Nightmare City (48 page)

‘
They want this lot for some reason,’ he told the American.
‘They even went as far as searching Derek Luton’s house but failed
to find it. Maybe there’s something useful here.’ He wasn’t
particularly hopeful but nevertheless tipped the contents out onto
the coffee table.

There was a lot of dross which he quickly sorted through and
discarded. ‘Degsy left me a note the night he was murdered, asking
me to come and see him. I didn’t get it till too late. I wonder
if...’ He found four statements which had been crumpled up and
straightened out. They were photocopies, not originals. Henry ran
his hand over them to flatten them. ‘These are recent,’ he said,
noticing the dates. ‘Last Sunday.’

There were yellow highlight lines over certain areas in all
the statements. A quick glance confirmed to Henry that they were
all statements taken in connection with the armed robbery in
Fleetwood which had preceded the massacre in the newsagents. The
highlighted areas included the time of the robbery, and
descriptions of the people involved. Question marks, also in
highlighter, had been placed in the margins. Henry noted that the
officer taking the statement was DS Tattersall, accompanied by DC
Luton.

The two detectives perused the statements.

‘
Henry, I don’t know what this means,’ the American
admitted.

The Detective Sergeant’s brow was deeply furrowed. ‘Nor me.
These are photocopies of the original handwritten statements. They
would have been subsequently typed up.’ Henry was thinking out
loud. His eyes went to the statements again. Then something
clicked. ‘When I was at the scene of the murder last Saturday
night, Derek told me that the gang had pulled an earlier robbery in
Fleetwood. He mentioned a time.’ Henry willed himself to recall the
conversation. It came to him. ‘Seven-ten,
seven-fifteen.’

‘
And these statements highlight those times,’ Donaldson
observed.

‘
Yeah, but why?’

Donaldson shrugged and pursed his lips.

‘
And why the question marks in the margins?’ Henry
nagged.

‘
Maybe your dead pal found something out,’ Karl suggested.
‘Such as these statements having been altered at some stage. These
are probably his highlights, marking the areas which’ve been
changed.’

‘
And Derek got caught finding this out.’

‘
And it worried someone bad enough to put a bullet through his
head.’

‘
No,’ said Henry firmly. ‘I can’t believe this. I don’t want
to believe it.’

‘
Henry, buddy, from what you’ve told me, and from what I can
gather, we are dealing with ruthless people here. They will do
anything to stop those who get in their way.’

‘
Even murder a cop?’

‘
What about the cop in the newsagents? How come he
died?’

‘
Rogue. Loner. Guy thought he was Dirty Harry...’ Henry’s
thoughts turned to Siobhan and her assertion that Geoff Driffield
had come on duty alone and disappeared alone. Yet the books he had
seen at the NWOCS - the duty states, the radio book and the
firearms book - showed he had come on with four other people. The
four Henry had encountered not very long ago.

‘
Or did he get set up too?’ Donaldson said
presciently.

Silence. The words hung in the conservatory air.

‘
Let’s apply some creative thinking here, Henry,’ the FBI man
said assertively. ‘I know it could be well off the mark, but have a
listen to this: Geoff Driffield thought he was going on a stake-out
to catch a gang of armed robbers. He found himself alone in a shop,
having been told that the gang would strike there that night. He
was kitted out and tooled up. Maybe it wasn’t unusual for him to be
alone, and so he suspected nothing. Meanwhile, his four colleagues
dress up as this gang and hit the shop and kill Geoff Driffield and
any other poor son of a bitch who happens to be there. What they
don’t plan for is the real gang robbing a shop in Fleetwood eight
miles north, and they’ve gotta do some real fancy footwork to make
it look like the gang did both jobs. It was their intention to
frame this gang anyway, to blame them for Driffield’s murder. . .
I’m just thinking out loud, you understand.’

‘
No, can’t be.’

‘
Sit back, think it through. Even on the night of the
shootings, as you told me, you were sceptical about the two crimes
having been committed by the same gang. Even then, you had doubts.
Now does it seem that, maybe, just maybe, your first reaction was
the right one?’

Henry acknowledged this with a reluctant, ‘Yes.’

‘
You’re dealing with a very violent, nasty cabal here who have
gone out of control and who will do anything necessary to achieve
their own aims.’

Henry stared into space. ‘And not only that,’ he said, ‘I
think that Fanshaw-Bayley and Guthrie are involved too.’ Henry
couldn’t shake the memory of FB and Morton together, colluding,
conspiring to set him up. He felt physically sick. ‘Which means
that the top detective in this force is corrupt. Where does it end,
Karl?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Where do I go from here?’

‘
I have an idea,’ Donaldson said.

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was approaching 3.30 p.m. by the time Henry returned to
work. Technically his lunch-break should have been only
three-quarters of an hour long, but he couldn’t care less about
that. Being caught out for taking a long lunch was way down on his
worry list.

He found a tight space for his car in the almost overflowing
car park at the rear of the police station.

Hoping that none of the NWOCS spotted him, he jogged down the
rear yard with the carrier bag Annie Luton had given him in his
hand. Once inside he opted for the stairs in preference to the lift
and climbed them slowly, emerging on the floor where the murder
incident room was situated.

This was the problem area.

He needed to get into the incident room unseen, find the typed
statements and photocopy them. He also had to make copies of the
written statements in the carrier bag.

He pushed the stairs door open wide enough to allow him to
peep through the crack into the corridor.

Empty.

He stuck his head out and looked both ways. Clear.

