by Nick Oldham
A thought skittered through his synapses. If I were being tortured, water-boarded, nails pulled out, branded by hot irons, my balls wired up to the electrical circuit, I would not reveal a national secret. But this — this — was much worse than torture. Subtle, psychological prodding, accompanied by a beautiful face and big innocent eyes, a package designed to draw information out of him. And mind reading. Fight it.
‘I’ve nothing to say, honest. You’re barking up the wrong tree. And I need to phone my boss.’
‘There’s a lot of ground to cover, Mark,’ Henry said turning squarely to the lad in the back of the Mondeo. He held up a hand to stop Mark’s protestation. ‘Let me just tell you what I know and then let me tell you something very important.’
Mark sneered, an expression that seemed permanently affixed to his face.
‘First off, I know that you and Rory Costain were out on the rob two nights ago. You beat up two people and stole from them. Maybe you even did more I don’t know about.’ Mark opened his mouth. Henry snapped, ‘Shut it. You robbed a lad in the town centre and a girl just down the road from the nick. But that’s not all, is it? Tell me about the old man, Mark.’
‘What old man?’
‘The one you tried to rob.’
‘Didn’t rob no old man.’
‘What did you do to him?’
‘Don’t know what you’re blabbing about, Henry.’
‘Mark, you stupid little shit. I’ve talked to Bradley and I’ve talked to Katie…’
‘The little twats.’
‘Your mates, actually. People who care about you.’
Mark’s sneering expression showed he thought differently. He folded his arms. ‘Nothing to say.’
‘Have you any idea who the old man was?’
‘What old guy?’ Mark said stubbornly.
‘Ever heard of the Mafia?’
‘Course.’
‘That old man was a Mafia godfather…’ Henry stopped speaking as Mark sniggered. ‘Put two and two together, Mark. You saw him get killed and the people who did it saw you watching. And then they killed Rory and you managed to get away… and they would’ve had you last night, but you got lucky, but Rory’s dad didn’t.’
‘Is he dead?’
Henry nodded. ‘Very.’
‘So you think I’ll be safe if I come and tell you what I saw? Stop taking me for a goomer, Henry. You couldn’t protect anyone.’
‘And you think you’ve got a chance by running away to London?’
Mark stared ahead.
Henry said, ‘Things have changed again.’
Mark sighed. ‘Sure they have.’
‘These people will stop at nothing to get you.’
‘Why would that be?’
‘Because they think you can identify them.’
‘They’re wrong.’
Henry was starting to bubble crossly. ‘Let me lay it down, Mark. I know you and Rory saw that old guy being murdered. You were right up at the end of the alley. I know you tried to rob him first and that he turned nasty, didn’t he? Not your usual victim, eh? He turned nasty because as a matter of course he killed, or had people killed, in his line of work. He was hiding out in Blackpool from a gang war in Naples and whoever killed him is desperate not to be caught, even if it means innocent people get killed.’
‘Like Billy?’
‘Like Billy,’ Henry confirmed. ‘And someone else…’
Donaldson was back at the computer, still getting nowhere. He had phoned Don Barber to tell him of his initial findings — that some of the killings attributed to the Marini clan didn’t quite fit in with their usual MO and were more professional than normal. He had even discovered a newspaper cutting relating to one of the long-distance shootings in which a Marini boss claimed they were not responsible for the hit.
Donaldson thought it was an unusual step for a Mafia boss to take — to deny a killing. Barber had sounded suitably unimpressed, then asked if there was anything more on the lad who’d witnessed Rosario Petrone’s murder, but Donaldson said he didn’t have any more updates, although he expected that the witness was probably back in Blackpool with the SIO by now.
‘OK, keep me informed,’ Barber said, ending the call just as Donaldson was about to ask him if there was any problems with the computer down at the embassy. He was about to call his boss back, but as he was about to hit the redial button on his mobile, he stopped and raised his face, looking at the 1964 picture of the Rolling Stones that Henry had put up on the study wall.
