Crunch Time (7 page)

The car dropped back, lights lowered.

Henry recognized the outline of the car as a Mondeo. One person on board, probably a man. Same one as before, he guessed and thought, ‘Whatever,' aloud, continuing to drive, coming on to another long straight stretch of dual carriageway. At this point the Mondeo swerved into the outside lane, moved forward and hung a few feet from the rear of Henry's offside wing.

Henry kept a cautious eye on the car through his wing mirror.

Then it came alongside, and they were like two racing cars on a Scalextric track, dead level, nose with nose, tail with tail, driver with driver.

Now seriously worried, Henry glanced sideways at the person who had become his tormentor – and what he saw sent a shock wave through him. The interior light was on in the car and he was able to see the driver clearly – as intended.

He was wearing a balaclava-type mask, with two eyeholes and a jagged mouth slit. The person was shouting something at Henry, who could see the mouth working obscenely behind the hole. Suddenly the person yanked his steering wheel down to the left, a jerk of a movement that Henry saw and reacted to instantly – but not quickly enough to avoid a collision.

He slammed the brakes on, but the two cars smashed into each other, edge to edge, with a horrendous scraping of metal and a sickening snap as Henry's wing mirror snapped off. Henry swerved into the roadside and the Mondeo tore away towards Blackpool. The driver threw a piece of paper out of his window as he disappeared down the road.

Henry sat behind his wheel, gasping. Someone had tried to ram him off the road. The same driver who had a few minutes earlier braked hard in front of him for no apparent reason.

Henry knew he hadn't done anything wrong in a motoring sense. He hadn't cut anyone up, or done anything stupid to make him a target for road rage. But the difference between road rage and this incident was that the former is usually a spur of the moment reaction to something, whilst what had happened to Henry was far more sinister … and was proved by two things.

Firstly, by the car involved. A blue Ford Mondeo, exactly the same colour as the one he had previously owned. And Henry knew this for sure now, despite the darkness, because he had managed to see and note its registered number.

It was his old car.

Someone driving his old car had rammed him off the road.

Coincidence? Henry did not think so.

Henry got carefully out of his car. This was a fast stretch of road and though not busy at this time of night he still had to take care as he ran through the rain to retrieve the piece of paper thrown from the Mondeo. He managed to get it without being flattened, returned to his car and sat there with the hazards flashing whilst he carefully unfolded the paper.

It was A4 size, bearing a full-face photograph of himself.

And pasted over it was a gun sight consisting of concentric circles, the centre of the sight, the cross hairs, right above his forehead.

It was as though he was looking down the sights of a sniper rifle aimed at himself, ready to pull the trigger.

Henry's mind jarred back to the present.

It was part-way through the third bottle of wine that did it for Henry, as Andrea Makin poured out two large glasses from it with that pleasant glug-glugging noise as the wine cascaded out.

He had explained in detail, during the first bottle, the minutiae of how the first meeting had gone with Ryan Ingram; during the second, conversation had become more relaxed, gravitating from work to more personal matters. Andrea learned a lot about Henry and vice versa. The third bottle led to less conversation, with some quite lengthy gaps and meaningful eye contact, then to a meeting of bodies as the table was pushed away from between them, the tearing off of clothing and Henry pushing Andrea on to the bed and climbing hurriedly between her legs … and then, unfortunately for both of them, erectile dysfunction and his subsequent humiliation.

H
enry awoke alone, feeling quite chilled in the room over the Manchester city centre pub. His head throbbed as a result of a combination of the wine intake, weeks of excess, tiredness and the stress he had been under thus far – but he knew he would in for much more pressure if Ingram took the bait.

He dozed awhile in the soft-mattressed, King-size bed whilst a series of emotions vied for attention inside him.

Part of him was glad he had not slept with Andrea Makin. It would have been another failure in his relationship with Kate, but the fact remained that he had
wanted
to have sex with her; another part of him was trying to deal with the fact that even though he had wanted sex, he hadn't been able to get a sustainable erection.

