Critical Threat

by Nick Oldham

  ‘How long has he been a PI?’ Angela asked.

  ‘Two – no, three years,’ Kippax calculated.

  ‘And what sort of work has he been involved in?’ she enquired.

  ‘Mainly divorce stuff, serving papers on people, that sorta crap.’

  ‘Not the kind of work to win friends with?’ Angela ventured.

  ‘It paid the bills, mostly.’

  ‘And what do you do now?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I clean, down at the Park Private Hospital, thirty hours a week. Steady, unspectacular, but OK.’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘Eddie couldn’t draw his police pension for another two years, so we needed all the money we could find. He could’ve got a steady job fillin’ shelves at ASDA, I suppose, but that wasn’t his scene. He liked doin’ stuff that wasn’t a million miles away from copperin’. It was the way he was, I guess.’

  ‘Did he make some enemies?’ Angela asked.

  ‘When you find people shaggin’ people other than those they should be shaggin’, you don’t exactly make bosom buddies.’

  ‘What was he working on at the moment?’ Henry asked.

  Kippax shrugged. ‘Coupla things … a divorce surveillance which was ongoing and he hadn’t got very far with, and something involving embezzlement down at the Class Act … you know the Class Act?’

  ‘I know the Class Act,’ Henry said dubiously. It was one of Blackburn’s most infamous nightclubs, one of those places that was always changing hands, but never for the better. It was run by crims for crims and the only surprise was that it was still going, hadn’t been shut down. ‘Somebody was embezzling from the Class Act?’ he asked incredulously. ‘I thought they taught embezzlement there.’

  Kippax sneered at him, no time for his quips. ‘I don’t exactly know the ins and outs of it, OK, but I think the manager was diddling the owner and Eddie got called in to make some discreet inquiries, do a bit of digging.’ She sniffed and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, blinking back tears.

  ‘Did he find anything?’

  Her eyes lowered and stared at Henry. ‘I think he did – I know he did – but he never got into real detail with me, just said the whole thing was a bit hairy.’

  ‘What did that mean?’

  ‘I think he’d been threatened by the guy he was investigating. He didn’t really say, but I think that’s what happened.’

  ‘Where did Eddie keep his records?’ Henry asked.

  She tapped her temple. ‘In here.’

  ‘In his head?’ Angela asked for confirmation.

  ‘He hates … hated paper,’ she corrected herself, choking back a sob. ‘He was good on the computer, though, but as for records …’ She shrugged helplessly, then suddenly folded her arms. ‘Look, how much more of this is there? I’m feeling a bit gutted, y’know? I want to go home, I want to hit the bottle and I want to cry. I know you think I’m a hard bitch, and to protect me and my own, yes I am … but me and Eddie …’ Her bottom lip started to tremble. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Who’s going to look after me now?’

  Henry sensed she wanted to reveal something, but she clammed up. ‘OK, I’ll arrange for you to be taken home’ – Henry knew she lived in a council flat on Fishmoor – ‘and for a family liaison officer to get in touch. We will need to come and see you again and we may have to ask you to identify Eddie formally.’

  ‘What?’ she almost shrieked.

  Henry made a pacifying gesture with his hands. ‘Unless the coroner will accept my ID of him, and I’ll try and push that.’

  ‘It’s the least you can do.’

  Their eyes locked again. A frisson of hatred crossed from her pupils to his.

  ‘I’ll do my best, Jackie … just, very, very quickly, though – tell me what happened tonight.’

  She released some tension inside her with a noisy exhalation of breath. ‘Er, nowt really. Just a boring night in front of the telly. We’d had a curry for tea and we just sat and watched the box, boozing, and suddenly he said he needed to go into the office for something and wouldn’t be long. That’s the last I saw of him, until …’

  ‘What time did he go?’

  ‘Just after ten. The news had just started.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘No – just went’ – here she rubbed her thumb and first finger together, in the well-known sign indicating ‘cash’ – ‘then he said “Quid’s in” and went.’