Mark climbed heavily out of the car and walked towards the beach, his eyes transfixed on the horizon. Henry walked behind him, Bill Robbins a few paces behind Henry, watchful, tense, not relaxing. Mark stopped on the edge of the sand dunes, then squatted slowly down on to his haunches, put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
But he did not cry, just remained silent.
Henry moved to his side, placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Mark,’ he said sincerely.
‘I have no one,’ Mark said, matter-of-fact, glancing up. ‘Best thing for me is to end up in a young offenders’ institute until I’m eighteen. Then I can go on the dole, father a dozen kids and live off the state.’
‘It’s a plan,’ Henry said.
Mark smiled and said, ‘There was a camera.’
FOURTEEN
Donaldson was just about to pick up his laptop and hurl it against the wall when he glanced out of the study window to see Henry’s car pulling up outside the house. He placed the computer gently down on the desk and watched, slightly puzzled, as Henry got out of the back of the car and trotted up the driveway to the front of the house. He saw a driver at the wheel, but could not make out any of his features because of the reflected light off the windscreen. There was also a dark, indistinguishable shape in the back seat of the Mondeo. He heard a muted conversation between Henry and Kate, before Henry opened the study door and leaned in.
‘Got the lad,’ he said breathlessly. ‘On the way back to the original murder scene for a witness walk-through. Want to come?’
Donaldson was already getting to his feet, even thought he suddenly felt leaden as, because of what Henry had just said, he realized why he’d been unsettled about the conversation he’d recently had with Don Barber.
‘It started here,’ Mark Carter said. ‘Me and Rory stood here.’ He pointed to the spot in the doorway diagonally opposite the shop known as Lucio’s on Church Street, Blackpool. ‘We’d done the girl and the lad, and we had the girl’s mobile phone with us,’ Mark explained. He might have been deeply upset at the news of his mother and his own prospects for the future, but he hadn’t lost his mind enough to tell Henry that he and Rory had also rolled a drunk for a fiver and a tin of cider before committing the two street robberies. His mother might’ve been murdered, Rory might’ve been murdered, killers might be on his trail, but he’d carried out three serious crimes and Henry only knew about two of them. And that’s the way it would stay because Mark knew that despite all the other stuff, the robberies would have to be dealt with at some stage. There would be no weaselling out of them. ‘The old man came out of that shop. It were Rory’s idea to rob him, and everybody else,’ Mark whined, ‘because he thought he’d be an easy target.’
Henry, Mark and Donaldson were on the footpath opposite Lucio’s. Bill Robbins was still at the wheel of the Mondeo at the road’s edge.
‘That’s his shop?’ Donaldson asked. Henry nodded. ‘All fake goods. They make the stuff in factories in Naples and sell it on the high streets.’
‘Why don’t the real manufacturers shut them down?’
‘Because it suits them,’ Donaldson said.
Henry couldn’t be bothered to ask.
Mark went on, ‘We watched him cross the road and followed him. An old guy with a walking stick, pretty rich looking,’ he pondered. ‘He went down there and we went after him.’ He led the men along the route he and his now deceased partner in crime had taken. Down Leopold Grove, ov
er Albert Road, then into the alley which cut north-south to Charnley Road.
Bill followed in the car like a kerb-crawler.
The evil chant, ‘Vic-tim, vic-tim,’ replayed through Mark’s mind. Suddenly he felt very weak, but pushed on. It had been his decision to get this crap out of the way, probably manipulated by Henry, who had convinced him that time was running out to catch killers who were responsible for four deaths in Blackpool alone.
Henry, however, knew he was on wobbly ground here. In the eyes of the law, Mark was a juvenile with all the protective trimmings that came with that status. He had the right to be accompanied by an adult at all times, as Mark had rightly told him, and even getting Mark to run through something to which he was a witness was an iffy thing to do without an appropriate adult present. It was made more complicated because Mark was in custody for robbery offences and everything that happened to him should have been recorded contemporaneously on the custody record.
