Hidden Witness (6 page)

‘Mm,' he began doubtfully, wondering how to phrase the rejection tactfully – but before he could say anything, a figure loomed up in front of him and Rory.

‘Hi guys,' the man said. He was in dark clothing, against a dark background.

The lads stopped.

A feeling of déjà vu – and complete and utter dread – coursed through Mark's body, like razor wire being drawn through his veins. History repeating itself.

The man stood in front of them, the entrance to the alley maybe ten metres behind him.

In that instant Mark knew exactly what this was about.

‘Scuse me,' Rory said, not getting it. He split away from Mark, sidestepping the figure with the intention of simply walking past. But the man moved into Rory's path.

‘Don't think so,' he said.

Rory peered at the man's face and then, even in the dark, just the slightest glint of light from the lamp posts way back at the fish and chip shop, a hundred metres behind them, he recognized him.

‘Shit,' he uttered, ducked low and tried to run to the man's left. Not quick enough. The man pivoted. There was something black and bulbous in his hand. There was a dull double-‘thwuck', accompanied by a silver-white flash as the man managed to touch the muzzle of the gun on to Rory's temple and fire. It was as if the teenager had been hit by the right hook of a heavyweight boxing champion. He staggered sideways, then his legs crumpled underneath him.

The man contorted away from Rory, Mark being his next target. He was moving quickly, but there was something unhurried, calm and efficient in the way he swivelled.

By contrast, Mark moved by instinct and fear, which gave him the slightest of edges as he swung the plastic carrier bag containing his newly bought feast into the man's face. The bag – possibly the cheapest and flimsiest plastic bag ever made – burst on impact, showering the attacker with an inferno of pie, chips and peas. He screamed and reared away, tearing at the hot food with his hands.

Mark ran for the alley, knowing he had only seconds at most.

‘Goddam little bastard,' the man bellowed.

Mark reached the first right of the dog-leg in the alley. The brick wall above his head exploded with silent missiles: the man was shooting at him. Mark ducked low, threw himself around the corner, not even allowing himself a micro-peek over the shoulder. That would have slowed him down. Even so, he was aware that the killer had recovered and was giving chase, could hear footsteps pounding.

The young lad ran towards the next corner, a left, just metres ahead. He skidded around it, feet sliding in the gravel, careening into the wall, then pushing himself upright and running hard, arms pumping. He was fast and lithe – a good sprinter – and he hoped that his recent cigarette habit wouldn't slow him down too much.

Still the footsteps were behind him. The man was fast and determined.

The alley opened up on to one of the roads on the estate. Mark did not pause to check for traffic, running across the road, bounding over a low hedge into a garden, then down the side of a house into the back garden, noisily kicking over some tins stacked next to a wheelie bin. They clattered loudly. Mark cursed, then abruptly changed direction by ninety degrees and ran parallel along the back of the house, across a paved area, then leapt across a broken fence into the next garden along, landing awkwardly but using his momentum to keep going.

A dog barked hysterically nearby. Someone shouted an obscenity.

Mark kept going, changed direction again and clambered over a back fence, dropping into another garden, ran through it and came out on another road, this time a cul-de-sac.

He stopped, wheezed for breath, in the middle of the road, his eyes wild.

An engine revved. A car swerved into the street, lights blazing.

Mark knew his cars and instantly recognized it as the Volvo that had struck the old man.

Terrified, trapped by the onrushing car, Mark remained transfixed by the headlights – then his survival gene kicked in. He spun, ran, the car only feet behind him, catching him, bearing down, trying to mow him over.

The cul-de-sac opened into a turning circle.

Once more Mark changed direction, cutting across the headlight beam, his shadow long and distorted. He swooped behind a parked car, then cut down a tight public footpath running along the side of a house, hearing the car swerve and stop behind him.

He kept going, never looking back. Pushing himself on, forcing more out of his being than ever before, using his intimate knowledge of the estate he'd lived on all his life to duck and weave, to lay false direction in case he was still being followed. Down alleyways that strangers would have mistaken for dead ends, but which Mark knew he could cut through. Along streets, through gardens, on to the fields surrounding the estate, until he reached the back of his house.

