Hidden Witness hc-15

by Nick Oldham

  He rested his head on the pillow and tried to stay awake.

  Then he heard the footsteps and realized he’d been asleep for hours. Someone knocked on the front door of the house and he heard a voice shout through the letter box, ‘Answer the door, Mark Carter, or you’re fuckin’ dead.’

  ‘I’ve had a CSI do a quick comparison of the impression in the dog pooh with the sole of Rory’s trainer and his assessment is that it’s a match — but we’ll need a footwear analyst to confirm it. Being sorted.’

  Henry looked at Alex Bent, a man who’d had about the same amount of sleep as himself in the last thirty-six hours. None. ‘I think we’re on to a winner, then. So let’s assume Rory was at the scene of the old man’s murder.’

  ‘And got whacked for what he saw?’

  ‘It’s a hypothesis,’ Henry said, his mind churning. ‘But it doesn’t explain why the old man might have smacked Rory across the head with his cane — if that’s what happened — and we won’t actually make that connection scientifically until at least the end of business today, and only then if we’re lucky.’ The walking stick, samples of skin, hair and blood from Rory’s head had already been sent by police motorcyclist to the forensic science laboratory.

  The two detectives were in an office just off the major incident room at Blackpool police station from where the investigation would be run. It was eight thirty a.m. Henry’s quickie had been unromantically but successfully executed to the satisfaction of both parties, and now he and Bent were in the process of pulling things together for later briefings, tasking and press releases. Henry wanted a chance to review everything beforehand so the murder squad, which was now being cobbled together, could hit the ground running. Henry had a feeling this would be a fast running investigation.

  Already the dry-wipe board was full of lines of enquiry and several sheets of flip-chart paper were being filled up.

  ‘How are we doing with the chip shop owner?’

  ‘No joy yet, boss.’

  Henry nodded, frustrated. He scanned the board, muttering and murmuring to himself as he read through the scribble that would later be translated into something more meaningful for others to understand.

  ‘Have we missed anything?’ he asked Bent, who was also checking the board.

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Good — let’s grab a brew, then head up to comms.’

  ‘You scared the crap out of me, sneaking around like that.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing in there?’

  ‘Long story,’ Mark said sheepishly. ‘Anyway, what’re you after?’

  ‘I was just taking the chance of asking if you were coming to school today, for a change. You know, school? That place you seem to be avoiding these days.’

  ‘I’m probably going to give it a miss.’

  His friend Bradley sighed despairingly. ‘Mark, you’re really going to get yourself in deep crap.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘And what’re you so jumpy about?’

  ‘Nothing — just get lost, will you, Brad?’

  Instantly, Mark regretted his snappy words as an expression of deep hurt came on to Bradley’s face. He and Brad had been mates since junior school, but they had seen less and less of each other since Mark’s sister had died of an overdose. At that time Mark had been a half-decent student with plans to get himself out of Blackpool and find a proper career. However, the subsequent conviction of his older brother for numerous drug trafficking offences, and the implication he could have supplied the drugs cocktail that killed their sister, had knocked Mark off balance. Without a mother to guide him either — she was too wrapped up in her own life, work, drink and a succession of men, to be bothered about Mark — he had almost lost the will to live. He’d certainly lost the will to keep trying. Nothing seemed important to him any more, and after missing school on several occasions and suffering no consequences, he started to drift aimlessly. It wasn’t long before he hooked up with known dead-leg Rory Costain.

  It had been downhill from there.

  Bradley hadn’t let him go easily, but the lure of a lifestyle with no authority figures beckoned Mark with a seductive crooked finger. Mark’s girlfriend, Katie, one of the brightest young lasses at school, also got to the end of her tether with him and cast him adrift, especially after spotting him in an amusement arcade snogging a well known slapper.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Bradley said indignantly. ‘But you’re not a mate any more, you’re just a self-centred, uncaring, selfish git.’

  Mark squared up to him.

