Hidden Witness

SIXTEEN

Ellen Thompson had been a public enquiry assistant at Blackpool police station for just over six months. She was twenty-three years old, a single mother with a two-year-old son and lived on and off with her partner, Lee Clarke, in a rented terrace house just to the north of the town centre. She had no previous convictions, otherwise she would never have got the job, but Lee Clarke had. He was a drug user, small time thief and handler of stolen goods.

At the time of Ellen’s application for a job as a PEA, she and Lee were having one of their regular splits from each other. Consequently, the rather flimsy background check on her did not reveal Lee’s presence in her life. Ellen had been desperate for a decent, regular job with a bit of flexibility in it and being a PEA, whilst not massively remunerated, was good work, well within her capabilities and actually pretty interesting.

However, two months after proudly securing the job, Lee Clarke came back on the scene. A bad boy, full of charm, and try as she might, Ellen could not resist him and his bad influence.

On top of which, the fact he was the father of her son was an extra pull on her heart strings.

At first, on his return to her life he was, as usual, remorseful, brimming with positives and promises. He said he’d put his drug habit behind him, kicked thieving, kicked booze.

And she fell for it.

Then her money started to disappear and he was obviously back on the line.

Money was tight and he needed more and more to fund the habit of a lifetime.

Then they had the conversation. ‘Do you get cash handed into you?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘Other stuff?’

‘Lots of stuff, but we mostly tell people to keep what they find.’

Lee looked pensively at her, his devious mind working the angles.

He continued to steal and waste even more money.

Then, as things became tight again and desperation grew, she committed the first theft at his suggestion. Cash needed to feed a baby. Fifty pounds found by an old woman on the bus station. Ellen said she should hand it over because someone had already reported it lost, which was a lie. She entered it into the found property book behind the desk at the police station and a couple of days later, the owner’s signature appeared and the cash was handed back. Apparently.

A couple of other thefts followed the same route. Only small amounts, but a great help all the same. And then a mobile phone was handed in by one of the smelly town centre drunks who was always in the station, either under arrest for being drunk and disorderly, or simply because he could not stay away from the cop shop. It drew him like a magnet and he was often escorted off the premises. His boozed up breath even made it through the security screen the day he came in when Ellen was on duty. He had obviously been imbibing for a number of hours. His words slurred loudly and he rambled on about being certain two lads had robbed him. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure if he’d spent his money, but could definitely recall a dream in which two youths had been through his pockets and nicked his cash — and his cider. Later that night, he’d been staggering through the streets when he kicked something on the floor, which turned out to be a mobile phone someone had dropped.

He pushed it on to the sliding tray, then turned and rolled out of the station, waving dismissively. A drunk like him had no use for such a device.

Ellen took the phone, saw it was a good model, put it into her locker to sneak home later. The appearance of the firearms PC asking awkward questions about a phone had spooked her and she decided she had better take it home, just in case further inquiries were made.

It didn’t matter if the phone had been blocked.

Lee knew someone who could unblock it, then it could be sold on and would be worth quite a few quid.

Though Ellen had only come on at four that day, she wanted an early finish. Lee had been on to her continually, calling and texting her frequently on her mobile, pleading for her to come home. Pack in the stupid job. Come home and fuck, then go out and get rat-arsed together. The kid had been farmed out to her mother, so that wouldn’t be anything to worry about. He was high or drunk or both, and the problem was, Ellen wanted to be too. The quick answer was to throw a sickie. She simply told the communications room sergeant she was going home because she felt nauseous with women’s problems.

She left at nine thirty with the phone in her bag. Curiosity made her switch it on as she got into her battered Ford Fiesta in the car park. The message that came up said, ‘This phone is barred from use.’ No surprise there.

They ran out to their cars. Henry to his Mondeo, FB to his massive four-by-four Lexus, Bill Robbins to the Ford Galaxy belonging to the ARV unit, Bent to his VW Golf, Donaldson and Jerry Tope to the Fiat 500, and Rik Dean to the Mercedes Coupe that actually belonged to Henry’s sister.

