Backlash

THURSDAY
Twenty-Three

There could be no post-mortems carried out until both bodies had defrosted sufficiently for the pathologist to stick his knife in. Mark Evans’ body was less frozen and Dr Baines reckoned he would be ready to start on it in about eight hours; David Gill, literally a solid block of ice, could take up to thirty-six hours before he had thawed enough to be autopsied. Which meant nothing could move forward on the pathology front other than some general observations by the pathologist which boiled down to: it looks like their throats have been cut.

Gill’s flat and garage were being top-to-bottomed by all manner of experts, forensic, scientific and search. Henry had decided that this might as well happen. He had thought about withdrawing everybody and mounting an observation on the place on the off-chance that Gill — or whoever the hell it was — would turn up and the police could nab him. He had decided against that because there had been so much police activity anyway that there was a good possibility that whoever was using Gill’s ID and home had already been alerted and would not be coming back.

It was half-past midnight. Henry was alone in Roscoe’s office, thinking about her.

The office door opened, FB came in. He drew up one of the chairs and plonked himself heavily down on it, throwing his heels up onto the edge of the desk.

‘Y’know what’s really shitty?’ he asked.

Henry said no.

‘Special Branch have just told me that the Irish cops have uncovered a plot to assassinate the prime minister at the conference this week.’ FB laughed, cackled really, as though he was on the verge of going under. Henry had never seen him like this. Normally supremely confident and brash, the stress of the week, the lack of sleep, the pressure of ambition were pulling him down. ‘And you know what? There’s absolutely fuck-all I can do about it, and what’s more I don’t care. I’ve had one officer seriously injured this week who is still on life support, another has turned up dead in a fridge and a third is missing, probably dead too, and I’ve just spent two hours with Mark Evans’ widow — ’ he shook his head. ‘She’s devastated.’ His head continued to shake. ‘And on the back of that the government is in town demanding to be protected. Every available cop I’ve got is here, looking after the namby-pamby idiots, and I can’t even pull a full murder squad together to dedicate to the death of one of my officers and the possible death of another. It’s absolute shite. I need a drink.’

Henry remained silent, watching FB open up. It was an amazing sight.

‘It’s all power games to them, one big fucking ego trip — then they’ll be gone on Friday afternoon and won’t even give us a second thought as we clean up all the dross left behind them.’

‘I thought you liked politicians.’

FB gave Henry a hard stare. ‘I was angling for a job, I admit it. Still am. Doesn’t mean to say I like ’em.’

‘We need more people on Jane Roscoe,’ Henry said. ‘Sooner rather than later. We can’t afford to wait till weekend. The trail will be well cold by then.’

FB sighed. ‘If I could give you more, I’d give you more, but I can’t and I don’t feel good about it because, and you probably won’t believe this, I do care. I even care about you, which is why I pulled you off CID. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly, Henry. I thought I was acting in your best interests.’

Henry shuffled the papers in front of him and sniffed. ‘Yeah, well, it would have been nice to be consulted about that. Anyway, that’s by the by now. Catching the bastard who killed Mark is all I want to think about now, that and finding Jane dead or alive. I hope you won’t take me off this.’

FB shook his head. ‘I won’t.’

The man who had used the name and taken the identity of David Gill was sitting and thinking about the events of the last few hours.

The police had finally rumbled his address. Mentally he worked through the flat inch by inch, visualising what was there, what he had left behind, what might be used to incriminate him or reveal his true identity. He was pretty certain there was nothing.

The relationship with Gill had been good while it lasted. Gill had been just the sort of low-life thicko he had been searching for. A man of low intelligence, who had few friends, and lived alone with no family who gave a shit about him. A bit of a druggie, a bit of a tealeaf, living for the most part on state handouts in a flat with no neighbours, whose only interest in life was his clapped-out motorbike. He had been perfect. The real David Gill had been the fourth such person he had used over the years to provide a cover for his murderous activities.

He had watched Gill for a while. Learned about him and his habits. Saw his occasional friend. Saw where he lived and had come to the conclusion that he could easily become David Gill whenever the situation required. He could pull Gill on like an overcoat and that would offer him a veneer of protection should he ever get caught — which was something he never intended to happen.

He had befriended Gill, something that had not taken long once Gill’s natural reluctance had been broken down. And then he had killed him and frozen the body.

