Crunch Time

by Nick Oldham

  Even at Donaldson’s soft words, Ingram did not stir.

  He said them again. ‘Shh, no need to speak …’

  Ingram moved slightly, wincing in agony, despite the painkilling drugs that had been pumped into him.

  His eyes opened and his lips popped drily.

  Donaldson smiled at him.

  Ingram looked at him through watery eyes, but did not react adversely to the man in his room. He may not have seen the stranger before, but because he was wearing a white coat with a stethoscope slung around his neck, to all intents and purposes he was just another doctor checking him up, even though he was as good-looking as George Clooney in ER.

  ‘It’s OK, no need to speak,’ Donaldson said again. ‘I hope you’re feeling better?’

  Ingram’s eyes fluttered.

  ‘I was shot myself once, you know?’ Ingram’s brow furrowed at this revelation. ‘I nearly died, so I know what it can be like. Very nasty indeed.’

  ‘Eh?’ Clearly the patient did not understand anything.

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions, if that’s OK?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ he croaked harshly.

  ‘You feel up to it?’

  He nodded weakly. ‘Need some water, throat dry.’

  Donaldson poured some from a jug on the bedside cabinet into a plastic glass, which he held to Ingram’s lips, assisting him to drink.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problems … I need to make something clear, though.’

  Ingram eyed him tiredly, wanting to get back to sleep.

  Out of his newly acquired white coat pocket, Donaldson extracted a small, plastic box that he opened. In it lay a hypodermic needle. He took it out between his finger and thumb and held it up, with his thumb on the plunger. Inside was a colourless liquid. He made a show of tapping the needle with the nail of his forefinger, as doctors do on TV, but he didn’t push the plunger, just held it up so Ingram could see what he was doing. Still, the wounded man showed no conception of his predicament.

  Donaldson then stood up and inserted the needle into the drip so that the tip of it was in the liquid in the bag. He left it hanging there and reseated himself on the edge of the bed, smiling at Ingram.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Ingram managed to say.

  ‘I’ll come to that in a moment … firstly, as I was saying, you need to know that I’m not a doctor, as such. I know I look like one, but I’m not. Nah.’ He shook his head.

  Ingram licked his lips.

  ‘I’m just here doing some research, you might say.’

  ‘You’re an American.’

  ‘Good observation skills. However … my research … you need to know that whatever happens in the next few minutes, you’ll never, ever see me again, either because you’ve answered my research questions to my satisfaction – or you’re dead.’

  Now Ingram’s eyes suddenly came alive. His whole body stiffened as he took in a breath.

  ‘Please do not think of shouting out, because if you do, you will definitely be dead before the first syllable comes out of your mouth. Trust me, I can do that.’ He smiled winningly. ‘That syringe’ – he pointed to it – ‘contains a chemical which, if introduced into your system intravenously, will kill you very painfully – nay, horrendously painfully – within about a minute. Doesn’t sound a long time, but a minute, sixty seconds, is a very long time when your heart feels like it’s being squeezed by a vice and your brain has been set on fire. And, a plus point, the chemical won’t let you scream, either. You think you’re screaming, but nothing’s coming out. Real clever.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Someone who wants some answers and promises, which if I get will mean you live to fight another day. If I don’t, you’ll be dead in, say, three minutes max.’

  ‘There’s cops outside guarding me.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself.’ Donaldson gave him a knowing look. ‘Would I sit here, chatting, with armed police outside? There’s no one outside, pal. They’ve gone for a coffee.’

  Fear, and a dawning realization that there was a cool lunatic in his room, were evident on Ingram’s face.

  ‘Easy or dead?’ Donaldson said.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘The seeker of truth.’ Donaldson reached out to the hypodermic needle and rubbed his thumb on the plunger. ‘This stuff, incidentally, will not be traced in a subsequent autopsy. Once it’s done its job, it disappears.’ His eyes, hooded and dangerous, roved slowly to Ingram. ‘Your death will be put down to natural causes, probably a heart attack as a result of your gunshot wounds, which, as we all know, were given lawfully to you.’

  ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘Who told you Frank Jagger was an undercover cop?’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Was it Troy Costain?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  ‘Did Troy Costain tell you before you killed him?’

  ‘As I said, go—’

  Before he could complete his sentence, Donaldson moved quickly. He clamped his big left hand over Ingram’s mouth, holding, squeezing tightly, then punched him with the power of a steam hammer on the dressings over his wounds. Twice. He held on to Ingram’s face, preventing him from screaming and easily fending off his weak attempts to wriggle free and fight back. The man had no strength in him whereas Donaldson had ninety-five per cent of his back – and that made him fearsome.

  In fact, Donaldson felt a resurgence of power within him, almost as though he had never been wounded. His face set like granite and, eyes ablaze, he held on to Ingram whilst he squirmed in agony, then eventually gave up. He withered and started to whine.

  ‘I forgot to mention,’ Donaldson said, his face inches from Ingram’s, ‘I’ll cause you a lot of pain even before I plunge the needle, if I have to.’ He glanced at the dressings, now saturated with new blood. ‘You answer my questions, Goddamnit. You killed Costain, didn’t you?’

  Slowly, he peeled his hand off Ingram’s mouth.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What did he tell you about Frank Jagger?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why kill him then?’

  Ingram was breathing with difficulty now, his teeth grating, fighting the renewed agony from his wounds, which had reopened with a vengeance.

  ‘Why kill him?’

  ‘To kill the debt.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Fuck you, whoever you are,’ Ingram blurted.

  ‘Doctor Nightmare, that’s me.’ Sharp and hard, Donaldson smacked a fist into Ingram’s upper chest again. He re-clamped his face and held him down until the pain started to ebb out of his body. ‘Tell me, or I’ll release this death into your veins.’

  ‘You fuckin’ wouldn’t,’ Ingram gasped, as Donaldson lifted the hand from his mouth.

  The American laughed. ‘Try me.’

  Ingram’s eyes roved over every detail of Donaldson’s face, the eyes, the skin, and the expression which told him with certainty that he was telling the truth.

  ‘I was double-checking.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’d already been told Jagger was a cop. I went to see Costain to double-check. But things took a turn for the worse. He argued about the debt, insisting that Jagger was a criminal, so I lost it and I killed him. I knew he was lying to me, but he didn’t say anything about Jagger being a cop.’

  ‘Who did tell you, then?’

  ‘Someone else.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me. I want a name, now, or I’ll murder you.’ He reached across to the syringe, put his thumb on the plunger.

  Twenty

  Rossendale was cold and grey. Back again, Henry thought as he motored into the stone-built town of Rawtenstall, the capital of the valley. Having spent a lot of his early career in these wilds, he knew his way around the place well, even now, but could not necessarily remember specific streets. He had to pull in and consult his Lancashire A–Z. He’d once thought about getting a satnav, but they took the fun
out of finding places. However, on that day, being in such a hurry, he would have welcomed hi-tech assistance.

  Even so, he found the street on the map quickly. He geographically imprinted it into his mind instantly and was on the trail again within a minute, heading up Burnley Road out of town. It was a terraced side street on the right-hand side of this main road, more or less opposite a pub he used to frequent in the days, long ago, when he was working as a uniformed cop down the valley.

  He pulled into the roadside and looked up the street. It was a short, dead-end terraced street with maybe enough room to manoeuvre a car across the top of it along a tight alley and drop down into the next street back down on to the main road.

  It was a street he had visited a time or two when he was a PC. He tried to recall why, but they must have been nothing jobs; kids causing a nuisance, maybe, no great memories. And now Ken Connolly, bent car salesman, lived in one of the houses on the left, number nine, in the middle of the terrace.

  Henry checked the address on the envelope containing Connolly’s P45. Definitely nine.

  He rubbed his eyes. He was tired, aching, sore, but feeling confident, having that infamous arse twitch of his like he always did when he was on the scent. He got a surge of energy as he checked his shoulder, jumped out of the car and strode across to the mouth of the street which was still, amazingly, cobbled. Nothing progresses very quickly in Rossendale, he thought.

