Crunch Time

by Nick Oldham

  He pouted.

  The prowler was very worrying, though. That brought Kate and the girls into the equation, something he did not like one bit. It meant a line had been crossed. Henry thought he was fair bait, but going for his family was a different matter.

  The thought made him utter a deep, primeval growl, and grind his teeth.

  He glanced at Kate in the dark.

  ‘My husband,’ she had said. A slip of the tongue, no doubt, but maybe it was time to re-pop the question, get everything above board again … if only he could get an erection … he’d be a pretty useless hubby if he couldn’t get a hard-on … what the hell was going on down there?

  He rolled his eyes, feeling very inadequate, then closed them and visualized the naked Andrea Makin guiding him into the gates of heaven. He shuddered, glad he had not gone there, but appalled at the same time that he couldn’t get hard, disgusted he’d even wanted to, scared that there’d been no response from the engine room. Crazy, mixed thoughts.

  Had he become impotent? Was that how it happened? Without warning?

  The bedside phone rang and made him jump.

  ‘Fuck,’ he heard Kate say in her sleep. She rolled over and covered her head with the duvet.

  Henry picked up the phone. It was 3.03 a.m. Never a good time to receive a phone call. ‘Hello,’ he said guardedly.

  ‘Oh, man,’ came a spaced-out American-accented voice Henry recognized straight away.

  ‘Karl?’

  ‘Yeah … were you asleep? … Sorry to wake you, man,’ he said. Henry sat up and touched the base of the bedside lamp, bringing it on to its lowest setting. Kate stirred and pulled the duvet down, opening one eye.

  ‘What is it, Karl?’

  ‘Hey, don’ be like that, man,’ the American drawled, and Henry could tell, almost smell it down the line, that he had been drinking. The trouble with Karl was that ‘been drinking’ didn’t have to mean by the gallon or litre because it did not take very much alcohol to get him pissed, despite his size. He was a Yank who couldn’t hold his liquor. He also had a tendency to revert to his East Coast accent when he drank, losing the mid-Atlantic hybrid he’d picked up from living in England for so long. Drink made him revert to type.

  Henry sighed and glanced at Kate, puzzled why his ex-friend was calling at such a godless hour. Henry had had no contact with him since the Akbar shooting because their friendship had suffered a severe, if not fatal blow during the hunt for the terrorist. It would take more than a pissed-up phone call to repair the damage.

  ‘I’m shorry, pal, podna,’ Donaldson slurred.

  ‘How much have you had?’

  ‘Full bottle bourbon.’

  ‘Jesus. It’s a wonder you can still pick up the phone.’

  ‘Man, oh, man, don’ be cruel …’

  ‘What do you want, Karl?’

  ‘She wants us to split … to leave me, man,’ Donaldson sobbed.

  ‘Who? Karen?’ Henry could not believe that.

  ‘Yeah, yeah … it’s over, pal … I screwed up, big style …’

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I needed to talk … to you, H.’

  Henry said, ‘Hey, first things first – Karen loves you. I know that for sure. Why the hell she does, I don’t know, but she does. Secondly, sober up, then we can talk. Get some sleep. OK, pal?’ There was no response. ‘Karl?’

  The line buzzed dead and Henry looked accusingly at the phone in his hand, then replaced it slowly on to the base unit.

  Eight

  The sound of the en-suite shower woke Henry from his slumber. He looked at the bedside clock and groaned when he saw it was only 8.30 a.m. He dragged the duvet over his head and did not peek out until Kate emerged from the shower, hair dripping and a bath towel wrapped loosely around her body. She went into the walk-in dressing room, left the door open and dropped the towel, then began to attack her hair. Henry could see her from where he lay and enjoyed the sight of a jiggling bum for a few moments before she realized he was ogling her. She twisted around, shouted, ‘Oi! Perv!’ and closed the door.

  ‘Nice arse,’ he shouted, hauling his ageing body out of bed and sitting up. He scratched all those dark, dank places that male members of society felt the need to scrape in a morning, before standing up and lurching towards the shower himself.

  ‘Anything?’

