The Nothing Job

by Nick Oldham

  The rain started to tumble and he found his mood darkening with the clouds as he tried to think logically over the events of the last twenty-four hours. He hoped his conclusions were not based on the fact that he disliked certain people and they disliked him.

  First of all, he didn’t really expect the local plods to fall over themselves in helping him. That was only natural, and so long as they didn’t blatantly obstruct his investigation he had no real problems with reticence or bad feeling.

  Secondly, was he reading too much into what happened in the CCTV room this morning? Sometimes things got wiped. Shit happened, and usually in connection with the things you happened to be working on at the time.

  It didn’t mean there was a conspiracy.

  Carradine had not hidden the fact that Jonny Motta had been put forward, then eliminated, as a suspect for the Preston murders.

  It just happened that Henry was one hundred per cent certain that Motta was the guy he’d had a rumble with on the night of the murders and that put him right up there in suspect number one place.

  And the fire in the office?

  Just bad luck?

  Maybe. And Henry wondered what was to be gained if the fire had been intentionally set. Anyone coming into the investigation would probably have copied the paperwork anyway. The only thing was, if someone in Merseyside was trying to hide something, perhaps they thought Henry had already uncovered something new and incriminating and therefore worth destroying. And putting a new lock on the door was a bit like flashing a red cape at an angry bull – it just had to charge.

  He knew he had to keep an open mind about everything, whilst at the same time keeping his focus on the task, which was to close the IPCC investigation into a police shooting … which took him by the nose to his next thought …

  He had been through everything left behind by the IPCC investigator – the statements, interviews, and all the things he would have expected to find – except photos, of course – but with one other glaring exception.

  Henry pulled out the mini-ringbound reporter’s notebook he carried around with him in which he’d jotted a few notes and telephone numbers. One was the mobile number of the dead IPCC investigator. Henry looked at it for a while, pursing his lips, wondering whether or not he should.

  Phoning a dead man was perhaps not the best thing to do.

  Still, Henry Christie was not noted for doing the best things.

  Henry had often been around people who had lost loved ones. However they dealt with the loss – hysterically, angrily, philosophically, calmly – there was always something in their eyes that made him feel sad for them. There was no exception to this when the door he’d been knocking at opened and a woman about his age with sharply styled grey hair and handsome but tired features stood there.

  ‘Mrs McKnight? I’m Henry Christie … I phoned about half an hour ago?’

  ‘On my husband’s mobile,’ she nodded. ‘I still don’t get why I keep it on and charged up.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to trouble you at this time and I’m very sorry for your loss.’

  She smiled pleasantly and her face became pretty. ‘Come in, it’s no problem. I need to talk to people.’

  He took tea and biscuits, but didn’t offer any more sympathy. She looked to be a strong woman, dealing with a tragedy in her life with dignity and resolve. Henry could tell she didn’t need any soppy words. She’d probably had her fill of them. She looked tired and drawn, though, from lack of sleep and Henry promised he would be as quick as possible.

  ‘As I explained …’ He sipped the Earl Grey tea. ‘I’ve been given the job of completing what Mr McKnight started in relation to the police shooting in Merseyside. From what I can see, he did a very professional, thorough job. It’s just that when he died, the job wasn’t finished and that’s why I’m doing it.’

  ‘In your phone call you said he might have left some paperwork at home, but to be honest, as far as I know everything he did was left in Liverpool. He was a workaholic and often brought documents home to study, but I’m sure there’s nothing here.’ She waved a hand loosely at the house.

  Henry scratched his head. ‘There’s a full box of statements and stuff like that, but I think I would have expected a notebook of some sort and a policy book which he would have been required to keep. They don’t seem to be there.’

  She pouted thoughtfully, then drifted off momentarily before dragging herself back. She looked at Henry. ‘I’m not really thinking straight … I think I’ve let you come on a wild-goose chase … Now I remember that what work stuff he had here, I’ve already handed over. I’m really sorry. One of your colleagues must have it.’