But he didn't just barge in. He secreted himself right at the back of the garden, sitting on a damp patch of weed. Here he caught his breath and with the patience of a deer knowing it was being hunted, waited still in the grass, unmoving, watching until he was positive it was safe to go home.

Five minutes passed. Nothing moved, other than the usual. This was one of the quiet avenues on the outer edge of the estate.

Then a car drove slowly past. Mark craned to see. Not the Volvo, one he recognized as belonging to a guy from the next avenue.

Another three minutes. Then another car, cruising. This time it was the Volvo.

His whole being tightened up.

It went by, two shapes inside it.

Then it was gone. He gave it five more minutes before crawling to the back door, kneeling up to the lock and inserting his key, letting himself in. He switched no lights on. Moved through the house on his hands and knees, along the hallway, checking the front door was bolted from the inside, then slithered upstairs to his bedroom and locked the door behind him. He edged to the window where he drew the curtains slowly and then, the light still off, he flopped on to his bed, exhausted.

Then he began to shake.

FOUR

T
he old man had been stripped and tagged. His arrival had been entered on to the database at the public mortuary and the computer-generated reference number – there was no name at present – scribbled on to the big-toe tag and in big figures on to his left shin in black felt tip.

Henry, having assisted the mortuary attendant with this procedure, was now wearing a surgical gown, latex gloves and a facemask pushed up on to the crown of his head. He walked slowly around the body, now laid out on a stainless steel mortuary slab. Henry's hands were clasped behind his back as he inspected the body, as though he was walking the beat at regulation pace.

The old man was in a terrible mess, something even more apparent now that he lay there naked and pitiful. The car had done a great deal of damage, crushing his chest, stomach, hips and upper legs; breaking numerous bones as though it had driven over a sack of twigs. The bullets had torn his head open.

Henry didn't flinch. He had seen much violent death over the years, lost count of the number of times he'd inspected a cadaver in a morgue. It was an obvious part of being a detective specializing in murder investigation. He wasn't immune to death, but neither was he upset by it – unless it touched him personally. The luxury of emotion had long since passed, probably since the first post-mortem he had ever attended as a nineteen-year-old rookie dealing with his first straightforward sudden death. He'd passed that test with flying colours – one of the top five dreaded incidents for all new cops – despite the evil machinations of his sergeant who had closed all the mortuary doors, turned up the heating to a swelter, and prayed that the sight and smell of a bloated, three-week-old corpse would cause him to hurl. It didn't. The spectacle had never affected him in that way. He couldn't pretend to be unmoved by the deaths of young people, but his professional detachment had given him inner strategies to deal with such rare occurrences.

The smell always bothered him, though. Never enough to make him physically sick, but enough to know he hated its musty clingy-ness, the way it stuck to clothes and on to nasal hairs for days on end.

But this dead man, mown down and shot, made his arse twitch with excitement. He knew this was no run of the mill Blackpool killing and the prospect of investigating it sent a thrill through him.

‘OK, guys, what've we got?'

Henry's observations were curtailed by the arrival of the appropriately suited and booted Home Office pathologist, entering the mortuary blowing into a latex glove until it expanded like a cow's udder, before fitting it.

Keira O'Connell was the locum pathologist standing in for the usual incumbent, Professor Baines, a man Henry knew well. His temporary replacement was far better looking, even though she looked exhausted and her hair was scraped severely back off her face and bunched into an untidy bun at the back of her head. And she was wearing a green surgical gown that did absolutely nothing for her figure.

Her steel-grey eyes regarded Henry as she fitted the second glove and then her facemask. He did not answer her question, which he guessed was rhetorical. O'Connell, like all good pathologists had already been out to the scene of the murder and knew as much as Henry.

