Nick Oldham - Substantial Threat

Ray glanced at his two companions, who stood one behind each shoulder, then stared back at JJ. ‘You gonna tell me about it?’ Ray’s head twitched in a gesture of encouragement.

JJ nodded. He felt nauseous. It was all he could do to stop fear from squeezing his entrails and forcing him to vomit.

‘Good man,’ Ray acknowledged.

The landlord’s house was on a recently built exclusive development of executive-style homes in Lytham. There were about a dozen houses on the estate, all detached, each with five or six bedrooms and double or triple garages, but not much land for the half million or so they cost to buy. Henry, an aficionado of the property pages in the glossy Lancashire Life magazine, recalled reading the adverts for the development. They were very nice houses, well out of his price bracket, but he could dream.

He parked at the end of the driveway and gazed at the house, which was a far cry from the class of property the landlord rented out in Blackpool. A totally different world. Not even on the same planet. There was a canary-yellow Mercedes sports car in the driveway, which seemed slightly incongruous to Henry. Not that the car did not belong, it was just that he’d expected to see a Jaguar or a big Lexus there, as these were often the cars that the local well-heeled landlords tended to use. There was something effeminate about the neat yellow Mercedes which did not sit right with Henry’s, admittedly, stereotypical view of the greedy landlords he knew and despised so much. He shrugged. Maybe it belonged to the guy’s wife.

He checked his notes then climbed out of the Vectra and meandered up to the front door, past the car, his eyes missing nothing. His finger pressed the doorbell and he heard chimes inside. He waited, handed clasped behind his back, humming tunelessly to himself. After a few moments someone appeared at the other side of the door and opened it.

Henry took a step back, caught his breath, then introduced himself.

The collections were going well that day. Harry Dixon trotted away from the council house and eased himself into the passenger seat of the car waiting for him at the kerbside.

‘Done,’ he said to the driver. ‘Next one. . should be a fun one,’ he murmured under his breath.

‘Yeah,’ agreed the driver. ‘Want me to come in with you?’

Dixon smirked. The driver was a big guy called Miller. He was as tough as anyone Dixon had ever met and, allegedly, had a certain way with a carving knife and a cheese grater, the thought of which made Dixon shiver. Miller had been driving Dixon for a couple of months on the weekly collection runs, but there had never yet been any need to call on his skills, much to the big man’s disappointment as he was eager to show them off. Dixon did not want to start now. Though he was smaller in stature than Miller, Dixon preferred to use his charm and tongue as opposed to brawn. But he knew the next address would be a toughie. It always was, but he felt he could handle it himself.

‘Nahh, you’re okay — just be ready if I need you.’

‘Sure. I will be,’ said Miller.

Dixon reached for the sports bag slotted tightly behind the driver’s seat and pulled it on to his knees. He unzipped it and dropped his latest collection into it. He had a wicked grin on his face as he thought about the word ‘collection’. It had a kind of religious tinge to it, sounded like something done at church on Sundays. There was actually nothing religious about the?500-roll of banknotes he dropped into the bag, each one of which he knew would have traces of cocaine on it.

He totted up the total in his notebook. That made just short of five grand he had collected that morning. Dixon’s heart began to beat a little faster at the thought of the amount of money he would have in his possession at the end of the day. The palms of his hands began to sweat. By 5 p.m. there would be about twelve thousand stuffed in the sports bag. He shook his head to rid his mind of impure thoughts — twelve Gs was not enough to go out on a limb for — and replaced the bag behind the driver’s seat, and in so doing his eyes caught those of Miller.

Miller smiled. It was as though he had been reading Dixon’s mind.

Dixon coughed and pulled himself together, swallowing nervously. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Miller.

As the car moved away from the roadside, Dixon leaned forwards and, for luck, touched the barrel of the sawn-off shotgun which was tucked out of sight underneath his seat.

Ray Cragg was sitting next to JJ on the settee with an arm around his shoulders, talking in little more than a whisper, almost reassuringly.

‘It’s always best to tell the truth, JJ, because you always get caught out when you lie, don’t you?’ Ray cooed.

JJ nodded his head painfully, the pounding, searing pain from Ray’s open-handed blow across the side of his face was making each movement horrendous.

‘So, c’mon, pal.’ Ray hugged him like a brother. ‘Spill the beans. We can only move forwards when we know where we’re up to, can’t we?’

‘Yeah,’ breathed JJ. He looked at Carrie, who was still curled up in a ball on the living-room floor, whimpering.

Ray glanced at her, too. ‘I know you’re concerned about her, but I promise that if you tell me the truth and we work this mess out, I’ll take her to casualty myself. Okay?’

‘Right, right,’ said JJ, wondering if Ray would be good enough to do the same for him because he was certain his eardrum had exploded with the impact of Ray’s blow.

‘So, come on, pal,’ Ray said again.

‘Yeah, I have been skimming a bit, Ray. But not two grand, nowhere fuckin’ near two grand.’

‘Well,’ said Ray, ‘that’s a start. How much would you say you’ve stolen from me, then?’

‘I’m looking for Jack Burrows,’ Henry said to the very pretty woman who answered the door.

‘That’ll be me,’ she said with a slightly crooked smile. ‘Jacqueline Burrows, but everybody calls me Jack, even me.’

A fleeting thought crashed through Henry’s mind — Am I destined to meet women with men’s names? — as he remembered Danielle Furness, known as Danny, the woman he had once loved and who was now dead, murdered by the most dangerous man Henry had ever met. He cleared his mind of the last image he had of her, lying dead in an hotel room in Tenerife, her head twisted at a gruesome angle because of her broken neck. ‘Do you own some flats in Cheltenham Road, Blackpool?’

She nodded. ‘And Dixon Road, Coronation Street, Hornby Road, and others.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Henry thoughtfully. He kicked himself for expecting to have to deal with some seedy landlord. This one looked far from seedy dressed in a jogging top and a pair of black lycra shorts which looked as though they had been pasted on to her slim thighs, her blonde hair tied back in a pony tail, exposing an area of seriously touchable neck. She was sweating lightly and Henry could just smell her fragrance. . but then again, he warned himself, she might be just as seedy and deceitful as all the rest. Because she did not reek of cigar smoke and whisky, and looked terrific, did not mean she was any different from the others. Henry knew his weakness for a pretty face, but was determined not to let it cloud his judgement. ‘I’m DCI Henry Christie and I’m investigating the murder of one of your tenants in those flats about a year ago. . a young girl?’

Jack Burrows’ face fleetingly creased with annoyance. But Henry had noticed it and filed it away for future reference. She recovered her composure quickly and smiled that lop-sided smile, pushed a stray wisp of hair away from her face and looked at him with wide blue eyes. It was a look, Henry guessed, designed to make his stomach go flip-flop. ‘I was interviewed about that ages ago, made a statement and everything. Have you caught the killer yet?’