  ‘What’re you gonna do, beat me up? You’re getting a bit of a reputation as a hard nut, aren’t you?’

  ‘I will if you don’t go,’ Mark warned, tilting his face aggressively at Bradley.

  The two lads stared at each other until Bradley finally shook his head sadly and said, ‘You’ve got no real friends any more. You just shit on everybody. I’m still here, but not for much longer.’

  Bradley spun away and stalked off without a backward glance.

  ‘Have you found the body in the car park behind Preston Road shops?’

  ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’

  ‘You heard — send a patrol to that car park.’

  Henry, Alex Bent and the comms room inspector were listening, for the third time, to the recording of the telephone call alerting the police to Rory’s murder. It had been downloaded on to a disc and they were in the inspector’s office off the main communications room in the station. There was also a written transcript of the short call, including the time it was made and its duration.

  Henry rubbed his eyes and the three officers listened again, all of them shaking their heads.

  ‘I don’t recognize the voice, but it’s obviously that of a young lad, maybe the one who’d been with Rory,’ Bent said.

  Henry nodded. ‘I feel like I know the voice, or I might just be kidding myself.’ He sighed and looked at the comms inspector. ‘Thanks for this,’ he said, taking the CD from the player.

  ‘No probs.’

  Henry handed him a sheet of paper on which he’d scribbled out a basic circulation regarding the shootings, which was for the information of the force, other forces and other agencies that might be interested. It was headed, ‘NOT FOR PRESS RELEASE.’ All it contained was the basic details of the two murders and little else. No speculation that they might be linked, even though this was implicit by virtue of the fact that both were referred to in the same message. Even though he was sure there was a connection, he wasn’t going to admit that just yet. SIO’s had to keep open minds otherwise they screwed up. The message also contained a description of the old man, including a reference to the old bullet wound in his side and asked for suggestions as to identity, giving a number to call.

  ‘Can you circulate that as normal?’ he asked the inspector, then stood to leave but stopped in his tracks, took the message back. He thought for a moment, then scribbled something else on the sheet and then handed it back to the inspector adding, ‘Can you also send this person a copy of the circulation by email — including a few actual photos of the dead man?’

  ‘Sure, boss.’

  Henry looked at Bent. ‘Shall we go back and work the crime scenes?’

  Scowling, Mark had jerked a middle finger up at Bradley’s retreating back, then retrieved his filthy quilt and pillow from the coal-hole, which he rolled up and dumped in the kitchen.

  He was famished but could not be bothered making anything for himself, and the thought of a fast food breakfast was very appealing. He hadn’t eaten anything for over twelve hours — since his last burger, in fact — as his intended supper had been whacked into the face of last night’s attacker. He had some money left over from his little crime spree and the McDonald’s on Preston New Road was just about walkable.

  He had a quick shower and shave — bum-fluff was sprouting all over his top lip and chin these days and annoyed him intensely — got changed and headed out acro
ss the estate, taking all the back routes to keep out of sight.

  It would have been easy to avoid Psycho Alley and the car park, but morbid curiosity drew him in that direction. He needed to know if it hadn’t all been a sick dream, because that’s what it felt like.

  The fact that the alley was cordoned off with crime scene tape was Mark’s first indication that it definitely wasn’t his imagination. The barrier meant he had to come at the car park from a different direction, and he emerged on to it from the main road to see a huge amount of police activity and public gawping going on. Cops were crawling everywhere, literally in some cases, as a team of overall-clad officers did a fingertip search in a line across the car park. The whole area had been cordoned off. A huge tent had been erected over the exact spot Rory had been shot. Mark wondered if the body was still there, or had it been removed? People in white forensic suits entered and left the tent, clasping samples.

  Mark’s empty guts wound sickeningly. He closed his eyes momentarily and thought himself back to the town centre alley, seeing the old man get mown down, then seeing the face of the gunman as he turned to look at Mark and Rory, startled. It had been night-time and the face had only been illuminated by orange street lights, but Mark had seen him clearly with his young, sharp eyes and was certain that if he came face to face with him again, he would be able to ID him.

