Bad Tidings

by Nick Oldham

  ‘And you,’ Henry said, but not loud enough for her to hear.

  His interaction with Janine troubled him, but he wasn’t certain why. Maybe because he’d seen her as an ‘in’ to the Cromers, but then her drawbridge had been pulled up and she’d retreated to the bosom of the family. Not that he blamed her. When the chips were down, families did tend either to stick together or fall apart, he supposed.

  A disappointment, but one he should have foreseen. She had been half pleasant with him for her own ends – basically because she had been worried about Freddy, her dear, unstable uncle, when no one else in the family seemed to give a toss, except for Freddy’s mother.

  What a tangled web, he thought . . . which, of course, he was obliged to untangle.

  On the way back to Blackpool he spoke to Rik Dean about the crime scenes, all of which were under control. The one around the Costain house had been quickly dealt with and closed down because of the growing tension on the estate. Even in the pursuit of truth and justice it was sometimes best to back off. The other scenes, at the hospital and the club, were still being combed for evidence and were expected to be sealed for at least another day as the scientific crews did their work. That was fine with Henry. As the manual said, ‘You only get one chance at a crime scene.’ Rik said that the post-mortems had also been arranged for later that day. He also confirmed that the young lad who’d been shot outside the Costains’ had been released from hospital and that arrangements had been made for a detective to interview him the following day.

  Henry also spoke to Bill Robbins, who sounded a lot more chilled than he had been on the bridge. Henry had managed to persuade the IPCC to back off from him for another day. They were desperate to get moving with the investigation, but Henry sensed their keenness was inspired by a sense of wanting to be seen to do something rather than by expediency. The press were on their backs about the shooting and, being media savvy, they had to show they were on the case.

  Henry talked them out of coming and arranged for interviews the following day, with the promise that they would have full, unrestricted access to anything they wanted because there was simply nothing to hide.

  Half an hour later he was back at the cardiac unit at BVH to find his mother sat up in bed, chatting brightly to Leanne and Jenny. After a lot of hugs and kisses, Henry relieved his daughters, who were planning a girls’ night out to catch up with each other properly.

  Then he sat down next to his mother and took her bony hand between his. It felt cold and brittle. He could easily have crushed it.

  ‘How you doing, Mum?’

  ‘Putting on a brave face. My chest still feels like I’ve been run over by a steamroller.’

  ‘It will.’

  ‘The girls tell me you’ve been busy.’

  ‘Just the usual dross.’

  ‘You know, I’m really proud of you, Henry.’ Her voice was a gravelly whisper. ‘You’ve achieved so much . . . who would have thought you could even have been a policeman? So shy and introverted when you were a kid, always in your own little world . . . and there was always a bit of Walter Mitty about you.’

  That was something his mother had often levelled at him, Mitty being a fictional character who lived in a dream world.

  ‘I just act the part, do what I have to do and then retreat to being the real me when I’m not at work.’

  She rested her head on the plumped-up pillows and inhaled a scratchy breath. ‘Do you need to tell me something?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Rings on fingers.’

  ‘Ahh, that.’

  ‘Yes, that.’

  ‘Er . . . I’m engaged to Alison.’

  ‘Good. She’s a good girl. Don’t screw it up.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She turned her head and looked sharply at him, although Henry could only surmise what she was actually seeing. Just a blur, he guessed. ‘You’d better not, otherwise you’ll have me to answer to. She’s a treasure. I never thought you’d find one as good as Kate again, but I think you have. Bloody look after her.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And bring her in to see me before I die . . . I want to see the ring, and you two together.’

  ‘I will . . . but you’re not dying.’

  With a snort of disbelief, she rested again and asked him what he was working on. He started to tell her but could not say if she was listening or even hearing at all as she lay there, eyes closed, her hand still in his, her chest rising and falling only slightly. Henry droned on, verbally working through the last few days. Any opportunity to get things in order was good for him, but this time it failed to provide him with any investigatory revelations. No light-bulb moments. Just making sense of the muddle.

