Nightmare City (45 page)

In just one week they had a major result, and all the
detectives and uniformed police officers involved in the case were
invited to a celebration that evening in the club upstairs. 5 p.m.
start. It would be a long, boozy evening.

Henry experienced a certain degree of satisfaction. He had
been instrumental in the arrest of the gang leader, Anderson, and
had nearly died for his trouble.

As the officers cleared the room, Henry caught sight of
Siobhan talking earnestly to Tony Morton, occasionally glancing
across at him. She looked upset, on the verge of tears. Henry
wondered if she’d had some distressing news or something. He did
not even begin to think she could be upset about last night and the
coitus interruptus. He had reflected on her behaviour and concluded
he did not really blame her ... but on the other hand she had said
some nasty things. Threats, almost.

She and Morton walked out of the incident room towards the
office he had been allocated for the duration of the
investigation.

Henry went to the CID office and sat at his desk where he
re-read a photocopy of the post-it note Derek had left for him on
the night of his brutal murder. What the hell did he want to see me
for? Henry asked himself. Was it the reason why he was murdered?
Henry could only speculate. The note was bare and said
little...

His mind wandered back to the previous evening when he had
called in to see Annie Luton on his way home. She had given him a
whole package of work-related stuff that Derek had taken home over
a period of time. It was all in a carrier bag.

‘
There’s everything there he ever brought home in relation to
work,’ Annie said. ‘I’ve been round the house from top to bottom,
gathering all this together. It was all over the show ... he was so
untidy. I even found some under our bed.’ Her eyes moistened as she
talked.

Henry glanced casually at the contents. None of it seemed to
be of major importance. Copies of reports, statements ... the type
of bumf most young officers probably had at home. Henry had been
like that years ago. Taking work home. Feeling the need to write up
reports off-duty so he could spend more time out on the streets
when on-duty. Yeah, he could relate to that.

These days he took nothing home.

He had spent about half an hour with Annie. She was very
rational and together, though a desperate and tragic figure. Henry
saw resilience in her and guessed that sooner rather than later her
life would be back on track.

He left with a hopeful, positive feeling inside him. The
carrier bag she had given him was dumped on the back seat of his
car, forgotten.

Then he went home to Kate.

He could hardly bring himself to look at her, so ashamed was
he of his actions with Siobhan. Did Kate pick up his body language?
Could she see right through him? Did she intuitively know that not
long before, he had literally been on the verge of making love to
another woman?

Henry would not have been surprised.

Wives were so perceptive about their husbands’ every little
transgression.

Thankfully she seemed far more concerned with his injuries and
getting him into a hot, soothing Radox bath and subsequently to
bed. She fussed around him like a mother hen, or at least someone
who cared very deeply for him and to whom his wellbeing was her
main concern. Inside, he boiled angrily with himself whilst on the
outside he revelled in the blue water and the glass of Jack
Daniel’s which Kate placed in his hand as he lay back and soaked
his soul.

He was beginning to think he had the makings of a serial
adulterer, but maybe he was exaggerating the problem.

His daughters, Jenny and Leanne, were another reason for this
self loathing. With the soap bubbles covering his rude parts, they
sat on their knees next to the bath, whilst Kate took a back seat
on the lid of the loo, and listened wide-eyed at the story of his
day, culminating in him being shot and the fight in the clothing
displays of M & S. He proudly displayed his chest-wound for
them to see. It had turned the colour of black grapes. He also
carefully removed the bandage on his ear to show them how chewed it
was.

He was their hero and although he knew the truth - he had been
completely terrified most of the time - he never revealed it to
them. Their dad. The hero.

The serial adulterer.

Kate ushered them out of the bathroom after the
story.

She sat back on the loo, looked him straight in the eye and
said, ‘I think you’ve got something to tell me.’

The words hit Henry harder than the bullet.

‘
How did you know?’

Were there claw-marks down his back he hadn’t realised Siobhan
had inflicted on him? Teeth-marks around his foreskin?

‘
The fact you were in Lancaster for one thing. Then you had a
gun. And you were arresting people for that multiple killing job.
You’ve already moved onto, what’s it called, North-West Crime
something or other?’

‘
North-West Organised Crime Squad,’ he corrected her, trying
to cover the relief in his voice. ‘No, I’ve just been helping them
out, that’s all, so they can look at me and I can look at them. See
if we like each other.’ He went on to explain the possibility of a
six-month secondment, followed possibly by a full transfer, and how
right he thought the job was for him.

He didn’t mention Siobhan at all.

‘
OK,’ Kate said, tilting her head. ‘If that’s what you want -
chasing criminals with guns all over the place, fine by me. If
you’re happy at your work, I’ll be behind you. Just please don’t
let it get in the way of us this time, Henry. That’s all I
ask.’

‘
I won’t,’ he promised meekly.

And once again, Kate, his wonderful, beautiful wife, had
surprised him with her generosity. And through no fault of her own,
made him feel like an absolute bastard.

Maybe that’s my lot in life, he’d reasoned.

Henry was brought bang into the present as the phone went,
interrupting his recall. It was Karl Donaldson.

‘
Karl, how you doin’?

‘
OK, buddy,’ Donaldson said, but Henry picked up a bum note in
the American’s voice. ‘I need to see you pretty urgently,
Henry.’

‘
About what?’

‘
Not over the phone. Face to face. I’m gonna travel up, bring
Karen along too. Settin’ off shortly. Looking at four-five hours
maybe with traffic and weather. Can you accommodate us?’

