Fighting for the Dead

SIX

By the time Flynn re-entered earth’s atmosphere, having been flung fuming and furious into orbit by the insinuation of Henry Christie’s question, he had driven the Smart Car all the way back to Glasson Dock. He’d parked outside the chandlery and was halfway through a bar meal at the Victoria, which was accompanied by a very chilled pint of Stella Artois and a Glenfiddich chaser.

The food was good, simple and filling. The lager was excellent, the whisky tremendous… the ideal combination to re-enter from the stratosphere without completely burning up.

It was only as he cleared his plate, sat back and started to sip his second pint and chaser did his emotional temperature start to fall.

Such was the effect Henry Christie had on him. Although Flynn had initially laid most of the blame on Henry for hastening his departure from the force and he had learned the truth of the matter later — that Henry had actually covered up a lot of the incriminating stuff he’d unearthed about Flynn — the damage to their relationship was pretty much done. They just didn’t like each other, never would.

The two men had come into contact a few times in recent years, in situations not compatible with endearing themselves to one another. It didn’t help that when they’d met up in Kendleton, Flynn had thought he’d had a chance at getting something together with Alison. Circumstances and geography dictated otherwise — not least that Alison did not fancy him — but to find Henry walking hand-in-hand with her, like two lurv-struck teenagers, really piqued him. That Henry knew he fancied his chances with Alison and was probably now having a ‘right good chuckle’ to himself, also made him seethe.

He sipped his beer and as he thought about things, he realized his problem went far beyond simple jealousy.

Yes, he was envious of Henry, but what really irked him was his own inability to find and keep someone for himself.

He had been in love once recently, the only time since his acrimonious divorce some years earlier. But it had ended in tragedy and he had been unable to pick up the pieces since.

Now he was starting to get worried about facing a future alone.

The big, rough, tough man of action wanted a serious relationship.

‘Diddums,’ he thought to himself.

What falling in love had taught him — after vowing never to do so after his divorce — was that it was wonderful, confusing, compelling — and something he needed. He thought he could handle being alone, indeed had done so for a few years, but now the prospect of hitting sixty and single frightened the crap out of him, more than swimming with a hammerhead shark.

Sixty was a long way away, but time flew, and you got old before you knew it.

‘Bastard,’ he hissed quietly into his beer. ‘How did he get someone like her? Wonder what his wife thinks about it?’

The beer went to his lips and half of it slid down his throat.

He glanced around the pub, which was moderately busy. A few couples and a few single oldish men propping up the bar. Flynn’s eyes paused on the couples, before tearing away and returning to the drink in front of him. He finished it in one fell swoop, then the chaser.

Actually, he reasoned, life wasn’t that bad. He enjoyed his life in Puerto Rico in Gran Canaria, had made some good friends, had regular sex with a few ‘no strings attached’ ladies, and had a great job he hoped he would do for the rest of his life. Skippering a sport-fishing boat was an awesome way to make a living and his plan was — eventually — to buy his own boat.

Lots of blokes would leap at the chance of leading his life.

Suddenly he felt better after his inner pep-talk.

He stood up, went to the bar, bought a couple of bottles of beer and went out into the night, which was cold and dark.

‘Boss, I thought you’d want to know — it’s definitely Sunderland’s wife,’ Ralph Barlow said. ‘Jennifer.’

Henry was sitting in the warm lounge of the owner’s living accommodation at the back of the Tawny Owl. On the journey across from Lancaster in Alison’s car, he’d got a call from Barlow but the signal had gone before they could talk — not uncommon out in the sticks — and he hadn’t been able to return it. He had called Barlow using the landline in the pub.

‘Thanks for that,’ Henry said.

‘He was pretty cut up about it. It must have hit him.’

‘Genuine?’ Henry asked.

‘Think so.’

‘What about a statement and interview?’

‘I’ve left it loose. Some time tomorrow.’