  Henry was standing at the far end of the back garden, hands on hips, eyes crossing and recrossing the area to see if there was something to preserve for a Crime Scene Investigator from the earlier shenanigans. Not that he had any greater pull than a normal member of the public on the services of the CSIs, and a prowler certainly wasn’t at the top of their list of priorities for a team already run ragged by Blackpool’s high crime rate.

  Kate stood at the kitchen door, coffee and toast in hand. She was already late for work, which she did four days a week, 9.30–4.30 at an insurance broker’s in town.

  There was a raised flower bed next to one part of the back fence and Henry saw a footprint in the soil next to one of his rose bushes. He bent down and inspected it, estimating about a size 8 trainers, maybe. It wasn’t his footprint and it was definitely worth preserving from the weather on the off-chance that a CSI might find time to nip around. He placed an upturned seed tray over it and joined Kate back in the kitchen.

  ‘Shoe print,’ he explained. ‘I’ll try and get CSI round, but they’ll be busy, I expect.’

  ‘Even if you order them? Is there no benefit in having rank these days?’

  ‘I can’t even fiddle expense claim forms anymore, not like in the days of yore when we first met.’

  Kate smirked at a memory. ‘Those were the days, eh? Sex, sex, sex – oh, and dead bodies.’

  ‘Mm, and your arse isn’t that much bigger now,’ he teased.

  ‘Nor is your cock,’ she responded, punching his shoulder. ‘I need to go,’ she announced. ‘You here tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, back around nine, I guess.’

  She looked relieved. ‘Good – see you later.’

  Henry fixed himself a breakfast of coffee and croissants and sat outside on the patio to eat it, even though the day was chilly, wishing he was on a Paris pavement. He had placed his mobile phones on the garden table in front of him and his business phone, which was set to silent, started to vibrate and flash as a call came through. The display read no number. He coughed to clear his throat, steadied himself and answered it.

  ‘Frank Jagger.’

  ‘Where the hell are you?’ growled the voice of Ryan Ingram.

  ‘Out and about.’

  ‘You haven’t been at your apartment all night.’

  ‘As I said, out and about.’ Ingram had been watching the flat, which was a worry.

  ‘Shaggin’?’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘I want a meet,’ Ingram said. ‘I liked what I saw.’

  ‘OK, where, when?’

  ‘You near a landline?’

  ‘I can find one.’

  ‘Find one, quick. I’ll give you a call in ten minutes on the mobile, then you give me the number of the landline to ring … understand why?’

  ‘Can’t be too careful?’

  ‘Correct … ten minutes … get to it.’

  Henry stuffed a croissant down his throat and swallowed it down with a big swill of coffee, then raced out of the house and jumped into the Rover. He realized that if he found a public telephone in Blackpool he would have to give Ingram a number with an 01253 prefix, which would probably start to jingle bells in his suspicious criminal mind. Henry lived only two minutes from the M55, which he joined at Marton Circle, then gunned the Rover east towards Preston. The journey took about twelve minutes, sometimes reaching speeds of 100 mph. He came off at the Broughton junction, near Preston, and drove on to the car park of an Ibis Hotel, screeched to a halt at reception and ran to the public phone just inside the foyer.

  Ingram called as he stood breathless by the phone. Henry gave him the number and waited. It
rang.

  ‘01772? That’s Preston, isn’t it?’ Ingram asked warily. ‘What’re you doing there?’

  ‘If I thought it was your business, I’d tell you,’ Henry came back harshly, but then thought he’d maybe pushed slightly too hard as a silence came on the line.

  ‘OK,’ Ingram said at length, ‘but if you want me to bankroll you out of your difficulty, I want answers to my questions, Frank. You see, I’m interested in what you’re selling – I like what I saw last night – and I want to help out. But I’ve been under police investigation for a long time and I don’t trust any fucker. You want help, or not?’

  Henry licked his lips. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, needing to keep Ingram on the line – and not just the phone line – the line with the hook and bait on it.

  ‘Once I’m happy with you, things’ll be fine.’

  ‘All right,’ Frank Jagger said as sullenly as a bollocked teenager.

