Bad Tidings

ELEVEN

Henry knew the club on Withnell Street too intimately for comfort, but was under the impression it had been virtually abandoned and allowed to fall into disrepair, untouched for years. The previous owner, John Rider, had harboured big ideas for the place, a former casino, with visions of turning it into a lap dancing club. Those visions had come to a very bloody end when one of Rider’s rivals had declared his own plans for the club and Rider had been killed in the crossfire. Henry had been deeply involved in the situation — it had almost cost him his life — and returning to the club for the first time in years unearthed a lot of unpleasant memories.

That said, he wasn’t surprised someone had taken it over for something. He guessed that the licence for the place would have been kept current by whoever had owned it — Rider’s executioners, he assumed. Once a liquor licence lapsed it was hard work to resurrect, as the application process would have to begin from scratch. And any premises with a drinks licence in Blackpool could be a gold mine.

He hurried back to his car, still in one piece after his close encounter with Cherry, and set off towards South Shore. Much of that area of town was quite pleasant, but the two hundred metre wide strip from the Pleasure Beach complex as far north as Central Pier was not the most salubrious of localities. Many of the terraced houses, once proud and clean bed and breakfast establishments, had been turned into rabbit-warren flats, financed by the Department of Social Security, run by seedy landlords and inhabited by the unfortunate and the criminal. Henry disliked to stereotype, but many of the people he came across were lazy third-generation scroungers, living off benefits embedded in their psyche, existing hand to mouth, stealing, taking drugs. Many he didn’t come across were decent folk living in harsh times. But the truth of the matter was that South Shore did have a high rate of crime, drug use was rife, and a lot of kids didn’t know their fathers.

The clubs and other drinking establishments didn’t help matters.

Most were well run, but a core of them were managed by individuals whose names should never have appeared on a licence, or were fronts for more organized crime, thriving on the weakness of others.

Sitting behind the wheel of the Audi, Henry exhaled a long breath, then inhaled an equally lengthy one in the hope of replenishing the oxygen in his system, which felt very depleted. He knew he was running on fumes.

His fingers gripped the steering wheel as he focused his mind. His intention now was to visit the club and see if Runcie had gone there. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be there. That would mean Henry could execute a graceful retreat, brief a few people then dash home — to his house in Blackpool, tantalizingly close, but oh so far away — sleep for four hours, then get back to work, and write off any possibility of seeing Alison.

He considered calling her, decided not to, and started the engine, having arranged to meet the night-duty detective at the club. Henry had decided his approach to finding Runcie would be blunt. He would simply knock on the door and take it from there.

He weaved through streets he knew intimately and emerged on the sea front. He drove north, turning into Withnell Street which ran at ninety degrees to the promenade. He drove past the club, did a three-point turn, then pulled in about fifty metres away, just as the night detective came and parked behind him in an unmarked Astra. The jack’s name was Brighouse, a youngish DC Henry knew vaguely and had heard good reports about. He had been busy with a prisoner in the cells when Shoreside was kicking off.

‘Some rockin’ tonight,’ he said to Henry as they walked up to the club.

‘One of those nights that make it all worthwhile,’ Henry said, with a mouth full of irony.

It was well over ten years since Henry had set foot in the club. Standing in front of the big, solid, ornately carved double doors that were the entrance, he paused and his heart upped a beat for a moment as a palpitation shimmied through him, head to toe. He swallowed.

Brighouse noted his hesitation. ‘You OK, boss?’

Henry nodded. ‘Yeah — someone’s just tangoed over my grave, that’s all.’

‘Don’t you just hate it when that happens?’

Henry shook himself free from the terrible memories and ghosts of the past. He had not thought about John Rider for years, a fact that slightly baffled him. Rider had been a top-rate Manchester gangster who had tried to break free from the shackles of his past, but his ex-buddies wouldn’t let go. They had muscled in on Rider’s Blackpool dream with fatal consequences for too many people, almost including Henry. Henry was amazed that he had the ability to move on from such life-changing events and still function as a cop. He knew that had to be the nature of the cop mentality, to be able to compartmentalize, to box off sections of the brain, file away the shit and carry on.

Not that he was completely immune to leakage between those inner walls. On occasions, they had disintegrated — big style — and the plumber had to be called in.

