Psycho Alley (32 page)

‘Shit,' he said at length, looking at the detective.

‘Yeah, shit,' he agreed.

‘Anyone else know about this?'

‘Nope?'

‘Wife, girlfriend, boyfriend?'

‘Not even him.'

‘What are your plans for the morning?' Henry asked.

The DC shrugged. ‘Day off, breakfast, newspaper, shopping, DIY, that sort of stuff.'

‘Cancel all those plans.'

‘OK,' he said without a moment of question. ‘Why?'

‘I need to tell you a story, then I need to phone the chief constable.'

‘Whatever.'

Forty minutes later, the tech support DC emerged from Henry's office, somewhat shell-shocked by what he'd heard, but at the same time thrilled by what he'd been tasked to do.

Henry, equally shocked and a bit dithery, came out of the office a few moments earlier and made his way to the MIR, which was abuzz with activity following the earlier briefing. He found Karl Donaldson with Jane Roscoe at the office manager's desk. They had known each other a few years, having met through Henry. Donaldson was very much aware of Henry's affair with Jane.

He sauntered over to the pair and got a progress update. Little had moved on, but a lot of people were beavering away on their allotted tasks on the streets. Blackpool was pretty much locked down as cops went out banging on doors, calling in favours and doing a lot of shaking down in an effort to trace Trent, whose face was now plastered over the MIR walls.

The activity was satisfying. Henry was sure that if Trent was in town, he'd be flushed out or cornered soon. He had to believe that.

His mobile roared like a jet as an incoming text landed. He looked at it:
ctch me if u can.

Donaldson and Jane watched Henry's expression alter.

‘Problem?' the American asked.

‘No,' Henry said, stern-faced. He walked out of the room.

Could it be that Trent was taunting him? He could not be sure, but from what he knew of the child molester, this was not something that fitted his behaviour pattern. Trent liked to assault and kill. That was his bag. It wasn't a game for him. He didn't like to leave clues, to play cat and mouse with cops. Cats usually caught mice, and he would not wish to jeopardize his freedom by playing silly buggers with mobile phones that could possibly be traced. He had been out and at liberty for a long time. Why would he want to lose that just for the sake of one-upmanship? He would not, Henry convinced himself. Trent wanted to stay free, not get caught. The more Henry thought about it, the less he believed Trent was the texter. But maybe the next twenty-four hours would reveal the culprit. Maybe.

In the corridor outside his office, he bumped into a constable coming out of the office. Henry did not know the officer's name, but recognized him as a member of the Support Unit, the bish-bash-bosh squad, as they were known, because of their somewhat hard-edged approach to policing. He was clutching a photograph in his hand.

‘Help you?' Henry said.

‘Yeah, boss … you got a mo?'

‘Come in.' Henry led him into the salubrious interior of his office and plonked down at his desk, waiting for the officer to sit down opposite. ‘Sorry, I don't know your name.'

‘PC Fawcett … John Fawcett,' he said.

‘What can I do for you, John?'

‘I was at the briefing earlier,' he began hesitantly. He showed Henry the photo he was holding – one of the many Henry had hurriedly produced of Trent. Fawcett did not go on immediately. Henry waited for him to fill the gap. ‘I've been looking long and hard at this photograph.' He waved Trent's face at Henry. ‘And, well, I don't want to appear stupid or anything and I'm not a hundred per cent, but, do you remember when you busted into Uren's flat?'

‘How could I forget?'

‘I was one of the Support Unit officers covering the stairs.' Henry nodded, recalling him now. ‘Just as you went into Uren's flat, a guy came down the stairs from the floor above.' The officer shrugged helplessly. ‘I mean, it obviously wasn't Uren, so when he asked if it was all right to go past, I just said no probs. Took his name, let him go.'

Henry saw Fawcett's Adam's apple rise and fall.

‘I think it was this guy.' He held up Trent's photograph.

It was a statement greeted by stony silence. For a moment, tumbleweed could have blown through the office on a whistling wind.

‘You think?'

‘A bit different-looking … but the eyes … yeah. I mean, we weren't actually given instructions about what we should do, so I let him pass, boss.'

On such simple things are suspects allowed to go free, and investigations are completely fucked up.

‘How certain are you?'