But Henry was in a hurry and was already working out how he’d cover his tracks if questions were asked.
Mark had now led them to the end of the alley where it opened on to Charnley Road, the scene of the murder, now clear of police activity. Bill had driven around in the Mondeo.
‘Rory had a go at him here,’ Mark said, ‘but the guy whacked him with his walking stick, smacked his head.’
Karl Donaldson walked past into Charnley Road, looking up and down, imagining the scene. Mark went on to describe what had happened — the car, the killer — and the killer looking at the two boys in the mouth of the alley. He had looked directly at them and Rory had shouted at him, stepped forward and taken a photo on the stolen phone. Then the boys had fled.
‘We ran, God did we run.’
‘And the camera, the phone, whatever — where is it?’ Henry asked.
‘That’s the problem. Rory dropped it somewhere.’
‘Somewhere?’
‘Somewhere between here and North Pier.’
Henry blinked. ‘So there isn’t a camera?’
‘It could still be around.’
‘Where did he drop it?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Did you search for it?’
‘Not really.’
Henry’s teeth ground grittily as he fought his disappointment and thought this through.
‘I got a decent look at the bloke,’ Mark volunteered.
‘Mm… walk the route with me, the way you went to North Pier.’
‘Now?’
‘No — next week. Yes, now,’ he said.
‘I might do a runner. I know I can run faster than you can.’
‘Like I said, if you do, I’ll have you shot in the leg — escaping felon.’ Henry beckoned to Bill in the Mondeo to get out and park up. Mark then took the men along his escape route. Back down the alley, left on to Albert Road with the south aspect of the Winter Gardens on their right, then on to Coronation Street, diagonally across into Birley Street — one of the main shopping streets — right into Corporation Street then on to Talbot Square. They had passed the exact spot where they’d robbed the Goth, done a left on to the Promenade and crossed over to the entrance to North Pier by the war memorial.
No sign of the mobile phone.
Henry’s frustration boiled over and he cursed. Mark looked contemptuously at him. ‘All you’re interested in is getting an arrest, isn’t it? You actually don’t give a monkey’s about me, do you? What I’ve been through, what I’m going through, how I feel?’
Henry picked up Mark by the lapel of his hoodie and slammed him hard against the war memorial. ‘Let me make something very clear to you, pal,’ he said. ‘The guys who killed the old man, Rory, Billy and your mum are still out there. They think you can ID them, Mark, and just at this moment I’m the only one who can keep you alive.’
Mark was not afraid of Henry. ‘Or get me dead,’ he rejoined.
Henry was back in his office off the major incident room. Bill Robbins had joined him, as had Jerry Tope, Alex Bent and Karl Donaldson. Mark Carter had been booked into custody and was now sweating it out in a juvenile detection room whilst Henry tried to work out the best way forward.
‘I suppose the humane thing to do would be to have a quick interview with Mark about the robberies — making sure he admitted them, of course, then bail him into the care of social services. The humane thing,’ he said again. ‘Then I want to get him with the e-fit people to get a face down on paper. In the meantime, I want a search team to work that route, turn over every rock and find that phone. It’s vital it turns up.’
The others nodded assent.
‘And then what?’ Bent asked.
‘Good question,’ Henry admitted.
‘Can I make a quick suggestion?’ Bill Robbins asked.
‘Go on.’
‘I know it’s a long shot, but — ’ he screwed up his face as though what he was about to propose was particularly stupid and that he would be stoned to death — ‘is it worth checking the found property register for the mobile phone? Sometimes people have been known to be honest and hand in property… it’d only take a minute.’
‘Not such a bad idea. Can you do that?’ Henry asked.
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
Robbins rose and left the room.
The remaining officers all shook their heads. ‘Not a chance in hell,’ Bent said cynically. ‘And if it had been handed in, it should have been cross-referenced to the crime report, so we should know if it had been.’
