Substantial Threat (5 page)

Ray Cragg was sitting next to JJ on the settee with an arm around his shoulders, talking in little more than a whisper, almost reassuringly.

‘It's always best to tell the truth, JJ, because you always get caught out when you lie, don't you?' Ray cooed.

JJ nodded his head painfully, the pounding, searing pain from Ray's open-handed blow across the side of his face was making each movement horrendous.

‘So, c'mon, pal.' Ray hugged him like a brother. ‘Spill the beans. We can only move forwards when we know where we're up to, can't we?'

‘Yeah,' breathed JJ. He looked at Carrie, who was still curled up in a ball on the living-room floor, whimpering.

Ray glanced at her, too. ‘I know you're concerned about her, but I promise that if you tell me the truth and we work this mess out, I'll take her to casualty myself. Okay?'

‘Right, right,' said JJ, wondering if Ray would be good enough to do the same for him because he was certain his eardrum had exploded with the impact of Ray's blow.

‘So, come on, pal,' Ray said again.

‘Yeah, I have been skimming a bit, Ray. But not two grand, nowhere fuckin' near two grand.'

‘Well,' said Ray, ‘that's a start. How much would you say you've stolen from me, then?'

‘I'm looking for Jack Burrows,' Henry said to the very pretty woman who answered the door.

‘That'll be me,' she said with a slightly crooked smile. ‘Jacqueline Burrows, but everybody calls me Jack, even me.'

A fleeting thought crashed through Henry's mind – Am I destined to meet women with men's names? – as he remembered Danielle Furness, known as Danny, the woman he had once loved and who was now dead, murdered by the most dangerous man Henry had ever met. He cleared his mind of the last image he had of her, lying dead in an hotel room in Tenerife, her head twisted at a gruesome angle because of her broken neck. ‘Do you own some flats in Cheltenham Road, Blackpool?'

She nodded. ‘And Dixon Road, Coronation Street, Hornby Road, and others.'

‘Oh, right,' said Henry thoughtfully. He kicked himself for expecting to have to deal with some seedy landlord. This one looked far from seedy dressed in a jogging top and a pair of black lycra shorts which looked as though they had been pasted on to her slim thighs, her blonde hair tied back in a pony tail, exposing an area of seriously touchable neck. She was sweating lightly and Henry could just smell her fragrance . . . but then again, he warned himself, she might be just as seedy and deceitful as all the rest. Because she did not reek of cigar smoke and whisky, and looked terrific, did not mean she was any different from the others. Henry knew his weakness for a pretty face, but was determined not to let it cloud his judgement. ‘I'm DCI Henry Christie and I'm investigating the murder of one of your tenants in those flats about a year ago . . . a young girl?'

Jack Burrows' face fleetingly creased with annoyance. But Henry had noticed it and filed it away for future reference. She recovered her composure quickly and smiled that lop-sided smile, pushed a stray wisp of hair away from her face and looked at him with wide blue eyes. It was a look, Henry guessed, designed to make his stomach go flip-flop. ‘I was interviewed about that ages ago, made a statement and everything. Have you caught the killer yet?'

It was at that moment she realized the conversation they were having was taking place on the doorstep. ‘Ooh, sorry.' She grinned. ‘Manners! Come on in and I'll make a drink or something.'

Henry followed her inside. She led him into the lounge, which was furnished in such a way that he thought it looked like it might once have been the show house. It was a through lounge and in the dining room Henry saw an exercise bike and a rowing machine side by side.

‘Tea, coffee . . .?'

‘Tea'll be great.'

‘Tell you what, come through to the kitchen and we can keep talking, though I doubt I'll be able to help you any more than I already did. It was a real tragedy, but it was a long time ago.'

She walked through to the spacious fitted kitchen and clicked on the kettle.

‘We haven't caught the killer yet,' Henry admitted, harking back to her question at the doorway. ‘I've been given the job of reviewing the case again to see if I can open up any new leads, that sort of thing, y'know?'

‘Oh.' She leaned against a worktop, her hips thrusting forward. ‘I always thought that if a case wasn't solved, it got closed down.'

