Big City Jacks

by Nick Oldham

  Henry could feel his heart changing up a gear, whilst his stomach seemed to contract. This was not a reassuring thing to hear. As he massaged his tired face again, his hands shook slightly as though his sugar levels were low.

  ‘If you tell the truth, you’ll go to prison for murder,’ he said harshly. ‘Is that what you want?’

  Henry’s mind came back to the present. He shivered apprehensively.

  ‘You OK?’ Jane Roscoe asked.

  ‘Somebody just walked over my grave.’ He saw Roscoe smirk.

  ‘How are you and the chief these days?’ she asked out of the blue.

  He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You and FB. Like that, aren’t you?’ She held up two crossed fingers.

  ‘Oh,’ Henry said dubiously, ‘haven’t seen or spoken to him in weeks.’

  ‘You and he reckon to dislike each other, but actually he looks after you, doesn’t he?’

  Henry’s mouth turned down at the corners. It was true to say that the relationship between him and the chief was a complex one. Henry often thought that Fanshaw-Bayley simply used Henry’s skills and abilities callously without any thought to the damage it did to Henry, just so long as a result came about. Having said that, Henry had some things to be grateful to FB for, recently in particular, so there was a two-way exchange, though much of the bias was tilted towards FB. Most lately FB had secured Henry’s return to work following suspension, but that in itself was now having repercussions which left Henry feeling a little numb.

  ‘I think we know each other well enough to call a spade a spade, don’t you?’ Roscoe pummelled on. Obviously she believed she had a right to say anything she wanted to Henry following the acrimonious end to their brief affair. Henry braced himself for something unpleasant. ‘Dave Anger wants rid of you from the SIO team.’ Henry sighed. So what’s new, he thought. ‘He’s come into the force and been given the job of running the team and he feels hampered by having you in it – someone he first met under very dubious circumstances, someone he suspects is not being quite straight with him. Not a good start, is it? He wants to get people in he knows and can trust.’

  ‘How many people can he know? He’s only just come into the force,’ said Henry crossly.

  ‘He knows people . . . me, for example. I’ve shown him how well I work and he wants me on the team. There’s others, too. Having people like you dumped on him gives him very little room to manoeuvre.’ She paused, then pounced. ‘Can I be blunt with you, Henry?’

  Henry sighed through his nostrils. ‘Would it make any difference if I said no?’

  ‘No.’

  He waited nervously.

  ‘This is just between you and me, Henry, and if you repeat any of it, I’ll deny it, OK?’ Their eyes locked at seventy mph on the M65. Henry had once thought Roscoe beautiful, but now to him her face seemed hard and callous. She had lost a lot of weight and her face had become thinner, chisel-like. ‘He’s out to get you and so am I . . . but actually all we want is for you to request a move . . . if you don’t, life will be very uncomfortable because we’ll keep digging and digging into this Wickson thing. We won’t let it drop . . . unless you ask for a transfer out.’

  Henry, jaw clamped tight, muscles in his face tense, turned his eyes back to the motorway and felt himself begin to waver.

  The chance came as Whitlock had planned. He had been wheeled in to see the duty solicitor in an interview room specifically reserved for such private consultations between client and brief. The room was not monitored by either CCTV or audio.

  He spent an hour in discussion, told the solicitor everything that had happened to him. In some ways that was good. A cathartic release, but finally the conversation was over.

  ‘Are you ready for the police to interview you now?’

  Whitlock nodded. ‘There is one thing . . . I don’t want to go back into the cell just yet . . . is there any way I could sit here for a while? It’s so depressing and claustrophobic, even with the door open. This isn’t much better, but at least it’s brighter.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right, but I do need to have a chat with the interviewing detectives first. You could be here for a good ten minutes.’

  ‘That’s OK . . . just as long as it isn’t a cell. It’s doing my head in.’

  ‘No probs.’ The solicitor pressed the attention button. After a minute the door opened and a civilian gaoler poked his head in.

