Crunch Time

by Nick Oldham

  The evening was cold. A bitter wind blew through the streets of Salford. Jagger stood outside the police station waiting for the taxi the custody officer had been cajoled into calling for him. He shivered, but grinned inwardly. It had been a good day, all told. Things could have gone wrong and he could so easily have ended up in detention, but it had worked out as planned – so far.

  A black cab pulled up. ‘Jagger?’

  ‘That’s me,’ said the released prisoner, and climbed into the back of it.

  ‘Any relation?’ the cabby asked. He twisted around and looked at Jagger’s face. ‘No, guess not … where to, pal?’

  ‘Deansgate, please. Drop me off near Waterstone’s.’

  The pub was in a tight side street off Deansgate. It was a narrow building, bustling with a cross-section of clientele, and offered rooms by the hour. Jagger edged in and eased past the punters, emerging at the bar where, after an interminable wait, he ordered a large Coke and a bag of crisps. He was thirsty and famished, but he could not have faced another beer or wine. In fact his liver felt like a brick lodged just below his ribcage. It would probably need a few weeks of convalescence before it became pliable again.

  As he paid for his goods, a woman sidled up beside him, blonde, about five-seven, trim, her nicely bobbed hair framing her face. She deliberately barged against him in a gentle way, almost causing him to spill his drink. He turned in a huff, ready to unleash a mouthful, but his annoyance morphed into pleasure on seeing who it was. They caught each other’s eyes, but neither spoke. She did not apologize, but ordered herself a drink – white wine and soda – then turned to Jagger, who was placing a huge crinkle-cut crisp into his mouth, grilled steak flavour.

  ‘I’ve got a room upstairs for an hour,’ she said, leaning against the bar.

  ‘Will that be long enough?’ His tongue pushed out his cheek suggestively, causing her to laugh.

  ‘How long do you need?’

  ‘I can go on for ever once I get started,’ he boasted.

  ‘So I’ve heard. Room two, up the stairs, second right. I’m sure you’ll like it. It’s very tasteful given the nature of its general usage.’ She pushed herself off the bar and disappeared through the crowd. Jagger popped another crisp into his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of Coke.

  Room two was furnished nicely, for the price. It had a four-poster bed with a very flowery quilt and curtains; a table and two chairs; an en-suite bathroom for the necessary clean up, pre- or post whatever activity might be taking or have taken place. There was also a strong medicinal tang to the atmosphere.

  The woman from the bar was sitting at the table set with two dinner places. She stood up as Jagger entered, extended her hand and they shook.

  ‘Thought you might like a decent meal,’ she said, indicating the place settings. ‘The food is basic, but pretty good here.’

  Jagger took a very deep breath, then exhaled. He was, and looked, exhausted. He plonked down at the table and regarded the blonde woman. She was in her late thirties, extremely good-looking now that her hair had been attended to. Last time he’d seen her was when it had been pinned sharply back off her face and she had been regarding him with harsh eyes across a custody desk whilst he had threatened to punch her lights out.

  ‘I could do with a meal and a very long sleep, actually.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve booked the room for the night. Thought you’d need a heads-down.’

  ‘Thoughtful.’ Jagger eyed the room, wondering how much action it had seen over the years. His mind boggled, then he looked back at the blonde, who was watching him with a half-smile, a million miles away from her earlier expression.

  ‘I thought it might fit in with the Jagger profile.’

  He acceded to the notion with a slight shrug and nod of the head. There was a knock on the door and a barmaid came in bearing a heavy tray with two plates on it, both stacked with wonderful smelling food. She placed it on the table and Jagger almost swooned at the aroma from the grilled chicken and potatoes. The girl bobbed back out to the corridor and returned instantly with two bottles of red wine and two glasses. Then she left.

  ‘The food I need; the wine might have to be avoided.’

  ‘Understandable. I thought it might ease the meal down.’

  ‘Whilst calcifying my liver, or whatever it does.’

