by Nick Oldham
Then he froze.
With measured deliberation, he ran the torch beam downwards across each step, and saw what had made him stop abruptly.
Blood. Tiny drops of it on a couple of the steps. He flashed his torch on the breezeblock wall and saw more blood, and in it a big handprint. On the stair rail there was yet more blood where a hand had gripped it. His torch flicked up to the door and there was blood on that, too, another handprint by the door handle that he hadn’t seen on his first arc of the torch.
Henry swallowed and turned to look over to Rik and Oxford, chatting quietly by the office door. He could hear the murmur of their voices.
He gave them a little wave but they didn’t look over at him.
He coughed – still no response.
He flashed his torch wildly at them and both detectives squinted over at him. He put a finger to his lips and beckoned them over. Rik opened his arms in a ‘What?’ gesture.
If he could have read Henry’s lips, they would have said, ‘Just fucking come here.’
Instead, Henry beckoned again, this time with a more urgent hand signal, and shook his head despairingly.
They seemed to move with reluctance, but joined him a minute later. As they made their way towards him, Henry kept his finger to his lips.
‘What is it?’ Rik asked.
Henry flicked his torch beam onto the wall, up the steps and onto the door of the upper office, showing him the blood smears.
‘Shit,’ Rik hissed.
‘No – blood,’ Henry corrected him. Then, ‘I’m going to have a look.’
‘Is that a good idea?’
‘Probably not.’
He put his right foot on the first step and went up slowly, avoiding the blood and not touching the wall. At the top of the steps there was a small, railed landing. Having reached it, he touched the door silently with a knuckle to see if it would swing open. It was shut, but maybe not locked.
He crouched low, squatting on his haunches. Rik was three steps behind him. Oxford watched from the bottom of the stairs, mouth agape.
Henry rapped on the door and shouted, ‘Police!’ then cowered slightly, expecting bullets to strafe the door from inside the office. There was no response, no indication of movement. Henry knocked again and once more said, ‘Police!’, but kept low and to one side of the door.
He gave it a few seconds and then reached up for the door handle, a basic latch type, easing it down with his thumb and forefinger. He pushed the door open and ducked to one side in case anything unpleasant came out of the room . . . like chunks of lead travelling at fifteen hundred miles an hour. The door swung open to an unlit room. Nothing moved or responded.
Henry counted to thirty – not certain as to why, but it seemed a good number to aim for – then shouted, ‘This is the police. Is there anyone in there?’
Still nothing. He shuffled himself around and then, with his back to the wall by the door, he rose to his full height, aware that the wall against which he pressed his back seemed to be made of MDF or some type of hardboard. It wasn’t solid . . . and if there was anyone in the office, desperate and armed, the wall would not give him much protection. He reached around the door jamb with the fingers of his left hand, feeling at a height at which he would expect to find a light switch. He touched it and his forefinger ran up the curved slope of a rocker switch. He hesitated a moment and then flicked it. A strong light came on in the room.
Henry jerked away from the door and dropped low again, but nothing happened.
‘Police,’ he said again. There was no harm in making sure that everyone knew, he wouldn’t like to have anyone arguing in court – either Crown or at an inquest (including his own) – that they had not been clearly informed the police were there. ‘I’m a police officer and I’m going to come in through the door,’ he said clearly. ‘I am not armed and you will be able to see my hands . . . OK?’
He had passed the point of expecting feedback. He rose to his full height again and sidestepped into the doorway, his muscles tense, expecting the whack of a bullet.
It did not come.
The office was devoid of any furniture, bare – with the exception of the second body of the night, another male, wedged in the far corner of the small room.
As at the first door, Rik came up behind Henry and peered over his shoulder. ‘Jeepers,’ he said again.
Even though Henry could not clearly see the face, he knew it was Freddy Cromer sitting there, legs splayed out, head lolling forwards on his chest which was drenched with blood from his head wound. In his right hand his fingers were loosely holding a snub-nosed, six shot revolver. Henry could see the entry wound in his right temple, half an inch in front of his ear. There was no exit wound this time, the bullet having lodged inside Freddy’s head.
