Substantial Threat

One

There was a particular combination of words that gave Henry Christie a very special thrill and sent a shimmer of unadulterated pleasure all the way down his spine. They were words Henry had been privileged to read out loud to about forty people in the course of his career as a police officer. Henry did not care what sort of person it was who had to listen to what he said, they could be the hardest, toughest, meanest bastard in the world — and some of the recipients of his words had been pretty near to that description. No, Henry did not care who they were because he was certain that the words would, inwardly at least, make anybody brick themselves.

Henry ran the words through his head once more. They were clear and recent in his memory. He had only spoken them two hours before.

‘You are charged that between the sixteenth and seventeenth of March this year you did murder Jennifer Walkden, contrary to common law.’

The murder charge.

Yes! Henry thumped his steering wheel with glee. He did not care a damn who the person was because no matter who the hell they were or what they purported to be, those words meant they were going to prison for a life sentence. . all things being equal. That is if Henry did his job right, if the prosecution brokered no deals, if the jury believed the evidence. . yeah, okay, all those things, but even that uncertainty did not detract from the feeling of utter triumph he felt when slowly reading out the charge.

Henry yawned and shook his head as he drove his car into the Lancashire police headquarters at Hutton, just to the south of Preston.

It had been a long day, but one which had been deeply satisfying. It was 9 p.m. by the time he parked in the car park near his office, fourteen hours after first coming on duty. It did not matter that he was physically and mentally exhausted, that the day had stretched his skills, abilities and personal resolve to their ultimate. None of that was important. What was crucial was that the suspect had been charged with the gravest offence, bail had been refused and he would be appearing at court in the morning.

Temporary Detective Chief Inspector Henry Christie had nailed the bastard and the feeling of elation that fact gave him over-rode anything else.

It had been touch and go. It could so easily have gone the other way and the suspect, by the name of Sherridan, could have walked. Henry knew the evidence against him was paper thin, but as he was totally convinced in his own mind that the guy was guilty of sticking a ten-inch kitchen knife into his girlfriend’s heart and skewering her to a kitchen table, Henry had been grimly determined to take it to the wire.

The whole thing had hinged on the interview: on clear, persistent, incisive and clever questioning. The suspect had to be made to admit the job because there was nothing else to tie him to the murder: no witnesses, no forensic, no weapon. Maybe a little circumstantial evidence and a pretty creaky alibi. . and, of course, Henry Christie’s cold-blooded gut-wrenching belief that Sherridan was a killer. The man needed to be pushed and pushed to the limit, but not intimidated or frightened; there was a fine and dangerous line between the two. A line Henry was very good at treading.

Henry had been up at three that morning, planning his interview strategy. He went on duty at 7 a.m. and talked the whole thing through with the local detective sergeant who was to be ‘second-jockey’ in the interview. At nine he put the plan into effect, talking to Sherridan, who had been in custody since the previous evening.

Eight hours later, after many furious, fractious and heated verbal exchanges (but with plenty of rest and refreshment breaks to keep suspect and solicitor happy), Henry truly thought he was on the verge of losing it. The clock on the wall behind Sherridan seemed to be ticking double time. Twenty-four hours was almost up, only sixty minutes to go, and Henry already knew that he would have major problems convincing the very cynical and pedantic on-call superintendent to grant an extension to the period of custody. Sherridan would either have to be charged or set free. And at that point — 5 p.m. — charging him was not even a remote option.

Then it came.

The chink of light. The opening. The lie that Sherridan had forgotten he had told. . or maybe not forgotten, so much as forgotten in which context he had told it.

Excitement surged through Henry as his adrenaline sluices opened. Moments like these made life worth living. Henry even felt the detective sergeant next to him tense because he, too, had spotted the opening. The trick was not to let on to the suspect because he could have wriggled free, even at that point. He had to be manoeuvred into an ambush. It was all Henry could do to refrain from smiling, to prevent himself from fidgeting, to stop himself clenching the cheeks of his bottom and rising ever so slightly in his seat. It took every last ounce of restraint not to let on that he was in and that the whole fabricated story that had been spun was about to be shredded word by word, lie by lie.