But not tonight. Tonight he had accidentally stepped into a violent set of circumstances that needed to be dealt with firmly and swiftly and forcefully, and a tenuous link to the past wasn’t going to throw him off the scent.

‘I’ve had dealings here in the past,’ Henry said.

‘I know,’ Brighouse said. ‘Bit of a legend.’

Henry shot him a glance, seeing if he was taking the piss. He wasn’t, but a concurrent thought struck him: did becoming a legend mean you were over the hill? Was it time to retire? he asked himself again. ‘This place hasn’t been used in a long time, by the looks.’

‘Not that I know of,’ Brighouse said. ‘So why are we here?’

‘Runcie Costain owns it.’

‘Shit — does he? I wonder if the licensing lads know about that.’

‘He’ll have got in under the radar. Probably using a clean front man.’

Brighouse nodded.

Henry put his weight to the substantial door. It didn’t move. And there was no way of booting it down. It wasn’t some flimsy plywood or MDF door to a bedsit. It was thick oak and properly secured. Henry surveyed it from top to bottom and saw a bell on the wall which had the look of being disconnected. Not that he would have rung it anyway. Runcie wasn’t likely to open up and let the boys in, if he was here.

‘Round the back,’ Henry said.

Brighouse gave him a wary look. ‘Boss, I don’t want to shit my suit up.’

Henry treated him to his best superintendent’s caustic, visual dressing down, all eyes and disapproving mouth, and the young man got the message instantly. Henry refrained from saying patronizingly that he’d ruined more suits than Brighouse had had hot dinners. Probably wasn’t a good boast for a living legend to make. Instead he stalked away, turned into the next side road and found the alley that ran parallel to the rear of the club. Another location he knew well.

It was a typical Blackpool South back alley. Empty beer cans, cider bottles, dog shit, discarded fast food packaging and, before he knew it, or could lift his foot up quickly enough, Henry had trodden on a hypodermic needle that crunched like a baked cockroach. His mouth turned into an ugly sneer of anger as he lifted his foot carefully from the broken glass.

Up ahead in the darkness the alley was blocked by a parked car, which Henry assumed might belong to Runcie. He and Brighouse crept towards it, leaving fluorescent street lights behind, entering a dark world. Henry saw there were two cars in the alley, both parked facing the same direction, nose to tail.

With some shock he realized that the nearer one was the Nissan he had seen on Shoreside. His mouth tasted bitter again as his system pumped the last dregs of adrenalin into him. Beyond the Nissan was an old-style Fiat Panda, one with a fold-back roof.

‘That Panda’s Runcie’s,’ Brighouse whispered behind Henry. ‘I think.’

‘And this one’s from the drive-by shooting,’ Henry said under his breath.

‘Oh.’ Brighouse sounded uncertain.

Henry continued to creep down the alley, careful where he placed his feet. The driver and front passenger windows were wound down on the Nissan. Even feet away Henry could feel the heat of the engine rising on his face, hear the tick-tick of it cooling. A car with a little engine that had been screwed to the ground.

And — not for the first time that night — he could smell the unmistakable odour of cordite from the discharge of a gun.

‘What we gonna do, boss?’ Brighouse said hoarsely. His adrenalin was flowing too, but he was probably having his first flush of it that night, so he had plenty remaining.

‘Investigate.’

‘Does that-?’

Henry wasn’t completely sure what the next words were going to be, nor did he ever discover, as the sentence was stunted by the sound of gunfire from within the club. Dulled. Muted. Unmistakable.

The young detective’s next words actually turned out to be, ‘Fuck-shit!’ and he ducked instinctively. Henry was sure they were not the words he’d originally planned to finish his sentence with.

‘C’mon.’ Henry sidestepped between the cars and went to the door set into the high wall at the back of the club. Highly illegal barbed wire was looped loosely along the top of the wall to deter burglars. Henry flicked the latch on the door and put his shoulder to it. This door, unlike its cousin at the front, was rickety and rotten and loose. It scraped open and he stepped into the rear yard. This was not a particularly large area, but it was a mess of tangled and broken pallets, a few beer kegs and a couple of mega-sized wheelie bins.

