Mark did not even wait to see the result.
The man screamed, reeled back. Mark ducked and launched himself to one side. And ran.
It took four hours to complete the first post-mortem and even then the paperwork wasn’t done. It had been a gruelling job and nothing was overlooked. Every little detail was systematically recorded and commented on, but even so the result told Henry no more than he already knew — just in greater detail.
Two bullets to the head causing massive brain trauma was put down as the cause of death.
Massive internal trauma to the body consistent with having been struck and then run over twice by a car was also recorded. Injuries that would have been fatal without the coup de grace of the bullets.
Henry looked at the old man’s brain on the dissecting board. It had been a horrible, grey, blood-mushed mess when O’Connell had removed what was left of it from the shattered cranium, the bullets having torn it to shreds. Now it was even worse after she had sliced her way through it and managed to recover some minute shards of the bullets.
‘The internal injuries would have killed him, but he was alive — just — when he was shot in the head,’ O’Connell said. She exhaled tiredly, eyed Henry. ‘I want to leave Rory’s PM until the morning, now. I want to do him justice and I don’t feel as though that’s possible at the moment.’
‘Not a problem,’ Henry said. He knew how she felt. Being up all night, then working through the day with hardly any sleep had drained them both. His mobile phone rang — as it had been doing all afternoon. He answered it. Jerry Tope was on the line saying he’d done Henry’s bidding and was ready with a PowerPoint presentation at Blackpool nick. Where was Henry?
Henry checked his watch, not realizing the time — having had so much fun, of course. He promised Jerry he would be at the station soon. There was to be a murder squad debrief at eight thirty and he didn’t want to piss a lot of people off by being late. Another call came through as soon as he ended the one to Jerry. He glanced at O’Connell, who was watching him patiently. He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and answered the phone.
‘Just for your information,’ Alex Bent said. ‘Two items. Number one — there is a match between the hair and blood on the old man’s walking stick and Rory’s hair and blood; secondly the shoe print in the shit is also a match, so Rory was definitely at the murder scene.’
‘Rory is definitely tied to the old man,’ Henry confirmed out loud for O’Connell’s benefit, raising his eyebrows.
‘Affirmative,’ Bent said.
Henry thanked him and hung up. ‘Now all we need to do is find out who was with Rory, then we could be on to a winner.’
‘I’ll get everything typed up, well, as much as I can within the next half hour, then I’ll email it to you,’ O’Connell promised.
‘That would be good. Thanks for this afternoon and everything else.’
‘Will you get chance for a drink later?’ O’Connell asked.
He wavered. ‘Er, probably. Have to see how the debrief goes and what all this new information throws up.’
‘I’ll be at home. Waiting.’
Henry turned to leave. His phone started to ring again. The caller display revealed it to be his wife, Kate.
On the short journey back to the police station, Henry assembled his thoughts as to how he would address the team of officers — detectives, uniformed, specialists and support staff — who had been brought into the enquiry. He hoped he wouldn’t forget anything. On his arrival at the nick he abandoned his car in the underground car park, effectively blocking in two other cars, because he couldn’t find anywhere else to park.
As he entered through the caged door that led through to the custody complex, two uniformed PCs were manhandling a reluctant prisoner in between them. He wasn’t being violent, just uncooperative and obnoxious.
Henry held the gate for them and they nodded a thanks as they heaved the unwilling man between them.
‘I tell you, I was not going to do anything,’ the prisoner said haughtily, yanking his arm out one officer’s grasp. ‘We were simply going for a little walk, that’s all. I wasn’t going to hurt the little guy.’
Much to their credit, neither officer responded to this as, even from the short exchange Henry had picked up, it sounded as though this man was possibly a child molester caught in the act.
Having said that, one of the officers did propel him hard through the next door into the custody suite.
Henry caught a glimpse of the side of the prisoner’s face. It looked red raw all the way across his cheek and chin, and extremely painful, as though he’d been scalded.
Then, they were gone, and in a few minutes the prisoner would be in the sausage machine that was Blackpool’s custody system, just one of over twelve thousand prisoners passing through each year.
Henry clamped the door shut and made his way along the tight corridor and smacked the palm of his hand on the lift-call button.
‘Oh yes, Fazil’s definitely dead… hell, these Malts wouldn’t know security if it jumped up and bit their asses.’
Karl Donaldson sat on one of the sunloungers on his hotel room balcony. With his left hand he held a bag of crushed ice, wrapped in a towel, on to the back of his head. In his right, the mobile phone was to his ear. He alternated holding the ice pack with picking up the triple measure of whisky he’d assembled from three miniatures in the hotel room minibar. Two Black Label and one Jack Daniel’s. An unusual but effective mixture.
‘I can’t believe it. I’d only been gone a matter of minutes before I decided to turn around and speak to him again.’ His head pounded from the blow he’d received, arcs of pain pumping out like circles in a pond. Fortunately, his nose hadn’t been broken and the bleeding had been easily stemmed, although the two cotton wool balls jammed up his nostrils did make him look ridiculous.
‘You’re damned lucky you didn’t buy it, too,’ Don Barber said.
‘Don’t tell me.’ He made a puzzled face, wondering why he hadn’t ‘bought it’ as Barber succinctly termed it. ‘Guess something musta spooked ’em and they were happy enough with Fazil.’
‘How in hell did they get into the freakin’ cop shop anyway?’ Barber demanded yet again.
‘Like I said, they’re way behind with security over here — and that’s where the accomplice came in — one of the gaolers. The desk sergeant obviously saw what was happening and got killed for his troubles.’
‘How did they escape?’
‘When they hit me, they went out through an emergency exit that’s usually chained up, but wasn’t in this case — they took the keys from the sergeant’s key ring. Bastards.’
‘Damn… and no video evidence?’
‘None… the gaoler must’ve fixed that too, tampered with the recording equipment.’
‘What a mess,’ Barber said.
‘Means we’re running outta witnesses,’ Donaldson said.
‘Yeah… you’re certain Fazil was the gun-dropper?’
‘As can be.’
‘Then he got what was coming to him… I know it ain’t the perfect scenario, but there’s some justice in it. And he wasn’t coming across to you, was he?’
‘But I’m still way behind the American,’ Donaldson moaned. ‘Fazil was a helluva good lead.’
‘You’ll get to him,’ Barber reassured him. ‘That’s why I put you on him, because I know you’ll nail him sooner or later.’
‘Whatever…’
‘Hey, don’t sound so despairing. A bad man’s bit the dust, let’s not mourn,’ Barber tried to sound upbeat. ‘And you’re still alive.’
‘OK, OK, I get the message… ahh!’ A jolt of pain crackled through his head. He took the ice pack off his head and took a mouthful of the whisky mix. There wasn’t much left in the glass.
‘What can you tell us about the killer?’ Barber asked.
‘Not much. Biggish guy, mask on, gloves on, overalls, I think, didn’t even make the weapon, which seriously annoys me, other than it was revolver with a silencer, probably a. 38, so no ejected shells. And he’s probably got one sore face, because I managed to land a good one on him.’ Donaldson thought he heard Barber sigh at the other end of the line. ‘Sorry, Don?’