Bad Tidings

by Nick Oldham

  TWO

  Henry Christie opened his eyes at the first low ring of the cordless telephone handset on the cabinet beside his bed. He was on his back, only half asleep, drifting in and out of wakefulness pretty much as per the last seven nights, over which, he claimed, he could probably count on both hands the hours he had slept. Not many. His head twisted to the right – a quick time check of the digital clock, the conditioned response honed by too many years of early morning phone calls and turnouts.

  He saw and mentally logged the illuminated display, which read 03:48.

  He rolled quietly out of bed, grabbing the phone as he moved, thumbing the ‘Take Call’ button before the third ring. He was up on his bare feet in an instant, phone clasped to his ear, plodding naked into the en suite shower room, closing the door softly behind him and only then speaking.

  ‘Henry Christie . . .’ His voice was nervy as he wondered which of the two matters this could be. He didn’t really want it to be either, but there was slight relief when the voice at the other end announced, ‘Mr Christie, this is Inspector Howard, force control room . . .’

  Henry juddered a short breath. No, he didn’t want either call . . . what he wanted was a full night and a long morning in bed for once, and for nothing to happen . . . but the Force Incident Manager’s voice made this one infinitely more preferable to the call he could have got. The FIM was calling from Lancashire Constabulary’s HQ Communications Room at Hutton, four miles south of Preston. It was the FIM who managed the call-out rotas for the force, deciding which specialist, if any, needed to be turned out to deal with an incident.

  Not that Henry was even on a rota that week.

  That week – the week between Christmas and New Year – he was technically off duty. Nevertheless he had been out and about all week, from Christmas Eve all the way through to New Year’s Eve. He had been involved in a series of incidents that meant what should have been a week of rest and relaxation had been completely ruined by both work and personal business. He’d had less sleep than ten fingers, he claimed . . . at least it felt that way. And he had been waiting for a call each night, and now, on New Year’s Day morning at 3.48 a.m., it had come.

  Henry listened. Very fleetingly he wondered if the FIM was visualizing him. Did she see a man too quickly approaching his mid-fifties, standing in a chilly shower room, goosebumps all over his naked body, jotting down notes on the writing pad he’d purposely left on the toilet cistern? Probably not . . . the FIM was far too busy to allow such trivial thoughts to enter her head, Henry guessed.

  Henry asked questions, clarified any possible misunderstandings, asked her to repeat the location twice. Then he gave some specific instructions to the FIM, who very professionally reconfirmed them, and Henry gave her his estimated time of arrival.

  Call over, Henry turned on the shower and stepped into it for a two-minute freshen up, then a shave.

  His clothes were already hanging on the door of the en suite in anticipation of the call. It wasn’t formal wear – jeans, a shirt, a sweater and leather jacket (with a tie rolled up in the pocket, just in case a degree of formality was required at some stage), thick socks and practical footwear, a cross between trainers and walking shoes.

  When fully dressed, he emerged from the room.

  He had hoped not to disturb Alison Marsh, his lady friend, but she was fully awake and propped up on one elbow, bedside light on a low setting. She had a concerned look on her face. Henry felt bad about waking her. She had only been in bed two hours and he knew she was as exhausted as he was by the previous week.

  ‘Sorry. Thought I was being quiet.’

  ‘And I thought a gorilla had broken in and was smashing the place up.’

  ‘Sorry . . . I need to go, love.’

  ‘Which one is it?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Work.’

  She exhaled. ‘Take care.’

  He walked to her side of the bed and kissed her cheek.

  Henry made his way through the pub, grabbing his Karrimor Chatsworth jacket as he went, knowing it would be cold outside. He let himself out through the front door into the icy blast of the morning in the north Lancashire village of Kendleton. Up until a couple of hours before the place had been heaving with festivities and the pub, the Tawny Owl, being the only hostelry in town, had been the centre of it. And very well it had performed.

