Epilogue
Externally, for the next six weeks, Henry Christie remained a fully functioning Detective Inspector, dealing with everything in a cool, professional manner.
There were many issues to resolve.
Firstly, the Spanish authorities refused to release Danny’s body for five weeks. The circumstances of her death and the manner of it, as well as the death of Ivankov and the serious wounding of Lawrence Brayfield, caused uproar. Many questions were asked, most went unanswered. Bureaucracy was unleashed on an almighty scale and had to be addressed and managed by Henry who was well in the thick of it. He was accused of murder himself at the beginning, though never arrested, then accused of conspiracies, then corruption, until eventually he persuaded his Spanish inquisitors, by his openness, frankness and honesty, that he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as had Danny. He had done what had to be done — an act of self-defence which had saved his own life, but not that of his colleague.
In the end, because it didn’t look as though Danny’s body could ever be released, he made a plea to the Foreign Office; he didn’t give a shit about himself, but Danny’s devastated parents were being messed about from pillar to post by the Spanish police and enough was enough. Keeping her body in the freezer would achieve nothing. He begged the FO to intervene and pull some strings… and incredibly, they did. From a high level, the order came down for her body to be returned and at last, the parents could have some sort of closure. Henry had met Danny’s mother and father during this period and he became a crutch for them, a role which put him under massive personal pressure. He desperately wanted to blab his relationship with their daughter to them, but felt he could not, for her sake. That would have put them over the edge, after all the business with Jack Sands, her ex-lover, topping himself not many months before. Another relationship with a married man… Henry could have imagined their reactions.
And while all this was going on, there was the question of Billy Crane to sort out, which also fell to Henry.
The day after Danny’s death, a specially trained armed unit of the Spanish police carried out a pre-dawn raid at Crane’s Gomerian villa.
As is so often the case in such matters, the actual laying of hands on Billy Crane was a very subdued affair, an anti-climax. He was roused from bed by four armed officers and submitted dazedly to their pidgin-English instructions. He offered no resistance, but maintained his silence other than to demand the services of a lawyer. At Tenerife he was incarcerated awaiting extradition proceedings. His slick brief, a man who was used to representing British felons in Spain — usually on the Costas — presented all types of delaying tactics. Henry doubted whether he would see Crane in the UK this side of six months.
The location of the stolen money remained a mystery. Despite the efforts of Lancashire Constabulary’s Financial Investigators and those from the Metropolitan Police and Interpol, and a raiding party on all the bank accounts belonging to Billy Crane, the money was not recovered. Crane’s accounts did reveal?3.1 million from drugs dealing, and proceedings were instituted to freeze the money and ultimately seize it. As the weeks went by, though, the likelihood of finding the money from the heist seemed less and less probable.
What did seem likely was that Lawrence Brayfield, once he had recovered from his shoulder wound, would leave Tenerife, go into a witness protection programme and in the due course of time — after he had successfully given evidence against Crane — receive his reward money.
It was during the course of one of Henry’s many conversations with Loz that he was reminded, purely by chance, of the existence of Nero the lion. Henry had charged out of the hospital ward and raced to Uncle B’s where he found the emaciated, barely-living animal, surviving against the odds in a disgusting shit-hole. The Spaniards immediately wanted to have him destroyed, but Henry was in no mood for another unnecessary death, nor the possibility of litigation that might follow; the police had a duty of care for prisoners’ property and the destruction of Nero could easily have been used as another delaying tactic by Crane’s legal eagle.
A place was found for Nero in a private zoo on Lanzarote where after only a few days’ recuperation he established himself as the dominant male in the resident pride, beat the living daylights out of the incumbent king, and claimed several lionesses in a mad whirl of sexual domination… so there was one happy ending at least.
And while all this was going on, the internal structure of Henry Christie, delicately balanced at the best of times, was close to collapse.
He was only grateful that he had to spend a great deal of time commuting backwards and forwards to Tenerife. Time spent with his wife and daughters was proving so difficult for him. Kate remained supportive but slightly aloof and he once caught her looking at him, on one of his infrequent visits home in those weeks, rather contemptuously. He wondered if she knew, or suspected, about him and Danny. Had she guessed? Or had it been so obvious that a blind person could have read the signs?
The time he had in Tenerife was busy, but this was the only opportunity he had to be alone to grieve for the woman who, rightly or wrongly, had grown on him and with whom he had fallen in love. His hotel rooms became places of retreat, for crying, for heavy drinking, for thinking and coming to terms with her death, knowing he could never tell anyone about their relationship; knowing he somehow had to pick up the pieces of his life and make a decision about the future and leave Danny behind. Easy to say, not so easy to put into practice — particularly having discovered something that completely blitzed his mind during Danny’s autopsy, something he prayed would not become general knowledge.
She was cremated one week after her body had been flown back from Tenerife, six weeks to the day after her death. The service took place in a crematorium outside Burnley in East Lancashire, the town of her birth, not far away from the dinosaur-like bulk of Pendle Hill. There was a huge police presence. The Chief Constable attended and several of the ACCs, including Fanshaw-Bayley. Karl Donaldson, Henry’s friend from the FBI office in London, also came, having met Danny previously on another enquiry.
Henry was relieved when it was over. Kate sidled up next to him, hugged him and looked up with a hesitant smile. There were tears in her eyes. Henry responded with a weak grin. He knew things had moved on too far for him to slip back into his old life. He had fallen deeply in love with Danny, and her death had devastated him. Some major decisions were now due to be made about his future. Being with Kate felt wrong, somehow — for both of them — but in his grieving state, the phrasing of the sentence with the word ‘divorce’ in it eluded him.
Most of the police contingent from Blackpool had come to the funeral by coach. As is the fairly cold culture of the police on such occasions, they stopped off on their way back at a pub on the outskirts of Blackpool to pay their last respects to Danny by way of alcoholic consumption. Henry, Kate and Donaldson — who was staying overnight at the Christies’ — having driven across to Burnley by car, decided to join them. Kate generously offered to drive the rest of the way home so that Henry had the chance to have a few drinks.
By the time they arrived, the coach had de-bussed and there was a deep throng of thirsty people crowded round the bar of the unsuspecting pub. Somewhere amongst them FB could be heard demanding that he be bought drinks by his detectives.
After getting their own drinks, Henry, Kate and Donaldson claimed a quiet spot in the bar where they could hear themselves talk. Kate excused herself and went to the Ladies’. After a few moments, Donaldson needed to go too — and suddenly Henry found FB sitting next to him, a drink in each hand.