Dead Heat (24 page)

Yeah, life was just a series of coincidences, some of which had greater ramifications than others.

His phone rang.

‘Hi, Al.'

‘You can come round and see me. Want to make an appointment?'

‘How about in two minutes?'

‘Er, well . . . er,' Major stalled, stunned.

‘I'm in the vicinity. Strike while the iron's hot?'

‘You know where I work?'

‘I do. Be there in two shakes of a lamb's tail,' he said brightly and ended the call.

He parked outside the perimeter wall, walked to the gate and pressed the intercom buzzer.

‘Hello?'

‘I have an appointment to see Al Major. DI Henry Christie from Lancashire.'

‘Someone'll be with you in a mo.'

Henry saw a young guy saunter out of the building.

‘Can I help you?'

Tricky. No badge, no warrant card, no ID. ‘I'm here to see Al Major. DI Christie from Lancs. It's a while since I was last here,' he went on quickly, going for the friendly bullshit approach. ‘Last time was when I was working on the Jacky Lee job.' Henry dropped a name he knew everyone would react to. Lee had been a gangster, a big one, but had met his end gruesomely in Henry's presence a few years before. ‘I was u/c on that,' he said, knowing he was pushing it because undercover cops never tell anyone about their work, especially people they've never met before. This officer looked young and impressionable. Maybe he could get away with it.

His eyes lit up.

‘Come in then.' He opened the side gate and let Henry step through. It was pretty much procedure these days that all non-uniformed staff wore their ID cards visible all the time whilst on police premises. He knew he would have to keep this officer's attention away from the fact that he wasn't wearing his.

‘I was there when he got killed,' Henry boasted uncomfortably. Even when he was showing off for a purpose, it did not sit easily with him.

‘Wow.'

‘Nasty. Russian Mafia.'

‘Big stuff.'

They reached the door of the main building as another man appeared. Henry's eyes focused quickly on his displayed warrant card. It was Al Major. Sergeant Al Major. Sergeant Major. Henry's hand shot out. ‘Al – Henry Christie.'

Major's damp flaccid hand shook Henry's firm dry one with no enthusiasm.

‘Thanks for taking the time to see me. I know it was short notice.'

‘That's OK.' The other officer excused himself and went into the building. ‘Come in, my office is down here.' Major took him down a short corridor and turned into the supervisor's office, which, apart from furniture, computers and mounds of paperwork, was empty. ‘Coffee?' Henry said yes. Major directed him to a seat, then came back from the filter machine with a mug of steaming black coffee. Major sat at a desk. ‘What can I do for you?'

Henry explained his meeting with Jo Coniston's mother, his own very tenuous link to Jo and that he felt a certain obligation to review the job and that he had permission from the GMP hierarchy to do so.

‘I don't think you'll find much to help you. It was a real strange do, but we put a lot of resources into it and she just vanished, as did Dale O'Brien, her partner. Couldn't say if they were murdered or not, but it seems a good possibility.'

‘Two cops go missing and there's no trace? Wow? What about their vehicle?'

‘No trace either – never found.'

‘Any leads at all?'

Major shook his head. Henry angled his head back slightly and looked quizzically at Major, trying to weigh him up. For some reason Henry was not getting good vibes. The hairs on the back of his neck crinkled up as a very old feeling crept through him. That of deep suspicion. But why?

‘Was there any suggestion of a liaison, shall we say, between them?'

Major shrugged. He glanced at the wall clock in a very obvious way, saying non-verbally to Henry that time was short.

‘What was the job that night?'

‘Er . . . one of those hit and miss ones. Surveillance on a guy called Andy Turner. Every heard of him?'

Oh yes, Henry knew Turner. He nodded.

‘It was one of those “Let's see if we can find him cold, then follow him” jobs.'

‘Did you find him?'

‘Jo spotted him in Rusholme, then we lost contact, basically. They followed him towards Bury, and then lost him on the motorway.'

‘And you never see the officers again?'

‘That's about the long and short of it.'

‘And their car never turned up?'

‘No.'