Henry felt like a chess grand master who had just seen the last six moves to certain victory. He was cold, ruthless and precise. His voice, however, remained calm and polite.

At first Sherridan did not see it coming. He prattled on blithely, smugly, digging his hole, well aware of the time passing in his favour, believing he would soon be walking free. Then, like a spectre, it materialized in front of him. Suddenly he clammed up tight and locked eyes with Henry for one chilling instant, the colour draining from his face.

His solicitor sat bolt upright and emitted a tiny gasp of despair.

Checkmate, you murdering bastard! Henry blinked innocently, face impassive.

‘Shit,’ mouthed Sherridan and dropped his head into his hands.

And from that moment on it was plain sailing. Despite his desperate back-pedalling and frenzied denials, he was like a fish caught on a hook. Henry revelled as he reeled the slippery son of a bitch in. After a fifteen-minute spirited, but ultimately useless fight, Sherridan cracked and caved in. Tears welled up as he finally unburdened himself and admitted committing murder.

Henry charged him with the offence five minutes before the twenty-four-hour deadline, milking each syllable of every word.

After this Henry and the local DS congratulated each other with a flurry of high fives and a few slightly hysterical, ‘Hey, yo de mans’ and an Irish jig around the CID office. After the brief celebration they quickly cobbled together the court file for the morning, then Henry left it with the local man to do the admin side of things — fingerprints, descriptives and a DNA swab of the prisoner.

Henry walked out of Blackburn police station feeling emotionally elated yet mentally drained from having concentrated so hard and so long. His temples were throbbing like pistons.

Before setting off back to his office at HQ, he gave his ex-wife Kate a call on the mobile. He let her know where he was and when he was likely to be home. They were taking things on a day by day footing, trying to get back together again, and regular communication had been part of the deal Kate had thrashed out with him. Henry told her he needed to get back to his office and clear up a few things before heading home.

Henry Christie was now a member of the Senior Investigating Officer team based at Lancashire police HQ. His temporary rank of Detective Chief Inspector and the move to what was in essence the murder squad had been the parting gift to him of an ACC who had gone to pastures new. The SIO team was based in offices in a building that had once been a residential block for students attending the training centre at HQ. It had been gutted and refurbished for the sole purpose of housing the team. Henry’s office was on the middle floor of the three-storey block and had a view through the trees to the rugby pitch in front of the main HQ building beyond. A nice, fairly peaceful location at the dream factory, — as headquarters was often referred to by cynical front-line coppers.

The corridor outside his office was quiet. A light shone out from an office at the far end, otherwise there was no sign of habitation. This did not mean that no work was going on. At present, including the murder Henry had been dealing with at Blackburn, the SIO team was involved in six on-going murders and assisting at least a dozen enquiries into other serious crimes.

Henry’s pounding headache had subsided. The drive from Blackburn to HQ with the car windows open had relaxed him, given him time to chill with David Gray on the CD. He could have done with a strong drink, but the days of having alcohol on police premises were long gone. He settled for a cup of water from the cooler, which he took back to his office.

After completing his housekeeping chores by about 9.45 p.m. he decided to call it quits for the day without feeling too guilty about it. The thought of the king-size bed and his warm ex-wife was very appealing. As he stood up, stretched and creaked, ready to head off, he heard steps approaching slowly down the corridor. Henry peered round his office door and smiled when he saw Detective Chief Superintendent Bernie Fleming, the head honcho of the SIO team. Henry admired him greatly, both professionally and personally. Although he was a career detective, Fleming was not narrow-minded and had a good head for strategy on his shoulders. He had supervised some extremely complex murder investigations in his time and been successful on every one. He was holding a thick box file and a video-cassette tape.

‘Henry, I thought it was you. Result?’

‘Coughed it. . court tomorrow.’

‘Well done,’ Fleming said with genuine feeling. ‘Off home now?’

‘Yep.’

‘Can I just give you these before you go?’ He held out his hands. ‘Bit of a pressie for the new kid on the block,’ he added slyly. ‘A cold case I’d like you to review.’