  Karl Donaldson was allowed to listen to Detective Superintendent Brooks’s chat with the duty solicitor, together with the two other detectives who would actually be carrying out the interview with Whitlock.

  The solicitor did not give much away and the purpose of the interaction was more about setting ground rules than anything else. This was a very big job and everybody wanted to get it right. It took about ten minutes, then they were ready to proceed.

  They had been ensconced in one of the interview rooms just off the custody reception area. They emerged like rats out of a tunnel and headed towards the desk.

  Brooks said to Donaldson, ‘I want to get the initial interview done before I let you loose on the prisoner. We have the facility to watch interviews taking place, so you and me can sit back and watch my detectives talking to this guy for a while.’

  It was as good as it was going to get. Donaldson accepted it.

  At the custody desk, Brooks spoke to the sergeant. ‘We’re ready now, Colin.’

  The sergeant opened the custody record and made an entry in the log. He turned to the civilian gaoler and asked him to produce Whitlock from his cell.

  ‘He’s still in the solicitor’s room.’

  ‘What? Why? He should’ve gone back in a cell.’

  ‘The brief asked if it was OK if he could stay there,’ responded the gaoler petulantly.

  ‘And you agreed?’ The sergeant stared askance at the duty solicitor, who wilted slightly.

  ‘Er, yeah . . . didn’t seem to be a problem. The door is locked.’

  ‘Next time, cell, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Go get him.’

  Donaldson watched and listened to the exchange with interest. He knew that there was a move within the British police service to appoint civilian gaolers because they were cheaper to employ than constables. The problem was that, unlike cops, who were steeped in custody procedure and dealing with deceitful baddies, civilian gaolers tended to be rather naïve and trusting.

  The gaoler strolled sloppily down the short corridor to the solicitor’s room, swinging his keys. He inserted one, unlocked it, pushed.

  The door would not open.

  He pushed harder, a puzzled expression on his face, which turned worriedly towards the custody desk.

  The duty solicitor, Brooks, the interviewing officers and the custody sergeant were huddled in a chat-scrum and were unaware of the gaoler’s difficulty. Donaldson, however, had watched him all the way and seen the struggle to open the door. He pushed himself off the custody desk. ‘There’s something wrong down here.’ He hurried down the corridor. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can’t get the door open.’

  ‘It is unlocked – yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ snarled the gaoler.

  Donaldson pushed the door. It opened an inch, no more. He looked around the door frame and then stepped back, his foot slipping on something. A moment passed before he realized he had blood on his shoe, blood which was seeping underneath the door.

  Without further vacillation he placed his shoulder to the door and pushed hard, his feet slithering in the blood. Slowly the door opened, inch by inch. People gathered behind him. He pushed and the door finally opened wide enough to allow him entry, revealing exactly what Donaldson expected to see: Whitlock’s body hanging by the neck from the inner door handle, his wrists slashed up each arm.

  Donaldson twisted into the room, bending down to look at Whitlock, whose bloodshot eyes bulged, his tongue hanging thickly out of his mouth. The American knew even before he reached for a pu
lse that there was nothing that could be done for the long-distance lorry driver.

  Eleven

  ‘Superintendent Anger won’t be very pleased,’ Roscoe pointed out unnecessarily.

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me, but the fact of the matter is that this body is lying within our jurisdiction, so it’s our murder.’

  Henry spoke with an authority that cut Roscoe dead. She clammed up.

  Henry knew the area well from many years before when he had served in the Rossendale Valley. The quirk was that to get to Deeply Vale, you had to drive out of Lancashire into Greater Manchester near Bury in order to get back into Lancashire. Deeply Vale thrust out like a peninsula surrounded by the water of a massive Metropolitan area, and if true logic had been applied then the area should probably have been part of that urban sprawl, but it wasn’t. Where Henry was now standing was definitely on his patch, which meant he knew exactly where the body was lying.

