Screen of Deceit

by Nick Oldham

  Jack regarded him with a mix of sympathy and contempt. ‘I’d hazard a guess that this thing is way out of your league, bud. Take it from me, don’t go poking your nose into a very dangerous world where you’ll find yourself getting injured, or worse.’

  Mark spat on the ground. With bravado, he said, ‘I’m not frightened – and anyway, I know who I’m going to see.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jonny Sparks.’

  ‘Why him?’

  ‘Cos he’s been hangin’ around Beth and I know he deals drugs and I’ll bet he gave ’em to her.’

  Jack sighed and clicked his tongue. ‘Why didn’t you tell the cops this?’

  Mark shrugged. ‘Dunno. Something at the back of my mind stopped me. Maybe I knew it was my job to get him, but I don’t know why I didn’t say.’ He squinted at Jack. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jack said wearily. ‘Look, Mark, tell the cops, eh? That DCI left his card. Give him a bell. Tell him what you know. Let him do the dirty work.’

  ‘He won’t do anything. Cops’re rubbish.’

  ‘He seemed pretty sound to me, even though I’m not that impressed by his methods.’

  Mark shook his head. ‘No, it’s down to me. Whatever happens, I’m having words with Sparks and then, depending on what he tells me – or not – I’m going for the Crackman. He’s the one behind it all.’

  Jack looked at him as though he’d gone off his head. ‘All right then, who the hell is the Crackman?’

  ‘Nobody knows,’ Mark said mysteriously, ‘except that he’s a big drug dealer and brings misery and I’ll bet he supplied the drugs to Bethany. Yeah, one way or the other, even if Sparks doesn’t know anything, I’ll bet the Crackman is the one who supplied the supplier who supplied Bethany.’

  ‘Mark – listen to yourself. You’re talking rubbish. You’re a fourteen-year-old lad who feels bad. Just tell the cops what you know, then back off and leave it to them. Don’t do anything stupid.’ Jack stood up and faced his younger brother and placed his hands on his shoulders, looked into his eyes. ‘And don’t go around making wild accusations you can’t back up with evidence, either. You know I’m talking sense, don’t you?’

  Mark avoided Jack’s eyes and looked at the ground, then shrugged his hands off his shoulders.

  He had made his decision.

  It became all-consuming, the only thing he could think of. He had to find out who had supplied the drugs to Bethany. As he lay on his bed in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, his brain raced like an F1 Ferrari. Not that he was making any great attempt to get his head down. He didn’t want to sleep because he believed he would have a nightmare and he knew exactly what that nightmare would be: Bethany on the mortuary slab being cut open and examined by some white-coated doctor who made sick jokes while he sliced her apart and ripped out her heart.

  That he could not face, even in a dream.

  He stood up, crossed to the window through which he had seen Bethany coming home, Jonny Sparks snogging her, touching her up. Mark’s top lip curled at the thought of Sparks’s hands on his sister’s body … the sister who had gone off the rails, but who had not deserved to die such an awful death.

  He didn’t even remember falling asleep. Next thing he knew he stirred and his clock told him it was ten in the morning and he had missed both his paper round and the start of school. But he didn’t care about either. He couldn’t be bothered. The thought of them made him feel sick and he knew he didn’t have to explain anything to either of them, the newsagent or his teachers.

  He dressed quickly and, without even washing himself or brushing his teeth, or putting on clean clothes, or underwear, he left the house – which was empty now. His mother had disappeared, to where he had not a clue, and nor did he care either. She hadn’t even hugged him once yesterday, so caught up was she in her own histrionics. As far as he was concerned, she could get lost. He had no time for her, would survive without her.

  Dragging his bike out of the hallway, down the front steps, he mounted up and pedalled furiously in the direction of the sea front. He arrived sweating and tired, suddenly extremely hungry, realizing he hadn’t eaten for over twenty-four hours. His arms and legs were dithery and weak and he needed some sustenance. He cruised hopefully to Tony’s Burger Bar, but it was too early to be open, so he rode around the back and secreted his bike behind some big wheelie bins, covered it with flattened cardboard boxes and set off on foot into town.

