Psycho Alley

Three

Henry Christie regarded his reflection in the mirror of the gents’ toilet of the public mortuary in the grounds of Lancaster Royal Infirmary. His injuries — the combination of the whack on his eye and the painful glancing blow he’d taken on the thigh from Uren’s car, together with the long day he’d just had, made him look grey and not a little frail. He splashed some water on his face, though it didn’t do much to revive him, and wiped himself dry with a paper towel.

His thumped eye had gone a vivid shade of purple, though the swelling had subsided and he could more or less see through it now. His ‘gammy’ leg, as he now called it, was sore and aching; he was actually wondering whether he should start using a walking stick, which could maybe become a pretentious trademark. After all, all great detectives had something quirky which defined them.

‘Great detective my arse,’ he mumbled at his reflection and necked a couple of the strong painkillers the hospital had doled out to him.

Behind him, the door to the gents’ opened and the Home Office pathologist entered, still in a bloodied-up apron from having just completed a gruelling three-hour post mortem examination on the body found in the back of the burned-out car. He was called Baines, a stick of a man with ears like a trophy. Henry had known him for longer than he cared to remember. He was a down-to-earth soul, and he and Henry had often retired to sleazy public houses after many a post mortem to ogle womenfolk and, occasionally, to discuss the findings of the examinations. Usually Baines was jovial, often ribbing Henry about his frequently disastrous love life; today, though, he was sombre. The nature of the PM he’d just performed had efficiently damped down all sense of fun.

‘Grim one, that,’ Baines said, fumbling underneath his apron and lining up on a urinal.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Henry, also affected. On the whole, PMs did not tend to bother him greatly. Today’s, however, had been deeply unpleasant. ‘So you’re sure?’ Henry ventured.

‘Oh yeah.’ Baines was now peeing.

‘She was dead before the car was set on fire?’

‘Stabbed repeatedly, then burned when the car was set alight.’ He finished, crossed to the sink, started to rinse his hands. ‘Murdered in situ, I would say. The angles of the wounds and the position she was found in corroborate that. I think we can get a good idea of the type of knife used, though. Probably a five- or six-inch bladed one, with a straight edge and a serrated edge. Kitchen knife.’

‘Bastards,’ Henry spat, vividly recalling the recently-completed PM. Henry believed that as SIO, he had a responsibility to attend post mortems of victims whenever possible. He had been present when the undertakers had carefully lifted the body out of the burned-out car in Fleetwood, placed it in a body bag, then driven all the way to the morgue at Lancaster. This was for reasons of jurisdiction, as the north Lancashire coroner covered Fleetwood, and therefore the PM had to take place in his area. It was a long journey and Henry had followed the undertaker’s van in his car, having picked it up from home. Professor Baines had spent some time at the scene in order to acquaint himself with the crime, and to offer advice, but he was ready and waiting at Lancaster when the van arrived and reversed up to the double access doors. The body was slid on to a gurney and wheeled into the well-lit examination room where, with little formality, the PM began.

Some details were quickly established: the body was that of a young girl, aged somewhere between eight and eleven years; she was naked and had been trussed up, hands bound behind her, feet tied at the ankles, another piece of what looked like clothes line tied between the feet and ankles. Henry could only begin to imagine the sheer terror she must have gone through. It wasn’t a great leap of the imagination to guess she had been abducted earlier the same day, Friday. But from where? No young girl had been reported missing in Lancashire, nor in any of the neighbouring forces in the northwest. A simple telephone call to each control room had quickly established that one. So it was a matter of waiting. Henry had already arranged for messages to be sent with urgency to all forces in the country, giving brief details of the facts, asking for immediate responses if any of their mispers possibly fitted the bill. He had arranged for that to happen whilst the PM was taking place, but so far, to the best of his knowledge, no one had yet got back.

In the meantime, his other priority had not changed: find George Uren. Something that was proving difficult.

‘God, I wish I wasn’t so knackered, beaten up and run down,’ Henry said to Baines as they left the toilets. ‘Literally run down.’

‘What is it? Too much playing away?’ the pathologist teased, his mood lightening a little. ‘Is the rather delicious DS Black your new piece of totty? Though I must say, she looks like she’s been round the block a time or two.’

‘You really need to get out more,’ Henry said with a shake of the head.

‘You provide me with all the entertainment I need,’ Baines laughed.

