Howard Linskey - The Dead

The lead police officer looked on edge. He had his pistol aimed right at me, ‘David Blake?’ he screamed.

‘Yes,’ I said quietly, even though I hate having guns pointed at me, particularly by people who looked as stressed as he did.

‘Don’t move and put your hands in the air!’

I was tempted to point out that I could hardly do both, but instead I slowly raised my hands, then I put the palms on the back of my head, which seemed to calm him. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘it’s fine officer, I’m happy to assist you with your enquiries. There’s just two little things.’

‘What?’ he barked, straightening his arm and pointing his gun more firmly at me in emphasis.

‘Let me put some clothes on,’ I told him, because I was standing there in just my boxers, ‘and shut the fuck up.’ He looked startled by that. ‘We have a small child sleeping in there.’ I indicated Emma’s room with a faint movement of my head. He stared at me for a moment like I was trying to distract him and might attack if he took his eyes off me for a second. I must have looked pretty harmless though, standing there in my underwear with my hands behind my head, because he finally stole a quick glance through the open door, saw Emma and realised I was telling the truth.

‘Okay,’ he said in something between a gasp and a whisper. ‘Sorry Miss.’ Sarah gave him a murderous look and went to check on Emma.

‘You know why you are here,’ the detective told me for the third time.

‘I have no idea why I am here,’ I answered. Here was the police station on Market Street, a grey, grim, sixties-built, flat-roofed box of a building. The interview room was just as stark; a table, some chairs, two filing cabinets in the corner, a DCI questioning me, three more plain clothes in the room to make sure I didn’t deck him and run off.

‘Are we going to mess about all night?’ asked Detective Chief Inspector Hibbitt, a man I had never clapped eyes on before, until he snarled an introduction at me five minutes earlier. He was the SIO or Senior Investigating Officer in the case I was about to be questioned over, he told me, with barely disguised contempt, while strangely neglecting to inform me what that case was, hence his rather ridiculous statement that I knew why I was here. ‘See if you can work it out,’ he added, ‘go on, give it a go.’

Behind him, a Detective Sergeant, who was equally unknown to me but apparently went by the name of Fraser, paced up and down behind him looking like a caged tiger. I had never seen police officers looking so wound up before. They were treating me like I was the mastermind of some terrorist outrage, not their local, friendly drug-dealing, money launderer gangster. I’d been offered a lawyer but I find these chats about crimes I have been linked with tend to go better if I let the police feel they are more in control. I let them ask their questions and deflect them. Then they let me go home and that is usually the end of the matter. If I involve my lawyer it tends to mean a protracted stay at the station and a tedious impasse, which leaves the police frustrated and angry because I didn’t cooperate. There isn’t much goodwill directed at me from the local plod but Sharp has told me that I get a few Brownie points for at least allowing them to have their little talks with me unencumbered by a posse of lawyers.

‘Night shift a bit dull, was it?’ I asked, ‘and you wanted to liven things up a bit?’

‘Carlton,’ he said.

‘I might have known,’ I replied. Carlton was behind this, ‘DI Carlton’s been my biggest fan for a while now. He seems to think I’m a criminal mastermind, not a respectable north-east business man.’

‘We know all about you, Blake, so there’s very little point in pissing us around,’ the DCI told me, ‘you used to work for Bobby Mahoney and he has been missing, presumed dead, for years now. He might be on a tropical island somewhere but more than likely he’s buried in the foundations of one of those yuppie apartment blocks you built on the Quayside. You’ve been doing very well since then, haven’t you? Well,’ he added, ‘you were because we’ve never been able to prove anything,’ then he continued, ‘but that’s all about to change.’

Then Hibbitt put his palms on the table in front of me, stretched across it, leaned in close to me and hissed, ‘there is a line, Blake, and you just crossed it. You are going down for a very long time.’

‘Is this the bit where I get to say something like, “I have no idea what you are talking about, Inspector”, because I really do have no idea what you are talking about, Inspector.’

‘Carlton,’ he said again, but he didn’t tell me more.

‘What about him? Is he here? I don’t know what he thinks he has got on me but it’s nothing. You are going to look very stupid when my lawyer tears you apart and sends you the bill for my front door.’

The DCI shook his head, ‘You can’t just do anything you want, hurt anyone you want. Don’t you see that? Sooner or later…’ his words tailed away and he shook his head in something like bemusement. He was looking at me like I was shit on his shoes. He stepped back from the table.

‘Shall we start again?’ I asked, ‘perhaps you can tell me what it is that you or Carlton think I have done? Would that make sense? You are supposed to do that; under your own code of practice from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, you are meant to let me know why you have brought me here.’

The DS, who had been watching me intently, suddenly lost control and let out a roar. He marched up to my table with a ferocious look in his eye and smashed his fist down onto it hard.

‘You fucking bastard,’ he hissed at me while he tried to regain control. I just stared at him, wondering what the hell he was on to make him act like this, ‘you… evil… fucking… bastard. You are gonna pay! I promise you that!’

‘Look,’ I said, in as reasonable a voice as I could muster, ‘there’s obviously some kind of mix-up here. I haven’t done anything… out of the ordinary.’ I was choosing my words carefully, abandoning the pretence that I was a law-abiding citizen for a moment.

The DS ignored this. ‘Carlton is a good man,’ he told me, ‘he’s worth a hundred of you.’

I frowned at him, ‘What’s happened to Carlton?’ I asked. ‘I haven’t seen him in weeks.’

‘He was close,’ the DCI interrupted, ‘very close, so he said. He was going to nail you and you knew it. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you, you fucking low-life.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I told them both, ‘has something happened to Carlton, because it has got nothing to do with me. You lot have your jobs to do and I might not like you for it but I understand and grudgingly respect it. I’ve never come up against any of you like that. If Carlton has taken a kicking, if he’s fallen down the stairs or been hit by a car, gone missing or stubbed his toe on the pavement, I repeat, it has nothing to do with me.’

‘Got an alibi, have you?’ asked the DCI, as if I was pulling the other one. ‘Got your men to do the dirty work? That’s how people like you operate isn’t it? You’re not hard, Blake, you’d be nothing without men like Joe Kinane to back you up.’

‘Neither I, nor anyone who works for me in any capacity, has done anything to hurt or harm DI Carlton,’ I told him, ‘and if you think we have, you are definitely on the wrong track.’

‘Leave me alone with him for just five minutes,’ DS Fraser was virtually frothing at the mouth now, ‘I’ll get him to talk.’

‘Oh please,’ I told him, ‘you’re acting like an idiot.’ And that’s when he went for me, launching himself across the table and swinging a haymaker at me that caught me off balance, even though I saw it coming. I ducked, but he still connected with the top of my head. It wasn’t a crashing blow but the intent was there and the two DCs who’d been standing to one side had to drag him off me. They managed to haul him away but I didn’t get an apology.