When Henry had last been to the club, the back door had been sealed by a huge steel panel, pock-riveted to the brickwork. That had long since been peeled away, revealing the door which led into the kitchen area. Henry headed for this door, seeing it was ajar, his mouth now salty and dehydrated. It was a long time since he’d had a drink of anything.

‘Henry — is this wise?’

Ahh, Henry thought. Maybe that was what Brighouse was going to say.

Henry ignored him and entered the club. A low wattage bulb lit the kitchen, hanging by a bare wire. Henry crossed to the next door. If he remembered correctly, it opened into a series of corridors at the rear of the premises, off which toilets, offices and storerooms were located. Beyond was the way through to the main part of the club.

As he stepped into the first corridor he was instantly confronted by the charging figure of a hooded man, a machine pistol in his hands; behind him was another, similarly clad figure, this one carrying a revolver in his right hand. The two guys from the Nissan.

The meeting was a surprise to all concerned. If it hadn’t been deadly it would have been farcical when Henry and the first man collided headlong into each other. They fell into a tangle of thick limbs and torsos, groans of expelled air rushing out of their lungs.

And behind each man was a second man, of course.

The man with the revolver pointed it at Brighouse and fired. It was an ill-judged, unsupported shot, one handed. The recoil snapped the man’s hand high and sent the bullet into the wall above the detective’s head.

Not that Brighouse would have been hit anyway. As soon as he had seen the weapon rising, self-preservation kicked in and he dived back into the kitchen like a synchronized swimmer launching into a swimming pool — but quicker and not so gracefully.

Henry scrambled wildly and hit out.

The man he was tangling with whipped the barrel of the machine pistol across Henry’s temple, a glancing blow, knocking him sideways. Then the man was up on his feet, and both gunmen hurdled over Henry through to the kitchen and fled out past the terrified Brighouse, who had somehow ended up on his knees in front of the gas cooker, hands held up in surrender.

The man with the revolver pointed it at Brighouse, who clamped his hands together as if praying. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve got a fam. .’

He did not fire, and they were gone.

Moments later, Henry staggered through the door, holding his face, blood from the gash on the side of his head all over his hands.

Brighouse dropped his praying hands hastily and looked shamefacedly at Henry, who gave him a glare, found his balance and ran out of the kitchen as he heard an engine starting up, a crunch of gears and a squeal of rubber.

Henry sprinted into the alleyway to see the Nissan swerving backwards onto the street, rocking as the brakes were slammed on, first gear was engaged and the car sped away.

By the time Henry made it to the street himself, the car had gone, leaving a trail of burned oil smoke hanging two feet above the road surface. He could hear the sound of the engine diminishing into the night.

‘You must think I’m a coward.’

Henry had found some kitchen roll, folded it square twice and was holding it against the cut on his head. The blood had flowed onto his face, neck and collar, but the cut itself did not appear too severe. It just hurt.

‘Do I hell. You did exactly the right thing. All you did was get out of the way of someone who took a pot shot at you. Good thinking if you ask me. I’d’ve done the same if I hadn’t run headlong into one of the bastards.’

‘You’re saying I did right by not tackling them?’

‘Yeah, you did right,’ Henry said softly. ‘Don’t dwell on it,’ he advised, but he could see that the prospect of being labelled a chicken would haunt Brighouse for some time to come, if not for ever. It was in his eyes. Self-recrimination. ‘OK?’ Henry said, ending the conversation. ‘Let’s go see what damage they’ve done.’

He and Brighouse had not been joined by any backup — mainly because all other available men were now up on Shoreside and there wasn’t another cop free within twenty miles. Henry, however, would lay odds that they would be safe now. Whatever had been going on in the club was over with. The job had been done.

He jerked his head at Brighouse to tag along, and they started to make their way through the corridors until they entered the main dance floor and bar area. It had not been touched since Henry had last been there. He quickly scanned the floor for signs of old bloodstains, then glanced up at the ceiling and saw the large number of bullet holes that had been put there on his last visit by killers trying to murder him and John Rider. They had fired upwards, strafing the ceiling, knowing that the two men were hiding in the rafters. Henry shook his head at the memory. The bullets had obviously missed him. They had killed Rider.

He blew out his cheeks, looked around. Brighouse had strolled over to the bar, which he peered over. ‘Oh Jeez. . here,’ he called, and looked at Henry, his face horrified.