Fawcett ummed and ahhed, then said, ‘As I said, not a hundred per cent, but as certain as I can be in the short time I saw him in the crap lighting in the building. And,' he went on, dropping the bombshell, ‘he told me his name was John Stoke, the name you said Trent uses as an alias.'

There was an extra long moment of dreadful silence as Henry digested this, then said, ‘He came from the upper floor, you say?' trying to keep hysteria out of his voice.

Fawcett nodded.

‘He could've been in one of the flats above?'

‘Could have.'

Henry held back from standing up, towering over the PC and shouting him into a quivering mess because ultimately, it was he, Henry, who was to blame. Going gung-ho into the block of flats, not properly resourced, with only an ‘on-the-hoof' plan put together, had meant he'd missed a simple thing: don't let anyone out until I'm happy as to who they are. It was one of those things the public would never believe the police would make a mistake on, but they did, often. The easy bits were the bits the cops got wrong, made themselves look stupid over. The building should have been tighter than a duck's buttocks and anyone should have been stopped, checked and verified. All the outer-perimeter people were looking for was someone doing a runner, not someone strolling out, having walked through police lines, passing the time of day along the way.

Sitting back in his creaky chair, Henry glanced out through the narrow window at the shark. Dave Anger would love to get hold of this one. Henry Christie, the incompetent bastard, had allowed one of the country's most wanted men to slip through his fingers. Literally. He could see the look of triumph on Anger's ‘fizzog', as his dear mum would say, corrupting the French word ‘visage' into a Lancashire speciality. Most definitely, Dave Anger had a ‘fizzog'. Bile rose in his throat. Jane Roscoe's words, which summed Henry up, came to haunt him. ‘Henry “Wing” Christie'. He looked at Fawcett, said, ‘Shit.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

‘Sure it's him?'

‘More or less.'

‘OK – no problems, only solutions. Have you got anything on now?' Fawcett shook his head. ‘Got a car?' He nodded. ‘Let's go the MIR first and see what we've got on the other residents in the block of flats.' Henry rolled out of his chair. ‘Onwards and upwards,' he said, none too energetically.

Henry checked the records detailing what had been done at the block of flats in which Uren's body had been discovered. The occupants of all but one flat had been accounted for and spoken to. A flat on the top floor was found to be apparently unoccupied, although it was rented out.

‘What enquiries have been made with the landlord?' Henry asked Jane, whose job it was to keep up to date with everything that was going on.

She looked over his shoulder. ‘Why?'

‘Not sure yet.'

‘The landlord has been spoken to,' she told him, ‘but mainly about Uren's occupancy, nothing else. Uren rented the flat and lived there alone, by all accounts.'

‘There's an unoccupied flat on the top floor – have we done anything about that? Found who was in it most recently? Have we asked the landlord who was in it?'

‘I don't think so,' she said cautiously.

‘OK,' said Henry, tight-lipped. ‘Who's the landlord?'

Jane flicked through some sheets of paper on her desk and handed one to Henry. ‘That's him.'

‘Ugh,' Henry said, reading the name, and wishing someone had told him who it was. ‘Why was I not told this?' he demanded of Jane. She half-shrugged. ‘Right.' He turned to Fawcett, who was standing behind him. ‘Got those car keys?' Fawcett nodded.

‘What's going on?' Jane asked.

Henry tapped his nose and pointed a finger at her. He did not want her to know he had probably made one of the biggest policing cock-ups in history. Nor did he trust her not to run to Anger and tell tales. He turned to Karl Donaldson, who was sitting at Jane's desk. ‘Fancy a jaunt out to see some of Blackpool's scum?'

‘Sure,' he said, rising. ‘What is it?'

‘That kinda scummy stuff you find floating in stagnant water,' Henry said as a joke, which no one got. Donaldson just looked perplexed. ‘Come on,' Henry said.

In the lift going down, Henry said, ‘We missed Trent,' to his good-looking friend, using the royal ‘we'. Not that he was ducking blame, but it was always good practice to spread it about where possible. He had always been contemptuous of bosses who were known to have Teflon-coated shoulders – meaning that no shit ever stuck. Now he wished he was one of them. He had clicked on to self-survival mode, and unless he could somehow pull this one back, questions would be asked in the corridors of power at HQ and he would be found wanting. He explained the situation to Donaldson.