  His wandering was aimless, his head still swirling with thoughts of Bethany and revenge for her death. He was hoping to bump into Jonny Sparks and beat a confession out of him, but didn’t know where to start. Jonny lived somewhere in North Shore and hung around the arcades when he wasn’t pushing drugs up on Shoreside. It would be more luck than anything if Mark found him.

  But one thing Mark believed he had was luck … and hunger. Deep and empty, his guts roared for something to fill them.

  Mark strolled into Boots the Chemist. They sold sandwiches and drinks. Just like any other shopper, he picked up a basket and meandered to the sandwich display cabinet. BLT – bacon, lettuce and tomato – sounded excellent. A three pack. On nice, thick brown bread. It went into the basket, as did a bottle of Fanta.

  He queued up at a till behind a few people.

  He did not know why he was doing this. He couldn’t afford the food because he had no money on him.

  He was going to steal it.

  His mouth went dry. Heart started pounding. Breathing went dithery. He got nearer the till.

  Mark had never stolen anything in his life before, not that he knew of, anyway. But he didn’t care, because nothing mattered anymore.

  His eyes constantly looked around.

  He spotted a grey-uniformed security guard, arms folded, chatting to someone further back in the store.

  The queue moved on a couple of steps.

  He weighed up his escape – basically out through the front door, which was an automatic sliding one about four metres further on than the till. Timing was going to be everything. Courage, too. And fitness.

  Hunger and the lack of dosh made the theft OK in his eyes. Boots made millions. They wouldn’t miss a couple or three quid for a BLT and a Fanta. All his firmly held beliefs about stealing something from someone else suddenly didn’t seem to matter any more.

  One person was ahead of him now, a woman buying perfume.

  Mark’s eyes narrowed. He was still sweating. That, added to the lack of a wash, and he knew he hummed badly. He could even smell himself. Fear was also a factor. This was his first offence. Should he dump the stuff and just walk out the store now? It was an option. The woman in front paid for her perfume. Now, if he could just time it right …

  He stepped up to the till.

  What did it matter if he stole?

  He smiled at the young Asian lady on the checkout.

  She smiled back, but then her nostrils flared slightly. Could she smell his intent? A brief shadow of suspicion clouded her face.

  ‘Mornin’,’ Mark said.

  ‘Hello, love.’

  He glanced at the woman who had bought the perfume. She was the key to his escape. She was looking at a display of Boots catalogues, stacked just inside the door.

  Mark emptied his basket and tossed it into the stack by the checkout. He saw the uniformed guard, his face turned in Mark’s direction, but still chatting.

  The cashier ran his two items across the barcode scanner. They beeped and Mark saw the price displayed.

  BLT: £2.35

  Fanta: 99p

  Total £3.34

  My very first theft, costed up right in front of my eyes, he thought wildly. Big money!

  The cashier slid the goods into a flimsy carrier bag. That made things easier.

  ‘Three thirty-four, please.’

  Mark took the carrier bag. Act natural, he thought … his right hand slipped into his pocket as though he was searching for the change. Through the corner of his eye
s he clocked the perfume-buying woman, who was approaching the doors, which hissed open for her.

  Spot on.

  Mark gave the cashier an arrogant grin, then legged it.

  Without warning he ran and as the doors opened fully, he danced around the woman who had unwittingly become a player in his crime, and raced off down the street, tearing away from the scene, the wind howling in his face, no idea if anyone had even shouted a thing. He did not look back, just dived into the crowds of shoppers, kept low, kept running. Stolen property in his grip and a surging feeling of euphoria pulsating through him as the adrenalin in his system was released, giving him extra power, more speed.

  He dodged through the streets like an urchin in a Charles Dickens novel. Cutting down by Woolworth’s on to the prom and, without pausing, he dashed across both lanes of traffic, instinctively avoiding being clobbered by cars, and ran to the railings at the sea wall where he stopped, panting heavily. He turned to face the town – expecting to see an army of burly security guards on his trail, closing in for the arrest. There was no one.