  ‘Up to you.’ She smiled beguilingly and Jagger thought how completely different she looked out of uniform. Quite stunning, actually.

  ‘So, Detective Chief Superintendent Makin of Scotland Yard,’ Jagger said in a mock Queen’s-English, upper-crust way, ‘can we dispense with the formalities and can I tell Frank Jagger to go to hell for a while?’

  ‘Well, Detective Chief Inspector Christie of the numbty constabulary, Hickshire, I think that might well be in order.’

  And with that, Henry Christie, a DCI from Lancashire Constabulary, divested the mantle of Frank Jagger, his alter ego, his nom de plume, his legend, someone he had pretended to be for the last three weeks.

  With a large sigh of relief he became himself again, at least for a short while, and said, ‘In that case it’d be rude not to give the wine a try, wouldn’t it?’

  Three

  Drinking the wine had been a mistake, even if it did ease the meal down. Problem was, one bottle became two and then, despite his best intentions, Henry drank too much and embarrassed himself, although on reflection he might have been more inclined to use the word ‘humiliated’ rather than embarrassed.

  It was just fortunate that the debrief was done over the first bottle, before the alcohol had any chance to skew his recollections.

  ‘So how d’you think it went?’ Andrea Makin asked, eyeing Henry across the rim of her wine glass.

  ‘You can only go so far with it,’ he answered, ‘otherwise suspicions get aroused.’ He looked into her eyes, thinking – inappropriately, as usual – that suspicions might not be the only thing to get aroused tonight.

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s a delicate path to tread.’

  ‘Having said that, I think he pretty much took the bait … we’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.’

  ‘You think he was interested, then?’

  ‘He wanted my phone number … let’s just hope he doesn’t want a date.’ Henry forked a tender chunk of chicken into his mouth and chewed it pleasurably. ‘He’ll have a nibble,’ he said, and immediately regretted the possible double entendre as Andrea’s eyes glazed over, the corners of her mouth twisted upwards and then she turned her head away at a coy angle, blushing. And Detective Chief Inspector Henry Christie wondered how the hell he’d managed to get himself into such a predicament: somewhere between a deadly, high-class criminal and a sultry, sexy woman detective whose only goal in life seemed to be the capture of that criminal, and maybe Henry Christie on the side. A bit like a salad.

  Four weeks earlier, Henry Christie had been sitting at his desk in his office set in one corner of the larger office housing the Headquarters Special Projects Team. He was shell-shocked and staring into space.

  He was in that frozen state of mind in which he often found himself in the blurred but hurly-burly aftermath of the attempt to assassinate the American State Secretary on her official visit to Blackburn, Lancashire, some nine months previously. It had been an attempt that Henry had had a hand in thwarting – but at what cost? he often harangued himself. The answer he came to was the cost of the lives of two good people, lives that he, ridiculously, blamed himself for losing. However, in clinical retrospect, they would have died even if Condoleezza Rice had seen sense and cancelled her visit. Henry, unknowingly, had set a violent express train going and lives would have been lost anyway.

  He had almost been killed, too. A constant physical reminder of what had happened to him was his broken right cheekbone which even now remained tender to the touch and throbbed constantly as it steadfastly refused to heal properly.

  And then, six months after that day of extreme violence, he had heard the news that his good frien
d, the American FBI agent Karl Donaldson, was fighting for his life in a Spanish hospital after having been found grievously wounded in mysterious circumstances in a square in Barcelona. It was an incident, Henry knew, that was connected to the hunt for the terrorist who had masterminded the assassination attempt on Rice.

  Henry shook his head to try and rid his mind, at least for a while, of these horrendous musings.

  He was not to blame for anything, he had been assured repeatedly by many different people, and he needed to put it behind him and move on.

  Unfortunately, having a brittle character at the best of times, he had found himself clinging to the edge of nervous exhaustion, breakdown and depression. He had been there before and it was a place he did not wish to visit ever again because it was dark, bleak, featureless and very frightening.

  He glanced at the stack of paperwork accumulated on his desk. His mouth twitched in distaste.