  Now it was eerily silent. The only visible remnants of the celebrations were streamers, party poppers spider-webbed out across the car park and several of the cars and a few balloons tied to wing mirrors. On the village green across the road, the embers of the bonfire still glowed and smoked and Henry could smell it.

  Henry inhaled the chilly air, feeling it sear into his lungs. He shivered, locked the pub doors and trudged over to his car, making the first footprints in a light dusting of snow. The vehicle was a new Audi convertible, the replacement for his previous car which had met its doom in a very ugly incident on the road into Kendleton six months before. That one had been a Mercedes which Henry had loved, and he was now slightly regretting the brand change.

  That said, he acknowledged that the Audi was also a great car.

  He slid into it, started up and within moments the efficient heating system was belting out hot air. A heated driver’s seat also helped matters. Then he was on the road.

  Geographically speaking, in terms of the county of Lancashire he was about as far away as he could be from his destination that morning.

  Kendleton was tucked away inconveniently in the very north of the county and he had to travel well into the east, but it wasn’t a straightforward journey. First he had to get onto the M6 at the Lancaster north junction, then it was pretty much motorway all the way. Head south down the M6, cut briefly onto the M61 at Bamber Bridge, then onto the M65 to travel east into the depths of the county, exit at junction 5, then plough even further east onto the bleak moors above Blackburn on which perched his destination. The village of Belthorn.

  Henry didn’t need to use a SatNav, and not just because Belthorn had been pretty much his focus of attention for the last week. He hardly ever needed to use one when travelling around the county, except for possibly the last few hundred metres of a journey. Over thirty years of policing the area had given him detailed knowledge of it and its denizens, particularly the criminal variety.

  He knew exactly where he was going on that dark, cold morning, the first day of the New Year. He settled down to enjoy the drive along deserted roads . . . and wondered, not for the first time, why he hadn’t been strong enough to stand up to the chief constable and refuse the job in the first place, the one that had been the launch pad for everything else that followed over the week. He should have been more assertive and the chief would have had to delegate it to someone else. But he was playing on Henry Christie’s weakness.

  The bait: two unsolved murders. And like a dim-witted carp attracted by a wriggling worm, there were some things Henry Christie could not refuse, even though his gut instinct was to tell the chief constable to find some other sucker.

  He bit the worm, because the challenge of catching a killer was impossible for Henry to swim away from . . .

  ‘Half a bloody job,’ Henry had said bitterly. ‘Half a bloody job.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ the chief constable had responded, accompanied with a ‘so what?’ kind of shrug. His name was Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, known to most people as FB, although no one of lower rank would ever be so familiar to his face. Therefore, by default, as everyone else in the Lancashire Constabulary was of lower rank, he was always referred to as ‘sir’ or ‘boss’, and occasionally – by his deputy or the assistant chiefs – by his first name, when he wasn’t chewing their backsides off.

  It was possible that Henry Christie, though a mere detective superintendent, could have got away with the informality. He and FB had known each other touching thirty years, ever since Henry had been a PC on the crime car in Rossendale and Fanshaw-Bayley the young, thrusting, obnoxious DI in that ne
ck of the woods, the smug ruler of the roost. Henry, therefore, knew he had certain privileges with FB that others did not, given their intertwined history, but never pushed it. He liked to keep FB at arm’s length, as the prospect of cosying up to him in any way made him nauseous.

  Because of their shared history – weighted mainly in favour of FB – Henry could have made a stand against the rotund chief. He had done so often, though he rarely gained any advantage from it. He could have said ‘No’ on this occasion, but FB had the trump card: murder.

  They were in FB’s office on the middle floor of police headquarters at Hutton, overlooking the sports pitches and the huge building – known as the Pavilion – that housed the Major Crime Unit, and beyond that the wooded campus in which the force Training Centre was located.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ FB purred, gesturing towards the leather settee on the other side of his office, positioned against the wall underneath a big, formal portrait of the Queen.

