Unforgiving

by Nick Oldham

  Overwall said nothing, did not blink, but Henry could see his mind working.

  ‘She’s fourteen and she wasn’t there, is that what you’re saying, even though you’re not saying very much?’ Henry asked.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

  ‘Did you try to contact her or her parents?’

  ‘No, why should I?’

  ‘Because she’s fourteen,’ Henry said, starting to sound dangerous as his patience began to grow thin.

  ‘Look, I haven’t got the time or the money to chase up fares who don’t turn up. I just haven’t.’

  Henry heard another car draw up outside the unit, saw the flash of headlights under the roller-shutter, probably parking alongside his Audi. He half-assumed it might be Jake.

  ‘Can I have a look, then?’ Henry said, indicating the Skoda he was prowling around.

  ‘Help yourself.’

  They were two words that made Henry think Overwall believed himself to be on solid ground here and that there was nothing of interest in the car. He opened the rear door, leaned in over the back seat, pushed the seat cushion down and ran his fingers into the gap, found nothing. He looked in the magazine racks on the back of the front seats, both clear, as were the trays in each door.

  He pulled himself up and glanced at Overwall, whose rat features were impassive. ‘So she wasn’t there and you didn’t give a flying fuck?’ Henry accused him.

  ‘Long and short of it. Maybe I should’ve, but I didn’t.’

  Henry stared with disbelief at the man as these words exited his mouth, wondering if he believed them or if he just did not want to believe them.

  ‘OK,’ Henry said at length.

  ‘That it, then?’

  ‘For the time being.’

  Henry stalked back into the corridor, noticing that the office door was closed and there was a light on inside. He stepped out on to the forecourt.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Overwall said.

  Henry stopped and turned, but at the same time saw that the car that had pulled up next to his Audi was another KountryKabs taxi, a white Skoda, same model as the one in the garage, the one he’d just looked through.

  ‘I’ve just remembered something,’ Overwall went on. ‘You’re not a cop any more, are you? You fuckin’ live at the Owl with that slag of a landlady … So what’re you up to, pretending to be a cop?’

  ‘I never said I was a cop,’ Henry informed him. ‘You just made the assumption.’

  ‘You sneaky turd.’

  ‘Hey, if the cap fits,’ Henry said, and pointed accusingly at Overwall. ‘That said, I don’t think you’ve seen the last of me, or the real cops.’ He spun, intending to go to his car, but stopped short, and a feeling of terrible dread flooded through him as he eyed the Skoda on the forecourt.

  He walked to it, checking the registration plate, peered in through the windows, shading his eyes with his hand, edging along the car until he was looking into the back seats. Squinting, he saw something in the footwell, square and white. An iPhone.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, stood upright and turned back to Overwall.

  At that exact moment, something very long, hard and heavy struck him on the side of the head, just between his left eye socket and ear. Although the effect was almost instantaneous – the jellying of his legs – in the nanosecond before he became unconscious and crumpled to the floor like a parachutist hitting the ground, the last thing he saw was Spencer Bartle’s face screwed up with the effort of having just smashed Henry across the head with a crowbar.

  FIFTEEN

  Even though Rik Dean’s field promotion (albeit to an acting rank) into Henry Christie’s still-warm shoes had not been something he had purposely engineered, and although Henry had ‘sort of’ forgiven him, the relationship between the two men remained strained. Henry had not even invited Rik to his little retirement soirée, which had wounded the younger man.

  Henry had looked after Rik’s career since he’d been a PC, and it must have hurt Henry badly to have lost his job to him; it was the ultimate irony. Henry had tried to keep a fairly objective perspective on it – mostly – but behind his eyes, Rik could see pain.

  Obviously, Rik dreamed of becoming a detective superintendent, which was probably the ultimate job for any ambitious jack – to be a Senior Investigating Officer in charge of what essentially was a murder squad. However, Rik found himself unprepared for the role and soon began to sink, at the same time as being amazed at how Henry had coped with it all.