And from that day on he came to believe that it was David Gill who had committed all the murders. It was Gill, not him, who came out of the dark and actually carried them out. But now Gill’s body had been discovered. Unfortunate. He would have to find some other poor, sad soul who could be bought for the price of a pint and then disposed of.

But before any of that could happen, two things had to be sorted out.

He had decided Jane Roscoe had lived long enough. He was getting tired of her now. He would just kill her quickly, nothing flashy, just slash her to pieces in a frenzy and enjoy it for what it was. And secondly he had to do the thing that would show the world that the backlash had truly started: kill the wife of the prime minister.

‘Sorry, boss, I was miles away,’ PC John Taylor said. He was sitting in the report-writing room. He looked up at Henry Christie.

‘I said, how are you feeling?’

‘Oh, much better.’

Henry hovered by the doorway.

‘Just redoing my statement from last night. Want to get it right,’ Taylor explained.

‘Good. I just wanted to ask you something.’

‘Go ahead.’

Henry waved the note Taylor had left him about the neighbourhood watch co-ordinator. ‘I know you got no reply from that neighbourhood watch co-ordinator. It says one of the neighbours told you he’d gone on holiday, didn’t say where to.’

‘That’s right,’ Taylor nodded.

‘Did you find out when he was coming back?’

‘Er. . next week sometime. . Tuesday, I think.’ Taylor seemed flustered.

‘Can you give me the name of the neighbour?’

Taylor thought for a moment. ‘No, don’t recall it,’ he said worriedly.

‘Where does he live?’

Taylor scratched his head. ‘Next door but one — no, two.’

Henry sighed. ‘Would you be able to take me there? One way or another I need to identify this military man who Jane spoke to. It’s just possible the neighbourhood watch co-ordinator might know who he is if he’s a local character, or it could even be the man himself — after all, the co-ordinator is called Captain Blackthorn. But, whoever it is, I need to get hold of him. He’s the key to this and the sooner I see him the better.’ Henry dangled a set of car keys between his fingers. ‘I’ll drive. You show me which house it is. If we can’t bottom it tonight, we’re going to have to go house to house in the morning, major style.’

Taylor looked rather peeved to be interrupted from his paper work.

They drove silently to South Shore. Taylor sat primly with his hands clasped between his thighs, slightly distracted.

‘How’s things?’ Henry asked.

‘OK.’ Nothing more was forthcoming.

‘What’s your background?’ Henry asked, more to keep the conversation going than anything. He found Taylor quite difficult to connect with. He had seen him around over the years but never really spoken to him at all because Henry had been so CID-focused and Taylor had been in uniform. It wasn’t unusual not to know someone at Blackpool police station with it being so large.

‘University of Salford 1980, then into the police. The rest is history.’

‘What degree?’

‘Psychology.’

‘Interesting delving into people’s minds. Never got any qualifications myself. Bone idle, that way. Too interested in girls and getting a job.’

Taylor smirked.

They reached Winston Road.

‘The neighbourhood watch co-ordinator is that one,’ Henry stated, peering at the numbers on the doors, shining his torch out of the car window at them. ‘Which way did you go to see this neighbour, up or down?’

‘Down, I think. That one there I think.’

Henry stopped. ‘Can you just hand me my radio?’ He had tossed it into the passenger footwell at the start of the journey. Taylor reached down and fumbled in the dark, dropping it once, then handing it to Henry who got out of the car saying, ‘This one, you reckon?’ pointing to the house.

Taylor nodded.

‘Come on then.’ Henry walked across the pavement to the front gate of the house, went through and up the steps to the door. It was a house divided into flats with six doorbells in the wall next to the front door. ‘Who did you speak to?’ Henry asked. There was no reply from Taylor, who he expected would be right behind him. Instead the officer was standing by the gate, looking sheepish. ‘Which one did you speak to?’ Henry raised his voice, shining his torch on the cluster of doorbells.

‘I’m trying to remember,’ he said feebly.

Henry felt a gush of impatience and anger well up. He came back down the steps, face to face with the PC, who was actually as tall as him and quite a bit broader. ‘This is a murder inquiry and I’m just about getting pig sick with you, PC Taylor. You volunteered to do this job for me, to come and see the co-ordinator, and as far as I can see you’ve made a complete balls of it.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ he gulped.

Henry grabbed his shoulder and propelled him up the stairs to look at the names on the doorbells. ‘Which one was it?’ Henry demanded.

‘I can’t remember,’ he wailed.