Henry edged forward, carefully watching where he placed his bootee-clad feet. Rik stayed at the door.
Henry squatted down again in front of Freddy, peering closely at him, angling his own face into a position to see him clearly.
‘Definitely Freddy,’ Henry said.
Then Henry blinked and uttered urgently, ‘Get an ambulance . . . I think he’s still alive.’
EIGHTEEN
‘I heard a breath and then I saw his chest move,’ Henry explained to the A&E consultant. This was the same doctor who, a week before, had come to meet Henry at the hospital on Christmas Day – it seemed so long ago now – when Freddy Cromer had taken the poor nurse hostage. Then, physically at least, Freddy had been in excellent health. The same doctor was now battling to save Freddy’s life. ‘Just barely,’ Henry continued. ‘I didn’t know if it was just a death rattle, to be honest – you know, the last expulsion of breath, that sort of thing. Then I heard it again, felt a pulse in his neck and realized there was life still in there.’ He did not add, tempting though it was, ‘But not as we know it.’
‘You did well to notice it,’ the doctor said. He had spent the last two hours treating Freddy, whose condition was described as critical. ‘I’m surprised he’s still alive, actually . . . the X-rays show that the bullet in the brain lodged’ – here the doctor touched the back of his own head, just behind his right ear – ‘somewhere in this vicinity. Obviously there’s massive swelling and bleeding and until we have control of both, it’s impossible to say what the prognosis is. At the moment he’s in a coma, which is a good thing because it’ll give his body an opportunity to settle . . . but to be fair, I don’t hold out much hope for his recovery. As corny as it always sounds, the next twenty-four hours will be critical.
‘Anyway’ – he clapped Henry on the arm – ‘you did well, you saved his life for the time being at least. Get yourself a brew. That machine’ – he pointed to a hot drinks dispenser – ‘does a great filter coffee, believe it or not.’
‘Thanks – and I will.’
The doctor pulled his surgical mask over his face and turned away into the maze of the A&E department.
Henry took a deep breath, then followed doctor’s orders.
It was now past eight in the morning. He carried the steaming coffee out into the dawn and stood on the paved area outside the A&E entrance at Royal Blackburn Hospital, sipping the surprisingly good brew, taking in the view across to the motorway and up the hill beyond towards Belthorn. He thought, Who could have believed I could have had so much fun in such a small place?
Daylight had only just crept in, but it was still grey. At least the threatened snowstorm had not materialized, yet as Henry searched the sky, the possibility still existed. There seemed little chance that the sun would shine on the beginning of this brand new year.
He phoned Rik, who was still up at the factory unit in charge of the murder scene. The circus had arrived en masse and got to work. It was only a short conversation – as he talked, he was focusing on an Astra van being driven up the curved driveway to the hospital. He ended the call and sipped his drink whilst watching the occupant park, pay and hurry in his direction.
He took a long swi
g of the coffee, then dropped the plastic cup into a waste bin and prepared himself to meet and greet Janine Cromer, daughter of Terry, niece of Freddy. He was already thinking this was going to be fun.
She halted abruptly in front of him, challenge in her manner.
‘Janine, I’m so sorry.’
She blinked away her disbelief and said cynically, ‘I’ll bet you are.’
‘Oddly enough, I don’t like people dying.’
She surveyed his face with hard-edged eyes. He could almost see the turmoil inside.
Henry had to agree that this wasn’t the way he would have chosen to deal with the relative of a murder victim and an (attempted) suicide. But he had wanted to stay with Freddy when the ambulance turned up fifteen minutes after being rousted and he did not really want anyone else to deal with them. When Freddy had been rushed into casualty, he had called Janine, using the mobile number he had logged in his phone, but there had been no reply. He’d left a message and then had a uniform PC to go up to the house in Belthorn – but there had been no reply there, either. And as the surveillance team had been taken off the house a day before (because of the cost), there was no way of knowing if there was actually anyone in or not. According to the patrol, the place seemed completely empty.
