by Nick Oldham
‘ That was completely different,’ protested Henry eventually.
‘ Are those the actions of a man who is a cool customer?’ Graham was insistent.
‘ Completely and totally different…’
‘ Did you or did you not assault a TV reporter?’
‘ Yes, but-’
‘ Thank you, officer,’ said Graham victoriously.
Henry found himself to be shaking and grinding his teeth. He gripped the edge of the witness-box to stop himself falling over. His breathing was shallow. His nostrils flared. Suddenly this big courtroom was beginning to swallow him up. He wanted to flee. Leap over the side of the box and run. Run for his life. He was, again, showing exactly how uncool he was in stressful situations. His eyes roved round the room madly. To the Judge. Across the faces of the jurors. To Hinksman, who smirked. Back to Graham, a man he hated more than anyone else at that moment in time.
Get a fucking grip on yourself, Henry, he told himself. Get a fucking grip. Pull yourself together. Don’t let this little shit win.
‘ I need to tell you about that particular situation,’ he pleaded. He looked at the Crown prosecutor for support.
The man, who had been squirming until that moment, got the message and stood up reluctantly. He addressed the Judge. ‘Your Honour, I feel that Sergeant Christie should be allowed to tell the court about this if he so wishes… After all, he did not bring the subject up. It was my learned friend here.’
Graham said quickly, ‘Your Honour, the situation itself is not actually relevant, merely the witness’s reaction to it.’ The last thing he wanted was Henry going for the sympathy bid.
‘ No,’ said the Judge with finality, ‘the Crown is quite correct, Mr Graham. The officer should be allowed to expand a little if he so wishes.’
She nodded towards Henry who said, ‘Thank you, Your Honour.’ The prosecutor sat down, hoping Henry wasn’t going to make a mess of this, like he had done so far.
Joe Kovaks rubbed his eyes. He had been up all night, patrolling the streets of Miami, searching, but not finding. It was almost 7 a.m., five hours behind British time.
He was parked in a plain FBI sedan in the Lemon City district, north of Miami, killing the last few minutes of his tour of duty.
His temporary partner, Tommo, dozed next to him in the passenger seat, snoring gently. Sue had been reassigned unwillingly to other duties — some massive white-collar fraud enquiry where she could use her accountancy skills to their best advantage — and Tommo had been teamed up with Kovaks pending the return of Donaldson from England.
The sun was climbing up through the sky. It was going to be another hot day. Soon Kovaks would be going home — how he had almost come to hate going home! — and he would take Chrissy to hospital where she would undergo treatment for most of the day, some medical, mostly psychiatric. He would go back to the apartment and sleep while she was there, collecting her later in the day.
Kovaks yawned and reviewed the night’s work.
Another fucking total waste of time. He’d combed the city for what seemed the millionth time, but he couldn’t find her, the woman who was going to bring Corelli to justice…
He and Tommo had hassled countless prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers, because he was sure that it was amongst these people she would be found: selling her body, what was left of it, and that once gorgeous mouth so that she could get pumped-up with enough drugs to see her through the next day.
But he couldn’t fucking find her.
Kovaks was teetering towards the edge now.
Tommo opened his eyes and squinted sideways at Kovaks. ‘You gonna answer that fuckin’ radio or not?’ he croaked.
‘ Eh?’ Kovaks had been so deep in his thoughts that he did not hear the radio operator shouting his call sign. He fumbled the handset. ‘Yeah, receivin’. Go ahead.’
‘ Yeah, Joe,’ began the weary operator. ‘Can you be making your way to the Jackson Memorial Hospital, Emergency Room?’
Puzzled, Kovaks said, ‘Sure, but I’m off-duty at seven.’
‘ Well,’ she drawled, ‘it’s up to you, Joe, but that little lady you been seeking for the past few days has just turned up there in the back of an ambulance — drugs OD.’
‘ On my way,’ shouted Kovaks, throwing the handset down, the wheels of the car spinning almost before he’d finished speaking.
