Nightmare City (25 page)

‘
It was just fucking unfortunate that Dundaven got picked up,’
Conroy snapped defensively.

‘
What were you thinking of, taking them to Blackpool in the
first place?’

Conroy stiffened. ‘You’re the one who wanted them stashed well
away from your warehouse, just in case. Rider’s club seemed as good
a place as any. I shouldn’t have given the bastard any choice. I
should’ve just told him I was going to use it . . . and, of course,
those two guys turning up with shooters complicated matters, threw
me off-course a bit, y’know?’ He touched the side of his face.
‘Having a gun stuck into the back of your head, then going off next
to your ear ain’t pleasant. My ear still rings like fucking chapel
bells. . . It was a bad fucking day all round.’

‘
And that’s another thing,’ McNamara latched onto. ‘What’s the
position with you and Munrow? We won’t be doing business with
anyone unless we can show we’re in control. What’s the current
state of play?’

‘
I have no fucking idea at all. It’s a waiting game. I don’t
know what his plans are. He’s an unpredictable, dangerous
twat.’

‘
Take him out,’ said McNamara.

‘
Oh -like, yeah. Easier said than done. There’s not many
willing to go up against him.’ Conroy turned his attention to
Morton. ‘Has that bastard Rider shot in the leg turned up
yet?’

Morton shook his head.

‘
One big fucking cock-up, all this,’ Conroy said in dismay.
‘All at once.’

Quietly, Morton said to McNamara, ‘Ron’s not the only one
who’s got a problem, is he Harry?’

McNamara clammed up tight. He reached for the brandy bottle
and tipped more than a generous measure into his coffee.

Conroy laughed. ‘You haven’t been picked up for kerb crawling
again, have you, you daft cunt?’

Nothing came from the millionaire.

‘
Shall I tell him?’ Morton said, who, when nothing came, went
on, ‘The police in Blackpool are investigating the murder of a
prostitute. One by the name of Marie Cullen. Ring a bell,
Ron?’

Conroy nodded and glowered sourly at McNamara. ‘You haven’t,
have you?’

‘
She threatened to go to the press about our relationship,’
McNamara blurted under pressure. ‘She wanted money to keep quiet.
She could have ruined me.’

‘
You mean she’d had enough of you beating the living crap out
of her every time you fucked her. Is that what you mean, you
sadistic bastard?’

McNamara placed his cup down. He rose from his chair and
without warning plunged himself across the room at Conroy who was
standing at the window with a drink in his hands.

They fell into a heap, McNamara’s fists flying, rolling across
the carpeted room, crashing into chairs. But, though McNamara was
bigger than Conroy, his technique was lacking badly and within
moments he found himself face down on the floor, nose pressed into
the shag pile, with Conroy’s left hand pushing the back of his neck
down. In his right was a switchblade which he pressed dangerously
into the side of McNamara’s neck.

‘
Don’t ever try a fucking stunt like that again, or I’ll
skewer you like a pig,’ Conroy panted heavily.

Morton pulled him away. ‘Gents, gents,’ he cooed.

Conroy released his grip and stood up.

Spitting phlegm, McNamara drew himself onto all fours and
gasped, ‘At least I’m not a little-boy shagger.’ He wiped his
face.

‘
I don’t hurt them,’ said Conroy.

‘
Gents, please! Come on, we’ve got problems to solve here,
solutions to find,’ Morton said with patronising smoothness. ‘Let’s
not make things any worse than they are.’ He helped McNamara to his
feet. ‘We’ve
all
got problems and we need to air them reasonably, otherwise we
might as well go our separate ways. . . and in the long term that
could do us all damage, knowing what we know about each other. We
need a corporate approach here. Heads together.’

Conroy brushed himself off. The blade had
disappeared.

McNamara returned to his seat, wheezing slightly, and lit a
cigar.

‘
Point taken,’ said Conroy.

‘
Harry?’ Morton probed the tycoon.