  Partway through this retelling, his mobile phone vibrated. He went out into the corridor to take the call.

  It was Lisa, sounding happy and, he supposed, gratified in more ways than one. She said she was coming to the hospital in about an hour, would spend a couple of hours with Mum and then stay on hand locally – and sober – just in case she was needed. She told Henry he could take the night off without worrying if he could have a drink. She and Rik would see to Mum. That was great news for Henry, but he also needed to talk to Lisa about the DNR issue, and he said he would stay until she arrived.

  ‘I thought you’d gone,’ his mother said as he settled back next to her.

  ‘Just on the phone.’

  She gave him a weak smile and reached out to touch his cheek. ‘I was listening to what you were saying, you know. One thing not suffering is my hearing.’

  ‘Oh,’ Henry said. ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘You know, we used to live in a village.’

  ‘I know.’

  Henry’s early years had been spent in a tiny village in east Lancashire, not far from Belthorn and not dissimilar. He remembered it as a glowing, glorious time, with harsh winters and long, wonderful summers and hardly anything in between. Deep snow and searing sunshine, one or the other, it always seemed. Running wild, free and unencumbered by any fear.

  ‘You mentioned Belthorn,’ his mother said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know it . . . well, knew it years ago. It’s probably bigger now than it was back then. I didn’t know it well, but I do know one thing about it, about all villages.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Secrets. All villages have secrets. Lots of them. And they always surface at some time or another. Nothing ever remains secret for ever, and nor do the lies . . .’

  And on that observation, Henry’s mother fell asleep.

  FOURTEEN

  Henry was doing what a superintendent was paid so much money to do: sitting at his desk, savouring his coffee and toast (he’d discovered a toaster in his secretary’s office a few weeks earlier and had brought in a small toastie loaf that morning, together with some real salted butter), but above all, thinking. He had his feet up, legs crossed at the ankles, and was tilted back in his office chair, hoping it wouldn’t collapse. Just thinking, sipping, munching, savouring.

  And the words shooting around his head were the ones his mother had uttered before dropping to sleep. Villages, secrets and lies. Was this the key to the two murders (and possibly a third one in West Yorkshire) he had been asked to investigate?

  Were they the result of secrets and lies?

  Something that had happened years before, but like a sleeping virus . . . chicken pox evolving into shingles. It was payback time.

  He folded the last piece of toast into his mouth, wiped the corners of his lips, slid his feet off the desk and rocked upright.

  If nothing else, he shrugged mentally, it was as good a theory as anything to follow in an unsolved murder case. Just another line of enquiry, a thread of investigation.

  He tapped a key on his computer keyboard. The county crest screensaver disappeared and the computer came to life.

  He had logged on to the internet, onto the website that celebrated the village of Bel
thorn, on which Jerry Tope had found the class photograph showing a bunch of innocent kids, looking shyly at the camera. Not many were smiling. Most looked terrified. Henry held his nose close to the monitor and looked at the children, whose ages ranged from five to eleven. It was actually a photo of the whole school – a total of thirty kids – a phenomenon that would simply not exist in the educational world of today. Thirty was a low number for just one class now, not the whole school.

  There were no names, but Henry could still identify some of them.

  David Peters. Christine Blackshaw. Freddy Cromer. Ella Milner, the murder victim from West Yorkshire.

  Henry could not pick out Terry Cromer and wondered where he was that day.

  Three victims, one madman.

  Henry pouted and looked closely through the faces again. Another one, a little girl, caught his eye. He frowned . . . something familiar about her. She was sitting with the younger children at the desks on the left side of the photo, the ages increasing left to right.

  Glancing up he looked at the whiteboard on the back wall of the office, which bore the names of the two Lancashire victims. As he looked, he reached for his desk phone and tapped in a number that he had written on the board, waited for a connection.