‘Shit happens,' the American said understandingly. ‘Admittedly more often to you than anyone else, but it does. The secret is to hide it without causing a bad smell.'

The lift jarred as it reached ground level, the doors opening. Fawcett led them into the garage and to his car, an unmarked Vectra, which was still quite blatantly a police car. The missing hubcap was always a bit of a give-away. Fawcett jumped in behind the wheel, Henry next to him, Donaldson in the back.

‘This is Karl Donaldson, by the way' he said to Fawcett. ‘He's an FBI agent.'

‘Ho hum,' the laconic cop said, unimpressed.

B
lackpool had its full share of sleazeball landlords, and Larry Cork was no exception. Unkempt, unshaven, unwashed and whiffy, he was the stereotypical snivelling landlord, money-grabbing, back-stabbing, penny-pinching and priceless. Henry knew Cork of old. In his younger days the man had been a pretender to the crime throne of Blackpool, but hadn't really had the physical toughness to make good his threats. He had gradually disappeared from the mainstream crime scene, emerging as a landlord and buying up property left, right and centre around the resort. He and his sons – amazingly called Barry and Harry, who muscled for him – had made a killing in the 1980s on the back of DSS lodgers. That bubble burst, but Cork had made his dough. Now he ticked over nicely, owning a string of ramshackle flats, including the block containing Uren's, plus houses and a two amusement arcades in South Shore.

Henry had once locked him up for gross indecency in some public toilets on the prom, which added to Cork's sleaze. He enjoyed the company of other men and the excitement of meeting in public toilets. Henry held Cork in very low regard.

Detectives had interviewed Cork quite thoroughly about Uren, but he had not offered the police anything more than they asked. He told them that he did not know Uren well, that he was a good paying tenant, and he wasn't interested in his comings and goings. The perfect landlord. He wasn't asked any questions about the unoccupied, but rented, room on the top floor of the block of flats. Time to change that, Henry thought as he waited for Cork to answer the door of his flat on the ground floor of another block in North Shore.

Barry, Cork's eldest son, came to the door. He was a wide, strapping guy in his early thirties. He was as hard as nails, and as gay as his dad.

‘Hello, Barry,' Henry said, holding out his warrant card. Fawcett and Donaldson were at his shoulder. ‘Need to see Larry, please. Name's DCI Christie, but you know that already, don't you?'

Barry opened the door fully, revealing himself to be dressed in a tight-fitting vest and leather jeans, body hair sprouting from all round the vest. Henry tried not to show his disgust. ‘Dad's not in and anyway, he's already talked to the filth.'

‘Need to talk more. Where is he, then?'

On the last word, Henry heard a toilet being flushed, a door opening and a growl of, ‘Fuckin' piles playing me up again,' coming from the brown-toothed mouth of Barry Cork.

Henry gave Barry a blank stare.

Barry shrugged, eyed Henry's two companions – his gaze fluttering over Donaldson – and conceded defeat. ‘OK, he's in.' He turned. ‘Dad! Cops!'

Larry Cork came into view, zipping up and tucking his shirt into his loose pants. A cigarette dangled from his lips as though it had been stapled there.

‘Can I help you guys?' he smiled. Then the smile fell and he scowled at Henry. ‘You, you bastard!'

‘Yep – how's it hangin' Larry?'

There was fire and caution in Cork's bloodshot eyes. His treatment at Henry's hands all those years ago had stayed with him. ‘What do you want?'

‘Just a chat about your tenants.'

‘Don't like you, never have.'

‘Feeling's mutual, Larry, but maybe it's time to move on. Let's not let the past colour the future, eh? There's been a murder on premises owned by you and by virtue of that you can't expect us not to be round to see you regularly, can you?'

‘What do you want? I've already given a statement.'

‘More depth … can we come in?'

Ten minutes later Larry Cork drove round with them to the block of flats where Uren's dead body had been found. Cork had identified Trent as one of his tenants, but said he didn't know of any connection between Trent and Uren. They had come as separate tenants, and Trent didn't use the name Trent anyway. He used the surname Stoke. He said he saw very little of him, and had certainly not seen him since Uren's body had been found.