Fighting for the Dead (28 page)

She swooned.

The man stepped towards her again and delivered a second blow on the exact same spot, equally forceful.

Then her knees buckled and she collapsed on the spot like she was falling into a hole that had suddenly appeared beneath her feet, unconscious before she hit the floor.

Henry lurched to the window, the palms of his hands on the glass panes, unsure initially what he was looking at, then horror-struck by the realization.

A large black Mercedes saloon car had drawn up on the road outside.

For a moment it looked as though a decapitated head was being held up against the window at the back nearside passenger door, a terrible, bloody, and distorted mess, being displayed triumphantly by the man in the back seat whose tightly fisted hand had wrapped the long hair of the head around it and he was holding it pushed against the window, smearing the glass with blood like some sort of medieval war trophy.

Except it wasn't a decapitated head.

Nor was it some gruesome toy bought at the gift shop of a medieval torture museum.

It was a real head, attached to a real body, and it belonged to Alison Marsh, the woman Henry Christie loved.

Her features had been pounded almost beyond recognition. Nose flattened, both eyes black and swollen, lips cut and bleeding, and looking dead. Then just to reinforce the message, the man smashed Alison's head against the window again, making the glass vibrate with the impact.

Henry roared with rage, spun away from the window and stepped dangerously towards Barlow, fists clenched, his face a vision of fury.

Barlow had been anticipating the reaction. The gun came up and he aimed it directly at Henry's forehead, stopping him dead.

‘What the fuck?' Henry growled, his anger rising beyond anything he had ever known, and way beyond the fear he had felt at being confronted by Barlow and a gun. Now he realized he had walked stupidly into a trap manufactured by Barlow and Sunderland, two men desperate to save their own skins by any means possible, having used Melanie Speakman as bait. He took another menacing step, but Barlow flicked the gun, his finger tightening on the trigger.

‘I'll tell you what the fuck is, Henry . . . this is deadly serious stuff . . . No, no,' Barlow warned him as Henry's body language telegraphed another move, ‘I'll shoot you dead here and now and think of another way through this if you do anything stupid.'

At Barlow's feet, the blood must have worked its way back to Melanie's brain. She stirred and opened her eyes, uncomprehendingly. Then they focused, she realized where she was, and they closed again.

Barlow took a pace back. ‘Now then, Henry old son, I want you to drag this nice lady into the kitchen and lay her out there. Don't want any nosy postman peering in, do we.' Barlow waited. Henry did not move. ‘Do it, Henry.' He stepped back further and Henry moved behind Melanie, hooked his hands under her armpits and slid her gently backwards out of the living room, into the hallway, then into the kitchen.

Reversing in, Henry didn't at first notice the other body by the back door, but as he laid Melanie out, he turned and saw another woman, shot in the head, her body crumpled up on the floor, lying in a large pool of deep, red, almost black, blood, obviously dead.

‘Oh, Jeez! What the hell are you doing, you complete . . .' Henry guessed this was the body of Melanie's friend, the owner of the house.

‘Stand back,' Barlow warned and waved the gun, then straddled Melanie and shot her in the head, twice.

Henry staggered back against the sink, dumbstruck by the excessive and casual violence, noticing that the bottom half of his trousers had been splattered by Melanie's blood. It was as if everything had been squeezed out of him.

Barlow stood upright, but still standing over Melanie. ‘Now then, Henry, where were we?'

‘You murdering bastard. What has she ever done to you? You utter cunt!'

‘Words, Henry . . . now then,' he said as though he was simply changing the subject of discussion about world affairs or pop music. ‘Ahh, yes, property . . . it was very sneaky of you to make sure only you could access it.' Henry waited, boiling inside, wanting to leap at Barlow and take his chance, but knowing that was a stupid move. He had to stay with this for Alison as he realized that this lack of concern for human life would also apply to her and the image of her dead tore at Henry. He could not shake the sight of her battered head being held against the car window outside. Suddenly hot rage was replaced by ice-cold calculation.

‘So what do you want?' Henry asked.

