by Nick Oldham
‘Fuck shoulda know? He were here.’ She exhaled like a horse and reached for a packet of cigarettes on the bedside. ‘D’ya wan’ ’im for?’
‘He’s done a runner. I need to speak to him urgently.’
Henry watched her pick up the cigarette packet next to an ashtray overflowing with ciggie ends, spliffs and two used condoms.
‘Where is he?’
She placed a cigarette between her lipstick-smeared lips, her eyes bleary. ‘No idea.’
‘Tell me your best guess, Cherry, or I’ll bust you.’
She screwed up her nose and hoisted the duvet back over her boob. ‘F’ what?’
Henry pointed at the ashtray. ‘Mary Jane’s still illegal, I believe. And are those traces of coke I see on the dressing table top?’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Would.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘Uh . . . prob’ly gone to that club on Withnell Street, I dunno.’
Henry only knew of one club on that road in South Shore. ‘John Rider’s old place?’
‘Yuh, that’s the one . . . he’s just bought it.’
‘Right.’ Henry turned to leave.
‘Hey!’ Cherry called.
He turned back. ‘What?’
She flung back the duvet, revealing her completely naked and completely hairless body, which to Henry looked very fine indeed. She rotated and opened her legs wide, allowing Henry to see her very finely shaved pubic area. ‘Jig-a-jig? You – me? I’ll fuck your brains out for Christmas for free.’
‘I’ll pass.’ Henry raised a hand. Just at the moment Henry’s brain was screwed up enough.
ELEVEN
Henry knew the club on Withnell Street too intimately for comfort, but was under the impression it had been virtually abandoned and allowed to fall into disrepair, untouched for years. The previous owner, John Rider, had harboured big ideas for the place, a former casino, with visions of turning it into a lap dancing club. Those visions had come to a very bloody end when one of Rider’s rivals had declared his own plans for the club and Rider had been killed in the crossfire. Henry had been deeply involved in the situation – it had almost cost him his life – and returning to the club for the first time in years unearthed a lot of unpleasant memories.
That said, he wasn’t surprised someone had taken it over for something. He guessed that the licence for the place would have been kept current by whoever had owned it – Rider’s executioners, he assumed. Once a liquor licence lapsed it was hard work to resurrect, as the application process would have to begin from scratch. And any premises with a drinks licence in Blackpool could be a gold mine.
He hurried back to his car, still in one piece after his close encounter with Cherry, and set off towards South Shore. Much of that area of town was quite pleasant, but the two hundred metre wide strip from the Pleasure Beach complex as far north as Central Pier was not the most salubrious of localities. Many of the terraced houses, once proud and clean bed and breakfast establishments, had been turned into rabbit-warren flats, financed by the Department of Social Security, run by seedy landlords and inhabited by the unfortunate and the criminal. Henry disliked to stereotype, but many of the people he came across were lazy third-generation scroungers, living off benefits embedded in their psyche, existing hand to mouth, stealing, taking drugs. Many he didn’t come across were decent folk living in harsh times. But the truth of the matter was that South Shore did have a high rate of crime, drug use was rife, and a lot of kids didn’t know their fathers.
The clubs and other drinking establishments didn’t help matters.
Most were well run, but a core of them were managed by individuals whose names should never have appeared on a licence, or were fronts for more organized crime, thriving on the weakness of others.
Sitting behind the wheel of the Audi, Henry exhaled a long breath, then inhaled an equally lengthy one in the hope of replenishing the oxygen in his system, which felt very depleted. He knew he was running on fumes.
His fingers gripped the steering wheel as he focused his mind. His intention now was to visit the club and see if Runcie had gone there. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be there. That would mean Henry could execute a graceful retreat, brief a few people then dash home – to his house in Blackpool, tantalizingly close, but oh so far away – sleep for four hours, then get back to work, and write off any possibility of seeing Alison.
He considered calling her, decided not to, and started the engine, having arranged to meet the night-duty detective at the club. Henry had decided his approach to finding Runcie would be blunt. He would simply knock on the door and take it from there.