Henry walked across, dabbing his face. It was still bleeding and the kitchen towel did not seem to be as efficient at soaking up liquid as the manufacturers claimed. Not blood, anyway.

He went to the open end of the bar and — without surprise — looked down at Runcie Costain’s bullet-riddled body. Alongside him was a sawn-off shotgun, a few scattered cartridges and a mangy-looking revolver. His little arsenal, stashed at the club, which he’d hurried down to retrieve and arm himself with after the drive-by, before he was ambushed.

He was on his back, one leg drawn up, between the bar and the shelves. An arc of bullets from the right side of his chest ran up to his left shoulder, probably one burst of the machine pistol that had cracked Henry’s head. A curved line from his liver, across his sternum, shredding his lungs and heart, and into his left shoulder, most of which seemed to have been blown away. They must have caught him by surprise, because he had a half-smoked cheroot clamped at the corner of his mouth, still smouldering. He was lying in a steady growing pool of crimson, oxygenated blood.

‘Holy. .’ Brighouse uttered as it truly sank in what he was seeing. It had taken his mind a few seconds to completely assimilate it. Then he started to gag. He pitched away from the bar and ran across the dance floor to its far edge, where he dropped to his hands and knees and heaved up copious amounts of half-digested Christmas dinner. It reminded Henry he hadn’t yet been lucky enough to have his.

But at least the crime scene remained sterile thanks to Brighouse’s thoughtfulness in spewing up as far away from it as he could manage.

Henry walked over to him and gave him a fatherly pat on the back.

The Force Major Investigation Team maintained a pokey office at Blackpool nick, tucked away in a corridor few people ever seemed to venture down. Nominally it was Henry’s office, but he let any of the FMIT team use it as necessary. The department only had a toehold because that was all they needed. When anything major happened in a division which called for FMIT involvement, such as a murder or other serious crime, it was up to the division to provide most of the staffing, resources, space and money. The team, which had such a grand-sounding name, was actually a very tiny department based at headquarters, headed by four detective superintendents (though only three at the moment because of Joe Speakman’s sudden departure) with a couple of DCIs and DIs, some support staff — and that was about it.

Divisional commanders — the chief superintendents who ran the geographical divisions — were supposed to find the staff and funding for major investigations from their own budgets, but it wasn’t always so clear cut, and they could be awkward about it. The FMIT supers had to be skilled in negotiating and prising cash out of tight-fisted commanders whose budgets were already stretched in a force that had recently been compelled to save over?20 million by a cost-cutting central government.

For a force the size of Lancashire’s, such cuts were excruciating. Posts were slashed, people lost jobs, were made redundant. HQ departments were pared to the bone or abolished. Police stations were closed, or opening hours reduced. Communications rooms were going to be closed and centralized, as were custody suites. Front-line cop numbers were reduced, Police Community Support Officers were sacked, and, as Henry discovered (although he already knew it), the number of officers actually working on public holidays, where pay entitlement doubled, were shaved to a minimum. In other words, there was hardly anyone on duty on Christmas or Boxing Day. The knock-on effect was that, if there was a big incident — and there had been two — it was a struggle to police them.

Which was why, at 6 a.m. on Boxing Day, Henry was sitting in that dank FMIT office in a disintegrating police station, still dabbing his endlessly bleeding cut and rubbing his half-strangled throat, trying to get the county’s act together.

At least he was being assisted by a much-needed mug of good filter coffee.

He had just finished a dispiriting phone call to the divisional commander at Blackburn, scene of the first shootings at the hospital — which included, of course, a fatal police shooting. Prior to that he had also spoken to the Blackpool divisional commander, on whose patch there had been a drive-by shooting and a murder.

The crime scene in Blackburn was easier to contain, being in the hospital; those in Blackpool not so, mainly because of the outdoor nature of the drive-by. That was skewed because the more criminally minded inhabitants of Shoreside were bubbling with mischief fuelled by the rumour that the police were behind it all. There was no logic to it, they simply wanted a confrontation, and the likelihood was that Shoreside would become a battleground later in the day.