  ‘Did he say what he meant by that?’ She shook her head. ‘Did he drive to the office?’

  ‘No – it’s just around the corner, as you know.’

  ‘And he didn’t come back?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Called him on his mobile – didn’t answer.’ That answered one thing for Henry. Daley had been in possession of his mobile phone, but it wasn’t at the scene of his death. Whoever had killed him must have taken it. Kippax went on, ‘I called the office – no reply. Then I went round, thinking he’d snuck off to the pub.’ She winced and clutched her stomach.

  ‘Jackie, are you all right?’ Angela asked.

  ‘Yeah, yeah … God, I wish he had gone to the pub.’

  ‘What time did you go round to check on him?’ Henry asked.

  ‘It was after midnight, that’s all I know.’

  Angela Cranlow smiled and said, ‘Wow.’

  Henry eyed her. ‘Wow – exactly.’

  ‘You seem to have rattled her cage.’

  ‘With good reason.’

  ‘So what’s the Eddie Daley story? Fill me in,’ she said excitedly.

  She and Henry were sitting in the front seat of her Mercedes. Henry himself had driven Kippax back to her flat on Fishmoor, ensuring he gave her his card, then met Cranlow back at the scene of the murder to check on progress, which was good. Everyone who should have been there was, and the well-oiled machine chugged merrily away. The only person who had not yet materialized was a Home Office pathologist, who was due at any time. Whilst Henry checked on everything, Cranlow had remained in her car writing up notes and generally being efficient.

  Henry had tapped on the window and she motioned him to get in beside her.

  ‘So, how am I performing?’ he’d asked as he settled in.

  ‘If you think I turned up here to check on you, think again, Henry. As I said, you’re paranoid. No, the reason I’m here is because it’s fun and interesting and it’s my responsibility – and yes, actually you’re performing OK, which is what I expected.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No problem.’

  He gave her a sly look and, not for the first time, realized he liked what he saw – a very attractive, well-groomed woman in her mid-forties, on top of which she was a high ranking police officer who seemed friendly and approachable and, yes, unless he was mistaken, unless his ridiculous male ego was playing its usual tricks on him, there was something of a spark between them, but he wasn’t going to be foolish enough to stick his match anywhere near it.

  ‘I’m going to follow this one through as best I can,’ she told Henry. ‘See how this force compares to my last on murders.’

  ‘I think it’ll be favourable.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ she said, smiling … then added, ‘Wow!’

  ‘Mm, Eddie Daley,’ Henry said ruminatively in answer to her question about the Eddie Daley story, which sounded like the title of some fifties bio-pic. ‘Not that much to tell, really. Just before I went on Regional Crime Squad, as it was, in about 94, I did a short spell as a DS in Blackburn, just filling in really, kicking my heels until my transfer came through.

  ‘I ended up working on Eddie Daley’s team. He was a DI based in the old nick in town. We were pretty good mates, actually, had a ball. He was seeing Kippax following his two failed marriages, but the thing about her is that she’s related, somewhere down the line, to a big-time Blackburn crim whose name escapes me …’ He thought for a moment, then it came. ‘Te
rry Burrows, who incidentally used to co-own the Class Act, spookily enough. It was called something different back then.’ Henry paused, arranging his thoughts. ‘Burrows was being investigated by RCS for drug-dealing and importation and I literally stumbled on Eddie passing intelligence to him about police operations. He got suspended, it went to trial, but a witness came to a sticky end and the whole thing fell apart.’

  ‘You mean murdered?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘Did you suspect Daley of the murder?’

  Henry exhaled a long sigh. ‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘but I think Burrows had a hand in it, but you know, shit sticks. The trial might’ve collapsed, but Eddie was tarred for life and he had to go. Internal discipline got him for all sorts, from checking PNC and passing details on, to getting free curries. In fact I found out he was leaning on local curry houses and Asian taxi drivers, running a sort of protection racket. Needless to say, I featured heavily in the trial and the internal discipline hearings.’ He looked at Cranlow. ‘It was hard, believe me. I’m no snitch and I’m no angel, but Eddie was rotten to his core and he had to go, mate or no mate. Hence Jackie’s reaction to me. Me and the wife had been out with them a few times. Burrows got his further down the line in a drive-by shooting in Nottingham.’

