his shoulders, realizing that, strong and healthy as he was, recovering from a beating took longer the older he got. He took a breath of the warm, sweet air. Ahead were the famous Maspalomas sand dunes and, to his left, the busy resort of Playa del Inglés, a place he tried to avoid.

  He hesitated – another age-related thing. Last chance to make his decision: fight or flight, in essence.

  If he went and knocked on Costain’s door he would have to accept and deal with what came through it head on.

  Now was the last moment to back off and see how it all played out without his further involvement.

  It was simply not within him to do so.

  He pushed open the gate that led to the villa complex and found Villa Elisabet, which stood in its own grounds, separated by a high hedge from the others around it. Very private and pleasant, much too good for someone like Scott Costain, Flynn thought.

  There was a terrace with dining table and chairs on it to his left, the pool beyond just on the other side of the villa. The main door to the villa was straight ahead.

  Flynn noticed the curtains behind the patio windows were still drawn.

  He walked to the front door and rang the bell, stepped back and waited. He rang the bell again, hearing it echo hollowly somewhere inside, but no one answered.

  He tried again – still no response – then knocked loudly. The door itself was a thick, heavy chunk of PVC and although it appeared closed at first glance Flynn saw the tiny gap around the edges showing it was actually very slightly ajar.

  He pouted, then put his knuckle to the centre of the door and pushed it slowly open, revealing a short, tiled hallway leading to an open plan lounge and kitchen area.

  ‘Hello,’ Flynn called. No response.

  Something unpleasant crept down the back of his neck. The dormant cop sense kicking in, reliving the moments in history when he had done something similar as a cop. Knocking on a door, opening it up … that creepy feeling … knowing when something wasn’t quite right, that a dead body might just be lying in wait.

  Or it could simply be that Costain was not in, had inadvertently left the door open. Maybe he and Trish had done a midnight flit.

  Flynn sniffed. His nose had been bashed about last night but
he still had his sense of smell and something hung in the air.

  ‘Hello,’ he called again. ‘It’s me, Steve Flynn, from the boat.’

  The words echoed across the tiles and back from the painted walls. He stepped in and walked into the lounge, checking the kitchen area to his left. Everything seemed to be in order. Except for the smell.

  To his right was a hallway with three bedroom doors off it, and a bathroom.

  He called out again; still nothing came back.

  He walked slowly down the hallway. The bathroom was on his right, behind a sliding door, half open. All OK in there. Next on his left was a bedroom door. He looked in and saw twin beds still made up, not slept in. After that there was another bedroom with twin beds again, both made up and tidy.

  One room left, directly facing him, behind a closed door.

  Flynn guessed this would be the double with an en suite. He knew the layout of villas like these was much of a muchness.

  Flynn tapped on this door.

  That smell.

  ‘Hello,’ again. His voice echoed. No reply.

  His hand turned the door knob, pushed open the door. He was correct – this was the master bedroom. Double bed, sparsely furnished, nice but basic holiday accommodation.

  Flynn said, ‘Shit.’

  Costain’s girlfriend, Trish, lay spread-eagled and naked on the bed, but with her limbs also twisted and unnatural. She was face up, her dead eyes staring at the white ceiling, and was lying in a bed saturated in her blood, blood splattered up the wall behind the bed, pools of it on the tiled floor next to the bed.

  She had been shot dead.

  To Flynn it looked as if someone had placed the muzzle of a gun against her left temple and pulled the trigger, the exit wound then having taken off the whole left side of her face.

  And there were three bullet wounds in her front, two in the chest, one in the lower gut. Possibly these had been the first ones fired and had flung her on to the bed and probably killed her, rendering the head shot superfluous and simply brutal, just to make sure she was dead, even though it was probably plainly obvious.