  The reason why Henry knew it so well dated back to the early 1980s when the phenomenon of travelling hippies hit the country. It was a time when such groups of people would, during summer months, descend in droves on various locations, set up camps for weeks on end, and hold impromptu and illegal pop concerts and smoke a lot of hash. Deeply Vale was one of these locations. A peaceful, picturesque area, accessible only via rough farm tracks. Ideal, it might be argued, for such peace-and-love events, but not so great for local residents, councils and cops who had to clear up the mess.

  There had been boundary disputes in those days and it was during them that Henry got to know well what was and wasn’t in Lancashire.

  A couple of Greater Manchester detectives from Bury huddled near their car, deep in conversation and surrounded by cigarette smoke. Henry walked over to them and explained the situation. They couldn’t have left the scene any faster, so relieved were they that a ball-aching murder was not on their area. Henry watched the exit with a shake of the head, then spun round and surveyed the scene.

  By virtue of its openness it would be difficult to secure. It also pained him that quite a few pairs of boots and sets of tyres had been across the scene. But there was one thing that Henry knew well and he reminded himself of it at every murder he attended: you didn’t get a second chance at a crime scene. He would do all he could to protect it in order to secure and preserve any evidence to be had. That would be his first task.

  Time to get the ball rolling.

  Time zones meant that the Costa Blanca in Spain was one hour ahead of Britain.

  Carlos Mendoza had been up since dawn, having taken his favourite horse Flamenca out for an hour-long hack in the hills behind the winery, both returning hot and sweaty from the exertion. Mendoza handed the horse to a stable boy who led the beast away for food, water and grooming. Mendoza went into the cool house, showered, then made his way to the pool side where he swam thirty hard lengths before pulling himself out and letting his brown, muscled body dry itself in the early sunshine.

  Breakfast – black coffee and warm rolls – was brought to him by a maid. He ate alone at table by the pool, looking down at a view he loved.

  It was not the fact that from where his winery was situated he could see down across the coastal plain to the port of Torrevieja and beyond that to the shimmer of the Mediterranean. That was OK, yes. Pleasant, picturesque, yes. What really pleased Mendoza was the sight of dozens of huge cranes standing there in the distance, reminding him of the flamingos which could be found feeding in the salt pans further north, near Alicante. But, again, this was not what pleased him. What really made him smile was that cranes meant building sites, building sites meant new houses and new houses meant vast profit to him – eventually. Much of his money was tied up in the recent and unprecedented housing boom on the Costa, where prices had doubled in a year. Mendoza owned six large building sites which would become housing estates. He could not build them fast enough to feed the demand. He had even bought a hotel in Torrevieja in which he lodged prospective clients for high-pressure three-day inspection visits.

  Although the money was tied up, it was profit for little effort, like most of his enterprises, although the housing market was perhaps the most legitimate area he dabbled in.

  A noise made him glance round. He squinted against the sun as he watched his number two, his business director, emerge from the house flanked by two heavies.

  ‘Hola,’ Mendoza called with a little wave.

  The man – Lopez – nodded and approached his boss. He wore a wide-brimmed straw trilby which shaded his pale skin and thick pink lips. In his hand he carried a briefcase containing the day’s business, which he placed on the table. The two heavies who had accompanied him dropped on to sun loungers on the other side of the pool, out of earshot. One read a newspaper, another played with a GameBoy. ‘Another beautiful day,’ Lopez commented. He flipped open the case.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Lopez extracted some papers which he scanned quickly. ‘Legit first,’ he said. ‘Acquisition of land south of the town . . . some pressure needed to be applied.’ He smirked. ‘The pressure worked and the contracts were signed . . . and you need to sign, also.’

  Mendoza nodded.

  ‘Bulldozers will be clearing the site within three weeks.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  ‘Also the supermarket acquisition is going well . . . the present owner has seen the error of his ways . . .’ Lopez continued the briefing of his boss, who, he noticed, seemed only to be half-listening, slightly distracted. He continued, despite this. ‘Forty more en route to Zeebrugge,’ Lopez said, moving on to criminal matters. ‘That should gross four hundred thousand sterling . . . twenty crossed yesterday, together with the other merchandise . . . we haven’t heard about that yet . . . but the money should start filtering through soon.’