They walked through the room commonly called the kitchen, mainly because of the huge chiller cabinet set against one wall with dozens of doors in it, set at the perfect temperature to keep a dead body fresh and fragrant. Cards with names scribbled on, slotted into the holders on the doors, declared whether there was a body on the roller behind the door. The place looked pretty full to Henry.

They crossed the tiled floor to the double doors and stepped out of the rear of the mortuary into the cool Saturday evening. Debbie Black, who had driven up to Lancaster in a firm’s car, stood on the grass verge, smoking. Henry winced slightly at the sight.

Baines elbowed him and hissed in his ear, ‘Know what they say about a woman who smokes?’

Henry stopped. ‘No, go on, surprise me.’

‘Fellatio, your todger’s happiest pastime.’ Baines winked lewdly.

‘Just fuck off,’ Henry said tiredly, but not nastily. ‘I actually don’t shag every woman I work with, y’know, even though I’m regularly accused of it.’

‘Not what I’ve heard.’

They continued to walk towards Debbie, who blew smoke in languid rings into the atmosphere.

‘Jesus, smoke rings, too!’ Baines gasped. ‘You lucky bastard.’

Henry shook his head. ‘You’re incorrigible.’

‘Great word,’ said Baines. ‘Underused.’

‘Hi, guys,’ Debbie said, stamping out her cigarette whilst exhaling her last lungful and wafting away the smoke with distaste. ‘I only smoke after PMs … I can’t stand the smell of them. Keep a packet of fags on standby, just in case.’

Henry nodded understandingly, although he had never known the desire to resort to cancer sticks. His stress default had usually been booze in the form of Stella Artois and Jack Daniel’s.

Debbie looked distraught, as though it was more than the whiff of death that was troubling her.

‘You OK?’ Henry asked.

‘No, no, not really.’ She was shaking her head, eyes filling with moisture. ‘It’s just that …’ She looked up to the heavens, seeming annoyed with herself for showing emotion. ‘I know I shouldn’t let it bother me … it’s just what you said, Henry, when you described what happened when you clocked Uren.’ He looked puzzled. ‘You know,’ she prompted. ‘That poor girl was probably tied up in the back of his car, wasn’t she? And those two bastards had stopped for fish and chips. They had her tied up alive and they stopped for fuckin’ chips,’ she said angrily. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said, drawing her hands over her face. She composed herself, took a few deep breaths, then regarded Henry levelly. ‘I want to be on the murder team, Henry. I want to have a chance at collaring Uren and I won’t accept anything less.’

‘What’ve you got?’ Henry asked the question of the single person who formed the intelligence cell in the MIR. He didn’t particularly like the way the DC looked back at him, because he sensed the answer in his expression: nothing.

‘Er, not much,’ mumbled the detective constable. His name was Jerry Tope and his nickname was ‘Bung’, short for ‘bungalow’ because, as legend had it, he had nothing ‘up top’. He was the DC Henry had snaffled from the local Intel unit.

‘How much more than when I left?’

The DC blinked nervously.

‘That much, eh?’ Henry said, his mouth set.

‘Er, just really the stuff that’s already on the system.’ Tope held up a fairly heavy file. ‘Downloaded.’

‘Right,’ clicked Henry. ‘So basically, since Uren was released and then did a runner from the hostel, we’ve nothing on him, except a snippet from an interview?’

The DC looked forlorn.

‘In that case, I want everything that we do know to be turned into an action. I want all known associates visited, all previous addresses visited, all known haunts visited, however out of date any of them might seem to be. I also want all known sex offenders in the area visited and spoken to …’ Henry squinted thoughtfully, marshalling his dendrites. ‘Anything back on the burned-out car yet?’

‘No … sorry, yes … no current keeper.’

‘We have the name of the previous keepers?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Get that actioned, too,’ he snapped. ‘And … find out who he was in prison with, who he was at the hostel in Accrington with — inmates and staff — OK?’

The Intel cell nodded.

Henry said, even though it sounded rather corny, ‘No stone unturned, because I’ve got a very bad feeling about this, the more I think about it.’

What he did not share with Tope were his thoughts on what exactly gave him such a bad feeling, something he was keeping to himself at the moment … not that it was rocket science, but something that had occurred to him after Debbie Black’s heartfelt remark about fish and chips; if Henry had interrupted Uren and his friend before they had a chance to do whatever they were going to do to the unfortunate girl, then it was always possible they might still be angry, believing they hadn’t achieved their goal. They might just be in the frame of mind to continue where they’d left off — and abduct another.