‘Might as well get the PM done first anyway. See if anything comes of that.’

‘Yeah, I thought that.’

‘Did you mention the robbery thing, the armed guys?’

‘You said not to.’

‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I?’

There was a slight pause as Henry’s brain ticked over whilst he mentally rechecked his list. Had everything been covered? Could everyone sleep tight tonight?

‘Boss?’

‘Just cogitating… anything on the two robbers yet?’

‘Not as such… but there could be some CCTV footage from the hospital cameras.’

‘Leave it for now, we’ll have a look tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? You not reporting in sick, boss?’

‘Things to do.’

‘But you’re well hurt.’

‘I’ll be fine after an ice-pack, some JD, more pills, food and sleep… I’ll be in at nine-thirty.’

Henry hung up. The door opened and, as if on cue, Alison entered the room with a small ice-pack from the freezer, wrapped in a tea towel. She sat alongside him and brought the ice up to his face. He winced at the contact, but bravely hung in there, then took it from her, moulding it tenderly around the contours of the swelling.

‘You’re not really going to invite Flynn round, are you?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ It was a firm answer. Although she had no romantic ideas where Flynn was concerned, the two did have a bond that would connect them for the rest of their lives. She had saved his life and in so doing had been forced to take someone else’s. Flynn had covered it up but Alison was secretly aware that Henry knew what had happened but had never voiced his suspicions. She hoped he wouldn’t raise the subject now that Flynn was back on the scene. ‘You were a bit harsh with him, I thought.’

‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could chuck him, love. Y’know there’s over a million quid missing from a drugs raid he botched, years ago…’

‘I know, I know… let it go, will you?’

‘And, and,’ Henry went on, about to mount a very high horse. ‘All right, maybe he didn’t steal it, but his bloody cop-partner did and the money and his partner have vanished somewhere in the ozone layer.’ He looked at her.

‘Finished?’

‘And I know he fancies you,’ Henry admitted dully.

‘Ahh, the truth will out. The old green-eyed monster.’

Henry’s look became a guilty frown. ‘He’s a good-looking bastard,’ he said. ‘Tanned, fit… smooth.’

‘And I’m so easily seduced. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘You were by me.’

‘Henry, I love you… end of.’ It was a statement that broached no further argument.

‘Yeah, well,’ he muttered. ‘I need to make a few calls.’

‘And I need to get back to the bar, the locals are thirsty tonight.’ She touched the back of his hand gently, then left.

Henry picked up the phone and dialled with his thumb, a number he knew well.

‘Hello, Marina, it’s Henry Christie… is Jerry about?’ he asked.

‘One moment. I think he’s just distilling the home brew… Jerry!’

Henry held the phone away from his ear as she bawled out the name. Henry was calling DC Jerry Tope, who worked in the Intelligence Unit at headquarters. Tope had done a lot of good work for Henry over recent years, was an excellent Intel analyst. He was also an expert at hacking into computer databases — usually illegally. Tope had been headhunted by the FBI, so impressed were they after he’d drilled into their computer network, but Henry had managed to block the move. He guessed it would only be a matter of time before he left the cops for more lucrative pastures. For the time being, Jerry Tope was his and because he was so talented and useful, Henry tolerated the fact he was a grumpy bastard who showed little respect for rank.

There were a lot of rustling noises, some whispering, and suddenly Tope’s voice came on the line. Abruptly he said, ‘Two things. First it’s gone nine and I’m off duty. Second, I’m just sterilizing my wine bottles.’

‘And third,’ Henry cut in, ‘I’m your boss, you’re a DC, and if you don’t shut it, you’ll be on a school-crossing patrol in Bacup on Monday. Promise.’ It wasn’t really a promise or a threat, but part of the little ritual he and Tope often went through to kick off their conversations.

Tope grunted, ‘Whaddya want?’

