Rik perked up, grabbed his PR and said into it, ‘DI Dean here — can you repeat the address. I can attend, also.’
The comms operator thanked him and as she repeated the address for him, he was already on his way out of his office, keen for something to do. It was only as he walked down the steps towards the police garage that the address rang a very loud claxon for him.
‘Shit,’ he said — and started to run.
They hit traffic on the A6 north into Lancaster, slowing the journey down to a crawl. The Mercedes was two cars behind. Henry glanced in the mirror, keeping tabs on it, but trying not to think about Alison, dragged into this through no fault of her own.
‘How’s this going to work?’ Henry probed.
‘What, exactly?’
‘Are you going to let me walk into Lancaster nick and just get the property from the safe?’
‘No — I’ll be right by your side, Henry, then you won’t be tempted.’
‘OK,’ Henry said, trying to visualize the process. ‘Is the happy killing video of you?’ he threw in.
‘Me and others.’
‘Others being Harry Sunderland?’ Henry guessed. ‘I presume Jennifer Sunderland found it… a wife going through a husband’s phone, sort of thing? Is that why Harry threw her into the river?’
Barlow snorted. ‘Actually he didn’t throw her into the river, but that’s another story. And yeah, she found the phone, had a fuckin’ crisis and wanted to tell the cops.’
‘And it wasn’t as though she could tell you, is it?’ Henry said. ‘Does it show you and him kicking the girl to death? Stomping on her face? Half-strangling her? Was it your tie?’ He was relentless as he put all this together. ‘What the hell had she done to deserve that?’
‘Nothing really, but I enjoyed it, fuck did I enjoy it.’ Barlow’s eyes glazed over as he recalled the killing. ‘We all did.’
Henry felt sick.
Rik drove the CID car through the streets of Blackpool like a maniac and arrived at the Bispham address in minutes, before even the second of the two mobile patrols who had called up. One double-crewed car was there already, pulled up outside the house. A uniformed constable rushed to him, his face ashen.
‘What’ve we got?’ Rik asked, climbing quickly out of the car and walking with the officer.
‘It’s not nice. Two women, one the owner of the house, don’t know who the other is yet. Looks like they’ve both been shot in the head.’
‘Let’s see,’ Rik said. The officer led him to the front door and paused. ‘We’ve been in and out through this door and down the hallway only,’ he explained to Rik. ‘That’s as far as we’ve gone. Just looked into the kitchen and not in any of the other rooms yet.’ He was saying this because he was thinking of scene preservation.
‘Good.’ Rik followed him inside. At the kitchen door, the PC stood aside and allowed Rik to look in. He caught his breath as he saw the bodies and the blood, lots of blood from terrible head wounds sustained by both women, almost now covering the kitchen floor. His eyes roved expertly around the room, just a normal, well-equipped kitchen. Nice, but nothing special. Except for the death it now hosted.
Then he saw something on the tiled floor by the sink unit. A white laminated card, maybe an inch and a half wide, three inches long. And even from where he stood at the kitchen door, Rik could see the Lancashire Constabulary crest on it.
Although wary of spoiling any evidence, Rik stepped across the first body, tiptoeing on tiled areas free from blood, and picked up the card.
It was Henry Christie’s police warrant card.
NINETEEN
They crawled along the A6 into Lancaster, a city where traffic probably moved even more slowly than London.
‘I don’t want you to park on the police station car park,’ Barlow said. ‘Pull up on Marton Street, outside the nick, and we’ll use the public entrance for a quick in and out. The inspector’s office is just on the corridor behind the enquiry desk and that’s where the safe is. We walk in, acting all natural, you get the inspector to open up, you sign the property out, then we leave. Seriously, Henry, we’re in and out in five minutes and if you do or say anything ridiculous, she will die — that’s the pay-off for any stupidity. Do I make myself clear?’
Henry shrugged as the car hit the roundabout at the southern tip of the city — known as Pointer Island — and then headed down South Road into Lancaster proper. He took the offside lane at the traffic lights outside the hospital, then moved across again to bear right into Penny Street then first right on to Marton Street, at the end of which stood the crumbling nick that was Lancaster Police station, not the best-looking building in the world and continually in need of refurbishment.
Access to the public enquiry office was via steps and a ramp off the street and although there were double yellow lines, Henry parked up as instructed. In the rear-view mirror he saw the Mercedes pull in fifty metres behind.
‘What if we get a ticket? The traffic wardens are pretty keen around here,’ Henry said.
‘Getting a parking ticket is the least of your worries, Henry,’ Barlow said. ‘What we do is go in and tell the public enquiry assistant behind the counter that the car’s staying here for five minutes, just so she knows, and then we go in and do the business.’
‘OK — get out and let’s go do.’ He slid the gun into his jacket pocket, keeping hold of it with his right hand.
‘Don’t blow your foot off,’ Henry said. ‘No, sorry — please blow your foot off.’
Barlow shook his head at Henry and said, ‘Move, funny guy.’
Henry got out and the two men entered the station. There was no one in the foyer, but a PEA was leaning on the desk, filling in some forms. She looked up and smiled at Barlow. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi, Jane.’ He sidled up to her in a curiously intimate way, reminding Henry of himself a little. Jack the lad, streetwise detective. ‘Just in a bit of a rush, so we left the car on the double-yellows.’ He pointed outside. ‘We’ll be about five minutes, tops… but we need a quick getaway.’
‘I’ll keep nicks,’ she said conspiratorially.
‘Buzz us in, will you?’ he asked. She reached under the desk and pressed the button that unlocked the entrance door. Barlow pushed it open and allowed Henry through ahead of him.
Mobile phone in hand, Flynn was sitting in the mortuary office with Professor Baines. There was still no reply from Henry and while this wasn’t a problem he was beginning to find it increasingly odd due to the nature of the fast-moving investigation Henry was in charge of: surely it was incumbent on the SIO to remain readily available. Going off and being a lone wolf was all well and good — and he had no doubt Henry was capable of doing that — but not at this moment in time.
‘Ah well,’ he sighed, ‘best get going.’
‘Henry needs to know about this,’ Baines insisted. He pointed to the tooth on his desk. ‘Discovering the crime scene will be crucial in this case.’
‘I know,’ Flynn said. ‘I wonder if it might be worth bobbing into Lancaster nick. Maybe they have another number for him, or might know of his whereabouts.’
‘Good idea.’
Flynn had walked out to Alison’s car and seeing it, he had a minor brainwave. He sat in it and dialled the landline number of the Tawny Owl. Perhaps he’d contacted Alison and spoken to her recently.
The number rang out for a while and he was just about to hang up when a slightly breathless voice answered, ‘Tawny Owl, Kendleton.’
It wasn’t Alison, but Flynn recognized Ginny’s girlie voice. ‘Hi, Gin, it’s me, Steve Flynn.’
‘Oh, Steve, I’m really glad you called.’
‘Problem?’
‘Have you still got Mum’s car?’
‘Yes, actually. Does she need it back? Sorry.’
‘No, no, it’s not that,’ she said. Flynn noted a slight tremor in her tone.
‘What, then?’
‘If she had the car back and it wasn’t here, I’d know she was out in it. As it is I don’t know where she is.’