Backlash

Ten

Peace at last. Henry strolled slowly through the corridors of the station, unable to inject any speed or purpose into his step as he came down from the high of his recent experience. He made it to the inspectors’ office and plugged in the kettle. Next to it were several mugs, all obviously personally owned by other inspectors, a box of teabags, some powdered coffee, sugar in a stainless-steel bowl (appropriated from the canteen, probably) and a couple of jars of Teamate. No doubt he would be required to join the inspectors’ tea fund. As he helped himself to a teabag, a spoonful of Teamate and dropped both into someone else’s mug, he hazarded a guess that the wonderful Inspector Burt Norman would be the tea-fund administrator. It seemed the type of thing he would relish taking on and running with a rod of iron. He would savour telling Henry about the unwritten rules concerning payment of monies, the use, or otherwise, of other people’s crockery (not permitted, Henry assumed) and the penalties levied for late payment of dues.

Henry smirked as he thought back to the welcome Norman had extended to him at the start of the tour. It seemed days, not hours ago, so much had happened since. All in all a pretty usual sort of night for the reactive inspector in Blackpool, Henry guessed. Reactive inspectors had to be the jacks and masters of all trades; it was something Henry had not realised before. God, get me back onto CID, he prayed.

No, the meeting with Burt Norman hadn’t just been hours ago. It had been a lifetime ago.

The kettle boiled and clicked off. Henry made his tea and because of his distinct lack of energy, heaped a large spoonful of sugar into it. False, short-lived energy, maybe, but energy nevertheless. He sat slowly down, easing his aching back and other joints into the chair. He lifted both feet onto the desk. They were throbbing continually in his boots, a persistent thud, thud, thud. He unclipped his tie, tore open his shirt collar and looked forward to his proposed oasis of calm.

Only when he had chilled out, drunk his tea and enjoyed its effects, would he get his mind round the things he had to do. First, the hospital. He had to decide what protection, if any, the girl needed and more importantly, perhaps, whether or not the police had the resources to keep a constant watch on her. Then there was her attempted suicide. Some searching questions had to be asked soon.

The first sip of the hot brown tea was a wonderful experience. He sighed and his mind drifted to the subject of Jane Roscoe. He had wanted to hate her with a vengeance, but had found he quite liked her. Liked her a lot, to be truthful. Firstly because she seemed very capable and no nonsense. She was a good DI, of that there was no question. Secondly because he actually quite fancied her. He liked her manner, her appearance, voice, hair, face — whoa, Henry! Put on the brakes. He stopped this line of thought with a sardonic grin: do not even think about it; do not let what lurks behind your Y-fronts rule your mind. That had happened far too often and, anyway, he was in a ‘relationship’ now with the vet lady.

His face creased at the thought of a situation he was not a hundred per cent comfortable with. Fiona did not seem to be on the same intellectual plane as him: she was several places higher and the only common ground seemed to be bed and sex. And even Henry knew that was no basis for a lasting relationship. How he hated that word. It meant nothing these days. He took a second sip of the tea. He never got the third sip.

PC Taylor thundered down the hospital corridor, heaving a nurse to one side. A second nurse took shelter in the doorway of a side ward and almost ducked as he flew past. The constable screamed, ‘Stop him! Stop him!’ He was hampered by the weight of his uniform and the cumbersome equipment belt around his waist. Police appointments were not designed with speed in mind. Nevertheless, Taylor ran hard and fast after the dark figure, his strong physique enabling him to move pretty quickly.

His right hand fumbled for the radio transmit button on the mike attached to his shoulder. He shouted his collar number and then screamed, ‘Assistance! Assistance needed at the Blackpool Victoria Hospital. Chasing suspect down corridor away from A amp;E. Murder suspect — killed a prisoner — ASSISTANCE!’

Henry shot out of his seat. There was a special radio set in the inspectors’ office which gave the inspectors the facility to listen to both sides of radio conversations. He had heard Taylor’s desperate transmission and could hear the breathlessness, the pounding of the feet, the rustle of clothing and the fear in the voice. Something bad had happened.

‘Inspector to PC Taylor, what’s the job, John?’

‘Ahhh — chasing — ’ pound, pound, pound of boots — ‘Chasing suspect — GET OUT OF THE WAY! Girl in custody — dead, I think-’

The radio went dead.