Henry explained the two things. One was a fairly straightforward piece of research, the second something a little more delicate that required Tope’s computer skills and sensitive links with the Telephone Unit, because Henry wanted this doing via the rear entrance.

Tope did his usual ‘umming’, but didn’t ask why. The first request was easy, the second less so. He said he would get back to Henry next day.

Before hanging up Henry said, ‘Incidentally, I bumped into an old friend of yours today… Steve Flynn.’ Tope emitted a loud groan. ‘Just to warn you,’ Henry said. ‘I know he fishes for information from you, because of what he has on you. Don’t be tempted.’

Henry was certain he heard Tope’s Adam’s apple rise and fall in his throat. He hung up with a smirk — one that hurt his face.

Then he stretched out, tilted his head sideways and balanced the ice-pack on his cheek, and settled down for the night.

The wind slapped the halyards on the rigging of the yachts in the marina, making a lovely clanking noise. Flynn paused to listen to the sound that made him smile. He sighed, wishing he was back in Gran Canaria. It was in the same zone as the UK, difference being if he had been there he would have been dressed in a T-shirt, three-quarter-length pants and flip-flops, cruising from bar to bar in Puerto Rico’s commercial centre. The evening would still be young — and warm.

Instead it was bone-chilling, the wind zipping in up the Lune estuary.

He hunkered down and walked alongside the canal up to the barge, stepping over on to the rear deck. He immediately saw that the door leading to the living area had been smashed open and was hanging off its hinges. The door was pretty substantial and to smash it off must have taken some doing.

In spite of the beer and whisky, he became alert, although he had no reason to suspect this was anything other than the work of kids. He placed his beer bottles on the deck and walked to the door. He did not expect anyone to be inside but if there was he had already alerted them to his presence when he came noisily aboard.

Three steps led down to the door. He went sideways down them and pushed the door away from him. Although the interior of the boat was in darkness, Flynn’s eyes were fairly well adjusted from having strolled back from the pub and he could immediately see the disarray inside. Galley cupboards were open, pots, pans and utensils were scattered around, and the furniture overturned.

Flynn swore. He bowed his head and ducked in order to get inside and fumble for the light switch that was somewhere to his right. His fingers ran down the wall, his arm stretched out.

It was at that moment the two men moved in for him — one from behind, one from the front.

Flynn saw the blur of movement ahead of him. A dark shape, a hooded man moving quickly, and also the swish of something moving through the air, a stick or a bat, perhaps. It connected to his outstretched forearm, smashing against his ulna, sending a jarring spasm up past his elbow to his shoulder.

He didn’t see the man behind him, just felt the flat-footed kick against the base of his spine that jerked his whole body and catapulted him onto his knees down the steps, crashing hard on to the wooden floor, where he sprawled out at the feet of the man in front of him.

The mistake the attackers made in those first, brutal moments was that they didn’t hit him across the head, to at least disorientate him, so by the time Flynn hit the floor, he was retaliating.

Using the forward momentum of being kicked down, he went for the man’s legs in front of him, finding purchase with his own foot against a cabinet and propelling himself forwards.

He grabbed the legs and in a moment the guy was toppled over onto his back and Flynn was scampering across him, chin in, head down, working on his strategy as he went.

There wasn’t much choice in the matter. It had to be this one, then the other. The one on the floor had to be dealt with instantly, then maybe used as some sort of shield against the other.

Flynn dropped on him, chest to chest, face to face, combining the fall with a powerful head-butt. Head-butts were not the best means of attack. There was no escaping the fact that the move entailed the clashing of two heads and if the deliverer of the blow didn’t connect accurately — forehead to bridge of nose — both parties suffered.

Flynn had delivered his fair share of head-butts in his time, mostly well aimed and timed, and, of course, in his younger days when he was faster and sharper.

So even though this head-butt was powerfully delivered, the man underneath saw it telegraphed and dinked his head sideways. Flynn connected with fresh air, missed him completely. This man was faster. Big realization.