‘That's better,' Barlow said triumphantly. ‘We need to go for a little ride and retrieve it. All nice and friendly, like, and when you've given it to me, we'll see where we are with things.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘I get the stuff, your little landlady goes free . . . as for you, dunno yet.' Barlow smirked as Henry looked at Melanie, still in death, but the blood from the terrible wound in her head still collecting and running across the kitchen floor to join up with the coagulating blood of her friend to form a lake.

‘Let's get on with it,' Henry said.

T
hey were in the pool car, Henry driving, Barlow sitting alongside, his body turned slightly towards Henry, the revolver pointed at Henry's left hip. Henry's mouth was clamped tightly shut as he steered the vehicle, as per Barlow's directions, towards the M55 motorway.

‘Now, you drive sensibly, don't do anything rash, keep to the speed limit, don't draw attention to us, because if you do, she's dead – and then you are, too. Got that?'

Henry nodded, re-gripped the steering wheel with his sweaty hands, controlling the urge to back-hand Barlow.

‘Good man. OK – M55, then M6 north, off at junction 33, drive up the A6 into Lancaster, pull in at the nick, then we do the business and after that, who knows? But no shenanigans or I'll . . . well, you know, don't you?'

Henry sped on to the M55, heading east out of Blackpool.

The Mercedes with Alison in it had shot away from the front of the house as Henry and Barlow got into Henry's transport, but as he drove onto the motorway, Henry saw it was behind them.

‘And just to confirm matters,' Barlow said, ‘just drive along in the inside lane at about fifty for a while.'

Henry did that and the Mercedes pulled out from behind into the middle lane and drew level with them. Henry glanced to his right, saw the profile of the driver, then the Mercedes accelerated slightly so it was a nose ahead of the pool car and for a few seconds the man in the back seat held Alison's face up to the window again, squashing it against the glass.

Then the Mercedes decelerated and dropped back into a following position.

‘Now you can achieve the national speed limit, seventy,' Barlow said.

Henry took the car up to this speed, seeing the blue smoke trail behind. Waves pounded through him, his skull doing a dull thu-dud, his vision seeming to have contracted into a tunnel. He did not dare to even glance at Barlow, because if he did, he knew he would lose it and probably kill them both in the process. The by-product of this would be to ensure that Alison also died.

He had to keep himself in check. Do as they said. Bottle his rage. Use his brain and figure a way out.

First thing: get a grip.

With this in mind, he told his body to relax, take it down a notch. Stop the beating heart that felt like an alien trying to explode out of his chest, get rid of the awful noises in his head.

There was at least a half-hour journey ahead. Use that to his advantage, and learn what this was all about.

‘I wouldn't mind,' he said, ‘but I didn't even want to get involved in Jennifer Sunderland's death. As far as I was concerned it was a job for the uniform branch, not FMIT.'

‘So why did you?'

‘I was asked to attend and then I got interested . . . and even up to the point of getting her to the mortuary, I wasn't
that
interested. It was just a drowning, f'God's sake. If those guys hadn't shown up, you'd still be in charge of it.'

Barlow gave a dismissive, ‘Phtt.' Then said, ‘Two fuckin' hot heads.'

‘So you know them?'

‘Course, I do . . . well, knew them until you came along and that Flynn guy. Thing was,' Barlow said, as though it was painful to speak, ‘if I'd gone to the mortuary instead of you, none of this would have happened. We'd all be happy pigs in shit – but because you wanted to maintain a chain of evidence, that meant I couldn't go through her belongings. I didn't get a chance at the scene of the drowning – too many people around – and I didn't get a chance at the mortuary and those guys were getting jumpy and I couldn't stop 'em, silly twats! I told 'em not to, but I'm not great at speaking in Russian.'

They had reached the left-hand fork for the M6 North. Henry crossed the lanes, the Mercedes two hundred metres behind. Henry glanced in his rear-view mirror, thought about what suffering Alison must be enduring in that car and again, a surge of anger passed through him.

‘And they didn't find anything, of course,' Henry said, ‘because there was nothing to be found.'

‘Exactly . . . and there was every chance it was lost in the river anyway, but you have to cover all the bases . . .'

