Nightmare City hc-2

by Nick Oldham

  He had fucked up everything.

  The chance of a settled, normal life, with a woman who loved him and had done so for years. And he had been unaware of it, so obsessed had he been with his macho gangster image, his drink, drugs and other women.

  In the space of a couple of days he’d been given the opportunity of a real life, but instead he’d reacted to a difficult situation like the Rider of old, which Isa could not handle.

  Straight to Violence. Do not pass Go.

  A wave crashed against the sea wall and broke over him, drenching his soul with its icy, salty blobs.

  He hardly noticed.

  He wanted to drown. To throw himself into the dangerous water.

  But he didn’t have the courage even to do that.

  ‘ It’s good to be working with you again, Henry — honestly.’

  Siobhan was sitting in the passenger seat whilst Henry drove the NWOCS Vectra. His face was stony and unresponsive. He couldn’t believe that Morton was making him work with her again. Humiliating him, rubbing it in.

  ‘ I was really disappointed when you didn’t fuck me, you know. I was really looking forward to it. I’d have come as soon as you got your dick in me, then lots of times after that. You missed a real treat. I’m so easy to satisfy.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘All these problems and you didn’t even get a jump for your trouble. Poor Henry.’

  They had reached their destination. Henry drew the car into the side of the road, stopped and kept the engine running. The windscreen wipers were on double speed to cope with the downpour. He kept his hands firmly on the steering wheel, rotated his head slowly and glared down his nose at her.

  ‘ I’d just like you to know that the decision not to screw you was made because I’m a married man and your supervisor. There is another reason why I didn’t even entertain shoving my clean cock into you. I was frightened of catching something nasty.’

  She slapped him very hard across the face.

  Or at least she tried to. This time he saw it coming. His hand whipped up and grabbed her wrist before she connected. His face displayed all the anger and repulsion he felt towards this woman.

  She whimpered, ‘Let go, you bastard.’

  He flung her arm away from him.

  ‘ Don’t ever tempt me to hit you, Siobhan. I don’t feel like I’ve got very much more to lose at the moment, and it’d give me a great deal of pleasure. A charge of assault on top of everything else wouldn’t matter a rat’s fart to me.’

  He glanced into the rearview mirror. A double-crewed police car pulled up behind. Their assistance was here.

  It was time to make an arrest.

  Donaldson drove north up the Promenade towards Fleetwood. Karen had slipped the statements out of the envelope. On one knee she balanced Luton’s photocopies and on the other the typed statements Henry had appropriated. She read them all carefully and compared them.

  ‘ This is incredible, Karl,’ she said nervously. ‘The statements have been changed, but it’s fairly subtle and well done. I’d say that this DS Tattersall knew what he was going to do when he took the statement initially, so that the subsequent changes wouldn’t be easily apparent. When these come to be presented at court in six, eight, ten months’ time, whoever made them won’t know any different. They’ll just go along with what has been written. Particularly if the prosecutor is on the payroll. This really worries me. If they’ve done it for this one, how many more times have they done it? How many more people have been wrongly convicted?’

  ‘ How many more people have been killed?’

  ‘ Do you think they killed Sergeant Driffield?’

  ‘ It all points to it, from what Henry says.’

  ‘ We need to tell someone.’

  ‘ The problem, as I see it, darlin’, is that we don’t know who to tell. How far does this cancer spread? If we talk to the wrong people, we put ourselves in jeopardy and Henry too. Let’s just take it step by step and see what happens. Now, get that street map out, babe. I don’t know my way around Fleetwood.’

  He checked his rearview and his eyes narrowed.

  Hands thrust into his jacket pocket, thumbs overhanging, a very wet and bedraggled John Rider came round the corner. He had been walking against the driving rain, head down, not looking ahead. As he turned into the road where his flat was situated, the force of the rain lessened and the wind dropped because of the high buildings on either side.

  He looked up.