  ‘A complex web. Wow,’ she said again.

  ‘Aye, so it doesn’t surprise me Eddie’s fallen foul of the underworld.’

  ‘You reckon the Class Act is involved in this?’

  ‘It’s a bloody good starting point.’

  ‘Don’t get blinkered.’

  ‘Would I?’

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘So,’ Cranlow said hesitantly, ‘what’s the Henry Christie story?’

  ‘Something along the lines of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, just on a smaller scale: sex, debauchery, adultery – rock ’n’ roll, even.’

  Cranlow chuckled and his eyes met hers at the complete opposite of the spectrum to when they had met Jackie Kippax’s.

  ‘I’m looking at a 1 p.m. briefing for this,’ he said quickly. ‘We’ll use the MIR at Blackburn nick. I’ll arrange for personnel to be drafted in and hopefully we’ll be knocking on doors by three. How does that sound?’

  ‘Good,’ Cranlow said coolly, recognizing when she had been cut dead and obviously feeling a little embarrassed by it.

  A car drew in behind them, headlights reflecting in the rear-view mirror. The occupant climbed out and Henry recognized who it was.

  ‘Pathologist’s here,’ he said, opening the door of the Mercedes. ‘Just one thing, boss,’ he added. ‘When I dropped Jackie off, she told me something … she’s just been diagnosed with stomach cancer.’

  ‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ Keira O’Connell, the Home Office pathologist said as she carefully removed what was left of Eddie Daley’s brain from its cranium and carried it with equal care over to the stainless steel dissecting tray on which she laid it. Henry Christie followed her, standing just by her right shoulder like a henchman. They were in the mortuary at Blackburn Royal Infirmary and O’Connell was about an hour into the post-mortem. ‘You’d been given the boot.’

  She was clearly referring to the time Henry had been ousted from the murder of the female who had just been featured on Crimewatch, when Dave Anger had ignominiously tossed him off the case and replaced him with DI Carradine.

  ‘It was a pretty public sacking,’ O’Connell said, looking over her shoulder at him. ‘So how come you’re on this one?’

  He gave her a stupid grin. ‘They needed me more than I needed them, only they just didn’t realize it.’

  O’Connell wiped her blood-streaked, latex-gloved hands on a paper towel and picked up a digital camera, taking a few choice shots of the damaged brain.

  ‘Did you catch Crimewatch last night?’ O’Connell asked.

  ‘Hm,’ Henry affirmed.

  ‘They phoned me yesterday to ask if there was anything more from my point of view they should say on the programme.’

  ‘Who phoned? Dave Anger?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She turned away from the workbench and returned to Daley’s body on the mortuary slab. He was now naked, his clothing having been removed and bagged for forensic examination. His body was overweight and pathetic and sad, and the blood that remained in him had settled although he had lost a lot from the head wound and bled profusely on to the floor of his office. She dropped on to her haunches and peered into Daley’s scooped out cranium.

  Henry hovered. ‘Did Mr Anger say anything about the progress of that investigation to you?’ he asked speculatively, trying not to seem too interested.

  ‘Not much. A bit.’ She poked her finger about and moved Daley’s head.

  ‘Did he say anything about the necklace that turned up?’

  ‘Er, yeah, apparently, the guy who found the body came forward with it.’ She stood upright. ‘He’d found it when he tripped over the body and helped himself to it, then at some stage his conscience kicked in … now then …’ She returned to the dissecting table and picked up a hand-held tape recorder and started to speak into it.