Then: ‘Jesus — fucking move, will you!’

Henry was not absolutely sure what was going on.

‘Inspector to all available patrols, make for BVH. Urgent request for assistance — officer chasing a suspect,’ he instructed over the air. ‘Inspector to Blackpool — put talk-thru on and get a grip of this job, please.’

‘Roger. Talk-thru on.’

‘Inspector to PS Byrne. Are you in a position to pick me up?’

‘No. I’m thirty seconds away from BVH.’

‘Roger. Forget it.’

Henry grabbed his hat and a set of car keys from the hook on the wall and ran out of the office, giving one longing look at his tea. He tore down the steps eight or ten at a time, down into the basement car park.

All the while, the radio transmissions continued.

Byrne shouted, ‘PC Taylor. Exact position within BVH?’

‘Not sure, not sure — heading from A amp;E towards X-ray. He’s gone in that direction.’

‘Got that,’ responded another patrol. ‘I’ll drive round to that side of the building.’

‘Me, too,’ a dog handler cut in.

‘PC Taylor — any description?’

The winded officer was doing his best to respond, but was getting more out of breath all the time. ‘Big guy — dark clothing — dark hair — ’

Meanwhile, Henry Christie was standing in the covered car park with a set of car keys dangling between his fingers, feeling very stupid and frustrated because he did not know which car they fitted. There was no number on the fob — it must have fallen off and never been replaced — and there were four cars parked around the garage. It didn’t help that they were all Astras and the keys in his hands were Vauxhall keys. No process of manufacture elimination to go through there. Just straightforward trial and error.

He dashed to each car like he was on some sort of game show: how long will it take you to find the car which the keys fit? Do it in less than thirty seconds and the car’s yours! He could almost hear Bruce Forsyth wittering in his ear.

Sod’s law kicked in. It was the last of the four cars he tried. Valuable time wasted doing a completely idiotic thing. He got in, the seat wobbling precariously and started up the reluctant engine, revving it hard, blowing out a mushroom of blue smoke with a serious sounding backfire. He saw immediately that the petrol gauge did not budge. He swore and prayed there would be enough fumes in the car to get him as far as the hospital. He drove the much-abused car out of the car park and accelerated away, re-tuning his ears to the radio transmissions.

‘Lost him, lost him,’ PC Taylor was gasping agonisingly, ‘somewhere down near the X-ray department — ’ he took a long, shuddering breath — ‘he can’t be far — must’ve gone to ground in here.’

‘Me an’ me dog’s on t’outside of the X-ray department,’ the dog handler said and just to prove he had a dog, it barked. ‘I’ll stay in the vicinity till further notice.’

‘Roger,’ the communications operator said.

‘I’m in A amp;E now,’ Dermot Byrne called in. ‘Meet me somewhere, John. You name the location.’

‘Er. . X-ray reception, Sarge,’ said the less than certain Taylor. ‘He must be here somewhere, must be.’ He sounded harassed.

‘Inspector to PS Byrne.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Situation report, re the female prisoner, please.’

‘Standby.’

Henry pushed the underpowered car through its gears, taking it to the limit at each change. He ran red lights, depending rashly on the protection afforded him by the meagre flashing blue light on the car roof. It was a false sense of security, he knew. Other cops had relied on the same in the past with fatal consequences. But at that time in the morning on the almost deserted streets, he felt reasonably confident of not wiping anybody out.

‘PS to Inspector.’

‘Yo!’ said Henry in the middle of a sharp bend, one hand on the wheel, tyres squealing, the other hand on his transmit button.

‘Bad news — she’s dead, sir.’

Henry had real problems controlling the car coming out of the bend, it was swerving all over the place. He narrowly missed a milk float trundling innocently down the street, the milkman’s terrified face was a sight to behold.

‘I’ll get you next time,’ Henry growled.

Because it was now a fully fledged crime scene, the young girl still lay in the bed and would remain there until all the necessary scenes-of-crime and forensic work had been carried out. It was a very inconvenient arrangement for A amp;E, but Henry Christie was resolute. They would have to work round it until he was satisfied the police had done their job, so nothing was going to change. He came close to a very nasty head to head with the charge nurse — a woman of formidable stature — but the determination on Henry’s face and in his body language made her back down submissively. When he was on a roll, he could be irresistible.

