Unforgiving

by Nick Oldham

  Hence Henry’s quickly assembled surveillance and firearms operation, which had proved a success until Oxford bolted from the car, leaving a terrified, but ultimately innocent driver behind the wheel of the Mondeo.

  Henry had not been keen to learn that Oxford had gone to ground in a derelict holiday chalet. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  But it had, and a short while after the radio message from Niven, Henry was on the scene in his bulletproof vest, speaking to Oxford through a loud hailer. The best part was that because of the location, no members of the public were put at risk, and if necessary the police could have starved Oxford out without breaking too much sweat. This was a fact Henry had been at pains to point out to the felon. If he wanted a siege, he could have one.

  Oxford had given himself up without a fight twenty minutes after Henry had turned up on the plot.

  It had been a great pleasure for Henry to watch the firearms officer make the actual arrest and truss him up without violence.

  Once booked into custody at Blackpool nick, Oxford’s clothing was seized for forensic examination, swabs were taken from his hands for gunshot residue (although Henry knew this was more an academic exercise than anything because the killing had been weeks ago and anything useful to link him to the scene would be long gone). Then, with Oxford dressed in a paper suit and elasticated paper slippers, and accompanied by the duty solicitor, Henry began to interview him on tape and video with DCI Rik Dean as ‘second jockey’.

  It was a ‘no comment’ discussion, which did not bother Henry too much. This was only the initial phase of what was likely to be a long process of battering Oxford – legally – into submission.

  There was, however, one thing Henry did need from Oxford, and that was his current address, because the detective believed a thorough search of it would prove very useful. Oxford had refused to divulge any address when booked into the system and continued to say ‘no comment’ when asked for one during the interview.

  That first, no response interview lasted forty minutes. At that juncture, Henry leaned back and surveyed the prisoner through cold eyes and gave a knowing, but slight nod of the head.

  ‘I just want you to know,’ Henry told him over steepled fingers, ‘I intend to convict you for this offence, and you will be going to prison for a very long time … Innocent lad shot dead, involved in gang warfare … Not Crown Court judges’ favourite offences …’

  Oxford raised his smug face and smiled. ‘No comment.’

  It was one of those smiles Henry would have dearly liked to knock off his face. He could tell that Oxford knew this.

  There was a tap on the interview room door, which had the effect of breaking the deadlock in the staring competition between the two men.

  Rik Dean leaned forward and spoke like the voice-over man on a reality TV show. ‘For the benefit of the tape, someone has knocked on the door.’

  Henry pushed himself up stiffly, walked to the door and opened it. In the corridor outside stood the custody sergeant, PS Broome.

  ‘Boss … thought you might want to see this.’

  Henry stepped out of the interview room and closed the door.

  ‘For the benefit of the tape, Detective Superintendent Christie has now left the room,’ Rik Dean said with a smirk.

  ‘What is it, John?’ Henry asked the sergeant, just as a wave of nauseous exhaustion swept through his entire being. Henry swayed slightly and put a hand out to the wall to steady himself. Suddenly, his brain was woozy, and he took a deep breath.

  ‘You OK, boss?’ Broome had noticed Henry’s change of demeanour – and colour. His face had run to a very pale grey with just a tinge of blue.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Henry’s equilibrium came back as suddenly as it had left him. He knew he was very close to burn-out and, if he was honest with himself, should have been tucked up in bed with a hot-bottomed landlady. The last few months had been a hard push, but he’d been determined not to slacken up. ‘What’ve you got there?’

  Broome held up a wallet. Henry recognized it as belonging to Wayne Oxford, taken from him when he’d been searched at the custody desk. It had contained almost £600 in Bank of England notes, 200 euros and a couple of debit cards, all of which were entered in the prisoner’s property list on the back of the custody record then seized as evidence. ‘I’ve had a proper look through this and found this in one of the pockets.’ It was a piece of folded paper, which Broome unfolded and showed to Henry. There was an address scribbled on it. ‘I don’t know if you need it, but I thought you might … Obviously, he wasn’t for telling where he lived, which I always think is a bit sus.’