  ‘So it’s like this …’ Ingram began.

  ‘He knew I hadn’t been in my apartment last night, which is worrying, and means he’s already checking me out, which means I need to be on my toes, here.’ Henry was talking frantically to Andrea Makin, who he’d met at the pub next to the Ibis, a premises known as the Phantom Winger. She had hurried across from her hotel near Bolton, having told Henry to stay put, which he did. But he was getting increasingly jumpy.

  ‘Do you want to pull out?’ she asked. They were in a corner of the pub, which had just opened, drinking coffee, the only beverage that kept Henry going.

  He thought seriously about the question, scratching his ear as he did so. ‘No,’ he said eventually – a decision he would later regret. ‘If I do pull out, then it’ll be ten times harder for the next U/C, or even impossible. If we can get through this, then I reckon we’ll be into him. Keep my nerve and then the cards’ll begin to fall.’

  ‘If you’re certain.’

  ‘I am.’ A surge of adrenalin pulsed through him.

  ‘What does he need?’

  Henry scratted his ear even more fervently. ‘I told him I’d spent the night with a friend in a hotel, so I need to sort out some hotel receipts. Then, stupidly, I told him something else. I was winging it, like,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I was just babbling, thinking out loud and I, er, said he could meet the friend if he didn’t believe me.’

  ‘Shit.’ Andrea slammed down her cup with a clatter of crockery and cutlery. ‘So now we’ve got to find a girlfriend? Bring someone else into this? When does he want to meet you?’

  ‘Lunchtime.’

  Andrea frowned, twisted up her face, then looked at the ceiling with despair. She tutted. ‘Henry, Henry, Henry … fucking hell!’

  ‘Sorry. And he wants to spend some time with me today …’

  ‘Doing what, exactly?’

  ‘I told him I was doing some business in the area, offloading some gear, booze, and then he wants to meet the guy I owe the money to.’

  She looked squarely at him. ‘Fantastic. This just gets worse.’

  ‘But, but’ – he held up a finger – ‘like all good undercover officers, I have a plan.’

  Karl Donaldson awoke feeling dreadful, his mouth clamped tightly shut as though a midnight devil had squeezed a tube of Super Glue into his mouth and sealed it. He had rolled out of his bed and crawled to the toilet, propped his chin on the bowl and heaved into it – a process which prized his mouth open, but replaced the taste of glue with something more abhorrent.

  His eldest daughter, Lisa, found him in this position, waiting for the next wave of nausea to strike. Fortunately both her and her younger brother, Liam, were old enough to get themselves up, breakfasted and ready for the school run. When Donaldson crept delicately downstairs, trying not to jar his head, an unshaven, dishevelled wreck, all he had to do was get in the car and drive them.

  ‘I take it you were rat-arsed last night,’ Lisa speculated.

  Donaldson merely blew out his cheeks and tried to concentrate on the road. He was aware his blood-alcohol level was still dangerously high and if a cop stopped and breathalysed him, he would be done for. One of those sad morning drunk-drivers still over the limit from the night before.

  ‘You don’t take alcohol well, do you?’ she went on, shaking her head sadly.

  In the back seat of the Jeep, Liam was making farting noises by blowing raspberries on to the back of his hand. They were steadily increasing in volume until Donaldson had had enough. He snapped around. ‘Shut it, will you?’

  Lisa’s eyes half-closed. She said, ‘Makes you grumpy, too.’

  Donaldson exhaled again and eyed her. ‘Sorry, darlin’, and sorry to you too, pal. Fart away.’

  ‘The thing about undercover cops is that they have real lives,’ said Ryan Ingram. ‘They live this elaborate double life, scamming the baddies, then going home to their loved ones at the end of the day, which is why I need to check you out good and proper. See if your story has any holes in it and if it has, then I’ll sink you.’ He smiled – dangerously.

  Henry feigned indifference. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Which is why it concerns me that you weren’t all tucked up at home last night when Mitch popped around for a brew.’