The chief superintendent’s perspective was that he wanted to keep the streets safe; neither Runcie’s death nor the wounding of one of the partygoers (a completely innocent lad, incidentally) really mattered very much. His priority was maintaining short-term public order, and if extra staff had to be brought on duty, that’s what they would be doing, not investigating the death of a toerag. He didn’t actually say the ‘welcome death’ of Runcie Costain, but Henry caught the insinuation — which riled him: no one’s death was welcome in Henry’s book. The commander suggested that as the whole thing had kicked off in Blackburn, then any investigation should be run from there. . with their money, not his.

Henry thought he had a point. Although the commander at Blackburn saw the logic, he wasn’t impressed by starting a murder investigation on Boxing Day, because even a very basic Major Investigation Room would need a lot of staff. ‘And I don’t have the freakin’ money,’ he bellyached.

And Henry knew that he needed enough staff to be able to carry out some coordinated raids, because he didn’t want Terry Cromer to get comfortable. He wanted to start harrying him now, this minute, with lots of cops with big boots kicking down doors behind which Cromer might be hiding.

The chief super pleaded with him to keep a lid on it for a day, so that it would cost less.

Henry had already deployed a plain police car to park discreetly within view of Cromer’s house in Belthorn, just watching and waiting for him to possibly sneak home. Henry doubted he would be daft enough to do that, unless he felt brave enough to bluff things out, but you could never tell. On the whole, most criminals were just slightly more dim than the cops who chased them, and they often did silly things, like go home.

But to the chief super it was a cop sat on his backside in a car doing nothing for double the wages. An expensive resource, though Henry appeased him by offering to pay half from the meagre FMIT budget.

After his conversations with the chief supers, Henry was even more whacked. He breathed, ‘Talk about bad tidings,’ as he tried to work out what best to do — what was a ‘must’, a ‘should’ or a ‘could’. How he could keep people happy by not spending their money. Budgets were a complete minefield. In times past — those hallowed days of limitless government spending — there always seemed to be a spare pot of cash lying about. No longer.

‘Bad, bad tidings,’ he whispered again. He leaned back in the rickety office chair that some thieving bastard had left behind in place of the half-decent chair that used to be there. He chugged back through the day he’d just worked, almost twenty-four hours of it.

His mobile phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. It was Rik Dean calling from Blackburn, updating Henry on the hospital shootings, which Rik seemed to have well under control.

From all that Rik said, it was Bill Robbins that bothered Henry the most. Rik said that he’d sent Bill home despite having spoken to some ‘stuck-up bint’ from the IPCC who insisted that Bill should be arrested on suspicion of murder.

‘I told her to fuck off,’ Rik said crossly. ‘Poor sod’s gone home in a bloody Michelin Man suit because all his other stuff’s been bagged up for forensics. He’s formally had his firearms authorization revoked, he’s been swabbed for gunshot residue and DNA and the bitch wanted him locked up to give her the chance to travel up from London. Stuff that! I’ve arranged for him to come into FMIT at three this aft with a brief, to be interviewed there.’

‘Sounds good. How is he?’

‘Broken,’ Rik sighed bleakly. ‘You know, you shoot and kill once — that’s OK-ish, if you did the right thing, which Bill did. But do it again, whatever the circumstances, it’s the high jump. The force was bad enough with him last time. This time they’ll make Pontius Pilate look like the Good Samaritan.’

‘I won’t let that happen.’ Henry was absently spinning a full three-sixty degrees on his chair and as he looped back to face the office door, he jerked to a halt when he saw that Fanshaw-Bayley was filling the door frame.

‘Everything else sorted?’ Henry asked Rik.

‘Yeah. . Home Office pathologist has been for a look, but it’s unlikely the PMs will get done today. . public holiday and all that.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Henry said.

FB entered the office and helped himself to a mug of coffee from Henry’s filter machine, then parked himself on an office chair. His weight made the pneumatic workings drop down a level with a fart-like thud. He spilled his coffee on the carpet and shot Henry a dagger-like look as he pumped himself back up, muttering, ‘Shit.’

Henry didn’t want the phone call to end. ‘Anything else I need to know about?’

‘No. . is someone taking this over from me?’ Rik wanted to know.

‘No.’

‘How does that work, then?’

‘We stay on duty.’

Rik guffawed uncertainly. ‘Good joke.’