  Henry took and read it: an address in St Annes, and obviously a flat. Henry narrowed his eyes and said thanks. He re-entered the interview room.

  ‘For the purposes of the tape, Superintendent Christie has now re-entered the interview room,’ Rik Dean told the microphone.

  Henry sat and played teasingly with the piece of paper which, spread out, was about the size of half a Post-it note. He spun it around, turned it over, all the while keeping his eyes firmly on Oxford, wanting to judge his reaction. Then he sniffed and placed the paper on the table between them, address facing upwards. ‘Is this where you live?’

  Oxford had a very scrawny neck with a very prominent Adam’s apple, which rose and fell in his throat like a spiny lizard moving under a blanket. Henry heard him emit a little gasp.

  ‘No comment,’ he said tightly.

  Henry now allowed himself a grin and a subtle wink. ‘As we speak, authorization is being sought for permission to search this address, which I firmly believe is yours, Mr Wayne Oxford.’

  Oxford’s head spun to his solicitor. ‘I want to make a phone call,’ he said.

  Henry almost laughed now. ‘That will be denied,’ he said with certainty.

  The solicitor stepped in. ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘That he will use a phone call to alert others involved in this serious crime.’

  The solicitor shrugged, then gave Oxford a helpless look. Oxford’s own face crumpled before he snatched the piece of paper from the table and stuffed it into his mouth and began to devour it. With an amused look, Henry let him do it. He had brawled with prisoners in the past who had tried to eat incriminating documents, and it had never been pretty. He’d been bitten on too many occasions trying to force open someone’s mouth. One man had even wolfed down a fraudulent car insurance certificate and an MOT certificate.

  The process of mashing it up was difficult.

  Ever one to help, Henry offered, ‘You want some water with that?’

  Oxford’s jaws chomped as he tried to digest it. Eventually, it went down.

  Henry sighed patronizingly. ‘What was the point of that?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Five minutes later Oxford was pushed into a cell, and five minutes after that, armed with the appropriate written authorization to search, Henry and Rik Dean, together with two constables they had managed to round up, were on their way to the address on the paper.

  Rik was driving his own car, with Henry slumped untidily in the passenger seat; the two PCs were in a police car behind.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Rik asked.

  ‘Pretty shit, but let’s not go there, eh?’ He’d had enough of deep contemplation, the hand wringing, the guilt. All he wanted to do now was his job – put a killer behind bars.

  It did not take long to reach St Annes. Rik turned right off Clifton Drive North on to Todmorden Road, then left on to North Promenade. On the right now was the seafront, effectively hidden by the height of the sand dunes, beyond which was the vast expanse of the beach at North Hollow, popular with sand yachters and kite flyers. On the left were properties: some high-class detached houses, then some apartment blocks tucked in amongst them. A few of these were also good quality, but the one Rik drew up outside, Salter’s Bank View, could have been transported and dumped on to the Shoreside council estate and not looked out of place, other than for its height
. Six storeys tall, a sixties throwback, made of pebble-dashed concrete and steel. Ungainly, unpleasant and slightly rotting.

  Henry squinted at it for a moment, then climbed out of the car as the two PCs pulled in behind and alighted from their patrol car. All four men made towards the ground floor entrance, which led into a badly lit hallway, where they came face-to-face with a locked door. On the wall next to this was a set of buzzers and intercoms.

  Henry rattled the door, hoping it wasn’t locked. It was, so he was reduced to deploying the old cop trick of pressing each of the buzzers and waiting for some response. Whilst waiting he glanced down the nameplates next to each button. Most were empty, and Wayne Oxford’s name wasn’t there, anyway. Not that Henry had expected it to be.

  He sighed and repeated the task with the buttons, looking over his shoulder at the three patient cops behind him.

  ‘Usually works,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘If it doesn’t I’ve got a door ram in the boot,’ one of the constables said helpfully.