He weaved through streets he knew intimately and emerged on the sea front. He drove north, turning into Withnell Street which ran at ninety degrees to the promenade. He drove past the club, did a three-point turn, then pulled in about fifty metres away, just as the night detective came and parked behind him in an unmarked Astra. The jack’s name was Brighouse, a youngish DC Henry knew vaguely and had heard good reports about. He had been busy with a prisoner in the cells when Shoreside was kicking off.
‘Some rockin’ tonight,’ he said to Henry as they walked up to the club.
‘One of those nights that make it all worthwhile,’ Henry said, with a mouth full of irony.
It was well over ten years since Henry had set foot in the club. Standing in front of the big, solid, ornately carved double doors that were the entrance, he paused and his heart upped a beat for a moment as a palpitation shimmied through him, head to toe. He swallowed.
Brighouse noted his hesitation. ‘You OK, boss?’
Henry nodded. ‘Yeah – someone’s just tangoed over my grave, that’s all.’
‘Don’t you just hate it when that happens?’
Henry shook himself free from the terrible memories and ghosts of the past. He had not thought about John Rider for years, a fact that slightly baffled him. Rider had been a top-rate Manchester gangster who had tried to break free from the shackles of his past, but his ex-buddies wouldn’t let go. They had muscled in on Rider’s Blackpool dream with fatal consequences for too many people, almost including Henry. Henry was amazed that he had the ability to move on from such life-changing events and still function as a cop. He knew that had to be the nature of the cop mentality, to be able to compartmentalize, to box off sections of the brain, file away the shit and carry on.
Not that he was completely immune to leakage between those inner walls. On occasions, they had disintegrated – big style – and the plumber had to be called in.
But not tonight. Tonight he had accidentally stepped into a violent set of circumstances that needed to be dealt with firmly and swiftly and forcefully, and a tenuous link to the past wasn’t going to throw him off the scent.
‘I’ve had dealings here in the past,’ Henry said.
‘I know,’ Brighouse said. ‘Bit of a legend.’
Henry shot him a glance, seeing if he was taking the piss. He wasn’t, but a concurrent thought struck him: did becoming a legend mean you were over the hill? Was it time to retire? he asked himself again. ‘This place hasn’t been used in a long time, by the looks.’
‘Not that I know of,’ Brighouse said. ‘So why are we here?’
‘Runcie Costain owns it.’
‘Shit – does he? I wonder if the licensing lads know about that.’
‘He’ll have got in under the radar. Probably using a clean front man.’
Brighouse nodded.
Henry put his weight to the substantial door. It didn’t move. And there was no way of booting it down. It wasn’t some flimsy plywood or MDF door to a bedsit. It was thick oak and properly secured. Henry surveyed it from top to bottom and saw a bell on the wall which had the look of being disconnected. Not that he would have rung it anyway. Runcie wasn’t likely to open up and let the boys in, if he was here.
‘Round the back,’ Henry said.
Brighouse gave him a wary
look. ‘Boss, I don’t want to shit my suit up.’
Henry treated him to his best superintendent’s caustic, visual dressing down, all eyes and disapproving mouth, and the young man got the message instantly. Henry refrained from saying patronizingly that he’d ruined more suits than Brighouse had had hot dinners. Probably wasn’t a good boast for a living legend to make. Instead he stalked away, turned into the next side road and found the alley that ran parallel to the rear of the club. Another location he knew well.
It was a typical Blackpool South back alley. Empty beer cans, cider bottles, dog shit, discarded fast food packaging and, before he knew it, or could lift his foot up quickly enough, Henry had trodden on a hypodermic needle that crunched like a baked cockroach. His mouth turned into an ugly sneer of anger as he lifted his foot carefully from the broken glass.
Up ahead in the darkness the alley was blocked by a parked car, which Henry assumed might belong to Runcie. He and Brighouse crept towards it, leaving fluorescent street lights behind, entering a dark world. Henry saw there were two cars in the alley, both parked facing the same direction, nose to tail.