  Two uniformed cops, Henry Christie and a woman cop (he assumed) were standing in a huddle on the pavement.

  Their faces lifted simultaneously and saw Rider. Christie pointed at him and shouted something that was lost in the rain. Rider did not hesitate. His finely honed survival skills clicked into place.

  He ran.

  Three of the four officers gave chase.

  Henry let them go. He climbed back into the car and flicked the heater fan onto full blast. Normally he would have been quite happy to join the chase — but nothing was normal any more. He decided to do it from the comfort of a vehicle. No point getting too wet. After all, it was only an NWOCS job.

  He executed a leisurely three-point turn and went in the general direction of the disappearing officers.

  It soon became apparent they had lost Rider.

  Other patrols were being called to the area to assist in the search. Over the radio, Siobhan called Henry and asked to be picked up. Henry guffawed. Some hope. Maybe when the bitch was thoroughly wet through and completely pissed off. He switched his radio off.

  Revenge of some sort and quite sweet in a childish way.

  Yet even though he had a desire in him not to make any effort, it was an interesting scenario.

  John Rider, Henry had been told by Morton, was suspected of putting two bullets into the brain of a no-hoper gangster called Munrow who had died whilst getting a new suit in Debenhams, Preston. This interested Henry because of his previous dealings with Rider — whom he did not like very much. The man might have been involved in the gorilla-shooting in the zoo and the wounding of a man in the leg — and these things kicked Henry’s arse into gear. Even if Rider had not popped Munrow it would give Henry a chance to speak to him at length about these other matters.

  Fuck! Henry cursed his conscientiousness. Once a detective, always a detective.

  He combed the streets for John Rider…

  … Who had panicked when he saw the cops outside his flat.

  He sprinted into an alley, skidded on the cobblestones and pushed himself as hard as he had ever done, with only one thought in mind: evasion.

  He concentrated on putting distance between him and his pursuers, knowing that the first couple of minutes were usually the critical ones. If they hadn’t caught you by then, your chances were pretty good.

  His other problem was that he didn’t have the fitness or stamina to sustain himself over more than two minutes of hard running. Within the first hundred metres he started to feel a tightness in his chest as his lungs worked at a pace not experienced for probably twenty years.

  Now he was over forty, unfit, with too much charcoal in his lungs and alcohol deposits in his veins.

  He emerged out of the alley, did a right down the next street, crossed over and zigged out of sight into another alleyway. A quick look over his shoulder before he disappeared told him no cops in sight.

  This alley ran behind a series of guest-houses, emerging into Waterloo Road, the main shopping street in South Shore, running at right-angles to the Promenade.

  Dodging the cars, he crossed over and took the next right onto Bond Street. Still no cops behind.

  He began to feel confident, though his body was sending out warning signals, such as: ‘Please stop, you’re hurting me!’ and: ‘Knackered body, can’t run any further.’

  He tried to ignore them and jogged as far as the junction with Dean Street into which he turned left, then left again into Bright Street where he had to stop. He leaned on the gable end of a guest-house, gasping f
or air, his lungs desperate for a rest. He was about to heave up and vomit, he was sure. His head throbbed with the exertion and pain shot through it like a lightning bolt. His vision swam.

  He bent forwards and put the palms of his hand on his knees.

  He vomited.

  A rush of stomach contents, mostly bile, surged through his mouth and erupted onto the wet pavement below.

  He wiped his mouth, aware vaguely of a car drawing up nearby.

  Hands still on his thighs he looked up, spitting the last remnants of sick out of his mouth. His face grimaced in disgust as he watched the figure of Henry Christie saunter up to him. A pair of rigid handcuffs were swinging tauntingly on the index finger of the cop’s right hand.

  Rider tried to run again. His legs refused to carry him.