He allowed himself just one extended look at the dead girl through the curtains. He was not going to be drawn in by morbid fascination. And, anyway, his presence would only contaminate the scene. However, his experience of murder scenes told him all he needed to know for the time being. Geri Peters was dead. From the way in which the pillow was laid across her upper chest and underneath her chin, there was a better than average chance that she had been suffocated.

Henry was angry with himself that he had not been switched on enough to see the danger she had been in.

Ducking under the police crime scene tape which now criss-crossed the A amp;E ward like a huge spider’s web, he made his way to the staff rest room.

PC Taylor was there, doubled over, head in hands, rocking slightly. Dermot Byrne sat next to the well-built officer, a hand on his shoulder.

When Henry entered the room, feeling stern and unforgiving, Taylor looked up through his fingers, then rose unsteadily to his feet, ready for the broadside. His arms dropped open by his side, hands palm outwards in a sort of acceptance of blame. He had been crying. Henry felt great sympathy for him but he did not let it show. He had no plans to let Taylor off the hook. Yet.

The officers from the night shift who could be spared had spent the best part of the last hour carrying out as methodical a search of the building as their few numbers allowed, which was not easy in a hospital as huge and sprawling as the Blackpool Victoria. Henry had them carry out a room-by-room, corridor-by-corridor search from beyond the point at which PC Taylor said he last saw the killer. The officers went up and through the X-ray department, right to the end of that particular leg of the hospital. To do more would have been impossible. Henry had even won the battle with the staff nurse to bring in an unhygienic and slavering dog to assist the search. The pooch had found nothing either. The guy had disappeared into the ether. Now Henry had several cops roaming the corridors and outside he had a few officers positioned at strategic points in the grounds with orders to ‘turn over’ anyone found wandering. Now Henry wanted some hard information.

Byrne, seeing the grim expression on Henry’s face, stepped in between the inspector and PC Taylor.

‘Don’t be hard on him, boss,’ Byrne said protectively.

Henry regarded his sergeant stonily. Byrne stood aside and Henry transferred the hard-edged gaze to Taylor, who wilted visibly. The PC sat down and stared glumly at the floor.

‘Tell me what happened — again.’

‘Well, as I said, I came to the hospital with her like you instructed-’

‘Like I instructed,’ Henry cut in patronisingly, unable to stop himself. ‘Yes, like I instructed — and what did I instruct, PC Taylor?’

‘To look after her,’ he said lamely.

‘Exactly,’ growled Henry through clenched teeth, his face a sneer.

‘Y-yes,’ Taylor muttered feebly, sounding frightened.

‘Right — what went wrong?’

‘Er, she got treated and they put her in the bed — where she is now — down at the far end of the department and I went to sit with her — next to her.’

‘Go on,’ Henry urged him on as he seemed to come to a full stop.

‘It’d been such a long night, what with the trouble up on Shoreside, that I was tired out. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I thought that if I had a coffee, maybe it would keep me awake.’ Taylor paused. ‘So I went for one.’

This time Henry did not prompt.

‘I was away for what? God, less than two minutes and as I came back through the curtain with my coffee I just saw the back end of someone going out the other side — it was so quick. I looked at her, saw the pillow, saw her face and I just went into autopilot and went after him. I realised I had to get him, whether she was dead or not. I legged it. I went like hell for leather down the corridor.’ Taylor’s head wobbled in disbelief at the vivid recollection in his mind. ‘I couldn’t get near him. He was bloody fast, like a shadow — and as I came round the next dog-leg in the corridor I was running down he was gone!’

‘Description?’ Henry said coldly.

Taylor hesitated, marshalling his thoughts. ‘I didn’t get a good look, really,’ he admitted. ‘Like I said, he was like a shadow. I just saw his back.’

‘His back? Are you certain it was a man?’

‘Yeah, yeah, hundred per cent. Ran like a man. About my height and build — say around six feet. Wearing dark clothing and something pulled over his head — balaclava, I reckon.’ Henry was expecting more but Taylor had apparently finished his description.

‘Is that it?’ Henry’s brittle voice held utter disbelief.

Taylor nodded worriedly.

‘Not very much to go on,’ Henry commented dryly.

‘I know, I know,’ Taylor bleated forlornly. ‘But that’s all I saw. I’m wracking my brains to dig more out, but it’s just not there. I’m really, really sorry.’