‘Right, in that case I’m going to have to apply a process of elimination here and ring every one of the fuckers, aren’t I?’

Taylor’s shoulders drooped. He looked ready to cry.

‘You did actually go and knock on the co-ordinator’s door?’ Henry asked suspiciously.

‘Yes I did,’ Taylor came back defiantly. ‘And he wasn’t in.’

‘And you did visit a neighbour?’

Taylor’s mouth pursed. He looked down at his feet. ‘No,’ he mumbled.

‘Fuck-shit!’ Henry shouted, turning on him. He grabbed hold of his blouson and slammed him up against the front door of the house. ‘How dare you?’ Henry said through gritted teeth. ‘How dare you fuck-up and tell me a lie? One of our officers has been murdered by a fucking maniac and another is missing, probably dead too — and you tell a fucking lie!’ Henry let go of him like he was flicking shit off his fingers. ‘I don’t know what your game is, pal,’ he growled, ‘but when this is over I’m gonna pin your hide to Blackpool Tower, and now, just for my own piece of mind, I’m going to knock on the door of the neighbourhood watch guy because I’m not sure I believe you even did that!’

He trotted down the steps and marched down the street to the relevant address, absolutely boiling over with rage, vowing that Taylor would lose his job if it was the last thing he did.

Up the steps, putting his thumb on all the doorbells until some irritated resident buzzed open the front door. That the door opened did not surprise Henry, it was a tactic police officers often used to gain entry to multi-occupancy premises. He stepped into the hallway.

He knew Captain Blackthorn’s flat was number one, the first one on the right on the ground floor. He knocked hard on the door. Knocked and knocked. There was no reply. Maybe Taylor had been telling the truth. He swivelled away in frustration, his hand going for the door knob in a gesture of despair, not expecting it to open, but it did. The door swung open — creepily — with a long moan of the hinges.

PC Taylor came through the front door of the building and Henry looked at him before pushing the flat door open fully. The short hallway was unlit. Henry called out, ‘Captain Blackthorn. It’s the police. May we come in, sir?’

Henry’s voice carried and reverberated around the hallway. He repeated his words. Again, no reply. The hairs on the back of his neck tingled. To find the door unlocked at this time of day, no security chain across, no sign of an alarm having been set, was disconcerting. He imagined the captain would be one of the most security conscious people on the planet, especially in his volunteer role. There would be no way he would leave his home unlocked.

Henry walked down the hallway of the flat, his radio in his right hand.

The smell of death hit him.

‘Damn,’ he whispered under his breath, jumping to the conclusion that he was about to discover that a natural sudden death had occurred, that the old guy had popped his clogs which had been the reason why Taylor had been unable to rouse him. Already he was angry at the temerity of the man to die without a thought for the murder investigation.

Where would he be, Henry wondered. In bed? On the bog? Many elderly people died while straining on the loo.

He opened the living room door and fumbled for the light switch. Then froze. This was no natural sudden death.

Blackthorn’s body was on the hearthrug in the middle of the room, in the space between the settee and the fireplace.

Like Joey Costain he had been gutted like a fish. His insides were flipped out, wrapped around his head and neck. Henry squatted down next to the body and inspected it without touching. His eyes roved round the blood-splattered room and spotted a walking stick resting against the settee. In blood, the word ‘grass’ had been scrawled.

‘Gill must have been here,’ Henry hissed, remaining down on his haunches. His thought processes whirred and clicked, going back to only moments before when he had reflected on the likely security consciousness of Captain Blackthorn. There was no sign of forced entry on the door, although it was possible an intruder could have entered by other means, such as a kitchen window. Failing that, someone had been invited into the house, someone Blackthorn knew and/or trusted. As was the case for Joey Costain who had turned his back on someone he knew or trusted or thought he could trust. And to confirm it, Henry saw two mugs of tea on the coffee table. Two mugs.

Henry was aware of movement behind him: PC Taylor.

Henry stayed where he was down by the body and hoped that his thoughts had not transferred themselves to his body language as his skin chilled. God, he hoped he was wrong, but he was sure he was not.

Taylor was behind him still. Not good. Henry sensed him to be by the living-room door about six feet away, a little bit of distance.

‘Where’s Jane Roscoe?’ Henry asked quietly. He stood up slowly, his knees cracking, betraying his approach to middle age. Taylor was immobile by the door. Henry had it in his mind that if he was wrong, he could just say he asked the question rhetorically, out of frustration, but when he looked at Taylor, he knew he was right, so he said it again. ‘Where is Jane Roscoe?’

