‘What does that mean?’
‘I get the stuff, your little landlady goes free… as for you, dunno yet.’ Barlow smirked as Henry looked at Melanie, still in death, but the blood from the terrible wound in her head still collecting and running across the kitchen floor to join up with the coagulating blood of her friend to form a lake.
‘Let’s get on with it,’ Henry said.
EIGHTEEN
They were in the pool car, Henry driving, Barlow sitting alongside, his body turned slightly towards Henry, the revolver pointed at Henry’s left hip. Henry’s mouth was clamped tightly shut as he steered the vehicle, as per Barlow’s directions, towards the M55 motorway.
‘Now, you drive sensibly, don’t do anything rash, keep to the speed limit, don’t draw attention to us, because if you do, she’s dead — and then you are, too. Got that?’
Henry nodded, re-gripped the steering wheel with his sweaty hands, controlling the urge to back-hand Barlow.
‘Good man. OK — M55, then M6 north, off at junction 33, drive up the A6 into Lancaster, pull in at the nick, then we do the business and after that, who knows? But no shenanigans or I’ll… well, you know, don’t you?’
Henry sped on to the M55, heading east out of Blackpool.
The Mercedes with Alison in it had shot away from the front of the house as Henry and Barlow got into Henry’s transport, but as he drove onto the motorway, Henry saw it was behind them.
‘And just to confirm matters,’ Barlow said, ‘just drive along in the inside lane at about fifty for a while.’
Henry did that and the Mercedes pulled out from behind into the middle lane and drew level with them. Henry glanced to his right, saw the profile of the driver, then the Mercedes accelerated slightly so it was a nose ahead of the pool car and for a few seconds the man in the back seat held Alison’s face up to the window again, squashing it against the glass.
Then the Mercedes decelerated and dropped back into a following position.
‘Now you can achieve the national speed limit, seventy,’ Barlow said.
Henry took the car up to this speed, seeing the blue smoke trail behind. Waves pounded through him, his skull doing a dull thu-dud, his vision seeming to have contracted into a tunnel. He did not dare to even glance at Barlow, because if he did, he knew he would lose it and probably kill them both in the process. The by-product of this would be to ensure that Alison also died.
He had to keep himself in check. Do as they said. Bottle his rage. Use his brain and figure a way out.
First thing: get a grip.
With this in mind, he told his body to relax, take it down a notch. Stop the beating heart that felt like an alien trying to explode out of his chest, get rid of the awful noises in his head.
There was at least a half-hour journey ahead. Use that to his advantage, and learn what this was all about.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t even want to get involved in Jennifer Sunderland’s death. As far as I was concerned it was a job for the uniform branch, not FMIT.’
‘So why did you?’
‘I was asked to attend and then I got interested… and even up to the point of getting her to the mortuary, I wasn’t that interested. It was just a drowning, f’God’s sake. If those guys hadn’t shown up, you’d still be in charge of it.’
Barlow gave a dismissive, ‘Phtt.’ Then said, ‘Two fuckin’ hot heads.’
‘So you know them?’
‘Course, I do… well, knew them until you came along and that Flynn guy. Thing was,’ Barlow said, as though it was painful to speak, ‘if I’d gone to the mortuary instead of you, none of this would have happened. We’d all be happy pigs in shit — but because you wanted to maintain a chain of evidence, that meant I couldn’t go through her belongings. I didn’t get a chance at the scene of the drowning — too many people around — and I didn’t get a chance at the mortuary and those guys were getting jumpy and I couldn’t stop ’em, silly twats! I told ’em not to, but I’m not great at speaking in Russian.’
They had reached the left-hand fork for the M6 North. Henry crossed the lanes, the Mercedes two hundred metres behind. Henry glanced in his rear-view mirror, thought about what suffering Alison must be enduring in that car and again, a surge of anger passed through him.
‘And they didn’t find anything, of course,’ Henry said, ‘because there was nothing to be found.’
‘Exactly… and there was every chance it was lost in the river anyway, but you have to cover all the bases…’
‘Which is why they visited Flynn.’
‘Yup. I learned he had a chequered history — suspected of thieving — so there was every chance he might have helped himself to some of her property, even though he was the hero of the moment. Had to be done.’
‘He’s anything but a thief,’ Henry said, surprising himself.
‘Well, we know that now, don’t we?’
‘What’s recorded on the phone?’ Henry asked.
Barlow considered this question for a while, then said, ‘Ever heard of happy slapping?’
‘Uh — yeah. Kids, usually, videoing assaults.’
‘Think a step up. Think happy killing.’ A look then came over him and he turned square on to Henry and held the gun up to his head. ‘And you do not know how happy I’d be to kill you, Henry, you meddling fucker.’
‘With the exception of the swear word,’ Henry said, ‘that could be right out of Scooby Doo.’
Barlow clunked the muzzle hard against Henry’s temple. The car swerved slightly but Henry kept control, glad he had riled Barlow, but not wanting to push it too far.
‘Who did you kill?’
‘Someone who didn’t matter.’ Barlow turned to face the front again.
‘Just you?’ Henry probed.
Barlow looked at him. ‘Time to shut up, I think.’
‘Was that someone who didn’t matter a prostitute?’ Henry ventured.
Barlow’s head moved slowly around and he glared at Henry. ‘Just drive,’ he said, and placed the gun against Henry’s thigh, finger wrapped around the trigger.
Steve Flynn looked disgustedly at his mobile phone, annoyed by the fact that Henry had hung up on him and then — apparently — switched his bloody phone off. Possibly they hadn’t made as much progress as he thought they had in terms of their ‘relationship’. Although he flinched at the word, he supposed it was a relationship, but not the romantic sort. The prospect of kissing Henry made him queasy.
He was sitting in Alison’s car on the hospital car park, brooding about his snub, wondering what to do, but knowing that he had to speak to Henry as no one else would really do, or understand the significance of what he had to say.
It was always possible that Henry was just too busy to speak to him, but at least he could have had the manners to say that over the phone before hanging up. Flynn realized Henry would be ultra-busy today and that he would not know that Flynn had anything important to say to him, so with that in mind, Flynn composed a text which he sent to Henry, saying simply, ‘ Call Me — Urgent.’ He hoped it didn’t sound too needy. The last thing anyone needed in a relationship was a needy significant ‘other’.
He checked the time, and did a bit of mental maths. He considered taking Alison’s car back across to her in Kendleton, then cadging a lift back to Glasson, but maybe that was too big an ask. If she was busy, it would be an imposition too far.
Then his phone rang. It was from a number he didn’t recognize. He thought Henry must be returning the call. Flynn answered.
‘Steve — it’s Rik Dean here… Yeah, hi… Just wondering if you’ve heard from Henry, or know where he is?’ Rik’s voice was hopeful and he sounded unconcerned.
‘No. I rang him a minute or two ago, but he hung up. Is there a problem?’
‘No… I just can’t get hold of him, thought you might know where he was. He was at Blackpool nick not long ago and I wanted to catch up with him, but he’s gone now. Maybe heading back up to Lancaster after this morning’s fiasco.’