  ‘Hello?’ the dull female voice answered eventually.

  ‘Oh, good morning. Is that Bernadette?’

  ‘Look,’ she started aggressively before he could say anything else, ‘if you’re trying to get me to claim back payment protection insurance, just sod off . . .’

  Henry chuckled. ‘No . . . Bernadette, this is Detective Superintendent Christie here. You know, the cop who interrupted your Christmas Day.’

  ‘Oh, yeah . . . just as bad. Your number shows as unknown. I just thought . . .’

  ‘It’s because I’m calling from my office . . . look, sorry to bother you again, but have you got a minute or two spare so I can ask you a few more questions?’

  Henry heard her expel a long sigh. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘When I spoke to you,’ he began, still peering closely at the monitor, ‘you said you’d known David a long time . . . can you tell me exactly how long?’

  ‘Since we met at college.’

  ‘And was college the first time you ever met him?’

  She paused, then said, ‘Er . . . well, yes, really.’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t go to the same infant school as him?’

  ‘Oh’ – something dawned – ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘What do I mean?’

  ‘I suppose you could say I did, for a while at least. We both went to Belthorn School, but we were only there briefly at the same time. He was older than me and I only went there for a few months – just as I started school – and then my parents moved to Accrington from Belthorn. He was four years older than I was and I can’t say I knew him, as such. When we met at college later, I didn’t even know him at all. It was only as we talked that we realized we’d been at the same school years before.’

  Henry rolled his eyes. He was annoyed at himself, annoyed at the detective who had taken Bernadette’s witness statement, and tried not to be annoyed at her, too. He knew from experience that people being interviewed by the police usually only answered the questions asked of them and rarely expanded unless pushed. The statement taken from Bernadette Peters was functional but sparse in detail.

  ‘Remind me – you met at college again?’

  ‘Yes. I was in my first year but he was in his last, doing some technical course or other, electronics and such like.’

  ‘Did he know you from school?’

  ‘No, as I said . . .’

  ‘OK . . . so how long were you at Belthorn School?’

  ‘Three months, I think. Not long.’

  ‘OK . . . do you know Christine Blackshaw?’

  ‘She was the one shot in Blackburn, wasn’t she? You mentioned her before.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ella Milner – does that name mean anything?’

  ‘No, who’s she?’

  ‘Another murder victim. Would you be surprised to learn they were all at Belthorn School?’

  ‘Surprised? The names don’t mean anything to me, Mr Christie. I was an itty-bitty kid. But how did you find out?’

  He looked at the photograph on his monitor. ‘Just as a result of enquiries,’ he said mysteriously. Then, ‘Do you remember anything at all that David might’ve been involved in way back then, any sort of incident? Did he ever mention anything?’

  ‘You’re clutching at straws, I take it?’

  ‘Following a line of investigation,’ Henry said, haughtily this time. ‘And the fact that three murder victims were together at the same school, even though that was years before they were killed, seems a pretty good thing to be banging away at, don’t you think?’

  ‘That’s my hand slapped.’

  ‘Yep . . . so if you do think of anything that David might have mentioned, please give me a call.’

  ‘You’re cross now.’

  ‘Yes I am.’ Henry hung up after a few words of thanks, and his fingers were still on the phone when his office door was flung open and two faces appeared. Rik Dean and Jerry Tope. Rik was marginally ahead.

  Neither man actually spoke, the look on Henry’s face reminding them they had burst into a superintendent’s office without knocking.

  Then Henry said, ‘Someone better speak.’

  ‘We’ve got something,’ Rik said.

  ‘Me too,’ Tope said, dancing behind Rik, a sheet of paper in hand.

  Henry cocked his thumb and forefinger like a pistol and pointed at Rik. ‘You first.’

  ‘Shit,’ Tope said, crestfallen.

  Rik said, ‘You’ll need your kit.’