Henry stopped mid-track, seeing the Keystone Kops side of this surge of manpower. ‘I think this is a bit of overkill, don’t you fellas?’ He gestured with a shrug and his hands.

FB said, ‘You guys get on with it — I don’t do operational,’ effectively withdrawing himself from the job, much to Henry’s relief.

‘Bill, Jerry, Alex and Rik — you jump in the Galaxy. Karl, you come with me.’

The relief in the American’s face was evident. He had given Jerry Tope a ride to the mortuary in the Fiat 500 and the shoehorning of the two men into it had not been a pretty sight.

‘We can come back for the other cars as and when,’ Henry said and they all piled into the allocated vehicles. Henry flicked open the glove compartment and grabbed his PR, switching it on. He called into comms. He told them who was in each vehicle and said, ‘Please go ahead with the directions from the phone company. And I want a dedicated operator on this for the time being,’ he ordered loftily. The power of a superintendent.

‘Roger, that will be me,’ the operator responded.

‘Update, please,’ Henry said.

‘At the moment the phone signal is still moving northwards, still in Blackpool.’

‘Roger that,’ Henry said.

‘DI Dean, I also received that,’ Rik said over his PR on behalf of the crew in the Galaxy.

‘Superintendent Christie to DI Dean, let’s get moving then, please.’

The two cars sped off the mortuary car park and headed towards Blackpool.

‘You OK,’ Henry asked Donaldson as the Mondeo shot through a set of lights outside the hospital.

‘So-so… shaken and stirred,’ Donaldson admitted. ‘I can’t believe what I think I know… and that e-fit, hell, that made me shiver… the likeness. That lad Carter must have good eyesight.’

‘To see and remember, and be able to describe a face in such detail… he must have eyes like a shithouse rat.’

‘Hey, babe,’ Lee Clarke slurred as Ellen Thompson entered the living room of their tiny house on north shore. She pulled off her coat and tossed it across the dining table on top of a pile of other clothes. ‘I knew you’d come… babe, I missed you. I hate you working.’

‘Well if I didn’t, we’d have nothing at all, would we?’ She sat down, unzipped her tight boots and peeled them off with gratitude. They were killing her feet.

Clarke was smoking a joint and Ellen sniffed appreciatively. ‘Good shit,’ she said and waggled her fingers at him in a ‘gimme’ gesture.

‘Last one,’ Clarke said sadly, inspecting the spliff. She waggled her fingers more urgently. ‘Oh, babe,’ he whined.

‘Give.’

Reluctantly, he handed her the joint and she took the last drag, holding the smoke deep in her lungs, feeling the wonderful euphoria of the drug seep into every part of her body. She exhaled slowly and sat back.

‘You got some dosh?’ Clarke asked.

‘Few quid.’

‘Enough for a few pints and some more good shit?’

‘Dunno, dunno.’ The cannabis had made her feel out of it already.

‘Nobody handed any cash in today for you to take a percentage?’

‘No… oh, I did get something…’ She crossed unsteadily to the dining table, rooted in her coat and found the mobile phone. She handed it to Clarke. ‘You can get something for this, can’t you?’

Clarke inspected it. He had stolen and fenced many a mobile phone and knew their worth. ‘Found property?’ he said with a knowing chortle.

‘Our property,’ Ellen said.

‘Hey, this is a good phone,’ he said appreciatively.

‘How much?’

‘Forty quid, I guess. It sells in the hundreds.’

‘Can you get that tonight?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘So we can party, party, party?’

‘Oh yeah.’

She stood in front of him, still dressed in the knee length, but tight, skirt and white blouse of her PEA uniform. She hitched up the skirt and straddled him. ‘Let’s start how we mean to go on,’ she said, slowly unbuttoning the blouse.

Clarke’s eyes misted lustfully over as he reached up and grabbed her generous boobs. She leaned into him and mashed her lips on to his, forcing her tongue into his mouth.