So Henry had left another message for Janine. And another.
And eventually she called him, sounding tired and irritated.
He had asked her to come to the hospital to meet him. His idea had been to tell her face to face what he had found in the factory unit, but she had insisted that he tell her over the phone.
So he did. To silence. Not the best way to deliver the news of a death, and Henry was very uncomfortable with it – but that was what she wanted. So she got it.
Finally she’d said, ‘My dad’s dead, but it looks like Freddy might live. Is that what you’re saying? Freddy might live?’
‘Yes – so I need to speak to you, please. And also to your grandmother, their mum.’
‘I’ll come,’ she said. And hung up.
And here she was standing in front of him. Suddenly her hard shell cracked and she said, ‘Can I see my uncle, please?’
‘Yes, I think so . . . I’ll come if you don’t mind.’
‘I do, actually, but I need to know what’s going on, what’s really happened, and sadly you might be the only person who can tell me.’
It would have been easy for Henry to shrug and say ‘Whatever.’ Instead he bit his tongue and remained professional. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.
‘Yes, we do.’
She stalked past Henry through the automatic doors, but once inside the reception area she stopped unexpectedly and spun on him. ‘I don’t even know where he is. You take me.’
‘Follow me,’ he said softly, walked past her touching her arm, leading the way to the A&E wards. He was sympathetic to her mood – something as enormous as this was hard for anyone to deal with and get right in their head. She had only just learned some terrible news about her family and Henry understood that she would probably hate him, love him, despise him, pretty much all at the same time. That’s the way it went, whether people were members of crime families or not.
As they entered the A&E wards, he bumped into the consultant again. A busy man.
‘This is Janine Cromer, the patient’s niece. Can she see him, please?’
The doctor looked at her. ‘We met last week. I’m very sorry about your uncle, but yes you can see him.’ To Henry he said, ‘You know where he is.’ To both he said, ‘We’re going to have to take him to Preston Royal Infirmary. They have the surgical facilities and expertise for this kind of thing . . .’
‘What kind of thing exactly?’ Janine demanded crossly. ‘I’ve only got part of the picture here . . . The police haven’t been very helpful, to be honest,’ she said with feeling and gave Henry that hostile look again. ‘But that’s not surprising as they hate and harass my family.’
‘OK, look, I’ll tell you what,’ the doctor suggested, sensing the aggression, ‘let this officer take you to see your uncle first. I’m afraid you won’t be able to touch him, or anything like that, but you can speak to him if you so wish. He’s been seriously wounded, he’s in a coma and critically poorly. When you’re ready, come up to the office and I’ll tell you everything I can. And I’m sure that Mr Christie’ – he looked pointedly at Henry – ‘will tell you all he can.’
Henry nodded helpfully.
Henry then led her to the single treatment room, in which Freddy lay spreadeagled on the bed. His clothes had been unceremoniously cut from him and a single folded sheet was laid across his lower stomach and upper legs. A machine was helping him to breathe steadily, making a sucking noise, and he was attached to two drips running into the veins in the back of each of his hands. He was connected to a monitor that showed the weak blip of his heartbeat and his dangerously low blood pressure. The head wound was covered by a dressing and bandage and although the area around it had been shaved, cleaned and disinfected, there were still streaks of dried blood down his cheek and neck.
He was a huge, hairy man, Henry saw. A massive barrel of a chest, enormous biceps and thick legs. Although Henry knew that Freddy had mental problems, he wondered why he’d allowed Terry to dominate him so. Terry was a big, tough guy, but he didn’t have Freddy’s physical presence. Henry knew the answer was psychology not brute strength. A powerful, evil personality was all that was required to cow others into submission, and Terry had certainly had that. Until now.
Janine’s hand went to her mouth, stifling a squeal of shock. ‘My God,’ she said into her palm. ‘My God.’
Henry, standing behind her, managed to catch her before she pivoted forwards and hit the hard tiled floor.
