The Nothing Job (21 page)

‘Will do – bye.' She hung up. No chit-chat.

Henry hung up slowly. Their relationship was well over and he had no desire to rekindle something that could have been terribly destructive. It was also a long time since he had had any contact with her, but he still felt annoyed that she had curtailed the call so abruptly. But who could blame her?

His thoughts were cut short by the phone ringing. This time it was his mobile, which had a Rolling Stones tune as a ring tone. Previously it had been ‘Jumpin' Jack Flash', now it was ‘Satisfaction' – that thing Henry didn't seem to get much of. The call was from a withheld number.

‘Henry Christie.'

‘DCI Christie? May I introduce myself? I'm Detective Superintendent Paul Shafer from Merseyside Police.'

For a second, Henry did not recognize the name – but then he remembered. He smiled when he said, ‘Hello there, can I help you?'

Shafer sounded pleasant, youngish and efficient. ‘Just thought I'd touch base with you. I believe you're taking on the Motta shooting, just tying it up et cetera?'

Henry hesitated. ‘I'm taking it over, yeah.'

‘Well, I think you'll find it's pretty much done and dusted by the IPCC. I just want to say that we're waiting for your arrival and you can count on us to be as helpful and open as we can be, though there won't be much investigating for you to do. As I understand it, it's just a read-through and recommendations.'

‘You know more than me, sir.'

‘I should do.'

‘Could I enquire how you found out I'd be taking over? I only found out myself a short while ago.'

Shafer chuckled amiably. ‘Jungle drums.'

Henry's mouth tightened sardonically. His disquiet was that he immediately suspected Dave Anger to be the drummer in question – and how professional was that, to ring up his old mates and warn them of Henry's impending arrival?

‘When can we expect to see you down here?'

‘Day after tomorrow, I expect,' Henry lied. He'd planned for tomorrow but didn't feel inclined to share that with Shafer, pleasant as he might be.

‘Look forward to meeting you in person.'

‘You too.'

Henry didn't have time to consider the meaning of the phone call before the desk phone rang again.

‘FB – you were after me, Henry,' came the brusque, no-shit voice Henry love-hated so well.

‘Quick question – this shooting enquiry? Can I take a couple of people down with me?'

‘Anyone you like.'

‘And if I feel it necessary, can I start from scratch with it, or at the very least do some digging? I don't want to take everything at face value, you know me.'

‘As far as I'm concerned you can do anything you want with it. If you're happy to close it down with what's already there, then OK; if you're not happy, dig away.'

‘Just the news I wanted to hear.'

A
lthough not technically a murder investigation (even if someone had been shot to death), as far as Henry was concerned he would be running the enquiry into Jonny Motta's demise as if he had been put in charge of one that hadn't been completed or solved. He believed it would be remiss of him not to be thorough and professional in his approach, make sure he didn't accept anything at face value and, basically, do the job FB expected of him as an SIO and maybe wind up Dave Anger into the bargain.

He decided that his approach would be to spend time reviewing the case as it stood, seeing if there were any obvious gaps that needed plugging and revisiting witnesses where necessary. In other words, do all the things he would have done on a genuine murder enquiry. He knew that by following the accepted model, the first stage being ‘Think murder until the investigation proves otherwise' and sticking to the problem-solving formula of ‘Why + When + Where + How = Who', he couldn't go too far wrong. He knew he had the ‘Who' bit – the poor sod who'd pulled the trigger twice and was now working in an office somewhere – but unless the file showed that he had all the other bits, then there was still somewhere to go with the job.

The rain lashed across the River Mersey as the famous Liver Building came into sight and Henry negotiated his way across several lanes of traffic as he drove along Dock Road, Liverpool, and towards the Albert Dock, passing some of the great historic buildings that made the city famous.

Henry had not been to Liverpool all that often. Work had rarely taken him there, but he'd had occasional family jaunts and found the city vibrant and lively with a lot of attitude, mostly positive.

