by Nick Oldham
She turned to the worktop and began the tea-making process, facing away from Henry. She was leaning on the surface with both hands taking her weight. Henry thought she was watching the kettle boil. Then he saw that her shoulders were shaking. Her head dropped, chin onto chest, and she sobbed.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
She tried to pull herself together, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse and tilting her head back as though to get the tears to roll back into her eyes. They would not stop coming.
Henry reached for the kitchen stool and placed it to one side of her.
‘Hey, sit down before you fall down. C’mon,’ he said gently.
She lowered herself onto the stool and blinked despairingly up at him. Her eyes were pools of clear water and streams of tears ran down her cheeks. She wiped them irritably away. ‘I’m sorry. This isn’t getting the tea made.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said, not bothered about tea. He was more aware that quite often, valuable information, sometimes good evidence, could be gained from emotional friends, relatives, lovers. His pleasant bedside manner was a bit of a con trick really. ‘D’you want to talk? I may be able to help, you never know.’
‘No, no, it’s all right.’ She heaved a huge sigh. ‘It’s just. . . Oh God, he promised...’ She shook her head. ‘I’m lying, he didn’t promise a damned thing, but he said he loved me and suddenly we had a future, then in the next breath it’s gone.’
‘Why did he do it?’ Henry asked.
Isa was worldly enough not to get taken in by that one, even in her turmoil. ‘I didn’t say he did it ... but I know that he’s been set up and now he’s told me you lot are going to make certain he gets sent down. He doesn’t have a chance. We don’t have a chance. Oh God, I don’t know who I feel more sorry for, him or me.’
‘You said he was set up?’ Henry’s ears (at least the unbitten one) had picked up gold dust from the emotional dross.
‘Bastard Conroy!’ she wailed. ‘And now you’re working for him, aren’t you? Just like all the other cops on his payroll.’ The expression on her face taunted him. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself. Guilty or not, you’re going to get him, aren’t you?’
She buried her face in her hands. ‘He’ll be an old man when he comes out, if he comes out, and I’ll have had a completely wasted life.’ Suddenly she flared up without warning, anger bubbling over. She propelled herself at Henry and attacked him, pounding her fists into his chest.
He grabbed her hands and bent them roughly back. She screamed. He tossed her away from him. She skittered across the floor and landed in a heap next to the washer where she continued to cry.
Henry rubbed his chest. Too many people were hitting it.
‘Y’allreet, Sarge?’ A couple of the PCs had abandoned the search on hearing the commotion in the kitchen.
Henry nodded. ‘One of you make sure she’s OK and the other one take me back to the nick. Then come back and finish the search.’
Before leaving, Henry wrote his home number down on a scrap of paper and left it on a work surface. ‘If you feel like talking,’ he told Isa, ‘bell me.’
Henry ensured he was dropped off at the front of the station. Siobhan, if she was waiting, would probably expect him to come back via the rear yard, one floor below. He wanted to avoid her at all costs. He dashed in through the public enquiry area and was buzzed into the building. He dropped down a flight of steps into the custody office.
No sign of Siobhan. Good.
‘Duty solicitor arrived yet?’ he asked the Custody Sergeant, who was dealing with a couple of juveniles.
‘Nope.’
‘I want to speak to Rider, about a matter not concerned with his arrest, not a criminal matter.’ Not strictly true, Henry had to admit to himself, but probably the only way he’d get to see Rider alone now.
Two minutes later they were face to face again.
‘I won’t speak to you without a solicitor present.’
‘I think you will. I’ve been to search your flat.’
‘You won’t find anything unless you put it there.’
‘I found a woman called Isa. She told me something very interesting.’
Rider sniffed indifference.
‘You’re being well and truly shafted here, aren’t you?’
‘You should know.’
‘You’d be surprised how little I know. The name Conroy was mentioned.’
Rider bit the inside of his mouth with a squelch.