‘Seriously, I’m OK,’ Janine said, waving off the attention and taking a sip of water from the glass Henry had provided for her.
Henry had caught her and dragged her gently to a chair in the corridor before lifting her onto it, again gently. The nurse who had been attending to Freddy swooped across to assist and it was established that Janine had simply gone woozy and lightheaded, not actually passed out, although Henry had seen the whites of her eyes as her eyeballs rolled right back into their sockets.
She sat with her head well forward, breathed and fanned herself. The nurse had checked her blood pressure, which was low but OK.
‘It’s just this whole week, what’s been going on, then this morning . . . Dad, Uncle Freddy . . . just too much to bear,’ Janine explained. ‘But I feel all right now.’ She smiled feebly at Henry. Her face was the colour of ash, but a healthier-looking tinge was creeping slowly upwards.
The consultant came out of Freddy’s room and bent down in front of Janine, checking her pulse and eyes, nodding as everything seemed to be in order.
‘Do you want to come up to the office?’ he asked. ‘I’ll tell you what I know.’
‘Please.’
He helped her to her feet and the three of them went to the office further down the corridor. Henry stood to one side whilst the doctor explained Freddy’s wound to Janine, using the X-rays, laying out the possibilities for recovery (slim, but miracles did happen) and what would be happening to Freddy in the immediate future. The air ambulance had been requested, he said, would be on site within an hour and Freddy was going to be flown to the trauma clinic at Preston Royal Infirmary.
There was a little shock in Janine’s face that Henry didn’t quite understand. She said, ‘So quickly?’
‘Within an hour and a half he should be being operated on,’ the doctor claimed. ‘I will accompany him, of course, and assist in the procedure.’
Janine shook her head at the news. ‘I just thought that if someone shoots themselves in the head, they’d die.’ She sounded a tad disappointed.
‘Every gunshot wound is different, every body different,’ the doctor explained. ‘It all depends on angles and the condition of the weapon used and the ammunition. From the X-ray, as you can see, the bullet entered his
head at a very acute angle and was not fired directly into the brain. Had that been the case, the injury would certainly have been fatal and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But we are. Mr Cromer is still alive, we’ll do our very best to save him. Maybe he will live and talk again.’
‘Thank you, thank you, doctor,’ Janine said. Henry thought that rather than being elated or hopeful, she looked mortified by the news that he might survive.
‘For the moment we need to concentrate on keeping him stable and preparing for the arrival of the helicopter, which is based in Preston. I need to do that now.’ He rose from his chair, gave Henry a glance and left.
Janine blew her nose on a tissue she found in her shoulder bag. She wiped her red-raw eyes. Henry perched on the corner of the doctor’s desk.
‘How you doing?’
‘Not good.’ She looked up at him. ‘Are you going to tell me what you know?’
‘As much as I can.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means as much as I can.’
After giving him another antagonistic gaze, Janine relented. ‘OK – fire away.’
Due to his conditioning as an SIO – and the fact that informing the relatives of murder victims was always fraught with difficulty – Henry kept it as brief as possible. Not least because there was always the chance that the ‘live’ relative might also have killed the ‘dead’ one.
He wasn’t to know, yet, if Janine had killed her father and put a bullet into her uncle’s head. It was always possible. Not that he thought this was the case here, but he always had to keep it in mind. There was a lot of work still to be done at the scene to piece together exactly what had happened.
First glance gave the impression that Freddy had killed Terry, who had been hiding out in the factory unit, and then turned the gun on himself in a fit of remorse. Henry didn’t phrase it in those terms for Janine, though. All he did was state facts.
He was interested in her conclusions, though. And he had a lot of questions to ask her, but they would have to come later. The first priority was to get Freddy treated and until the result of the surgery at Preston was known, Henry doubted if he could morally pin her down. He did wonder where Freddy’s mother was. Janine said she had gone to the Canary Islands to get away from all the ‘shite’ that was going on and that she, Janine, would speak to her later.