The Nothing Job (6 page)

Carradine blanked Henry out as he strutted across to the DI's office, but Henry rose to his feet and collared him.

‘Jack – how's it going?'

‘Henry. Didn't see you lurking there.'

‘Whatever,' Henry said indifferently. ‘Just wondering how the job at Preston is going.' Carradine was the SIO who took up the reins of the double murder Henry had initially covered.

‘You mean the one where you took a dead passenger out for an early morning drive and nearly completely fucked up any possibility of getting any useful evidence from that crime scene? That one, you mean?'

Henry's bottom lip twisted.

‘You know, Henry, you are a fucking laughing stock, pal.' He gave him a patronizing tap on the shoulder and eased past, end of conversation.

Henry stood immobile for a moment, getting a grip on himself, his fingers folding and unfolding into tightly clenched fists, his breath shortening as ire rose. All eyes in the office were on him, some sniggerers – he thought – some waiting for an outburst which would entertain them all in their drab little day.

Slowly he sat, controlling his breathing, blinking away the red mist.

Jerry Tope eyed him worriedly. ‘You OK, boss?'

‘Not really,' Henry said tightly.

‘The man's a knob, if that's any consolation.'

‘A knob with my job.' He inhaled deeply and blinked to shake himself out of his jagged state, then looked at Tope, self-control having returned. ‘Nearly lost it there,' he admitted.

‘He'll get his comeuppance.'

Henry smiled. ‘Comeuppance – another good word, Jerry. I like a man with a bit of vocabulary … So, found anything?' Tope had been tapping away at his computer keys.

‘Thing is, once you know your way around the force intranet, if you've got half a computer-literate brain in your noggin, you can just about spy on anyone in the organization – email, files, departments, whatever.'

‘But can't you be traced?' Henry asked, not completely sure he wanted to be a party to Tope's hacking.

The DC gave him a withering glance.

‘I'll take that as a no.'

‘Here we go.' Tope pushed the monitor around so Henry could see without craning his neck. It showed a lot of figures and balances. ‘This is one of the chief's special accounts … I mean, there's money sloshing around the constabulary all over the place … this is Operation Wanted and there's twenty-five grand in it from somewhere … This'll be the money siphoned from somewhere else.'

‘Twenty-five grand?' Henry hissed. ‘Where's it come from?'

Tope tapped a few more keys. ‘Backtracking here,' he explained. ‘Four grand from some Home Office funding for street crime …' More keys tapped. ‘Eight from the central training budget – everybody nicks cash from training …' Tap, tap, tap. ‘Three from corporate development.'

‘OK, heard enough. Unbelievable.' Henry raised his hands in surrender.

‘All kosher, though.'

‘Not saying it isn't, Jerry … just shows that money can be found from anywhere when necessary. Twenty-five grand, though. Seems a lot. Maybe a trip to Cyprus isn't completely out of the question,' he mused. ‘Never been. They say it's pretty nice.'

‘I've been. I could show you around,' Tope volunteered hopefully, batting his eyes at Henry.

‘I'm afraid it's a job for a man of rank,' Henry said sonorously. ‘Anyway, these miscreants.' He patted the file. ‘Can you dig out everything we have about them all?'

There was a roar of muted laughter from the DI's office, then his door opened and DCI Carradine stepped out, the DI in tow. Henry wound around in the chair, a dark shadow crossing his face as he watched Carradine shake the DI's hand effusively and then walk back across the office. As he passed Henry he gave him another pat on the shoulder, but didn't look at him, and carried on walking towards the door. It was all Henry could do not to jump up after him and fell him with a kung-fu-style kick in the back.

As ever, he remained a model of professional restraint, simply scrunching up a piece of A4 paper his left hand had been resting on, turning it into a tight ball.

The DI stopped by Henry's shoulder and exchanged a knowing glance with him.

‘That man is a total wanker,' he stated, folding his arms, then grinned at Henry and said, ‘Has Jerry been of help to you?'

Henry shrugged non-committally. ‘Suppose so.'

