Crunch Time (30 page)

Henry recognized the PC. He was a fairly grizzled old-timer, stationed at Haslingden. They nodded at each other, but Henry's eyes were drawn to the female dog-walker. She was seriously pretty on close inspection and Henry's usually wayward heart missed a couple of beats.

‘OK, what've we got?' FB blustered.

The PC, whose name was Stanforth, said, ‘This young lady's been walking her dog on the hillside, came back down through these trees' – he pointed to the pine trees surrounding the car park – ‘and she spotted some clothing in the undergrowth by the path. Her dog was off the lead …'

FB cut the PC short with a chopping motion of the side of his hand. ‘Let's let her tell, shall we?' He turned smarmily to the woman. ‘Hello, I'm DI Bayley' – in those days he did not use the Fanshaw in his double-barrelled name; it was only as he moved up the ranks and further up his own backside that he started using it again – ‘I'm from Rawtenstall nick.' He smiled – leered – at her. ‘Now, don't get all upset or anything, love, but what happened here? Y'can tell me, I'm head of CID round here.'

‘Oh, that's nice,' she said, amused and unimpressed.

‘What's your name, love, by the way?'

‘Kate Marsden.' She smiled at Henry, who had to catch his breath.

‘And what've you seen, Kate?'

‘Well …' she began.

‘I want you' – FB jabbed his cigarette-holding fingers at Henry – ‘to take this young lady home and get a comprehensive statement from her. You got that? Everything … and then I want her clothing parcelled for forensic, OK?'

For the first and last time in his life, Henry wanted to give FB a great big hug.

FB spun around and left them. The circus had arrived and there was now a great deal of police activity on the car park and the surrounding woods.

‘I didn't really see much,' Kate, the witness, said.

‘Your evidence is vital,' Henry insisted. ‘Like the boss said, I'll need to get a detailed statement from you.' In one of the strangest sensations he had ever felt, Henry found himself gasping for breath, even though he hadn't been exerting himself.

She smiled at him. His knees, literally, turned to weak rubber. ‘Your place or mine?' she said playfully.

Henry's mouth opened and closed like a dumb goldfish.

She smiled again. ‘You follow me in my car.'

‘Yeah, yeah, sure,' he gabbled.

Kate Marsden turned and walked away, her dog at one heel and Henry Christie at the other.

Henry's life in Rossendale since moving into the flat off the town centre had been all work and play, nothing in between. He worked, he played; he caught criminals, he got drunk, ate poorly, chased women and had sex coming out of his ears – then he chased more criminals. The social scene for young cops was amazing, but eventually, it started to wear him down a little because it was so relentless.

But in Kate Marsden, a girl who worked for an insurance brokerage, Henry found some stability, though the morning after the discovery of the girl's body, the only thing he had found with Kate Marsden was exhaustion. They had easily fallen into each other's mindset.

Henry had taken the witness statement as directed. Done it long and slow, drawn out every last detail, every last word, just because he didn't want to say goodbye.

It had been Kate who finally smiled at him and said, ‘Honestly, I don't think I can say anything else. You've drained me dry.'

She was more and more stunning the more time he spent in her company. Her young beauty grew on him. Her slightly crooked smile, one slightly misaligned tooth, the slight kink at the end of her nose … all those trifling off-centre things went to make her gorgeous in Henry's eyes and he knew he couldn't let go of her … but how to keep her? He was immaturely clueless at that point.

‘Right,' he said collecting the statement forms, ‘thanks.' He stood up. They were in the kitchen of Kate's family home in Haslingden where she lived with her parents. It was a big, detached house with a huge garden. Her parents were out. ‘You've been very helpful.'

She walked him to the front door, pausing in the hallway.

She was tiny in comparison to him, and, having removed her walking clothes, which Henry had bagged up as instructed, and changed into jeans and a tee-shirt, Henry saw everything was just about right, where it should be.

‘Um, er …' he said, lost for words.

Her eyes caught his, held them.

‘Are you going to ask me out?' she asked cheekily. ‘I'm between boys.'

Stunned, Henry garbled, ‘Will-you-go-out-with-me?'