Henry took the file and video eagerly. ‘Thanks, Bernie.’

‘Fancy a swift one at the Anchor before you hit the road?’

Fleming asked hopefully.

Henry declined with a sad shake of the head. ‘Love to.’ He shrugged. ‘But y’know. .?’

‘Yeah, no probs,’ Fleming said with a trace of disappointment. Henry knew that the Chief Super did not have anyone to go home to and felt slightly mean at refusing the offer of a drink. Now that he did have someone to go home to, he was not going to jeopardize the relationship.

Fleming trudged back down the corridor towards his office and Henry watched him go. Then he glanced down at the thick package and video in his hands. Cold-case review was one of the functions of the SIO team, it involved looking again at unsolved murders and other serious crimes which came under their remit. This was the second one Henry had been given since joining the team two months before. The prospect of it excited him. He was very tempted to open the file there and then, sit down and start work on it. But that would have been as bad as going for a drink with the boss. That was another condition of the package with Kate: come home when you can.

He called her from the office phone and announced his imminent departure.

Twenty-five minutes later he was sitting next to her in the lounge of their house on the outskirts of Blackpool, sipping Blossom Hill red, discussing each other’s day. They hit the sack at just gone eleven, both bushed. They cuddled and kissed for a while but did not make love and fell asleep quickly.

About 4 a.m. Henry woke up groggily, dying to pee. After relieving himself, sleep would not return. He tossed, fidgeted, began to sweat and could tell he was affecting Kate, though she did not wake up. Eventually frustration got the better of him: there was no point staying in bed. He slid out, wrapped his dressing gown tightly around himself and stepped quietly on to the landing.

He checked on his daughters, Jennifer and Leanne, soundly asleep in their rooms. Good kids, good to be back with them. . almost back with them. He experienced that overwhelming sense of love he always felt when he was with them, then sneaked downstairs, knowing exactly why he could not sleep.

He had brought home the cold-case review.

It had been a frenzied attack. The girl had been mercilessly beaten, battered to death by an assailant who had lost total control. Blood had splashed everywhere around the dingy basement flat — floors, walls, ceiling — indicating she had been pursued relentlessly through the premises, desperately trying to defend herself from the onslaught.

Her life had come to an end in the tiny, grubby bathroom. Here, it seemed, she had been cornered by her killer. Trapped. Her head had been repeatedly smashed on the rim of the toilet bowl until she died from massive internal bleeding in her brain. Her face was a gory, unrecognizable pulp. The killer had probably continued to pound her head against the toilet long after she had died.

She had been found on her knees, slumped over the toilet, her head hanging into the bowl as though she might have been vomiting. It was estimated she had been there for forty-eight hours. And if that was not bad enough, rats had gnawed her buttocks, legs and feet.

Henry sighed. His nostrils dilated. He rubbed his gritty eyes. He paused the crime-scene video, holding it on a framed shot of the dead female’s bare back — she was completely naked — which was latticed by a network of wheals, abrasions and cuts. She was thin almost to the point of emaciation, resembling an inmate of a concentration camp. Not that her gauntness had prevented her from being a prostitute. Semen from four different men had been found inside her during post-mortem.

Henry pressed the stop button on the remote control and the TV screen went blank. He had seen enough for the time being. He took his mug, stood and walked quietly through the silent household into the chilly conservatory. The house backed on to agricultural land and a pale dawn was approaching. He gazed across the field and jumped with pleasure when he saw a big dog fox bouncing through the grass. Then it was gone. Elated by the sight, he sat on one of the cane chairs, shivering a little and holding his hot mug of tea between the palms of his hands, drawing heat from it into his body.

He placed the mug down on the glass-topped coffee table, reached out and flicked on the fan heater, gazing unseeingly into the garden. He sighed again, interlocked his fingers behind his head, but did not allow his mind to go blank. His inner concentration was absolute as he tried to imagine himself as a fly on the wall at the scene of the particularly brutal and senseless murder he had been asked to review.

This thought process was a vital part of the job of the murder detective: making assumptions, constructing hypotheses to be tested, retested and most probably discarded en route to the truth. Then maybe one or two lines of enquiry eventually turning up information, facts, evidence, and then, hopefully, a suspect.