Taylor smiled confidently. A transformation from the ‘big softie’ he had been described as. His face had a dark shadow over it. He was not the person Henry had come to know recently.

‘I made two mistakes,’ Taylor said quietly. ‘One, reading the Sunday Times. Two, leaving you that note and pretending to be the keen constable. Very foolish of me. I should have known you’d not accept it at face value. I was hoping it would put you off for a few days, give me time to do what I have to do, then disappear. As it is, you’ve given me even more things to do now. I need to kill you, Henry.’

Taylor’s right hand appeared from around his back, holding a baton. He did not say anything, just maintained that enigmatic smile.

Henry brought his radio up to his mouth and pressed the transmit button. Nothing happened.

‘Don’t bother,’ Taylor said. ‘I’ve changed the channels. By the time you tune it back to Blackpool, you’ll be dead.’ He raised the baton. For the first time Henry saw it was an electronic-shock baton. ‘High voltage, low amperage, non-lethal shock,’ Taylor explained. ‘Just enough to put you down long enough for me to slit you open like all the rest.’

‘Like Mark Evans? Louise Graveson?’

Taylor shrugged. ‘Something like that.’

Henry’s mind spun. He tested the water: ‘What about Mo Khan?’

Taylor smirked. ‘I finished off what Joey started. He left Khan bleeding, but I whacked him to death, very satisfying,’ he said with pride. ‘Then I killed Joey before I came into work that evening. I phoned in about his death from the hospital; remember when I was supposedly vomiting at the thought of letting the prisoner in my charge die? I was telling communications all about Joey being a mess. And that nice Sergeant Byrne was being so caring. You weren’t, though, were you? Nasty man!’ He smirked cockily. Henry’s hands bunched into tight fists which he wanted to smash into Taylor’s face. ‘Joey was an imbecile and we used him.’

‘We?’

‘Hellfire Dawn — the saviours of this second-rate country.’

‘And Jane Roscoe? Where the hell is she, PC Taylor?’

‘I’m not PC Taylor at the moment,’ he came back stiffly. ‘My name is David Gill.’

‘Really?’ Henry guffawed, picking up on the brittleness in Taylor’s voice. ‘My understanding is that David Gill is lying in the mortuary defrosting like a frozen lamb.’

Taylor pointed the baton at Henry. ‘Wrong. He is who I have become. He is me, when I need him. He is my raincoat, my comfy pair of slippers. He was just a shell waiting to be inhabited, a good for nothing loser, better off with his throat cut. At least he now has a purpose in life.’

‘Well that’s fine and dandy for the judge and jury: I become someone else so I am therefore not responsible for my actions — fuck that,’ Henry spat. ‘You can convince them that you’re Jekyll and Hyde for all I care, but I guarantee you’re still going down for a long time. You can take my regards to Ian Brady.’

‘I don’t think so. You see, no one knows I’m here with you, do they? So once you’re dead, I’ll go and do the business with Janey, then my piece de resistance, then I’ll be gone. I’ll find some other shell to inhabit, rather like that nice, but sensitive policeman PC Taylor, so deeply affected by the sight of blood and death and a little bit soft — PC Taylor — who the hell was he but a shell?’

‘There’s a slight hitch in your plan,’ Henry said. His voice held, but he was starting to feel it going, starting to quake as, with his right hand, he fumbled with the channel selector on the radio. ‘I’m not dead — and I don’t intend to be.’

Taylor moved into the room proper and closed the door behind him.

Henry stepped back over the captain’s dead body, his feet slipping in the blood, which had a crusty top on it, but a slimy underbelly. He wanted to keep his distance from Taylor and the shock baton.

‘There’s quite a bit of a difference here,’ Henry pointed out, ‘between you and me.’

‘Oh? You victim, me killer,’ Taylor said. ‘Where’s the difference?’

‘Difference is that I’m expecting you. None of your previous victims were ready for you, were they, PC Taylor? You either surprised them or got them to trust you, then you whacked ’em. I’m not surprised and I don’t trust you, PC Taylor.’

‘Gill, David Gill,’ Taylor corrected him sternly. ‘Call me David.’