‘Mm,’ Henry said doubtfully. ‘Can you check the phone’s status, though?’ he asked Bent. ‘I’m presuming it was blocked after the robbery was reported. If it has, maybe it could be unblocked, and if it’s still transmitting a signal we could locate it that way?’
‘Will do.’
‘Have we heard anything from Rik yet?’
‘No he’s at the mortuary with Mandy,’ Bent said.
‘The pathologist will be wanting to do Rory’s PM. Ask Rik if he’ll cover that for me, will you? And then arrange to get Mark Carter sorted?’ Henry checked his watch. ‘Social services should be here soon, so they promised.’
It was almost four p.m. as Bill Robbins sauntered through the tight, badly decorated corridors of Blackpool police station. He was feeling quite serene, having been dragged away from the drudgery of some tedious lesson planning at the training centre to come and be Mark Carter’s bodyguard. Since coming to the station he had locked all his firearms in the safe in the ARV office.
He went down to the ground floor where the public enquiry desk was located and popped his head through the door behind the desk itself. As ever there was a stream of people at the desk being attended to by a harassed assistant. Bill saw the found property register on a shelf underneath the desk, reached through and took it, then stepped back out of sight lest a member of the public demanded to see a real cop as opposed to a public enquiry assistant, or PEA as they were known.
He retreated into the tiny PEA office and flicked through the book.
These days the police took less and less property from the public. When Bill had joined the job, the cops took everything. Now finders were encouraged to keep what they’d found and if they hadn’t heard anything within twenty-eight days, were told that the property became theirs. This even applied to fairly large sums of money.
There wasn’t much recorded in the book over the last two days. Bill would have expected that if a mobile phone had been handed in, it would have been retained by the police to cross-check with recorded crimes, pretty standard procedure for such items.
A female PEA came into the office, fitting her epaulettes. She was clearly just coming on duty, working the four-to-midnight shift, after which the police station would be closed. She was a bonny young thing, Bill thought patronizingly, glancing at her name tag: Ellen Thompson.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Just checking to see if a mobile phone has been handed in over the last couple of days… doesn’t see
m to be anything.’
‘Mm, I’ve certainly not taken one in,’ the PEA said quickly. ‘Don’t know about anyone else.’
‘It would have been recorded in here, wouldn’t it?’ Bill tapped the red-spined found property book. She nodded. ‘OK, no probs.’
The PEA held out her hand. ‘Shall I put it back for you?’
‘Thanks.’ Ah well, he thought, another bright idea that came to nought.
Henry and Donaldson stepped out of the lift on the top floor and entered the canteen. Henry was gagging for a drink and something to eat. Donaldson was coffee’d up to the eyeballs, so he bought a mineral water and both men picked a cherry-topped raisin swirl each to go with their drinks, and took their mini-feasts to a table giving them a view across the Irish Sea.
Henry sipped his coffee and waited for the hit before biting a chunk out of his pastry.
Jerry Tope entered the canteen, got himself a brew and went to sit alone. Henry was watching him, but not thinking about him.
Donaldson winced as he tasted his water. ‘Complex stuff,’ he said.
‘What, H2O? Hydrogen, oxygen isn’t it?’
‘If only things were that simple,’ he frowned.
‘You have a look of disquiet,’ Henry observed skilfully.
‘Something doesn’t add up.’
‘Tell me about it. You can trust me, I’m a cop, a detective super at that.’
‘I’ve been looking at all the Camorra killings since the hit in Majorca,’ he explained, ‘and some don’t fit the pattern.’
‘In what way?’
‘The hits on the senior Petrone clan guys seem much more tidy and professional than all the others. The street killings are the usual horrid mess, but the ones where the bosses are taken out are much more clinical — it’s no wonder Rosario did a runner. Anyway, I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.’
‘Whoever killed him also seems very keen to the extreme on eliminating witnesses,’ Henry said.
‘Problem is I can only access certain files at the moment. I need to look at some more detailed information that I know exists, but I don’t seem to be able to get into. A glitch, I think.’