Nick Oldham - Backlash

‘You can say that again,’ Franklands came back, ‘and the rest.’

‘Why, what else have you done?’ Standring could not resist posing the question, but he did it almost with feigned disinterest.

Franklands had been sitting on the edge of the cell bed. He stood up abruptly, knowing he had already said too much, but now that he had started to blab, he could not stop himself. It made him feel light headed, light chested and the feeling was just so fantastic.

‘What else?’ he said. ‘I planted that bomb.’

Shit, thought Standring.

‘I think I want to talk to the detectives now — and I want a solicitor.’ His face cracked. He started to cry.

It was all Henry Christie could do to stop himself leaping up and down, punching the air, planting kisses on everybody in sight.

He had nailed the bastard. Christ, he had done it — or at least a partial fingerprint found at the scene of a murder which should not have been there had done it. And it belonged to one of the inhabitants of Blackpool. It was not enough to be used in a court of law, but it was enough to go and effect an arrest.

David Brian Gill. Born 21/4/58 in Blackpool. The man had come to the attention of the police only once before at the beginning of the year when he had been arrested and cautioned for a minor public-order offence committed outside a pub in the resort. Despite the fact that there had been no prosecution because it was a first offence and not particularly serious, Gill’s fingerprints had been taken as a matter of course and then gone into the system, together with descriptive forms.

That was how he had been caught, from the only set of fingerprints taken.

Henry had a copy of the custody record in front of him relating to the time Gill had been locked up. There was a copy of the caution form with it. The descriptive forms which had been submitted to HQ were being searched for. With some pleasure Henry saw that the custody officer on the night in question was the inscrutable Dermot Byrne. PC John Taylor had been the arresting officer. Members of his new shift who had done a good job several months before, who had made sure everything was done and dusted for a minor offence, had played some part, subsequently, in the identification of a serial murderer. So simple. Yet it was the simple things that caught people.

Henry ran a hand over his face.

Outside on the streets Henry knew that the Hitler-led right-wing demonstration had come to nothing and everyone had dispersed. The conference had ended for the day, the PM having made his law and order speech to great acclaim and the home secretary his speech on immigration.

Henry thought about David Gill. Where the hell did he fit into this picture? Had he abducted Jane Roscoe and Mark Evans? Henry struggled to get his head round it all. Had they stumbled onto him from evidence provided by this ‘military type’ and therefore been unprepared for an encounter with a seriously dangerous man?

Gill’s address was not far away from Joey Costain’s. Roscoe and Evans could easily have walked to it, leaving their cars parked near to Costain’s flat.

Henry was eager to get going, to pull the guy in, but he wanted to do it properly and if possible involve Byrne and Taylor. It would be a nice thank-you for having done a run-of-the-mill job so well and could go some way to reviving Taylor’s spirits following his horrendous night when he’d let Geri Peters get murdered and been there when Joey’s body had been found. Poor lamb. Henry decided to wait until they came on duty at six.

Henry wanted to do it right. This included having a fingerprint expert on call as well as scientific teams on standby.

There was also the other issue of Franklands. He was Henry’s prisoner and he had a responsibility to deal with him as expeditiously as possible. If Henry went out on what could be a completely unrelated matter while his murder suspect lounged in a cell, very serious questions would be asked when the case got to court. Henry had an idea how this could be addressed.

He was sitting in Roscoe’s office again.

‘Well?’

Henry looked up sharply at the figure by the door. FB.

‘I hear things are moving.’

‘Yeah — but whether we’ll find Jane or Mark is something else.’

FB looked seriously exhausted. ‘Do your best, Henry,’ he said without energy. ‘Find them, please.’

‘I will.’

FB disappeared down the corridor.

Henry immediately went back to the papers on his desk. These now included the responses from all the police forces who had had similar murders to Joey Costain’s on their patches: Surrey, the Metropolitan and the West Midlands. He had not had the time to look at these yet and he thought this might be an opportunity to do it now. He took each one and read them carefully.

At first he saw nothing to link the crimes beyond the obvious similarity of the way in which the victims had been murdered. Beyond that there seemed to be no connection, but Henry instinctively believed there must be something. He wrote out the names of the victims on a blank piece of A4, listing them down the left side of the paper. Two victims were black. Their occupations did not seem to have any similarity. It was frustrating. Henry read the files again, concentrating on the background and interests of the victims.

Twenty minutes of hard reading and analysis gave him the answer.

Gill’s flat was on a small, dilapidated council estate where the number of vacant and derelict properties outnumbered the ones which were inhabited. It was in a small block of flats about six storeys high at one end of the estate with a complex of garages at the back. The flat was on a corner, reached by a concrete stairwell leading onto a walkway which ran along the front of the flats, past the front doors. A quick enquiry with the council had revealed Gill’s name on the rent book and that the rent was paid up to date, something which surprised Henry. Council records also showed that Gill rented one of the garages at the back.

Henry and Karl Donaldson sat in a beat-up unmarked Astra about a quarter of a mile away awaiting the arrival of backup before they hit the flat.

‘If we get this guy,’ said Donaldson, who was there only as an observer, ‘then tomorrow I’d like to try and catch my bomb-maker, pretty please. My president said I should.’

‘You and your president.’ Henry laughed. ‘But of course we can. Serial killer today, serial bomber tomorrow. Piece of piss.’

‘Ahh, such a quaint term — “piece of piss”,’ Donaldson remarked. ‘Called your ex-wife, yet?’ he asked, filling a gap.

‘Nope.’

‘Going to?’

‘Yep.’ Henry nodded. He checked his watch. ‘I wonder how Andrea’s getting on with Franklands.’ She had jumped at the opportunity to interview someone who might have been present at the murder of one of her officers; it gave Henry the space he wanted to go for Gill and hopefully get a lead on Evans and Roscoe.

‘They’re here,’ Henry said, glancing into the rear-view mirror. Dermot Byrne and John Taylor pulled in behind them in a plain car, civvy jackets over their uniforms. He gave a wave over his shoulder and moved off slowly. There was going to be nothing loud and flashy here. No blue lights, two-tones or screeching tyres. Just a slow approach, park quietly and trot slowly to the front door of the flat (there was no back door or exit, other than windows) then bust the door down, pile in and disable the suspect.

‘I don’t want you to get involved, Karl,’ he reiterated to Donaldson firmly. ‘You’re just here to watch the finest of the British police in action, OK?’

‘Gotcha.’ Donaldson smiled grimly. He picked up the sledgehammer which was wedged between his knees in the footwell. Henry laughed.