All the while he expected Gallagher or Morton to appear. If
they caught him before he completed his task, he was
finished.

He stepped into the corridor.

Morton’s office was around the corner. The door to the
incident room was directly ahead. Three strides saw him
inside.

Two HOLMES operators were working at their computers. Neither
looked up. No one else was in the room.

First things first.

Whistling tunelessly, he walked confidently to the copier. He
almost screamed when it sensed his approach, clicked on and the
message on the control panel told him he had to wait five minutes
for the warm-up. A wave of frustration jittered through him. Five
minutes is a long time to stand next to a machine, looking
guilty.

Better fill the time constructively.

He slid across to the statement reader’s desk where there
were three big fat ring-binders bursting with statements. He
grabbed one of the folders marked
Fleetwood
and went back to the
copier.

Please wait
4
minutes. Warming up.

Henry snarled at the machine then set to work scanning through
the folder. He found one of the statements very quickly and removed
all four pages.

Please wait
3
minutes.

‘
Bastard,’ he hissed. He continued to flick through the pages,
knowing that each passing second put him in greater jeopardy. He
found another, three pages long, and yanked it roughly out of the
binder.

2
minutes,
the copier taunted.

Henry twitched. Somebody walked past the door.

He found the third and fourth statements he was looking
for.

Ready,
the copier declared with a
prim beep.

‘
At last,’ he breathed.

He stacked the four statements to one side and picked up the
plastic bag, pulling out the creased photocopied originals. Because
they had been screwed-up and flattened out, Henry did not dare feed
them into the copier for fear of causing a jam. He would have to do
each sheet one at a time. A slow process, especially when there was
a total of nine one-sided and four double-sided sheets.

When the paper tray ran out halfway through the third
statement, Henry nearly sank to his knees and cried.

He looked around wildly for more paper and saw a stack of it
in one corner of the room, behind a flip-chart stand.

As he was unwrapping a ream, Gallagher appeared at the
door.

Henry quickly leaned sideways, putting the flip-chart stand
between him and his tormentor, became still and prayed.

Gallagher called something to one of the HOLMES operators, who
laughed.

Then he was gone.

Shaking, Henry ripped the wrapping paper away from the A4
sheets, returned to the copier and stacked the paper in the
relevant tray, which he slammed back into place.

‘
C’mon, y’bastard - work,’ he hissed at the
machine.

Moments later it was ready to restart.

Henry fed the remaining sheets through.

He placed the new copies into the carrier bag, slotting them
in amongst all the other papers.

He had originally intended to photocopy the typewritten
statements too, but decided to steal them from the binder and hope
they would not be missed. He slid them and Derek’s highlighted
copies into anA4 envelope, together with a batch of blank statement
forms.

As he turned out of the room, Gallagher was coming towards
him. ‘Henry. I thought I saw you come in. What’ve you been up
to?’

‘
When - now? Or over lunch? If you mean over lunch I’ve been
crying in my soup, if you must know. Just now I’ve been to the
accounts department to drop my expense sheet off for last month.
It’s overdue, you see, and they’ve been on my back to get it in as
soon as poss. Life goes on even when you’re corrupt, you
know.’

‘
Let’s hope you’re not screwing the system. I’d hate for you
to make false claims about anything.’

‘
Gallagher, why don’t you just shove it. You’ve got me by the
balls, I accept that, but unless I have to, I don’t really want to
have to talk to you.’

‘
You ain’t got much choice, pal.’

Henry eyed him. He wanted to hit him very hard. Instead he
shoved the plastic bag into his chest and said, ‘Here, I believe
you wanted this stuff’?’

Gallagher took it from him.

‘
Have you been through it?’

Henry took a deep breath. ‘If there’s anything in there that
tells me more about your squalid little set-up, then I don’t want
to read it. I know more than enough now, thanks.’

‘
Hey, this is just the beginning, Henry,’ the DI sneered.
‘You’re on board now, one of us. You’ll get to like it. Then you’ll
start reaping the benefits. It’s not all bad.’

‘
Yes it is,’ said Henry. ‘I hate bent cops.’

‘
Then you must really despise yourself. I mean, all those
nasty things you’ve done in the last few days. Makes me look like a
beginner.’ Gallagher snorted.

Henry had had enough. ‘Finished?’

‘
Tony Morton wants to see you. Got a little job for
you.’

‘
He’ll have to wait.’

Henry shouldered his way angrily past the smirking DI and made
his way to the stairs. Gallagher was delving in the carrier bag,
not watching Henry, who twisted into the stairwell, then ran down
to the public enquiry counter. He opened the security door and
handed the envelope through to Karen who was waiting on the other
side. She gave him a forced smile, deep concern visible behind her
eyes, then left.

With an empty feeling, Henry turned back into the police
station and dragged himself unwillingly up to the murder incident
room, dreading what might be in store for him next.

‘
Something odd happening, boss.’ It was the voice of an NWOCS
detective called Hunt who had been told to keep Henry under
surveillance. He had trailed Henry home and then back to work after
lunch. He was now parked up outside the police station, talking on
a mobile phone to Morton, who was in his temporary
office.

‘
What do you mean, odd?’

‘
I followed him home and waited for him to reappear. There was
another car in his drive when he arrived. Later he came out with
two other people, a man and a woman - not Christie’s wife. Christie
got into his own car, they got into the other and followed him back
to the nick. The guy stayed in the car. The woman went to the
enquiry desk and reappeared after about ten minutes with a large
envelope in her hand. Whoa, the car’s just moving off now ... What
d’ya want me to do?’