Crunch Time

Contents

Cover

Recent Titles by Nick Oldham from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

BACKLASH

SUBSTANTIAL THREAT

DEAD HEAT

BIG CITY JACKS

PSYCHO ALLEY

CRITICAL THREAT

CRUNCH TIME

 

 

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First published in 2008 in Great Britain and 2009 in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

This eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2008 by Nick Oldham.

The right of Nick Oldham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

Oldham, Nick, 1956-

Crunch time

1. Christie, Henry (Fictitious character) - Fiction

2. Police - England - Blackpool - Fiction 3. Detective and mystery stories

I. Title

823.9'14[F]

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6703-2 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-565-9 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

T
he Jaguar XJS had seen much better days. Once called British Racing Green, this car's formerly proud colour had now faded to a patchy, lighter shade with numerous round, pitted craters where the paint had rotted from the acid in the bird shit from the branches under which the car had been parked and neglected for over five years. Rust blistered the bottom edges of both doors and all the wheel arches; the tyres, whilst not technically illegal, were treading a fine line, wearing very thin indeed. Add to that an engine which was temperamental at best from a lack of servicing and tuning – twelve cylinders, almost thirty years old, needed a lot of care and attention – and an exhaust blowing like a tractor, and the picture painted was one of dilapidation and decline, of having seen much better days.

This was a scenario compounded by the man behind the wheel.

He was just on the right side of fifty – not such a bad age – but he had the aura of a beaten, defeated man. His eyes were dark and sunken in their sockets, particularly his right, which squinted behind a cheekbone that had been broken months before and didn't seem to want to heal properly. Both eyes were bleary and bloodshot after four solid days on a bender of epic proportions.

The man's breath stank horribly of belched alcohol, a dirty, unpleasant odour to anyone not having lived alongside him for the length of his binge – and no one had. It had been a solitary road he'd travelled, bumping into fellow drunks for the occasional shared hour, but leaving even the best of them in his wake.

During those four days he had not found time to wash, shower, clean his teeth or change his clothing. In fact, he had been so utterly drunk at one point he had pissed his pants and not noticed. It was at that moment he'd been ejected from the pub and, down to his last tenner, staggered back to his car. Then, somehow, without mowing anyone down, he'd driven to his present location somewhere near his rented apartment on Salford Quays, Manchester, close to the Old Trafford football ground, the apartment he'd just received notice to quit having defaulted on the rent.

The man in the Jaguar had come to the end of the line.

He was broke. His latest business deal had turned to shit, leaving him owing serious money. His girlfriend had deserted him after christening him a loser and a drunkard. He was being thrown out of his property and his car was a heap of expensive-to-run shit. As he slumped with his head wedged against the steering wheel, having pulled into the side of the road and managed to manoeuvre three wheels on to the footpath, it seemed that, as he vomited copiously down his lap and shins and over his once beautiful brogues and into the turn-ups of his piss-stained pants, nothing else could go wrong for him.

But in such pitiful cases there is always something else that can – and will – go shit-shaped.

Although the man in the car wouldn't completely realize what the gravity of that ‘something else' was until he was on the road to sobriety, that ‘something else' was just about thirty seconds away. It took the form of two uniformed police constables who just happened to be in the neighbourhood when the call came through.

‘
Patrol to attend anonymous report of possible drunken man in a car on …
' The comms operator gave the location and description of the car and the nearby double-crewed patrol responded immediately. They found the old XJS as described, looking as though it had screeched to a halt after having avoided a cat in the road.

The police car drew alongside and the female PC in the passenger seat opened her window and peered into the XJS.

‘You or me?' she asked her partner.

‘Be my guest.'

With a shrug of resignation the officer climbed out of the cop car, breath kit in hand, and slowly opened the driver's door. The man behind the wheel was now half-propped against the door and as the officer eased it open, he slithered slowly out and on to the roadside, lying half in, half out of the ancient sports car. The cop winced and stepped smartly back, crinkling her nose at the terrible stench of vomit, urine, four-day-old body odour and alcohol, all combined into one awful package that cops were almost immune to, but not completely.

The officer bent slightly to look back into the police car and gave her partner one of those ‘thanks a bunch, you bastard' expressions, but actually said, ‘What a mess,' as she glanced down at the drunk driver.