‘Bonkers, more like,’ Henry said. ‘So come on then, let’s have a bit of action here. You don’t like this, do you? Face to face, level terms, with someone who’s going to disarm you and beat you. How does that feel, John?’ He emphasised the name blatantly. ‘Gonna wrap me up like a parcel?’ Henry taunted. ‘Just put the baton down and any other weapon. Make this easy on yourself.’

Taylor hesitated. Henry stood there giving the impression of composure, which underneath he did not feel.

‘Fuck you!’ Taylor screamed. He shook the baton angrily and stepped towards Henry.

Henry moved back to keep out of range.

‘You’re the one who’s fucked — make it easy on yourself: give up now,’ Henry said, soothingly. ‘Life won’t be bad for you, cosseted in a padded cell. It’ll probably be quite nice. You can be who you want to be all the time.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. You see, it’s not my time yet. I have things to do, wrongs to put right. I mean, take this job, for instance. I came into it in the first place because it was the last bastion of the white man. Now look at it. A shambles. Promoting Pakis and women, leaving us behind. I mean,’ he babbled, ‘you should be pleased by what I’ve done for you, Henry.’

‘Why?’ Henry said, eager to keep the talking going.

‘You’re back on the investigation, aren’t you? I got the lovely Jane Roscoe out of the way. You should be thankful, but you’re not, are you? You just don’t see it, do you?’

‘All I see is a person who needs help.’

‘Fuck you!’ Taylor shouted again, losing it. He went for Henry.

The baton sliced through the air. Henry ducked and lost his footing in Blackthorn’s blood, his ankle twisted under him and he fell awkwardly, knee-down onto the dead body. Automatically his hands went out, palms down, to break his fall, but they went straight into Blackthorn’s gaping stomach. Henry twisted away from the intestines, repelled and horrified, but also aware that Taylor’s baton was swinging towards him again. He bobbed his head and launched himself away from Blackthorn’s body, rolling across the room, aware his hands were covered in blood and body slime. He scrambled towards the fireplace where he could see a poker.

Taylor moved quickly. He whammed the baton into Henry’s side. The pain was incredible, but it was only from the strike of the baton, not an electric discharge. Henry rolled with the blow, reaching desperately for the poker with his fingertips. Missing it.

Taylor bore down on him, raising the baton, a scream on his lips. Henry covered his head and kicked out wildly, catching the back of Taylor’s knees, forcing him to stumble backwards. Henry drove himself at Taylor, going for a bearhug. Both men, entwined, struggling for advantage, rolled across the floor and over Captain Blackthorn’s body, which suddenly seemed to come to life as they fought over it, his legs and arms twitching madly, head turning, and noises being driven out of the windpipe.

With a roar, Taylor broke free, still keeping hold of the baton which he tried to bring back into play, to get it onto Henry’s chest to deliver the stun.

Henry pulled away and punched Taylor as they rolled back over the body, its arms flailing. The two men battled amongst entrails and loops of rubbery intestines. At the back of his mind, Henry was utterly repulsed by this, but could not afford to give a shit. He might well be sloshing about in the organs and innards of a dead man, but he was fighting for his own life too. The two men split apart.

Henry tried to come in with a head butt. It did not connect. Taylor managed to swing the baton across Henry’s lower back with a stinging blow.

They were face to face, still on the floor, pawing at each other, each trying to get into a position of power. They slid towards the hearth. Henry kicked and punched, while Taylor tried to use the shock baton. Henry found himself underneath Taylor, trying to grab the wrist of the hand holding the baton — then, bang! Henry’s head smacked against the edge of the raised hearth with such force that his brain jarred for a precious moment. A split second was long enough for Taylor to rear up on his knees and press the end of the baton onto Henry’s chest, above his heart. Taylor laughed victoriously. Henry waited for the punch of the shock. He knew that all Taylor had to do was lightly pull the trigger in the baton handle and 150,000 volts would shoot through him and then Taylor would butcher him. Henry braced himself.

Click. Nothing.

Taylor pressed the baton harder into Henry’s chest. Click, click. Still nothing.

The realisation suddenly passed between both men: for whatever reason the baton was not working correctly.

Henry was first to react. He grabbed the baton and tore it out of Taylor’s grip. Taylor lost his nerve. He ran. Henry went after him, leaping across the gutted corpse and out of the flat, spinning into the hallway to see Taylor disappear out of the front door, which he slammed behind him. Henry slowed slightly, thinking that Taylor might just be on the other side, waiting to pounce.