‘Fancy a brew, then – kettle's on in the office,' the DI offered.

‘Don't mind if I do.'

An hour later, brews being a leisurely affair in the Intelligence Unit, Henry stopped off at the accounts department on the journey back to his top-floor office. There he spoke to a woman of his age who he'd known for many years and had once, indeed, had a one-night stand with about twenty-odd years before when he'd bumped into her on a CID night out in Preston.

‘Henry Christie,' she said warmly, almost purring.

‘Madeline Payne,' he responded, recalling the night of debauchery that had ended up in her grotty flat in the town centre. Memory gave him a little golden glow.

‘Madeline Rooney, actually,' she said, holding up her left hand and wiggling the third finger.

‘Oh, nice.'

‘Third time around … last time around.'

‘Congratulations … anyone I know?'

‘A DC over in commerce – John.'

Henry nodded. He knew John Rooney. ‘Yeah, good man,' he said and hoped that their little liaison would never rear its head again like the one he'd had with the woman who became Dave Anger's wife. Almost thirty years on, that little indiscretion still cost him dearly.

‘I still remember, you know,' Madeline said demurely, looking at him in a sultry, dirty manner. She pursed her lips, which were not as full and soft as they had been in the flush of youth. Having said that, Henry happily admitted that he too was drying up with age.

His heart missed a thump and he thought tensely, Too much bloody history in this organization, too many skeletons in my cupboard, mostly based around my dick. He smiled fondly and said, ‘Me, too.'

‘Mm, anyway, water under the bridge. What can I do for you?'

Relieved, he said, ‘Operation Wanted. How much have I got to spend?'

‘Follow me.' She beckoned him, as she had once done all those years before and he followed (as he had done). Only this time she took him to her desk, noting that whilst the lips might have lost their fullness, the hips had expanded, but in a very shapely way. She manoeuvred herself into her chair and bade him pull up another one next to her. She gave her mouse a shake and the screen came to life.

‘Operation Wanted,' she confirmed, tapping a few keys to bring up a file full of figures. She placed a pair of specs on her nose to look at the monitor. From where Henry was sitting, he could not really make any sense of what he saw.

She whistled appreciatively.

‘You've got a nice round figure to play with,' she said, giving him a suggestive sideways glance. She shuffled her shoulders and her large breasts moved provocatively.

Henry gave an inward, sad sigh. ‘How much?' he asked, deciding to ignore the blatant double meaning. Madeline had been, and obviously still was, a girl with a reputation.

‘Four grand.'

‘Four grand,' Henry spluttered in disbelief.

Eventually back in his office, Henry leaned in his chair and wondered what had happened to the outstanding twenty-one thousand pounds that he knew, unofficially, was in the budget for Operation Wanted. Madeline had been insistent that four thousand was the only money available and though Henry suggested with subtlety that she look again, he didn't feel he had the right to come out and say he knew there were twenty-five big ones in the budget.

He scratched his head and decided it was probably nothing to sweat about. The four grand was probably just his sub-allocation from the larger budget, or however accounts worked. He was no expert and now knocked himself for not attending the two-day course called ‘Finance for Non-Financial Managers' about two years before. Like most cops he had an aversion to handling money as well as an aversion to attending training events. He would never have missed a session on serial killers, though, but he'd thought that two days of figures and more figures was an appalling prospect and he'd made his excuses.

He rocked forward and reached for the three envelopes that had appeared on his desk from Jerry Tope, efficient as ever. He splayed them out and read the names on each: Downie, Kinsella, Scartarelli.

Eeney, meeney … he thought, but decided to make the choice on a financial basis crossed with a weighting on whether there was any chance of success.

Kinsella, according to Tope, was supposed to have fled to Australia. That meant if Henry physically went there, his vastly reduced budget would get wiped out straight away. Scartarelli might be in Cyprus, which was a possibility, but the definite quick win would be Anthony Downie. There was a good chance he wasn't too far away and just needed flushing out. So, decision made, Henry's finger and thumb slid inside the envelope and pulled out the now thicker file.