‘So you bloody well should be — sorry for that girl.’ Henry’s voice started to rise, but he got a grip and sighed down his nose, flaring his nostrils.

‘Oh God, I feel ill.’ Taylor got to his feet abruptly and swallowed. His face was the colour of best-quality typing paper. ‘I wanna spew.’ He swallowed again.

‘Well, don’t fucking well do it here,’ Henry shouted, ‘go and find a bog.’

‘Urrggh!’ Taylor pitched himself out of the office, holding his guts with one hand, the other clamped over his mouth.

‘Poor sod,’ Byrne said.

‘You’re too bleedin’ soft,’ Henry muttered. He plonked himself down next to Byrne on the sofa, clasped his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. He cogitated awhile, arranging his thoughts.

‘We can’t afford to wait for the circus to turn out. I want to get a start on names and addresses of everyone in A amp;E at the time of the murder and I want statements to start being taken. Staff, patients — anyone. I want you to get going with that, Dermot. I know we haven’t many spare bods, but let’s start the ball rolling, get a tick in the book.’

‘Sure, boss.’

‘And get PC Bloody Taylor to do his statement immediately — I want it to be as detailed as possible from the moment I gave him the instruction until you arrived on the scene, OK?’ Henry paused. ‘What do you think of him?’

‘PC Taylor?’ Byrne shrugged. ‘He’s OK. I don’t really know him all that well. Bit long in the tooth and needs motivating, but still gets stuck in now and again. He’s just had a good job up at court, a date-rape, which the CPS binned on a technicality, much to his annoyance. He’d done a lot of work on it, so I think that’s pissed him off quite a bit.’

‘I read about it,’ Henry said, now bored with the subject of PC Taylor. He changed the subject. ‘You managed to get here pretty quickly,’ Henry observed innocently.

Byron reacted to the comment by stiffening slightly and pulling at his collar. ‘Happened to be driving past — purely by accident.’

‘Yeah, whatever. .’ Henry’s ponderings had drifted on to the crime scene. Being in a clean and hygienic hospital made it unlike most of the murder scenes he’d had the pleasure of visiting over the years. Henry was aware he would have no further part in the subsequent investigation which had already been allocated to the on-call senior investigating officer from headquarters who was already on his way, but it did not stop him from slipping back into CID mode for a few precious moments.

Detailed analysis of the crime scene was crucial to any murder investigation. At every crime scene the offender leaves messages about him-or herself, indicating what the motivation and drive is behind the crime. As a seasoned investigator, Henry consciously tried to reconstruct what had happened to try and find the links between the location, the victim and the offender and the other things he could not even guess at yet, such as what the forensic and post-mortem investigations would reveal.

Already, this murder troubled him deeply.

He started putting together some hypotheses: firstly that the victim could have been a source of potential danger to the offender; that the crime had links with the dead girl’s knowledge of activist right-wing groups; that she had known too much and was a danger — these would all be areas for detailed investigation. However, Henry realised that to be rail-roaded by such a narrow band of thought could skew the investigation into a direction which could be totally misguided. It could be that this was simply an opportunistic crime: some passing loony who, feeling murderous, might have seen a chance and gone for it. It sounded a faintly ridiculous premise to Henry, but he knew it could not be overlooked. Which brought him back full circle to his initial conjectures. And the one big question which needed to be answered if the girl’s death was connected to the dangerous knowledge she might have possessed about right-wing groups.

‘How the hell did whoever killed her know she was here, at the hospital?’ Henry asked and quickly explained his background reasoning to the question.

Byrne shrugged. ‘Radio transmissions?’ he suggested. ‘Could well have been listening in. We thought they’d been scanning us earlier on Shoreside.’

‘Possibility.’ Henry chewed the inside of his mouth, making a squelching noise. ‘And if that is true, then they also stalked the A amp;E department until Taylor — God bless his socks — went for his fatal coffee break.’ Henry thought about what he had just said. Something clicked in his brain, then went. Probably nothing.

‘It’s a busy department,’ Byrne said. ‘People come and go all the time. It wouldn’t be difficult to blend in and hang around.’

‘My head hurts,’ Henry said prophetically — because just then he was hit by a stinking headache which came from nowhere and lurked nastily behind his eyelids.

