Nick Oldham - Big City Jacks

Even so, Henry made him go through it in more depth and when he was satisfied said, ‘Right, I should be across there within the hour. I’ll make to the scene and meet the DI there. Can you ensure he meets me, John?’ The Inspector told Henry that the DI was actually at Burnley police station, where the offender had been taken. Henry accepted this and said he would see him there after the scene visit instead.

They hung up. Henry looked at his daughter. She tilted her pretty head and squinted quizzically at him.

‘Dad?’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd?’

‘What’s that, my dear?’

‘Y’know — sitting around, waiting for people to pop their clogs?’

Henry pouted thoughtfully. ‘Never really considered it in those terms.’

‘Anyway,’ she said, her expression changing to one of glee as she moved her Queen regally across the chessboard, dramatically wiping out Henry’s remaining Bishop with a flourish. She announced, ‘Checkmate!’ very smugly.

Father and daughter faced each other over the board for a few silent moments.

‘You’ve been toying with me,’ Henry accused her.

‘Yep — out-thought and outmanoeuvred,’ she admitted, stood up and said, ‘Bed for me.’ As she walked past him, she patted him patronizingly on the head.

In terms of the county of Lancashire, Bacup and Blackpool — where Henry lived — could not be much further apart, but he arrived within the environs of the small Rossendale town in about fifty minutes without breaking the speed limit too many times.

Henry knew the area well, having spent a large proportion of his early police service in the east of the county. He had been on the Task Force prior to its abandonment in the early 1980s and in that time — those ‘hallowed times’ Henry called them — he had regularly worked the ‘Crime Car’ as it had been known, in that neck of the woods. He was very comfortable about finding his way around, ably assisted by a detailed street map.

Whilst driving across the county from the flatness of the Fylde coast up into the hilly region of the east, Henry reminisced a little about those days. A time when coppering had been a simple fun job, when a guy in uniform could do almost anything — and get away with it.

In some ways he missed it, but some of his memories made him cringe and wonder how the hell he’d survived some of the things he’d done.

Society had been very different then. The Toxteth riots and subsequent public enquiries had changed the face of policing forever.

But one thing that could never be changed was the popular music of that era, and on his late-night journey Henry allowed himself to wallow in some nostalgic rock of the time by sliding one of his ‘sad old git’ compilation tapes in and turning it up. He arrived in Bacup accompanied by Queen.

He found Moorside Terrace easily, parked up some distance away and got out of the car.

The cold hit him hard and immediately. A cold he had not felt for years. Half-past midnight in Bacup on a braw windy night was no place for the faint-hearted. He wrapped his coat tightly around him, pinned his ID to his chest and trudged towards the crime scene, hoping that most of the scientific work had been carried out by now. The house was slap-bang in the middle of a terraced row on a steep cobbled street which seemed to be holding on to the hillside by its fingertips.

The street was a buzz of activity. Staring, nosy people, and cops.

Every available officer in the division seemed to be hovering around. Probably all been to have a sneak peek at the body. A job like this was a magnet for the curious and it was often surprising how many cops turned up out of the woodwork. Henry prayed that the night-duty inspector had been telling the truth about scene preservation. Nothing fucked-up a crime scene better than a bunch of wanna-see bobbies in size elevens.

As it happened, the scene was well preserved. The only people who had trudged through it were the ones who’d had no choice: the paramedics, the first officers on scene, the CSIs and the Home Office pathologist who, as Henry poked his head around the kitchen door to have a look at the carnage, was just rising to his feet having examined the body which was still in situ.

The room was swathed in blood and the body itself lay pretty much in the centre of the floor, skewed at an awkward angle, limbs splayed to all points of the compass. Theatrically, Henry thought, the murder weapon was still sticking in the man’s chest. It was a very big kitchen knife. Henry winced.

Backing off carefully, placing his feet with caution, the pathologist turned away from the body to be greeted by Henry’s beaming smile.

‘Hallo, H,’ he said pleasantly, easing his hands out of his latex gloves.

‘Dr Baines, I presume,’ Henry responded. The two men had known each other for many years and had established a friendly rapport which, on occasion, spilled beyond the professional and into drinking establishments. Baines was as thin as a post, with ears like car doors, but Henry knew his ability to imbibe was second to none. All the beer, Henry guessed, went straight to his legs. ‘You’re a bit off your patch, aren’t you?’ Henry asked. Baines covered the west of the county usually. ‘Filling in for a colleague out collecting dead bodies, or something?’

‘Something like that,’ Baines replied as though hurt.

‘OK, pleasantries over — what’s the prognosis?’

Baines and Henry both turned their heads down and looked at the body on the kitchen floor. ‘Not good. Not likely to recover. He’s been stabbed to death, probably over a dozen times. The knife is in the heart at the moment, but any one of six other wounds could have been the fatal one. I’ll know for sure when I carry out the PM.’

There was a blinding flash as a CSI moved in with his SLR to record the scene.

‘As far as I’m concerned you can move the body to the public mortuary. I’ll do the PM now and get it over with. No point trailing all the way home only to have to come back in the morning.’

‘Good idea.’

He and Henry withdrew from the scene. After ensuring continuity of evidence regarding movement of the body — an officer had to accompany it to the morgue — Henry took his leave of Baines and headed back towards his car, thence on to Burnley custody office to take a look at the perpetrator of the foul deed.

It took about fifteen minutes to get there, travelling over the wild moors at Deerplay between the two towns and dropping down into Burnley. Henry spoke to the on-call DI on the way.

Burnley’s custody office had been recently refurbished and this is where Henry met up with the local detective inspector. His name was Carradine, one of the old school who had adapted pretty well to the new ways of doing things. Henry had known him for many years. They had been together at the Police Training Centre at Bruche near Warrington, having joined the job at the same time. Carradine had originally been a member of Merseyside Police, but had transferred quite a few years before to Lancashire. The two had never been close friends, but were comfortable enough with each other. At least Henry thought they were.

‘Hello, Barry.’

‘Henry,’ Carradine nodded curtly.

Henry picked up a strange tension in the DI’s manner which he had not locked into during the phone call.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Yeah — shouldn’t it be?’

‘Er, yes,’ Henry shrugged uncertainly.

‘Wanna see the prisoner?’

‘Yeah. . yeah.’

‘This way.’ He beckoned Henry, calling out to the custody sergeant, ‘Bernie, me and the temporary DCI are going down to the female side to have a glance at our murderess. Make a note on the custody record, please.’