  Bristling at his own weakness – and checking his watch tetchily (it was 6.17 p.m. on Christmas Eve) – Henry slouched round-shouldered over to the settee and dropped miserably onto it. FB rose from the dark wood, leather-bound office chair behind his expansive leather inlaid desk – two pieces of furniture that would not have looked out of place in the captain’s cabin of the Cutty Sark. Scooping up two fat folders, he followed Henry but sat down directly opposite him on one of the armchairs on the other side of a glass-topped coffee table with an ancient map of the world beneath the glass.

  Peevishly, Henry folded his arms, his mouth twitching. He had been grinding away full tilt for the last six months and had booked annual leave for the week ahead. He was looking forward to helping Alison, unofficially, at the Tawny Owl, spending a happy week with her and her daughter Ginny, and maybe inviting his daughters, Jenny and Leanne, to spend a couple of nights at the Owl, too. A bit of a ‘get-to-know-you’ thing.

  The two files in FB’s arms meant that Henry’s plans were about to change, but neither man could have imagined just how much. And, although he didn’t know it just then, something else totally unrelated to work was about to happen that would also screw up his week.

  FB gave him his most understanding smile as he placed the files on the table. ‘Can I get you a coffee? Tea?’

  Henry blinked at the offer. FB doing something for me? But then he realized it was after six and all of FB’s support staff had gone, and there were no lackeys to whip into shape. Christmas Eve meant an early dart for all the HQ office staff. The place was like the Mary Celeste.

  ‘Coffee would be good.’ Though Henry loved his coffee, he rarely drank it after 3 p.m. unless he needed to keep going. Something in FB’s eyes led him to believe that he might have to keep running tonight.

  FB stood up and poured two mugs from the filter machine on top of the dark panelled sideboard. He handed one to Henry, then reseated himself opposite.

  ‘We know why it was half a job, don’t we?’ FB said.

  ‘Uh – because he got himself in deep criminal shit and investigating murder wasn’t his top priority, even though he was an SIO?’ Henry answered what he knew had been a rhetorical question.

  ‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ FB agreed.

  They were talking about Detective Superintendent Joe Speakman, a former colleague of Henry’s on FMIT – the Force Major Investigation Team – who had become embroiled in various criminal schemes that had ended tragically for him and his family. After stumbling on Speakman’s death, Henry had uncovered organized activities stretching from Lancashire to Cyprus and up into Russia. It turned into a complex, wide-ranging investigation that, six months down the line, was still ongoing for a small, dedicated team of detectives headed by Henry. People were still on the run, arrests still had to be made.

  FB placed his coffee on the table, then laid his hands flat on the files.

  Henry eyed them, fully aware of their contents.

  A beat of silence passed, then FB said, ‘Two murders, unfortunately dubbed the “Twixtmas Killings” by our esteemed local press.’

  Henry nodded. He sipped his coffee. It was bitter, tasted like it had been on the hotplate for a week. He guessed it was FB’s emergency supply for when he couldn’t click his fingers to get one of his minions to make a fresh one. Henry could not disguise his grimace of distaste. ‘Yup,’ he said.

  FB’s eyes narrowed. With his hands still on top of the files, he slid them across to the detective superintendent.

  Henry squirmed. ‘Last time I inherited something from Joe Speakman, I ended up being shot at, kidnapped, beaten up. My lovely car was written off by a freakin’ Russian gangster and my partner was seriously assaulted – and she’s only just got through that shit.’ An image of Alison’s pulped face came into Henry’s mind.

  But FB reverted to type, giving an uncaring pout and shrug. ‘Who’d have known? Still, there’s nothing to say that either of these murders is connected with those other shenanigans, is there?’ He tapped the files.

  Henry didn’t flinch, didn’t lean forward. To have done so, in terms of body language, would have signalled his acceptance of what was being said, and he was fighting it.

  He had worked long, hard, punishing hours for the last six months and knew it was probably taking its toll on his fledgling relationship with Alison. He really needed a week off with her or he could see the whole thing going south . . . and he had something special planned for Christmas that would put everything – his relationship, his life – back on track.

  But two murders?