Reluctantly the man nodded.

‘
Good, let’s get on with it then.’

Conroy stalked moodily over to the window where he stood, arms
folded, staring out at the snow.

To McNamara, Morton said, ‘I’ll do what I can to help you,
Harry, but I’ve got to know one thing. Did you kill
her?’

‘
Bitch deserved it,’ McNamara spat.

Morton sighed. ‘In that case, you do have a problem. A
monumental one.’

‘
Why? Can’t you do anything to get them off my back? That’s
what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’

‘
It’s not so simple in this case. I don’t hold any influence
over the cops in Blackpool. I managed to get my team onto the
newsagents killings because it’s one of my men who ended up dead
there and we need to control the investigation. But there’s no way
I can get anyone onto Cullen’s murder. . . I couldn’t justify
it.’

‘
Shit,’ said McNamara.

‘
And you’re in a similar position too, Ron, but I might be
able to get a couple of my people onto the Dundaven enquiry on the
pretext that we’ve got an interest in him, just to keep a watching
brief on it. That way at least I could pre-warn you of any
developments in your direction.’

‘
I don’t see it as that much of a problem. Dundaven won’t
talk. If he does, I’ll ensure he commits suicide on remand. My
difficulty is getting a shitload of guns up here in time for the
viewing.’

‘
No - you’re wrong there,’ Morton warned him. ‘If finding guns
was your only problem, you’d be laughing. Both your problems are
much, much bigger than that.’

He had the rapt attention of both men.

‘
Your -
our
- problem is a very nosy, tenacious detective who doesn’t
quite know anything at all just yet, but given time, knowing him
and his reputation, he’s very much on the verge of discovery. And
that problem,’ said Morton, ‘is called Henry Christie.’

Long hours hunched over a desk did nothing for the small of
Karl Donaldson’s back. Reading and writing in a completely
ridiculous posture gave him severe pain in the lumbar region.
Around lunchtime, having spent two hours sifting meticulously
through the accumulated paperwork, he knew he should get up,
stretch, have a walk round. Otherwise he’d be set like a statue in
that position.

He leaned back creakily and rubbed his neck.

‘
I’m not cut out for this crap,’ he said to no one in
particular. ‘Desk jockey.’

All this close-up work was playing havoc with his eyes too. He
had a horrible feeling he might need spectacles soon. In his book
that was the ultimate concession to the onset of middle age. That
and a beer gut.

He ran a hand carefully over his face, touching the
chain-mark, black eye and swollen jaw. The combination pulsated
continually, even though he’d now succumbed to Nurofen. Suffering
pain wouldn’t bring Sam or Francesca back to life.

He had almost reached the foothills of the mountain of
paperwork. He quickly signed off an Intelligence bulletin from
Madrid without reading it too carefully, then a name in one of the
paragraphs caught his eye.

It was a surname:
Mayfair.

The item referred to the fact that a sharp-eyed FBI operative
who happened to be on a surveillance job at Madrid Airport had
spotted two people whom he believed were the Mayfair brothers,
Tiger and Wayne. They had arrived on a flight from Lisbon, both
using assumed names and not travelling together. It was an
unconfirmed sighting but the agent was reasonably sure it was them
... the two men believed to be responsible for a number of contract
killings throughout the US and Europe. Wherever they went, death
seemed to follow, but as yet no law-enforcement agency had tied
them evidentially to actual murders.

The item went on to state that a photograph of the two was to
follow, taken by airport security cameras. Donaldson skimmed
through the most recent Interpol bulletins from Portugal and saw
nothing which would indicate that the Mayfair brothers had been
active professionally.

He took a photocopy of the bulletin and updated the office
file on the Mayfair brothers as this was his
responsibility.

Next on the pile was a teleprinter message. Donaldson read it
and his eyebrows rose with pleasure on reading the name of the
originator. . .
Acting DI Henry
Christie
. . . which was why he read the
whole thing a second time. He was glad he did. He picked up the
message, cleared a space on his desk, pulled his portable PC
towards him and logged into the FBI system.