  ‘Good,’ Henry said.

  A groggy female voice came tinnily through one of the intercoms. ‘That you, babe?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Henry said back.

  ‘Been waiting all night,’ the woman said.

  ‘Me, too,’ Henry responded in his best sultry voice, arching his eyebrows at his colleagues.

  There was a click on the intercom, then a buzzing sound as the door was released.

  Rik grabbed the door, and the cops were in and heading up the concrete steps to flat twenty-one, assuming it would be found on the second floor. On that landing, Henry caught his breath before moving along to number twenty-one, which was at the far end. They moved relatively silently, then stopped. Rik and Henry were side by side at the door, the uniformed officers just behind, slightly fanned out.

  Henry could see that the door, although pushed to, was open, just resting on the jamb. He pulled out his warrant card and warily pushed the door.

  It opened straight into a living room, in the centre of which was a young woman, maybe early twenties, dressed in only a bra and panties.

  This detail wasn’t the important one to Henry, though. What was, was the fact she was holding a big, heavy looking, black revolver in her right hand, supported by her left, and it was pointed directly at the centre of his chest.

  Henry ducked instinctively to his right as the woman yanked back the trigger. Behind him, he was aware of the other three cops diving in all directions.

  Henry cowered, seeing the hammer draw back then slam forwards into a bullet in one of the six cylinders. He flinched as the firing pin landed with a dull click and nothing came out of the business end of the handgun.

  Henry saw the look of horror and confusion on the woman’s face as she realized the gun had misfired. Henry jumped up quickly – the stiffness and tiredness in his body replaced by an instant surge of adrenalin that was like jet fuel to his system. He lunged towards her, horrified as she did perhaps the most idiotic thing that a person who was inexperienced in handling guns, and confused by something that should have happened but hadn’t, could do. She turned the gun towards herself, brow furrowed, and looked down the barrel.

  At that exact moment, as her right eye focused down the black hole, the gun fired with a tremendous bang.

  Even though the noise was loud within the confines of the flat, Henry still actually heard the sickening, squelchy ‘thuck’ as the bullet entered her eye at a sideways angle and, as everything slowed down in that instant, Henry clearly saw the slug exit out of the side of her head just by her right ear, taking bone and brain with it in a devastating wound.

  She spun from the momentum, dropped the gun, then fell on to her hands and knees, her shattered head lolling briefly between her arms, blood gushing, before she rolled sideways, dead.

  At that point, Henry had only moved two steps. He stopped.

  The other three crowded behind him, shocked.

  Henry stood there, stunned, then took two more steps towards her, watched her body spasm, then stop moving.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, easing himself down on to his haunches, his mouth open. His knees cracked hollowly. With his first and second fingers he touched her warm neck to feel for a pulse, knowing it was pointless because she could never have survived that. He knew dead when he saw it.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Rik Dean said behind him.

  ‘Shit,’ Henry said, withdrawing his fingers: no pulse.

  ‘Why did she—’ Rik began, then stopped, realizing he was about to ask a futile question.

  Henry sighed, feeling his energy drain out again. ‘Ambulance, police surgeon, CSI,’ he said, twisting his head to look over his shoulder at the white-faced, stunned to silence PCs. ‘And body removers … You guys OK?’

  Both nodded, though they were dumbstruck.

  ‘Do it then, eh?’ he encouraged them. ‘But just check there’s no one else here, first.’ Henry pushed himself up and looked at Rik, who grinned lopsidedly.

  ‘That was meant for you,’ he informed Henry.

  ‘I know. Hopefully, it would have missed, though – and hit you instead.’

  Rik nodded sagely. ‘Fancy looking down the fucking barrel.’

  Henry regarded the dead woman’s head, then tore his eyes away and took a few moments to study the flat. They were standing in the living room, off which was a kitchen and bathroom; to his left was a short hallway leading to what he guessed were two bedrooms. His eyes returned from their wandering and settled on the Formica-topped dining table pushed up to one corner of the living room. Four guns were displayed on this, side by side. Two handguns, two machine pistols together with boxes of ammunition and spare magazines.