They were back on Henry’s side following his graphic and emotional account of the M6 bombing and its aftermath in the river and on its banks. It was the first time Henry had related the whole story in full to anyone. He found it to be a cathartic, cleansing experience. Suddenly he felt as though a great burden had been lifted from his soul. He’d tried his best, but the situation had been against him. And now he could accept that. Stood in that courtroom, the eyes of the world on him, he had bared his soul — and it felt great.
He looked at the jury. Two women were actually crying.
Then he looked at Hinksman.
Again their eyes locked. But this time Henry felt in no way intimidated by him. I am a brave man, he told Hinksman silently. You are a violent man, but at heart you must be a coward. I am better than you.
Graham coughed. He desperately wanted to get the whole thing back on course.
‘ Now if I may bring you back to the night in question,’ he said, not wasting time, not allowing the jury to reflect. He went straight for the jugular. ‘We’ve established that you were in a dark alley, being assaulted by a number of people. You were on your back, having passed out briefly. What happened next?’
Henry’s ordeal was by no means over.
‘ One of them had a gun to my face — my own gun, actually — and he was weighing up whether or not he should "pop" me.’
‘ “ Pop” you, officer?’
‘ Pull the trigger, kill me,’ explained Henry. ‘Before he could make a decision he himself was dead with his brains blown out, mostly all over me.’
‘ Who shot him?’
‘ A man who came down the alley.’
‘ Do you see that man in court today?’
‘ Yes,’ said Henry. He pointed. ‘Him. Your client.’
‘ Now, come come,’ tutted Graham disapprovingly. ‘How can you possibly make that assumption? A dark alley. No lighting. A beating. You cannot say for sure that it was my client in the alley, can you? You cannot say for sure that he killed those people, can you?’
Henry hesitated. Then he said, ‘I am sure it was.’ No way was he going to be swayed.
‘ Did you see his face?’
‘ To a degree,’ said Henry. ‘Enough to identify him.’
‘ What happened after “this man” shot those people in the alley?’ ‘He turned and walked away.’
‘ Did he speak to you?’
‘ No, but he spoke to one of the men before he shot him. He said a few words in an American accent.’
Graham chose to ignore that. ‘Did he turn back at all?’
‘ Briefly, at the end of the alley. He glanced back and I saw his face again — this time under street lighting. It was definitely your client.’
‘ And how long did you see his face for? One second? Two? Three?’
‘ About a second,’ admitted Henry.
‘ About a second… and that gave you enough time to make a positive identification of Mr Hinksman?’
‘ Yes.’
‘ How far away was he from you?’
‘ About fifty feet.’
‘ And you were still laid on your back, is that correct?’
‘ Yes,’ said Henry.
Graham shook his head. ‘What happened next?’
‘ Hinksman turned and walked away towards the Tower. I decided to go after him.’
‘ So you lost sight of him.’
‘ Yes.’
‘ For how long?’
‘ Until I caught up with him on the promenade.’
‘ Which was how long?’
‘ A minute, ninety seconds.’
�
� Is it not just possible that the man you caught up with was not the same man who killed all those people in the alley?’
‘ It was the same man — Hinksman,’ said Henry firmly.
‘ But you lost sight of that man. How could you possibly say it was the same man?’
‘ I recognised him, and apart from anything else, he was wearing the same clothing.’
Graham did not pursue Henry’s encounter on the promenade with Hinksman. Too many people could back him up. Instead he concentrated on discrediting the identification of Hinksman in the alley. He knew that much of the evidence against Hinksman was good and that he would probably get convicted of most of the murders of which he was accused. Graham saw it as his job to do two things; get some of them reduced to manslaughter and get him off some of the charges. He had a strong case against Henry’s testimony, as the sergeant well knew. There was no one to back up Henry’s story because Ralphie’s girlfriend had disappeared without trace (probably dressed in concrete, Henry believed), and therefore everything rested on Henry’s eyewitness account, backed up by forensic and ballistic evidence which proved that the gun in Hinksman’s possession at the time of his arrest was the one which killed Ralphie and his pals. The difficulty for the prosecution was in proving that Hinksman had actually pulled the trigger. If Henry couldn’t convince the jury, then Hinksman would be cleared of four murder charges. Henry did not want this to happen.
