Nick Oldham - Backlash

‘No, no, nothing like that.’

‘Thank goodness for that.’

‘Could you tell me what exactly you said to her?’

The captain accompanied Taylor to the door of the flat and let him out.

‘You’ve been very, very helpful, sir.’

‘I do hope she is all right.’ The captain was very concerned.

‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ Taylor reassured him. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you.’

‘Not a problem, not a problem.’

‘Good night.’

The captain closed his flat door. Taylor walked down the dark hallway to the front door of the building.

David Gill emerged from the shadows.

He had been curious as to how Roscoe had found him. He had not asked her yet, had not had the time for a long, loving chat. That would come. But now he knew. A nosy neighbour. A man with nothing better to do with his life except sit by a window, watching, making notes on other people’s comings and goings. Prying into the private lives of others. The sad fucking bastard. Gill approached the front door of the captain’s flat and tapped on it. As expected, he opened up immediately.

‘Sorry about this,’ Gill said. His left hand shot out and grabbed the captain by the throat. He barged in, forcing the old man down the short hallway, kicking the flat door closed behind him.

The knife in his right hand curved upwards, plunging deep into the captain’s chest, under the ribcage and up into the old man’s already weak heart. He drove the blade in harder, hard, hard, twisted, pushed more, twisted, withdrew and let the captain fall. He was already dead. The frail body crimped to the floor.

Even though Gill knew he was dead, this did not prevent him kneeling down next to him and repeatedly stabbing and slashing the body in a frenzy of anger.

‘No one,’ slash, stab, ‘no one — tells on me,’ stab, ‘no one gets away with it you silly — fucking — idiot — mad, old cunt!’ Stab, stab, stab. ‘Now you try to finger me.’

Jane Roscoe thought she was going to suffocate. Gill had wrapped the parcel tape tightly around her head and face in his anger at her screaming. It had gone round and round, covering her nose and mouth, leaving the smallest of slits through which she could breathe.

She lay there. In his lair. That was how she had come to know it. What, in her mind, she called this living tomb in which he kept her. A lair.

She lay there, trying to control her breathing, to keep her heart rate down, to stay in control. She knew that inner control was the only way in which this ordeal could be survived. She had to control herself and then she had to control him, even if it meant subjugating herself to his will. If he wanted to rape her, fine, let him do it. Anything to survive. Unfortunately she didn’t think he wanted sexual domination.

Her mind wandered uncontrollably. She thought of her husband and her failing marriage and wanted to cry. She had been so unfair to the man. Was there anything that could be salvaged? Lying in this cold place she realised she’d had plenty of opportunity to put things right, to make an effort, and had never done a thing. She had allowed them to drift apart. He had a responsibility too, but the biggest part of the blame was on her shoulders. Why had she let it go? Maybe love had fizzled out. Passion certainly had. No fire any more, but wasn’t that the way of marriage?

And Henry Christie? What of him? The first man in years who had got under her skin. One whom she had wanted to hate but who, instead, had made her feel something she hadn’t felt for years. The only man who could send a shiver down to her sex. . she had to force herself to stop thinking like this and start thinking about how to get out of here alive. Then you can start making life choices.

She listened to her surroundings for some clue. Nothing seemed to make sense. Was it day or night? If she could only remember what had happened, but all she could bring to mind was knocking on David Gill’s door, it being opened by a guy in a motorcycle helmet then — zap! — a huge jolt of something against her chest, the blackness of unconsciousness then awakening here, wherever here was.

Footsteps. A door opened.

He was back. Gill had returned to his lair.

The detective inspector from Cheshire was better than his word. A police motorcyclist dropped a thick file off at the front office at Blackpool police station with Henry Christie’s name on it at 7 a.m. It was in Henry’s hands five minutes later because, try as he might, he hadn’t been able to sleep. He had dropped off for about an hour at 5 a.m., but awoken with a start at 6.15 when one of Fiona’s patients started howling down below.

The police station was hectic. Seven was the turn-around time for officers working on the conference.

Henry collected the package from the front desk and gravitated to Jane Roscoe’s office which, not long ago, had been his own. Not much had changed in it. His own personal belongings and mementoes had been replaced by Roscoe’s. Everything else was as it had been. He eased himself behind the familiar desk — under which he had found Jane Roscoe searching the other night with her bottom swaying provocatively in the air, trying to reach a piece of paper. Briefly, the memory made him smile.

He ripped open the package from Cheshire, while thinking that the DI down there must have been another early riser. He shuffled the contents out.

‘Graveson: Lucinda and Thomas. Murder’ the file was headed.

Inside were several bound books of crime-scene photographs which Henry flicked through, then put to one side. He picked up the written materials and started to scan them. He had read many murder files. On some murders he had worked specifically in the capacity of statement reader, dedicated solely to reading and rereading statements for clues, connections, leads and discrepancies. He could read a murder file quickly and be certain at the end of it he knew as much about it as anybody.

There were many statements to go through here.

With a note pad by his side, pencil in hand, he started.

Three-quarters of an hour later he picked up the crime-scene photos again. Shots of the Graveson house in Wilmslow, Cheshire, a very different part of the world than South Shore, Blackpool. This time he looked closely at every picture. When he had finished he knew he had something, but did not know what. It was something from the photos. Something that did not quite gel properly.

At 8 a.m. he did not have the answer. He got on the phone to Cheshire and spoke to the DI again.

As soon as Donaldson and Makin arrived, Henry hustled them down to the garage without any explanation and hurried them into a plain, traffic enforcement car. It was a Vauxhall Omega, the fastest and best car he could blag at short notice with the promise to the traffic sergeant that, honestly, he would bring it back in one piece.

He almost had his first accident speeding out of the garage doors, but managed to avoid the bread delivery van.

‘Oops,’ he said, giving the white-faced van driver an apologetic wave.

‘Oops, my ass,’ Donaldson growled, taking his hands slowly away from his face. ‘Is it safe to look now, you reckless son of a bitch?’

‘Sorry,’ Henry said, jamming the brakes on at the first junction, then accelerating left to put the car into a slot in the early morning traffic which did not look wide enough for a mini. ‘Here, have a look at this.’ He picked up the envelope from his lap and tossed it across to Donaldson. ‘The murder of Louise Graveson and her husband.’

Donaldson picked it out of the footwell and extracted the contents. As he read each statement he passed it over his shoulder to Makin in the back seat.

Henry pushed the car hard and unlike most police cars it revelled in it. He enjoyed the experience, whizzing past every other car on the motorway and not caring whether or not he was caught on a speed camera. This was a business trip. The firm would have to write off any fixed penalties that came his way. He motored along the M55, then south on the M6, through Lancashire and down into Cheshire.