‘Get to the point, Sergeant.’
‘I may be able to help you, but in return you have to help me first.’
‘Look - you’re out to get me, come hell or high water, and probably at Conroy’s bidding, so why should I help you? I mean, this whole thing’ Rider waved his hands at the room - ‘could be a set-up, just to get me to admit something. How do I know there isn’t a hidden mike somewhere?’
‘You have my word.’
Rider nearly fell off his seat. ‘The word of a man who has already verballed me up? What’s that worth in real terms?’
Henry pushed himself to his feet. He walked to a corner of the small room and lounged there.
‘I need a fag,’ Rider complained.
‘Sorry, no smoking. Force policy.’
‘Fuck force policy!’ Rider leaned his forearms on the table and intertwined his fingers. He twiddled his thumbs, rotating them against each other.
‘You’ve got something together with Isa, haven’t you?’
‘Did have.’
‘She’s devastated, you being in here. Really fucked up.’
‘Did have, I said.’
‘You still could have, John - if you’d trust me. At the very least, what you’ll get out of this is a fair and honest investigation. If there is evidence of murder against you, you’ll get charged. If not, you’ll be released. But I promise there will be no evidence fabricated against you.’
‘Sounds fucking great,’ he said cynically. ‘The devil and the deep blue sea.’
‘It’s better than what you’ve got at the moment,’ Henry said pragmatically.
‘What’s going on, Sergeant?’ Rider looked across at Henry with eyebrows raised. Henry strode back and sat down opposite Rider again.
His voice was earnest. ‘Isa says she believes you’ve been set up for this murder by a man called Conroy. Is that what you think?’
‘You, him - and others, probably.’ Rider spoke guardedly, not wanting to say anything which might go against him.
Henry saw the look. ‘I’ll tell you why you can trust me.’
‘Go on, astound me.’
‘Do you think I’m doing this shite willingly? Well, I’ll tell you, I’m not. I’m doing it because if I don’t, I lose my job, my wife, my pension, my reputation, everything - and may even end up in prison. Yeah, it’s true. I’ve been set up too. In a different way, for a different reason - or maybe the same reason, I dunno. Maybe there’s some connection between us two. But there’s something I do know. If I convict you on false evidence I’ll be trapped for ever and I’ll be a bent copper for ever, unless I do something about it . . . and you’ll be in prison for the rest of your life. We could be the key to saving each other.’
Henry had been leaning forwards, becoming more and more intense as the words torrented out. ‘But if you’re not interested, let’s go down the road to hell together.’
The next official interview was over fairly quickly, much to Siobhan’s disgust. They presented Rider back to the custody officer and he was returned to the cells.
‘Speaks,’ Siobhan demanded.
They adjourned to the interview room and closed the door.
‘That was a poor performance, Henry. You didn’t seem to be trying very hard.’
‘Just feeling my way, getting used to the situation.’
‘Find anything useful at the flat?’
‘Don’t know yet. Going to go back and check. Then we’ll move onto his club and do that.’
‘Leave the club!’
Siobhan said sharply.
‘Why?’
‘Just leave it, that’s all. It’s an order. We’re not interested in the club.’
‘Sure, fine,’ he said. ‘Who am I to argue?’
‘Exactly. Who are you?’
Henry left her in the custody office, telling her he was going for a dump, which might take some time.
Instead of going into the station, he turned right out of the custody office, after checking Siobhan didn’t see him, and sprinted down the rear yard to get into a CID Metro for which he had the keys in his pocket. He gunned the small car out of the garage and into Blackpool town centre where he whizzed up and down a few streets, including going the wrong way down a one-way street. He wanted to know if he was being followed and was fairly satisfied he wasn’t.
He pointed the car in the direction of Lytham.
Behind him, Jim Tattersall tapped Tony Morton’s mobile number into his own, hardly able to suppress a laugh at Henry’s anti-surveillance tactics.