  Fuck you, FB, he thought. You slimy toad. He knew it was a crap deal getting handed two unsolved, very cold murders . . . but hell! Two murders. How could he possibly resist?

  Fuck you, FB, he thought again. However, he continued his little game, even though his mind was already rehearsing his speech to Alison. His I’m only doing what my boss ordered, I didn’t have a choice speech. Even in his brain, it sounded piss weak.

  ‘What about Don Royce?’ he stalled. Royce was one of the other two FMIT detective superintendents.

  ‘Too busy – and he’s on call for everything else this week.’

  ‘Reg Carney?’ He was the other one.

  ‘Caribbean cruise – already jetting across the water.’

  ‘There’s plenty of DCIs who could tackle them,’ Henry suggested.

  FB shook his head. His double chins wobbled.

  The word ‘Bollocks’ sat on Henry’s tongue, but remained unsaid. He squirmed again.

  ‘You’re the man,’ FB said. ‘You’ve already had involvement with Joe Speakman. You obviously know how Joe’s mind worked, how he thought.’

  ‘Thin,’ Henry said. ‘Try harder. I have a week’s holiday booked and a hot-arsed landlady waiting for me.’

  FB continued unmoved. ‘You’ve pretty much wrapped up the Speakman thing . . . you need something else to keep you occupied, to ease you up to retirement.’

  ‘How about I have the week off, then look at them?’ He nodded at the files.

  ‘You know you can’t.’

  Henry raised his eyes and looked directly at FB. ‘I’m having them, whatever, aren’t I?’

  ‘Course you are.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Henry knew exactly what was in the files. He’d read them several times just in case there had been some connection to the mess that Joe Speakman had got himself embroiled in. Henry concluded that the two murders were not linked in any way to Speakman’s personal debacle – but there was every chance that they were themselves connected. Whichever senior investigating officer inherited them would have to put in a lot of time and effort over the next week because of that connection and because the week was significant in terms of the murders. Henry gazed at the files, nostrils dilating, knowing two things. First, he would not be spending much time with Alison over the next seven days. Second, he had a horrible feeling he’d just been handed the hunt for a serial killer . . . but when FB said, ‘You bloody love it, don’t you?’ Henry had to agr
ee.

  He did.

  The morning was still black, no sign of dawn, as Henry approached junction 5 of the M65. He was now well into the east of the county – dark satanic mill land (though most cotton mills had been demolished years ago, or turned into ‘shopping events’) – and as he looked up to his right he could see the silhouette of the village of Belthorn perched on a high crest of moorland on the edge of some very wild countryside. Over to his left was the town of Blackburn and lit up in the foreground, about a mile distant, was Blackburn Royal Infirmary. He’d had some real fun there this last week.

  He came off the motorway and bore right onto the A6177 Grane Road, which linked Blackburn with the Rossendale Valley.

  Less than a mile distant he turned right onto Belthorn Road and drove up towards the village, over the slight rise, then down into a dip before the steep hill that was the main road through the village. To the right was the Dog Inn, but before Henry reached that, he slowed, then stopped. On his right was a narrow tarmac side road and parked across it was a marked police car, one officer on board, controlling all vehicular access.

  Two hundred metres down the lane was the location – a factory unit – at which Henry had been asked to attend.

  The scene of the crime. Five very evocative words, Henry always thought: the scene of the crime.

  At that moment, after a long, fast early morning drive across the county, Henry did not know for certain what he would discover.

  What he did believe was that, based on his knowledge of the two unsolved murders FB had given him to investigate, the link between them would be confirmed. But the good thing was that this one wouldn’t be a cold case. Henry was coming in right at the start. New leads and connections would be generated and – based on what he learned over the week – the killer, he was confident, would be caught. Because he was pretty certain who it was.

  A shimmer of excitement scuttled through him.

  He checked his watch, which read 04:58. Two minutes to five on New Year’s Day . . . what could be better, after the week he’d just had, than attending the scene of yet another horrific murder?