Instinct (23 page)

‘No, no, I do.' She screwed up her nose. ‘I'm going to resign anyway. We, Hugo and I, have a pile in Monaco that needs some TLC. I'm going to go and supervise the renovation.'

‘When you say a place  . . .?'

‘Well, slightly more than a place  . . . more a villa  . . . a big villa. A palace, really. So those are my plans. So what can I do for you? One last thing?' She held his gaze meaningfully.

‘Why is MI5 not sharing anything about Blackpool?'

Mark Carter was due in to answer his police bail that evening, as a result of which Henry Christie decided to meet, greet and re-interview the lad together with Rik Dean. His plan was to get a long, detailed interview completed this time, put some pressure on Mark and if nothing came of it – such as a confession to killing Natalie – Henry would release him with the warning that if any other evidence came to light that fingered Mark, he would be rearrested. Keep the sword hanging over him. Always a good police tactic.

During the afternoon, Henry brought himself up to speed with his other ongoing investigations and spent some time with Rik, who Henry had decreed would take on the serial rapist case.

It was one of those jobs that was beginning to bubble and rouse some media speculation. Henry, having had it thrust on him, wanted to do something about it before it blew up in his face, as such things often did. If not dealt with immediately and seen for what it was, the police could end up looking like idiots in about ten years' time, still trying to chase their tails and solve a hundred offences instead of just three.

He and Rik tossed around a few strategies, mostly coming back to resources and the lack of them. If they
could
throw resources at it, then they'd have a good chance of getting a result. That was the problem with everything, though. No resources.

‘At least we know they were all committed by the same individual,' Henry said, looking at the report on the DNA samples. One man had indeed carried out the three reported attacks. Henry raised his face to Rik, who was sitting across from him. They were in Henry's office at HQ reviewing exactly where the investigation stood – up to the point where the original DI investigating had gone sick – and, as ever, coffee was being consumed. ‘I'm surprised this offender isn't on the database, being such an obviously violent person. Surely he must have some previous.'

‘Wouldn't be sitting here if he was on the database,' Rik pointed out.

‘OK, it was a pretty obvious point to make,' Henry conceded. ‘Any pattern to the attacks?'

Rik scanned the analysis of the crime reports. ‘Night-time, between eleven and one. Lone women, young ones, teens, early twenties, attacked in areas where there are no CCTV cameras.'

‘Deliberately chosen, or just lucky?'

Rik shrugged. ‘An area he knows, I suspect. All in the vicinity of Garstang Road on the way out to Poulton. Two of the women were dragged into Boundary Park, one on to some playing fields. No independent witnesses to speak of.'

‘Dates?' Henry frowned.

‘One a month for the last three months  . . . well,' Rik scrutinized the reports more closely, ‘that's one every four weeks  . . . each progressively more violent, but each woman threatened with a return visit and a horrific murder if they reported the assaults. This is a guy we need to catch.'

‘Bastard,' Henry whispered. They looked at each other. ‘So if this pattern continues, when would he be due to strike again?'

‘This week,' Rik calculated. ‘Although he hasn't done so far, unless it hasn't been reported.'

‘No set days?' Henry asked. Rik shook his head. Henry pouted. ‘Could it be a shift worker of some sort, out on a break?'

‘That's something I'll check, see what businesses are operating around that area twenty-four hours.'

‘I wonder how many he's actually carried out?' Henry mused.

‘What do you mean?'

‘The reported ones are always the tip of the iceberg  . . . the terror factor makes a lot of victims clam up. Any chance of pulling an operation together for a couple of nights this week?' Henry asked in vain hope.

Rik screwed up his face. ‘I could possibly muster a few bodies tonight, but it's a late request. Maybe more tomorrow, but then we hit the weekend and everybody's stretched.' He checked his watch. ‘I'll see what I can do, but don't hold out much hope.'

‘We need to plan something for next month.'

Rik nodded and gathered all the paperwork together. ‘I'll get home for some tea, then I'll see you at Blackpool for Mark Carter, seven thirty?'