Morton told Tattersall to stick with him.
Morton ended the call and placed his mobile on the desk. He drummed his fingers agitatedly and asked himself what the significance could be of Henry’s departure from the police station without Siobhan, his chaperone.
The internal phone rang.
‘Morton.’
‘Siobhan, boss. Just seen the custody record. Henry’s had an unscheduled conversation with Rider before I got here. It says on the record it was in connection with a matter unrelated to the investigation.’
‘Do you know where he is now?’
‘Having a shit.’
‘Wrong, you stupid bitch! He’s in a car and he’s heading out of town, for fuck’s sake. I thought you were supposed to be keeping an eye on him?’
Morton slammed the phone down.
Morton had ordered a two-car tail on Donaldson. And Mr Donaldson, FBI employee, didn’t spot it until quite late because they were good. By the time he saw them, he and Karen had visited the other two witnesses and taken statements.
He swore when he realised, but there was nothing more to be done about it - other than to lose them for the fun of it.
But by then, both addresses were on a piece of paper in front of Tony Morton.
Morton asked Siobhan to check the voters’ register to put names to them. He was beginning to feel very uncomfortable; also that he had been too generous with Henry Christie by allowing him to live. The challenge of corrupting an incorruptible officer was proving to be a headache of epic proportions.
It would have been far easier to have had him whacked straight away.
Henry drove quickly, pushing the Metro hard through the mid-morning traffic which, due to the season and the weather, was fairly light.
He picked up the coast road and was soon in Lytham. He had a vague idea of where he was going because a few years ago he had delivered a message there, about what he could not recall. He did not know the town well, but it was only a small place and he trusted his memory and sense of direction.
He found the road in about ten minutes. Thirty seconds later he stopped outside the house, a large, bow-windowed semi.
He looked at the building for a while just to make sure he wasn’t mistaken.
Yep. It was the right one.
He got out of the Metro and went through the garden gate, failing to see the car which had drawn up two hundred metres behind him.
Tattersall was quickly on the blower.
‘Boss ... we could have problems here.’
Morton paced his temporary office. Siobhan was sitting watching him with a fearful expression.
He had four names and addresses on his desk which still meant nothing to him.
And Henry Christie had spoken to Rider alone for about twenty minutes. And now he was at an address which sent goose bumps down his spine.
‘I don’t like this one little bit.’ He rubbed his chin.
‘He’s wriggling,’ Siobhan said. ‘That’s all.’
‘He should’ve been killed like the two others. I regret not having him done now. I protected him and he could well be causing me problems.’
Gallagher came in bearing the statements which had been amongst Luton’s other paperwork in the plastic bag.
‘Got the statements back,’ he said triumphantly.
He handed them to Morton who glanced at the top one and tossed them onto his desk. Then his neck craned down as he saw the name on the top one. He fanned all four out, his face turning ashen.
‘These are the people that Donaldson guy has just been to see. He’s been visiting the witnesses again on Henry’s behalf.’
‘What?’ asked Gallagher, who had not been privy to these developments. He’d been making a show of running the murder enquiry.
‘Some guy called Donaldson and a woman have been visiting our witnesses again. Where have you been for the last twenty-four hours, numb-nuts?’
‘Somebody has to make it look like we do policework occasionally,’ he griped.
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘Did you say Donaldson?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘Name rings a bell.’ Gallagher was thoughtful for a moment whilst he wracked his brains, the tip of his tongue resting on his lower lip. ‘Got it! FBI agent linked to that big trial Christie was involved in about eighteen months, two years ago. The mafia guy, remember? Yeah, I’m sure Donaldson was the name of the FBI agent who was a major witness.’
‘So an FBI agent and a female who we don’t know are going round visiting witnesses?’ Siobhan wanted this to be cleared up.
‘Probably his wife. She’s a policewoman, ex-Lancashire now in the Met. Works at Bramshill these days, I think.’