‘Which is why they visited Flynn.'

‘Yup. I learned he had a chequered history – suspected of thieving – so there was every chance he might have helped himself to some of her property, even though he was the hero of the moment. Had to be done.'

‘He's anything but a thief,' Henry said, surprising himself.

‘Well, we know that now, don't we?'

‘What's recorded on the phone?' Henry asked.

Barlow considered this question for a while, then said, ‘Ever heard of happy slapping?'

‘Uh – yeah. Kids, usually, videoing assaults.'

‘Think a step up. Think happy killing.' A look then came over him and he turned square on to Henry and held the gun up to his head. ‘And you do not know how happy I'd be to kill you, Henry, you meddling fucker.'

‘With the exception of the swear word,' Henry said, ‘that could be right out of
Scooby Doo
.'

Barlow clunked the muzzle hard against Henry's temple. The car swerved slightly but Henry kept control, glad he had riled Barlow, but not wanting to push it too far.

‘Who did you kill?'

‘Someone who didn't matter.' Barlow turned to face the front again.

‘Just you?' Henry probed.

Barlow looked at him. ‘Time to shut up, I think.'

‘Was that someone who didn't matter a prostitute?' Henry ventured.

Barlow's head moved slowly around and he glared at Henry. ‘Just drive,' he said, and placed the gun against Henry's thigh, finger wrapped around the trigger.

Steve Flynn looked disgustedly at his mobile phone, annoyed by the fact that Henry had hung up on him and then – apparently – switched his bloody phone off. Possibly they hadn't made as much progress as he thought they had in terms of their ‘relationship'. Although he flinched at the word, he supposed it was a relationship, but not the romantic sort. The prospect of kissing Henry made him queasy.

He was sitting in Alison's car on the hospital car park, brooding about his snub, wondering what to do, but knowing that he had to speak to Henry as no one else would really do, or understand the significance of what he had to say.

It was always possible that Henry was just too busy to speak to him, but at least he could have had the manners to say that over the phone before hanging up. Flynn realized Henry would be ultra-busy today and that he would not know that Flynn had anything important to say to him, so with that in mind, Flynn composed a text which he sent to Henry, saying simply, ‘
Call Me – Urgent
.' He hoped it didn't sound too needy. The last thing anyone needed in a relationship was a needy significant ‘other'.

He checked the time, and did a bit of mental maths. He considered taking Alison's car back across to her in Kendleton, then cadging a lift back to Glasson, but maybe that was too big an ask. If she was busy, it would be an imposition too far.

Then his phone rang. It was from a number he didn't recognize. He thought Henry must be returning the call. Flynn answered.

‘Steve – it's Rik Dean here . . . Yeah, hi . . . Just wondering if you've heard from Henry, or know where he is?' Rik's voice was hopeful and he sounded unconcerned.

‘No. I rang him a minute or two ago, but he hung up. Is there a problem?'

‘No . . . I just can't get hold of him, thought you might know where he was. He was at Blackpool nick not long ago and I wanted to catch up with him, but he's gone now. Maybe heading back up to Lancaster after this morning's fiasco.'

‘What fiasco would that be?'

‘Oh, nothing, nothing,' Rik said quickly. Flynn got the impression Rik thought he'd blabbed too much. ‘If you hear from him, tell him to contact me, will you?'

‘Vice versa,' Flynn said and hung up. Unable to contact Henry, he thought. Probably not an uncommon occurrence. And what was the fiasco, he wondered. Had Henry cocked up in some way? Again, probably not an uncommon occurrence, he chuckled.

Then he looked up and saw a classic car drive past him – a silver-blue E-type Jaguar. He watched it turn into the car park and drive to the far end, then carry on through the ‘Access Only' signs, which he knew led down to the mortuary.

He'd never seen the car before, but knew the driver. He started up Alison's car and sped after the E-type, which had driven on to the mortuary staff only car park and stopped, cheekily straddling two parking bays. Flynn pulled up alongside, but not too close for comfort, and was out before Professor Baines had even climbed out of the E-type.

Flynn met him at the driver's door.