Nightmare City (29 page)

In twenty minutes she’d cried herself out.

For the moment.

Henry’s shirt and tie were soaking wet, a mix of tears, snot
and saliva.

Annie sat upright. Henry handed her a paper handkerchief. She
wiped her face with it and blew her nose.

‘
Questions,’ she stated. In answer to his look, she said, ‘Ask
them now, Henry, while you’ve got the chance. I’m in control of
myself at the moment. Not sure how long it’ll last.’

‘
What did he say when he got home last night?’

‘
Very little.’

‘
Did he seem his normal self?’

‘
No ... odd, distracted.’

‘
He must have said something, Annie.’

‘
Kept muttering about a statement, how he couldn’t believe it.
He’d been there, yet it was different, changed ... something like
that, anyway. He was waiting for you to call. He was sure you
would. I didn’t know what he was on about.’

‘
He’d left a note on my desk, but I went straight home last
night. I didn’t go into the office.’ Like maybe I should have done,
Henry thought agonised. Then: Fuck that for a thought. What’s done
is done. ‘And what happened after that?’

‘
We went to bed round about midnight. He read for a while,
then he was tossing and turning, going to the loo. I was aware of
it, but I was asleep. D’you know what I mean, Henry?’

He nodded.

Annie stopped talking. He hoped she wasn’t about to weep
again.

‘
I don’t remember anything else,’ she said faintly.

‘
Think, Annie,’ he encouraged her softly. ‘It could be
important.’

She stood up and crossed to the window, staring at the rain.
There were two police cars and a van outside. The whole of the
garden had been taped off. Officers from the Support Unit were on
their hands and knees, searching for evidence in what was quickly
becoming a quagmire.

‘
There is something,’ she said eventually. ‘He got up. I mean,
obviously he got up or he wouldn’t be dead now. Hang on, hang on,
let me get a grip.’ She put her head into her hands and pummelled
her forehead with the base of her hands, wracking her brain,
shimmering with frustration. She turned to Henry again. ‘Yes,
that’s it. He got up. Someone was knocking on the door. He went to
the window. He said it was two o’clock. Then he went downstairs. I
turned over and went back to sleep.’ Her eyes rested accusingly on
Henry. ‘He thought it was you at the door. He thought you’d come to
see him ... only it wasn’t.’

Her face creased like a screwed-up ball of paper.

‘
Did he bring anything home with him?’ Henry asked
quickly.

‘
I don’t know.’ Her bottom lip, her whole chin quivered. She
was trying vainly to keep control, but was slowly losing the
struggle.

‘
Annie, we need to have a look through his things. There could
be something to help us. May we?’

‘
Yes, sure, but someone’s already done that.’

‘
What?’ said Henry, perplexed. ‘Who?’

Annie didn’t know.

Henry turned to the policeman. ‘Who?’ he demanded.

‘
Two detectives from that lot in Blackburn.’

‘
The Organised Crime Squad?’

‘
Yeah, them.’

‘
We couldn’t find anything, boss,’ Siobhan Robson said to her
Detective Chief Superintendent.

‘
What sort of a search did you do?’

She sighed with frustration verging on anger. ‘Cursory -
that’s all we could do. We couldn’t very well tear the place apart,
could we? It would have looked a bit too suspicious.’

‘
Maybe he didn’t have anything with him.’ This was a
suggestion made by a Detective Inspector called Gallagher, who had
been with her during the search.

‘
Oh he did, I’m sure of it. Copies of the original statements
at least. That’s what the little bastard did - made copies, as we
have seen from his locker. So where the hell are they? We need to
find them - soon. And my bet is that they’re in his house -
somewhere.’

Henry stormed into the murder incident room. Two policewomen
were inputting details into the HOLMES terminals. DC Robson and DI
Gallagher were in deep, muted conversation with Tony Morton. As
Henry closed in on them, they looked up and stopped talking. A
smile appeared on Morton’s face.

‘
Henry, good to see you. I’ve been looking for
you.’

Henry liked and admired Morton. He thought he was a good cop
who got results. But at that moment in time, Henry was enraged and
when something annoyed him, his mouth had a nasty habit of speaking
quicker than his instincts for self-preservation.

Without courtesy, he launched into a tirade of invective which
stopped all activity at the HOLMES terminals. ‘What the fuck right
do you have to go rummaging about in Derek Luton’s belongings for?
Not only have you been heavy-handed about it and upset his widow,
you could easily have tainted valuable evidence. You had no right,
no fucking right.’

Morton’s false smile fell from his face instantaneously. His
expression hardened.

‘
And you, DS Christie, have no right, no
fucking
right whatsoever, to talk to
a senior officer like that. I’ve a good mind to slap you on paper,
but from what I gather, discipline enquiries are not unknown to
you.’

‘
I personally don’t give a flying fuck what you do, Mr Morton.
You and your elite squad of wankers are bang out of order. We’ll
probably never know what damage you’ve done. What the hell were you
looking for that was so important anyway?’

Gallagher, the DI, who had silently witnessed the exchange,
cut in. ‘I can answer that, boss. After all, it was me who went to
the house with DC Robson here. We thought he’d gone home with some
important documents that we needed for this investigation. Some
house-to-house logs he’d been doing.’

‘
House-to-house logs?’ said Henry incredulously. ‘What the
hell was he doing on house-to-house? That’s for
numpties!’

‘
He was assigned to my murder squad, and how I use my officers
is my business, not yours,’ Morton said stiffly. ‘Now, Henry,’ he
went on placatingly, ‘if we’ve trodden on your toes, we apologise,
but we needed to find what he had. We did it carefully and with
consideration and compassion for Mrs Luton’s feelings. There’s no
chance we spoiled any evidence and if you feel Craig and Siobhan
here were heavy-handed, I’ll go round and see Mrs Luton and
apologise. How’s that?’