  ‘Who did you hand it to?’

  ‘A police officer, not someone from the IPCC … With everything that’s happened, all the things you have to do when someone dies, it just went out of my mind. I don’t recall who it was, though.’

  ‘Not a problem, Mrs McKnight. I understand. I imagine it’ll turn up.’

  ‘My mind’s a bit of a mess,’ she sighed.

  ‘I understand … but could you describe the person. I’ll probably know who it is.’

  Henry’s mobile vibrated silently in his pocket. He ignored it as Mrs McKnight gave a faltering, half-remembered description to him. He nodded as she spoke, memorizing what she said.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ he said, then rising and finishing the tea. ‘You’ve been a great help and I’m sorry to intrude.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything else? I mean, did Mr McKnight mention anything to you about the investigation at all?’

  ‘He rarely discussed his work. Much of it was highly confidential and he was very conscientious.’ She and Henry walked to the front door. ‘But on reflection,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘he did seem troubled by the investigation. It seemed to be a weight on his shoulders.’

  Henry fought the urge to give her shoulders a good shake. ‘In what way?’ he probed gently instead.

  ‘Hard to say.’ She opened the door for him. ‘He was just more withdrawn and distracted than usual, even more so on the day he was killed. I don’t know. I could just tell. Even though he didn’t discuss work, I could tell when things weren’t going well and on that day he was acting quite strangely …’ Her voice trailed off wistfully. ‘But then again, hindsight makes all things significant, doesn’t it?’ She looked as though she was about to break into tears.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, touching her shoulder gently. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time.’

  What was left of the McKnight family lived in Ormskirk, the pretty little market town just inside the Lancashire border, so it was easy for Henry to pick up the A59 and he was back at Lancashire Police headquarters within half an hour. He strode through the Intelligence Unit and collected Jerry Tope on the way, who was sitting at his desk working at his computer.

  They commandeered the DI’s office and closed the door behind them. Henry invited Tope to take a seat and said, ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘For most of the morning I’ve been trying to get into the Preston City Centre CCTV system and I’ve managed to succeed, but haven’t managed to recover the file you’re after. I can see where it’s been, but I can’t access the hard drive to recover it. I probably need to be physically in the CCTV room itself, but I have a program at home that might help. If I had that I might be able to get what you want. I’m sure the file will be there, even if it’s been deleted. It’s just finding a route to it.’

  ‘I thought you were a computer nerd.’

  ‘I am,’ he said with pride. ‘But not all things get done at the flick of a finger.’

  Henry rubbed his eyes, tapped his fingers on the desk, then lifted a bum cheek to allow wind to pass: a great detective at work.

  ‘Would it help if you worked from home?’

  ‘That’s where all my stuff is … my unofficial stuff, that is.’

  ‘I want you to have a look at some other things, to
o.’

  ‘Will I get into trouble?’

  ‘Only if you disobey my orders.’

  ‘OK.’

  Henry then told him about the mysterious fire in the office in Liverpool. It made Tope’s jaw drop.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘what do you make of it?’

  Henry opened his hands. ‘Something and nothing. If it’s a genuine fire, nothing. If it’s arson, something.’

  As he spoke the words, he spotted Bill Robbins sauntering through the Intelligence Unit, then enter the DI’s office.

  ‘Some bastard set the office on fire in Liverpool,’ Tope blurted.

  ‘Really,’ said Bill unconcerned. He took a seat, looked at Henry after the incident had been explained to him. ‘What d’you make of it?’ he repeated the question.

  ‘I’m told it was a faulty socket. From my experience of fires, it doesn’t look like it.’ He folded his arms. ‘Deliberate,’ he said firmly.

  Tope and Bill exchanged worried looks.

  ‘From now on we work from here – or home – and we ensure everything is backed up and secured from prying eyes and fingers. And, whilst I don’t want to sound dramatic, we watch our backs, too. The fire might be genuine, who knows, but let’s be careful when we cross the border because I get the impression they don’t like us very much down there. Better safe than sorry …’

  Bill took in the order, an unflustered look on his face. Tope seemed gravely worried and said, ‘The IPCC investigator got murdered, didn’t he?’

