Instinct (2 page)

Boone, though annoyed by this, kept quiet, a condition encouraged by the handgun each of the men carried. They were heavy pistols, ugly, black and dangerous looking – rather like their owners, Boone thought.

The first man aboard said, ‘We search.'

Boone shrugged, stepped aside. They went past him, down into the galley and stateroom, the toilet/shower, doing a sweeping and fairly cursory search. One lifted the engine cover, stuck his head down into the bowels of the boat, finding only a well-maintained Volvo diesel engine in there. Satisfied, they left the boat and went back to Aleef who was standing getting drenched in the rain as a heavy downpour came. His neat suit became misshapen and baggy. They exchanged a few more words, then one of them opened the rear door of the Mercedes and the two other men slid out.

Boone noticed that Aleef kept himself angled slightly away from these guys, eyes averted.

They came on board, the second one with an H&K machine pistol slung across his chest. The first man – who appeared to have Arabic features – walked straight past Boone, down into the stateroom, and closed the door behind him. The second man sat on the bench Aleef had been on a few moments earlier. He laid the H&K across his lap and regarded Boone stonily through creamy eyes.

Aleef stepped back on board.

Boone spun angrily at him. ‘Two things here, Aleef,' he hissed. ‘One – I don't allow guns on board, and, most importantly, two – the deal was for one passenger.
ONE
.' He reinforced the word by jerking his middle finger in front of Aleef's eyes. Truth was, the gun didn't bother him. Firearms were a fact of life in the way he made the bulk of his living – collecting and delivering packages dropped by ships from South America anchored in international waters just outside the Gambian national limits. But he did have an issue with numbers. Didn't like the change in odds.

The smaller man said, ‘It's changed. Two will go and you'll bring him back.' Aleef indicated the lounging gunman.

Boone snorted. ‘In that case the price has gone up. I'll do it, yeah, but it'll cost another grand.'

Aleef swung his briefcase on to the table next to the wheel, thumbed the combination and opened it slowly, slanting it away from Boone's inquisitive eyes. He handed over a stack of dollars. ‘One thousand, as promised.' Then he gave him another stack, less heavy. ‘Five hundred extra, and on the return pick-up run you'll receive another thousand.'

Boone snatched the money and tucked it under his jacket. Clearly these guys had dosh to spare, he thought, and said, ‘You were expecting this, weren't you?' He sniggered.

‘A man like you, Mr Boone, is very easy to second guess, something I factored into the equation. But you do need to know that you will not receive a penny more, nor,' Aleef added, ‘should you even think about demanding more. That would be a very bad move on your part.'

‘That suits.'

‘May I also warn you not to engage in conversation with these men,' Aleef said. ‘Speak only when spoken to. In fact, keep your distance, do your job and then forget the faces – am I clear?'

‘Crystal.'

Aleef took a piece of paper out of the briefcase and unfolded it. ‘You will be met at these coordinates just to the south of the Canary Islands and the package will be transferred. I take it you have the necessary electronic equipment on board to accomplish this.'

Boone took the paper and nodded.

‘I shall see you when you return, then.' Aleef stepped off the boat and walked across to his own car on the quayside, a battered Citroën 2CV. The men who'd searched Boone's boat leaned impassively against the big Mercedes, guns hanging loosely by their sides.

Boone's mouth puckered unhappily as he turned to the wheel and pressed the starter, bringing the engines to life with a healthy burbling sound.

‘Ready for off?' he asked the man on the bench. He got no response other than a half-lidded contemptuous look that brooked no conversation. Boone thought he would try anyway, despite Aleef's instructions to the contrary. He wasn't really someone who could not talk – unless he was banged up in a police cell – so he shrugged and turned his attention to the job at hand. Getting the human package from the Gambia to the Canary Islands, then bringing him back three weeks later. Straightforward and simple – with the exception of having an armed man on board, something difficult to explain should they run into the authorities. But that was something Boone was good at: slipping under the radar, keeping a low profile, so he wasn't too concerned on that count. Having a pretty nasty looking dude on board who looked as though he got a lot of pleasure drilling 9mm bullets into people was the bit he didn't like.