  Without a word, Henry clamped the first cuff onto Rider’s right wrist. He twisted the cuffs in a well-practised movement. Rider screamed but was powerless to resist Henry who wrenched his right arm up behind his back, flattened the luckless Rider against the wall, grabbed his other arm and well and truly handcuffed him, his hands ‘stacked’ behind his back, one above the other. Rider’s cheek was pressed against the stone wall. A trickle of sick ran out of the corner of his mouth.

  Rider eyed Henry, who smiled, gave a short nod and said, ‘You’re under arrest. Suspicion of murder.’ He tried to recite the caution, but made a hash of the wording despite the practise. Rider understood its sense and made no reply.

  After a cursory body search, Henry directed Rider into the back of the Vectra, after ensuring the child locks were operative. He climbed into the driver’s seat.

  ‘ Bit of a wet one,’ he commented.

  Rider did not respond, but slumped sideways across the seat, panting. Henry shrugged and reached for his PR.

  Siobhan stood waiting on a street corner as wet as any person could be.

  She pulled the passenger door open and shouted, ‘Where the fuck did you go to, you bastard!’ On the last word she saw Rider in the back seat.

  Meekly she got in. ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘ Coupla streets away.’

  ‘ How did you know where to look?’

  ‘ I’m a detective. It’s my job.’

  From that moment on, all the way back to the police station, not another word was spoken in the car.

  ‘ I did my bit. You’ve got him, now it’s down to you.’

  ‘ Not quite so fast, Henry.’ Morton grabbed his sleeve.

  ‘ Look, you asked me to assist in the arrest. I did. Now leave me out of anything else. Take him to Preston and let them deal with it.’

  ‘ Preston aren’t dealing with him. We are, and I want you to interview him.’

  ‘ Why me? I know nothing about the incident and, to be truthful, I don’t even know why he’s been arrested. What evidence is there against him?’

  ‘ There is none — just reasonable suspicion. That’s all you need for an arrest, isn’t it?’

  ‘ Where’s the reasonable suspicion then?’

  ‘ He was tied up with Munrow in some sort of underworld deal. They are believed to have fallen out and bang bang, Munrow’s dead. Rider is prime suspect. And you’re dealing with it.’

  Morton waved a file of papers in front of Henry’s face. ‘Here’s all the details of the crime itself, including ballistic reports. What I want you to do is interview him and then charge him with murder.’

  ‘ Simple, eh? Just like that. Where’s the fucking evidence?’

  ‘ That’s down to you, Henry.’

  ‘ Meaning?’

  ‘ If you can’t find real evidence, then stitch him up. Fabricate evidence, get a conviction. Do whatever is needed to get this man a life sentence. This will show us that you are one hundred per cent with us now. Do this for me, do it well, and I’ll consider letting you off the hook. If you don’t do it properly, then the first thing that’ll happen is that your darling wife will get a phone callanonymously — to say you’ve raped a female officer. That female officer will then lodge a formal complaint against you. Then all that other shit will hit the fan. It’s your choice, Henry, but it would probably be in your best interests to fit Rider up. Then you have my word we’ll part amicably.’

  Henry went slowly down to the custody office. It was a painful journey, not only because of the soreness of his body (his chest and ear were hurting dreadfully) — but because of the dead weight on his shoulders.

  How had they done this in such a short space of time?

  How had he fallen for it so easily?

  Fool.

  Yet, in retrospect, there had been nothing tangible to suspect. Odd twinges, niggles, some bad feelings, yes. Other than that, nothing. A bit like a bogus gas official knocking on your door. You’re not completely happy, but you let him in, he leaves and then you find your life savings have gone.

  Happens all the time. People get conned. Even the ones who would never imagine in a million years they could be a victim of such a crime.

  And all because he had rattled a few cages without even realising there were tigers inside them. The NWOCS — and Tony Morton in particular had close ties going back many years with Harry McNamara. It was obvious that he was being protected. And now the ‘Conroy connection’ had been revealed by Karl Donaldson and those photographs taken by MI5. A proper little triumvirate. Conroy, McNamara and Morton. All protecting one another, no doubt. All in each other’s pockets.

