by Nick Oldham
Henry upped his pace to his car. ‘Do exactly what we’ve decided and what she wanted, if it comes to it. The hospital know.’
‘Let her die?’ she sobbed.
‘Yes,’ Henry said firmly, an answer he truly did not want to give. He wanted his mother to live for ever and his instinct was that the doctors should do everything in their power to save her, but it wasn’t the right thing. He almost vomited on the word.
‘Oh God, Henry.’
‘I know, I know, sweetheart.’
‘Is Rik with you?’
‘He’s at a crime scene.’
‘Can he come, please? I think I need him.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. . are the girls there?’
‘No.’
‘Phone them, get them there, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘OK.’
Henry hung up and approached his car, noticing there was a missed call on his phone which must have landed at the same time as he talked to Lisa. He got into the Audi and started the engine to heat it up before returning the call,
He sat back in the comfortable driver’s seat and waited for the connection, again noticing that Janine’s van was still parked — she must have gone to the loo or something, maybe to wash and freshen up. He cricked his neck and peered up through the windscreen to see the air ambulance up above, manoeuvring over the big H of the helicopter landing pad about a hundred metres from the entrance to A amp;E. Standing on the edge of the circular pad were the consultant and the nurse, ready to greet the crew.
‘Jerry — you called?’
‘Yeah,’ the DC said gruffly. ‘Another public holiday.’
‘I haven’t called you out — yet.’
‘No — but I know what’s happened and you were going to ruin another day off, weren’t you, so I got in first. .’
‘And ruined your own day, all by yourself?’
‘Something like that. But you were going to call me, weren’t you?’
‘Hard to say,’ Henry teased. ‘This could just be a murder/suicide and a lot of things will be sorted by the deaths, unless Freddy lives, that is. . So why call me? You should’ve gone out for the day, made yourself unavailable.’
Henry’s mind wasn’t really engaged in the conversation. He was thinking about his mother, how long it would take him to get to Blackpool. Would she still be alive when he got there? How would he deal with it all? His eyes wandered lazily from the always spectacular arrival of a helicopter, landing with just a little bounce, back to the hospital, where he thought he saw Janine Cromer entering the A amp;E department through the sliding doors.
Tope was saying, ‘I don’t know if this is of any interest, but I’m telling you anyway. . just some things I got back late yesterday, was going to tell you tomorrow when we all rolled back in.’
He started to explain.
Less than thirty seconds later Henry leapt out of his car and sprinted fast and hard to the hospital entrance, a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach as his arms and legs pumped. His vision was blurred from the exertion and his hearing distorted by the whump-whump of the copter rotor blades.
The automatic sliding doors opened with agonizing slowness, but then he ran through the reception foyer and into the A amp;E department, his eyes jerking left at the reaction of the startled receptionist and down towards the treatment room in which Freddy Cromer was located.
He swerved into the room.
The nurse who had been treating Freddy was on her knees, clutching the back of her head, and Henry was too late.
The drips had been ripped out of Freddy’s hands.
The sticky pads that connected the wires from the machines monitoring his vital signs were torn off and dangled uselessly by the bed.
The soft pillow that had been used to smother and suffocate the comatose Freddy lay diagonally across his chest.
Henry bent by the nurse, and she glanced up at him and gasped at the pain in her head. ‘Somebody hit me,’ she said and swooned. Henry caught her, twisted her round so she was sitting on her backside and pulled her back to the wall, where he propped her up.
‘Did you see who?’
‘No.’
He went to Freddy and checked for a pulse in his wrist. Nothing. Then he pushed his thumb and forefinger into the soft flesh underneath the jaw and felt for the jugular vein, but could find no pulse there either.
This time Freddy was dead.
‘Shit.’
Henry spun out of the cubicle and stood in the corridor. Which way?
He chose left and ran, coming to a T-junction in the corridor, his head jerking both ways. Seeing an arrow that pointed towards an exit to the left, he ran in that direction, knowing that Freddy’s killer had maybe a minute, maybe ninety seconds on him. Not long, but plenty long enough to make an escape.