‘
The way I see it,’ Morton said pensively, ‘this is a
three-sided thing. Firstly, Harry, there’s your angle: Christie’s a
digger, a stubborn guy who doesn’t mind who he upsets. This means
he’ll be on your case until he cracks it, or it defeats him. My
guess is that he’ll crack it because it’s nothing more than a
run-of-the-mill murder case. He will get you, given
time.’

McNamara winced and drew on his cigar.

Conroy cackled with laughter, which ceased as soon as Morton
turned to him and said, ‘And in your case, as Christie himself
stated to me, he doesn’t like people taking pot-shots at cops. If
only for that reason he’ll net you along the way.’

‘
Not a fuckin’ chance.’

‘
He will,’ Morton assured him. ‘He’s already searched all
those premises and-’

‘
And found nothing. He’s way off the mark.’

‘
Just practising his aiming.’

The three men were all now seated, in positions where they
could easily see and hear one another. There was invisible tension
in the room, caused mainly by Morton’s assessment of Henry Christie
and his abilities.

‘
And how does he affect you?’ McNamara pointed at
Morton.

Morton sat back and thought for a moment. ‘Firstly, I’m pretty
sure it was Christie who put the seeds into the mind of the
unfortunate DC Luton about there being two gangs operating. Luton
brought it up, but we laughed him out of the office. But it worried
us. Then, last night, we found Luton reading through the witness
statements we’d amended. I’m sure he was dealt with before he spoke
to anyone else. Having said that, he seemed to be expecting Henry
Christie at his front door, but that says to me they haven’t yet
talked.

‘
Which means that Christie doesn’t actually know shit about
anything yet, but him being the person he is, it won’t take him too
long to make connections. . . and then he becomes a problem for me,
Harry, in answer to your question.’

‘
Then top him,’ said Conroy. ‘If he poses a threat, do
him.’

‘
Yes,’ McNamara agreed. ‘We’ve done it before.’

‘
No,’ said Morton firmly. He stood up and paced the room. ‘We
only take out police officers in exceptional circumstances. That’s
always been agreed. It causes too much interest. Too many people
want those sort of murders solved. We only get rid of the people
who know too much and who are likely to cause us immediate damage.
People like Geoff Driffield and Derek Luton. They were both too
near.’

‘
But you said he’d find out,’ complained McNamara.

‘
Look, at this stage he knows fuck all,’ the detective said.
‘And if we kill him now there’ll be so much heat that some bugger
might crack. Two cops are already dead in Blackpool; one is still
in ICU. If another one gets it . . .’ He left the implication
floating in the air like a bad smell and shook his head.

‘
Accident?’ suggested Conroy.

‘
They need to be arranged,’ Morton pointed out. ‘Not easy to
do without arousing suspicion.’

‘
Pay him off then,’ said McNamara. ‘Pay him to look the other
way.’

‘
Mmm, I thought about that ... but I know a little about Henry
Christie because of that big mafia case he was involved in a while
back, and I don’t think money would work. He once turned down an
offer of several million dollars to look the other way. He arrested
the man who made that offer, saying he liked to be offered bribes
because he enjoyed locking up the people who made them. So, no.
That won’t work.’

‘
Put the fear of God into his family.’

Morton looked sharply at Conroy. ‘We don’t intimidate wives
and kids,’ he said.

‘
So what then?’ asked an increasingly irritable McNamara. ‘I
want the cunt off my back - now.’

‘
Well,’ said Morton, ‘he’s a very talented
detective.’

‘
Yeah, Detective Sergeant Perfect by all accounts,’ said
Conroy snidely.

Morton went on, ‘A good investigator, bit of a ruthless touch,
but straight as a dye ... Think about it.’

Conroy was first to catch on. ‘Just the sort of honest
detective you’d want on your elite squad.’