He was driving a Ford Mondeo from the police pool. He glanced to his left and then over his shoulder at the two people in the car with him – his team.

‘So that's the plan, guys. Any gaps in it you can see?' he asked. ‘Jerry? Bill?'

Jerry Tope shrugged indifferently. ‘Sounds OK to me.'

In the back seat, Bill Robbins also shrugged, too. ‘Whatever.'

Henry shook his head in disbelief at the hot enthusiasm of his crack investigative team. Bill had been brought along for his firearms experience and Jerry for his attention to detail, both of which would be crucial if this job was to be done right.

He reached the dual carriageway alongside Albert Dock, opposite which was Merseyside Police headquarters. Rather than trying to get a space in the small car park there, he turned in to the large one next to the dock and paid for a day instead.

The three of them trudged across and entered the building. It was nothing fancier than an office block, nothing special other than the signs singling it out as police premises.

They couldn't get any further than the reception desk, where they signed in and were given visitors' badges, then were told to wait and someone would come to collect them.

Bill looked extremely bored. He preferred being on a shooting range or part of a team bursting into houses, brandishing weapons and trying not to shoot innocent members of the public. The thought of checking statements appalled him, but at least it was another jolly and saved him from having to go out and patrol a division.

Jerry Tope hummed and tapped his fingers on his laptop. He actually liked reading statements and analysing data in whatever form. He was eager to get going, although he was still annoyed about not being able to go to Cyprus.

Henry paced the foyer, his mind clicking over, wondering what lay in store for his band of merry men.

A young crew-cutted man strode through the security doors. He was expensively suited and booted, an air of efficiency surrounding him. Henry came upright, alert and pegged him instantly.

‘DCI Christie?'

Henry extended his hand. ‘You must be Detective Superintendent Shafer?'

They shook. Henry turned to his mini-team and quickly introduced them. Shafer's sharp grey eyes took them in and assessed them, as they had done Henry – and found he did not like what he saw, particularly in Henry's case. He beckoned them to follow him, and using his fingerprint and number combination on the keypad opened the big glass doors leading into the HQ building. Uncharitably, Henry thought they were stepping into the lions' den.

Shafer herded them into the lift.

‘A day early,' Shafer said, looking down his nose at Henry. ‘I was expecting something like this,' he smirked as the doors hissed shut and the lift jerked upwards. ‘Henry Christie,' he said, ‘we meet at last. Your reputation precedes you.'

Henry narrowed his eyes suspiciously and like Clint Eastwood once said in a film he could not recall the title of, said, ‘What reputation is that?' Henry was sure that Eastwood had received a reply that summed up his hard-boiled, flawed character, but Shafer wasn't playing the game. Instead he just shook his head and continued smirking, sending a shiver of annoyance through Henry's backbone. He already wanted to swipe it off his face.

As the lift jolted to a halt on floor eight, and before the doors opened, Shafer answered, ‘Nothing to write home about,' then, his timing perfect, he stepped out of the lift into the corridor before Henry could collar him and demand to know exactly what he meant. He glanced quickly at Bill and Tope and they dropped their eyes quickly, embarrassed for him.

‘This way,' Shafer said brightly.

Henry gritted his teeth, already seething, his nostrils flaring so widely he could have fitted king marbles up them.

They followed the brisk be-suited superintendent along the corridor, left-turned and stopped outside a door which had no markings or number on it. Shafer produced a key and slid it into the lock.

‘This is the office we provided for the IPCC to conduct their investigation. They've also got a small room at Southport nick, Southport being where the incident took place, as you'll know,' Shafer explained, unlocked the door and pushed it open.

‘Ahh, the broom cupboard,' Henry said glancing into the tiny, dim office which seemed to have no natural light coming into it. Inside two small desks were crammed in, back to back, and three plastic chairs.

‘Office space is always at a premium,' Shafer said. He stepped in, then let Henry and his team filter past him. Henry appraised the room and found it wanting. There was a half-sized filing cabinet which looked as though it could have been jemmied open at some time in its life, and nothing else other than a Formica-topped table tucked in one corner. There was a kettle, two mugs and some milk in a bottle on this table. By its looks, the milk could have already become cheese.