‘Only after I've tested the merchandise,' her voice said, husky all of a sudden. She tiptoed up, placed a hand at the back f his neck and pulled his face towards hers …

‘PC Christie!'

Henry's head shot up as he was dragged remorselessly back into the real world of the morning briefing of the night before, possibly the most glorious night of sex he had ever had in his short, penis-driven life.

He had managed to drag himself out of bed to make it to the hastily rearranged briefing at 8 a.m. on the morning after the discovery of the girl's body.

Henry knew he had fallen in love.

He looked at the stern face of the DI.

‘You're away with the fairies, laddie,' FB said to the amusement of the rest of the people in the smoke-filled room. ‘Still on the job?' he asked bluntly.

‘No, sorry,' Henry spluttered, his face red.

‘Right,' FB said. He took the last, deep drag of his ciggy and mashed it into an ashtray. ‘You lot queue up for your jobs. PC Christie, you and me have some unfinished business to attend to.'

‘Right, boss.' Henry stifled a yawn and wondered if his new lady friend had managed to drag herself out of his bed.

Five minutes later they were in the Vauxhall heading towards Haslingden, the most westerly town in Rossendale. Henry was at the wheel, FB in the passenger seat, constantly readjusting himself in his underpants.

‘Wife's got me these newfangled boxer shorts,' he moaned. ‘Can't keep the bloody tackle in … need my usual ones, my Y fronts … so bloody uncomfortable, these fuckers.'

‘So what's the cause of death? Any inkling yet?'

‘The PM's at noon today, but early indications are strangulation and sexual assault.'

‘Shouldn't we wait until that's done?' Henry suggested meekly. ‘I take it the guy we're off to see is the one we were going for yesterday?'

‘I wanna rattle this guy's cage, get into his rubs, get him sweating.'

Henry raised his eyebrows. It seemed half-cocked to him, bull in a china shop, but he shrugged mentally. FB was the boss and had a reputation for taking that bull by the horns and shaking the shit out of it. Unpleasant though the man was, he did get results.

‘Now the body's been found, he'll be on pins, waiting for us to hit his drum.'

Henry drove on to a council estate called Longshoot.

‘Everything's fallen into place with him,' FB went on, making further adjustments. ‘Firstly, he has a van and he works in a mill over in Blackburn … uses the Grane Road everyday, so he knows it well. He's got pre-cons, as I said. Fairly minor stuff, but it's starting to escalate … and he's related to the dead girl's mother, a cousin or something.'

Henry nodded, pulled to a stop in front of the address FB had given him.

As he did twenty-seven years later, all these historical thoughts having tumbled through his mind since leaving Ken, the car salesman, in the pub. The memories were still sharp, even now. The dead girl … meeting Kate for the first time … FB and his horrendous macho ways – which had not changed much in the intervening years, just his ability to hide them – and the way in which the police operated with ruthlessness.

Robert Fossard came to the door bleary-eyed, dressed just in a pair of jeans. Behind him were his wife and ten-year-old son, drawn to the door by the presence of a uniformed cop and a detective.

‘Robert Fossard?' FB had asked.

‘Yeah, what?' Fossard scowled.

‘You're under arrest on suspicion of murder – how does that sound?'

‘What the fuck you on about?'

‘Jenny Colville – abducted and murdered – and I'm locking you up for it. You're not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be taken down in writing and given in evidence. Now get dressed and get your coat on.'

‘This is madness. I didn't do it … Jenny's a relative!'

‘Yeah.' FB looked coldly at him. ‘And we all know relatives kill relatives, don't we?'

‘What's going on, Bob?' Fossard's wife, a thin, rat-haired girl with thick glasses, asked.

‘They're tryin' to fit me up for Jenny's murder.'

‘What?' she asked incredulously.

‘It's bollocks.'

‘Get hold of him, Henry,' FB said.

Henry grabbed Fossard's arm. ‘You either come easy, or hard,' he growled, but he knew it would be easy. Fossard was a slightly built man, no match for the rugby-fit Henry who was all trim and muscle at that age.