  As well as the disappearance of Laura Marshall, he had inherited what remained of the Jamie Turner murder case, the Wayne Oxford courtroom murder, and the Fraser Worthington shooting, with all the baggage that came with that, including Dave Morton’s death. If that was not enough, a new murder had come in, a serious robbery had been committed and he was also expected to assume Henry’s role on two national CID forums, as well as deliver daily briefings to the chief constable, plus everything else that came with the rank. All stuff that Henry seemed to have strolled through, but now Rik realized it was probably the ‘duck on water’ syndrome.

  He was wallowing in the mire with no one at his shoulder to guide him, as pathetic as that sounded. To cap it all, he didn’t seem to be faring much better than Henry in regards to Laura Marshall’s disappearance, and if Rik had thought he could pick Henry’s brain, he had been way off the mark.

  Henry had simply withdrawn to the Tawny Owl to pull pints, shag the landlady and generally ignore Rik, who, although realizing that pride came before a fall, could not bring himself to pick up the phone, call Henry and say, ‘Pretty please.’

  So Henry’s call out of the blue had been welcome, even if the conversation had been stilted and tinged with bitterness.

  Rik looked now at the names Henry had given him: Rebecca Merryweather and Grace Greenwood. Two teenage girls missing from North Yorkshire.

  ‘How the hell have you pulled these two out of the hat?’ Rik muttered as he searched for the number of North Yorkshire Police and asked to be put in contact with the officer leading the search for the first girl.

  Twenty minutes after that, Rik was then speaking to the OIC of the investigation into Grace Greenwood’s disappearance – still in North Yorkshire, but in a different division.

  Not long after that he plunged into the National Missing From Home Database. As he trawled through the results chucked up by his search criteria, a cold chill pervaded his body and he said, ‘You brilliant bastard, Henry.’

  This utterance was because of the fact that both of the officers Rik had spoken to had run their fingers down a list of people, witnesses or otherwise, who had been interviewed by the police on the other side of the Pennines, and whilst there were names that cropped up on both lists because they were farmers, legitimately going about their business, buying and selling livestock, one name stood out like a shining beacon.

  Spencer Bartle.

  He wasn’t on a suspect list; he’d just been in the vicinity on or around the actual dates the girls went missing.

  Rik tried to keep calm as he logged into Lancashire Constabulary’s Intel database and searched for the dates and times that Bartle had been arrested.

  It was a fairly busy list. He had been arrested eight times over the last twelve months, resulting in six court appearances for drunken behaviour or breach of the peace, none of which had landed him with anything another than fines or conditional discharges.

  Rik printed off the list and compared the dates of the arrests to the disappearances of the teenagers.

  He swore again, snatched up his phone and called Henry’s mobile. There was no reply, so he called the landline at the Tawny Owl, which was answered by Alison.

  ‘Henry there?’ he asked after the preliminaries.

  ‘No, he’s out and about. You know Jake Niven, our new Bobby?’ she asked, and Rik said yes (how could he not know?). ‘Apparently, his daughter’s gone missing, so Henry’s just making a few enquiries.’

  ‘How d�
��you mean, missing?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Rik … She didn’t get the taxi back from school in Lancaster, or something.’

  ‘So where is Henry?’

  ‘Gone to Thornwell, I think.’

  ‘Uh …’ Rik had a thought. ‘Which taxi firm?’

  ‘Our local KountryKabs.’

  That was a name that rang a suspicious bell with Rik. ‘Right, thanks,’ he said dubiously and hung up. His eyes fell back to the lists in front of him: Bartle’s arrests, and the dates the young women or girls had gone missing. He saw that Bartle’s most recent arrest was just three days ago; he was locked up in Lancaster for being fighting drunk and had been fined at court the next day. ‘Surely not,’ he said, thinking about what he’d just heard concerning Emma Niven.

  He grabbed his PR, coat and mobile phone and dashed to his car.

  Jake swerved into the driveway, the family car rocking as he slammed the brakes on, and parked next to the police Land Rover. He and Anna were inside the house moments later, Jake calling for Danny as they burst through the front door.

