He came off the motorway and bore right onto the A6177 Grane Road, which linked Blackburn with the Rossendale Valley.
Less than a mile distant he turned right onto Belthorn Road and drove up towards the village, over the slight rise, then down into a dip before the steep hill that was the main road through the village. To the right was the Dog Inn, but before Henry reached that, he slowed, then stopped. On his right was a narrow tarmac side road and parked across it was a marked police car, one officer on board, controlling all vehicular access.
Two hundred metres down the lane was the location — a factory unit — at which Henry had been asked to attend.
The scene of the crime. Five very evocative words, Henry always thought: the scene of the crime.
At that moment, after a long, fast early morning drive across the county, Henry did not know for certain what he would discover.
What he did believe was that, based on his knowledge of the two unsolved murders FB had given him to investigate, the link between them would be confirmed. But the good thing was that this one wouldn’t be a cold case. Henry was coming in right at the start. New leads and connections would be generated and — based on what he learned over the week — the killer, he was confident, would be caught. Because he was pretty certain who it was.
A shimmer of excitement scuttled through him.
He checked his watch, which read 04:58. Two minutes to five on New Year’s Day. . what could be better, after the week he’d just had, than attending the scene of yet another horrific murder?
Don’t answer that, he thought. .
The two files were substantial and Henry had to cart them out of FB’s office one under each arm, shouldering his way carefully through doors, down steps, eventually emerging at the front of the HQ building and walking across the footpath that dissected the playing field.
He hadn’t completely got his head around how he was going to manage the week ahead, personally or professionally, but he knew that some skilful juggling would have to take place.
What he didn’t expect was to be blindsided by something unexpected — which came in the form of a phone call.
His mobile started to ring as he was halfway from HQ to his office, situated in a refurbished former student accommodation block at the Training Centre. With both files clamped tightly underneath his armpits, he couldn’t shuffle them without dropping either, so he ignored the ringing and carried on across the sports pitch in the gloom of the evening.
The phone continued to ring as he walked, with the accompanying sound of text messages pinging as they landed. Something was going on.
He struggled up to his middle-floor office in a building that seemed to be deserted and dumped the files on his desk, fished out his phone and slid it open: four missed calls, two texts and a voicemail.
He checked who each was from. One from Alison, two from his daughter Leanne, one from his sister, Lisa. The texts were both from Alison and the voice message from Lisa.
With a feeling of dread, Henry started to listen to Lisa’s voice message, knowing it could only be about one thing.
It was one of the fastest drives of his life: Preston to Blackpool. Police headquarters to Blackpool Victoria Hospital, BVH. Twenty minutes.
And then twenty more minutes finding somewhere to park.
And then ten minutes walking from his car to the A amp;E department and another five to find the patient in a curtained cubicle somewhere at the back.
As he drew aside the heavy plastic curtain, his eyes alighted on the frail figure of his mother in the bed, hooked up to various monitors and drips stuck in veins at the back of her bony hands, and on the faces of Lisa and Leanne, his sister and daughter, at the bedside.
Both women turned and gripped him, suddenly in floods of tears.
Henry consoled them, an arm around each, as he looked at his mother, her eyes closed and, he guessed, very close to death.
Something cold and rock solid sank in his chest.
He could have driven down the lane, using his rank, but instead he parked the Audi on the main road, pulled the Chatsworth jacket tight, got out and decided to walk. He grabbed his Maglite torch from the footwell and stuffed a few pairs of latex gloves and shoe covers into his pocket, just a few items from the kit every half-decent detective would carry with him.
As he approached the stationary police car, the officer inside got out wearily. Henry flashed his warrant card, even though the PC recognized him.
‘I’ll let you drive down, if you like, sir,’ he told Henry. ‘There’s plenty of parking outside the unit and quite a few cop cars down there.’
‘Maybe later, when I see what’s what,’ Henry said, ducking under the cordon tape that had also been strung across the entrance to the lane. His mind was already starting to take in the location, trying to assess its importance, and he worked quickly back over the existing murder files as he walked to the scene of what might actually be the fourth murder in the series. And he shook his head at the memory of the past week and all that he had endured. .
THREE
It had been a heart attack that had floored Henry’s ninety-one-year-old mother, Veronica Martha Christie, nee Redwood. Fortunately for her it struck when Lisa, Henry’s somewhat flaky sister, was paying one of her very infrequent visits. (Cruelly, Henry wondered if the fact that Lisa had turned up had been the reason for the attack.)
His mother lived — still fiercely independent at such a great age — in sheltered housing in Bispham, to the north of Blackpool. She had survived a previous heart attack a couple of years before, but it had become obvious to the family that she had started to deteriorate health-wise in the last six months. She was eating less and less, hardly had any energy in her frail body and was approaching, if not death, then at least the time when she would need to be cared for by professionals.
Henry had seen the decline and begun what he knew would be the very delicate process of convincing his mum that a home would be a much better place for her. This did not go down well — she was convinced that ‘a much better place’ meant better off dead. ‘Because I might as well be dead in an old people’s home with all those old codgers about,’ she remonstrated. Henry found that, although she was in physical decline, her mental faculties were still top notch and she refused point blank to move. She had access to a warden if necessary and her main meal of the day was delivered by a charity, although it often remained uneaten.
The other problem for Henry was the commitment needed from his family to look after her — a family that now consisted only of himself and Lisa. It didn’t help that his mother’s decline had coincided with Henry having to investigate the Joe Speakman scenario which took up so much of his time, nor was it helpful that Lisa cringed at the thought of spending too much time with their mother.
‘I’m not cut out for that sort of thing,’ she grimaced when Henry tackled her. ‘Y’know, cleaning up pots with food dried onto them and helping an old biddy get to the loo.’ She shivered repulsively at the prospect.
‘She’s your mum, not an old biddy,’ Henry said, trying to keep his cool. At the time he was trying to balance the investigation, plus his newish relationship with Alison that had suffered after her assault, and he felt like he was a daddy-long-legs having its limbs pulled off. It was exhausting for him, even though Alison was wonderful and understanding about it all. And yet. . he thought the cracks were starting to appear.
It was also hard to get his daughters involved. Leanne, the younger, was too busy flitting from man to man and Jenny lived in Bristol with her husband.
Henry was struggling.
‘I know she’s my mum,’ Lisa whined, ‘but things aren’t going well with Rik. .’
‘You’re going to get freakin’ married, aren’t you?’ Henry exploded.