There was not much to go on here. The flat the girl had died in was located in a poor area of Blackpool’s North Shore. It could easily be accessed directly from the street down a set of steps from the pavement. This, unfortunately, meant that visitors or customers, or the killer, could come and go without having to enter the main building above, which was a large terraced house converted into a warren of tiny flats. The main point about this, and what made it particularly frustrating from a police point of view, was that people could enter her flat unobserved and very quickly. All they had to do was slip in from the pavement.

At the foot of the steps the front door was almost hidden from view from anyone who happened to be passing. It opened into a tiny vestibule and from there into a bed-sitting room. This was meagrely furnished with a three-quarter-width camp bed, adequate in size for the business of prostitution, some cheap chipboard units and an old, but comfortable-looking settee. There was a portable TV in one corner of the room which looked quite new. The room was lit by a single bulb swinging on a bare wire from the damp ceiling and a lamp on a unit next to the bed. Curtains, worn and frayed, were drawn across dirt-streaked windows, giving the room, at best, a very grainy-grey light.

Also on the bedside unit were an empty wrap of heroin, a blunt, blood-filled needle and a packet of condoms.

The kitchen, reached through this room though an archway, was fitted with a two-ring electric hob and nothing else. No fridge, no kettle, no toaster. Just a brown-stained, germ-filled sink. A cupboard on the wall housed food supplies. Pot Noodles and a selection of instant soups, a bottle of curdled milk, little else. The boiling water required to make these delicacies had to be heated in a pan on the hob.

The cupboard under the sink was the route by which the rats had been able to infiltrate from the foundations. They had obviously been trying to break through for some time, having gnawed their way through the laminated chipboard from which the cupboard was made. Had the girl been alive, the rats would have come through anyway. As it was, they had found her dead and feasted on her.

Henry shivered involuntarily at the thought. It was ghastly enough to have been murdered so horrifically, but then to have been lunched on did not bear thinking about. In his time as a cop, he had been to several deaths, usually from natural causes, where the deceased had lain undiscovered for some time and their pets, driven crazy by hunger, had started to nibble them away.

Cats were the worst.

Henry’s mind, distracted momentarily by these thoughts, flicked back to the crime scene.

Whether she had actually had four customers on the day of her death was difficult to determine for sure. It seemed to be a likely scenario, according to the scientists, and very likely that her last customer had been her killer.

She had had sexual intercourse with a man who had then pummelled and battered her until she died.

The assault had started in the bed-sitting room. She had been beaten while still on or near the bed. Blood splashes were all over the bed clothes, together with semen stains from another three men. Her assailant had smashed her head against the wall next to the bed, strands of blood-matted hair and indentations in the plasterboard confirmed this.

The grim fight had continued around the room.

She had either banged her head, or had it banged for her, against the sharp corner of one of the home-assembled units. The pathologist and forensic scientists had matched up the triangular point with the indent on the back of her skull.

At some point during the struggle, killer and victim crashed through to the kitchen and boiling water from a pan on the hob had been tipped up. A scald mark was found on the dead woman’s back: more excruciating pain to add to the suffering she was already enduring at the hands of the person destined to take her life. From there the crime-scene analyst reckoned she had managed to escape, but only as far as the bathroom. She had locked the door, which had been booted down off its fragile hinges.

Henry’s thought processes paused at that point. His mind’s eye saw the moment when the door had been whacked down, splintering. He wondered if the woman had thought she had found some sort of sanctuary in the bathroom, a place of safety. But all she had found was that she had backed herself into a corner from which there was no escape.

Was she screaming as her assailant threw himself against the door? Or was she cowering, huddled down on the floor, whimpering, terrified as the door burst open? What was she thinking as the killer, breathless, red-faced and raging, stood in the bathroom doorway?

He had probably launched himself across at her in a flash of violence. Maybe she had already been on her knees by the toilet bowl, begging for mercy, and all he had done was grab her and started pound-pound-pounding her face against the porcelain.