He smiled as he read the front sheet, which was a copy of
The Informer
, the constabulary's crime intelligence bulletin, and wished he'd chosen a trip to the Antipodes instead.

The headline screamed,
Wanted for Murder, Rape and Indecent Assault
.

Under the headline in thicker, fatter, bolder lettering were the words: ‘
DOWNIE IS VIOLENT AND DANGEROUS TOWARDS POLICE OFFICERS
'.

Under that it read, ‘Known to frequent the Blackpool, Leyland, Rochdale and Central Manchester areas.'

Then there was a colour photo of the man staring back at the lens with an expression of loathing and arrogance.

‘Nice choice,' Henry said, sitting back and starting to read the file on the first of three people he was expected to go out and arrest.

Anthony Downie sat in the back of a police car. The car was a Vauxhall Astra owned by Greater Manchester Police and he was being driven to Rochdale police station with two uniformed constables in the front, passing an occasional comment to each other. Both were pretty pleased by the fact that Downie was in the back. So pleased that they'd just got a little bit complacent.

Downie huddled down in the seat. He was a big man, six-eight, broad-shouldered and just on the verge of being very fit. He was strong and agile and already cursing his stupidity in getting caught. He should have suspected this would happen. He'd stayed too long in one place and had paid the price.

He had been in Rochdale for three months, living under the stolen identity of a man he'd killed and buried under the patio of the previous house he'd rented, in Nottingham. No one had noticed the man was missing yet. Downie knew this would happen because the man, a nonentity, had been carefully chosen for just that reason. It had been easy to live off the capital he had stashed in several bank accounts, all of which were accessible via plastic. Before he had killed the man – a very satisfactory strangulation following a wild bout of male-on-male intercourse – Downie had tortured him for four days and made him reveal all his PIN numbers. After the midnight backyard burial, Downie had moved up to Rochdale, withdrawing three hundred pounds per day from each of three accounts, renting a room in a modest terrace and hiring a nondescript car. Nine hundred pounds a day was just about right and he had worked out that the accounts would last him about ten weeks at that rate.

His downfall came from a family in the same street. A hard-working family whose eldest son was gay. Downie had befriended him whilst pretending to be a supply teacher, as was his modus operandi, and started to steal from him and the family. The young man found some of his mother's property in Downie's rented room and challenged him. Downie made the mistake of apologizing and returning the property, only for the lad to blab to his mother what had happened. She in turn told her husband, a suspicious fellow, who began to follow Downie and discovered that he never went near any school. Instead he drifted each day into the Canal Street area in Manchester, where he targeted gay men in bars and cafes.

Not happy, the father called the police, who spoke to the son.

At that moment, the police believed they were dealing with a man called Tony Robinson and simply went round to the rented room for a chat.

Downie's defensive and suspicious demeanour set off a few alarm bells in the officers' heads and with a nod and a wink between them they arrested him in a very nice manner, still unaware they were dealing with a ruthless murderer.

They ‘conned' him into the car, saying there was a complaint of theft from the family and they ‘needed to go through the motions'.

‘Yeah, I can see that,' Downie said and willingly got into the police car. The officers dropped their guard and with such a compliant prisoner, they neglected to put handcuffs on him, by no means an unknown occurrence.

On the journey to the station the officer in the front passenger seat turned and said, ‘What's your name again, mate?'

‘Ant …' Downie stopped in mid-name and corrected himself. ‘Tony Robinson,' he said quickly, stupidly caught out.

A look of comprehension came over the officer's face, but before he could react, Downie launched himself at him, powering a terrible punch into the side of the cop's head, breaking his jaw instantly, then hitting him again.

The car swerved as the two men fought in the cramped space, mounted a pavement and glanced off a bollard before bouncing around and stalling with a gear-crunching lurch. Downie, knowing the back doors were child-locked, crushed his big frame through the gap between the front seats, his fists flying and connecting, and he went for the passenger-door handle and scrambled out over the injured cop.

They had come to a halt on a quiet side road, a location which went a long way to inform Downie of his next move.