  Things might not have been so bad if work had been more interesting and challenging. With the exception of a drugs-related death investigation he had been involved in, most of his time had been spent cooped up in the office, pushing unimportant pieces of paper and staring into space.

  Through his office window he could see the Special Projects Team, the group of misfits who had been chucked together to do the projects no one else wanted to touch with a barge pole – and because no one else wanted those particular individuals in their departments.

  However, Henry had tried very hard with his team and the work and been proud, in a perverted sort of way, that he’d managed to complete two very unsexy projects and launch three others which were going as well as could be expected, despite their unpopularity.

  He rose from his chair, realizing he needed to move, get the blood circulating.

  Passing through the Special Projects office he nodded amiably at his staff and emerged on to the narrow top-floor corridor of the headquarters building, making his way to the stairs.

  It was his intention to have a mid-morning stroll and do some networking at the same time. He trotted down to the ground floor and snaked through along the ground floor to the Intelligence Unit where he had a chat with the DI in there; then he walked out of the HQ building itself and walked across the sports pitches to the Pavilion Building which housed the Serious and Organized Crime Unit, formerly the Major Crime Unit. He had a very pleasant conversation with the very nice female DCI, who was running a government-funded project on street crime. She declined his invitation to join him for a late breakfast, so he meandered back to the HQ dining room where he caught the tail end of the breakfast service. Then, armed with a bacon roll (which he promised himself he would run off at lunchtime) and a large coffee, he took up a position in one corner of the room.

  He watched a few people come and go, his interest only perking up when a man he detested with a vengeance walked in, accompanied by a woman who Henry did not really take much notice of.

  The man was Dave Anger, his former boss on the Force Major Incident Team, who had a massive downer on Henry because Henry had slept with his wife many years before, when she wasn’t actually his wife, not even his girlfriend. It was something that gnawed relentlessly at Anger and he did not seem to be able to let it go, especially since his wife had left him and rubbed his nose in it. His vendetta against Henry was a growing legend throughout the force and had resulted in very bad blood between them.

  Henry averted his eyes, looked through the window at the car park, sipped his coffee and ignored Anger’s presence. He was soon lost in dark thoughts again, though, his mind’s eye recreating a scene of savage butchery. Two people lying dead, their throats cut so badly their heads were almost severed from their bodies …

  ‘Henry?’

  He twitched and looked up. Dave Anger was standing in front of him, a pretty unusual occurrence as both men steadfastly ensured their paths did not cross if at all possible.

  ‘Dave,’ Henry acknowledged the superior officer dubiously, their eyes interlocking for one fleeting, flinty moment. He then glanced at the woman with Anger. She was standing slightly behind him, to one side, a grin on her face. Anger half-turned, ‘Can I introduce you to …’

  Her smile widened. She extended her hand. ‘No need, Dave. We already know each other.’

  Henry rose quickly, his chair scraping backwards, shaking hands with her, their eyes making an altogether different contact than his and Anger’s had only seconds before.

  ‘Andrea … it’s great to see you.’

  Her name was Andrea Makin. When she and Henry had last met, some six years earlier, she had been a detective superintendent in the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. Henry guessed she would have probably moved up at least a rank by now. His eyes gave her the quick once-over – as hers did him – and he saw she had changed somewhat from the woman he remembered. She was still tall and rangy, but her facial features had tightened, her once wide nose now seemed pinched and her full lips were a little thinner. Her body, Henry guessed, from the appraisal, seemed pretty much as before. But she looked tired now. Stress or illness, Henry couldn’t decide.

  Still, he thought, I’ll bet I don’t look like the spring chicken she knew back then.

  ‘Nice to see you, too,’ she responded. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘You mean I looked this bad six years ago?’ he jested.

  She smiled.

  Anger’s face had changed expression during this brief exchange – to annoyance that Henry seemed to have stolen some of his thunder. He coughed, bringing attention back to him.