  After leaving his mother’s bedside the previous evening and entrusting her to Lisa, who had turned up looking positively radiant following her reunion with Rik, Henry had driven straight to the Tawny Owl, where he ate the apparently legendary Boxing Day curry (turkey, of course) with a couple of pints of San Miguel, followed by a couple of Jack Daniels on the rocks. He crashed out about midnight with Alison beside him and the newly betrothed couple screwed the last dregs of life out of each other before falling soundly asleep.

  Henry woke seven hours later with a bursting bladder, but also completely refreshed and ready for what lay ahead.

  Alison watched him get dressed after he came out of the shower.

  ‘This doesn’t mean you get out of the “whisking me away, down on one knee” scenario,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’ He pulled on his jeans, missed the trouser leg and found himself hopping around in a circle in order to keep his balance. He bounced off the wall twice before the second leg found its rightful place. He sat down heavily on the bed and started to pull on his socks. ‘But it’ll still be busy this week . . . we’ll get away next week, promise. A hot city somewhere.’

  ‘How do you think this week will pan out?’

  ‘Dunno. Bit of a waiting game in some respects. First, Mum. I honestly don’t think she’ll last much longer, even though she rallied a bit yesterday . . . just a feeling,’ he said sadly. ‘Then we’ll see if the Twixtmas Killer strikes again, and today I’ll need to pull a big investigation together to sort out the mess of the last couple of days. I’ll get in early, brainstorm a bit. Loads of things need covering . . . locations, victims, offenders, post-mortems . . . a manhunt for Terry Cromer and whoever was his partner in crime . . . all sorts. Just want the first hour or two alone to get my head around it.’ As he talked he continued to dress, staring at the wall for inspiration, assuming that Alison was enthralled and intrigued by his work. ‘Surveillance branch, Intelligence Unit, Fraud, Uniforms . . .’ When he glanced at her, she had turned over and seemed to have fallen asleep. ‘So, not really interested, eh? Bloody women . . . That said, I did enjoy last night, especially when you flipped over onto your knees and I got behind—’

  ‘Oi!’ she interrupted without looking round. ‘Save your deb
riefs for work.’

  Henry chuckled, leaned over, kissed her and left.

  He was at his office in the FMIT building at HQ three-quarters of an hour later, working out the day ahead.

  At 1 p.m. he had a team of detectives in front of him in one of the classrooms at the Training Centre, though not as many as he would have liked; by 2 p.m. they were on the road, fully briefed and tasked. Henry then spent an hour with the IPCC investigators being interviewed on tape, then he was back in his office where he had started pondering about the double murder and had called Bernadette Peters.

  ‘Surveillance Branch picked him up straight away,’ Rik Dean explained. ‘They’d recently done a job for NCIS on him and Terry Cromer that came to nothing. It seems that this guy and Terry had been doing a lot of to-ing and fro-ing together around the north-west and it’s possible he could be Terry’s partner in crime for the shootings.’

  Followed by an irritated Jerry Tope, Rik Dean and Henry were scuttling across to the garage at the rear of headquarters to pick up one of the pool cars. They were moving quite rapidly and as Rik spoke, Henry scanned the paperwork he had been handed.

  Kyle Clovelly was the name of the individual Rik was talking about, and he had been mentioned in Henry’s briefing. Late twenties, with a long history of crime behind him, including serious assaults, drug dealing and firearms offences. According to the intel he had recently hooked up with Terry Cromer, mainly it seemed, as a heavy and bodyguard. The information was fairly sparse but a few sharp-eyed cops (and Henry was relieved to learn there were still some out there) had seen him with Cromer entering and leaving clubs in Blackburn. It had been this information that had prompted an NCIS operation, but it had come to nothing, not least because Cromer and Clovelly were surveillance smart.

  Since the briefing, a couple of surveillance officers had set off on their own initiative to see if they could track Clovelly down and they’d picked him up in a car driving through Blackburn. They followed him as best they could towards Accrington, the neighbouring town, where he had managed to shake the tail.