‘Hope you don’t mind, boss,’ he said. ‘We did a quick drive through on the way down from Fishmoor. Thought you’d appreciate one, too.’
‘No probs.’ Henry gratefully accepted the drink. He knew it all looked pretty slack, drinking like this in the eye of the public, but he was gagging after his sandwich and his adrenaline-fuelled dash across the county which had dried him up like a kipper. He broke back the seal on the lid and took a gulp, burning his mouth.
‘So, no sign of life up at the flat?’
‘Nothing, boss.’
‘Isn’t this place usually open by now?’ He pointed at the Class Act.
‘Too early,’ the WPC said. She was a local officer and Bill had been teamed up with her for the night. ‘Doesn’t usually open until eleven thirty-ish.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Henry said, realizing. ‘Of course, silly me.’
‘You think this Kippax woman might be in here?’ Bill asked.
Henry shrugged. He had some more coffee, which tasted amazingly good. ‘It’s something we were going to look into tomorrow as there might be some connection with the people who run this place and Eddie Daley’s murder … his girlfriend, Jackie Kippax, thought they might have some grudge against him, but we haven’t had the chance to make that inquiry yet.’
‘I take it you know who owns the place now?’ the WPC asked rhetorically.
‘I take it you do.’
‘Johnny Strongitharm.’
‘Really!’ Henry knew Strongitharm by reputation, though he’d never had any dealings with the guy. Strongitharm, an appropriately named crim from Blackburn, was one of a dying breed of violent armed robbers who specialized in money on the move. Security vans, in other words. It was estimated he had made millions from highway robbery over the years and Henry recalled several unsuccessful crime squad operations against him. He was finally convicted of a very brutal robbery-gone-wrong about ten years before at a Royal Mail sorting office when a security guard was maimed when a shotgun blew off part of his leg. A big NCIS investigation had finally nailed Johnny, but not the money, some?600,000. ‘I thought he was still inside,’ Henry said.
‘Released last year and bunked off to Spain, but not before buying this shit-hole for some reason,’ the WPC said.
‘A bolt hole,’ Henry suggested. ‘Allows him to keep tabs on comings and goings in town.’
‘Maybe … anyway, he owns it, but someone else manages it.’
‘That someone is?’
‘Guy called Darren Langmead.’
‘Dear me, bad to worse,’ Henry exclaimed. He also knew of Langmead, a vicious low-life enforcer and tax collector who revelled in breaking people’s fingers.
‘The licence is in someone else’s name, of course,’ she explained. ‘Some clean-sheeted guy called Jones, who is never there. Way of the world,’ she shrugged. ‘That’s how they keep the licence.’
‘Right, OK,’ Henry breathed, taking in these facts and not being surprised that Langmead could well have been embezzling from a boss who lived two thousand miles away, whatever his ruthless rep might be. He looked across at the club. ‘Let’s check it out.’
The three of them crossed Mincing Lane and spent some time at the front door, getting no response from inside and finding the door well secured, so they entered the narrow, cobbled alley running down the right side of the club. They were hit by the immediate stench of rotting food from several overfilled wheelie bins and plastic bin bags which had burst, their contents scattered by the indigenous wildlife — cats, dogs, rats and tramps. It wasn’t easy to tell what was being stepped on and Henry tried not to think about it as he dropped his coffee cup on to a pile of trash.
They reached a door in a wall surrounding the rear yard of the club. Henry tried the handle, but it was locked.
‘I have an idea,’ the WPC announced, looking fairly repulsed by her present situation. ‘Why don’t I go and ring the bell again? And I’ll see if comms can get hold of a key holder. You boys have fun.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned on her heels and picked her way carefully back down the alley.
‘She should be a sergeant,’ Henry sniffed.
‘She will be,’ Bill sniffed, too.
Henry tried the handle once more, confirming it was indeed locked. He put his shoulder to it, but it didn’t budge. Taking a step back he surveyed the height of the wall and wondered if he was capable of scaling all seven feet of it. He thought he could, but what bothered him was what might be on top of it, such as glass shards embedded in concrete or razor wire, and what might be lurking on the other side, such as something with sharp fangs, a bad attitude and hunger pangs.
He and Bill exchanged glances in the dark.
‘Is there anything to say she’s actually in there?’ Bill asked hopefully.
‘Nothing, a hunch, could be a million miles off the mark … but it needs to be checked out. Once we’ve eliminated this, we’ll try elsewhere.’
‘Better get over, then.’
‘It’s what we like doing best.’
Henry jumped at the wall, his fingers gripping the top of it, and found a purchase for his left foot on the door handle and, shakily, eased himself up so his elbows were on top of the wall and his head high enough to peer over.
‘No broken glass, anyway … doesn’t seem to be any wildlife in the yard, just junk and barrels.’
He scrambled on to the wall and perched there, one leg on either side, letting his eyes adjust themselves to the shadows beyond. He could see the backdoor of the Class Act reached by half a dozen steps. It looked like a reasonably easy door to break down, if necessary. He swung his legs over and dropped clumsily into the yard, jarring his knees, causing his right one to give unexpectedly, though he managed to remain upright, stumbling slightly.
Bill was with him moments later, landing heavily with all his kit on.
The yard was quite large and, as Henry had seen, full of discarded waste, wheelie bins, barrels and crates, all pretty typical of the back of a poorly managed licensed premises.
They walked towards the backdoor, stepping in and out of the mess, until they reached the foot of the steps — when Henry noticed something to his left, pushed up against the wall. As he realized what it was, he gulped and tapped Bill and at the same time thought he heard something behind which could’ve been a low, guttural growl.
He froze. ‘That’s a kennel,’ he hissed.
‘Yep,’ said Bill, also having seen it.
‘Did you hear what I heard?’
‘Yep.’ Bill was never the most chatty of people.
They rotated slowly and in the shadow between two wheelie bins stood a beast which had cunningly allowed them into its lair, stalked and trapped them. It stepped forwards, revealing itself, its powerful head and shoulders protruding from the darkness.
‘Shit.’ Henry swallowed, experiencing fear like nothing before. A kind of desolate emptiness, a panic of epic proportions.
‘Pit bull,’ breathed Bill quietly. His right hand moved slowly to his holster.
‘If you shoot it, it’ll get mad,’ Henry said seriously.
‘It already looks pretty mad.’
The dog took a few more steps and became clearly visible to the two officers. It was a magnificent creature, even Henry had to grudgingly admit, scared as he was and ambivalent towards canines in general. Basically they did nothing for him. He could see no further than eating, shitting and biting and costing money, which is why he had always declined his daughters’ pleas for one.
This animal looked the business. A good twenty-two inches high, probably weighing in about fifty-five pounds, all of it rippling muscle, under a thick, short coat of shiny hair, the colour of which could not be made out in the light available, but was probably a light brown. On top of that, there must also have been a brain inside its thick skull which was intelligent enough to allow two idiots to climb into its den without letting them know it was waiting with bared teeth.