  Good enough reason to do a runner, Mark thought. He spun away, almost stepping into the path of a car pulling up at the front of the shops.

  ‘Stupid kid,’ Alex Bent said, slamming on the brakes.

  ‘Eh — what?’ Henry glanced up from the paperwork he had been studying, only catching a fleeting glimpse of the back of the youth who’d nearly been flattened by Bent.

  The moment was gone and forgotten as the two detectives got out of the battered ‘Danny’, the old slang term for a plain car used by detectives — in this case an ageing Ford Focus that looked as if it had never seen better days.

  They walked to the front door of the chip shop and rattled the handle.

  ‘Need to find the owners,’ Henry said unnecessarily.

  Next-but-one along was a newsagent owned by an Asian, Mr Aziz. He was lounging at the door of his shop. Henry and Bent asked him a few pertinent questions but he didn’t know anything about the incident or the chip shop owner, who was new. Aziz thought he lived somewhere in Preston.

  Henry thanked him and went to the scene out back.

  He intended to have half an hour here, then head across to the other murder scene in town and start to build up any connections between the two.

  Suddenly, Mark was no longer hungry. Suddenly, he was as paranoid as hell as the thought hit him, the same one he’d had last night, that murderers always go back to the scenes of their wrongdoing. At least that’s what they said in TV cop dramas. They liked to gloat, enjoyed the power and Mark realized he was stupid to go anywhere near the scene again. If the murderer was there, milling about with the onlookers, keeping his head down, Mark was a sitting duck.

  Hence his thoughtless step in front of a car, almost resulting in him getting flattened.

  And then the glimpse of the driver, who he did not recognize, and the even quicker look at the passenger who he did recognize and never wanted to see again.

  The horrible feeling was that if Henry Christie was running this case, then it would only be a matter of time before he and Mark came face to face.

  SIX

  ‘ You don’t understand,’ the man pleaded desperately. ‘Firstly I cannot tell you anything because I know nothing.’ He was using expressive hand gestures as he spoke. ‘And even if I did, I could still say nothing because I would be dead within days, possibly hours, of speaking to you.’ He snorted derisively. ‘Don’t think that because I will be held inside a Maltese prison that I am unreachable. They can get to me anywhere, so I say nothing, keep myself alive.’

  Karl Donaldson tried to look sympathetically across the interview room table, but cared little for the man’s predicament. He was on the trail of a killer and this individual was the best lead he’d had in three years of chasing shadows.

  Donaldson shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair, sweat dripping from his scalp, down his neck and all the way to his backside. The heat was oppressive, even here in what were literally dungeons below the streets of Valletta on the island of Malta. He glanced at the stern-looking Maltese cop standing rigidly by the heavy steel door, arms folded, face grim.

  ‘Any air-con in here?’ Donaldson asked.

  The cop shook his head and allowed himself a wry smile. As if. Much of the police station above ground level had been modernized, but the money had not stretched as far as the underground cell complex. There was still a medieval feel to them, as though it was only days since the Knights of Malta might have incarcerated their Turkish prisoners before beheading them with their scimitars.

  Which was an irony, albeit a small one, as the man sitting opposite Donaldson was a Turk, though he had left his homeland many years before and ditched Islam along the way. His name was Mustapha Fazil.

  ‘I need a cigarette,’ Fazil demanded.

  Donaldson checked with the guard, who nodded, and Donaldson handed Fazil a pack of Camels and a lighter. Apparently, no smoking policies hadn’t reached Malta just yet, which was good, Donaldson thought. Tobacco was always a useful interview tool.

  Fazil lit up, inhaled deeply, then exhaled the acrid smoke with a shudder of pleasure. Donaldson tried not to cough. He was anti-smoking but did see its uses as Fazil visibly relaxed in front of him.