‘I know her,’ Morton declared. ‘She was one of my course tutors on the senior command course.’
Morton looked at the statements again. His mouth sagged as something else dawned on him. ‘These are photocopies of photocopies.’
Gallagher’s brow creased.
‘Luton screwed his copies up when I caught him. These should be creased, for God’s sake! Look, look at them. You can see that the ones they’ve been copied from were creased. I am surrounded by imbeciles.’
‘Let me look.’ Gallagher took them from his boss. It was true. They were photocopies of creased statements. Gallagher’s despair showed on his face. ‘So they’ve still got the copies Luton made?’
‘It fucking well looks that way, doesn’t it?’ screamed Morton. He took in a deep breath. ‘Seems we’ll have to sort Henry Christie out properly this time.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘I don’t suppose for one moment you’ll remember me, sir. . .’
Before he had a chance to finish, the older man said, ‘Course I bloody do, you’re Henry Christie. I don’t forget faces like yours in a hurry.’
The former ACC of Lancashire Constabulary, Roger Willocks, stood to one side and allowed Henry into the house. He pointed to the lounge and Henry went in.
Henry could not fail to see the large number of sympathy cards around the room, filling every available flat surface.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Willocks. If I’ve come at a bad time. . .’
‘No, no, no, nothing of the sort. My wife died nearly a month ago Cancer. Just haven’t got round to taking the cards down yet. Seems such a final thing to do.’
He smiled sadly at Henry.
‘It’s good to have a serving cop round. Most of my friends are retired now and I don’t have any particular connection with the Top Team now. Coffee?’
They chatted briefly about the good old days - which Henry was glad to see the back of, actually - and Henry told him of the sweeping changes which were taking place today in the job.
Willocks was not impressed. ‘Glad I got out,’ he said. He put his coffee down. ‘So, my lad, to what do I owe this honour? I don’t suppose you’ve dropped by just to delve into the past, have you?’
‘Yes and no.’ Henry paused and gathered his thoughts together.
‘A few years ago you headed an enquiry into the North-West Organised Crime Squad.’
Willocks’ face blackened over. ‘I’m not sure I want to talk about it,’ he said stiffly.
‘I need your help,’ Henry begged him. ‘Two police officers have died within the last week, another has been shot, and another is having his balls squeezed - and the thread through them all is that squad. The more I find out about it, the less I like - and my testicles are starting to hurt quite badly.’
Willocks’ gaze drifted around the cards in the room, all sent in sympathy for his departed wife.
He laughed to himself and said, ‘Don’t suppose it matters now she’s gone.’ He turned to Henry.
‘You’ve only scratched the surface,’ Willocks commented, when fifteen minutes later he had listened to Henry’s very edited version of events. ‘Come with me, Henry, let’s go to my thinking shed.’
He led the detective through the house and out into the garden at the rear. The rain had stopped and the cloud had thinned considerably. They walked down a path to the garage and entered it by means of a door at the back. Inside it was dark and Willocks pulled a light switch. A series of three spots came on, revealing a workshop with lots of pieces of furniture scattered about the place in different stages of renovation. A workbench was covered in tools of all descriptions. Fumes which Henry assumed were paint-remover or turps pervaded everything.
‘Don’t light up, whatever you do,’ warned Willocks with a laugh. ‘Leave the door open, it’ll clear. This is where I spend my spare time. Buy crap, make it look good, sell at car boot sales. My hobby,’ he said proudly.
Henry, to whom anything in the sphere of DIY was an anathema, tried to look impressed. He sat on a newly renovated chair, while Willocks perched on a stool.
‘The NWOCS is a police unit which is out of control,’ the former senior officer declared. ‘It’s like a private army and its little Adolf Hitler is Tony Morton. It was a badly conceived set-up in the first place, one of those knee-jerk reactions to a particular problem which existed at that time in the mid-1980s. You know the sort of thing - let’s set up a squad.’