By this time, still only a few seconds into the conflict, the man behind who had kicked Flynn into the boat was moving quickly to help his mate and Flynn lost his advantage — the advantage he had hoped to achieve by showing them this was no pushover and they’d bitten off more than they could digest.

Flynn’s head came back, and, angled slightly so that his face gave a perfect target, the men made up for their earlier mistake of not putting him down straight away. Something hard, heavy and metallic was smashed down hard across his head. It was like being hit by a frying pan — in fact, it could have been a pan from the galley. Flynn tumbled sideways off the man, who spun and rolled up onto his feet with ease, whilst Flynn’s brain was sent into free-fall by the blow.

Then the blows began to connect.

He rolled into a foetal ball, forearms covering his head, trapped tight against a bench seat, unable to do anything now but cower and try to protect himself.

They hit him hard, one with a baseball bat, the other with the butt of a gun.

Then they stopped. Next thing Flynn was hauled roughly into a half-seating position and the barrel of the gun — it was a machine-pistol of some sort — was rammed underneath his chin, then forced upwards so he looked along it, along the hands and arms of the man holding it, who squatted in front of him, up to his ski-masked face.

The ski mask. One of the simplest forms of terror inducement that existed. A hood with eye holes and a mouth hole. An innocent garment that, worn under the right circumstances — usually during a violent robbery — was so terrifying that it immediately gave offenders a massive psychological advantage over victims and witnesses.

The eyes behind the mask. The obscene mouth.

Flynn’s head was swimming from the blow, but he also felt fear.

‘Jeez… what… hell!’ he gasped, trying to give the impression of total incomprehension, although he was trying to work out the angles and odds now.

The man pushed the muzzle of the gun deep and hard into the soft flesh under the V of Flynn’s jaw.

‘OK, tough guy, you finished fighting?’

‘Yuh,’ he said and his brain clicked: accent.

‘Good.’ The man’s head moved closer to Flynn’s face. Flynn could smell his breath and sweat and cheap deodorant. An unpleasant combination.

Flynn looked to his right and saw the other man standing there slapping a baseball bat into the palm of his hand, a corny but effective gesture.

‘Now… where is it?’

‘What? Where’s what?’ Flynn sneered.

‘Whatever you took from the dead woman. We want it.’

‘I didn’t take anything.’

The gun was jammed further into his throat and in a concurrent line of thought, Flynn worked out that if the trigger was pulled, the bullet would rip up through his tongue, behind his teeth, up through the roof of his mouth. His brain would be removed, the top of his skull would explode outwards and there would be a hell of a mess inside the boat.

‘You did. Do not lie!’

‘I’m not in a position to lie,’ Flynn protested. Then he lurched forward instinctively and grabbed the man’s ski mask and ripped it off, and stared directly into his face.

The man laughed harshly, said, ‘Fool,’ and slammed his weapon sideways across Flynn’s face with such force that it had the instantaneous effect of knocking him into oblivion.

Henry shifted on the settee, settled, closed his eyes — then almost leapt out of his skin when his mobile phone, left in his trouser pocket, vibrated as a text message landed.

It was unexpected because he’d forgotten the phone was there and with the signal in this area being so poor and unreliable, it was rare for anyone to get through anyway.

He pulled it out and slid it open, peering at the screen. He visualized the text having been sent, then loitering in space for a while before suddenly seeing a chance to swoop down to his phone. This was the same person who was convinced that a text could be sent with a nifty wrist-flick of the phone, like throwing a Frisbee, but not actually letting go of the phone. Henry had a fairly childlike view of the new age of technology.

The sender was Professor Baines, the Home Office pathologist. It read simply, ‘Call me.’

Henry had been on the verge of serious slumber. The ice-pack had helped stem the expansion of his swelling and the painkillers plus a second JD had made him sleepy.

He forced himself into a sitting position, picked up the landline phone and dialled Baines’s number, gently touching his face as the call connected.