Henry spent a further thirty minutes in the witness-box under cross-examination by Graham.
In the end Graham said huffily, ‘It is obvious, officer, that you have decided to stick to your story no matter what, so I have no further questions for you.’ Angrily he sat down, unhappy that he could not get Henry to budge — and not terribly pleased that he had been unable to carry out Hinksman’s instructions and drag Henry’s character through the mud.
Three hours after stepping into the box, Henry stepped out, feeling weak and hungry. The court had adjourned for lunch.
‘ Well done, pal,’ said Donaldson. He’d been watching from the rear of the court.
‘ I feel completely drained,’ said Henry. ‘Lunch?’
‘ Afraid not. Karen and I have an appointment in Manchester at three. We’ll be leaving now.’
‘ What’s that for?’
‘ Can’t tell you,’ said Donaldson, tapping his nose.
‘ A mega-concoction of pills, anything she could lay her hands on, I’d say,’ the nurse told Joe Kovaks. ‘You name it, they were in there. Pill cocktail, could’ve been lethal if she’d’ve had ‘em in her any longer. Got here just in time. We pumped her stomach out real good. Doc says no harm done.’
‘ So she’ll be OK?’
‘ Yep. She’s tired now and she’ll need a few days in here, but she’ll be fine, or at least as fine as a junkie can get.’
They turned into the ward. ‘Third bed on the left.’
‘ Thanks, nurse,’ Kovaks said.
He walked quietly down the ward. Curtains were drawn around the third bed along. He found the gap and stepped into the enclosed world. Kovaks gasped when he saw her. She looked very ill, all skin and bone and she seemed to be barely breathing. In fact he thought she was dead at first, but a twitch in one of her fingers told him otherwise. A drip ran into one of her skinny arms, the tube of which was not much less in circumference than the arm itself.
Kovaks sat next to the bed. His chair scraped on the floor.
She looked ninety years old. Kovaks knew she was nineteen. He shook his head sadly, remembering the feisty girl who used to give him as good as she got whenever he visited her to try and arrest Whisper when he’d been wanted on warrant. She hadn’t taken any shit from anyone back then. Now she didn’t even look capable of taking a shit.
Yes, Corelli had a whole lot to answer for, he thought grimly.
‘ Laura,’ Kovaks whispered.
Her eyelids flickered, but stayed closed.
‘ Laura,’ he said more forcefully. He touched her arm. It felt cold and clammy.
This time her eyes opened. Kovaks noted they were dead eyes, without depth or hope. She squinted sideways at him, not instantly recognising him, but when she did she sneered.
Kovaks looked at her mouth. Once thick-lipped and sensuous, even he had imagined the pleasure of a blow job with her. Now her lips formed a thin, hard line.
‘ What do you want?’ she whispered tiredly.
‘ I heard you were in. I wanted to see how you were.’
‘ Well, now you’ve seen,’ she said, ‘so fuck off and leave me.’ Her eyes closed wearily. She breathed out and her whole being seemed to deflate as though she’d breathed out her soul.
‘ There’s only one reason you’re here,’ Kovaks said, ‘and that’s because of Corelli. He hasn’t only fucked up your life, you know? He’s fucked up hundreds, thousands. We need to talk, Laura, maybe not just at this minute, but soon when you’re feeling better. We have to stitch that bastard up… please, Laura.’
She opened her eyes again. ‘I’ve lost my baby because of him. She’s been taken away from me, did you know?’
‘ No, I didn’t,’ he lied.
‘ She was all I had left after they killed Whisper. Yeah, sure, I’ll talk…’ A tear rolled down her face and dripped onto the pillow. ‘He can’t do anything to me now. If he killed me he’d be doing me a favour… so what do I have to lose? But not now, not now. I feel so sleepy. I need to sleep…’
Chapter Twenty-Two
The town of Garstang lies midway between Lancaster and Preston on the A6. A couple of miles north of Garstang is a layby. At 7.30 p.m. that same Monday evening, Dave August drove sedately into the layby in his own car and parked up. He switched the engine off, unlocked all the doors and rested his hands on top of the steering wheel so they were visible — as instructed.
