He blinked, brought his vision back to focus and said, ‘Why?’
‘ If you haven’t sussed that out by now,’ said Morton, sounding a little exasperated with him, ‘you’re not the great detective I thought you were.’
‘ Dundaven and Marie Cullen,’ he stated. His brain cells shuffled through the incidents of the last week. ‘Marie Cullen I can see. You have some connection with Harry McNamara and I suppose you’re protecting him because he’s as guilty as fuck. I can only speculate about Dundaven. Must have something to do with the guns. Presumably you’re protecting somebody else and I was getting too close to them, and they — or you didn’t like it.’
‘ By Jove I think he’s got it,’ Morton chortled patronisingly. ‘But that’s enough of the speculation. You don’t need to know anything further, other than you were beginning to worry some people and they needed to be… reassured. Remember when you said a little dickie bird would tell you when you’d gone as far as you could with those enquiries? Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep. It’s me. I am that bird.’
‘ You bastard!’ Henry had a sense of being trapped in a cage.
‘ You should know that certain people want you dead, Henry. I saved your life. You should be thankful to me, not call me names.’
‘ Big deal. What’s to stop me walking out of that door, going straight to my Chief Constable and blowing the whistle on you?’
‘ You still don’t get it, do you? Your life will be worse than hell. We will drag you through the mire. We’ll come up smelling of roses and you’ll just smell like cowshit. You’ll lose. We won’t. Simple as that. We’ve had problems like this before and dealt with them accordingly.’
Henry stood up without warning.
Morton drew back defensively. Gallagher braced himself and Tattersall was half off his seat.
He walked to the window and stared out blankly through the rain.
He had nothing on these people. They had everything on him, twisted and perverse though it was. And they were prepared to use it, should Henry make a stand.
They had power and organisation. He could not even begin to guess the scope of their activities.
Standing there he was isolated — and beaten.
He turned slowly from the window, a look of defeat on his face. ‘So what’s the score?’
‘ I’ll lay it on the line, Henry, then you know exactly what is required of you. Firstly, you must ensure that to the best of your abilities those two investigations get nowhere.’
‘ That may not be within my power. Other people work on them.’
‘ In which case you must keep me informed of any progress, you must destroy or contaminate evidence without drawing attention to yourself, and you must pull your weight in terms of making enquiries hit dead ends. Otherwise you’ll suffer.’
‘ And secondly?’
‘ Keep a watching brief on the Derek Luton case and let me know how that goes.’
‘ Why?’
‘ Because I’m interested. And thirdly, before you go back to your normal duties, we may have something else for you to do.’
‘ And what’s that?’
‘ All in good time, Henry.’
‘ So you’ve got me by the bollocks.’
‘ Only if you value your life and how you lead it.’
‘ Is that it?’
‘ No,’ said Gallagher sharply. ‘You were given some documents by Annie Luton last night, I believe.’
‘ How do you know?’
‘ Telephone. Hand them over to us now.’
‘ I left them at home,’ Henry said quickly. ‘I’ll bring them in this afternoon.’
‘ Make sure you do.’
‘ Can I go now?’
‘ Yes, you can. Go away and reflect on things. Consider your position very carefully, but realise one thing: you now belong to us and basically you’ve no way out of that.’
Tight-lipped, Henry strode angrily to the door and wrenched it open. He stopped for an instant, turned quickly and uttered the word ‘Cunts!’ before storming out, slamming the door behind him with a ferocity which nearly brought it off its hinges.
Morton regarded the other three with raised eyebrows.
‘ I don’t trust him,’ Siobhan said.
‘ Nor do I,’ Gallagher agreed.
Tattersall said nothing.
‘ Me neither. Make sure he’s followed. We really don’t want him to do anything stupid, do we? Jim?’ Morton looked towards Tattersall.
‘ I’ll see to it, boss.’
Chapter Twenty-One
The weather over the whole of the country was appalling.
Karl Donaldson, with Karen sitting by his side, drove their Jeep Cherokee through driving snow around London, sleet and icy hailstones all the way up the MI, five minutes of clear weather around Birmingham on the M6, then bucketing rain the rest of the way up to Blackpool.
The journey took nearly five hours at an average speed of 50 m.p.h., headlights blazing all the way.
As ever they made the trip more pleasurable by singing along with each other. A Beatles session, followed by Motown, a little opera and finally some good ole country music onto which Donaldson had successfully weaned Karen. Dwight Yoakam, the O’Kanes and Lacy J. Dalton were no longer a mystery to the girl who’d been born in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, not Nashville, Tennessee.
It made the time fly and helped Donaldson concentrate.
They arrived at Henry’s house about twenty minutes before he did.
Kate greeted them warmly. They had become good friends and often made excuses out of nothing to visit each other, even if it meant a two-hundred-mile hike. The two women had an extra dimension to their relationship now and talk turned immediately to babies, pregnancy and childbirth. Kate began to feel broody again.
When Henry came in like a bull with a wasp stinging its arse, it was immediately obvious to all three that he was fuming with anger.
He refused to say anything about what was bugging him, but his body language put them all on tenterhooks.
Kate coerced him into the kitchen and said sternly, ‘Henry, they’ve come all the way from London to see you, you could try to be just a little bit polite.’
He nodded and breathed down his nose. ‘You’re right.’
They had a light, but hot lunch, and Henry made an effort. They exchanged stories about their injuries — Henry’s chest and ear, Donaldson’s face. Over coffee Henry said to Karl, ‘What can I do for you, pal? I know this is a work-related visit first and foremost.’
‘ Henry!’ Kate said in a warning way, ‘Don’t be so rude.’ She looked apologetically at the other couple. ‘He’s had a long week.’
‘ Kate — you don’t know the damned half of it.’ Henry’s voice was hard and unyielding. ‘And don’t talk about me like I’m not here.’
He stood up without a further word and left them. Donaldson found him in the conservatory, sitting on the bamboo sofa. Rain streamed down the windows. The garden was waterlogged and there seemed nowhere for it to drain away.
‘ Mind if I join you?’
‘ Help yourself.’
Karl placed himself next to Henry and gave a little shiver. ‘That’s the trouble with these places. They look darned good, but they’re too cold in winter, too damned hot in summer.’
‘ Mmm.’
‘ Can you talk to me, H.? Kate’s really upset in there.’
Henry leaned back. He stared up at the glass roof and shook his head. ‘Big problems, Karl. But mine at the moment. I need to think them through.’
‘ OK.’
Henry sat up. ‘What’ve you come up for, Karl? It’s a hell of a day to travel. Must be pretty important.’
‘ That occurrence in Madeira with Sam — I think she was murdered by a guy she’d seen out there, name of Scott Hamilton, or at least murdered on his orders. I have an idea on that score, but that’s another story. Anyway, the cops in Madeira were eventually interested enough to put a tail on this guy. He hopped on a plane to Manchester yesterday.’
‘ And you want some help tracking him up here?’
‘ Naw. I got on to MI5 to help me out. They’re so under-employed these days they’ll jump at the chance to do anything. So I asked ‘em to pick up Hamilton’s tail in Manchester, stick with him, take some mug-shots and stay within eyeball until he got back on the plane home. Which is what they did. Real pros, they are. Pity they don’t know what the hell their role is any longer. I got the surveillance photos pushed through my door late last night — and that’s why I’m here. Take a look at these.’