  ‘Seems a long time since the Nazis and Hellfire Dawn,’ Andrea said, ignoring Anger.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘And how is Jane Roscoe?’ she asked, like a minx.

  ‘As far as I know, OK,’ Henry answered, feeling himself redden up at the mention of a woman he was once illicitly involved with. He cleared his throat. ‘So what brings you to this neck of the woods again? Still chasing Hitler lovers, or is it all Islam now?’

  Anger, having been cut out, felt the need to interject. ‘Neither of those things.’

  ‘Ah, well, nice of you to say hello,’ Henry said, lowering himself back down, thinking the encounter was over.

  ‘It’s actually you we came to see,’ Anger said, causing Henry’s eyebrows to ride up. There was a note of reluctance in his voice.

  ‘Special Projects, me. Team misfit,’ Henry said. ‘What could you possibly want with someone like me?’

  Andrea swooped past Anger into a chair opposite Henry, leaned on the table and said, ‘Got a proposition for you – and your alter ego.’ She smiled and Henry knew he was all hers from that moment on.

  The trio retreated to Dave Anger’s office in the FMIT block on the far side of the playing fields. Once an accommodation block for students on residential courses at the force training centre, it had been commandeered several years earlier and refurbished to become a reasonably plush office suite to house the FMIT team and its administration. Henry had once had an office on the middle floor, on which Anger’s office was situated, and it annoyed him to know that this now belonged to one of Anger’s brown-nosed sycophants, a certain DI Carradine, the man who had replaced Henry on FMIT.

  Being led by Anger across the playing fields, knowing he was being taken back to his old stomping ground, gave Henry palpitations and a shortness of breath. He tried to master his heartbeat and breathing, trying to slow everything down as discreetly as possible, so as not to draw attention to himself in the early stages of hyperventilation. He managed – just – and followed the two high-rankers into the FMIT block and up the stairs, feeling uneasy about what was going on.

  What could Dave Anger want him for?

  It had to be something unpleasant.

  Seated in Anger’s office – even more recently decorated than the block itself, Henry noticed, wondering how much the taxpayer had forked out for the wallpaper – Andrea Makin shot Henry a few worried glances, noticing the discomfort he was at pains to hide
.

  ‘You OK, Henry?’ she enquired in a whisper.

  ‘Yep, yep,’ he clipped, obviously not.

  They were sitting on the points of a triangle, facing each other across a coffee table.

  ‘Superintendent Makin,’ Anger opened – so she hadn’t gone up a rank, Henry noted – ‘perhaps you’d like to begin?’

  She gave him a thin smile and half-turned to Henry, her expression morphing into one of pleasure, something Anger clocked with a wry curl of his mouth. ‘The thing is this, Henry,’ she started, ‘since we last met I’ve moved on to the Serious Crime Squad down in the Met and child pornography is in my portfolio.’ Henry nodded. No wonder she looked drained. Dealing with that day-in, day-out can be an emotional killer. ‘We’re investigating the activities of a professional criminal by the name of Ryan Ingram.’ She produced an A5-size photograph from her briefcase that she handed to Henry. It was a good quality surveillance photo of a middle-aged man with close-cropped hair, tough looking. ‘He’s a pretty big shot down in the Smoke, if you’ll pardon my vernacular.’

  ‘If I knew what one was, I’d be more than happy to pardon it,’ Henry quipped. It brought a smile to Andrea’s face, a scowl of disapproval to Anger’s coupled with an under-the-breath ‘tut’. He was clearly as uncomfortable with Henry, as Henry was with him.

  ‘He’s a drug importer at the top of a very long, complex chain, which we are constantly breaking the links of. Though,’ she went on, ‘it’s the way of the world that those links get repaired very quickly. He’s also into hardcore pornography, right across the board. He imports DVDs, finances filming in Holland and Belgium, and he’s also hands on.’ She paused, took a breath. ‘He likes little girls in particular and we suspect him of abducting two children who’ve never been seen since. We think they may have ended up being murdered in snuff movies in Holland.’