A Time For Justice (49 page)

‘
You did say six-thirty,’ Donaldson said defensively. ‘Long
day ahead. ‘

‘
Yeah, yeah, I know,’ muttered Henry. ‘Come on in, give me ten
minutes. ‘

‘
You look like something a cat’s dragged in,’ Donaldson
observed.

‘
And you look like a dog’s dinner,’ said Henry. ‘Did Karen get
you dressed?’

He had a quick shave and a shower, threw on some clothes and
fifteen minutes later was sitting in the passenger seat of
Donaldson’s hired car which sped down the motorway towards
Lancaster. After a brief, perfunctory conversation, Henry’s eyes
closed, his chin sagged onto his chest and he fell asleep,
drooling.

Donaldson laughed and tuned into Jazz FM.

As demanded, everything about Hinksman was on Dave August’s
desk at 9 a.m. sharp. The Chief Constable glanced at the boxes of
files that FB had deposited and was itching to get into them, just
to see if there was anything at all, anything that would guide him
to the people who had made him do this awful thing.

But it was a task that would have to wait. The day ahead held
other priorities: press conferences, then a visit to the incident
room. After that he planned to meet all the bereaved relatives
personally at their homes. Just to give them a few minutes. To show
he cared.

That was not going to be easy, knowing that, ultimately, he
was the one person responsible for their deaths.

It was going to be a tough day.

Joe Kovaks was at his desk by eight o’clock that morning. He
ignored the mountain of paperwork that he’d allowed to accumulate
there. He wanted to get two things done.

First he wanted to see his supervisor and ask to be taken off
the Corelli case.

Then he wanted to visit Laura and tell her about his change of
heart. Killing Corelli wasn’t the way forward, he now knew, and he
had to convince her of that - which wasn’t going to be easy. He’d
spent enough time brainwashing her; now he had to try and reverse
the process. The prospect was daunting. But the little sachet of
white powder in his jacket pocket should make things
easier.

For the first time in years his supervisor arrived late for
work. Kovaks had been pacing the man’s office like a
cat.

‘
Hello Joe
,’
he said, removing his coat. ‘What can I do for
you?’

‘
Hi, look, sorry to be so blunt Arnie, but can I make an
urgent request?’

‘
Sure,’ said the puzzled supervisor.

‘
I want off the Corelli case, as of now. The case papers are
all up to date. That OK?
’

‘
Fine by me, but why now? You’ve put a lot into this over the
years. You in trouble or something? Someone leanin’ on
ya?’

‘
Not in trouble, but someone is leaning on me, yeah, but in a
nice way. Can I tell you later, boss? I don’t want to appear rude
but I have an urgent meet with an informant. After that I’ll come
back and have a chat. OK?
’

‘
Yeah, yeah,’ the supervisor said, completely
flummoxed.

‘
So I’m off the case?’ Kovaks confirmed.

‘
As of this moment.’

‘
I love ya,’ said Kovaks. He took the man by the shoulders and
kissed his cheek. Before anything more could be said, Kovaks had
turned and left the office.

Quickly the supervisor wiped his face dry, disgusted at the
thought of being kissed by another man.

Car theft is a growth area in crime in Britain. It is a big
headache for the police. There are always some people who leave
their cars unlocked with the key still in the ignition.

People like Henry Christie.

When he’d parked in the early hours he’d been so tired, had so
much on his mind and had been so busy chatting to Jane that he’d
simply got out of his car, left the key in the ignition and
forgotten to lock it.

Even if he’d remembered he wouldn’t have been distressed.
After all, who would want to steal a car which even the owner
described as a ‘heap o’ shit’.

The answer was a young man called John Abbot. Aged fifteen, he
was once again playing truant from school, engaged in his favourite
pastime of robbing cars.

The ‘robbing’ was either stealing from them - which he did
mostly - or, if the opportunity arose, driving the cars away and
abandoning them somewhere when he got bored. Usually on the beach
in the face of an incoming tide.

Abbot was one of Blackpool’s most prolific car-crime experts
and was verging on becoming a professional. He made over three
hundred pounds per week selling the goods he stole from cars, and
wrecked about ten thousand pounds’ worth of cars each month, just
for pleasure. He was rarely caught.

He was strolling through the streets of the south-shore area,
trying car doors as a matter of course, when he came across Henry’s
Metro.

He couldn’t believe his luck when he saw the key in the
ignition. He had a quick glance around the interior and sneered at
the state of it: torn seats, worn carpets and a radio which was
just that - a radio. Not even a cassette player! No one would want
to buy that.

‘
This car deserves to be trashed,’ he said. He slid in and
reached for the key.

The engine fired at the third attempt and ticked over lumpily.
He dipped the accelerator a few times and revved it gleefully. He
selected first and moved off. There was a big smile on the young
criminal’s face.

He was not to know that this was the last car he would ever
steal.

It was a long time since Joe Kovaks had felt so happy,
certainly not since the letter bomb. It was like a new beginning,
and he was looking forward to the road ahead. If this is what love
feels like, he thought, give me more.

He almost skipped through the office to his desk. One or two
people looked up quizzically from their work as his tuneless
humming reached their ears.

The phone rang as he sat down.

‘
Joe Kovaks, Special Agent. May I help you?’ he answered
brightly. ‘Joe, it’s me,’ came a weak voice.

Reality flattened Kovaks back into his chair. ‘Damian, where
the hell are you?’ he hissed urgently. He’d almost forgotten about
Sue’s murder.

‘
Look, I can’t talk on this line, you know that.’