‘Don't ask,' Boone said to himself. ‘Just do it, keep your mouth shut, eyes closed, take the fucking money and run – and hope the bastard gets seasick and suffers.'

With that in mind, he released
Shell
from her moorings, gave the men ashore a cheery wave – got no response – and headed carefully out of the creek into the main river channel, hit the open sea, programmed his instruments and let the boat do the rest. Then he settled down for a long journey that promised to be rough.

TWO

T
he phone rang. It was two thirty in the morning. It continued to ring and even though the first ring didn't need to wake him, because he was already awake, Henry Christie did not reach across to the bedside cabinet to answer it. Then it stopped and the room returned to silence with just the faintest echo ebbing away. He lay there, the duvet halfway down his body, his upper half naked and chilled, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

He knew it, or his mobile phone, would ring again. It had to because he was the only one available and they would keep trying until they contacted him, even if it meant sending someone round to knock him up. Part of him devilishly thought about taking it that far, but he knew he would answer next time. Henry did not like to keep people waiting, not where death was involved. Or as in this case, as he knew it would be, murder.

The call would be from the Force Incident Manager, the inspector based in the control room at police headquarters in Hutton, just to the south of Preston. All call-outs for Senior Investigating Officers – SIOs – were routed through the FIM, who held the rota for all disciplines, from public order to serious crime.

The bedroom was in darkness, a vague glow filtering in from the street light outside.

Henry's eyes were fixed open, staring upwards at the ceiling, his fingers interlaced across his sternum. He breathed shallowly, could feel the regular pumping of his heart and the occasional gurgle of his stomach as valves opened and closed and liquids gushed.

His mobile phone rang, as he had predicted. He had downloaded the Rolling Stones' studio version of
Wild Horses
as his ringtone, a melancholy, emotional number that had fitted his mood at the time. Now, as brilliant as it was, it sounded stupid and needy, and he thought he might change it back to something more upbeat later.
Crazy Frog
, maybe. Something to make him smirk, not make his guts lurch. He
needed
to smirk.

His mobile lay next to his house phone and he fumbled for it with his right hand, the slight contortion and stretch hurting his mostly healed left shoulder, and answered it, mumbling something.

‘Detective Superintendent Christie?' It was the voice of the FIM, a female inspector.

‘Yuh.'

‘Sorry to bother you, sir, but  . . .'

Henry sat up stiffly, pushing the duvet back, taking the pad and pen from the cabinet top and jotting down the gist of what she was telling him: ‘Murder  . . . female  . . . teenager  . . . not yet identified  . . . strangulation, maybe  . . . Poulton-le-Fylde  . . . near Carleton crematorium.' Henry wrote down the exact details of the location, the circumstances of the discovery of the body, asked if an arrest had been made – no – and if there was a suspect – not yet. Which detective was at the scene? After further questions, Henry ended the call with a time check – 2.38 a.m. – his thanks and an ETA.

He rubbed his eyes, making them squelch, then stood up and made his way to the en suite bathroom. There was a light knock on the bedroom door, which opened an inch.

‘Dad? You OK?' It was his youngest daughter, Leanne, now twenty-three years old, so no longer young in that sense, and starting a career as a pharmacist. She had moved back home temporarily. To keep an eye on Henry had been the excuse, but the high cost of living and a bad on–off relationship made it seem to Henry that she was back for good. Whilst he loved her to bits, having her home again, mothering him, was not what he wanted or needed.

‘Just a call-out.' He looked at her in her night things, still wearing jim-jams covered with bears cuddling each other. She was heartbreakingly beautiful, the spitting image of her mother. She moved into him and gave him a hug, asking if he wanted a brew doing.

He didn't, but she wanted to feel useful, so he said that would be great.

He had a very quick shower and a wet shave, timed to take only five minutes between them, and came out of the en suite with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was about to say something to Kate, his wife, purely out of conditioning. She often had some pithy remark about his turn-outs, something negative, usually funny. But Henry snapped his mouth shut. He hadn't got used to the fact she was no longer there and the sight of the empty bed made his chest jar sickeningly.