One thing was certain: Henry was now heading a hot, fast-moving investigation and at that precise moment, feeling tired and jaded, hurt and injured, just wanting eight hours uninterrupted sleep, he did not feel confident of pulling it off.

Henry raised his eyebrows at DC Tope, who was regarding him unsurely.

‘So what you waiting for?’ he demanded.

Tope’s head dropped and his fingers moved to the keyboard of the computer in front of him. Henry spun and strutted across the MIR — as much as he could strut with a gammy leg — and as he exited through the door he was pretty sure he heard the word ‘git’ waft from Tope’s mouth. He stopped at the door and, in the fashion of all good TV drama, turned to look, about to say something profound and life changing. However, words failed him, so he just left and made his way back to the office he had been allocated on his redeployment with FMIT.

It wasn’t such a bad office really. It was out of the way, which was always a plus point. It was small, with a long narrow window running from floor to ceiling, overlooking Bonny Street and not much else. Daily he was now faced with a massive model of a shark stuck on the wall at the rear of Sea World. It had blood on its fangs and small piggy eyes and looked ferocious. He had named it Dave, after Dave Anger, his boss, and greeted it every day with a nod and a wave. The office was desperately cold, though — always — and he had acquired a plug-in electric radiator from someone else’s office, which did the job up to a point. He often felt that his front half was red hot, but his back was frozen, even on the best of days. He had a desk, a computer with a will of its own, a swivelling chair and just enough room for two plastic chairs opposite the desk, for those cosy chats that chief inspectors often found themselves having, usually with themselves.

He sat behind the desk and tilted the chair back until it whacked the wall, then raised his sore leg on to the desk, giving it some relief.

Yes, the office was just about functional, but nowhere near as comfy and spacious as the one he’d been evicted from at HQ. The one with the view of the tennis courts, rugby field, trees and grass. Now all he had was a Blackpool back street to admire. And a shark.

It was eight thirty p.m. A debrief was planned for nine p.m., then there would be another briefing in the morning at eight a.m. Sunday would be a good day for working, getting progress made.

He wondered if he would be able to pull this one off quickly and if he couldn’t, what would his future look like.

Dave Anger, who he had now renamed Sharky, would see to it that it would be bleak and tragic … Henry was visualizing feeding his boss into the mouth of a Great White shark when the office door opened, clattering against the plastic chairs. Debbie Black came in, a terrible expression on her face.

‘I’ve just had a horrendous thought,’ she blurted.

‘I know,’ Henry said, reading her.

‘They’re going to do it again, and they’re going to do it soon, and if we don’t catch them, another young girl is going to die.’

‘I know,’ Henry said again. ‘I know, I know, I know.’

In a nutshell, nothing was achieved that day apart from on the scientific front. Uren had gone to ground and could not be found and all other leads were dead ends — for the moment. But then again, unless someone struck lucky in those first few hours, there weren’t even enough detectives to spin a drum. It was clear to Henry that the murder squad would have to be seriously enlarged by Monday at the latest.

His tired detectives made their reports at the debrief in the MIR, including Jane Roscoe, and he thanked all of them genuinely. As knackered as they were, they remained keen and eager.

He sent them home at ten p.m. They were all parched and Henry overheard some mutterings about going across the road for a pint, a thought that tempted him. He gathered up his papers, aware that the room had not completely emptied. Jane Roscoe lounged by the door, looking across at him.

A heart sinking in a chest can be a sickening thing.

‘Hi Jane.’ He walked towards her. ‘Thanks for the work you did at the scene.’

She shrugged an acceptance of the remark. ‘You going home?’

He nodded. ‘I need a good, long kip.’ He paused by her so they were almost shoulder-to-shoulder at the doorway. ‘You OK being the crime scene manager for the time being?’

‘Whatever.’ She sounded like a grumpy teenager.

A beat passed. Henry gave her a sad smile, then walked on by, heading back to his office. Even though he wondered how deep she was into Dave Anger’s pockets, his heart was still thumping and a quick sluice of adrenalin had done a rush into his blood as he had passed close to her. He was past knowing how to deal with the situation he and Jane were caught up in. An affair over, feelings still running strong on her part, the work situation.