‘No, not with a murder.' He locked eyes with her – and he had to admit she had pretty eyes – but something grabbed his heart with icicle-like fingers and made him go on to say, even though he did not necessarily believe his own words, ‘I think there's a good chance of rooting out the killer in this case.' He squinted thoughtfully at the ceiling and added, ‘Particularly as it's been given to me to investigate. It's a matter of pride, you see. I'm very good at catching murderers.' He came eye to eye with her again.

Jack Burrows nodded. Henry thought she looked a tad uncomfortable at the news. This pleased him no end because for no other reason than she was the owner of the property in which a brutal crime had been committed, he had made her his first suspect.

‘Two-fifty and certainly not more than three hundred quid at the outside,' JJ had to admit. ‘Honest, that's all it was. I skimmed a bit here and a bit there, and I'm sorry, but it were never two grand. Nowhere fuckin' near. That sorta figure is one you'd've noticed, Ray. That would've been stupid.'

Cragg guffawed. ‘Two-fifty or three hundred is pretty bloody stupid,' he observed, ‘and I think you're a stupid person, JJ. Stupid enough to have a bad habit which clouds your judgement, makes you think you can steal from me, and now you're stupid enough to expect me to believe you only took a fraction of what you really took.'

‘I'm being honest with you, Ray,' JJ insisted, opening his arms.

Cragg snorted a laugh of contempt through his nose and stood up.

Carrie was still doubled up on the carpet in one corner of the room, moaning and shivering. There were streaks of blood on the wall next to her.

Marty and Crazy lounged by the door, hands in pockets, waiting for Ray to come to some sort of decision. Crazy was the more relaxed of the two, chewing gum and picking at a large spot on his face. Marty seemed restless, more eager for something to happen, his foot tapped agitatedly.

Ray crossed to the window out of which JJ had tried to escape. He folded his arms and gazed quietly out across the rooftops of a nearby housing estate, then down to the deserted play area four floors below. It was tempting to lean on the windowsill but he did not. He was always careful to leave as few traces of himself anywhere as possible.

‘You could've come to me and asked for cash,' he said eventually. ‘We could've sorted something and you wouldn't now find yourself in this . . . pickle, would you?'

Despite the shakes and the booming sound still rattling around his cranium, JJ had managed to roll a replacement cigarette, which was now lighted and affixed to his bottom lip.

‘I didn't think, man,' he wailed plaintively. ‘It won't happen again. I swear it on my goddaughter's life.'

‘Bloody right it won't happen again,' Marty interjected, taking a step towards JJ, who cowered back in the settee. He knew Marty was a dangerous, sometimes uncontrollable bastard.

Ray spun on his half-brother, pointed at him and shot him a stare which stopped him in his tracks. He did not have to utter a word. Marty's face creased angrily.

‘Normally,' Ray said to JJ, half an eye on Marty, ‘I deal very harshly with people who shit on me.'

JJ tore his eyes from Marty. ‘I know.' He swallowed.

‘But I'm actually feeling a bit lenient today – with you, that is.'

JJ held his breath, his lungs full of the harsh smoke from the filterless roll-up.

‘You're not going to let him get away with this, are you, Ray?' Marty said. ‘He needs dealing with good and proper.'

Ray ignored him and smiled briefly at JJ.

‘This is the first and last time, JJ. You skim from me again and you're a dead man.'

JJ closed his eyes, relief flooding through him.

‘Jesus! You're letting the twat off!' Marty wailed, shaking his head despondently. ‘He's fuckin' stolen from you.'

‘My money, my decision,' Ray said, ‘so shut the fuck up.' He spoke to JJ again. ‘If you need any extra dosh, ask me, don't just take it. We'll work something out.'

‘Thanks, Ray, oh God, thanks.'

Ray sat down next to JJ again, placing an arm around his shoulders – again.

‘I do not believe this,' Marty tutted.

‘Y'see,' Ray said, his lips only inches away from JJ's bad ear. ‘I'm not that bad.' He gave him a squeeze. ‘There is one thing I'm curious about, though.'

‘What's that?'

‘If you didn't skim two grand off me, who did?'

Henry had followed Jack Burrows back through her house into the lounge. He sat on the expensive soft leather settee, sinking so quickly into it he was caught off balance and almost spilled his tea.

Burrows smiled. ‘Always gets people, that.'