Fossard glared at him. ‘I'll get dressed.' He shook his arm out of Henry's grip and retreated into the house, Henry close at his heels, not allowing him the opportunity to do a runner or hide anything that might be vital evidence. He followed him upstairs and he noticed the son watching him coldly, but with an air of worry. ‘It's all right, Bobby Junior,' Fossard reassured his offspring, ‘they've got nowt on me.'

At the front door, Henry heard FB arguing with the wife.

‘It's bollocks, this,' Fossard complained as he pulled on a shirt, socks and shoes.

Henry shrugged. ‘We'll see, eh?'

‘You look like a real bastard.'

‘I am a real bastard, but I don't kill kids.'

Henry saw that the son had sneaked up the stairs behind them.

FB clouted Fossard hard across the face, open-handed. The smack landed like a crack of lightning and the force of the blow lifted him off the seat in the interview room and sent him sprawling across the tiled floor, upending his chair. FB stood over the prisoner's prostrate form, breathing heavily from the exertion.

‘Now then.' He wiped his lips. ‘Let's start again.'

He aimed a kick at Fossard's ribcage which landed hard, winded him and made him curl into a ball, clutching his guts.

FB turned to Henry, a feral look on his face. ‘Make sure nobody comes through that door,' he instructed the young cop, then took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, bent down and heaved Fossard up and pinned him against the wall.

Henry gulped, but stood guard by the door.

FB punched the prisoner in his lower belly then let him go as he doubled over, but bent down with him. ‘Now then, you fuckin' lyin' piece a shit, tell the truth. You abducted her and raped her and strangled her, didn't you?'

‘No, you got it wrong.'

‘Wrong answer, pal.'

FB punched him again. ‘Tell me the fuckin' truth.'

Fossard sank to his knees, gasping for air, snot and spit coming out of his facial orifices. ‘That is the truth, I didn't do it.'

They kept him for twenty-four hours, but he did not break. FB grew more and more frustrated that his usually excellent interrogation techniques were having no effect on the prisoner – the variation from ‘I'm your biggest pal' to ‘I'm your biggest nightmare' seeming to get absolutely nowhere.

In the end he had to be released without charge.

There was no evidence to tie him to the girl other than the family link, no witnesses, no incriminating evidence putting him at the scene of the crime and his van was the cleanest in the world.

‘I actually don't think he did it,' FB said sagely as he and Henry walked down to the charge office to tell the station sergeant to release him. ‘I'm a pretty good judge of character in that respect.' He rubbed his hands together like Pontius Pilate.

Henry kept his mouth shut. It was the first time he'd seen a prisoner get such a beating.

‘Take him home, will you?'

Henry nodded. ‘Sure.'

Fossard was released and Henry did as he was told, driving him home. They did not speak on the journey, but as the car drew in outside Fossard's council house, he turned to Henry with a smirk of triumph on his face.

‘Better luck next time, eh?'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

Fossard chortled. ‘You bastards couldn't catch a cold.'

Suddenly, Henry did feel very, very cold. ‘You did it, didn't you?'

Fossard simply looked at Henry, a smile on his face, then raised and lowered his eyebrows.

Henry gripped the wheel tightly, wondering what he should do. Rearresting him would not serve any useful purpose.

Fossard opened the car door. ‘She fucked like a rabbit, enjoyed every second,' he sneered, then was gone, striding towards the front door of his house, which opened. His son ran out and hugged him, and shot Henry a fearful glance. Fossard's wife kissed him and the man turned to look once more at Henry, gave him a nod and an exaggerated wink, then entered the house. A guilty man walking free – something that Henry Christie, even at that point in his service, could never tolerate.

The investigation continued, got nowhere. Henry worked on the periphery of it, conducting house-to-house enquiries, assisting in searches of land and premises; he even arrested a couple more suspects at the behest of FB, but he knew they would be a waste of time because the real offender was still walking the streets, flicking a V at the police.

It had been rolling about a month, when late one evening after an arduous day, Henry found himself wandering along the first floor corridor at Rawtenstall nick, on which was the DI's office. The door was open, lights on, and FB was sitting at his desk, head in hands, fag in mouth. The room was filled with acrid smoke.