With some shock he realized that the nearer one was the Nissan he had seen on Shoreside. His mouth tasted bitter again as his system pumped the last dregs of adrenalin into him. Beyond the Nissan was an old-style Fiat Panda, one with a fold-back roof.
‘That Panda’s Runcie’s,’ Brighouse whispered behind Henry. ‘I think.’
‘And this one’s from the drive-by shooting,’ Henry said under his breath.
‘Oh.’ Brighouse sounded uncertain.
Henry continued to creep down the alley, careful where he placed his feet. The driver and front passenger windows were wound down on the Nissan. Even feet away Henry could feel the heat of the engine rising on his face, hear the tick-tick of it cooling. A car with a little engine that had been screwed to the ground.
And – not for the first time that night – he could smell the unmistakable odour of cordite from the discharge of a gun.
‘What we gonna do, boss?’ Brighouse said hoarsely. His adrenalin was flowing too, but he was probably having his first flush of it that night, so he had plenty remaining.
‘Investigate.’
‘Does that—?’
Henry wasn’t completely sure what the next words were going to be, nor did he ever discover, as the sentence was stunted by the sound of gunfire from within the club. Dulled. Muted. Unmistakable.
The young detective’s next words actually turned out to be, ‘Fuck-shit!’ and he ducked instinctively. Henry was sure they were not the words he’d originally planned to finish his sentence with.
‘C’mon.’ Henry sidestepped between the cars and went to the door set into the high wall at the back of the club. Highly illegal barbed wire was looped loosely along the top of the wall to deter burglars. Henry flicked the latch on the door and put his shoulder to it. This door, unlike its cousin at the front, was rickety and rotten and loose. It scraped open and he stepped into the rear yard. This was not a particularly large area, but it was a mess of tangled and broken pallets, a few beer kegs and a couple of mega-sized wheelie bins.
When Henry had last been to the club, the back door had been sealed by a huge steel panel, pock-riveted to the brickwork. That had long since been peeled away, revealing the door which led into the kitchen area. Henry headed for this door, seeing it was ajar, his mouth now salty and dehydrated. It was a long time since he’d had a drink of anything.
‘Henry – is this wise?’
Ahh, Henry thought. Maybe that was what Brighouse was going to say.
Henry ignored him and entered the club. A low wattage bulb lit the kitchen, hanging by a bare wire. Henry crossed to the next door. If he remembered correctly, it opened into a series of corridors at the rear of the premises, off which toilets, offices and storerooms were located. Beyond was the way through to the main part of the club.
As he stepped into the first corridor he was instantly confronted by the charging figure of a hooded man, a machine pistol in his hands; behind him was another, similarly clad figure, this one carrying a revolver in his right hand. The two guys from the Nissan.
The meeting was a surprise to all concerned. If it hadn’t been deadly it would have been farcical when Henry and the first man collided headlong into each other. They fell into a tangle of thick limbs and torsos, groans of expelled air rushing out of their lungs.
And behind each man was a second man, of course.
The man with the revolver pointed it at Brighouse and fired. It was an ill-judged, unsupported shot, one handed. The recoil snapped the man’s hand high and sent the bullet into the wall above the detective’s head.
Not that Brighouse would have been hit anyway. As soon as he had seen the weapon rising, self-preservation kicked in and he dived back into the kitchen like a synchronized swimmer launching into a swimming pool – but quicker and not so gracefully.
Henry scrambled wildly and hit out.
The man he was tangling with whipped the barrel of the machine pistol across Henry’s temple, a glancing blow, knocking him sideways. Then the man was up on his feet, and both gunmen hurdled over Henry through to the kitchen and fled out past the terrified Brighouse, who had somehow ended up on his knees in front of the gas cooker, hands held up in surrender.
The man with the revolver pointed it at Brighouse, who clamped his hands together as if praying. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve got a fam . . .’
He did not fire, and they were gone.
Moments later, Henry staggered through the door, holding his face, blood from the gash on the side of his head all over his hands.
Brighouse dropped his praying hands hastily and looked shamefacedly at Henry, who gave him a glare, found his balance and ran out of the kitchen as he heard an engine starting up, a crunch of gears and a squeal of rubber.