‘Mm,' murmured Henry doubtfully and sipped the hot drink while studying her face carefully, but surreptitiously. There was something familiar about her. He had an exceptional mind when it came to recalling names and faces, rarely forgetting either, but his recall of her was slightly skewed and out of all context. He frowned. ‘I know your face, but I'm struggling to place you,' he admitted.

‘Sounds like a chat-up line.'

‘If I wasn't investigating a murder, it would be,' he said. Then he made the connection in his mind: murder . . . body . . . death . . . ‘I've got it,' he said with a hint of triumph. A sudden death, two, no, three years ago . . . a suicide. The deceased had taken a shed-load of pills and not been discovered for about a week or so and had started to rot nicely, thank you. Henry had gone to the death as a matter of routine, but there had been nothing for the CID. Nothing suspicious in it. Henry had happened to be at the scene when the body remover arrived. ‘You're an undertaker,' he declared.

‘I've had enough of this shit now,' Ray Cragg said bluntly. ‘You can go.'

‘You mean it?' JJ said in disbelief.

‘Oh, c'mon, Ray,' Marty whined. ‘You're not gonna let him go, are you? Let's break a few fuckin' fingers at least. Twat deserves it.'

Ray scowled at Marty. ‘Yes, you can go, JJ,' but then he pointed to the open window. ‘But you've got to go that way. I want to see you climb down the wall. You must be just like Spiderman.'

‘Eh?' JJ said suspiciously.

‘You heard. I said you can go, but you've got to climb out of the window, just like you were doing when we came in.'

‘You're joking.'

‘Never joke. If you want to go, that's the way you're going to have to do it, otherwise I'll let Marty and Crazy give you a few digs and a few broken bones.'

The Adam's apple in JJ's scrawny throat rose and fell. He pushed himself slowly to his feet, stubbing out the butt of the hand-rolled cigarette in the overfilled ashtray. With a terrible sense of foreboding he approached the window, cautiously eyeing the three men, seeing if there was any possible way out past Marty and Crazy. There wasn't. They had the door blocked. No chance of doing a runner. Even Carrie had stopped her sobbing and moaning and was watching transfixed from behind her bloody fingers.

‘Go on, don't dilly-dally,' Ray urged him. ‘Giving me a display of your climbing prowess is the only way you're going to leave this room.'

JJ hesitated, then swung his right leg over the window and sat astride it.

‘Go,' said Ray. ‘I want to see you climb down.'

JJ eased his left leg over and lowered his toes down to the ledge.

Suddenly Ray crossed the room and faced JJ. ‘Actually no one skims from me. Two hundred quid or two grand, it doesn't matter. Principle's the same. You stole from me, committed theft.'

On the last word, Ray's right hand shot out palm first, but landed softly on JJ's chest. JJ clung on to the window frame. His eyes pleaded with Ray's, but got nothing back in return, just ice.

‘Fuck . . . Ray . . . Don't!'

A look of utter contempt twisted on to Ray's face. Then he pushed and said, ‘Fly, you bastard.'

JJ could not hold on. His fingers lost their grip and he was out in mid-air in freefall. He knew there was nothing he could do, just wait for the impact and maybe hope to survive it somehow. There was a whooshing sensation past his ears as he hurtled down. It lasted only momentarily and then he hit the ground. But there was nothing. No pain. No feeling. No blackness.

Ray had leaned out of the window to watch the fall. To him, JJ seemed to be in the air for a long, long time, it was as if everything had slowed down. JJ's arms flailed like a broken windmill, his mouth opened in a silent scream. Time then clicked back to normal and he smashed into the ground. Ray plainly heard the dull whack as the top of JJ's head struck. His body twitched a jig, his eyes came open, then he did not move anymore, his eyes staying open, staring up at Ray accusingly.

Ray pushed himself away from the window, a grim, wild look in his own eyes.

‘First one of the day,' he announced. ‘Let's get a move on.'

He made towards the door. Carrie, who had watched him murder her boyfriend, forgot her own fear and pain and pounced at Ray's feet, screaming, ‘You bastard!'

Ray smartly side-stepped and rammed the sole of his trainer against the side of her face, kicking her away. She sprawled across the room, but wasn't finished. Jumping to her feet, she went for him again.

Marty put himself between her and Ray. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and dug his fist into her stomach. He dragged her sideways and threw her to the floor.