Rik left. Henry picked up the phone to call a detective sergeant at Preston who was dealing with one of the domestic murders Henry was overseeing. He needed an update  . . . and that was how the rest of Henry's afternoon unfolded, checking up on progress. Then it was six and he had a sudden, gut-wrenching thought that he hadn't called Kate to let her know he would be late home.

It was only as he unthinkingly tapped the first digit of his home phone number that he remembered. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a feeling of despair and emptiness, heartbroken by the realization that it was a call he would never have to make again.

In the same time zone, about three thousand miles to the south on the west coast of Africa, Steve Flynn steered
Faye2
out of the deep Atlantic Ocean and into the wide mouth of the Gambia River. The journey from Gran Canaria had been uneventful, even his overnighter in Nouadhibou. Here Flynn had refuelled, taken on fresh supplies and had a long, uninterrupted sleep.

The Gambian capital, Banjul, was on his starboard side and he sailed past with disinterest, his eyes cold as granite under the brim of his baseball cap. He angled
Faye2
upriver and cruised slowly past many creeks, surveying them with binoculars, until he found one he wanted. It was deep enough and contained a badly constructed wooden quayside against which he manoeuvred and tied up his boat. He had noticed it on his previous visit to the country, but had never imagined he would be returning to use it.

The heat was heavy and cruel in the early evening, although the sun had virtually disappeared over the western horizon.

Flynn poured himself a long, iced cola and rolled his hips as he drank it, still feeling the pain of the gouge-line ploughed by the bullet along his ribcage, nicking bone as it went. The wound was healing well but had a way to go yet. But he was mobile enough to return to the country from which he had fled like a rat being chased by dogs.

He had abandoned a dead friend and left that friend's lady in a horrifying situation, and did not even yet know if she had survived it. She could well be as dead as Boone, and that was what Flynn expected.

His guilt was gut-wrenchingly physical. Tearing him up.

Boone had been dead for certain, his body kicked like a dog into the creek. But Michelle
had
been alive and maybe she had survived. He knew he could not have helped her at the time, but that didn't make him feel any better.

Which is why, after a horrendous return to Gran Canaria and some convalescence there, he was right back in the Gambia as soon as he was fit, with one thing on his mind.

He downed the last of the cola, the ice chinking against his teeth, then vaulted off the boat, tucking the 9mm Glock 17 into the waistband of his three-quarter length trousers, pulling his shirt over it and pushing the silencer into his pocket.

Henry did not bother going home, unable to face the house, empty or otherwise. He'd spent about half an hour staring into space at his desk, his mind empty and dull. Eventually he clicked into action, roused himself with a sorry shake of his head and pushed himself up from his chair, which was like trying to lift a lead weight. He gathered his stuff and made his way to his car, sat in it for a while and experienced more guilt at having acquired such a fancy machine for what, it seemed, was the cost of Kate's life. He knew he would not have owned such a beast if she was still here. It would never have entered his head. The Mondeo had been more than adequate.

The Mercedes engine barely made a noise as he drove up the avenue away from the FMIT block, towards the HQ building. At the junction he was faced with a slight dilemma: turn right and exit, or go straight on to the sports and social club, aka The Grovellers' Arms. The beer was cheap but at that time of day, between five and seven, it was full of office staff and bosses, none of whom he cared to mix with. He rarely socialized with other cops, other than a few close friends, and was a bit worried now that he'd reached the rank at which others might want to brown-nose up to him. The thought worried him. He had always disliked rank and authority, yet was now part of the establishment. Sort of like Mick Jagger accepting a knighthood.

With that in mind, he selected a very old Rolling Stones album from the in-car iPod, from the days when they were the bad boys, and swung the car right, spurting under the rising security barrier quickly, because he never quite trusted it. Then, to the strains of
Gimme Shelter
, he hit the road.

He joined the traffic heading into Preston, bearing left after crossing the River Ribble, out towards Blackpool, past Preston docks. He enjoyed the drive in the new car, although his left shoulder was giving him some gyp, the one which had been peppered with shotgun pellets during the blood-soaked stand-off in Kendleton, where he first met Alison. A slight sweat came at the memory of his lucky escape.

