‘What fiasco would that be?’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ Rik said quickly. Flynn got the impression Rik thought he’d blabbed too much. ‘If you hear from him, tell him to contact me, will you?’
‘Vice versa,’ Flynn said and hung up. Unable to contact Henry, he thought. Probably not an uncommon occurrence. And what was the fiasco, he wondered. Had Henry cocked up in some way? Again, probably not an uncommon occurrence, he chuckled.
Then he looked up and saw a classic car drive past him — a silver-blue E-type Jaguar. He watched it turn into the car park and drive to the far end, then carry on through the ‘Access Only’ signs, which he knew led down to the mortuary.
He’d never seen the car before, but knew the driver. He started up Alison’s car and sped after the E-type, which had driven on to the mortuary staff only car park and stopped, cheekily straddling two parking bays. Flynn pulled up alongside, but not too close for comfort, and was out before Professor Baines had even climbed out of the E-type.
Flynn met him at the driver’s door.
Baines looked at him critically, no recognition in his eyes. ‘Can I help you?’ he said cautiously.
Flynn knew Baines from the time he’d been a cop. He’d carried out the post-mortems of a couple of drug-dealers Flynn had once been investigating, when they fell foul of a ruthless rival gang from Merseyside and ended up dead on the Lancashire-Liverpool border. Flynn had been involved in the subsequent investigation and one of his tasks had been to attend the PMs. He had immediately recognized Baines when he drove past and knew he was involved with Jennifer Sunderland as Henry had talked about him, and mentioned his teeth fetish.
‘You remember me?’ Flynn asked.
Baines peered more closely. ‘Didn’t you leave the police in, um, slightly nooky circumstances?’
‘I’ll have that.’
‘What can I do for you?’ Baines reached into his car and heaved out his overweight medical bag.
‘You might know I’ve been involved in, er, some stuff that’s been going on recently. Henry Christie might have mentioned my name.’
‘He has and I recall you were the person who pulled the drowned lady out of the river. Plus being involved in two more deaths, both of which I will be looking into later today,’ Baines said haughtily, referring to the post-mortems he would be carrying out on two dead Russians. ‘Neither pleasant… I hope you haven’t come to kill me,’ Baines said. ‘Or to try to influence the result of the examinations.’
Flynn could have taken offence at that, but gave a short laugh instead. ‘Neither,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to have a quick look at this, if you have a moment.’ He held up the clear plastic money bag containing the tooth he had found earlier.
Baines looked at it laid out on the palm of his right hand. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
They drove in silence for the next five minutes until the service station at Forton, south of Lancaster, came into view with its huge saucer-shaped building that was a milestone for all travellers heading north or south.
Henry didn’t like the silence because he learned nothing from it, other than Barlow emitted body odour that made his nose twitch. A night in the cells.
‘What’s with the Range Rovers?’ he tried, working on the premise that theft of vehicles was a bit easier to chat about than killing.
Barlow looked at him and sighed. ‘You want to know everything, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘That why you’re such a good jack — this need to know?’
‘It probably helps… but I’m not that good a jack, it’s just that the other side are piss-poor and always drop themselves in it or do something silly because they think they can get away with anything. I haven’t met a crim yet who thought he wouldn’t get away with it — have you?’ he asked pointedly.
Barlow sniggered. ‘No, guess not.’ He had missed Henry’s point.
‘Not even you,’ Henry said, driving it home. He glanced sideways and saw a dark look come over Barlow’s face. Riled again, Henry thought, very touchy. ‘So yes,’ he said quickly, ‘I do want to know everything.’
Barlow started to brood, then said, ‘You get involved in things, you know… things you shouldn’t, then you start liking what it brings. You do a favour, it gets returned, then you find yourself in debt and it just spirals and all the time you think, “I can handle this” — and at the time, you can.’
Henry screwed his face up at this. ‘Meaning?’ he asked.
But Barlow had gone silent again. ‘Next turn off,’ he said after a pause.
Baines led Flynn through to the mortuary office, where he took off his jacket and put a clean apron on over his shirt and trousers. Flynn had been to this mortuary occasionally, but it was just like all the others he’d had to visit in his time as a cop. Places best avoided.
‘Can you handle seeing dead bodies?’ Baines asked him. ‘If not, stay here. If you think you can — and I don’t want to have to deal with any silly fainting, y’know? — come with me.’ Flynn just looked at him. ‘Here,’ Baines said, handing him a surgical mask, ‘you have to put this on. But don’t touch anything.’
Baines started to fit his own mask and gloves and Flynn pulled on the one he had been given. He followed Baines out of the office and into the mortuary, over to the refrigeration unit. He glanced into the examination room and saw another pathologist at work on a dead body, just extracting a heart between his two hands like taking a delicate present out of a box.
Flynn clasped his hands behind his back and watched as Baines opened one of the chiller doors and drew out the tray on which was the muslin-wrapped body of the young unidentified female, Henry Christie’s cold case. Baines stood at one side of the drawer, Flynn the opposite.
As Baines unwrapped the shroud from around the girl’s head, Flynn drew a breath as he saw the horrific injuries that the girl had sustained. Henry had described them to him when they were on their way to have a look at the woodland area in which her body had been discovered. Henry’s understated description was nowhere near as awful as the reality. And once more Flynn’s respect for Henry as a detective notched up a few degrees, realizing that he had to deal with this kind of thing, day in, day out. The result of another person losing it and beating the life out of another for little or no reason, usually.
He wanted to exclaim something, but kept his mouth closed.
Baines tilted the girl’s battered head back and opened her mouth, then took the tooth Flynn had found. He spent a couple of minutes with his eyes right up to her mouth cavity, fiddling with the tooth, making odd, thoughtful noises, reminding Flynn of someone building a minute scale model.
Then he raised his eyes to Flynn over his mask and stood up slowly. He pulled down his mask, exposing his mouth. ‘This is one of her missing teeth,’ he stated. ‘Obviously I will have to do more work to confirm it one hundred per cent, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s teeth.’
Rik Dean cradled his desk phone and sat back. Not knowing where Henry was did not bother him too much; it was just frustrating because he needed to ask him things about the investigation and where it was going from here. Major things had happened with the release of the two prisoners and he had to know what was on Henry’s mind and how this was all going to be pulled back.
Rik’s PR was standing on his blotter, the volume turned down, a lot of morning chatter going on in Blackpool section, most of it mundane jobs. A minor car accident, a town-centre break in, some criminal damage, nothing really for him as a DI, other than how the crimes would affect the figures overall, which were skyrocketing.
Then the comms operator came on with an urgent tone to her voice asking for patrols to attend an address in Bispham where a neighbour had, apparently, discovered the bodies of two women — one of them the next-door neighbour — in the kitchen and lots of blood.
Two mobile patrols shouted up their attendance immediately. Sounded like a good, juicy job, and there was always competition to get to an incident like this first.