With anger he threw down the towel and entered the walk-in dressing room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Henry actually enjoyed the mug of tea made for him by Leanne, even though he could only manage a few hasty mouthfuls before stepping out into the night, just before three. It was late spring, still chilly, making him shiver. He sniffed the air and smelled the sea two miles west of him. A good smell. If he found time he thought he would get down to the front and take a bracing stroll. It was a nice thought, but not very realistic. In his experience of turning out to murders at three in the morning, there was rarely any time for breaks in the day ahead. He would happily lay odds that he would be working till gone seven that night. Only sixteen hours away.

He had treated himself to a new car, thought he deserved it and the pleasure it gave him, even though its cost was crippling. A rare smile came to his face as he pointed the remote and unlocked it with a satisfying clunk. Then he climbed into his Mercedes E-Class coupé and reversed it carefully off the driveway.

There wasn't far to go. A few miles through the mainly bare streets of Blackpool, then out towards Poulton, cutting across the southern edge of that fairly affluent town to a small village called Carleton, making his way along narrow roads to the entrance to the crematorium, at which there was much police activity.

He purposely parked his car a couple of hundred metres away. Not just to ensure it didn't get scratched, but because he always liked to get the feel of a crime scene on foot. Too many detectives, he thought, rolled up and rolled out. If pressed he would probably struggle to provide concrete evidence that his considered approach ever proved fruitful, but he knew intuitively that good detectives liked to feel crime scenes. To inhale them. To taste them. It was maybe a way of getting somehow into the mind of a killer because crime locations often had some significance to either the killer or victim.

He hunched deep into his wind jammer, zipped it up, slotted his hands into the pockets, and approached slowly.

Henry had seen too many murder scenes like this one. The frail body discarded on a grass verge by the roadside. The tangle of thin limbs. The blood-soaked clothing. The battered face and head. Long hair splayed and matted with mud and blood. Eyes wide open. That last look of terror and disbelief on the face.

Henry had stepped into the zoot suit and paper shoes, the forensic overalls required of everyone attending the scene, logged in with the constable holding the clipboard down the road who was noting all comings and goings, then walked as directed on the chosen route that all officers had to take to the body and back.

He was standing perhaps six feet away from the body. His torch beam played over it from toe to head, then hovered on the girl's face.

She had been pretty and petite. Maybe sixteen, eighteen, he estimated. He glanced around at the location, the body next to the crematorium gates, trying to get his mind working.

The local detective inspector appeared at his shoulder. His name was Rik Dean, a man Henry knew well, not least because Rik was now living with Henry's feckless sister Lisa in a smart flat in Lytham. And because Henry had been instrumental in getting Rik on to CID years earlier as a detective constable. Henry had seen Rik's early potential to become a jack because as a PC in uniform Rik had been a superb thief-taker. Rik's subsequent rise through the ranks had been all his own doing – he was also a natural boss – and now Henry was trying to get Rik a place on FMIT – the Force Major Investigation Team – of which Henry was joint head with three other experienced detective superintendents.

‘What've we got?' Henry asked.

‘You probably know as much as me,' Rik replied. ‘Body of a female teenager found by a uniformed PC on patrol. Thought it was fly-tipped rubbish, just a bundle of rags. On closer inspection turned out to be a body.'

‘Which PC?'

Rik pointed him out, leaning on the bonnet of his unmarked patrol car. ‘Paul Driver  . . . a bit shaken by it.'

‘What was he doing around here? A bit out of the way, isn't it?'

‘Part of his normal route,' he said.

‘Uh, huh,' Henry said. ‘ID?'

‘Not as yet, but there is a girl missing from Blackpool who fits the bill. A Natalie Philips, just turned eighteen, attends Shoreside College, doing a hairdressing NVQ. Reported missing by her mum last evening just gone, but had been missing a day before. I'm just waiting for the file to be brought up from Blackpool Comms, but  . . .' Rik produced his BlackBerry, ‘I got them to e-mail me a photo of her.' He pressed a few buttons and turned the screen around for Henry to see. A pretty young lady pouting at the photographer. ‘Looks like her.'