David Gill grinned happily to himself. He loved it when a plan came together — and this one was coming together easier than a children’s jigsaw: slot, slot, slot, all the pieces fitting snugly together — fucking wonderful.

First Mohammed Khan’s death — better late than never — then the riots where the detective got torched — a bonus — and now the extra problem solved, the one that could have been a difficulty — the girl. It was unfortunate that she had been arrested in the first place, but because of the liability aspect, she had had to be dealt with.

He was not proud of the way in which he had killed her, though. Because it was something that had had to be done quickly, it had lacked finesse. A pillow over the face, for Christ’s sake. Where was the panache with that one? Just a means to an end, a functional tool. No flair. No fun. He loved to talk to people first. Loved to explain things to them, to outline the reasons for that ultimate question they all asked: Why? Why me?

Because you have to get killed, that’s why. Because you are a cog in the machine and the machine needs to be destroyed. And this week powerful moves were going to be made to destroy the machine and show the country that a sea-change is about to take place. The balance of power was about to shift and return to where it belonged. The old order is going to be restored and revamped for the people.

So he regretted not having had the chance to tell the girl why she had to die. He also regretted that she had been drugged up to the eyeballs because that meant she could not struggle — although there had been the faintest blip of self-preservation when her body found the air had been cut off, but it had been nothing really, just a twitch, a reaction.

Still, David Gill took some solace from the fact that Joey Costain had known full well why he had to be murdered. Gill had talked to Joey for quite a while.

Gill picked up the telephone.

Time to alert the police. What a shame. They were so busy.

‘Here.’

Henry’s eyes opened. He had allowed himself to wallow in his headache and had sat back on the sofa in the staff rest room, closed his eyes and drifted. He hadn’t heard the door open. The next thing he knew was that Dermot Byrne was standing over him, PC Taylor just behind him. Two paracetamols were in the palm of Byrne’s outstretched right hand, offering them to Henry, a glass of water in the other.

‘Thanks.’ He took the tablets and threw them down the back of his throat, swallowing them with the water, which was very cold. ‘Right, let’s get things up and running.’

‘I’ve told John he can go back to the station and get his statement written,’ Byrne said, ‘if that’s all right.’ He looked at Taylor, then back at Henry. ‘I don’t think he’ll mind me saying, but it might be the best use of his time at the moment.’

Henry stared at the constable who looked dreadful.

‘I think you’re probably right,’ Henry said. ‘Best place for him.’

‘Blackpool to inspector,’ the personal radios shouted in unison.

‘Receiving.’ Henry almost tutted. He was beginning to detest having to carry a radio around with him all the time. There was no hiding from it. Not like when he had been a DI, back in those balmy, rose-tinted days, when Henry had only used the radio when it suited him. Being at everyone’s beck and call did not sit easily with him.

‘Can you give me a landline number where I can contact you, please? Or can you phone in?’ the radio operator requested. ‘It’s urgent and not something I want to put out over the air in case of scanners. Don’t want to call your mobile for the same reason.’

‘Give me a minute,’ Henry said. ‘Wonder what it is now?’ he said to his officers. He hurried out of the rest room to the charge nurse’s desk where the charge nurse regarded his approach with some hostility.

‘What d’you want now?’ she asked. ‘Should I close the hospital while you dust it down for fingerprints?’

Henry smiled ingratiatingly. ‘If I was a bit assertive before, I apologise.’

‘Aggressive, not assertive,’ the nurse corrected him.

‘Sorry.’

‘And now you want something else, don’t you?’

Henry gave her his best boyish grin. ‘Just a little thing.’

‘A little thing, dearie,’ she said flirtatiously, showing Henry a surprising trait to her personality, ‘is all I’ve got. What d’you want?’

‘Borrow your phone?’

She actually looked disappointed. ‘Be my guest.’ She slid the phone across her desk. ‘Nine for an outside line.’ She resumed browsing through the patient notes.

‘Appreciate this.’ He perched one cheek of his backside on the desk and stabbed the direct dial number in for Blackpool Communications. ‘Inspector Christie here.’

‘Thanks for calling in so quickly, sir.’ He had managed to get straight through to the radio operator who had talked to him on the radio. ‘We’ve just received an anonymous call from a male person, untraceable, to say we can find Joey Costain at an address in Withnell Road, South Shore.’ He gave Henry the house and flat number of the property. It was not far away from the address which they had searched earlier without success. ‘The caller said we should get there now because Joey’s in a bit of a mess.’