  Danny appeared at the living room door, looking pale.

  ‘Is she back?’ Jake demanded.

  Danny shook his head.

  Anna pushed past Jake and hugged her son.

  ‘How did you get on with Henry?’ Jake asked over Anna’s shoulder.

  ‘Went across to the taxi firm, but it was closed up,’ Danny said with a release of breath when Anna let go of him. ‘He dropped me off, and he’s gone back over. He also searched the house.’

  Jake took this in, then asked Danny if he had the phone numbers for any of Emma’s friends.

  Danny scrunched up his face and shook his head.

  ‘I know some from Blackpool,’ Anna said. ‘I could probably find their number and call them, check if she’s met up with any of them or spoken to them and told them she was up to something.’ Anna lowered her eyes and looked at Danny. ‘Is she up to anything? Has she got a boyfriend or something?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  Jake’s mind was on the verge of exploding. ‘OK,’ he said fairly decisively. ‘Are you staying here? I’m going to leap into the Land Rover and get over to Thornwell, too. I really need to speak face-to-face with that taxi guy.’

  ‘We’ll be OK here,’ Anna said, taking Jake’s hand and squeezing it. ‘I’ll start phoning.’

  Jake exhaled. His eyes criss-crossed from Anna to Danny: two of the three most important people in his life. His family – something he would never forget again. ‘Let’s just put this into perspective,’ he said as calmly as he could. ‘It’s only a couple of hours down the line. Chances are, it’s just a teenage kid thing, so let’s keep our heads and not panic. We do what we have to … She’ll be fine.’

  Anna nodded, but her maternal instinct told her otherwise.

  Jake hugged her tightly for a moment, patted Danny on the shoulder, left the house and, still wearing his best suit and shoes, got into the short-wheelbase Land Rover that came with the job. The constabulary had found it in some forgotten corner of a garage at headquarters and provided it for the beat, as opposed to giving Jake a car allowance, which would have let him use his own car for the job. The powers that be had decided that giving him a battered old Land Rover with over 100,000 miles on the clock was the cheaper option. It was a pig to drive, uncomfortable and as chilly as the Arctic, but it was liveried with an old-style constabulary crest on each door and was still great for going places he would never have attempted to take a normal car.

  He fired up and reversed out of the driveway, hurtled down to Kendleton and stopped at the Tawny Owl. He could not see Henry’s Audi in the front car park where it was usually kept. All the same, Jake popped in to check. Alison confirmed Henry was not back yet, and without any further conversation, Jake got back into the Land Rover and set off towards Thornwell.

  He was at the taxi office ten minutes later, finding it in darkness, no vehicles outside, not even Henry’s, which made him scowl worriedly. On the way across from Kendleton he had not seen any other cars on the road, so he was puzzled as to Henry’s location.

  He called the taxi firm from his mobile – no reply; then he tried Henry – and got no reply either. He slid out of the Land Rover and knocked on the office door, pounded hard on the roller-shutters. Another no reply, causing his frustration to mount. He was about to get into the Land Rover when a car swung into the industrial estate and pulled on to the forecourt, its headlight beam sweeping across, briefly lighting up a dark shadow of something in the surface of the concrete that looked like a diesel spill.

  The car lights were turned off. Jake waited for the driver to get out.

  It was Rik Dean.

  ‘Jake.’

  ‘Hello, sir.’

  ‘Call me Rik, please.’

  Jake gave a little shrug, not really caring what he wanted to be called. ‘Sir’ was good enough for Jake, who tended to keep his distance from senior officers if at all possible. He’d had some dealings with Rik over the last few months in connection with Oxford and Worthington and thought he was an OK boss, though nothing outstanding. He certainly didn’t fill Henry Christie’s shoes. But Jake didn’t hold that one against him. He wasn’t sure anyone could.

  ‘What’s the latest?’ Rik asked him.

  ‘On which bit?’

  ‘Your daughter? Henry?’ Rik said.