‘And their personal vehicles – were they left parked here?'

‘Yeah – returned to their families.'

‘How long did the inquiry run?'

‘Three, four months.'

‘Were you involved in it?'

‘What? The inquiry?'

‘Yes.'

‘Yeah – they were my officers.'

‘What's your take on it, Al?'

‘We did all we could, nothing turned up, end of story.'

‘What about Andy Turner?'

‘Hasn't been seen since, either.'

‘Could he have killed them and done a runner?'

‘Could have.'

‘But what's your personal take on it? Your hypothesis?' Henry pushed him.

‘I haven't got one, sir.'

‘You're a cop. All cops have gut feelings about jobs, about mysteries. And this is a mystery, isn't it? And you knew them both. You supervised them, I'm told.'

‘Look, I don't know where you're going with this, but I was questioned extensively when this all happened. I played a big part in the investigation and it all came to nothing. I don't have a clue about it. Yeah, it's a mystery and we did everything we could to solve it, but we didn't and I've tried to lay it to rest. They were my staff. They disappeared. How do you think that makes me feel? Not good, I can tell you. I want to lay those ghosts to rest, sir. You coming digging at the behest of a grieving relative won't change a thing other than to resurrect the past.'

Henry's eyes became cold and unforgiving. ‘You seem a bit too blasé about it, Al . . . I'm not getting nice signals from you.'

Major stood up. ‘I have things to do.'

Henry drank the remainder of his coffee and got to his feet. He and Major were of similar build and height, though Major was probably ten years younger. ‘Personal question,' Henry said. ‘No doubt you've been asked it, but I'll ask again.' Major waited. ‘What was your relationship with Jo Coniston?'

Major snorted at the stupidity of the question, but Henry saw him shift slightly. He had hit a nerve.

‘Purely professional.' He eyed Henry, daring a challenge.

‘Yeah, right.'

‘But she was a slag, I'll tell you that for nothing,' he said with venom. ‘Now, as I said, I've got work to do, DI Christie. Next time come through the proper channels if you wish to interview me. Don't just cold-call me.'

Henry descended on to the M60, slotted into the heavy line of traffic in the first lane, weaved out into the middle and put his foot down. He was swearing to himself, feeling frustrated at not having a warrant card and the powers that came with it. If he had, his next move would have been to get the file on the two missing cops and spend some quality time going through it. He banged the steering wheel of the beat-up Astra, swerved into the first lane and exited the motorway, joining the M61 Preston-bound. He kept his foot down and took the car up to a very unsteady 85mph, not caring if cops with speed guns were anywhere about.

Al Major bugged him. A supervisor should have been devastated that two officers under his control had disappeared without trace. Major did not seem to be bothered.

Five minutes down the M61, across to Henry's right was Rivington Pike. Henry looked at the huge hill, with the TV masts beyond, somewhere he and Kate often walked. A place of good memories for him.

He wondered how to get his hands on the file. Although officially still classed as open, he knew it would be gathering dust at GMP headquarters now; given an occasional review, then put away again when no further evidence came to light. Such was the way of the world. There was little chance of him worming his way into GMP Headquarters in his unofficial capacity. They definitely would want to see his ID before he got any further than the front door. The only source of background he could think of which was available to him was from the newspapers of the time, probably the
Manchester Evening News
being the best bet. He would have to find a library with it on micro-fiche and that would mean a trip back to Manchester. He doubted whether a library local to him would have it in the archives.

He sighed. Maybe he had done all he could. He had no obligation to the girl and her family . . . but yet he hated to let anything like this go without wringing its neck first. Maybe he did have an obligation to Jo Coniston, even if he found her alive and well, living a riotous life of debauchery in Rio. He doubted that would be the case.

From what he knew so far, he guessed that she was dead and so was her partner. Could very well be that Andy Turner might well have the answer. That was a line of enquiry that appealed to him. Find Turner and that would give him some answers. Henry knew where to go to mainline on that one.

He looked at the display on his ringing mobile and groaned. Mobiles were the curse of the modern day. He hated them with a passion.