  He rapped his knuckles on the door, a poorly maintained wooden one which needed either replacing or refurbishing. It rattled loosely, hollowly. Stepping back a few feet, he checked for activity, then looked through the ground floor window into the lounge. It was empty and cheaply furnished.

  His knuckles hit the door again, but his cop sense told him no one was at home. He cursed silently, thought about knocking on a few of the neighbours’ houses, but as he looked back down the street, his eyes focused on the pub, the Red Lion. He recalled that Ken had smelled of booze when he’d last spoken to him and just maybe, being a man out of work, he might be drowning his sorrows in the local.

  It was worth a try. If it was a dead-end he’d do a few neighbours anyway, and then sit and wait in the pub for Connolly to roll home.

  He dashed across Burnley Road and entered the pub.

  This was somewhere Henry had been many times in the early 1980s when he was not much more than a kid in a uniform. He had never been to the pub whilst on duty, always off-duty and chasing skirt. In those days it had been one of the pubs in the valleys where cops congregated. And cop groupies went, too.

  Treasured memories flooded back, but the reality of the pub on that day, as he pushed his way into the main bar, was of a place in urgent need of attention. It was a dive.

  It was hardly busy, late morning just before lunch, and as he sauntered in he immediately spotted Connolly at the bar. He had a fresh pint in his hand which had been presented to him by a barmaid who could well have been in situ since Henry had last sauntered in twenty-odd years earlier.

  Henry stood behind Connolly, who had not seen him enter, and noticed a racing paper on the bar in front of him, with a notepad and pencil, names of horses and odds scribbled down. Ken the gambler, boozer and skimmer, Henry thought.

  He stepped sideways and dropped Connolly’s P45 on to the bar.

  ‘Pressie for you. Your P45.’

  Connolly turned his head and squinted at Henry for a moment, then recognized him.

  ‘Shit,’ he said vehemently.

  His eyes did an escape check, but, with half an eye on Henry, he saw there was no way of getting out other than trying to bowl Henry over, which was a task too far for Connolly who was slimmer, smaller and shorter than the detective. Resigned to whatever fate awaited, he turned back to the bar and took a long drink of his bitter.

  Henry waited for further reaction, but none came

  Eventually he did break the silence. ‘Whaddya want?’ he asked miserably.

  ‘A chat, nothing more.’

  ‘Buy me another pint and you got it.’ He downed what remained in his glass, some three-quarters of his drink which, Henry guessed, must have gone straight down to his legs.

  Henry eyed the barmaid. ‘A pint of what he’s having and a J20 for me, please, luv.’

  Connolly hung his head as Henry slid on to the stool next to him. He did not meet Henry’s eyes, but sat there with the cloud of doom hanging over his head.

  ‘Ken,’ Henry said, ‘you are a fuck-wit – and don’t even try legging it.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘But luckily for you, at this moment in time, your ex-employers are not pressing charges for theft and deception.’ Henry paused. ‘We do know what we’re talking about here, don’t we? We don’t have to do this the hard way, do we?’

  ‘We do and we don’t.’

  ‘Good, because the point is, if prodded just a teeny bit, they would make a complaint, yeah?’

  Connolly nodded glumly.

  ‘How many altogether?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘How many cars?’

  ‘Thirty, forty.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Nice little earner.’

  ‘More than my commission, tight fuckers.’

  ‘But still criminal?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘So how does it work?’

  ‘I get into conversation, get a feel for a punter, get a cash sale – I mean cash, cash – get all the forms signed with no figures on them, which is easy, then I fill ’em in after the punter’s driven off in a banger and take a percentage. Bob’s your uncle. It happens throughout the car trade. Salesmen skim.’

  The drinks were placed on the bar. Henry thanked the lady and they made eye contact. She looked quizzically at him and Henry did recognize her. A cold chill turned his tum. She’d been ten years older than him in 1982, which would have put her in her early thirties then, which wasn’t so bad. A one-night stand in the days of his singledom and the sexual excess of being a young, good-looking cop in Rossendale which, if you wanted it, was a hotbed of sex and booze.