  A chilled pause descended on the office.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Unexplained hit and run.’

  Suddenly Henry felt very foolish. ‘Unexplained hit and run?’ – things were being repeated quite often in the office that morning. ‘But I thought he’d …’ Henry’s voice trailed off because he was going to say something stupid like, ‘been involved in a road-traffic accident.’ He had made the assumption, a killer of a thing to do for any SIO worth his salt, that McKnight’s death had been a car-to-car bump, a tragic accident with a fatal outcome. Head through the windscreen thing. He had made the error of not checking things out.

  ‘From what I recall, he was hit by a stolen car which ended up being burnt out,’ Jerry said. ‘That comes under “unexplained” to me. It was on the Internet.’

  ‘But not necessarily murder,’ Bill pointed out.

  ‘Admittedly not.’

  Henry pulled himself together, kicking himself. ‘And you didn’t feel the need to mention this to me? Anyway, let’s not jump to conclusions.’ He said that even though he knew that a big part of the job of an SIO was to jump to conclusions and then test them out. ‘Bill, you’ve been to Merseyside’s Firearms Department this morning … anything of interest?’

  ‘Nahh, not really …’

  But Henry’s mind wasn’t completely on what Bill had to say. It was on what Tope had just revealed … plus the fact that the description Mrs McKnight had given him of the officer to whom she’d handed her husband’s files matched Detective Superintendent Paul Shafer to a ‘T’.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Look, pal, all I want is ten minutes with this guy.’ Karl Donaldson was pleading with Henry as they walked through the doors of the Tram and Tower, Henry’s local pub, presided over by his favourite landlord, Ken Clayson. They approached the bar and already Ken, having spotted Henry, was pulling him a pint of the finest Stella Artois. The duo leaned on the bar. ‘I don’t wanna go through a loada bureaucratic shit, I just wanna get in and talk, that’s all. Not even on the record.’

  ‘Which is probably what worries them.’

  Ken placed the drink on the bar and smiled at Donaldson. ‘A water for you, sir?’ He knew from past experience that the American could not take his liquor, despite his size. Two pints and he was anyone’s, to quote a phrase.

  Donaldson thought about it. ‘I’ll try a pint of that … what is it? Bitter.’

  ‘Good choice, sir.’

  Donaldson had remained up in the north-west since last meeting Henry and had tried to get in to see Paulo Scartarelli, who was being held on a remand to police cells. He was at Leyland police station, Lancashire’s highest-security nick.

  ‘I’ve been on the phone, seeing people … You name it, no deal. I keep getting referred upwards, sideways and up people’s assholes.’

  ‘Who have you spoken to?’ Henry sipped his beer.

  ‘Your pal, Dave Anger, from whom I got a flat no. His was the final say-so.’ Donaldson’s pint arrived. He allowed the head to settle before taking a sip and wincing at the taste. ‘Folk drink this shit?’

  ‘The second sip gets better, the third even better. Trust me.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, wiping a foamy moustache from his top lip. They retreated to a corner table, Henry subtly furious that the ladies present, without exception, were watching Donaldson like predatory hawks. It also annoyed Henry that Donaldson, simple soul he was, did not even seem to know he was the centre of so much attention.

  ‘Your fan club is in,’ Henry said scathingly as they seated themselves.

  ‘Come again?’ the Yank said dumbly.

  ‘Nothing,’ Henry muttered darkly and scowled at the women who were openly gawking. Then he said, ‘Am I being paranoid, or what?’ as an opener for the discussion relating to his own problems of the moment.

  ‘How do you mean, pal?’

  ‘I’ve been asked to take over the investigation into this police shooting in Liverpool, as you know. Only been doing it two days and not even done anything yet, really. The natives aren’t friendly. Which I expected. But the office we were allocated to work in has been set on fire and there’s some unconfirmed rumour going about that the IPCC investigator died in mysterious circumstances. When I say mysterious, he was flattened by a hit-and-run driver in a stolen car.’