‘
Hang on, hang on.’ Kovaks fumbled in his jacket for his
electronic diary. ‘I gotta number here you can use.’ He pressed a
few buttons. ‘Damian, you still there?’

‘
Yeah,’ he said tiredly.

‘
This is the number of one of the phone booths opposite the
office you know, the ones we use for delicate calls?’

‘
Yeah, I know ‘em.’

‘
You gotta pen?’

‘
Yeah.’

Kovaks read the number out and got Damian to recite it
back.

‘
Is this kosher?’ Damian asked suspiciously.

‘
Yeah. Leave it five minutes for me to get down there, then
call the number, OK?’

‘
Right. ‘

Kovaks hung up and put his diary back inside his jacket. He
immediately called Ram Chander in Homicide but was unable to
contact him. He decided not to leave a message.

He glanced quickly around the office. ‘Bill, do me a favour,
will ya? Call Ram Chander and tell him Damian’s recontacted me,
right? Tell him I’m gonna try and make a meet with him. He’ll
understand. It’s pretty urgent. Can you do that for me,
pal?’

‘
No probs,’ the other agent said, scribbling.

Kovaks left the office quickly. Eamon Ritter stood up and
followed. In his hand he had a mobile phone which he began to
dial.

Henry Christie sat staring dead ahead as Donaldson drove him
back down the motorway. It was 5 p.m., and it had been a
frustrating day. No progress had been made; and Henry was the
subject of an official complaint, yet again.

He’d spent most of the morning with Karen, briefing the small
team of detectives which had been assigned to their line of
enquiry. Their first task was to go and see a tame magistrate and
swear out two warrants which were to be executed later that
afternoon.

Around lunchtime Henry walked up to the public mortuary at the
hospital where Dr Baines, the Home Office Pathologist, was carrying
out post mortems on the police officers killed the day
before.

Baines was deep inside a chest cavity. His gloves, sleeves
and apron were covered in blood. The scene reminded Henry of
MASH,
except there was
no one to be saved here. They nodded to each other. Baines’s hands
emerged with a heart that had been shredded by bullets. He placed
it carefully down by the body.

‘
Henry! How are you, old man?’ he asked rather incongruously
in a mock-Etonian accent.

‘
As well as can be expected under the
circumstances.’

Both men looked down the room. There was a body on each slab.
In one corner was a bloodstained pile of police
uniforms.

‘
Glad to see you’re fighting fit though,’ Baines said.
‘Believe you’ve had some, er, problems.’

‘
Yeah, but I’m over the worst now - I hope.’

‘
That double murder at Whitworth never got solved, did
it?’

‘
No, we got nowhere with it.
And
I
got
kicked off the case.’

‘
I’m damned sure I know something important about that,’
Baines said. He thought hard for a moment or two, eyebrows
knitting. ‘Nope, won’t come, tried before. Anyway, must get back to
work, so if you’ll excuse me . . . Perhaps we should have a meal
out sometime?’

‘
Yeah, why not?’

Henry meandered back to the station. FB was just driving into
the car park.

‘
How’s it going, Henry?’ he asked as they walked into the
building and made their way to the canteen for lunch.

‘
So so,’ Henry shrugged.

‘
Just to let you know, just to warn you - I’ve let the Chief
have copies of everything on Hinksman. He wants to know every move
we make, so keep me informed please, bang up to date on everything,
OK?’

‘
By all means.’

‘
So, what’s planned for this afternoon?’

‘
Gonna scare the shite out of Lenny Dakin.’ For the first time
that day Henry’s scowl was replaced by a grin. But it was a wicked
one.

The warrants authorised the police to enter, by force if need
be, two properties belonging to Lenny Dakin, and to search for a
person unlawfully at large who was reasonably believed to be
therein, namely Hinksman.

One warrant was for Dakin’s home in the Ribble Valley and the
other was for his flat over his supermarket in Blackburn. Henry
knew of several other addresses but didn’t want to overplay his
hand at such an early stage. His idea was to panic Dakin, put him
under surveillance and hope that he did something stupid, like lead
the cops to Hinksman.

However, the afternoon turned into an utter shambles. Both
premises were searched, but Dakin wasn’t at either of
them.

Henry and a squad of armed officers, including an unarmed
Donaldson, hit Dakin’s farmhouse. Another team, led by Karen, did
the rooms over the supermarket.

As both teams reassembled back at Lancaster, a man purporting
to be Dakin’s solicitor telephoned the incident room and asked to
speak to Henry. He demanded to know on what evidence the
application for the warrants had been based.

‘
I cannot discuss anything over the telephone,’ Henry said
officiously. ‘I don’t even know if you are who you say you
are.’

‘
Oh, I am definitely Mr Dakin’s solicitor,’ the man said. ‘And
there is also the question of compensation and theft. The front
door of Mr Dakin’s house has been severely damaged by police as
they entered the premises... ‘

Henry held his breath. The door had been battered down and a
joiner had been called to repair and secure it before the police
left. Fortunately Henry had taken a Polaroid camera along with him
for ‘before and after’ pictures.

‘
The door is several hundred years old, an antique in fact and
is valued at two thousand pounds. We will be claiming that amount
in compensation. ‘

‘
Bollocks,’ uttered Henry, declining to disclose the existence
of the photographs.

‘
And of course there is the problem of Mr Dakin’s Doberman
Pinschers. Both dogs have disappeared, presumably allowed to escape
by the police.’

Henry made no comment. The Dobermans had been a problem all
right; they’d bitten two detectives’ arses before being shepherded
out of the house where they immediately hurtled away down the
garden, over the wall, never to be seen again.

‘
A large amount of gold jewellery has gone missing,’ the
solicitor went on smoothly.