‘Yeah,’ Henry agreed. ‘Let’s take a look and do your best to keep your feet out of the blood if at all possible.’
Henry moved in front of Carly and tiptoed across the foyer, trying his best to place his toes in spaces where the blood hadn’t splashed, which was incredibly difficult. The two firearms officers followed with equal care.
He stopped on the threshold of the snug and, using the knuckle of his right forefinger, pushed the door fully open, revealing a small bar, but no more appetizing than the larger one on the other side. It was smelly and unappealing. The blood smear continued across the carpet, making Henry wonder who was dragging who. He thought it unlikely to be female dragging male. The trail went through a double swinging door at the back of the room marked ‘Kitchen’.
‘What do you think, Henry?’ Bill asked in his ear.
‘Keep your hand on your weapon and don’t shoot me in the back.’ He moved off, walking alongside the trail as it snaked its way across the carpet to the kitchen door. He held his breath as he pushed open the left side of the swinging door, then stepped in, just knowing this was as far as it went. Here would be answers, he thought — and more questions.
‘Hell,’ he said dully at the sight that greeted his eyes.
Behind him, Bill pushed to get a look. Henry heard the breath gush out of his colleague’s lungs. He turned when he heard a further groan to see Carly, whose knees had buckled under her, pirouette away in a faint. Henry lunged for her and managed to get his hands under her arms and ease her to the floor, ensuring she didn’t smack her head on the descent. He left her in a swoon and regarded the tableau in front of him.
A terrible scene. Two people lay sprawled on the floor in a kitchen aisle between a sink unit and a large fridge-freezer. A single-barrelled sawn-off shotgun was discarded next to them and it was that weapon that had caused the damage.
Henry approached carefully, thinking ‘evidence’ all the time, and even though he knew instinctively that this was a tragedy that would go no further than a coroner’s court, it still had to be dealt with as though it were a murder, which in part it probably was.
The first body he came to was that of a male, maybe forty years old, dressed in what had once been a white T-shirt and jeans. There was a massive shotgun wound to his neck, a whole chunk of it as big as an apple having been blown out; there was another horrific wound to his lower abdomen, just above the groin area.
He swallowed and glanced at Bill, who rose from attending the woozy Carly.
‘I don’t know this man,’ Henry said. ‘Could turn out to be Darren Langmead, maybe?’
‘I think Carly knows him.’
Henry stepped carefully past the dead male. ‘I do know this one, though.’
‘Jackie Kippax?’
Henry nodded, a bitter taste in his mouth.
She was a mess, and on the face of it, it was obvious what had happened to her: she had committed suicide.
There was a perfect hole in the soft, fleshy part underneath her chin. Henry knew it would be the exact size of the barrel of the shotgun, which had been held there before being discharged. The shot had entered her at a slight angle, leaving her face virtually intact, or as intact as it could be when the back half of the head had been blown off and was stuck on the ceiling as though a pan of Bolognese had exploded. Henry looked at it and sighed.
More awake than he should have been, Henry sat opposite Angela Cranlow in the deserted canteen at Blackburn police station and handed her a black coffee from the machine. He had worked out that coffee to him was like blood to a vampire — the only thing that kept him going. Their kiss, only a few short hours earlier, was a distant memory, one he was trying to forget completely, pretend it hadn’t happened. Unfortunately, he had to admit that despite her tired eyes and hair scraped dramatically back off her face, his boss looked pretty damned good — even at two in the morning. As though she’d just rolled out of bed, which she had.
He reckoned what she was seeing wasn’t quite so alluring, though.
‘Thanks, Henry. Reckon you’ll ever get to bed again?’
‘I think I’m capable of living without sleep from now on. Sleep’s just a bad habit. All you need is a bit of willpower … and amphets, obviously.’ He swigged his own coffee and winced. ‘Just kidding.’
‘Where are we up to, then?’
Henry took it to mean the investigation into Eddie Daley’s death and the subsequent double deaths of Jackie Kippax and Darren Langmead, erstwhile manager of the Class Act, now closed down for the foreseeable future. He hoped she did not mean him and her.
‘Seems that Jackie believed Langmead was Eddie’s killer and she’s taken the law into her own hands, gone out to challenge him about it before we got the chance to do it properly. A quick PNC inquiry showed that Eddie was the holder of a shotgun certificate, which accounts for her access to the weapon, though I doubt it should have been a sawn-off one.’ He paused. ‘Trying to put it all together isn’t easy, but looking at the scene, it seems she’s gone to see Langmead at the Class Act, they’ve had a discussion which has obviously gone pear-shaped. I’m guessing he probably denied killing Eddie, she disagreed and produced the shotgun and blasted him in the gut. They were upstairs in the living quarters at this point. Probably mortally wounded even at that point, Langmead has managed to do a runner and she’s gone after him and pumped another into his neck in the foyer, which killed him outright. Somehow and, for the moment, for reasons unexplained, she has managed to drag his body all the way into the kitchen then topped herself. How she had the strength and why she dragged him I don’t know. A tragedy on top of a tragedy. But she had nothing to lose, I suppose. She said she was dying of cancer, Eddie had gone and she had nothing left to live for. I’m guessing …’ Henry shrugged uncertainly.
‘All supposition at this stage?’
‘It’s called hypothesis in the world of investigation, ma’am.’
‘Guessing, you mean?’
‘Absolutely. She didn’t trust me to bring in Eddie’s killer, so she did the job herself.’
‘What about the phone call?’
‘Er, well, perhaps she had him bang to rights, admitting everything under the duress of a shotgun, then he went for her, although I did hear a man in the background say “You got it wrong” when she phoned me …’
‘Do you think Langmead killed Eddie?’
Henry leaned back and gazed at the high roof above. ‘I don’t know. I’m not convinced, but it’s something I need to follow up.’
‘You’ve still got a few days left before it all gets handed back to Anger. Use the time constructively.’
‘I will, boss.’
She yawned, covering her mouth and saying, ‘Sorry,’ in a girlish way. ‘I need to get some sleep … got meetings all day from eight … no rest for the wicked … no chance to be wicked, actually.’ She grinned. ‘I’m off. Night.’
She left and Henry was still buzzing. He toyed with his plastic cup, knowing that the journey home would give him time to wind down, but something still nagged at the back of his mind.
He picked up his PR and called Bill Robbins, asking him to ring back on the mobile phone facility on the PR, which he did.
‘Bill, thanks for tonight.’
‘No probs, boss,’ he said laconically.
‘How’s Carly?’
‘Shaken, but OK. Gone home.’
‘Did you fix up the RSPCA for the Hound of the Baskervilles?’
‘Done.’
‘What time’re you finishing?’
‘Round about now … why?’ he enquired cautiously.
‘Fancy a quick peek round at Jackie Kippax’s flat?’
There was a pregnant pause. Then, ‘You authorizing the overtime?’
‘Yeah, why not. See you at the back door of the nick in ten.’
Henry entered the flat using the key found on Jackie’s body. It was a typical council flat, plain, functional, not modern, but quite well looked after by Jackie and Eddie. They seemed to have had everything they needed and although not luxurious, there was a nice suite, TV, DVD and video player/recorder, a computer, a decent CD player and lots of discs. The kitchen was basic and clean. Henry imagined they rubbed along all right, despite the fact he had allegedly ruined their lives all those years before.