‘Joey’s in a bit of a mess? What does that mean?’

‘Don’t know, sir. Those were his exact words.’

‘And he didn’t say what was meant?’

‘No, sir.’

‘When did you get the call?’

‘Exactly six minutes ago.’

‘Any details from the caller at all? I take it you spoke to him?’

‘Yes, sir, me.’

‘Stop calling me sir,’ Henry said with a tone of annoyance.

‘Sorry sir — oops!’

‘Caller details?’ Henry reminded him.

‘None. All refused. Sounded like an Asian or someone pretending to be one.’

‘Was it a treble nine?’

‘No — direct dial. Tried to trace it, but the caller must have used 141 before calling. Not recorded, either.’

Only 999 calls were recorded as a matter of course.

‘And, “Joey’s a bit of a mess”. Those were the exact words?’

‘Affirmative.’

Henry went quiet. In the distance a casualty nurse called out a patient’s name. Henry was thinking it would be very nice to have Costain ready and waiting in a cell for Jane Roscoe in the morning. Not only because arresting Joey was one of life’s great pleasures, but because it would be one over on Roscoe, and no matter how much he had begun to like her, he could not resist the temptation to come up smelling of roses.

‘OK, give me a few minutes to sort things out up here, then I’ll let you know what we’re going to do about it, if anything. And well done for not broadcasting this over the air.’ He hung up.

Byrne and Taylor were behind him, having listened to his end of the conversation. Byrne looked eager, Taylor like death warmed up.

‘Got an address for Joey Costain,’ he told them, ‘from an anonymous source.’

Acting on anonymous information, not backed up by other intelligence, was fraught with the danger of going shit-shaped, as so many police operations had shown in the past. There was always the possibility the information was simply being misleading or malicious, often the result of someone getting back at someone else for purely personal reasons. There was also the chance of booting down the wrong door and giving some innocent old granny heart failure, or shooting a kid. It was a position very difficult to defend in the arena of a Coroner’s Court. And it was always newsworthy.

‘I don’t think we need to go in with all guns blazing,’ Henry conjectured, biting his top lip while his mind ticked over. ‘Right,’ he said abruptly, coming to a decision. ‘You carry on up here, Dermot, and make sure everything’s ready for the senior investigating officer, and I’ll take John, here — ’ he cocked his thumb at Taylor — ‘back to the station, but we’ll go via South Shore and check out this address softly, softly. If Joey is there, all well and good. I’m sure we can handle the little shit between us. If he’s not, we’ll make profuse apologies and leave and at least we haven’t gone OTT. Come on then,’ he said to Taylor, who for the second time looked less than enamoured by another of his inspector’s instructions. ‘Let’s hope that car of mine has enough juice in it to get us back. You be OK here?’ he asked Byrne.

‘Absolutely.’ Byrne indicated something beyond Henry’s shoulder: the on-call SOCO team arriving at the hospital.

The circus was rolling into town.

South Shore, known nationally and internationally as the location of the Blackpool Pleasure Beach and the roller-coaster ride, ‘The Big One’, was interlaced with thoroughfares such as Withnell Road. They all looked very similar, with long, multi-storeyed terraces of houses, most of which were either bona-fide guest houses, or had been divided up into tiny flats to house ‘doalies’ — unemployed people drawing state benefits.

Generally, South Shore was the fairly seedy backdrop to the colour and brashness of the promenade. Car crime, burglary, muggings were rife, all symptomatic of an out-of-control drug culture which pervaded the whole resort, not just the south.

Henry cut the engine and the lights and coasted in to what he hoped would be a silent stop at the end of the street. He cringed, but was not at all surprised, when the brakes grated and squealed. He climbed out with a ‘Come on,’ for PC Taylor. ‘Leave your helmet in the car. Let’s go and have a shuftie.’ He closed the door quietly. Taylor did likewise.

Several street lights had been smashed or were simply not working which ensured there were many shadows for the two cops to flit between as they edged their way to Joey Costain’s alleged address. It was quiet. Four thirty in the morning, the most peaceful time of day in Blackpool. The sky was showing the faintest grey-grittiness of the sluggish approach of dawn. A chill was in the air. Less than 200 metres away, Henry could hear and smell the sea as it lapped against the sea wall.