He set off and passed an emergency exit which was still secure.
The corridor ahead of him had a ninety-degree turn in it. He rounded the corner, skittering on the polished floor, pushing himself off the wall and using his momentum to power on.
At the next turn Janine was fifty metres ahead of him, hurrying but not running down a deserted corridor. She must have sensed or heard him. She stopped, turned and faced him for the briefest of moments, then hared off down a corridor to the left. Henry upped his pace and as he came around the corner, he found he had her trapped — the corridor she had shot into was a dead end with a fire door which had halted her. She was rattling the bar desperately, unable to get it to open.
Henry stopped, caught his breath. ‘Janine,’ he called.
She stopped instantly, stood upright, revolved slowly. ‘Henry,’ she whispered, defeat in her voice.
‘That’s far enough, love,’ he said and walked towards her, his chest rising and falling. He made a calming gesture with his hands, palms down, patting thin air. ‘You’re going nowhere now.’
He took four more steps, then her right hand slid into her shoulder bag and emerged gripping a small revolver, snub-nosed, six rounds.
Henry stopped. ‘Put it down.’
She shook her head.
‘Let’s talk.’
‘What’s to say?’ There was that hostile, unforgiving look in her eyes again.
‘All sorts of things.’ Henry’s hands still made the calming gesture, but they were now rigid. His eyes flickered between the gun and her face as he spoke. ‘Come on, talk to me, Janine.’
‘I have nothing to say, Henry.’
‘Really? Nothing?’
‘Not to you.’
‘Not even about Terry Cromer not being your real father?’
The gun came up slightly. It was in her right hand, supported by her left, which was cupped underneath it, steadying it. It was pointed at the centre of Henry’s chest.
‘How do you know?’
‘DNA. . you were arrested a few years back in Manchester, weren’t you? You’re not the sweet innocent you make yourself out to be, are you? Doing a bit of dealing, I believe. Anyway, your DNA was taken. I took Freddy’s DNA last week, if you recall, and we already had Terry’s on record. One of my staff fast-tracked a comparison.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I told him to investigate your background. I’m a cop — that’s what we do. I mean — the more I thought about it — a member of the Cromer family being a solicitor! Christ — you’ve never been near a university, have you? Just what have you been doing?’
The gun wavered. Just a little. Henry saw her forefinger tighten on the trigger. He was still ten metres away from her, and he knew if he had any sense he should be reversing not advancing. Let her go. Let her run. That was the intelligent thing to do.
‘You are Freddy’s daughter, aren’t you? Not Terry’s. I saw the resemblance a couple of times, just thought it was a general family thing, but it’s striking in some lights. Like I said,’ he shrugged, ‘I never thought about it. But you don’t look anything like Terry when I do think about it.’
‘Well spo
tted.’
‘And I saw the way you were with Freddy.’
‘And how was that, Henry? Do tell.’
‘Loving,’ he said truthfully, and saw the word hit the mark — at least for a second. Then she refocused her ire.
There was a door on either side of her down this dead-end corridor. She edged sideways to the door on her left and tried the handle. The door opened, so she pushed it wide and glanced quickly inside before stepping back and jiggling the gun.
‘In here, Henry.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when I shoot you in here, it’ll take longer to find you and that can only be good for me. Not that anyone knows what I did, or saw me. I hit that nurse from behind.’
‘You might be surprised.’
‘Get in,’ she ordered him, waving the gun, keeping him covered, keeping her distance.
‘If I don’t?’ he challenged her.
‘Then you’ll die in a dead-end corridor as opposed to a storeroom.’
‘You’re clearly not the best of shots, though, are you? I assume you put the gun to Freddy’s head?’
‘I did — but he pulled the trigger. It just sort of slipped, which is why the bullet didn’t go straight through his ear, which it should have done. IN! I won’t say it again, Henry.’
Henry, still with his hands out flat, but not so much in a calming gesture now, more a ‘please don’t shoot’ one — slid past her and into the room, which was simply a store with stacks of chairs. He walked in, turning to face her as she came in behind him, closed the door and leaned against it, the gun up, aimed at his body.
