Without further ado, she grabbed it, opened the door, flicked on the lights and stepped into the kitchen.
Danny’s bleak thoughts concerning the whereabouts of Henry Christie were way off the mark. Not only was he not in bed with his wife Kate, he had not slept on the marital bed for almost two weeks. At that moment in time he was leaving a very sophisticated night club in Manchester’s city centre, with his arm thrown around the shoulders of one of the biggest and most feared villains in the North of England.
Jacky Lee believed himself to be one of the elite hundred or so men in the country who were considered by the cops to be the top of the tree, crime-wise. One of those crims who lead flash lifestyles, drive big cars, own big houses, screw second-rate models, knock about with footballers and pop stars, and who have no visible means of support. The police know their way of life is financed by crime, but because they cleverly distance themselves from the sharp end, they are rarely caught.
However, Lee’s belief had been somewhat dented six years earlier when he found himself in front of a Crown Court jury in York, facing drugs importation charges for which he subsequently received eight years in jail. Good behaviour got him out in four, when he immediately slotted back into business.
Lee and Henry Christie stumbled out of the club, down the steps. A Roller had pulled up, a black BMW behind it, all tinted windows and menace. Lee and Henry clambered into the back of the Rolls, laughing and joking drunkenly.
Lee was definitely the worse for wear, well inebriated. Henry was stone cold sober, but acting pissed. Inside himself he was worked up like a coiled spring and needed to keep his wits firmly about him. He was operating in dangerous territory.
Lee leaned over the driver’s shoulder and gave him instructions to take them to his apartment in the city — a penthouse down south. Then he slumped back next to Henry and gave a deep sigh of contentment.
‘ Jesus, it’s good to be back with you,’ he said to Henry, slapping the policeman’s knee in a manly way. ‘I really missed our crack when I was inside that fucking place, you know.’
‘ I missed you too, Jacky,’ Henry said. ‘We had a scream back then, didn’t we?’
‘ Aye lad, we fuckin’ did that — and did some good business too.’
A change suddenly came over Jacky Lee. He became silent, pensively watching the lights of the city flash past from the Rolls. His expression was hard and he no longer seemed drunk.
‘ Y’know,’ he said at length, ‘I fuckin’ thought and thought about why I ended up in the slammer. I truly believed my operation was watertight.’
Something in Henry’s throat constricted. A peculiar feeling — nausea combined with dread — grumbled in the pit of his stomach.
‘ I been over it all again and again, boy. Workin’ it all back in my mind. Retreading everything I’d done, who I’d met, who I’d dealt with, and I really, really struggled to see why the cops moved on to me. I even got a private detective to go over all the witness statements against me to see if there was any clue in them as to who might’ve dropped me in it with the cops, and to check out people I know. Just out of curiosity, like.’
Henry’s controlled outer-body language did not betray his inner turmoil. He feigned a stifled yawn of indifference and belched. He folded his arms and allowed his head to drop back on to the soft white leather headrest. ‘Any conclusions?’ he asked Lee laconically, closing his eyes.
‘ Oh yeah, too fucking true.’ Jacky Lee’s eyes bored across at the side of Henry’s head. Henry opened his own slowly and clicked his tongue as though there was a nasty taste in. his mouth. Actually there was. It was a taste called terror. But even so, if Lee thought he was going to rattle Henry into spouting a confession of some sort, he was wrong.
‘ And?’ Henry asked.
‘ I thought about you. I thought you could’ve been the one.’
Shit. Henry’s mind raced whilst his face remained impassive. So this was it, he thought. The time of confrontation. The moment Henry dreaded happening. He knew that his reaction to Lee’s statement was crucial as to whether he, Henry, lived or died. The significance of the following BMW struck him at that moment. The hit team.
Henry eyed Lee narrowly for a few tense seconds. Lee was waiting, testing.
Henry’s mouth kinked into a grin and his eyes flushed with humour. The grin evolved into a smile which became a chuckle and a head-shake of disbelief. Lee responded with a giggle.
‘ I had to think about you, pal. I had to think about every cunt,’ Lee explained when the mirth had subsided. ‘But you — I knew it couldn’t be you. You’ve put too much bent gear my way for it to be you.’
Henry’s mind breathed a sigh of relief.
‘ Yeah, you know me too well, Jack,’ Henry said, remembering how he had once spent a whole Christmas with Lee and his family up in the North-East — mother, sisters, granny, nieces and nephews and even had a holiday in Spain with the guy once. They knew each other very well. ‘I’m just like you. Making a living. Buying and selling. Just a commodity broker.’
‘ Yeah, you’re right. That’s all we are — commodity brokers, market traders without a pitch. Just selling on goods. I like that — commodity broker.’
The Rolls drew to a halt outside an apartment block. New, swish with good security, overlooking one of the basins of the Ship Canal. Lee had built the whole complex, financed it one hundred per cent. The eighty apartments he’d already sold had netted him somewhere in the region of six million.
‘ Love to invite you up, pal,’ Lee said, ‘but I got some hot totty waiting up there. Gagging for it, she is.’
‘ Hey, no problemo.’
‘ Good. So — see ya.’ Lee opened his door but crimped back suddenly to Henry before getting out of the car. ‘The issue we’ve just been discussing, by the way…’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Y’know, the grass?’
Henry waited.
‘ Sorted it,’ Lee said with a wink. ‘Fish food. No more problems for Jack. See ya.’ He got out, slammed the door and slapped the roof and strode briskly, if unevenly, to the apartment block.
‘ Where to, sir?’ the driver asked through the intercom.
Henry told him the name of a hotel in the city centre. The Rolls pulled quietly into the night. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that the BMW was staying with him all the way.
He sank into the comfortable seat and tried to control his pulse-rate, careful not to let the mask slip because the driver was constantly monitoring him in the rearview mirror. Henry was actually elated by the way things had gone. Without any pushing or probing, which could have put Lee on his guard, the crim had begun to talk about ‘having sorted his problem’ and once people like him began to brag, the rest was usually easy.
Soon, Henry was sure, he would have Jack in the bag.
Of course the refrigerator had gone. Because Jack Sands’s brains had been handily collected in it, there had been no need to bag up the bits and pieces. The fridge door had been closed and the whole thing accompanied the body to the mortuary where the pathologist had simply helped himself to particles of the skull and brains as required during the autopsy. Like he was raiding the fridge for a snack or something.
But Danny could still see the scene, clear and graphic as ever in her mind’s eye.
She remembered opening the kitchen door, full of apprehension.. And there he was. Jack Sands, former lover, lying with his head in the fridge, his legs and arms were splayed and twisted gruesomely. The single-barrelled shotgun lay by his right side. Danny had to step right into the kitchen to actually see his head.
Or what was left of it.
The shotgun had literally blown it right off.
Somehow Sands had wedged the muzzle underneath his chin, in the cleft of soft skin in the ‘V’ of the lower jawbone, angled it slightly, stretched forward and pushed the trigger back with his right thumb. His long arms had easily reached down the length of the barrel.