The officers paused outside the address given by the unknown caller. The information said Costain would be in flat number 3 on the first floor. The whole building was in darkness. Nothing stirred on any of the three floors; however, number 3 could easily be at the back. Concrete steps led up to the front door.

Henry led Taylor up, treading carefully but still failing to spot a broken syringe which Henry’s boot crushed.

‘Shit,’ he whispered, looking down.

‘Fucking junkies,’ Taylor added, startling Henry with his language.

On the wall next to the front door was an array of doorbells, each connected to a flat inside. Henry counted them: twelve. The flats must be minute, he thought. Some of the bells had the names of the occupants next to them, most did not. Anonymity was easy to attain and retain in South Shore. Henry flicked on his pen-like Maglite torch and read them. Number 3 was a blank. Number 8 seemed quite interesting, Henry thought in passing: Maria. French Lessons. ‘Merci beaucoup,’ he said under his breath.

He tried the door knob, which did not turn, but amazingly the door opened when he gave it a firm shove, opening to reveal a dark, unlit vestibule. On the left was a narrow, steep set of stairs leading to the first floor. Straight ahead was a high-ceilinged hallway with three closed doors off it.

Henry had been in many such dives. In his time as a cop he had probably been in thousands and hoisted out hundreds of criminals from them. Inevitably all these premises were much of a muchness: similar layouts, similar facilities, similar smells and similar occupants. The truth was that the same social template could be laid over most of the people he’d had dealings with over the years in these properties: mostly mid-teens to late twenties; they all drew their giros, never paid into bank accounts because bank accounts were for rich people; all smoked and drank, although they never had two ha’pennies to rub together; they were drug abusers, thieves; often with lives that were overshadowed by their own violence or abuse against themselves; they were usually from broken homes — and yet, despite these common characteristics, each was an individual. Henry had even quite liked some of them and had some sympathy for their predicaments, but it stopped short when their deprived backgrounds and shortcomings meant other people suffered.

His thin torch beam shone at the first door he came to in the hall. Number 1. Next was number 2 and the one at the far end of the hall was 2A. Taylor had crept down the hall behind him. When Henry turned after checking the number on the last door, he bumped into Taylor. Both nearly fell into a tangled heap of manhood on the sticky carpet.

‘Hell fire!’ exclaimed Henry, only just keeping his voice down.

‘Sorry.’

Shaking his head angrily and muttering, Henry brushed past the constable to the foot of the stairs. He peered up into the darkness, beckoned Taylor to follow — not too close this time — and went up, using his torch intermittently until both of them were on the first-floor landing.

Henry stood still, his heart pulsating with excitement. He was enjoying himself, having forgotten how much fun policing could be. He put a finger to his lips and added a ‘Shh’ just in case Taylor didn’t understand the gesture. Too late: both their radios blared out a distorted message with plenty of static. They turned them off immediately and waited for the inhabitants to start coming out of the woodwork like forest animals in the night.

No one came.

The officers listened. Someone, somewhere, was snoring loudly. Music was coming from one of the flats. Henry cocked his ear to it, concentrated — it was barely audible, but he recognised the riff with a flush of pleasure: The Rolling Stones, ‘Midnight Rambler’. From the floor above he heard footsteps and another unmistakable sound, a couple having sex. Henry adjusted his hearing to listen, a quirky smile at Taylor who grinned back with embarrassment. Henry quickly realised the couple consisted of two men.

‘All human life is here,’ he whispered.

But, all in all, nothing untoward was happening. Henry was as certain as he could be that their entry to the building had not been clocked.

The nearest door was number 5. Down the corridor to 4, then 3, the one they were interested in. Both officers made silent progress even though the carpet was worn through to the boards in places.

Outside number 3 Henry realised this was where the music was coming from, which was good — being such a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the Stones himself would give him some common ground with Joey Costain, something to talk about, to break the ice, unless Henry had to break Joey’s head first. ‘Midnight Rambler’ climaxed and ended with Jagger threatening to ram a knife down someone’s throat. If the track was on the Let It Bleed album, Henry expected to hear ‘You Got the Silver’ next, instead, ‘Midnight Rambler’ began again, the haunting Keith Richards’ riff filtering out through the door.