Henry sprinted into the alleyway to see the Nissan swerving backwards onto the street, rocking as the brakes were slammed on, first gear was engaged and the car sped away.
By the time Henry made it to the street himself, the car had gone, leaving a trail of burned oil smoke hanging two feet above the road surface. He could hear the sound of the engine diminishing into the night.
‘You must think I’m a coward.’
Henry had found some kitchen roll, folded it square twice and was holding it against the cut on his head. The blood had flowed onto his face, neck and collar, but the cut itself did not appear too severe. It just hurt.
‘Do I hell. You did exactly the right thing. All you did was get out of the way of someone who took a pot shot at you. Good thinking if you ask me. I’d’ve done the same if I hadn’t run headlong into one of the bastards.’
‘You’re saying I did right by not tackling them?’
‘Yeah, you did right,’ Henry said softly. ‘Don’t dwell on it,’ he advised, but he could see that the prospect of being labelled a chicken would haunt Brighouse for some time to come, if not for ever. It was in his eyes. Self-recrimination. ‘OK?’ Henry said, ending the conversation. ‘Let’s go see what damage they’ve done.’
He and Brighouse had not been joined by any backup – mainly because all other available men were now up on Shoreside and there wasn’t another cop free within twenty miles. Henry, however, would lay odds that they would be safe now. Whatever had been going on in the club was over with. The job had been done.
He jerked his head at Brighouse to tag along, and they started to make their way through the corridors until they entered the main dance floor and bar area. It had not been touched since Henry had last been there. He quickly scanned the floor for signs of old bloodstains, then glanced up at the ceiling and saw the large number of bullet holes that had been put there on his last visit by killers trying to murder him and John Rider. They had fired upwards, strafing the ceiling, knowing that the two men were hiding in the rafters. Henry shook his head at the memory. The bullets had obviously missed him. They had killed Rider.
Henry walked across, dabbing his face. It was still bleeding and the kitchen towel did not seem to be as efficient at soaking up liquid as the manufacturers claimed. Not blood, anyway.
He went to the open end of the bar and – without surprise – looked down at Runcie Costain’s bullet-riddled body. Alongside him was a sawn-off shotgun, a few scattered cartridges and a mangy-looking revolver. His little arsenal, stashed at the club, which he’d hurried down to retrieve and arm himself with after the drive-by, before he was ambushed.
He was on his back, one leg drawn up, between the bar and the shelves. An arc of bullets from the right side of his chest ran up to his left shoulder, probably one burst of the machine pistol that had cracked Henry’s head. A curved line from his liver, across his sternum, shredding his lungs and heart, and into his left shoulder, most of which seemed to have been blown away. They must have caught him by surprise, because he had a half-smoked cheroot clamped at the corner of his mouth, still smouldering. He was lying in a steady growing pool of crimson, oxygenated blood.
‘Holy . . .’ Brighouse uttered as it truly sank in what he was seeing. It had taken his mind a few seconds to completely assimilate it. Then he started to gag. He pitched away from the bar and ran across the dance floor to its far edge, where he dropped to his hands and knees and heaved up copious amounts of half-digested Christmas dinner. It reminded Henry he hadn’t yet been lucky enough to have his.
But at least the crime scene remained sterile thanks to Brighouse’s thoughtfulness in spewing up as far away from it as he could manage.
Henry walked over to him and gave him a fatherly pat on the back.
The Force Major Investigation Team maintained a pokey office at Blackpool nick, tucked away in a corridor few people ever seemed to venture down. Nominally it was Henry’s office, but he let any of the FMIT team use it as necessary. The department only had a toehold because that was all they needed. When anything major happened in a division which called for FMIT involvement, such as a murder or other serious crime, it was up to the division to provide most of the staffing, resources, space and money. The team, which had such a grand-sounding name, was actually a very tiny department based at headquarters, headed by four detective superintendents (though only three at the moment because of Joe Speakman’s sudden departure) with a couple of DCIs and DIs, some support staff – and that was about it.