He stared dead ahead. Afraid.
The digital figures on his watch moved to 7.35.
Briefly he considered starting up, slamming the car into gear and speeding away. But suddenly the passenger door was wrenched open and a man seemed to fall from nowhere into the seat next to August. The Chief Constable jumped. He hadn’t seen anyone coming. No one had pulled up in a car. The man must have sneaked up from the hedge.
August faced the intruder, and didn’t know whether to laugh or scream: the man was wearing an Oliver Hardy mask. In the end he did neither because a heavy, dangerous-looking revolver was pointing straight at his belly. Behind the mask August could see the eyes and the deep red slit of a mouth which, when it moved, sickened him.
The voice was hollow, distorted. ‘Drive north.’ The man obviously had no time for small talk. ‘Keep your speed to forty.’
‘ Look-’ August began plaintively.
‘ NO! Don’t talk — just drive,’ he snapped. ‘Or some cunt’ll find a dead Chief Constable in a layby. Now fuckin’ drive.’
A few seconds later August and his companion were travelling the A6 in the direction of Lancaster.
Just before they reached Galgate, south of Lancaster, the man ordered, ‘Turn in here.’
August nodded. His hands gripping the steering wheel were weak and perspiring. He pulled into a car park by the side of the road, overlooking the Lancaster canal. A large number of pleasure cruisers were moored by a quay below them, but there was no one around. It was very quiet, tranquil.
The man dangled something in front of August’s face. It was a small hessian bag with a drawstring fastener. ‘Put this over your head.’
He obeyed meekly, slipping the rough-textured material over his head, down over his face, blocking out all light. It was harsh and unpleasant against his skin. The man pulled the drawstring tight and fastened it with a knot.
A hand touched August’s shoulder. He was told to swing his legs out of the car and stand up. As he rose unsteadily he caught his head on the doorframe but managed to struggle to his feet.
Another vehicle drew up.
He was manhandled into the back of this vehicle —
a Ford Transit van — and lying on his side in the foetal position, was frisked by heavy hands. The back doors of the van were closed and the van drove away. He had orders not to move, otherwise he would be thrown out.
August tried to keep track of his journey.
He could tell that they turned right out of the car park, so they were heading back towards Garstang. After a couple of minutes the van slowed and went left. This was the motorway junction. If there was another left turn they would be heading north up the M6. There wasn’t. August could tell from the acceleration of the van and the way it leaned that they were looping around the junction to travel south, back towards Preston.
They were on the motorway for about fifteen minutes — continuous, straight-line, high-speed travel. No one spoke on the journey, yet August sensed there were two men.
The van slowed and came off the motorway.
August was fairly certain this was the Preston north turn-off. Soon after, he lost his bearings as they hit Preston proper, and ten minutes later, they stopped.
He heard some doors slide back.
The van lurched and stopped again. The engine was switched off.
They had driven into a building of some sort.
In his blackness he heard hollow footsteps. The building doors sliding back again. Murmuring voices. A laugh. Then the back doors of the van were opened. He was heaved out and dragged for a few metres, then forced down onto his knees, then onto all fours and then completely onto his front. The ground was cold and hard. Concrete.
Soon, he thought, I will see them. This is their weak time. He was wrong.
A voice said, ‘I am going to remove the bag from your head, do you understand? Because I am a civilised man and we are going to have a conversation. However, when I do this you will look at the ground, your nose will be pressed to the floor and you will keep your eyes closed. Do you understand?
‘ Yes.’
‘ I will hold a double-barrelled shotgun to the back of your neck.’ The voice was male with a Scottish accent and sounded as though it was being reasonable. ‘If you open your eyes and try to look round, or do anything silly or make a sudden move, I’ll pull both triggers and blow your head off your shoulders. There will be nothing left of your head. Do you understand?’