  ‘Do I know you?’ she asked hesitantly.

  ‘Er, don’t think so, love,’ he denied.

  ‘For a moment, I thought I did.’

  He shook his head, smiled tightly and she withdrew along the bar, giving him repeated sideways glances. He scratched his head to hide his face.

  ‘Carry on,’ he said to Connolly.

  ‘I only did it with cash-sale bangers and I diddled the paperwork to cover my tracks. Never had any comeback. Chances of being caught were minimal. You turning up and the company getting sus freaked me out, so I did a runner before the shit hit. Are you gonna lock me up?’

  ‘Ken, I couldn’t be arsed … just so long as you tell me everything about the car I part-exchanged for the Rover and the guy who bought it. The paperwork seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘The Mondeo?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Henry fished out a screen-grab from the CCTV images he’d reviewed earlier. He showed the photo to Connolly. ‘Him?’

  Connolly barely glanced at it. ‘Yeah, he just wanted the car, wanted to pay cash and it was a deal done quick.’

  ‘How much did he pay for it?’

  ‘It was on the lot for twelve hundred …’

  ‘Twelve hundred? You only gave me seven-fifty for it!’

  ‘That’s business. Anyway, he got it for nine hundred on paper, I skimmed fifty and everybody’s happy.’

  ‘Except the company pay you a commission on the eight-fifty remaining, so that makes you a thief, Ken. I expect it pays for your bad habits, doesn’t it?’

  Connolly tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘I know. You want his name, don’t you?’

  ‘If you want to remain a free man.’

  ‘Did he use the car on a job?’

  ‘He tried to kill a member of my family.’

  ‘Oh.’ Connolly swallowed.

  ‘Name.’

  ‘I don’t know it.’ Connolly rubbed his t
emples.

  ‘You do want to remain a free man, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t have his name … it would probably be a false one anyway, under the circumstances.’

  On that, Henry lost it slightly. It had been going on too long for him anyway. He grabbed the front of Connolly’s tweed jacket and shirt in his right hand and twisted him off his bar stool and jerked him towards him so their faces were only inches apart.

  ‘You’re fucking locked up, then.’

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘No … let me tell you something you might not have picked up on, Ken. I’m not a happy soul at this point in my life and I’d just like to beat the living crap out of you for resisting arrest, you lush.’ Henry’s voice quavered.

  ‘Resisting arrest …? I haven’t—’

  ‘Oh yes you have.’ Henry shook him and rattled his alcohol-mushed brain.

  ‘OK, OK, let me be.’

  Henry eased him back on to his stool. Ken’s shaky hand went for his pint which he just managed to get to his mouth without spilling, though he did bang the rim of the glass on his teeth.

  ‘I want a name,’ Henry insisted.

  He was feeling something very unpleasant building up inside him now which, like projectile vomit, was close to coming out in a spectacular, ugly way. Something he was going to take out on Ken Connolly, who regarded him and sensed a bubbling volcano. Ken extracted a small notebook from the inside of his jacket pocket and flicked it open. It contained all the details of his criminal transactions.

  The speed camera flashed, but did not slow him down. Instead he rammed his foot harder on the accelerator, swerved through a dodgy overtake, slotted back in and gunned the heavy car through the traffic.

  His face was grim and determined, his mind focused on driving. He wanted to reach his destination swiftly and in one piece. But he was also focused on the name he had been given, desperately trying to work out what all this was about. To even start to do that, his mind, his memory, had to dig all the way back to 1982.

  Twenty-One

  Henry Christie’s thief-taking potential had been spotted early in his career as a uniformed PC. From the outset he had loved the feel of a villain’s collar and from his first day on the beat as a rookie, pounding the pavements of Blackburn town centre (his first posting), he had dedicated himself to depriving lawbreakers of their liberty. The traffic side of coppering had never really interested him at all, but crime fascinated him.