She looked at the old man – not Henry – then glanced at the creepy-eyed mortuary assistant, who was precisely laying out the tools of the mortician's trade in a perfect line on a contraption resembling a breakfast-in-bed tray that fitted on runners over the mortuary slab and could slide up and down as the pathologist worked.

‘Are we recording?' she asked him.

‘Yes, boss . . . sound and vision on.'

‘OK,' O'Connell said. Then, for the benefit of the recording equipment, spoke the time, day, date and location, and introduced herself and that she was about to perform a post-mortem on the body of an as yet unidentified male found earlier that evening on a street in Blackpool.

Henry glanced up at the video camera on the wall, and the one attached to the ceiling, both focused on the body.

O'Connell did a recap of what she already knew and gave some general observations such as, ‘Male, aged somewhere between sixty-five and seventy-five, five-eight tall – yet to be accurately measured – and perhaps eleven stones, again, yet to be accurately weighed. Slim build, well-nourished, white-skinned but possibly from a Mediterranean background . . .' When she had finished her introduction, she walked slowly around the body, pointing out the various injuries. They were, she said, consistent with having been struck and then run over by a vehicle, possibly a heavy saloon car, and the head injury – massive trauma – consistent with having been shot twice. The obvious always had to be stated.

Henry watched and listened. He admired her professionalism and knowledge, and whilst his professional side nodded sagely at her findings, his less professional man-side cursed the fact he'd once screwed up his chance of ending up in the sack with her. A couple of years earlier, after a post-mortem, they had gone out for a drink. He'd been going through a rocky patch at work and instead of allowing her to talk, he made the fatal error of rambling self-pityingly about his own misfortunes and bored her half to death. When her eyes glazed over she made her excuses and left, leaving Henry mentally kicking the living crap out of himself. She probably didn't even remember it – he hoped.

He glanced at the wall clock: 2.07 a.m. Then his eyes flicked back to the body.

‘. . . looks like an old bullet wound,' O'Connell was saying, words that made Henry jerk upright. She was standing alongside the old man, lifting the body slightly and inspecting an area just below the rib cage on the right-hand side.

‘What?' Henry blurted.

O'Connell raised her eyes over her mask, tilted her head. ‘It looks as though he's been shot before.'

Henry scurried around the slab to inspect the discovery. Just below the rib cage there was an entry wound and an exit wound corresponding to it at the back. It looked as though a bullet had winged the old man through the soft tissue around that part of the body, near to the liver. ‘In here,' she said, putting her forefinger on the entry, ‘out here,' and she put her thumb on the exit, taking a lump of flesh between her fingers. ‘Obviously didn't do too much damage, not much more than a flesh wound, though the exit is more of a mess than the entry, as they often are.'

‘I hadn't noticed it,' Henry admitted.

‘That's why we have pathologists,' she responded. Henry saw her ears rise as she smiled teasingly behind the mask.

‘How old?'

She shrugged. ‘Difficult to say exactly . . . it's well-healed and it looks as though it was treated medically and well . . . maybe five years,' she estimated.

Henry blinked, did the maths. ‘So if this guy is at the lower age you estimated, he got shot when he was sixty?' His voice rose incredulously on the last few syllables. O'Connell nodded. ‘Not likely to be a war wound, then?'

‘Not unless he was in Dad's Army.'

Henry stood upright. ‘Can we get that photographed?'

‘All part of the service.'

‘Thanks.'

‘And so we begin.'

Henry retreated a couple of steps, his forehead creased in thought by the wound in the man's side as he considered the possibilities. ‘I'll go bag and tag his clothing,' he announced.

When the body had been stripped, the clothing had all been dropped into a plastic basket that was now in one corner of the room. He went across and picked it up, then carried it through to the mortuary office where he dumped it on a desktop. He nipped out to his car parked in the tiny car park at the back of the mortuary and brought back several paper bags, sacks, polythene bags, tags, and a notebook he always had with him – just in case. Most detectives are similarly equipped. You could never tell when some bloodstained clothing or other evidence might have to be seized. He left his portable fingerprinting kit in the boot. That job was going to go to a CSI.