‘They’re good people,’ Donaldson said.
Henry regarded his old friend, but then his attention was redirected when he heard the warning beep-beep of a vehicle reversing up the back alley. It was an ambulance.
‘For me?’ Henry asked, squinting through his one good eye.
‘No, for the guy I shot.’
‘I assumed he was dead.’
‘He’s not well, but he’s conscious and we need to have speaks with him urgently.’
Two paramedics in green overalls dropped out of the ambulance and armed with their kits and a fold-away stretcher, they dashed into the house. It wasn’t long before they reappeared with a body on the stretcher, completely covered as though it was a corpse. They rushed past Henry and Donaldson and slid the stretcher into the ambulance. One jumped in with it, the other clambered back behind the wheel.
‘Should I get in?’ Henry asked.
‘Nah — you come with me … you’re in this up to your neck and I think we can use you.’
Henry sat dumbly in the passenger seat of his Rover 75 whilst Karl Donaldson drove through the crowded streets of Blackburn. Henry’s face was scrunched up in an expression of unhappiness, the posture of his body matching it.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
Henry had known Karl Donaldson for about ten years. They had first encountered each other when Donaldson, then an FBI field agent, had been investigating US-related mob activity in the north-west of England. That initial link-up had resulted in their paths crossing several times more over the next few years, both professionally and personally, and they became good friends. Donaldson even married an ex-Lancashire policewoman and settled just outside London, enabling him to commute into the city where he’d landed a job as an FBI legal attache based in the American embassy. His role entailed a lot of liaison work with police forces across Europe.
Over the years, Henry had glimpsed a different side of Donaldson. He came across as a big, handsome, friendly guy who could charm his way into a mother superior’s panties if he so wished, but underneath that veneer Henry had seen a band of ruthlessness a mile wide.
His appearance today, whilst welcome under the circumstances, was also a shock and Henry was somewhat mystified … but hoped for some answers soon.
Donaldson handled Henry’s car easily. He had driven his own Jeep on British roads for over ten years and was comfortable with traffic. He had ordered Henry to get into the passenger seat, continually reassuring him about the crime scene and that it would be looked after and that it would all be taken care of, and after taking his keys, had settled behind the wheel and set off with a squeal of rubber. He headed swiftly back down Whalley Range out of town, anxiously checking the rear-view mirror until, at last, a smile crossed his face and he relaxed.
Curious, Henry glanced down at his door mirror and, with some shock, saw that the ambulance that had set off a couple of minutes before them was behind, no lights flashing.
Henry uttered, perplexed, ‘Is that the same ambulance?’
‘You’ll see … now just relax, H, I’ll explain soon.’
‘Am I being abducted?’
Donaldson laughed. ‘So I could have my wicked way with you? Don’t kid yourself.’
As Henry adjusted his position to get more comfortable, he grunted in pain. He put a finger in his mouth and touched a tooth, which waggled loosely. Then he groaned again for good measure.
Donaldson accelerated through an amber light, straight across from Whalley Range into Plane Street, then Plane Tree Road and sharp right on to Robinson Street.
‘How the hell d’you know your way around Blackburn?’
‘Sat nav.’
‘And why is that ambulance still behind us? Why hasn’t it gone to the hospital?’
‘Trust me, I’m an FBI agent.’
Henry waggled his tooth again. It sent a shock of exquisite pain through his face.
Donaldson dropped down on to Philips Road and turned left into an area that was mainly industrial estates within easy reach of the M65. They were not far from Blackburn police station and Henry assumed this was their destination.
Assumed wrong.
There were lights at the junction of Philips Road and Whitebirk Drive — a dual carriageway, also known as the arterial road which curved around the north-west perimeter of Blackburn, hence the name. To reach the police station, Donaldson should have turned right. Instead, he drove straight across the lights on to Whitebirk industrial estate, a sprawling conglomeration of business units of all shapes and sizes, which seemed to expand continually into the hillside beyond. Henry had always known it to be there. It was probably one of Blackburn’s oldest industrial estates, post-cotton.
Henry could still see the ambulance in the wing mirror, following them.
Donaldson muttered something. Henry turned to him to ask, ‘What?’ but realized the American was talking into a tiny radio mike. To Henry, he said, ‘Nearly there, pal.’
‘Nearly where?’
‘There,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Actually, I could get into deep shit for bringing you here and letting you see where “there” is. But because I trust you, I’m willing to take a chance …’
‘Eh?’ Obviously Henry’s brain had been addled from the beating he’d just taken, compounded by the horrendous bloodbath. He thought he might have damaged something up there, because this was making no sense to him.
Donaldson drove to the far reaches of the industrial estate, which got grottier and grottier the further they went. He steered down a cul-de-sac and then turned in through some high steel gates, topped with barbed wire, and drove through an open shutter door into a cavernous industrial unit which was surrounded by a ten-foot-high steel mesh fence. The ambulance tailgated them in and the shutter door started to close as soon as the vehicles stopped moving.
The unit was similar to thousands of others: breeze-block built up to about ten feet, then the remainder constructed of corrugated steel walls and roof. There were no windows and illumination was provided by banks of strip-lighting hanging from the roof.
The floor was made of poured concrete and on it were parked many vehicles. Henry recognized Donaldson’s Jeep and amongst the others was a Royal Mail van, a United Utilities transit van and a Tesco home delivery box van; there were also several non-descript cars of a variety of makes and a liveried Lancashire Constabulary traffic car.
And the ambulance.
Donaldson eased his big frame out of Henry’s car and leaned on the roof, looking across at his bemused friend, who had also got out and was staring around the unit with a little-boy-lost expression.
‘Welcome to Homeland Security, Blackburn Branch,’ Donaldson said, with a wide sweep of his arms.
Henry nodded, still unable to take it in, but slowly beginning to slot things together.
He watched the paramedics pull the stretchered casualty out of the ambulance and carry him across to a door in one corner of the unit. With a bit of contortion, they managed to manoeuvre through without tipping him off.
‘That’s Bob and Bob,’ Donaldson explained for Henry’s benefit. ‘American Special Forces, both highly trained medics.’
‘Of course they are,’ Henry said, as if seeing two Delta Force soldiers dressed up as Lancashire Ambulance Service paramedics, carrying a man who had been shot on a stretcher between them, across the floor of an industrial unit on the edge of Blackburn, was the most normal thing in the world.
Henry’s legs went weak.
Donaldson saw him sag. He rushed round to him, held him up under the armpit and led him across the unit. ‘There won’t be too much time for explanation,’ he said. ‘I’ll just get you cleaned up, get some painkillers down you and then we’ll try to keep the American Secretary of State alive … how does that sound?’
‘Just doody,’ Henry said, using an expression bandied about by his youngest daughter Leanne, which seemed entirely appropriate for the situation.