  ‘That is good . . . how is the cash flow?’

  ‘OK,’ Lopez said, but not with gusto.

  ‘You hesitate.’

  ‘There is a lot of money tied up in property. We are still borrowing. We need the drug money to help us out, otherwise certain people will become restless.’

  Mendoza held up a weary hand. ‘I know . . . but the omens are good, aren’t they?’

  Lopez nodded. ‘Si.’

  The maid brought out coffee and rolls for him and the two other guys.

  ‘I have been thinking,’ Mendoza said, ‘my mind has been wandering, as it often does . . . I was thinking about Verner again . . . I am still unsettled as to how he met his death . . . have we made any further inroads into that situation?’

  Lopez shifted on the pool-side chair and wished he hadn’t moved an inch. He cleared his throat, then wished he hadn’t done that either. Mendoza had noticed both things, things which betrayed inner tensions.

  ‘No, nothing yet. I have our contacts all over Europe probing and asking, but nothing has come out yet.’ Lopez screwed up his face.

  ‘Verner was a good operative,’ Mendoza said. He was so good that he had murdered over a dozen people on behalf of Mendoza and had been about to dispose of another – John Lloyd Wickson, an entrepreneur from the north of England who had tried to wriggle out of his obligations – when he himself had been assassinated by someone who remained, as yet, unidentified. ‘What concerns me,’ Mendoza said thoughtfully, ‘is that I do not know who could possibly have known Verner’s location on that night . . . it worries me, as you know.’

  Lopez felt his throat constrict.

  ‘Only you and I knew – isn’t that correct?’

  Lopez nodded.

  ‘But clearly someone else did too?’

  Lopez emitted a stuttery breath. ‘I think he may have got careless. He must have been followed for several weeks . . . one of our rivals, is my guess. I won’t rest until I find out who, you can trust me on that.’

  Mendoza fixed his second-in-command with a glare laced with acid. ‘When you find them, they must die, do you understand that?’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘Good . . . now, where were we?’


  With a hand which wobbled slightly, Lopez reached into the briefcase to extract more papers.

  Henry tutted as he glanced skywards and saw the clouds beginning to thicken and threaten rain. ‘Please don’t,’ he whispered, knowing that if a downpour came it would destroy evidence. He had already got specialists up to the scene: a team from the divisional operational support unit were already planning how they would get a fingertip search underway, spreading out from the body; CSIs were in attendance looking for tyre tracks and doing their usual stuff with the body; scientific support were there and the Home Office pathologist was en route. Lots of other people were coming too, not least Dave Anger and the detective inspector who had been on night duty regarding the domestic murder in Bacup; the chief constable had also intimated that he would be putting in an appearance at some stage, as well as the ACC Operations. Henry was also negotiating the numbers of detectives for the murder team and also a location from where the investigation could be run.

  There were many things to consider and Henry did not want to miss anything, especially as everything he did would be under the microscope.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ Jane Roscoe said, ‘you’ve got it all under control.’

  Henry regarded her cynically. Before they had embarked on their ill-fated affair, she had thought of him as one of the best detectives she had ever met. Now, it seemed, she thought he was an incompetent idiot. He was about to open his mouth and tell her something he would regret, but he bit his tongue – literally – to stop his mouth from spouting before his brain got into gear. Instead, he decided to spend a few minutes in deep thought. The last hour had been task, task, task, but now he needed to have a bit of cogitation.

  He gave Roscoe a wink and turned away from her, strolling back to where the body lay – using the now well-trodden, but carefully chosen and slightly circuitous route that had been decided everyone approaching the scene would use. This led Henry to the taped cordon which actually surrounded the immediate vicinity of the victim. This was an area that no one was allowed into, unless specifically authorized, the most protected area of all. Henry, even though in charge, did not cross this line. The fewer people the better was the best policy until everything forensically and scientifically had been done.