‘No — seriously.’

There was a beat of absolute silence.

‘Gotcha,’ Henry said. He was feeling a bit light headed. ‘I’ve arranged for someone to keep track of things so we can get home and grab some sleep — but I want us back this afternoon, probably for another long day.’

‘Um, all right,’ Rik said. ‘What’s the point of having a personal life when you can be a cop, eh?’

Henry glanced at FB. ‘Talking of which, have you heard from Lisa?’

‘No.’ It was a blunt reply. Only one syllable, Henry thought, but it was incredible what could be read into it. Anger. Hurt. Frustration. Fear. . Henry’s heart, unusually, went out to Rik, who had a lot of years womanizing behind him but then had found someone to really love — someone who, with years of man eating behind her, had rapidly reverted to type.

‘OK,’ Henry said, not having time to go there. ‘DCI Leach should be with you soon. Brief him, then get to bed and be at FMIT at Hutton about one this afternoon. We’ll have to run this thing from there for the time being.’

‘Eh?’

‘Don’t ask. I’ll sort out some staffing, but it’ll be all our people, not division’s at the moment. . It’s all about the money, money, money,’ he said with sad cynicism. ‘Pushing bodies across boundaries.’

‘Yeah, understood.’ Rik knew what Henry meant. In days gone by, when dead bodies — usually old alcoholics — seemed to turn up face down in canals much more regularly than they did in the present day, the officer who found the ‘floater’, if it was close enough to a divisional or force boundary, would often spend hours launching rocks into the water in the hope that the ripples would send the body over the border. Then the police over there could deal with it, though occasionally the reverse happened and somehow, mysteriously, the body would be found in its original location. The good old days, when bobbies really were bobbies, skilled at ducking, diving and avoiding work.

‘It’ll be cheaper all round if we can run it from FMIT, at least until New Year kicks in. We’re a bit of a halfway house here, between Blackburn and Blackpool.’

He ended the call and smiled at FB. After a pause of consideration, FB said, ‘What I don’t get, Henry, is how I give you a simple cold case to deal with and next thing I know, you’re in the middle of a real shit storm.’

Henry could have argued the point. He hadn’t done any of the stirring, but he was definitely at the centre of a vortex.

His last phone call, using the hands-free in the car, was to Bill Robbins. Unable to sleep, Bill was out walking his dog in the woods close to where he lived in the countryside at Hurst Green, between Longridge and Clitheroe, near the River Hodder.

Bill sounded thoroughly depressed.

‘You know, when that bastard swung around with his gun, I actually thought twice about pulling the trigger. I also thought, should I just try and wing him? That was the worst part. In that fucking microsecond, all the shit went through my noggin, as well as the implications of shooting him. Knowing I was right, that I didn’t have a choice, that I had to shoot to stop him, not try and be fancy by just shooting him in the shoulder. I knew there would be months and months of shite to come.’

Henry listened, feeling very sorry for him. It was a tough call being an authorized firearms officer, but when it came to that moment, the one when the trigger had to be pulled, lives had to be saved, lives had to be taken, the resultant fallout had to be lived with. Authorized Firearms Officers were under no illusions about that, but no amount of training could prepare anyone for it.

‘Like I said, though,’ Bill went on, ‘it was the hesitation that was a problem. If that dickhead had been any good, we could both be dead, Henry, and it would’ve been my fault.’ He sounded totally distraught.

‘Bill, you did exactly the right thing. I’ll back you up one hundred per cent, like I did last time. I’ll give a statement to IPCC, too. I’ve just had a long discussion with FB and he promises the full backing of the force.’

‘Excuse me if I vomit disbelief,’ Bill said.

‘It will be OK,’ Henry insisted.

‘Yeah, right. . I know you’ll be there for me. . it’s the other twats that worry me. I need to go, Henry, get my dog. . it’s got something horrible in its mouth.’ He finished the call abruptly, just as Henry drew up on the driveway of his house.

Parked on the road, much to his relief, was Lisa’s Mercedes. On one side of the drive was the tiny SmartCar that Leanne had inherited from Kate. Also on the road was Jenny’s car. But best of all — and completely unexpected — was the sight of Alison’s newish, sporty Hyundai.

He was coming home to a houseful of women.