The pounding on the door was a rude interruption.

Clarke pulled his head away and gasped. ‘I hope that’s not Tweedy,’ he said, referring to his dealer. ‘I owe him some money, but coming round here is bang out of order. Ignore him.’

But the knocking persisted in an authoritative way. Whoever it was, wasn’t going to go away in a hurry.

‘Shit,’ Clarke said and pushed Ellen to one side, extracting himself from underneath her. She moaned with annoyance as Clarke got up and said, ‘I’ll piss him off.’

‘How much do you owe him?’

‘Dunno. Twenty, I guess. Not a lot.’

For Mark Carter it might as well have been another police cell. Out of one, into another, the only difference being this one was en-suite and the bed looked half-comfortable and inviting.

‘You’re lucky,’ the social worker had told him on the way.

‘And why would that be?’ he asked harshly. The social worker, God bless him, came across as a decent kind of guy, trying his best to do a thankless job with a stroppy teenager. However, Mark had no intention of making anything easy for him.

‘You’re the first guest. The place doesn’t officially open until next week after being refurbished. People haven’t started filtering in and out yet.’

‘Inmates, you mean?’

‘I mean young people with serious needs.’

‘So there won’t be anyone else there tonight?’

‘Nope — just you. But I’ll be in a room down the corridor if you need anything. I won’t be far away.’

‘Like bumming, you mean?’

‘Eh?’ Then the guy got it, reddened and laughed nervously. ‘We’re not all raving perverts, you know,’ he chuckled with a tinge of hurt.

‘Well that’s reassuring,’ Mark said. ‘I feel as if I’m being bum-fucked anyway. You might as well just do it for real. I don’t give a toss.’

‘Now then, Mark. We’re simply interested in your welfare, that’s all. You’ve been through a lot and we’re trying to do the right thing for you.’

‘Oh? And do I get to have a say in what the right thing is?’

‘Of course you do, Mark, of course you do.’

Mark had been handed over to the care of the social worker after he had spent some time with Alex Bent making a witness statement and then with the police artist at the computer, compiling an e-fit of the guy he had seen murder the old man. When finished, Mark had been spooked by the likeness. It was spot on.

He had then protested he didn’t need social services and could easily look after himself, and would answer bail and not do a runner. Unfortunately, by virtue of the fact he’d been arrested doing a runner was just one of the things that negated his argument. He had money in his pocket and the police thought he would probably never be seen again. He was also a juvenile who had just lost a parent, did not have any other immediate family, and there was a responsibility to ensure his safety. That meant, for the short-term at least, Mark would be put in a home.

Had Mark known anything about stereotypes, he would have sneered at the social worker’s car. A completely knackered old Citroen with a gear lever coming out of the dashboard, which was built as flimsily as a paper house in Japan. Instead, he sat glumly in the front seat, his mind in turmoil.

‘Is my mum really dead?’ Mark asked at one point.

‘I’m afraid so, Mark.’

‘Whatever.’

They drove up the promenade, passing the Norbreck Castle Hotel on the right, until they came to Little Bispham where the social worker pulled the car across the road into the wide driveway of a large detached house opposite the tram stop at Melton Place. It was a big, old, imposing building, erected some time between the world wars, called Cleveley House.

‘Here we are.’

Mark eyed the place and sighed. ‘This isn’t secure accommodation, is it? I mean, I don’t have to stay here if I don’t want to.’

‘In theory, Mark, you can walk out anytime.’

‘Which means I can’t, obviously.’

‘It means that if you do, next time you will end up in a secure home. You see, there is a bit of trust needed here. We know you’re a sensible lad and that you know it’d be silly to walk away because of the consequences.’

‘Some bloody situation.’

‘Come on, let’s make the best of it. Let’s get you settled in, then let’s go out and get a takeaway, my treat, then come back and watch TV for a while and try to chill our beans. There’s satellite TV on a forty-two-inch screen in one of the lounges, so we could either watch a film that’s on, or hire one for the night. Up to you.’

‘Tch.’ Mark shook his head.