On the ground, which he hadn't hit too hard, the driver groaned pathetically. Then his whole upper body heaved, giving the constable just enough forewarning to jump out of the way, as the heave turned to a retch and once more the man hurled. From his twisted position, the vomit shot out like a fountain, then splattered back down across his chest with a sound like hailstones hitting the ground.

‘Call for the van, will you?' the officer said to her partner.

‘Drunk in charge of a motor vehicle and failing to provide a specimen of breath … oops!' The arresting officer had just presented the driver of the XJS to the custody officer at Salford nick in Greater Manchester. She'd propped the guy against the custody desk and then proceeded to outline the reason for the arrest and was just getting to the spiel when the driver lost his balance and staggered backwards on rubber legs. The officer caught him, prevented him from falling by getting a hand on his back, which seemed about the only part of him without a vomit-veneer covering. She manoeuvred him back up to the desk and held him there, the driver looking stupidly at the custody sergeant, unable to keep his head still on a neck that seemed to be without muscle.

The long-in-the-tooth custody sergeant, a gnarled, seen-it-all, don't-give-a-shit kind of guy, watched the episode with a contemptuous twist of his mouth. ‘Circumstances?' he said wearily to the officer.

‘Found him behind the wheel of a parked XJS, opened the door and he fell out. Keys in the ignition. Smelled strongly of intoxicants, he was sick all over everything, as you can see.' The officer indicated the prisoner's appearance with a wave of her hand. ‘He sort of blew into the breathalyser, but couldn't provide enough for a sample. Too drunk, weren't you, mate?' she finished patronizingly, as though she were talking to a dumb child. She added, ‘So I arrested him, but I'm pretty sure he's clueless about what's going on. Been on a real bender.'

‘Right, mate.' The sergeant's eyes took in the swaying prisoner, who was having a bit of trouble focusing and preventing treble-vision. To him it looked as though he was being inspected by three sergeants all saying the same thing, just slightly out of sync with each other, like a digital TV gone wrong.

‘Did you understand all that?' the sergeant asked him.

‘Er – what?'

‘Do you know why you've been arrested?'

‘I've been arrested?' the prisoner blurted with surprise. ‘I thought thish wush McDonald's.'

The sergeant scratched his ear with his ballpoint pen and declared, ‘Too drunk to understand his rights.' He twisted to the keyboard in front of him and began to enter details of the arrest on to the computerized custody record whilst the prisoner continued to watch him with amazement, having to be held upright by the arresting officer.

‘Name?' the sergeant asked.

‘Oh, shit,' the prisoner replied. His watery but bloodshot eyes opened wide. A gush of sweat rolled down his forehead and temple and suddenly he became a pale grey colour – and heaved.

‘Get him out of here!' the sergeant shouted at the PC. ‘He's gonna chuck up. Get him to the toilets!'

The constable grabbed the prisoner's left arm and yanked him roughly away from the custody desk – it was very bad form to allow a detainee to spew his guts over the sergeant and his equipment – and steered him double-quick along the corridor to the toilets. They got there just in time so the prisoner could at least direct this bellyful into a toilet bowl. The prisoner sank to his knees, grabbed the porcelain – this was actually the staff toilet, not one for visitors – and retched and gulped and retched until there was nothing else to come out. This done, he hung his head in the bowl and groaned loudly, the perfect acoustics of the toilet ensuring that the sound travelled back to the custody office.

He turned his haggard face up to the constable, one eye slightly closed, a dribble of runny sick on his chin. ‘That's better.'

‘You look a real fucking mess,' the PC said. ‘C'mon.' She hoisted him up by the elbow, flushed the toilet and steered him back to the patient custody sergeant, where she jammed him up against the desk.

‘Right … name?'

‘What? My name?'

‘Whose freakin' name do you think I want? Yes, you,' the sergeant said, with the irritability of someone who had dealt with a thousand inebriates and still had no time for them.

The prisoner's chin fell on to his chest and he looked up at the sergeant. ‘Jagger's the name. Yep, Jagger.'

‘Mick, I suppose? And I'm Keith Richards.'

‘Duh-duh-do-dah-dah-duh-dah-dah …' the prisoner sang, attempting to replicate the riff of
Satisfaction
, the Rolling Stones' hit song.

The sergeant's face – his three faces – hardened. ‘Do not fuck around.'

Something in the tone of his voice cut through the alcoholic haze and the triple image of the sergeant morphed into one slightly fuzzy one.