  And FB too.

  Henry shivered at the thought.

  Frightening.

  He reached the custody office and booked himself a set of tapes out for the interview. Eric Taylor walked into the room from the cell corridor.

  ‘ Why?’ whispered Henry.

  ‘ To help you, of course.’ Taylor moved in close to Henry so they were within earshot only of each other.

  ‘ How much did they pay you?’

  ‘ Don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘ How much did they fucking well bribe you to alter that custody record, Eric?’

  ‘ Don’t you mean — how much did YOU bribe me?’

  A PC walked in, whistling. The two men drew apart from each other, a look of loathing on Henry’s face. ‘I want to interview Rider,’ he said, now businesslike. ‘I’ve booked a set of tapes out.’

  Taylor flicked open the current custody record binder and went to Rider’s.

  ‘ He says he wants someone telling he’s here and he wants to make a phone call.’

  ‘ He can have what the hell he wants,’ Henry said.

  ‘ Sign here.’ Taylor’s forefinger pointed to the space in Rider’s record where Henry had to sign to take responsibility for the prisoner. ‘Last time I gave a prisoner to you, you kicked him in the balls,’ Taylor said.

  ‘ Allegedly.’

  They found the first address in Fleetwood. Donaldson parked outside the house, which was a semi-detached council house.

  ‘ What’ve we got here, honey?’

  She had the relevant statements on her knees. ‘This man witnessed the robbery. He was in the shop when the gunmen burst in and fired the shotgun into the ceiling. He gave a pretty good account and some detailed descriptions which have been watered down on the amended statement.’

  ‘ How are we gonna approach him? He ain’t gonna like it a whole bunch when he finds out his statement’s been tampered with.’

  ‘ Let’s just play it by ear.’

  She kissed him on the cheek and alighted from the Jeep.

  Rider sat up straight when he heard the key in the lock of his cell door. The gaoler, a young PC with less than two years’ service, beckoned him. ‘You’re going to be interviewed now.’

  Rider half-thought of being awkward. The idea of a few hairy-assed coppers laying into him with feet and fists, however, did not appeal to him. Ten, fifteen years before, they would have had to drag him from the cell screaming and kicking and he would have taken great delight in whacking a few of the boys in blue in the process. Times had changed. H
e wasn’t the hard man he once was and the events of the last few days had proved that, even though he had killed a man. It hadn’t been easy to do and as soon as the trigger had been pulled he had regretted it.

  Not that he was about to bare his soul to whoever interviewed him. They would get nothing from him.

  Rider stood up wearily.

  The PC stepped to one side, allowed him past and followed him down the cell corridor.

  He was taken to an interview room where Henry Christie was waiting for him.

  Rider sat down on the chair on the opposite side of the table to Henry. At one end of the table, next to the wall, was the double tape machine. Stuck to the wall above it was the mike. The sealed tapes and various documents were on the table.

  The gaoler left the room on a nod from Henry.

  Henry opened his mouth to speak, but closed it when the door reopened and Siobhan Robson entered the room. She sat down next to Henry with a smile. ‘Just want to see how a professional operates,’ she whispered to him.

  Henry sighed. He unpacked the tapes and slotted them into the machine.

  Obviously they were going to make sure he did as he was told.

  The witness was good.

  Karen began by showing him a copy of the ‘amended’ statement and asked him to read it carefully. He obliged. When he had finished he looked up at them and said, ‘It might be my bloody name on top, but I didn’t say that.’ He was very precise and pointed out the discrepancies.

  She showed him Degsy’s copy then. He glanced through it quickly and declared, ‘That one’s mine.’

  She and Donaldson exchanged a glance of quiet triumph.

  ‘ What’s this all about? Why has it been changed?’ the witness asked.

  ‘ We’re not sure,’ Karen answered. ‘But would you mind making a further statement, telling what’s just gone on now? I know it’s a real imposition and it’ll take a while to do, but we think it’s very important.’