Nightmare City (49 page)

‘
Could be nothing. Stick with them. Let me know what they’re
up to.’

The call ended at the exact moment Henry knocked on the door
and entered the office.

Morton clicked off his mobile.

‘
You wanted to see me?’

‘
Yes, got a good job for you, Henry.’

John Rider stood on the Promenade at South Shore. He wasn’t
dressed for the weather, being in jeans, trainers and a flimsy
blouson. The rain was plastering his hair flat on his head and
rolling down his face, intermingling with the tears he had thought
himself incapable of crying.

He had fucked up everything.

The chance of a settled, normal life, with a woman who loved
him and had done so for years. And he had been unaware of it, so
obsessed had he been with his macho gangster image, his drink,
drugs and other women.

In the space of a couple of days he’d been given the
opportunity of a real life, but instead he’d reacted to a difficult
situation like the Rider of old, which Isa could not
handle.

Straight to Violence. Do not pass Go.

A wave crashed against the sea wall and broke over him,
drenching his soul with its icy, salty blobs.

He hardly noticed.

He wanted to drown. To throw himself into the dangerous
water.

But he didn’t have the courage even to do that.

‘
It’s good to be working with you again, Henry -
honestly.’

Siobhan was sitting in the passenger seat whilst Henry drove
the NWOCS Vectra. His face was stony and unresponsive. He couldn’t
believe that Morton was making him work with her again. Humiliating
him, rubbing it in.

‘
I was really disappointed when you didn’t fuck me, you know.
I was really looking forward to it. I’d have come as soon as you
got your dick in me, then lots of times after that. You missed a
real treat. I’m so easy to satisfy.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘All
these problems and you didn’t even get a jump for your trouble.
Poor Henry.’

They had reached their destination. Henry drew the car into
the side of the road, stopped and kept the engine running. The
windscreen wipers were on double speed to cope with the downpour.
He kept his hands firmly on the steering wheel, rotated his head
slowly and glared down his nose at her.

‘
I’d just like you to know that the decision not to screw you
was made because I’m a married man and your supervisor. There is
another reason why I didn’t even entertain shoving my clean cock
into you. I was frightened of catching something nasty.’

She slapped him very hard across the face.

Or at least she tried to. This time he saw it coming. His hand
whipped up and grabbed her wrist before she connected. His face
displayed all the anger and repulsion he felt towards this
woman.

She whimpered, ‘Let go, you bastard.’

He flung her arm away from him.

‘
Don’t ever tempt me to hit you, Siobhan. I don’t feel like
I’ve got very much more to lose at the moment, and it’d give me a
great deal of pleasure. A charge of assault on top of everything
else wouldn’t matter a rat’s fart to me.’

He glanced into the rearview mirror. A double-crewed police
car pulled up behind. Their assistance was here.

It was time to make an arrest.

Donaldson drove north up the Promenade towards Fleetwood.
Karen had slipped the statements out of the envelope. On one knee
she balanced Luton’s photocopies and on the other the typed
statements Henry had appropriated. She read them all carefully and
compared them.

‘
This is incredible, Karl,’ she said nervously. ‘The
statements have been changed, but it’s fairly subtle and well done.
I’d say that this DS Tattersall knew what he was going to do when
he took the statement initially, so that the subsequent changes
wouldn’t be easily apparent. When these come to be presented at
court in six, eight, ten months’ time, whoever made them won’t know
any different. They’ll just go along with what has been written.
Particularly if the prosecutor is on the payroll. This really
worries me. If they’ve done it for this one, how many more times
have they done it? How many more people have been wrongly
convicted?’

‘
How many more people have been killed?’

‘
Do you think they killed Sergeant Driffield?’

‘
It all points to it, from what Henry says.’

‘
We need to tell someone.’

‘
The problem, as I see it, darlin’, is that we don’t know who
to tell. How far does this cancer spread? If we talk to the wrong
people, we put ourselves in jeopardy and Henry too. Let’s just take
it step by step and see what happens. Now, get that street map out,
babe. I don’t know my way around Fleetwood.’

He checked his rearview and his eyes narrowed.

Hands thrust into his jacket pocket, thumbs overhanging, a
very wet and bedraggled John Rider came round the corner. He had
been walking against the driving rain, head down, not looking
ahead. As he turned into the road where his flat was situated, the
force of the rain lessened and the wind dropped because of the high
buildings on either side.

He looked up.

Two uniformed cops, Henry Christie and a woman cop (he
assumed) were standing in a huddle on the pavement.

Their faces lifted simultaneously and saw Rider. Christie
pointed at him and shouted something that was lost in the rain.
Rider did not hesitate. His finely honed survival skills clicked
into place.

He ran.

Three of the four officers gave chase.

Henry let them go. He climbed back into the car and flicked
the heater fan onto full blast. Normally he would have been quite
happy to join the chase - but nothing was normal any more. He
decided to do it from the comfort of a vehicle. No point getting
too wet. After all, it was only an NWOCS job.

He executed a leisurely three-point turn and went in the
general direction of the disappearing officers.

It soon became apparent they had lost Rider.

Other patrols were being called to the area to assist in the
search. Over the radio, Siobhan called Henry and asked to be picked
up. Henry guffawed. Some hope. Maybe when the bitch was thoroughly
wet through and completely pissed off. He switched his radio
off.

Revenge of some sort and quite sweet in a childish
way.

Yet even though he had a desire in him not to make any effort,
it was an interesting scenario.