A box file sat on the back-to-back desks.

‘This is where the IPCC investigator worked from and that's his stuff.' Shafer indicated the box. ‘Everything he collected is in here. And this is his key – the only one for the room, apart from the master.' He handed the key with which he'd opened the door to Henry. ‘OK? I'm sure you'll want to get started.' He turned away.

Henry screwed his nose up. ‘There's a big list of things we'll need, actually.'

This stopped Shafer. ‘Why would that be? I understand that your task is simply to …'

‘Dot and cross?'

‘Exactly … shouldn't take too much. Not, you understand, that we won't be as helpful as possible.'

‘It's just basic things,' he said, pleasantly enough, not wanting to get off too far on the wrong foot. Although he wanted to spell out what he saw his task as being, he could imagine how vulnerable the force would be feeling and then to get a snotty detective to come along from another force and start nosing around again did not help matters. He glanced at the room and saw computer access points. ‘It'd be useful to get a computer in here, for example,' he said innocently with a deprecatory shrug. ‘We'll need ease of access to the building, to know where we can photocopy stuff … that sort of thing.'

Shafer looked slightly relieved. ‘I can get those things sorted.'

Henry went on, ‘But I will have to go through everything, you can understand that.' He pointed at the box file on the desks. ‘Then take it from there. May even need to interview or re-interview people again.'

‘Yeah, sure.'

‘And try to live up to my reputation,' he added slyly, his face set, his eyes levelling with Shafer's. They locked, then broke.

Shafer handed Henry a business card with his internal phone number on it. ‘I'll let you get settled.'

He spun on his shiny heels and left the office.

The three Lancashire officers watched him go, remained silent for a few moments, then Bill said, ‘Don't know about you guys, but I've got a bad feeling about this already.' He shivered.

‘Yeah, me too,' Tope said. ‘Didn't like him.'

‘At the end of the day,' Henry said magnanimously, ‘we are investigating them and they will feel just a bit jittery. Understandable. However,' he levelled his gaze at Bill and dangled the office key in front of him, ‘nip into the city centre, will you, and buy a padlock and an electric screwdriver from a hardware shop. I think we'll take the unilateral decision of putting our own security on the door. I'll lay odds there's more than one key circulating and I'd like to keep our little room to ourselves. Some coffee, milk and another mug might not go amiss either …'

‘And biscuits,' Tope said.

‘Can you manage that?' Henry asked Bill.

‘I'm the gofer?'

‘If the cap fits.'

‘Short simple steps,' Henry explained. He now had a mug of cheap coffee in his hands which tasted like treacle, but had a kick like a mule. He was feeling refreshed and ready to rock and roll. ‘Let's take this whole thing from start to finish. To me that means going back to the shooting Motta was supposed to have committed, then through all the intelligence-gathering after that up to the point where Motta was pinpointed as a suspect and then located. An operational order must have been drawn up for the armed arrest. Then we go through everything relating to the raid and the shooting. See how it all flows. I know there's gaps, but we'll fill 'em as we go along.'

‘Shall I just fix doors and coffee,' Bill asked.

Henry fixed him with a contemptuous stare, then turned his attention to the box file that should contain all the things Henry had just described. He opened the lid for the first time and said, ‘Dig in, chaps.'

It was a long, tedious, caffeine-fuelled day, as once they sat down to their task they diligently worked their way through the file. It was an orderly and well-put-together piece of work. The IPCC investigator had been assisted by members of the West Midlands Police who had, seemingly, professionally investigated, interviewed and made recommendations.

On the face of it, Henry could see very little wrong with what had been done.

Based on what he read, the story of Jonny Motta and his demise was one of those unfortunate but inevitable incidents and if the police hadn't pulled the trigger, then it was quite likely that someone else would have done so, sooner rather than later.