At the door to his cubby-hole he said, ‘Oh fuck, what a mess,’ then tried to put her out of his mind, or at least partition her away for the time being, and thought, Bring on the plasma screen TV.

A weak man versus a public house. Every time, hands down, the pub wins, as it did that Saturday night as Henry left the police station. Despite his weariness and resolve to go home, his head was still spinning and the lure of a cold beer from a well-cared-for tap was too much to resist. Just the one, he promised himself whilst crossing Bonny Street to the Pump and Truncheon less than thirty feet away from the building. One long, chilled pint of Stella Artois would be the thing he needed to get that all-important eight hours sleep.

Ten thirty p.m., and the place was full to bursting, with good rock music blaring out, unlike the junk he’d been subjected to the night before. With his injured leg making progress twice as hard, Henry eased his way through the throng, nodding at one or two people and edging his way to the bar. On his journey he noticed a gaggle of his jacks huddled in one corner of the bar, engrossed in a real debrief.

It took a while to get served, but his persistence in the face of adversity paid off when the barmaid pushed his golden drink toward him and he crossed her palm with the appropriate amount of brass and silver. He took the pint, turned, intending to lean on the bar, but came face to face with Debbie Black, who was standing right behind him, half a pint in one hand, cigarette dangling from the fingers of her other. He hadn’t clocked her on entry.

She gave him a half-cocked smile which he found rather attractive.

‘Boss,’ she said. ‘Am I on the team?’

‘I’ll swing it.’ He sipped his lager, then took a deep draft. It tasted amazingly wonderful, feeling like it was shooting through his lungs and stomach and every capillary. ‘Thought you only smoked at post mortems?’

‘I lied.’ She took a deep draw, held it in for what were obviously a few sweet moments, then exhaled upwards through pursed lips, reminding Henry of the pathologist’s observations of a smoking woman. She reached past Henry, deliberately closing in on him, and stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray on the bar. To Henry, admittedly not a smoker, it seemed to take rather longer than normal to extinguish a cigarette, but he wasn’t complaining. Even though he was wearing his windjammer, he could feel Debbie’s generous curves up against him. He swallowed. She moved back, but remained well within his space, her eyes roving all over his face, completely taking him in.

Henry’s heart was pounding again, blood pressure rising.

She smiled in a way he did not understand and stepped further back, having done exactly what she had intended to do to him.

‘Can we talk?’

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘It’s quiet at the far end of the room.’ She turned, he followed at a limp, though for some reason his leg didn’t seem to be hurting him half as much now.

Squashed down snugly on a bench seat in one corner of the bar next to each other, they could converse without having to shout too loudly.

‘Think we’ll get him?’ she asked, her lips close to his ear.

‘For sure.’

‘I want to be part of it.’

‘You will be.’

‘He deserves stringing up, the molesting, murdering bastard.’

Henry nodded in agreement, though the words jarred in his ear.

‘Really got to me, that PM.’

‘Nothing to be ashamed of. They often do get to you. You’re only human,’ Henry said with empathy.

‘Did it get to you? It didn’t seem to.’

‘They all do,’ he admitted. ‘Nowadays more than ever. Must be an age thing.’

‘And just how old are you?’

Henry gave her a sidelong and told her. She raised an eyebrow in surprise and said, ‘You don’t look it.’

He guffawed at the compliment and, flattered, took a red-faced swig of his Stella.

The street outside the pub was busy with foot traffic, typical of a Saturday night in Blackpool. Music from bars drifted in the wind which whipped down the gap between the buildings. It was not a well-lit street, though, and there were plenty of places in the shadows in which a person could secrete themselves.

A dark figure stood unseen in a doorway which reeked of stale urine.

The figure waited patiently.

When last orders were called, Henry had just reached the bottom of his beer glass, amazed at his record: that must have been one of the longest lasting pints he had ever drunk.

‘Can I buy you another?’

‘No, thanks. I need to get home,’ he said and made to stand up.

‘Are you sure?’

‘No — honestly. I’m injured, old and knackered, and I need my bed.’

Debbie smiled and stood up with him. ‘I’ll walk up to the car park with you.’

With a wave at the other detectives, who seemed to have settled in for a session, he and Debbie left the pub, walking quickly across the street and into the police garage using a swipe card to gain entry.