  ‘Not much to go on there,’ Donaldson said, taking a further swig of his drink and nodding approvingly.

  ‘Supposing he found out something he wasn’t supposed to and – bam! Splat!’

  ‘Far-fetched.’

  Henry leaned forward. ‘And it turns out that the guy who was shot by the police is the same one who killed two prostitutes in Preston – but I’ve been told it’s none of my business and to get lost.’

  ‘Definitely the same guy?’

  ‘He looks similar.’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Well, I had an altercation with the guy and during it I dug my fingernails into his throat and clonked him with my PR on his arm. I’ve had a look at the dead body and he’s got those injuries still. Faded, but definitely there.’

  ‘Have you told anyone this?’

  ‘Not at present.’

  ‘Is there any other way of proving it’s one and the same guy?’

  ‘Possibly. I think some partial fingerprints were recovered from the car in which one of the prostitute’s bodies was found and as far as I know, there was never a match. If I had a set of prints from a corpse lying in Southport, then got a friendly fingerprint guy to cross-check ’em … that would be something to go back with, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘So that’s you sorted out … Now what about my problem?’

  Henry stared at his friend over the rim of his beer glass. ‘Scartarelli’s in Leyland now, yeah?’ Donaldson nodded. ‘And he’s up before the magistrates tomorrow for a remand hearing? If I scratch your back and you scratch mine … how does that sound?’

  ‘So long as you don’t touch my ass … What’re you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking that Scartarelli will be handed over to a private-security firm in the morning. That will effectively take him out of the police system – which means I might be able to get access to him, maybe. And I’m also thinking something else … There’s no time like the present to get a set of fingerprints from a dead man.’

  No self-respecting detective would be found without a portable fingerprint kit in the back of their car. And although a few people in the organi
zation that was Lancashire Constabulary had set out to make Henry Christie look a fool, he had never lost his professional self-respect. Which was why he always carried an inked strip, a tube of fingerprint ink, a wooden roller, a wooden block with a shiny metal strip on it, several blank fingerprint forms and many pairs of latex gloves in the boot of his car.

  He and Donaldson walked quickly back to Henry’s house after finishing their pints. After a brief verbal joust with Kate, they jumped into the Rover and headed for the motorway. They came off the M6 south of Leyland and crossed the southern edge of the county to Southport. Henry, although he had only had one pint and was well under the legal limit, still drove like a Formula One Grand Prix driver.

  They pulled into Southport General after about half an hour’s nippy travel.

  Henry collected his go-anywhere fingerprint kit from the boot, which he kept in a plastic Asda bag, and he and Donaldson entered the hospital.

  The corridors were quiet as they plunged into the depths of the building. It was after visiting hours and hardly anyone was moving about.

  The mortuary was staffed by the same mini-attendant as on Henry’s previous visit, still playing medical/death-related tunes on his CD player. Henry was pleased to hear a familiar riff emanating from the attendant’s office. It was the Rolling Stones’ track ‘Dancin’ with Mr D’, highly appropriate for the task he was about to undertake.

  There was a surprised expression on the attendant’s pasty face as Henry poked his head round the door and sang, ‘Dancin’, dancin’, dancin’ with Mr D,’ in the style of Mick Jagger, his idol. It was obvious that his pint of beer as well as making him desire to travel faster had also removed his inhibition barrier.

  Scrambling to his feet, the attendant blurted, ‘You’re back!’

  ‘Yeah – brought a new friend.’

  ‘Uh … what d’you want?’

  Henry held up his plastic bag and fleetingly in his mind’s eye he saw the image of himself as the great comedian Eric Morecambe, who used to leave the stage wearing a long raincoat and flat cap and carrying a plastic bag. He coughed to clear the image, let his hand with the carrier drop to his side and said, seriously, ‘I need another look at Mr Motta, please.’