  ‘Both missing now,’ Jake stated. ‘My daughter should’ve been picked up by this shower of a taxi firm in Lancaster after school, but wasn’t, and I haven’t been able to speak to the firm. Henry came across from the Owl to speak to the owner, but he isn’t here now. No one’s here. Er … what are you doing here, by the way?’

  ‘It’s a circuitous story, and I’m not sure if the dots are connected yet.’

  Jake stared blankly at him, baffled by the words.

  Rik caught the look and said, ‘Anyway, I’m here, and I need to speak to Henry urgently about …’ He was going to say ‘the disappearance of girls’, but stopped short because Jake was clearly not listening.

  Jake had had a quick thought. He reached into the cab of the Land Rover for his torch, turned it on and flashed the beam across the concrete forecourt on to the dark stain he had seen when Rik arrived.

  Initially, he’d thought it was oil or diesel. Nothing unusual in that – there were several dark patches of both on the concrete – but there was also another patch of liquid, and it was neither of those two. He walked over to it and bounced on to his haunches with Rik at his shoulder, curious.

  ‘Fuck,’ Rik said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake agreed, standing stiffly back up.

  The two men looked at each other. Both knew what bloodstains looked like.

  ‘Could mean nothing,’ Rik said.

  Jake shook his head. ‘Too much of it not to mean something. Someone’s been hurt here.’

  ‘Let’s kick off with the premise that it does mean something,’ Rik said.

  Rik shuffled out his mobile phone and called Henry’s number. It went straight to voicemail again, so he called Alison at the Tawny Owl, and she told him Henry still was not back.

  ‘Right,’ Rik said decisively, ‘let’s kick a door in.’

  Jake attempted to force up the roller-shutter door, but it was impossible to move. Whilst he did this, Rik put his shoulder to the front door of the taxi office and found that it, too, was well locked and resolute.

  They looked at each other. Jake indicated for Rik to stand aside whilst he braced himself, raised his right foot and flat-footed the door hard, just under the lock. It rattled slightly at the frame, but, essentially, did not budge.

  He did the same again and got the same result.

  This door was not going to succumb to human strength.

  Jake paused, got his breath back, then looked sideways at the Land Rover, which had a towing ball fitted to the back bumper, protruding maybe eight or ten inches from the rear of the vehicle. He got in, reversed off the forecourt and swun
g it round to face away from the door, then lined it up, selected reverse and rammed his foot down. He wanted to hit the door with the tow-ball, but not cause damage to the building or the Land Rover.

  Rik watched, wondering – as superintendents do – how much this was going to cost. He winced as the tow bar connected with the door. Fortunately, it had the desired effect first time, and the door flew open.

  Jake pulled away, stopped and alighted, and the two cops entered the unlit unit.

  Rik found a bank of light switches and ran the side of his hand down them. The interior lights flickered on, one by one, lighting first the corridor, and then the garage on the other side of the viewing window, illuminating all the cars parked up therein.

  Both men stood at this window, looking into the garage from the corridor, made speechless by what they saw.

  The last car to have been driven in was a silver-grey Audi coupé which bore the marks, dents and scratches of having been ‘assaulted’.

  Henry’s car.

  SIXTEEN

  Henry Christie regained consciousness slowly and painfully. His skull was a cracked-up concoction of disorientation and swirling blackness, and for a fleeting moment he thought he was back in a deep, flooded tunnel. Yet, from somewhere, he could hear the sound of voices – two men – arguing.

  As his senses returned, the side of his head throbbing and pulsing from the blow delivered by the crowbar, he could feel the deep gouge of the cut it had caused, and even in the haze of nausea, he realized he was lucky to have survived such an assault. He had dealt with people who had died from receiving a single blow from such an instrument.

  He kept his eyes tightly closed. His head was as heavy as if it was filled with lead, and he could taste his own salty blood on his tongue. He tried to make sense of what was happening and what had happened.

  At that moment he knew only the answer to that last question.

  He recalled seeing the taxi parked on the forecourt, looking inside and seeing what looked like an iPhone in the rear footwell, then looking at the number plate and turning accusingly back to Overwall.