Nick Oldham - Psycho Alley

‘Dangerous beauty,’ Henry whispered to himself before banging his forehead on the desk and asking himself with each bang, ‘Why’ — bang — ‘am’ — bang — ‘I’ — bang — ‘so’ — bang — ‘crap’ — bang — ‘at’ — bang, bang, ‘relationships?’ He rubbed his reddening brow. He would rather be having a life-and-death struggle with a deranged serial killer than grappling with the emotions and complexities of the female of the species. ‘Plasma screen TV, plasma screen TV,’ he chanted in a sort of religious mantra.

The PB lay open in front of him, one paragraph completed, not a very good one at that. He picked up his pen and attacked the book with determination, finishing with a flourish of satisfaction about half an hour later, a mug of cold tea by his elbow.

Another intrusion.

It was John Walker, the detective from technical support.

Henry waved him in, told him to close the door, sat him down. ‘You got something?’

‘You need to see these.’ He handed Henry a big envelope. Henry looked closely at what had been presented to him, feeling his heart skip a beat or two.

‘Shit,’ he said at length, looking at the detective.

‘Yeah, shit,’ he agreed.

‘Anyone else know about this?’

‘Nope?’

‘Wife, girlfriend, boyfriend?’

‘Not even him.’

‘What are your plans for the morning?’ Henry asked.

The DC shrugged. ‘Day off, breakfast, newspaper, shopping, DIY, that sort of stuff.’

‘Cancel all those plans.’

‘OK,’ he said without a moment of question. ‘Why?’

‘I need to tell you a story, then I need to phone the chief constable.’

‘Whatever.’

Forty minutes later, the tech support DC emerged from Henry’s office, somewhat shell-shocked by what he’d heard, but at the same time thrilled by what he’d been tasked to do.

Henry, equally shocked and a bit dithery, came out of the office a few moments earlier and made his way to the MIR, which was abuzz with activity following the earlier briefing. He found Karl Donaldson with Jane Roscoe at the office manager’s desk. They had known each other a few years, having met through Henry. Donaldson was very much aware of Henry’s affair with Jane.

He sauntered over to the pair and got a progress update. Little had moved on, but a lot of people were beavering away on their allotted tasks on the streets. Blackpool was pretty much locked down as cops went out banging on doors, calling in favours and doing a lot of shaking down in an effort to trace Trent, whose face was now plastered over the MIR walls.

The activity was satisfying. Henry was sure that if Trent was in town, he’d be flushed out or cornered soon. He had to believe that.

His mobile roared like a jet as an incoming text landed. He looked at it: ctch me if u can.

Donaldson and Jane watched Henry’s expression alter.

‘Problem?’ the American asked.

‘No,’ Henry said, stern-faced. He walked out of the room.

Could it be that Trent was taunting him? He could not be sure, but from what he knew of the child molester, this was not something that fitted his behaviour pattern. Trent liked to assault and kill. That was his bag. It wasn’t a game for him. He didn’t like to leave clues, to play cat and mouse with cops. Cats usually caught mice, and he would not wish to jeopardize his freedom by playing silly buggers with mobile phones that could possibly be traced. He had been out and at liberty for a long time. Why would he want to lose that just for the sake of one-upmanship? He would not, Henry convinced himself. Trent wanted to stay free, not get caught. The more Henry thought about it, the less he believed Trent was the texter. But maybe the next twenty-four hours would reveal the culprit. Maybe.

In the corridor outside his office, he bumped into a constable coming out of the office. Henry did not know the officer’s name, but recognized him as a member of the Support Unit, the bish-bash-bosh squad, as they were known, because of their somewhat hard-edged approach to policing. He was clutching a photograph in his hand.

‘Help you?’ Henry said.

‘Yeah, boss … you got a mo?’

‘Come in.’ Henry led him into the salubrious interior of his office and plonked down at his desk, waiting for the officer to sit down opposite. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name.’

‘PC Fawcett … John Fawcett,’ he said.

‘What can I do for you, John?’

‘I was at the briefing earlier,’ he began hesitantly. He showed Henry the photo he was holding — one of the many Henry had hurriedly produced of Trent. Fawcett did not go on immediately. Henry waited for him to fill the gap. ‘I’ve been looking long and hard at this photograph.’ He waved Trent’s face at Henry. ‘And, well, I don’t want to appear stupid or anything and I’m not a hundred per cent, but, do you remember when you busted into Uren’s flat?’

‘How could I forget?’

‘I was one of the Support Unit officers covering the stairs.’ Henry nodded, recalling him now. ‘Just as you went into Uren’s flat, a guy came down the stairs from the floor above.’ The officer shrugged helplessly. ‘I mean, it obviously wasn’t Uren, so when he asked if it was all right to go past, I just said no probs. Took his name, let him go.’

Henry saw Fawcett’s Adam’s apple rise and fall.

‘I think it was this guy.’ He held up Trent’s photograph.

It was a statement greeted by stony silence. For a moment, tumbleweed could have blown through the office on a whistling wind.

‘You think?’

‘A bit different-looking … but the eyes … yeah. I mean, we weren’t actually given instructions about what we should do, so I let him pass, boss.’

On such simple things are suspects allowed to go free, and investigations are completely fucked up.

‘How certain are you?’

Fawcett ummed and ahhed, then said, ‘As I said, not a hundred per cent, but as certain as I can be in the short time I saw him in the crap lighting in the building. And,’ he went on, dropping the bombshell, ‘he told me his name was John Stoke, the name you said Trent uses as an alias.’

There was an extra long moment of dreadful silence as Henry digested this, then said, ‘He came from the upper floor, you say?’ trying to keep hysteria out of his voice.

Fawcett nodded.

‘He could’ve been in one of the flats above?’

‘Could have.’

Henry held back from standing up, towering over the PC and shouting him into a quivering mess because ultimately, it was he, Henry, who was to blame. Going gung-ho into the block of flats, not properly resourced, with only an ‘on-the-hoof’ plan put together, had meant he’d missed a simple thing: don’t let anyone out until I’m happy as to who they are. It was one of those things the public would never believe the police would make a mistake on, but they did, often. The easy bits were the bits the cops got wrong, made themselves look stupid over. The building should have been tighter than a duck’s buttocks and anyone should have been stopped, checked and verified. All the outer-perimeter people were looking for was someone doing a runner, not someone strolling out, having walked through police lines, passing the time of day along the way.

Sitting back in his creaky chair, Henry glanced out through the narrow window at the shark. Dave Anger would love to get hold of this one. Henry Christie, the incompetent bastard, had allowed one of the country’s most wanted men to slip through his fingers. Literally. He could see the look of triumph on Anger’s ‘fizzog’, as his dear mum would say, corrupting the French word ‘visage’ into a Lancashire speciality. Most definitely, Dave Anger had a ‘fizzog’. Bile rose in his throat. Jane Roscoe’s words, which summed Henry up, came to haunt him. ‘Henry “Wing” Christie’. He looked at Fawcett, said, ‘Shit.’