  Henry stifled a yawn. It was 11.30 a.m. The coroner, whose office did not open until 9 a.m., had been personally contacted by Henry and had allowed Henry’s identification of Daley’s body, though he required it to be backed up by Jackie Kippax’s identification of Daley’s personal effects. This had been a relief to Henry because an ID at any time was stressful and emotional, even more so when the loved one has a bullet hole in the head. He especially didn’t want to put Jackie through that, bearing in mind her mental state and the revelation that she was suffering from cancer. Her future looked bleak enough without the addition of having to see Eddie on a slab.

  It was also a relief because the pathologist was ready to roll on the nod of the coroner and Henry knew the value of getting an early PM done. What better than to have the preliminary results ready for the murder squad briefing?

  He watched O’Connell working skilfully away at her job, impressed. She did everything meticulously from all the preliminary stuff at the scene, then in the mortuary, all the way through to the point she had just reached, the examination of the remnants of the brain. Henry did miss his old friend Professor Baines who was the Home Office pathologist for this area, but he was away on another conference and Keira O’Connell was a more than able substitute, and much prettier. He doubted whether she would want to go for another drink with him though, after boring the life out of her last time.

  She clicked off the tape recorder and walked back to the brain, selecting a brain knife – a straight, finely honed, twelve-inch bladed knife which was used to make long, clean cuts through the brain tissue. She held it up to the light and inspected its sharpness, then turned to Henry. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘you missed a very good opportunity when we went for a drink six months ago … unfortunately I’m now in a relationship.’ She gave him a sad look and twizzed the knife around. She turned her attention back to the brain. ‘Shall we?’

  Henry raced across the outer rim of Blackburn to make it to the police station for 1 p.m., the time of the first briefing. He had delegated the job of pulling together some staff to get the investigation rolling to an increasingly sleepy and tetchy DC Hall, who had responded to the request with all the enthusiasm of a death row prisoner being asked to take a seat on the electric chair. He was tired, needed his sleep and would have to be back on duty that evening at six whatever, he whined. Henry just told him to get on with it, whilst he attended the autopsy.

  There was no way he was expecting a full squad on day one, but he would be happy so long as there were enough bodies to put together a Major Incident Room, get a few roles allocated and get actions underway.

  The car park was chocka and Henry eventually abandoned his car, knowing he was blocking someone in. It was par for the course in police station car parks these days not to find a parking spot, so before entering the building proper, he left his mobile number at the front des
k so he could be contacted if the ‘blockee’ wanted to get out.

  As he pushed the door open into the innards of the station, he immediately spotted Trevor Hall walking towards him, with an anxious expression, which gave Henry instant cause for concern.

  ‘It’s not my fault, boss,’ were the first words Hall uttered.

  ‘What isn’t?’ Henry asked darkly.

  ‘I did my best, honest.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Trevor?’

  ‘The murder squad.’

  ‘What about the murder squad?’ Henry’s words were slow and deliberate.

  Hall’s worried eyes rose past Henry’s shoulder whilst at the same time his head seemed to shrink into his shoulders.

  ‘We need to speak.’

  Henry spun round. Angela Cranlow, looking a little shamefaced, had appeared behind him and from the look on her face, Henry knew something wasn’t quite right.

  Angela dragged Henry out of the station, bundled him into her car and drove him the short distance to the nearby McDonald’s just off Whitebirk roundabout where they could have a more discreet chat.

  She brought him a coffee and sat him down by a window, plonked herself opposite. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said quietly.

  Henry decided to let her fill in the silence. Inside he was churning as he wondered what could possibly be so bad.

  ‘I’ve had my knuckles rapped.’ Instinctively they both looked down at her hands, which were laid flat on the Formica tabletop. She gave a short laugh. ‘Metaphorically speaking.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, suddenly knowing the answer, but did not want to hear it.

  ‘Not following procedure.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘By deciding to allocate Eddie Daley’s murder to you.’

  He nodded, understanding, an empty feeling overcoming him. His mouth twisted acerbically. He was going to have this one snatched from him, too, he thought. Another kick in the …‘Bollocks,’ he said, without vehemence. He scratched his head in a gesture of despair. ‘I thought it was too good to be true. But there’s not many people in this organization who can rap your knuckles, ma’am.’