Shut up Henry, he told himself. Take a breath. Count to ten.
This man’s a Chief Super. He can knee-cap you if he
wants.

‘
All right,’ Henry accepted. ‘Did you find the
logs?’

‘
No,’ said Gallagher. ‘We’ll simply have to revisit all those
homes again.’

‘
Unlucky,’ Henry could not resist saying.

There was a moment of strained silence. Gallagher’s eyes
narrowed slightly as he weighed Henry up.

The smile that was originally on Morton’s face reappeared. To
his two officers he said, ‘Leave us,’ and flicked them away with a
wave of his hand. Gallagher nodded. He picked up a pile of papers,
his eyes never leaving Henry’s. Siobhan smiled nicely at him. Then
they both went.

The two HOLMES operators resumed their tasks.

‘
Now then Henry,’ said Morton. ‘Come and sit over
here.’

He guided Henry to two chairs next to a table on which was a
coffee filtering machine. Henry smelled the rich aroma of a newly
brewed pot and his body demanded a cup. Fortunately Morton poured
one for him. He handed him the cup and both men sat
down.

‘
I’ll come straight to the point, lad. As you know, life goes
on in this job of ours. When a vacancy arises, it gets filled,
however it occurred. And sadly we now have a vacancy on this
squad.’

‘
You mean Geoff Driffield - your guy in the
newsagents?’

Morton nodded. ‘We need people of a high calibre, as you well
know. We have an enviable reputation of crime-busting to maintain
and only the best will do for us.’

He regarded Henry with meaning.

‘
You mean me?’

Morton nodded. ‘You fit the bill. I want you on the
squad.’

Chapter Thirteen

A certain club in Manchester city centre on the periphery of
China Town played host to John Rider that evening. He arrived
shortly after eleven and established himself in a position at the
bar which gave him an unobstructed view of everyone entering and
leaving. He ordered a pint of Boddington’s bitter as a gesture to
Manchester, and after a long satisfying swig, began to sip it
slowly.

The whole place was a dive. An unprepossessing doorway at
street level, which could easily be missed, led down a tight set of
steps into the foyer. The cashier was in a booth protected by
armoured glass and two bouncers stood nearby - dinner-jacketed,
bow-tied, black-shoed, fingers interlocked at groin level, thumbs
circling.

The admission was five pounds - cheap for Manchester - the
facilities limited and the drinks expensive. They were served from
a three-sided bar. The dance floor was minute, or intimate
depending on your point of view, and music pounded down from
speakers suspended precariously from the ceiling. The disco lights
ensured it was difficult to see the fixtures and fittings, which
were in poor condition. Carpets were tatty, walls
peeling.

Just like Rider’s own club, money needed to be
spent.

But unlike Rider’s, the place was packed with
punters.

Rider saw her arrive. Toni Thomas.

She was stunning. Long blonde hair, beautifully made-up face,
off-the-shoulder strapless dress in glistening blue which stopped
just below decency to reveal long shapely legs in silver stockings.
The front of the dress plunged into a cleavage to be proud
of.

She came in and drifted around the place like a goddess. All
eyes followed her progress. She waved with soft gestures,
acknowledged looks with pert smiles, some flirting, dainty
laughter.

She was beautiful.

Rider almost fell for her there and then.

Toni Thomas, the person who in the last fifteen years had been
Munrow’s accountant and who Rider believed had kept some of his
businesses going for him whilst he was inside. The legitimate ones,
that is the off-licence and the two launderettes. The person who
might know where Munrow was to be found.

Because Rider wanted to pay him a visit.

He watched her smooch onto the dance floor with a man. The
music had turned slow and sensuous. She unashamedly rubbed her
genital area up and down the man’s thigh, kissed him, touched his
backside and squeezed his balls. His face was a picture of
ecstasy.

When the music went up-tempo they came off the floor hand in
hand, then parted company.

Toni went towards the toilets, straight past Rider without
noticing him.

He put his glass down, slid off the bar stool and pushed his
painful way through everyone to the Gents.

The toilets were apparently empty.

They were grim and unsanitary. The urinals were cracked and
germ-laden. The cubicles looked ready to collapse like a house of
cards. The stench hit Rider’s nostrils. His face curled up in
disgust.

Only one of the cubicles had the door closed.

Rider crept softly along the tiled floor, stopping outside the
cubicle. He could hear rustling inside and some softly spoken
whispers.

Two voices. Toni was not alone.

Rider laid a hand on the door and tested it gently.
Locked.

For a moment he hesitated and thought about his actions.
Something he would not have done ten years earlier.

He knew the soft approach would be useless. The only time for
questions would be when Toni’s head was being forced down the
U-bend of the toilet and she was almost drowning in shit. Violence
was the only method these people knew how to respond to. The quiet
word, the exchange of pleasantries, was alien to them. Seen as
spineless. But to have your head rammed down a bog, boy, they
really understood and responded to that.

Rider nearly turned away and went home to his poxy little
bedsits and his dreams of a big-time strip club. That’s where he
knew he should be, where he felt comfortable. This world wasn’t his
any more. He’d grown out of it.

Then he steeled himself and tried to forget the pain his body
was still experiencing.

He was going to do it.

Shuffling back a few paces, he kicked the cubicle door open.
It flew back with hardly any resistance and revealed the sordid
tableau beyond.

Toni was kneeling in front of a man who was sitting on the
toilet, his trousers down around his ankles. It was a different guy
to the one on the dance floor. His hard cock was three-quarters out
of sight in Toni’s mouth. Very quick work. Must have been a
pre-arranged tryst.