Without knocking, Henry tried the door handle. It opened. He turned to Taylor, winked, and pushed the door open slightly. No lights on inside the flat. Henry paused on the threshold. His senses were now razor sharp. Expect the worst: an attack; an escape — or for this not to be Joey Costain’s flat.

The music was louder with the door open. It was an insistent, urgent riff. Henry knocked gently on the door, almost making no sound with his knuckles, his mind concocting a fabricated story in case Joey wasn’t here and someone else was.

‘Hello,’ he whispered into the flat, not loud enough for anyone to hear. He twitched his head to Taylor who had a look of abject horror on his face.

‘Can you do this, sir?’ he gasped. ‘What about the Police and Criminal Evidence Act?’

‘Didn’t you know — we’re in the police. We can do anything.’ The smile he gave Taylor was mischievous in the extreme. ‘We’re entering premises under section one of the Ways and Means Act. Stick with me. We’ll be OK.’

Taylor remained unconvinced.

The front door opened into a short hallway with two doors off it. One on the right, the other directly in front. No signs of lights under either door. Henry opened the one on the right and put his head and torch round. It was a poky, smelly, toilet and bathroom. He flicked the torch beam round to confirm it was empty, populated only by the putrid smell of urine and shit. Not nice.

He closed the door and walked down the hall. His right hand withdrew his side-handled baton.

Behind him, Taylor followed suit.

Henry extended his baton with a crack as did Taylor, although it took him two tries to extend his because he was shaking so much.

Henry was positive this door would lead into the living room, kitchen and bedroom all rolled into one. Something the upper class would call a pied-a-terre and would cost a quarter of a million in London, but because it was in Blackpool, it was what Henry would call a shit-hole.

The music played on relentlessly. Mick Jagger sang with a sinister malevolence never achieved since. Henry’s guts churned at the words of the song which had been inspired by the antics of the Boston Strangler.

Henry went for the direct approach, knocked loudly on the door, pushed it open and announced, ‘This is the police. We’re looking for Joey Costain.’ The door swung open to reveal another room in blackness. Curtains closed. No light from outside filtering through at all.

A strange smell grappled with Henry’s nasal passage, making him wince. He recognised it immediately. Death. Sweet and sickly.

Without stepping into the room, Henry leaned forward and located the light switch by the door. He touched it with his baton tip and knocked it down.

The light produced by the single, swinging, unshaded bulb, hanging limply from a wire in the centre of the ceiling was not dramatic, but curiously restrained. It did not have to be bright; in fact, a powerful light would probably have reduced the impact of what it revealed. The low wattage produced a dull, grainy light which cast grey-to-black shadows across the tableau — and the effect was terrifying.

Henry whistled, then covered his nose and mouth with his hand. ‘At least we now know why Joey didn’t answer his bail.’

Behind him, PC Taylor stood on tiptoes, eager to get a glimpse of the room, then wished he had not bothered. As soon as he realised what his eyes were seeing, his legs turned jelly-weak and folded underneath him. He keeled over as the blood left his brain and he hit the floor. Hard.

Henry did not move, even with Taylor wrapped around his ankles, groaning as he came round.

‘Feel sick,’ Taylor said, retching.

‘Again? Well don’t do it on my shoes, do it in the hall.’

Taylor got onto all fours and crawled down the hall where he vomited what was left of his stomach contents — a surprising amount since he had already thrown up not long before at the hospital.

Henry gulped. Joey Costain lay dead in the flat. Butchered. Mutilated. Torn to shreds. Ripped open from his pubes to his neck, his insides turned outside, intestines wrapped around his neck like a garland. His hands were bound together by parcel tape, as were his ankles and lower legs. He was lying on the floor, on a rug, in the centre of the room. Dark gobs of blood were everywhere, like puddles of tar on the carpet. The walls were splashed and smeared with the stuff.

Henry tore his eyes away from the body, scanning the room, letting them take in everything they could. He would not be setting foot any further into the room for fear of destroying evidence. He dreaded to think how much he might already have spoiled by actually coming into the flat. His gaze moved across the walls. Something registered. He realised there were words there, written on the wall in blood. He squinted and shone his torch on them. They read: ‘Gypsy scum.’

He switched the torch off. Mick Jagger on the Boston Strangler: ‘He don’t give a hoot or a warning.’