  He had committed his first crime and he had escaped.

  Holding up two fingers at the town, he yelled, ‘Stuff the lot of you.’

  Ten

  And that, Henry Christie thought, puts a whole different perspective on the matter – just that one name, the Crackman.

  He was driving back to Blackpool Police Station after having spoken to the mixed bag that was the Carter family, having told them what the result of the post-mortem on Bethany had been, at least as much as he knew.

  And Mark had uttered those magic words under his breath, ‘The Crackman,’ catching Henry sharply.

  He hadn’t pursued the remark, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to and as he drove back from Shoreside to the nick he reassessed just how he had got to this point and mulled over how things would progress from hereon.

  Henry Christie truly believed he had been born to do the job of senior investigating officer – in other words investigating sudden, unexpected, violent or unusual deaths. Death kept him going. He thrived on it and – if there were a word that described his feelings better he would have used it – relished the prospect of tackling the biggest challenge a detective could face: hunting down and bringing to justice someone who had taken another’s life.

  The ultimate job for a detective: catching killers.

  Unfortunately his job, his vocation, his raison d’être, had been cruelly taken away from him by higher-ups in the organization that he’d had the temerity to upset.

  The fact he’d slept with the wife of his boss, a detective chief superintendent, and the resulting furore may very well have hastened Henry’s departure from the Force Major Incident Team (FMIT) and into the backwaters of an office-bound desk job at headquarters about as far away from the front line as could be. Even though Henry had committed the dirty deed many years earlier, even before the lady in question had become the guy’s wife, this did not seem to count for much in his defence … which meant Henry had been busted from FMIT kicking and screaming, threatening legal action and grievance and employment tribunals until he was blue in the face, but to no avail. When he realized he was fighting a losing battle – once the organization has got it in for you, you might as well wave the white flag – he decided to keep a low profile and take whatever scraps were offered and make the best of a bad job.

  He did manage to get promoted to chief inspector on the promise he would keep his mouth shut, but he did refuse to relinquish the title of detective, even if he was technically no longer one. He knew this was pretty sad, but hey, he thought, I like being called a detective.

  And, being the stubborn ass that he was, and not wanting to sit on an ever-expanding backside in a badly-lit office, he did his best to stay in touch with the sharp end of policing as best he could. He therefore ensured that his name was on as many call-out duty rotas as possible and provided cover for the divisionally based DCIs when necessary, making him quite a popular fellow with one or two people. He also volunteered for just about anything else if it meant getting out of his fishbowl office; Rik Dean’s ill-fated Operation Nimrod was an example of this.

  He knew he was like a dog around the supper table, waiting for throwaways, but he was prepared to take what came his way, good or bad, deal with it as best he could and therefore walk around with a bit of self-esteem, knowing he hadn’t been entirely defeated by the powers that be.

  Henry had been at home when he received the call about Bethany Carter’s death by drugs overdose.

  He had awarded himself a late start that morning but only because he had slept through his alarm, as had Kate, and when he eventually surfaced he found he had the biggest cranium-bashing hangover he’d experienced in a long, long while.

  He and Kate had had a particularly heavy night down at the Tram and Tower, their local pub. There had been a two-piece band on, all backing tracks and digital music machines, but they’d played a good selection of ’60s and ’70s music which Henry appreciated, being stuck in the musical time warp that he was. After their second set of the night, Henry – who’d already had too much to drink – introduced himself, bought them a round of drinks, then the rest was history.

  Following a 2 a.m. lock-in by Ken, the tame publican, Henry and Kate had staggered the mile home and after a Jack Daniel’s night cap and a box of microwave chips each, they fell into bed in a drunken stupor which failed to be infiltrated by the alarm.

  Hence the late start.