That had been so embarrassing.

As he'd clambered gamely over Andrea's more than willing flesh and her hands slid all over his body, ultimately finding their way to his penis only to discover not very much, their wild, breathless antics had ceased virtually immediately as she held him and looked into his eyes with disappointment.

He had looked down and said, ‘Shit.'

Andrea's face hardened as he crabbed sideways off her and rolled on to his back, covering himself with the quilt. The back of his hand covered his eyes, an attempt to hide his utter shame.

‘And I suppose that's never happened before?' she said stiltedly.

‘I won't say never, but it's been a rare occurrence.'

‘So it's me then?' Her voice was hurt.

‘No, no, God, you're wonderful,' he babbled as she sat up on the edge of the bed, then stood up without shame, displaying her lovely peach-like rear to him, then bent over and collected her clothes, as Henry watched transfixed, gulping.

She hiked up her panties, picked up her bra and turned to face Henry whilst refitting it with jerky movements making her breasts bounce, and making Henry ache for the nipples he'd not even managed to get his lips around. Lifting the quilt and glancing down hopefully, he still had not reacted appropriately.

‘It's just …' he began feebly.

‘It's all right, Henry,' she said, hitching up her skirt. ‘It was a foolish idea in the first place … it would only have clouded our judgement. Y'know' – she tossed her hair back here – ‘every debrief would've been just hot lust and dirty sex.' She shrugged. ‘We wouldn't have wanted that, would we?'

‘No.' It was a very squeaky, pathetic sound he made.

‘Anyway, you're obviously drained and need a good night's sleep. We'd've only been fucking all night and that wouldn't have helped you, would it?'

She had completed her dressing and now looked down pityingly at Henry, her head tilted to one side as though she was inspecting a strange, horrible museum exhibit. Her mouth gave her face an expression of disgust, like she might have been looking at a medical display at Tussaud's waxworks.

‘Let's pretend this never happened, eh?' She swung her bag over her shoulder and strutted to the door, stopping with her hand on the knob, turning back.

‘I'm sorry, Andrea. It's not you, honestly.'

‘Whatever … let's meet at midday in the café in Waterstone's on Deansgate … chat about the way forwards, eh?'

The words sounded pretty ominous to Henry, but he nodded assent.

‘You have no idea,' she declared with a lioness-like swish of her head, ‘what you've missed.'

‘Oh, I think I do,' Henry mumbled to himself as, the morning after, he threw back the quilt and got out of bed following the mental rerun of his clash with Andrea. At least when she had gone, slamming the door dramatically behind her, he had simply fallen asleep for almost nine hours. He thought, hopefully, that maybe it was merely exhaustion that had affected his libido. However, as he glanced down at his presently acorn-sized member nestling in his greying pubic hair, there wasn't much sign of life.

Still, as a one-off, and as disappointing as it had been, he decided not to worry about it. He shouldn't even have been butt naked with another woman, so perhaps it was simply a divine punishment for the sin.

He stood up with a groan. He had slept well and deeply, but the bed had been too soft for his liking and his lower back was killing him. Putting one foot ahead of the other and making his way to the en-suite shower, he felt about ninety and his liver like a chunk of Accrington brick.

The shower was hot, wonderful and reviving. He spent a long time underneath its powerful jets, shampooing and soaping off the last few weeks of grime and the remnants of his time in custody. Then he dressed and groomed himself, remembering that when he stepped back out on to the streets of Manchester he would again be Frank Jagger, ne'er-do-well and vagabond of this parish … but before that he wanted to treat himself to an unhealthy breakfast, a couple of mugs of coffee and a chat on the phone with Kate.

‘Hiya, babe.'

‘Hello, darling,' Kate answered brightly, making Henry close his eyes in a pang of disgust at himself. ‘How's it going?'

‘OK, just getting to the interesting part, I guess.' He was on his personal mobile phone to her, sitting in a hot café in Manchester's Arndale Centre, staring down at a six-piece breakfast. Suddenly, on hearing her voice, his hunger deserted him as his guilt kicked in. ‘How are you?'