‘Hello, Jane,' he said.

‘It's not Jane. It's your fucking Chief Constable using her phone.'

‘Oh.'

‘You might well say “oh”, Henry,' FB stormed loudly. ‘Why the fuck have you gone to Manchester? You should be sniffing round the Wicksons, not the bleedin' Trafford Centre. What the fuck has that got to do with the Wicksons?'

‘Nowt.'

‘Well, get your sorry arse back to Blackpool and get doing what you're paid to do, not gallivanting around the north-west using up county petrol.'

A typical burst of FB, Henry thought, as the Chief ended the call as abruptly as he'd started it. Henry whizzed up the M6, then did a left on to the M55. Soon Blackpool Tower was in sight.

He turned off at junction 3, glancing across to the other side of the motorway where his abduction experience had ended on the hard shoulder. He was going to retrace the route back down the A585 to Poulton-le-Fylde and drive to the Wickson house. It was eerie driving back along the road, one he knew very well, knowing that not very long before, his life had been in terrible danger driving along the same.

He thought about the possibility of dying as he drove along. When he'd been a young cop, the thought had never bothered him because he thought he was immortal, but as age dragged him on, he became more worried than ever about it. He was concerned that he would miss his daughters growing older, seeing them develop into young women and begin their own lives. He did not want to miss any of that because he had completely missed them growing up. The job had always taken precedence. Now, he had determined, it was family that would take first place. This was despite his strong, lingering feelings for Jane Roscoe. He knew he would never seriously consider rekindling their relationship now, even though he seemed incapable of stopping himself from flirting with her, going all doe-eyed and gooey. There was no future in it.

He arrived at the entrance to the Wicksons' and turned up the driveway. Across to the right were the stables. A JCB excavator was shovelling up the remains of the burned-down stables into a tidy stack from which the charred pieces of wood were then scooped up into the back of a massive truck. Work had already started on stable-block rebuild. Parked on the site was also a crusher for the stones and rubble shovelled up by the excavator. It was not in use at that moment.

So busy was he looking at this, he only just stopped in time and pulled in tight to allow what he at first thought was a milk tanker to come down the drive in the opposite direction. As the vehicle squeezed past him, he realized it was not a milk tanker. And why should it have been? This was not a working farm. It was an old articulated fuel tanker. He looked up at the driver and was surprised to see a cigarette in the guy's mouth. Then it manoeuvred past him and was gone.

Henry shook his head, wondering why such a huge tanker was here. Probably delivering oil for the central heating. But it was a very big tanker and he knew that, usually, small rigid tankers brought oil to houses. Then he recalled seeing the dilapidated farm buildings at the rear of the house from the time he was on the hillside. There had been two articulated fuel tankers in the yard then.

His mouth turned down at the corners, his mind actively ingesting these snippets of information. He pressed on and drove to the gravelled parking area at the front of the house. The Bentley and Mercedes were parked there, and a couple of other less grand cars. He drew the Astra in next to the Bentley, relishing the juxtaposition of machines. He got out and rang the front door bell, waiting and whistling. No reply. He looked to the stables again, watching the land-clearing activity. Turning round, he saw a figure riding up the driveway on a horse.

It was Tara.

No . . . he was wrong . . . as the horse and rider got nearer, he saw it was Charlotte, not Tara, in the saddle. From a distance it was an easy mistake to make.

She walked the horse towards the house. Henry approached her.

‘Good morning, Charlotte.'

‘Hi,' she said cautiously.

‘Nice horse.'

‘He'll do.'

‘How's Chopin?'

‘Poorly.' She brought the horse to a halt in front of Henry. He took a wary step back. ‘What're you doing here?'

‘Your mum asked me, remember?'

‘Oh yeah.' She dismounted.

‘Is she in?'

‘Dunno. Don't care, really.' She hooked the reins over the horse's head. ‘Have to walk him in from here. The machines,' she explained. ‘Don't want to ride him in case he gets spooked. He can be a handful.' She slapped the horse's neck.