He opened it gingerly but the man had gone down the front steps and was running towards the promenade. A car was coming slowly up the street which Taylor flagged down, having no trouble in so doing because he was in uniform. Henry shouted a warning, which was lost in the night. Taylor opened the driver’s door and heaved the poor unsuspecting driver across the bonnet of a parked car. Taylor dropped into the seat and accelerated towards Henry who was now in the middle of the street.

Henry was no fool. He jumped smartly out of the way of the approaching car and ran to the CID car, scrambled into it and had started it as Taylor veered left out of the street towards the town centre. Henry crunched into first and stepped on the gas.

Christ, he had been good. Taylor’s histrionics at the scenes of the murders of Geri Peters and Joey Costain had taken everyone in. But it had all been a tissue of lies: he had not chased anyone through the hospital at all; he had raced along the corridors himself, forcing people out of the way, chasing a shadow that existed only in his mind. Henry realised why he had been so unsettled at the scene of Geri Peters’ murder: there had been no coffee cup. Taylor had said he had been out to get coffee when Geri Peters was being murdered but, of course, he had himself been smothering her. No doubt he had tried to hang Geri earlier in her cell and attempted to make it look like suicide. Taylor’s name had been on the list of people the custody officer remembered seeing in the office that night. Taylor hadn’t had any prisoners in the cells, so why had he been there? Henry remembered Geri Peters’ words before she had been put into the ambulance: ‘One of yours.’ At the time they had meant nothing to him. Now they meant everything. ‘One of yours’ meant PC Taylor.

Taylor drove onto the promenade. It was virtually deserted at this time of night. He wasn’t going too fast and Henry was about a hundred metres behind him.

Henry had the list of similar killings, all linked by MO, but not by motive — until he had worked it out. Louise Graveson was a lawyer specialising in equal opportunity and racial cases. She had just won a quarter of a million pounds for a black female police officer at an employment tribunal where the allegation had been of sexual and racial abuse by a white male sergeant. Another victim, a black woman councillor from north London, had been a witness at another employment tribunal where a black man had won damages for unfair dismissal on racial grounds. Then there was the police support staff worker, again in London, who had ended the career of a white police inspector who had harassed a black PC. A journalist in the West Midlands who was constantly rubbishing the way in which minority groups were treated by large organisations.

Taylor had been waging an insidious guerrilla-like murder campaign against anyone with the temerity to stand up for the rights of the minority on behalf of Hellfire Dawn.

Taylor speeded up. So did Henry who was desperate to stay with him.

Henry picked up his radio; glancing down at the display he fiddled with the channel button and glancing up, he drove. He locked back onto Blackpool’s radio frequency. ‘Thank God for that,’ he breathed.

‘Inspector Christie to Blackpool. Urgent. In pursuit of a silver Honda Accord being driven by PC John Taylor, who is a murder suspect. No time to explain. Suspect is armed and dangerous. We’re on the prom, north towards Talbot Square. Assistance to stop him please.’

The communications operator was cool despite the shock of hearing what he had just heard. He began to deploy patrols, then stopped and said, ‘PC Taylor, go ahead.’

As the radio was not on talk-thru, Henry could not hear Taylor’s transmission.

‘Inspector Christie,’ communications called.

‘Yes.’

‘Message from PC Taylor. If you do not withdraw, the little package will not be found. Understood?’

‘Received.’ Shit, the bastard was making demands now.

‘PC Taylor also requests talk-thru be put on.’

‘Denied — we keep with him. Keep deploying patrols. I want him stopped and arrested.’

Henry was now right up behind Taylor in his hijacked car, leaving just enough room between the two cars to brake if necessary. Taylor’s car surged ahead.

‘Change of plan,’ Henry said, ‘put talk-thru on.’

‘Talk-thru on.’

‘Inspector to PC Taylor. Come on, pull in, it’s over, John, there’s nothing more for you to achieve.’

No reply.

‘Talk-thru off,’ Henry ordered again, and when it was off he almost shouted, ‘Where is my assistance? I haven’t seen another cop car yet. Just passing the junction with Chapel Street — he’s just run a red light, I’m going through too.’ Henry shot through, unscathed.

The Tower rose above them on the right. At the next junction was another set of lights, again on red. Henry watched as Taylor’s car hurtled towards the lights, accelerating all the time, obviously with no intention of stopping. He must have been approaching 60 mph as he crossed the junction. Suddenly a police transit van shot out in front of him, blue lights flashing, and skidded into the path of Taylor’s car.