‘
Sure, sounds important. Nothing over the phone?’

‘
No clues, bud.’

‘
I’ll see you at home then.’

The phone went dead. Henry hung up, mystified and slightly
worried. He had no time to ruminate, however. The phone warbled
again.

‘
DS Christie - get up into my office now.’

Rather like Siobhan’s open-handed slap last night, Henry was
caught unawares by what happened next.

He meandered down the corridor towards Morton’s office. When
he was a few feet away from the door, it opened dramatically and
Siobhan burst out, virtually into his arms. Tears were streaked
down her face and she was heaving with loud, gut-wrenching sobs.
She looked up at Henry and reacted instantly as though she had
walked into the monster from hell.

‘
Get off me, get off me!’ she screamed, making a great show of
disentangling herself from him. She was not entangled by any
stretch of the imagination. She drew back, slapping the air like
she was trying to free herself from Spiderman’s web. ‘Leave me
alone. You’ve done enough damage.’

‘
Siobhan!’ Henry was wrong-footed completely. ‘What d’you
mean?’

‘
You bastard! Don’t come near me again.’

With that she ducked to one side, swept past him and scurried
off down the corridor towards the ladies toilets. Henry watched her
retreating back with shock. He turned. Tony Morton was standing in
the doorway of his temporary office.

‘
What was all that about?’ Henry asked, nonplussed.

Morton said nothing for a moment, but surveyed Henry with a
calculating look which made him shiver.

‘
Come in and sit down.’

Morton stayed by the door. Henry slid by him into the office.
He sat down, intertwining his fingers on his lap in a gesture of
submission.

Morton closed the door softly and walked to his seat behind
the desk, putting a large space between him and the Detective
Sergeant and peering down at him from a greater height. Henry could
not help but be awed by the old-fashioned power psychology. It
always worked on him.

What the hell was going on?

Morton did not speak for a few moments, but allowed Henry to
savour the atmosphere.

Then he dropped the bomb.

‘
DC Robson claims that you have sexually harassed her and this
has culminated in a serious sexual assault. Namely
rape.’

Three items appeared on Karl Donaldson’s desk just as he was
in the process of packing his briefcase.

The first was from Madeira and had come by DHL. It was the
sample of human tissue taken from under Sam Dawber’s fingernails.
It was in an airtight container, with Santana’s signature across
the seal as well as the doctor’s who had performed the post
mortem.

The next item was a statement from an FBI scientist which
contained the DNA profile resulting from the sample taken from
under Sam’s nails at the second autopsy. There was a computer
print-out attached which meant nothing to Donaldson. It went on to
say that the FBI DNA database had been searched, but no match had
been made.

He assumed that if he got the police here to DNA test the
sample from Madeira, the result would match up with the one from
the States.

He slid both items into his desk drawer and locked
it.

They would have to wait.

He wanted to get on the road to see Henry, ASAP.

However, the next item caught and held his
attention.

It was the photograph of Wayne and Tiger Mayfair taken on
their arrival at Madrid Airport a couple of days before. Donaldson
had already received a brief written report about the arrival from
a field agent out there. They were good quality photographs and
Donaldson was pleased by the high resolution. But it was the report
which accompanied it that made him sit up. Again, from the same
field agent, a guy named Moody, who had been doing a bit of
digging. It briefly said that, under assumed names, the Mayfairs
had now left Spain en route by air to Paris. The agent had also
discovered that they had flown into Madrid from Lisbon.

And into Lisbon from Madeira.

Donaldson looked at the photograph again. Something odd about
Tiger Mayfair.

He rooted around his stationery drawer and found a magnifying
glass which he held over Tiger’s head.

Yes, there was no mistaking it.

Donaldson laid the photo down and breathed deeply.

Scratch-marks down his left cheek.

Henry stumbled out of Morton’s office with a face of granite
and all-pervading waves of cold fear gripping his
intestines.

Allegations of sexual harassment, followed by indecent assault
and then, possibly, rape, were dreadful to be levelled at anyone.
Especially when they were untrue.

And that is what Siobhan had alleged against him.

She had said that from the first moment they’d met, he had
constantly made lewd comments to her, sexual jokes and innuendo and
he had leered at her virtually all the time. ‘Active mental
groping’ was the term used.

She had gone on to tell Morton she had become physically sick
as a result of his behaviour, but she felt powerless to do anything
about it. After all, he was a Sergeant, she was only a Constable.
But above all he was a man.

To Morton she said that Henry had forced her to kiss him at
the NWOCS office in King Street when they had been there alone,
collecting equipment. He had rubbed his body up against hers but
she’d managed to struggle free and tell him not to touch her again.
That night, she claimed, she’d gone to bed and cried herself to
sleep, petrified at the thought of doing observations with him the
following morning in Lancaster.

Things got worse after the shooting incident when, in the
casualty department of all places, he had enticed her into the
cubicle where he was receiving treatment and exposed himself to
her.

It all culminated at King Street, again when they were alone.
This time, she alleged, Henry forced her to undress and tried to
rape her. He failed to penetrate her and ejaculate because he could
not maintain an erection.

She had been terrified. Put through an horrendous ordeal by a
man with power.

And now she wanted some action taken against him.

As the story was revealed to Henry, he simply sat there
open-mouthed, unable to believe what was being said. It was all
nonsense, of course. Both had been willing participants in the
engagement until Henry’s head had cleared and he realised how
foolish he was being - which was at the point where his
very erect
penis had
brushed up against the lips of WDS Robson’s vagina.