  Wayne Oxford slouched down low in the uncomfortable plastic chair, scowling through mean eyes across the table at Henry Christie. He was still displaying a challenging, cocky veneer, but when Henry’s eyes bore into his, Oxford’s withdrew from their line and he looked away.

  They were in the same interview room as before, and the same duty solicitor was sitting alongside his client, looking decidedly weary, having been called back in just as he was about to bed down. He had made representations about Oxford’s right to have eight hours’ uninterrupted rest, and Henry promised that, by all means, once he had finished this interview, Oxford could get his head down.

  Henry sighed, thinking he was probably the most tired man in the room.

  He forced a tight smile at Oxford. ‘Now then,’ he said. The tape and camera were running, the preliminaries were out of the way – the introductions, caution. He glanced fleetingly at Rik Dean sitting alongside, and then said, ‘We’ve searched your flat, Wayne.’

  Oxford tried to give the impression of impassivity, but he fidgeted at the news.

  ‘We found some very interesting items.’

  Nothing from Oxford.

  ‘Due to their nature I cannot, unfortunately, place these items down in front of you just yet. However, because of the magic that is digital photography I can show you some photos of these items.’

  On the table in front of Henry was a brown A4 envelope. He opened the flap with deliberate slowness and took out five sheets of paper, laying them face down so that Oxford could not see the photographs on them. Henry thought it was rather like having a fixed deck of cards, because he had staked them in a particular order which he hoped would be effective.

  ‘These shots were taken by a crime scene investigator, and I’ve printed them off, just so you can see them and maybe comment. Or not. Up to you.’

  Oxford’s mouth twitched.

  ‘Each of these items was found in your flat, Wayne.’ Henry slowly turned the first one, the photograph of a machine pistol. It got not even a word from Oxford. Henry did the same with the next three photographs until he had four laid out alongside each other, just as they had been on the table in the flat.

  Henry put his finger on one at a time. ‘A Škorpion machine pistol … a Makarov nine millimetre semi-automatic pistol … a Heck
ler & Koch MP-five machine pistol … and a revolver of indeterminate manufacture, but point forty-five calibre. All of these weapons had ammunition with them.’ He raised his eyes. ‘Do you wish to comment, Wayne?’

  Although his nostrils flared, he was more or less impassive. He said nothing, just continued with his defiant stare.

  Henry slowly turned over the fifth sheet, which was a photograph of the weapon the young woman had fired into her own face by mistake. This was a black four-inch barrelled .38 revolver, similar to something Smith & Wesson made, though the manufacturer of this one was, like the other handgun in the flat, unknown at this stage. It was actually not a large gun, but when Henry had first seen it in the girl’s hand, pointed at him, it had seemed so much bigger, probably because of the heightened tension of the moment. The bullet that had killed the innocent boy on Shoreside had also been a .38. Henry was convinced that the weapon he was showing to Oxford was the one that had killed him.

  ‘I want you to look very carefully at this particular weapon, Wayne.’

  Oxford gave it a fleeting glance.

  ‘I think this is the gun you used to kill twelve-year-old Jamie Turner on Shoreside. I’m certain your fingerprints will be found on it and that ballistics will be able to match the bullet taken from the dead boy’s body to this gun. That is my belief.’

  Oxford blinked.

  ‘Anything to say, Wayne?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Henry nodded, changed tack unexpectedly. ‘What’s your girlfriend’s name?’

  Oxford shrugged.

  ‘I happen to know she is called Sophie Leader. She’s eighteen years old and was at the address we found in your wallet. Papers in the flat say that Sophie is the occupier and rents it.’ Henry raised his eyebrows, getting a little weary now of the non-verbal exchanges because, despite knowing that scientific studies would tell him that over seventy per cent of communication is unspoken, non-verbals don’t mean anything in a court of law. Only words were of any use.