As he drove he did his retirement sums again. The house was now paid off. The pension would be good. He could buy a dog  . . . Or maybe just keep going until they forced his hand? Then he could come back as a cold case consultant on half the salary, no responsibility and all the fun.

In Blackpool he turned into the KFC on Preston New Road and parked in one of the wide grill bays. Once inside he stood at the back of a long queue and kept an eye out for Mark Carter, who was nowhere to be seen. He ate in the restaurant, glumly avoiding standing on the chips on the floor, having had to wipe the table before sitting at it. But the food was OK and gave him that short energy burst he needed.

At seven thirty he was at Blackpool nick in the CID office with Rik, awaiting a call from the public enquiry desk to say that Mark Carter had answered his bail.

He chatted with Rik about the serial rape inquiry, and whether he had sorted anything out for later. The DI looked sheepish.

‘Singularly unsuccessful. Tomorrow night, maybe, plenty of bodies about, but tonight, too short notice.'

‘Which means?'

‘Uh, well, after we've finished with Carter, I'll get changed into my scruffs, grab the crappiest CID car I can find and troll about myself until midnight.'

‘Yourself?'

Rik nodded.

‘Keeping obs for a rapist?'

‘Yep.'

‘Not exactly the well-resourced operation I had in mind,' Henry sighed. ‘Tell you what, I'll come with you. Wouldn't expect you to do it alone.'

‘Seriously?' Rik sounded doubtful. ‘Only thing is, every time I go out on a job with you, I seem to end up getting injured.' He was referring to the times when he'd been stabbed once and shot once, each time out with Henry.

‘You're still alive, aren't you?'

‘Just.'

Henry winked, checked his watch and picked up a desk phone, dialled the front desk and asked if Mark had shown his face. Negative. Cradling the phone, Henry checked his watch again and decreed, ‘I'll give him until half eight, then I'll go looking.'

‘Probably done a runner,' Rik said. ‘Guilty and all that.'

It was a ten minute walk to the creek in which Boone's houseboat was moored. As Flynn turned on to the unstable quayside, his insides seemed to drop from a great height. The tropical evening had drawn in and his way was illuminated by lamp posts along the quay which varied in strength. Some flickered, some glowed dully, others cast intense white light. Even so, Flynn could clearly see the big shape that had once been the
Ba-Ba-Gee
, Boone's houseboat and home.

The old concrete barge was tilted at a forty-five degree angle away from the quay, like an immense, dead, beached whale. It had been completely gutted by fire and everything that had been so lovingly and expensively refurbished by Boone – upper and lower decks, the outside seating area, the galley, the bedrooms – was all destroyed. All that remained was the seemingly indestructible concrete hull, half sunk in the water.

Flynn approached the wreck slowly.

Inside he was cold and raging. Outside his skin had tightened on his skeleton, and now his breathing was laboured and he started to dither.

He walked alongside the barge and up to the point on the quay where the fleeing Boone had been shot in the back of the head. His body draped across the old railway sleeper that was still there.

Flynn stooped to one knee and touched a bullet hole in the planking, slipping his little finger into it. Then he looked up sharply, his face distorted by venomous anger. He came upright slowly, carried on walking along the banking to the next inlet where Boone's fishing boat
Shell
had been moored. Flynn had originally moored
Faye2
alongside, such a long, long time ago. A light year away. Since then he had been shot, and managed to make it back to Gran Canaria, where a discreet Spanish doctor had treated the wound and taken an excessive amount of money to keep quiet. During his recovery, Flynn had done his research, remembering the Internet pages that he had briefly looked at on Boone's laptop in the seconds before the man himself had rushed back, pursued by desperate killers.

Splattered all over the news pages that Flynn had accessed back in Gran Canaria was the face of the man he'd watched getting off Boone's boat. The man who had been injured, the same man suspected of involvement in the planning of terrorist activities in the UK. The man who was now wanted by the authorities and whose name was Jamil Akram.