  ‘I do have a bit of a life,’ Henry said. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I want to know where you were last night and who you were with and what you’ll be doing today … then, if I’m happy, we’ll talk about a way forward with the money. Your choice. A bit of openness and we’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK.’ Henry, aka Frank Jagger, nodded. ‘I spent last night in a hotel with a married woman.’

  ‘Which hotel, what woman?’

  ‘This hotel.’ Henry gave Ingram a scrunched up receipt for the Ibis hotel which he peeled flat and read, nodding as he did. He looked at Henry, smiling. ‘I take it this is the woman?’ He glanced past Henry’s shoulder towards the Nissan Micra, in which sat the figure of Andrea Makin. His head bobbed and weaved for a better view.

  ‘Looks a doll.’

  ‘She’s here under sufferance … like I said, she’s married and she’s got a reputation to protect.’

  ‘Can I have a chat with her?’ Ingram took a step towards the Nissan. Henry moved across him. Behind him, Mitch, who was also present, tensed up.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Henry said, hardening his voice. If Ingram pushed it, he knew he would have to relent and see if he and Andrea could bluff their way through this. Andrea had assured Henry that she and Ingram had never met, even though she was the detective heading the investigation into him. But they had been face to face, because she had been acting out the role of custody officer at Salford police station when Henry had been arrested. She had not dealt with Ingram, but they had been in close proximity when she and Henry had almost come to blows for the benefit of the audience.

  What Henry and Andrea had decided to do to appease Ingram involved a big risk, hoping he would not recognize her. If he did, the meeting could turn into something very nasty. On the plus side, with her hair down and make-up on, Andrea now looked nothing like the harsh-faced, harassed custody sergeant.

  ‘She doesn’t like being inspected,’ Henry said.

  He and Ingram were shoulder to shoulder.

  They had met on the Bolton motorway services eastbound on the M61 this time. Henry was wary of becoming something of a regular, but he knew such locations were the meeting places of many travelling criminals and their contacts. Ingram and Mitch had come in from the direction of Manchester, then used the service access road to cross the motorway to reach the eastern side.

  ‘She’s got to go to work,’ Henry insisted.

  Ingram sniffed. ‘You said your bird had dumped you.’

  ‘She has, but this one isn’t my bird. There’s a difference between an occasional shag and a regular bird, yeah? I brought her here in good faith just because you wanted to see her and I don’t want her to have any further embarrassment, OK?’


  ‘OK, I’ll have that.’ He bobbed his head for another look. ‘Tasty.’

  Henry kept his mouth shut.

  ‘OK, then,’ Ingram relented.

  ‘I need to take her and drop her off at work, then we can meet up later, if that’s all right?’

  ‘And we can join you on your rounds?’

  ‘You can join me – not him.’ Henry indicated Mitch.

  Ingram waved the hotel receipt Henry had given him. ‘I might just go and pay this place a visit in the meantime, see if anyone remembers you.’

  ‘Do what you want,’ Henry said. He walked away, trying to stroll casually towards Andrea in the Nissan. Inside he was churning. He dropped into the driver’s seat and fumbled for his keys. ‘He going to check the hotel,’ Henry said through the side of his mouth.

  ‘Shit, we could be stuffed then,’ Andrea said.

  ‘More than likely.’ Henry fired up the car and headed off down the motorway, not giving Ingram and Mitch a backward glance, but painfully aware that the receipt he had given him was one he’d been lucky to obtain from a real guest at the Ibis who had dropped it whilst packing his car.

  ‘Can I just say something, by the way?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Be careful of Mitch. He’s a dangerous bastard.’

  Nine

  Another car park – this time the one at Botany Bay, the old canal mill standing proud by the M61 that had been renovated and converted into retail outlets – another meet.

  Henry sat in the Nissan, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, wondering whether Ingram would show. And if he did, what would he have discovered at the hotel and what sort of mood would he be in. Henry’s face was set hard as he thought about Ingram, a violent, clever man, obviously careful in the extreme, as well as completely ruthless.

  He thought back to the evening he had spent with him, sampling Henry’s DVD collection, courtesy of the Met. Ingram had taken Henry to the back room of a pub in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, where they would not be disturbed.