He swallowed, amazed at how effective adrenalin was at drying up throats. He folded his arms and tried to look casual and unafraid, when in reality he felt as though someone had rammed a broomstick up his arse, he was so tense and terrified. He wondered if it had come to this: a thirty-odd year career as a cop ending in either a corridor or a storeroom.
Thing was, he knew for certain it would end here if Janine was truly as ruthless as she had to be in order to leave no witnesses behind.
‘Let me tell you something, Henry,’ she said rapidly. ‘This isn’t confession time. I’m not going to tell you about my freakin’ childhood, the abuse, the terror my mother had to endure because of one stupid mistake she made — getting shagged by Freddy.’
‘Sounds like a confession to me,’ Henry observed.
‘Don’t be a smart arse — doesn’t suit you.’
‘But you must have a tale to tell,’ Henry said. He needed her to talk, he needed her to blab, to get emotional, to drop her guard. ‘All that stuff that drove you to self-harm. . yes, I saw the scars,’ he said, responding to the surprise in her face. ‘And I know the pain that drives someone to mutilate their own body. .’
‘You know fuck all, Henry,’ she growled in rage. Her breath came in short gasps. ‘You know nothing about shitty family secrets and having a mother who suffered at the hands of a. .’ She uttered the worst word in the English language. Her face contorted into a hideous mask of anger and pain. Tears cascaded down her face. ‘You know nothing,’ she said weakly. ‘Nothing about loving a man who couldn’t be called Dad or taking revenge with him for the wrongs he suffered as a kid — and as a grown-up. Yeah, yeah,’ she sneered, ‘we killed them all one by one. Each year on the day they almost burned my father alive. . and the last one, the pinnacle, was always going to be Terry. My dad — Terry,’ she almost spat. Her face glistened with flowing tears. ‘Not my fucking dad, actually. . trouble was a gang war kinda screwed it up. . so we improvised. Just sad we didn’t get the chance to make him eat feathers. That would’ve been a real trump.’
‘But why kill Freddy? Or try to kill him?’
‘Because he was a nutter. . isn’t that what you called him? The medical term? Didn’t you snigger at him? Nutter! You arrogant, fucking, uncaring bastard, Henry Christie. Phh!’ Her voice had risen almost out of control, but now she calmed herself, though Henry saw the gun was shaking with her fury. ‘Freddy couldn’t have lived with what he’d done. . to the others, maybe, but not to Terry, because really he loved him. He was his brother, but he had to kill him. . a story as old as the hills.’
‘And you manipulated him into doing just that, didn’t you? I should have realized as soon as I smelled weed on you,’ he said, recalling the aroma he had sniffed when she had hugged him earlier. ‘It was obvious you’d been in the factory.’
‘He wanted to do it. So we took Terry some food and a gun and killed the fucker where he was hiding out from you. . saved you a job, didn’t it? Saved the taxpayer a lot of money. . least it would’ve if Freddy had died too, like he was supposed to have done.’
‘Whoa.’ Henry held up his right hand. He gave a short laugh. ‘I think you’re the nutter here, Janine. Freddy was the most sane man in the world compared to you. You’re a sick, twisted individual.’
‘And guess what? This sick, twisted individual is about to take over the family business. How’s about that!’
‘Oh, now it starts to make sense.’
‘That cannabis factory? There’s ten more of them. Four million quid in the making. And they’re mine.’ She gave him a rueful smile. ‘I bided my time, then I struck. And by the way — all the shit you cleared out for me this week, cheers. Good policing. Some good arrests. Real dross.’
‘So there is a family business after all and you just want the money.’
‘I want everything, actually.’ She winked conspiratorially at him and his heart skipped a beat, because he knew then that he had lost. He had somehow hoped that he could talk this young woman down, drive a wedge into her emotions and make her crack, fall apart and sink down the wall, sobbing her heart out, seeing the error of her ways, overwhelmed by the enormity of her awful life. That was not going to happen, Henry knew. She was mad, and she was determined that no one would be a witness to her crime — and she would kill Henry right here, right now.
