Howard Linskey - The Dead

‘Mr Kinane accepts this gracious offer,’ the lawyer quickly responded on his behalf before Kinane lost that famous temper once again. At that point he looked over at us and realised we were all desperately trying to keep control. Palmer was doubled up and laughing silently, his body shaking with mirth. Vince had a grin on him like a Cheshire cat and I just about managed to stifle a smirk, but he knew he’d been had and he scowled at us all.

‘That will fucking teach you,’ I told him, as I handed him his pint in Rosie’s bar afterwards, ‘not that ten hours of anger management is ever going to cure you of being a cunt.’

‘Bastard,’ he muttered, as he took the pint, ‘you’re all bastards, in point of fact’.

I had known that the worst punishment that could have been handed down to Joe Kinane, aside from prison, was one in which he was forced to sit in a group, while admitting out loud that he had anger issues and it all stemmed back to his childhood because his mummy never cuddled him. This would be a form of living hell to a man like Kinane, who had bottled up every negative emotion he’d had in his life and thought the only proper way to handle a problem was to ‘fucking deal with it’.

The wind-ups and piss-takes would have gone on a lot longer if Palmer hadn’t walked back in at that point after taking a call outside in the street. He looked at me and shook his head, which could only mean one thing; more bad news.

We stood outside Rosie’s bar, which sits in the shadow of St James’ Park, the huge, white footballing cathedral right in the middle of our city.

‘What is it?’ I asked him.

‘It’s Baxter,’ he told us, ‘he’s been arrested.’

‘Again?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Fuck me,’ snorted Kinane, ‘doesn’t put a foot wrong in years and now he’s picked up twice in seven days. The man’s a one-man crime-wave. What are they gonna charge him with now? Littering with intent?’

‘Murder,’ said Palmer.

Sharp had learned his lesson from our last meeting. This time, when I called him, he didn’t grumble. He met me in the small apartment block we keep in the city, to accommodate guests of the firm and for crash meetings like this one.

‘Tell me about Henry Baxter,’ I said, ‘that’s my prime concern right now.’

It was pretty amazing to think that being wrongly accused of the murder of a detective’s daughter could actually be priority number two, but I was having a very bad week.

‘When Baxter was arrested for drink-driving they did all of the usual stuff for someone as far over the drink-drive limit as he was,’ Sharp explained to us. ‘They breathalysed him, fingerprinted him, then took a buccal swab from his mouth before they let him back on the streets. It was purely routine, and so was the cross-checking of the DNA sample. We do it for everyone because it works. We had one guy who was picked up after a brawl in a pub car park. It turned out he’d done an armed robbery fourteen years back and left his DNA at the scene when he’d given the building society manager a smack in the mouth to make him behave. He must have cut his hand on the bloke’s broken teeth because a tiny smattering of his blood ended up on the counter top. We matched the samples and now he’s doing sixteen years for it.’

I could see Kinane looking uncomfortable. I knew he’d be recalling all of the armed robberies and punishment beatings he’d been involved in over the years. There were probably microscopic traces of Joe Kinane’s DNA all over this city.

‘That’s fascinating Sharp, but what has that got to do with Baxter and a murder?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s the same thing. When Baxter’s DNA was taken it was matched by the computer to a cold case. They reckon he’s the perp. He must have done it. The odds against it are millions to one.’

‘Baxter? A murderer? I seriously doubt that,’ I told Sharp.

Kinane chipped in then, ‘Who’d he kill? A tax inspector?’

‘No,’ answered Sharp, ‘a little girl.’

To my complete disbelief, Henry Baxter was placed on remand in Durham nick, to await trial for the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl named Leanne Bell. He soon got word to us.

‘I am not going anywhere near Durham nick,’ I told Palmer. I was about to meet the owners of that York hotel I wanted to buy. The heat might have been on us since the death of Gemma Carlton, but we still had to keep the business going. They were due at our Quayside restaurant and I didn’t need the prospect of a cosy prison visit at the back of my mind. ‘I have to put as much distance between me and that child-murdering prick as possible, particularly now. Surely you understand that?’

‘Course I do, obviously.’ Palmer looked like he was about to continue but Kinane cut him off.

‘If it was down to me, we’d have him shanked in the showers,’ my enforcer told me, ‘and not like Toddy. I’d get someone to fillet him, so he died slow. I’d want him screaming in agony when he finally went. He deserves it for what he did to that girl.’

‘Careful Joe,’ Palmer chipped in, ‘we don’t know for sure that he’s guilty.’

Kinane gave Palmer a vengeful look.

‘We really don’t,’ my head of security reminded him, ‘all we know is he was picked up for drink-driving, they took a DNA swab and let him go, we hear nothing for days and the next thing we know he’s lifted off the street on a ten-year-old murder charge and banged up in Durham.’

‘Sounds pretty straightforward to me,’ grunted Kinane.

‘So you are one hundred per cent certain this isn’t some crafty SOCA plot to get Baxter to come over all supergrass, are you? Because I’m not.’

Kinane snorted like he thought that was ludicrous, but he didn’t say anything more. Palmer continued, ‘He knows stuff, Joe. Baxter knows damaging things about us, so the last thing we should do is cut him adrift. What else has he got to bargain with?’

‘Palmer’s right,’ I admitted reluctantly. Kinane turned to face me then, with anger in his eyes. ‘He is,’ I assured him, ‘we can hate Baxter all we like but we shouldn’t cut him loose completely. Not yet. We need him to keep thinking we are on his side while we quietly dismantle everything he set up, so nothing can be traced back to us. Then, once we have done that, we’ll drop him like a hot rock and he can rot in prison for the rest of his miserable life.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Kinane nodded, finally getting my point.

‘So you’ll go and see him?’ asked Palmer.

‘No I won’t, not personally’ I told him, ‘I thought I’d spelled that out.’

Palmer nodded, ‘You did, but he’s having none of it, and he knows where all the bodies are buried. You just admitted as much yourself.’

‘So I have no bloody choice?’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ he confirmed.

Durham jail is a Category B closed prison, which means the inmates are not the highest risk, but escape is meant to be made very difficult for them. Men like Henry Baxter, who are on remand awaiting trial, are usually held as Category B prisoners. Durham is no cake-walk though. A decade ago its seven wings had the highest suicide rate of any prison in the country, and there are more than nine-hundred inmates housed within its walls.

We drove up to the huge nineteenth-century building with trepidation. Not because I was scared of the place. It was our link with a probable child killer that was alarming me. It was all I needed right now with the murder of Gemma Carlton hanging over us.

‘You’d better wait here,’ I told Palmer, as I surveyed this forbidding building. ‘If I know Baxter he’ll be jumpy enough as it is without seeing you.’