And they were in.
‘You cow,’ Marty yelled. He went straight for Carrie’s cowering form, enraged by having his wrist trapped. He powered into the hall and kicked her in the face with as much force as he could, breaking her jaw. She rolled away, blood pouring out of her mouth, trying to protect herself. Marty continued to lay into her, overcome by anger, as Ray and Crazy strode past, their minds focused on catching JJ.
JJ heard the crash, the scream, the shouts as the front door was booted in.
He had to move now.
He lifted his body and sat astride the windowledge before twisting round and lowering his feet blindly until his toes touched the ledge which jutted out from the wall about three inches, several feet below.
This was the position in which Ray and Crazy found him as they burst into the living room.
JJ panicked as Crazy strode across the room towards him, a menacing look on his countenance, Ray Cragg behind him. JJ reached out his right hand for the soil pipe, which he knew he could shimmy down if he could just get to it. But before he could even touch it, Crazy grabbed the front of his T-shirt in his fists and pushed him outwards away from the wall. JJ screamed. His arms flailed like a demented windmill but he managed to grab the window frame, though his fingers slipped as Crazy threatened to push him away again.
The two men were focused on each other’s faces, both with determined expressions. Crazy’s look was one of sheer glee at what he was doing; JJ’s, by total contrast, was a look of terror. The thought of hitting the ground headfirst reeled through his mind, the prospect of his skull splintering through his brain.
‘This is gonna hurt you.’ Crazy grinned twistedly.
JJ’s fingers slipped even more on the window frame. He knew that all Crazy had to do was push and let go of his T-shirt and he would go plummeting down.
‘Your head’ll smash like a tomato. What d’you think, Ray?’ Crazy looked back over his shoulder. ‘Push the thieving fuck or what?’
‘It’s a tempter.’ Ray leaned out of the window, judging the distance to the ground below. ‘Pull him in,’ he said. Crazy looked disappointed. Then with a shrug he hauled JJ back into the flat.
‘I need words,’ Ray Cragg said to JJ.
The murdered girl’s flat was on the sort of grubby street where Henry Christie had done so much of his police work in the past. Same old story, same old people, he thought jadedly as he gazed out of the car window up at the five-storey terraced block of flats, each one probably inhabited by a dolie or a junkie or a loser. Henry prodded himself mentally for forgetting that there were also many good people caught up in it as well. It just seemed that he did not meet them that often.
The house was structurally solid, having stood the test of time on the outside. It was its innards and inhabitants that had changed.
He climbed out of the Vectra and made sure it was locked before leaving it unattended.
He wanted to get a feel for the scene of the murder. He walked up to the front of the house and stood at the bottom of the steps leading to the main door. To his left was the flight of steps which descended to the basement flat.
He looked around. The street was pretty quiet. A couple walked down the other side. A car waited at the junction to pull out. He could easily have stepped down to the flat without being seen. . or could he?
If nothing else, Henry’s experience as a detective had taught him that very few crimes are committed without witnesses. Somebody always sees something. The trick was to find that somebody and bleed them white. In the nicest possible way, of course.
Henry stood where he was and rotated slowly on his heels, allowing his eyes to rove, to try and spot someone watching him. He saw no one.
It was very tempting to go down to the girl’s flat, but he wanted to keep that experience for later. First things first. He would check out the owner of the property who, he remembered from the file, lived in Lytham, in a very desirable location.
He got back into the Vectra and thought seriously about going into the property rental business.
JJ made himself a roll-up. Though his hands were shaking, he put the cigarette together expertly.
Ray Cragg leaned forward eagerly with a lighted match and a smile. ‘Calm down,’ he said as JJ chased the flame with the end of his cigarette. ‘There’s no need to worry.’
‘No need to worry? How d’you work that one out?’ JJ retorted, inspecting the lighted end of his cigarette and blowing gently on it. He put the thin stick between his lips and drew deeply on it. Almost one half of it disappeared with the drag. ‘You’re gonna kick my head in and you tell me not to worry?’
JJ’s narrow eyes darted nervously around the room, taking in each face, then, looking at Carrie, his face creased in pain. She was huddled in one corner, whimpering pathetically, cradling her busted face in the palms of her hands, nursing her shattered jaw.
‘She needs a hospital, Ray,’ JJ wheezed through a cloud of smoke.
Cragg shrugged. ‘As and when.’
JJ tried to hold his eyes to Ray Cragg’s, but they flinched fearfully away from the confrontation.
‘So what do you want?’ JJ asked.
‘I think that’s fairly fuckin’ obvious, don’t you?’ Cragg grinned. ‘Otherwise, why try and leg it?’
JJ shrugged his thin shoulders, looked down between his knees and flicked ash on the carpet. He took another drag on the cigarette and blew smoke out through his nose. It was all but gone now. Sitting there, head bowed, eyes blinking at the floor, his jaw rotating, JJ did not see the blow coming.
Cragg put almost all he had into it and really JJ should have expected it because he had witnessed Ray do it several times before. It was his trademark, a long, powerful, open-handed smack across the side of the face, the palm of his hand cupping over the ear. It lifted JJ off the seat and dumped him in a sprawl on the carpet. The pain in his ear was so severe, he wondered if the drum had burst. The butt of his cigarette rolled away underneath the settee.
Before JJ could react or even scream, Marty and Crazy dragged him off the floor and flung him back across the settee.
‘When I ask you a question, you answer it,’ Ray Cragg said mildly. ‘Are you with me?’
‘Yeah,’ JJ answered quickly. A booming, painful sound ricocheted around his cranium.
‘Right. Now we’ve got that settled, let’s get down to business,’ Ray said. ‘I’ll let you have it right between the eyes, figuratively speaking,’ he went on. ‘I don’t give you much to do, do I? Bit o’ this, bit o’ that. Enough to pay for your dirty little habits and keep the wolf from the door — and then some. Carry this, deliver that.’ He swayed forwards again. He could smell JJ’s fear. It smelled dank, but he liked it. ‘All in all, nothing very arduous, and I trusted you JJ.’
JJ closed his eyes for a long moment.
‘Trusted you for a long time. . but why is it that people get greedy?’
‘I don’t know.’ JJ’s words were barely audible.
‘Fuckin’ astounds me.’ Ray shook his head sadly and pulled away from the stench of JJ’s terror. ‘I keep tight books, JJ, and I know for a fact you’ve lifted two grand off me?’ JJ opened his mouth to protest. ‘Ah, ah, ah.’ Ray wagged a warning finger at him. ‘I know you have, okay? I am not stupid.’
Ray glanced at his two companions, who stood one behind each shoulder, then stared back at JJ. ‘You gonna tell me about it?’ Ray’s head twitched in a gesture of encouragement.
JJ nodded. He felt nauseous. It was all he could do to stop fear from squeezing his entrails and forcing him to vomit.
‘Good man,’ Ray acknowledged.
The landlord’s house was on a recently built exclusive development of executive-style homes in Lytham. There were about a dozen houses on the estate, all detached, each with five or six bedrooms and double or triple garages, but not much land for the half million or so they cost to buy. Henry, an aficionado of the property pages in the glossy Lancashire Life magazine, recalled reading the adverts for the development. They were very nice houses, well out of his price bracket, but he could dream.