Or had she fought him at that point? Did he have to wrestle her down, overpower her again, drag her to her knees and then murder her?

Henry finished his tea and walked back to the lounge. The sky was much brighter now, the sun not far away, spring in the air. He went to the TV and switched the video on again. He sat on the settee, hunched forwards, and watched intently as the tape continued from where he had left it. The camera drew back from the woman’s spine then circled within the confined space of the bathroom, picking out the blood splashes on the wall, in the washbasin, in the bath, and the mass of coagulation in the toilet. The screen faded to black, then faded in a few seconds later. Now the body of the woman was laid out on a mortuary slab just prior to post-mortem taking place.

Henry’s face was emotionless as the camera inspected the wounds on her head and face and the scald mark on her stomach. A commentary from the Home Office pathologist, Professor Baines, accompanied this footage. His latex-gloved hands came into shot, pointing out the various injuries, his voice describing and commenting on them with relish.

Henry stuck with it up to the point where the PM was about to take place, then switched off. He felt no need to watch her being hacked to pieces.

A sigh escaped from his lips. His toes tapped agitatedly in his slippers as he pondered and summarized in his mind what he had learned in the last hour about a crime that had been committed over eleven months before.

There were no particularly good witnesses. No one had been seen entering or leaving the flat, despite the investigation team having interviewed dozens of people in the area. Nor were there any fingerprints which matched anyone on record, and no forensic evidence other than the DNA profiles on the semen. Low copy DNA — DNA left by a person merely touching objects — had been tested too, but this very expensive process had been inconclusive.

The DNA profiles from the semen were crucial, of course. But only when they could be matched to a particular individual. As with the fingerprints, no match could be made to anything currently held on record. That did not mean that the men who had left their semen did not have criminal records. It might just be that they had not been arrested recently enough to have provided a DNA sample for the database.

Henry knew that new DNA samples were continually being checked against the database of outstanding crimes, but it was a slow process which might or might not bear fruit. He felt he could not sit back and wait and hope that something of that sort happened.

Still cogitating, Henry mused that he was looking for a man who was quite powerful and very handy with his fists, which, together with the rim of the toilet bowl, had done a lot of damage to the prostitute’s face. It could be someone who had convictions for assaulting women, particularly hookers. It was an avenue that had been pursued in the original investigation. A lot of likely suspects had been pulled in and questioned without success. That was a line Henry intended to re-open and maybe fling the net more widely across the whole north-west region.

He bent down to the VCR and ejected the cassette. He would not have liked Kate or his daughters to see it by accident.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle faced by the murder squad had been that they had been unable to identify the victim. She was faceless and nameless. Either no one knew who she was, or they were not telling. No identification papers had been found in the flat and the landlord knew her only as Miss Smith. A media campaign, including an item on Crimewatch UK, produced no leads whatever. Her DNA, dental records and fingerprints were also dead ends. No one on the national missing persons register fitted her description.

Which was bloody amazing, Henry thought, because her age had been estimated at just fourteen.

No one had missed a fourteen-year-old girl. Fourteen. A prostitute. Now murdered. And nobody knew who the hell she was?

But Henry was not surprised. He had long since stopped being surprised at anything. He knew how ruthless and uncaring the world was.

‘Thanks very much, Mr Fleming,’ Henry said to himself under his breath, ‘for giving me a no-hoper of a case.’

It was 5.45 a.m and Henry had to be at Blackburn Magistrates Court at ten to see how his murderer fared during the remand hearing. He stifled a wide yawn and crept upstairs, knowing the household did not stir until seven thirty. He checked his daughters again to see if they were sleeping soundly, his fiercely protective parental instinct roused by the thought of a fourteen-year-old girl missing and murdered. If either of his two went, he knew he would never rest until he found them. The thought made him judder.

He slid back in bed, ensuring he did not rouse Kate. She murmured something and turned over, taking the duvet with her.

With a wry smile, Henry closed his eyes, then thought about his cold case. If only for the sake of some parent out there, he would give this one his best shot in the time he had available. . then within seconds he fell into the sleep that had been eluding him for the last couple of hours.