  He dragged himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed just after nine, groaning when he saw the time, but then shrugging. Nobody would miss him for an hour or two today. There was nothing urgent on his desk, no pieces of paper that needed to be rushed anywhere, no meetings, and no pressing e-mails, so he decided to roll in whenever he got there.

  Kate yanked the duvet over her head with a warning snort and Henry, depressed that his job seemed nothing more than an administrator’s position, staggered to the shower, scratching the parts that men are prone to scratch in the mornings.

  It was as he was drying himself and half-returning to the sober world that his mobile phone rang.

  ‘You’re not in your office!’ a voice accused him.

  ‘No, mate, I’m not.’ Henry recognized Rik Dean’s voice immediately. It was nearly three months since he’d been shot and Henry knew he was already back at work, office-bound for the time being.

  ‘So where the hell are you? On a tryst? The chief constable wants to know.’

  ‘Tell the chief constable to go and frig himself.’

  Rik laughed. ‘No, seriously, where are you?’

  ‘Butt naked, still in bed, half-pissed, fighting crapulence – and that’s a hangover, not the shits, by the way.’

  ‘I knew that! So, still in Blackpool?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Even better … fancy covering a job for us?’

  Henry squinted, felt a little nauseous. ‘What sort of job?’

  ‘Drug OD. We’re strapped out here, nobody to cover … unless your office job is too tying, that is?’

  ‘Name, address.’ Henry picked up a pen next to the pad he kept bedside for such eventualities.

  ‘Who was that?’ Kate enquired, her voice muffled from underneath the bedclothes.

  ‘Just work. They want me to cover a suspected drug overdose down on Shoreside. Some girl … hell, don’t feel like it,’ he admitted.

  However, twenty-five minutes later, spruced up, sharp looking, breath smelling fresh and the headache held more or less at bay by a double dose of Nurofen, Henry was walking up the path leading to Mark Carter’s front door. He slotted back into his SIO role like pulling on a pair of comfy driving gloves.

  He kept it simple, telling them he was an SIO from Blackpool Police Station. No point in complicating matters for people already under stress. He managed the scene, talked to the family, then arranged for the body to be taken to the local mortuary, hoping he had hidden just how badly his hang
over was affecting him. He had come close to snapping when the elder brother, know-it-all Jack, had a dig at him for questioning the kid, Mark, especially after he’d been so sympathetic to the lad.

  Henry had been proud of himself that he hadn’t actually locked Jack up, because he had severely pissed Henry off, but he’d held back and ridden Jack’s tirade and been mildly amused when Mark had actually leapt to his, Henry’s, defence.

  Whilst waiting for the body removers, Henry had noticed Jack’s Porsche Cayenne parked a little way up the road. Something nagged at the detective about the car, but he couldn’t exactly say why. He’d simply filed it on the back burner and got on with the task of following the body down to the mortuary.

  In over twenty-seven years of policing, Henry Christie had seen many bad things and although he had become thick-skinned to most, the death of a youngster, natural or otherwise, always gave him pause for thought.

  When he looked down at the pitifully thin and wasted, waxy cadaver of Bethany Carter, he shook his head sadly and thought it was such a terrible waste. So unfair to die at such a young age. Then he thanked his lucky stars that his own daughters, both older than Bethany, had managed to avoid the drug scene in the town that was Blackpool. This was due to good mothering rather than his wayward fathering, he knew that, and was ever grateful to Kate for the way in which she had steered the girls along the straight and narrow.

  He shivered at the prospect of what might have been, then got on with the job. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

  With the assistance of the pasty-faced and rather creepy mortuary attendant, Henry stripped Bethany, bagged and tagged her clothing, then inspected the body. He took hold of one arm and eased it outwards, exposing her inner elbow.

  His mouth became a tight line and his nostrils dilated as he nodded sagely to himself. He placed her arm back and looked at the soft, fleshy parts at the backs of her knees, nodding to himself again at the sight of the scabbed-over needle marks he found there.

  A junkie.

  He drew a white sheet over her head and nodded to Dr Death, the mortuary assistant: She could go into the chiller now.