‘I’m Barry, by the way.’

‘Whatever.’

The social worker unlocked the front door of the house and they entered a grand hallway, with a central staircase that split either way on the first floor. He showed Mark to a bedroom at the end of a long corridor up the stairs.

‘This is yours. If you want to get a shower, then maybe come down to the kitchen at the back of the house?’ The social worker, Barry, nodded reassuringly as he spoke, trying to be infectious in his positivity. ‘There are towels and soap and stuff. No change of clothing yet, but I’ll sort that in the morning.’

And that was something Mark had not really thought about. Tomorrow. He sat on the bed, brooding, his brain churning. Part of him wanted to walk out, another part craved the security that this place, and Barry, offered. He also needed to sleep. Tiredness overwhelmed him. A night in a coal-hole and a shed hadn’t really been all that comfortable. He decided to forego the shower and go straight for the food. He fancied a Chinese. He was famished and very thirsty all of a sudden. Wearily, he stood up and sauntered back along the corridor to the top of the stairs. He paused here, wondering if he really wanted to spend any time with the good-natured Barry. There was every possibility he would drive Mark mad. Maybe being alone would be the best end for the day. Let it all roll and tumble through his mind.

But he was still starving and the thought of a Chinese chicken curry was appealing, and things would feel so much better on a full stomach.

He placed his foot on the first step down — which is when he heard the crash from the kitchen at the back of the house.

‘Are we sure this is the one?’

‘Down to three metres, or so I’m told,’ Henry said to Donaldson. ‘This was the location of the last pulse before the phone signal went dead.’

‘Are they ever gonna answer the door?’

Henry pounded on the front door of the house to which the phone company had directed them. They had been standing outside the terraced house on Cornwall Avenue in North Shore for a couple of minutes. Henry’s car was at the kerb, as was the Galaxy driven by Bill Robbins, containing the others.

Henry was getting impatient, thinking the occupants could have seen who was knocking and decided not to open up. He rattled the door, but it was firmly locked.

Then he regarded Donaldson and said, ‘I am about to exercise my power of entry.’

‘Which power is that?’

Henry could have reeled off the many he knew that gave him the right to burst into peoples’ homes unannounced, but just said, ‘I’ll think of one that fits.’

He took a step back, braced himself, then flat-footed the door just underneath the Yale lock. It was a powerful, well delivered kick, but only rattled the door in its frame. He repeated the action, but it still held firmly.

‘Lost my touch,’ he muttered angrily. ‘Getting old.’

Donaldson elbowed him out of the way. ‘Allow me.’

His first mighty kick almost took the door off its hinges. He stepped aside and allowed the English detective to enter the vestibule, shouting ‘Police’ as he barged in, through the inner door into the narrow hallway where he almost tripped over the body that lay diagonally across the floor, slumped half against the wall. Henry just managed to stop himself from pitching headlong on to the floor.

Lee Clarke had a neat bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. He’d obviously been standing when shot, answering the door, facing the person who had killed him. The bullet had entered his skull an inch above the bridge of his nose and removed the back third of his cranium. He’d probably staggered a couple of steps, spiralled and fallen. The remaining pieces of his brains had dribbled out underneath him and he was now lying untidily in a thick, disgusting pool of blood and other matter.

Donaldson peered past Henry. ‘You know this guy?’

‘No — but I know her.’ Henry was looking into the living room.

Still in her PEA uniform, Ellen Thompson was as dead as her drug-addled boyfriend. The crimson flowers of blood on her white shirt were still blossoming and the fingers of her right hand were jerking spasmodically in after-death. She had been shot at the door to the living room, maybe coming to see what was going on in the hall, only to be greeted by a gunman who had stepped over Clarke’s body and killed her just as mercilessly. She had fallen back and was sitting upright on the settee, arms and legs splayed at wide angles and, despite the twitching, dead.

‘Shit,’ Donaldson said. The eyes of the two men locked as they both had the same, dreadful thought. The witness, Mark Carter.