‘Oh, not bad, I guess.' She sounded slightly hesitant, something he detected straight away.

‘What's up?'

‘Er, well, neither of the girls were at home last night … Jenny's away as you know and Leanne spent the night at Jason's.' Jason was
the
boyfriend. Henry's insides did a whoopsie at the thought of the long-haired, good-for-nothing, unemployed student layabout molesting his youngest daughter, now, god forbid, almost twenty years old.

‘And?' Henry asked. It was still fairly rare for Kate to spend a night alone and she did tend to be a bit jumpy.

‘I think we had a prowler … in fact, I know we did.'

Henry went icy. His mind immediately panned back to the car which had tried to force him off the road, his old Mondeo. He had actually checked the car on the Police National Computer, but it had shown no current owner. He had not said anything to anyone about the incident, had lied to Kate about the damage to his car, and not had time to follow up anything because of the U/C job he was involved in. Also, he did not want to jeopardize the new job, either, by admitting that perhaps someone was after him. Once again he wondered if there was any connection between the incident and the job with Ingram, though he doubted it. The road rage had happened before he had even started working undercover.

Now he was wondering if a prowler at his house had any connection with the road rage incident. Connections, Henry thought. All connections.

‘The security lights at the back of the house kept coming on,' Kate went on. ‘I thought a dog or a fox might've got into the garden or something, so when they came on a third time. I went out to check, but the side gate was locked and there was nothing in the garden.'

The garden overlooked open fields and foxes had occasionally jumped the low fence, setting off the lights. Henry picked up on the wavering in Kate's voice. He frowned.

‘Was it a fault?'

‘I don't know. This was before I went to bed, by the way. So I locked up, then went to bed … couldn't sleep without you next to me … I had a mooch around to the girls' bedrooms and saw the light was on again.' The girls' rooms were at the back of the house, overlooking the rear garden. ‘I peeked out and saw a man on the decking, staring up at the house. When he saw me, he legged it over the fence and disappeared down the field.'

‘Did you call the cops?'

‘No. I was too shaky.'

‘Are you all right now?'

‘So-so. I'll be OK.'

Henry knew there had been a few burglaries on the estate, but only in unoccupied houses. Maybe this incident was linked to those. Someone casing up a joint. He made a decision.

‘Whatever happens, I'll be home tonight.'

At midday he wandered into Waterstone's on Deansgate. He made his way up to the café, ordering a medium Americano for himself before joining Andrea Makin who was already there, drinking something very frothy, making her wipe her top lip after every sip.

She watched him coldly.

‘I know I said we'd forget what happened,' she said immediately, forgoing any niceties, ‘but no man who has ever been on top of me has been unable to get an erection. Do you know how that makes me feel?'

Henry blinked and made a sort of speechless, clicking sound with his tongue before he found some words to respond with. ‘Not half as bad as I feel,' he said. ‘I'm the one who couldn't do it and now I feel pathetic – OK? Let's just leave it, eh?'

Her face softened. ‘I'm sorry, Henry. I guess I never saw that point of view. I just thought you didn't like what you saw.'

‘Oh, I liked it,' he said, ‘but' – he made a desperate squashing motion with his hands – ‘can we just get on? I'm depressed enough.'

‘OK.' She sipped her coffee and forgot to wipe the foam from her top lip, which cheered up Henry. ‘So where are we up to?'

‘Contact made – guess it's just a waiting game for now. That's assuming Ingram got released from custody.'

‘He did. Take it he didn't tell you why he'd been arrested?'

‘Nah – tight lipped.'

‘And you don't actually want to know?'

Henry shook his head. ‘Be better coming from him.'

‘Understood.' She paused. ‘So we wait?'

‘Correct.'

‘And suppose nothing happens?'

‘We'll have to think of a way of me bumping into him, naturally. But let's not hurry. He'll contact me.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Cos he's greedy – to see the product and make a profit. I could see it in his eyes when I whispered those words.'

‘Which were?'