‘So they didn’t keep you in overnight?’ Baines said immediately.

‘No, I’ve got my own nurse, free, on tap, works behind a bar… all the best attributes of a good health-care worker.’

‘Lucky you… how are you feeling?’

‘Grog and cross,’ Henry muttered. ‘What can I do you for?’

‘Well, I haven’t done any post-mortems yet, but I have found something that might be of interest to you.’

‘Are you still at the mortuary?’ Henry asked incredulously, his eye glancing towards the fireplace clock.

‘Death never sleeps,’ Baines said mysteriously. ‘Yes, I am still here, surrounded by the dead — and from the looks of the mortuary assistants, the undead too. But needs must.’

‘What have you found?’

‘As you know, I’m a tooth man. I look at dead people’s teeth for various reasons, mainly selfish.’

‘Hence the OBE.’

‘And maybe a knighthood, if rumour is to be believed.’

‘Don’t hold your breath.’

‘OK — banter over. These days I tend to head straight for the mouth first. Which is why I had a peer into the mouth of the woman who was pulled from the river, who has now been identified, I believe. Post-mortem now scheduled for ten-thirty tomorrow, by the way.’

‘Great.’

‘She’d had some bridge work done, some fillings.’

‘Not unusual.’

‘Not in itself, but what I consider to be unusual is that there are now two dead bodies in this mortuary who have had work carried out by the same dentist.’

Henry waited.

‘The work done in the mouth of… ahh… Mrs Sunderland was done by the same dentist as the work carried out in the mouth of the unidentified girl, the murder victim we looked at earlier. Now what do you think about that?’

Flynn was woken by a combination of two things — smell and heat.

The smell was that of petrol.

The heat was from the fact that the petrol had been set alight and flames were whooshing up, along and around the interior of the canal boat.

Flynn was face down, cheek pressed into the wooden floor.

The smell was horrendous, invading his nostrils.

He moved his head, opened his eyes and looked down the length of the boat, burning with intense heat, bright flames crackling and heading quickly in his direction.

He attempted to raise himself, but slid back down on weak, rubbery arms that would not hold his weight.

‘Bastards,’ he groaned.

They’d set the boat alight with him still in it, unconscious.

Flynn pushed himself up again, head swooning, disorientated slightly, but knowing he had to crawl backwards to the door.

Then his brain cells started working again and he realized that he hadn’t been left in the position where he’d been bashed unconscious. The men had dragged him through the galley area, along the floor, through the living room, the full length of the boat and into the bedroom where he’d been dumped. Then they’d doused the boat in petrol and lit it.

Leaving him trapped by the flames.

To get out of the door would mean running through a tunnel of fire, thirty feet long, which was now fearsomely hot and would roast him instantly.

Flynn rose to his knees and peered through the flames at the door beyond, the one which had been kicked off its hinges by the men, and had been loosely pulled back into place when they left.

He felt heat on his face, scrambled backwards against the bed. He kicked the bedroom door closed, and smoke hissed through the gap underneath it.

Now the situation had slightly changed.

Instead of being burned to a crisp, he was probably going to die in the way most people do when trapped by fire — by inhaling noxious smoke. Both were gruesome, terrible deaths.

The bedroom door, thin and not very substantial, even started to glow.

Flynn scrambled across the bed, which almost filled the small room. He ripped the flimsy curtains away from the window, unlatched and opened it and started to squeeze himself out like toothpaste in a tube. It was a very small window. But in his haste to escape the flames he’d forgotten the geography of the boat. It was only when he was halfway out of the window did he realize he should have crawled out of the one on the other side, which would have given him the chance to drop onto the canal bank.

Instead, as he slithered out he dropped straight into the ice-cold muddy waters of the Lancaster Canal just as the flames in the galley burned through the rubberized taps that connected the gas cylinder to the cooker and the boat exploded.