The figure in the doorway stepped back into deeper blackness and watched the two of them enter the police building.

The person’s breathing became shallow and juddery at the sight of Henry Christie, a man loathed beyond anything ever thought possible; a man who had ruined more than one life and who, the person in the shadow had decided, would suffer as a consequence.

They rode up a floor in the lift, then walked out of the police station and across the mezzanine which led to the level in the multi-storey car park on which the police had secure parking. Henry’s leg was back to hurting like hell, probably, he guessed, due to tiredness more than anything. He was aching for sleep. They trotted down the concrete steps and through the secure gate on to the police-only parking level.

Henry’s car was the nearest, his trusty Mondeo. He clicked the remote and heard the thud of the doors unlocking.

They stopped walking.

‘Well, see you tomorrow, bright and breezy,’ Henry said, turning to Debbie. She did not respond verbally. Instead she looked up at him with one of those expressions which sent a shimmer of anticipation through him, like a bolt of electricity. There was a moment of — literally — charged silence, then she stepped close, face to face, only inches away. For the third time that evening, his heart started to beat faster than resting pace without the inconvenience of physical exercise. He hoped he didn’t have any clogged arteries.

‘Thanks for letting me on to the team.’ She sounded husky.

‘ ’S OK.’ His throat was dry.

‘I appreciate it.’ She moved closer. Her arms slid up around his neck. She rose on tiptoe, paused for the briefest of moments — for effect — before planting her lips on to his.

For a second, Henry wanted to struggle and push her away; it was only a second, because her lips tasted good, the smokiness of her breath somehow giving her a vague taste of liquorice. One of his hands encircled her and pulled her into him until the kiss ended naturally and she dropped back on to the flats of her feet.

‘I’ve wanted to do that for almost fifteen years,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve never kissed another cop before.’

‘Was it worth it?’

She nodded, lips slightly parted. ‘You bet. Want to do it again?’

Henry swallowed, some moisture back in his throat, making what should have been an easy decision quite hard. ‘I don’t think so, but thanks, it was nice.’

‘OK,’ she whispered, ‘I understand.’

‘Right … er … goodnight.’

She touched his jacket gently, gave him a look which he translated into something very hot. She spun and walked slowly across to her car, hips swaying gently, knowing Henry was ogling her. Henry watched her gradually disappear into the shadows before breathing out and climbing into the Mondeo. His mind rattled madly. He needed another drink now. ‘Get home, get a JD with ice, get to bed and forget this shit,’ he said to himself, inserting his key into the ignition and starting up. He drove out of the space — the one now reserved solely for him — and within less than a few feet of motion, he knew something was wrong. He stopped, got out, checked the tyres.

The rear nearside was as flat as an iron.

The words which emanated from his mouth were not pretty nor lyrical.

On the other side of the car park he heard Debbie’s car fire up. He stood uselessly by his car as she drove slowly towards him and stopped. Her electric window descended.

‘Changed your mind?’ she asked coquettishly.

‘Flat tyre.’ He indicated the offending Firestone.

‘That’s a bugger,’ she grinned.

‘Yeah. Better get on with changing it.’ He headed to the boot of the Mondeo, opened it, picked his way through assorted clothing, magazines, Wellington boots, hoping like mad the spare wasn’t flat, too. He could not even recall the last time he’d checked it.

‘Need any help?’ Debbie called.

Henry replied from the depths of the spare wheel well. ‘No, I’ll be fine, thanks.’

She drove off without another word.

Twenty sweaty, swear-laden minutes later, Henry was driving down the ramps of the car park on to Richardson Street. His hands were black with oil and grime, his face looked as if he had tried to camouflage himself. His annoyance levels were at their highest and as he sped out he almost flattened the lone pedestrian crossing through his headlights, making the poor soul break into a short dash to save himself. Henry did not stop, did not really register the person other than to grumble an obscenity in their direction. He tore away, desperate to get home. Annoyed that he had weakened enough to go to the pub, annoyed — but curious — about the kiss, seething about the flat tyre and aware that the chain of events he’d been foolish enough to put into motion now compromised his sleep time. Tomorrow would be one hell of a difficult day and he needed to be on top form to deal with it. Now he knew he wouldn’t be.

The pedestrian who had almost become a casualty stood and watched Henry speed away car with a grim smile of satisfaction.