Instinctively Henry braked.

Taylor’s stolen car broadsided the police van, driving into it like a piston. The Transit van was hit right on the seam in the centre of the side panel, the impact bursting it open. The van flipped over onto the tram tracks and Taylor’s vehicle skidded off at right angles from its original south-north path, slithering out of control, brake lights flashing, towards the sea-wall railings. It crunched into them probably still doing in excess of 40 mph, with a shredding, tearing of metal.

Henry skidded to a halt. He leapt out, shouting the situation down into his radio, requesting an ambulance, and ran towards the smashed police van which had rolled to a halt on its roof. The back wheels were still spinning, the engine roaring. Henry was terrified of what he might find.

As he got there, the driver was extricating himself out of the shattered driver’s door window, unscathed. He stood up shakily. It was Dermot Byrne. He smiled coolly, if a little wonkily, then leaned on the van for support as his legs buckled under him.

‘I’m OK. . I think. . go get him.’

Other police cars were now turning up. Henry moved away reluctantly and trotted to the mangled wreck of Taylor’s car. The owner would not be well pleased to be told that a car commandeered by a cop — who had assaulted him in the process — was now a write-off.

Steam hissed out of the engine block. Henry could smell petrol. Taylor was slumped over the wheel. There was a head-shaped indentation in the windscreen. Henry shone his torch in and could see that Taylor’s body was contorted under the steering column and dashboard which had crumpled with the impact. There was a lot of blood about, a lot coming out of Taylor’s right ear. Not a good sign.

‘Don’t be fucking dead,’ Henry said.

He pulled at the door. It would not budge. He used his feet for purchase and wrenched at it as hard as he could. It opened, twisting on broken hinges, but only about eighteen inches. Just wide enough for him to shoulder in and lean towards Taylor’s mangled body.

He reached for Taylor’s blood-soaked head and lifted his face away from the rim of the steering wheel, turning it towards him. It had been smashed beyond recognition into a bloody pulp. The eyes were closed, there was no sign of life. Repulsed, Henry was about to lay Taylor’s head down when suddenly his eyes flicked open, startling him. It was like something out of a horror movie. He almost dropped the head in shock. One eye socket was just a black hole and Henry could not work out where the actual eyeball was. It had either been pushed into his head, or was in the car somewhere.

Taylor’s breath blew bloody bubbles from his lips as his mouth worked. He was speaking. There were words there. Henry put his ear close to the lips.

‘Vince, is that you?’

‘Yeah,’ Henry said immediately.

‘I did it. . I did everything you said, didn’t I?’ He coughed, spraying Henry’s face with blood and spittle.

‘Yeah,’ said Henry, keeping in there, trying to ignore the blood, ‘but you have to tell me where Roscoe is.’

‘I did them all for you. . is it done?’

‘Yeah, it’s done. Where have you put Jane Roscoe?’

‘Have we won?’

‘Yes, we have.’ Henry knew that in a matter of seconds Taylor would be dead. He asked again. ‘Where is Roscoe?’

‘In the garden, buried,’ he gasped and died. Henry dropped the head back onto the steering wheel. With his handkerchief he wiped the blood and saliva from his face.

‘Shit,’ he said, drawing out of the vehicle. He sank to his knees and in despair, held his head in his hands. He was overwhelmed with horror that he had been unable to prevent the death of another woman. He rocked, choking back the sobs.

A hand touched his shoulder. Through his fingers Henry looked up at Byrne who had staggered from the Transit. Other cops were behind him.

‘I’ve lost her,’ Henry wailed. ‘I’ve lost her.’

‘Who — lost who? What’s going on, Henry?’ he demanded.

‘Jane — it was him. He did it. Killed Mark Evans, too. Took Jane and now I’ve fucked it up and we’ll never find her. She could be alive, he talked about her still being alive. She won’t be for much longer.’

Byrne was still dazed from the accident. He slumped down by Henry and placed an arm across his shoulders. ‘Did he say anything?’

‘In the garden — buried in the garden — that was all. Christ, she must be in a tomb somewhere.’

‘No, no, wait,’ Byrne’s mind cleared quickly. ‘Taylor was on the pre-conference search team. He searched and sealed the Winter Gardens. He called them the garden.’

The words permeated only slowly into Henry’s brain. ‘How many search teams are on nights?’

‘Two, I think. One at the Winter Gardens, one at the Imperial.’

‘Let’s get moving then.’