  ‘In other words,’ Fazil said, picking something from his tongue, ‘I’m a dead man if I talk, so don’t expect me to say anything.’

  After a beat of silence, Donaldson leaned on to the table, his eyes searching the young man’s face — the deep-set eyes, the hooked nose, the thick black moustache, the swarthy suntanned features — all mixed together to make up the stereotypical Turk. And also the face of a young man deeply embroiled in a life of organized crime that spanned international boundaries.

  Donaldson vividly remembered the call-out three years earlier, the reason for him being here now, sweating in an ancient cell, desperately trying to extract information from a very unwilling source

  …

  Midnight. Donaldson had been at work since seven a.m. that day, at the beginning of a manhunt to track down one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, Mohammed Ibrahim Akbar, a man who had almost managed to assassinate the American State Secretary who had been on a visit to the north of England at the invitation of the British Foreign Secretary. The attempt had failed — just — but the terrorist had escaped. Donaldson had then been asked to become part of a multi-agency team dedicated to hunting down and apprehending, or neutralizing if necessary, the wanted man.

  In the very early days of this manhunt, much of Donaldson’s time had been spent with the other team members collecting, collating and sifting intelligence and information just to get a sniff of the whereabouts of their prey. Long days at the computer, on the telephone, and reading reports from agents across the globe, trying to pinpoint their guy and work out his next move. So they could be there, waiting for him.

  On the day he got the call-out he’d been in his office for almost seventeen hours. His eyes were grit-tired and he knew he needed a shower, shave and about twelve hours sleep, the latter option being the most unlikely to happen.

  He was in his cubbyhole of an office in the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, where he had worked for over ten years as a legal attache for the FBI. It was one of the most prestigious jobs in that organization and something he did well.

  Just before the witching hour, he closed his computer down, stretched, yawned and rubbed his eyes, when one of the other team members appeared by the door, leaning on the jamb. This was Jo Kerrigan, a CIA operative who was the only female to be drafted on to the team. Donaldson had struck up a good rapport with her. She was a six-foot blonde, a fantastic athlete who had once made the
US cross country skiing team in the winter Olympics. In physical terms she was more than a match of Donaldson, who himself touched six-four, was broad-shouldered, fit and all-American handsome.

  He knew that the relationship between him and Kerrigan could easily become intimate. But — and it was a very big ‘but’ for Donaldson — even though his marriage was going through a rocky phase, he would never allow himself to be unfaithful to his wife Karen, tempting though the prospect was.

  ‘Long day,’ she said.

  ‘Yup — and getting nowhere fast.’ He clicked shut the lid of his laptop.

  ‘Going home?’

  ‘Uh — naw — using one of the service apartments tonight. Need an early start.’ This meant he would be staying within the confines of the embassy in one of the tiny en-suite rooms at the rear of the building. They were known colloquially as ‘hell holes’ and the team had been granted special permission to use them whenever necessary.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ she said, smiling. ‘How about a drink first? The night is young.’

  Donaldson eyed her. ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he drawled.

  ‘How about food? I bet you haven’t eaten since that croissant this morning, have ya?’

  In a reply that said it all, Donaldson’s stomach growled loudly and they both chuckled.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said patting his tummy. He was suddenly famished. He guessed it wouldn’t do any harm to go get a bite to eat with Jo because he didn’t intend it to go any further than food. Even though he’d had a very terse conversation with his wife earlier that evening when she’d castigated him for never coming home and being obsessed with work. The conversation had frozen after he’d announced his intention to bed down overnight at the embassy.

  ‘There’s a new Chinese on Curzon Street — opens late,’ Jo suggested.

  ‘Chinese sounds good,’ he said but there was a touch of hesitation in his voice. ‘Er… just need to make a couple of quick calls, actually,’ he fibbed. ‘Time zones, etcetera,’ he explained. ‘Won’t take long… see you at the staff exit in five?’