Pollack saw the movement, smiled. ‘Want to hit me? All cops do.’ He raised his wiry eyebrows. ‘Except for the ones who molest kids like I do.’
Henry did the quickest count to ten ever, still felt like kicking the living shit out of this old paedophile, but got a grip, relaxed … c’mon … relax … ‘Have you got any idea where George Uren is?’
‘Why should I know?’
‘You were here when he was,’ Henry said. ‘Presumably you talked to him.’
‘Not specially. I practise talking to the little people … that’s my speciality.’
Rik Dean reacted instantaneously. Before Henry could stop him, he’d blurted the words, ‘Sick bastard!’, crossed the room with one stride, heaved Pollack out of his chair and pinned him up against the wall by the open window. His face was centimetres away from Pollack’s. ‘I’m going to throw you out of this window, you perverted git.’
Pollack’s expression remained unchanged, as though this was something that always happened to him.
‘You let that man go!’ Ms Harcourt screamed. ‘And you get off these premises now.’ She pushed Henry out of her way and tried to drag Rik off Pollack.
Dean was a strong, burly man, and he did not flinch. Instead, he almost shrugged Ms Harcourt off and slammed Pollack against the wall once more, inducing a further scream from her: ‘Get off him! I knew this was a mistake, letting you two in here.’
‘Rik, put him down,’ Henry said.
‘Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know where this piece of shit’s been, do I?’ He released Pollack with a flick and stepped away. Pollack sniggered, unshaken by the event. He brushed himself down disdainfully. Hard-faced bastard, Henry thought. Love to meet you in a back alley.
‘Come on.’ Henry touched Rik’s shoulder.
Rik’s teeth were grinding, his whole being coiled up tight. He gave Pollack a last look which would have killed him if there had been any justice, then strutted out of the room. Henry also shot Pollack a last glance.
‘Expect a complaint of assault and police brutality,’ Pollack said coolly. He sat down and tapped a cigarette out of the packet on the desk top, placed it between his curdled lips. Henry reached out, snatched the cigarette and ground it to pulp in the palm of his hand, allowing its content to flake on to Pollack’s lap. He leaned in close.
‘Don’t,’ he whispered, ‘or I’ll revisit.’ He winked and left it at that, easing past the trembling Ms Harcourt.
By the time Henry got to the front door of the hostel, Rik had already reached the car. He waited for Ms Harcourt, who came down the stairs and walked angrily toward him.
‘I’ll be reporting this,’ she said.
Henry shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t go the way I’d intended.’
She held Henry’s eyes for a few moments, some internal wrangling going on behind her eyes. Then she relented slightly. ‘I’ll see what Pollack wants to do.’
‘He won’t do anything.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because if he does, he’ll get investigated. I’ll get a surveillance team on him and I guarantee he’ll re-offend — and he knows that.’
‘Are you saying I’m not doing my job?’
‘I’m saying he’ll never change.’
Henry was about to leave it at that when Ms Harcourt said, ‘Just hang on there a sec.’ She spun away down the hallway, disappeared into the staff rooms and was back a minute later, a piece of paper in hand. She waved the paper. ‘Look,’ she said unsurely, ‘don’t think I don’t want George Uren caught. I do. He’s an evil man … This is the name and address of a previous occupant who did spend some time with him. He’s moved on to the coast now and this is the address we have on file here. It may not be current. If it isn’t, he should have registered with the Probation Service on the Fylde. He might know where Uren is.’
‘Thanks.’ Henry took the paper.
‘I heard what you whispered to him up there,’ Ms Harcourt said. ‘That sort of thing can be very scary, the threat to return.’
‘And? I meant it.’
‘That’s what makes it scary.’ She looked into Henry’s eyes. He saw fear there, terror maybe. Henry was puzzled, but did not have time to pursue it because his mobile phone rang. He gave her a business card and Ms Harcourt opened the door for him to leave.
He answered the phone as he trotted down the front steps of the hostel. It was Debbie Black calling from Harrogate. ‘Got anything?’ Henry asked, doubling into the driver’s seat of the Mondeo.
‘Could have,’ she replied. ‘Obviously we can’t be a hundred per cent, but the young girl went missing last night from an estate on the outskirts of Harrogate. Would be about the right age and height as the dead girl in the Astra. Won’t know for sure until we get the forensic matches back, but I have a feeling about it.’
‘Where are you up to with it?’ Henry slotted the key into the ignition, fired up the engine.
‘Just off to the parents with the SIO. We’ve brought some DNA kits, so we’ll take swabs and also turn out the family dentist for those records, too.’
‘Good stuff,’ Henry said, raising an eyebrow at a po-faced Rik Dean, who was still smarting from his recent encounter. ‘Get the kits back over here and we’ll fast-track them tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, no probs with that.’
‘How are they treating you out in the sticks?’
‘Excellent.’
‘Good — and how’s Jane?’
‘Being a first-class bitch as ever.’
Debbie cut the connection, leaving Henry with a dead phone at his ear and a twisted grin on his face. ‘Could be some progress,’ he said to Rik.
‘Was that Debbie Black?’ Henry nodded. ‘Hm,’ Rik grunted.
Henry turned squarely to the DS and looked disappointedly at the grim-faced officer. ‘Two things: first off, I thought you were a wow with the chicks?’
Rik shrugged. ‘Sometimes things just don’t gel … not that I wouldn’t give her one, all things being equal. Actually, she was pretty bloody tasty. And secondly?’
‘Your temper could get you in the shit. I always thought you were a pretty placid sorta chap.’
‘Got it wrong on two counts, then, haven’t you, boss? The temper’s an experience thing,’ he explained. ‘The more experience I have, the less patience I have for crims, pervs in particular.’
‘Hm, going by that logic, my temper should be just about at ground zero.’
‘From what I’ve heard, it is.’
The two men eyed each other for a moment, then Henry waggled the note Ms Harcourt had given him, the Ms Harcourt he could not quite figure out. ‘She relented a bit — gave me this name and address as one of the previous inmates who knew Uren and may know where he is now.’
‘How did you manage that?’ asked an astonished detective sergeant.
‘Boyish charm … crumbled under my aura of male sexuality … a combination of things.’
‘Hardly,’ Rik muttered, snatching the note. ‘Bloody hell!’ he blurted on reading the name. ‘Percy Pearson — Percy Pearson the perverted person from Preston — now living on us, that is. He was locked up on sus of gross indecency last week sometime … luring boys into public toilets, then introducing them to the delights of his donger. Enticed one kid back to his flat, I think.’
‘Oh,’ said Henry, not quite slapping his forehead. The penny had not dropped when he had read the name. Now it had. ‘He’s the one who said where Uren might be in the first place. We were in Fleetwood because of something he’d said during an Intel interview. Could’ve saved us an eighty-mile round trip if I’d remembered.’ He pulled an agonized face, annoyed.
‘You wouldn’t have had the pleasure of the frigid Ms Harcourt, though.’
Henry pulled away from the kerb. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever have that pleasure,’ he admitted sadly, ‘but something tells me that behind that chilly veneer she isn’t frigid.’
Rik gave a wistful, ‘Mm, quite fancied her, actually.’
The return journey across the county was tedious. They joined queues of the great unwashed masses heading into Blackpool. It only dawned on Henry he would have been better going back by another route than the motorway when he hit a tailback of slow-moving traffic as he left the M6 and joined the M55. He began to zigzag through the crawling morass, but to no real avail. Progress was tortoise-like at best. The section of the journey which would normally take about fifteen minutes took almost an hour on a day that was becoming hotter and hotter, and every driver seemed fractious.