John Rider, Henry had been told by Morton, was suspected of
putting two bullets into the brain of a no-hoper gangster called
Munrow who had died whilst getting a new suit in Debenhams,
Preston. This interested Henry because of his previous dealings
with Rider - whom he did not like very much. The man might have
been involved in the gorilla-shooting in the zoo and the wounding
of a man in the leg - and these things kicked Henry’s arse into
gear. Even if Rider had not popped Munrow it would give Henry a
chance to speak to him at length about these other
matters.

Fuck! Henry cursed his conscientiousness. Once a detective,
always a detective.

He combed the streets for John Rider. . .

. . . Who had panicked when he saw the cops outside his
flat.

He sprinted into an alley, skidded on the cobblestones and
pushed himself as hard as he had ever done, with only one thought
in mind: evasion.

He concentrated on putting distance between him and his
pursuers, knowing that the first couple of minutes were usually the
critical ones. If they hadn’t caught you by then, your chances were
pretty good.

His other problem was that he didn’t have the fitness or
stamina to sustain himself over more than two minutes of hard
running. Within the first hundred metres he started to feel a
tightness in his chest as his lungs worked at a pace not
experienced for probably twenty years.

Now he was over forty, unfit, with too much charcoal in his
lungs and alcohol deposits in his veins.

He emerged out of the alley, did a right down the next street,
crossed over and zigged out of sight into another alleyway. A quick
look over his shoulder before he disappeared told him no cops in
sight.

This alley ran behind a series of guest-houses, emerging into
Waterloo Road, the main shopping street in South Shore, running at
right-angles to the Promenade.

Dodging the cars, he crossed over and took the next right onto
Bond Street. Still no cops behind.

He began to feel confident, though his body was sending out
warning signals, such as: ‘Please stop, you’re hurting me!’ and:
‘Knackered body, can’t run any further.’

He tried to ignore them and jogged as far as the junction with
Dean Street into which he turned left, then left again into Bright
Street where he had to stop. He leaned on the gable end of a
guest-house, gasping for air, his lungs desperate for a rest. He
was about to heave up and vomit, he was sure. His head throbbed
with the exertion and pain shot through it like a lightning bolt.
His vision swam.

He bent forwards and put the palms of his hand on his
knees.

He vomited.

A rush of stomach contents, mostly bile, surged through his
mouth and erupted onto the wet pavement below.

He wiped his mouth, aware vaguely of a car drawing up
nearby.

Hands still on his thighs he looked up, spitting the last
remnants of sick out of his mouth. His face grimaced in disgust as
he watched the figure of Henry Christie saunter up to him. A pair
of rigid handcuffs were swinging tauntingly on the index finger of
the cop’s right hand.

Rider tried to run again. His legs refused to carry
him.

Without a word, Henry clamped the first cuff onto Rider’s
right wrist. He twisted the cuffs in a well-practised movement.
Rider screamed but was powerless to resist Henry who wrenched his
right arm up behind his back, flattened the luckless Rider against
the wall, grabbed his other arm and well and truly handcuffed him,
his hands ‘stacked’ behind his back, one above the other. Rider’s
cheek was pressed against the stone wall. A trickle of sick ran out
of the corner of his mouth.

Rider eyed Henry, who smiled, gave a short nod and said,
‘You’re under arrest. Suspicion of murder.’ He tried to recite the
caution, but made a hash of the wording despite the practise. Rider
understood its sense and made no reply.

After a cursory body search, Henry directed Rider into the
back of the Vectra, after ensuring the child locks were operative.
He climbed into the driver’s seat.

‘
Bit of a wet one,’ he commented.

Rider did not respond, but slumped sideways across the seat,
panting. Henry shrugged and reached for his PR.

Siobhan stood waiting on a street corner as wet as any person
could be.

She pulled the passenger door open and shouted, ‘Where the
fuck did you go to, you bastard!’ On the last word she saw Rider in
the back seat.

Meekly she got in. ‘Where did you find him?’

‘
Coupla streets away.’

‘
How did you know where to look?’

‘
I’m a detective. It’s my job.’

From that moment on, all the way back to the police station,
not another word was spoken in the car.

‘
I did my bit. You’ve got him, now it’s down to
you.’

‘
Not quite so fast, Henry.’ Morton grabbed his
sleeve.

‘
Look, you asked me to assist in the arrest. I did. Now leave
me out of anything else. Take him to Preston and let them deal with
it.’

‘
Preston aren’t dealing with him. We are, and I want you to
interview him.’

‘
Why me? I know nothing about the incident and, to be
truthful, I don’t even know why he’s been arrested. What evidence
is there against him?’

‘
There is none - just reasonable suspicion. That’s all you
need for an arrest, isn’t it?’

‘
Where’s the reasonable suspicion then?’

‘
He was tied up with Munrow in some sort of underworld deal.
They are believed to have fallen out and bang bang, Munrow’s dead.
Rider is prime suspect. And you’re dealing with it.’

Morton waved a file of papers in front of Henry’s face.
‘Here’s all the details of the crime itself, including ballistic
reports. What I want you to do is interview him and then charge him
with murder.’

‘
Simple, eh? Just like that. Where’s the fucking
evidence?’

‘
That’s down to you, Henry.’

‘
Meaning?’

‘
If you can’t find real evidence, then stitch him up.
Fabricate evidence, get a conviction. Do whatever is needed to get
this man a life sentence. This will show us that you are one
hundred per cent with us now. Do this for me, do it well, and I’ll
consider letting you off the hook. If you don’t do it properly,
then the first thing that’ll happen is that your darling wife will
get a phone call- anonymously - to say you’ve raped a female
officer. That female officer will then lodge a formal complaint
against you. Then all that other shit will hit the fan. It’s your
choice, Henry, but it would probably be in your best interests to
fit Rider up. Then you have my word we’ll part
amicably.’