Nick Oldham: Psycho Alley

Away to their left was where police activity was taking place. They made their way toward it. Three police officers were huddled together in a conflab near Uren’s burnt-out Astra, which had been abandoned there; two uniformed, the third a detective who, when she saw Henry and Jane approaching, broke away and came to meet and greet.

‘Hi, boss,’ she said to Henry. Her name was Debbie Black. She was one of Henry’s proteges, having worked with him when he was on CID at Blackpool. She’d done a spell on Child Protection and Special Branch; promotion to sergeant had brought her to Fleetwood, where she was a DS. She noted his eye and limp, but, diplomatically, said nothing. After acknowledging Jane with a curt nod, she said, ‘Not good, this.’

‘What’ve we got?’

‘Well, you circulated this car last night.’ She pointed to the Astra. ‘So our patrols have been keeping an eye out for it.’

‘Splendid,’ Henry said.

‘About an hour ago we got a call from a man walking a dog on the opposite side of the river.’ Debbie pointed across to Knott End. ‘Said he could see a car on fire here … Fire Service turned out and doused it down before we got here, then they popped the boot, hatchback,’ she corrected herself, ‘and found the body.’

‘Fire brigade been and gone?’ Jane asked.

Debbie nodded. ‘They got called to a house fire in Cleveleys, but they’ll be back.’

‘What are your initial thoughts?’ Henry asked. As much as he was eager to go rooting about, he liked to gather facts and opinions as he went along.

The DS shrugged. ‘If there hadn’t been the body, it’s a pretty normal run of the mill thing. Abandoned car gets torched. We get quite a few dumped here. It’s a popular spot for it. Another unusual thing is that the fire brigade said the car had been set alight with incendiaries of some sort, plus accelerant, probably petrol.’

‘Incendiaries?’ said Henry thoughtfully. ‘Unusual.’

‘Which route did the car take to get here?’ Jane put in.

‘Same way as all of us, we think, except that where the track disappears, he kept on driving. It’s bumpy, but driveable, until you reach the sand and mud, that is.’

‘Have you organized a search of the area yet?’ Jane asked.

‘Not yet. The lads’ve had a scout round, but nothing structured.’

‘Was anyone seen at the car?’

‘No.’

‘In the area?’

‘Nope.’

‘What’ve you done about securing the scene?’ Jane asked.

Debbie looked squarely at her. ‘I’ve only just arrived.’ If she’d said it any slower it would have been spelled out. The two women regarded each other coldly and a confused Henry decided it was best to step in.

‘Let’s have a look.’

Debbie spun haughtily and set off towards the Astra, Henry and Jane in tow.

‘You got some sort of downer on her?’ Henry hissed. ‘Why are you bustin’ her balls?’

Jane’s head turned and she gave him a cynical look. ‘Why are you defending her? Is she another of your conquests? I thought I was asking reasonable questions about crime scenes.’

‘Jane,’ he said bristling, ‘I have not shagged every policewoman in Lancashire, no matter what you might believe.’

‘Just two-thirds of them.’

‘And anyway, what business is it of yours?’

‘None, I suppose,’ she snarled.

‘Exactly.’

The vehicle, although still recognizable as a Vauxhall Astra, had been burned to a crisp. The fire had gutted it. Everything that could have been burned had burned. The tyres had melted. The seats were just springs and metal frames. The dashboard was a gooey mess, the windows molten glass. Henry had seen numerous torched cars and was not surprised to see how little remained, just a charred metal shell. Cars burned extremely well.

The hatchback was open. Henry assumed the Fire Service had done that, which was something to check on — and the body was inside there. Debbie Black led him up to the car and, keeping his hands in his pockets — an old, but trusted approach to a crime scene — he peered in.

Sometimes the brain does not immediately compute what it is seeing. For a fleeting moment, Henry’s mind needed to make some adjustments; rather like staring at one of those multi-patterned optical illusions that need to be stared at for a length of time before hidden, recognizable shapes emerge in 3D.

At first Henry could not configure what he was seeing. It looked like a black and brown, singed, burnt mess … and then a shape emerged; a head, body, arms, legs; a seared, scorched, distressing sight. And then the smell hit him: burned human flesh, instantly recognizable, once inhaled, never forgotten, forever remembered by the olfactory sense.

‘Jesus!’ Jane uttered, putting a hand to her mouth.

Henry turned to see her stagger away, hands covering her face, retching. ‘Make sure you puke a good long distance away,’ he called after her, rather cruelly.

He caught Debbie’s eye, who, under her breath, said, ‘Wouldn’t want to contaminate the crime scene, would we?’

Henry smiled, looked again at the body. It was a truly awful sight, but the real horror to Henry was that its size told him something that made him shiver inside, made his throat constrict. Obviously it would have to be confirmed by the pathologist and the post mortem tests, but there and then Henry would have bet a month’s salary that he was looking at the body of a young person. Maybe eight, ten years old, somewhere round there. What sex he could not tell. Not that it mattered. Henry’s tired eyes — or good eye — which had seen a multitude of deaths, became sad as he inspected the murdered body of a child … and he now realized why Jane had maybe reacted so badly. She too had seen enough death for anyone and was usually unaffected by it. But even the most hardened detective is moved by the death of a child.

‘You think this death is connected to the enquiry you’re running?’ Debbie Black posed this question as she drove Henry south towards Blackpool. After apologizing to Jane about his lack of sensitivity, a gesture received with a sneer of contempt, Henry had delegated the task of crime scene manager to her for the time being, much to her obvious annoyance. He had then commandeered Debbie Black and her car to run him back to the Major Incident Room (MIR) from where he had been running his inherited investigation. To be straight, he should have given the CSM job to Debbie, but Jane was making him feel uncomfortable, so his decision was purely personal. If called to account, he thought he could justify it professionally if necessary.

Now, with the Irish Sea to his right this time, Henry considered Debbie’s query. He blew out his cheeks, gave it some application of grey matter.

On his return from the Manchester murder/corruption enquiry, he had been given an investigation that had been going down the pan. Not, he was at pains to admit, that he’d been doing much better with it since taking over. Problem was that it had taken the police too long to see that there even was a problem, despite the much-heralded problem-solving approach Lancashire Constabulary claimed it took, so by the time Henry became the SIO, he’d inherited a mess.

The whole thing had begun some six months earlier, whilst Henry had been knee deep in corpses and bent coppers across the border.

The beginning of spring. Days growing longer. Kids staying out later, parents inside, or sat on patios, beers in hand.

There had been four attacks in one day around Blackpool, each more horrific and violent than the last.

Saturday lunchtime: the first attack, an attempted abduction. A man in a car, a young girl skipping along a street. The man stopped, asked the girl for directions. She was wary, though, despite being a tender eight-year-old. When he opened his car door and she saw his trousers were unfastened, his penis out, she screamed as he lunged for her. She evaded his outstretched hands and ran for home. The man and car disappeared and the descriptions obtained were poor.