‘Just so you know. . I’m going to pay a little visit to the security office before I leave. . just to check the CCTV cameras. Wouldn’t like to get caught, would I?’ She gave a playful, childish shrug and a wrinkle of her lovely nose at the exact moment Henry’s mobile phone rang.
Her eyes flickered down, momentarily distracted — and Henry launched himself at her.
In his mind he knew exactly where he intended to take her. In the midriff. It would be a bone-crushing, organ-compressing tackle, underneath the gun, slamming her back against the door and using his shoulder to heave upwards, at the same time pinning her right arm against the wall. He had it all worked out in that micro-second. Visualized the point of impact, driving the breath out of her lungs, crushing and disarming her.
He dived like the rugby player he had been many years before.
Difference was that when he was nineteen or twenty, he hadn’t weighed almost fifteen stone and had been fit, agile and super-fast. Thirty plus years ahead, too much spread, too much weight, had slowed him right down. For his age he knew he was pretty fit, could still run three miles a day, visited the gym regularly. . but it was all relative. In fact he was older and slower than his brain led him to believe.
Janine reacted instantly.
Whilst Henry was in mid-air, she pulled the trigger. In the confines of the small room the sound of the discharge was ear-shatteringly loud, accompanied by a spectacular muzzle flash and a bad recoil that jerked her hand up.
The bullet still connected, hitting Henry with such force that he felt like he’d slammed into a brick wall. The impact stopped him, spiralled him off course, threw him back and he landed face down in an untidy heap, almost at the point from where he’d jumped.
There was no pain. Just a huge, spreading numbness radiating out from somewhere around his neck and right shoulder. He tried to move but his limbs didn’t respond to any of his brain’s demands. With a great effort of will he pushed upwards, but then his hands slipped in something thick and oily and warm and went from under him, and his face hit the fl
oor in the wetness.
With a surge of panic he realized he was lying in his own blood and that he had been shot.
His eyes were open. He saw Janine’s feet. His mouth popped like a stranded fish and he tried to speak.
She was standing over him.
More immense effort. He moved his head slightly and looked up through the corner of his eye to see her pointing the gun down at his face. The black circle of the muzzle was maybe four inches away from him. Her finger curled around the trigger. The cylinder started to revolve. Henry could just about focus on the tips of the bullets seated in their chambers, fitted snugly like mini-missiles.
It rotated.
The hammer went backwards. The trigger was pulled. Henry didn’t even have the energy to wince, to prepare himself for the impact into his brain. There was a metallic clunk as the firing pin smacked down onto a dud. It didn’t fire. In anger, she yanked the trigger back twice more — both duds.
‘Shitty fucking ammo,’ she said.
Henry’s eyes closed slowly. His face relaxed into the spreading pool of his own blood. He heard footsteps, a door closing. . then blackness.
NINETEEN
Because his mother had not been particularly religious, the funeral service was conducted by a humanist preacher who had spent a couple of hours in the company of Henry, Lisa and Henry’s two daughters a couple of days before. It had been good to talk about his mother, and the preacher had been skilled at getting the four of them to open up. Henry actually enjoyed the process, which was something of a catharsis, recalling not only the significant events in his mother’s life (such as his twenty-four-hour birth, which she often described as excruciating) but also more trivial, funnier ones. From their chat, the preacher had put together the speech he was to make at the crematorium.
His mother’s body had been brought to his house in Blackpool before the funeral cortege rolled from there out to a crematorium near Kirkham. It was only a small convoy; first the hearse, then a long funeral limousine carrying Henry, Lisa, Leanne and Jenny, and behind that another limousine with Rik and Alison and her step-daughter Ginny, plus Henry’s old friend from the FBI, Karl Donaldson, and his wife Karen. A few other cars followed, carrying a couple of distant relatives Henry didn’t even know existed and a few of his mother’s friends. There were not many: the old dear had proudly outlived most of her contemporaries and most of those still drawing breath didn’t have the physical capability to get there.