Nick Oldham - Backlash

It seemed logical, therefore, to take the dead guy’s fingerprints and get the on-call expert to do some cross-checking. The first thing Henry wanted to discover was if the fingerprint found at the scene of the murder in Cheshire belonged to the dead man. If it did match, then it raised a whole bunch of questions. If it didn’t, then it raised a whole bunch more questions.

Henry decided to take it one step at a time. Make no assumptions, jump to no conclusions, just deal with facts.

‘Hair drier?’ a uniformed constable called out.

‘Over hair.’ The SOCO laughed.

The constable, who had scrounged the drier from a woman living nearby, handed it over. She would never have offered it had she known it was going to be used to defrost a dead man’s fingers.

Henry offered the fingerprint expert a seat in Roscoe’s office. The guy was called Lane and he was one of the constabulary’s top experts, twenty-two years of cross-matching loops and whorls and providing the evidence that had sent thousands of baddies to prison.

‘Tell me,’ Henry prompted.

On Lane’s lap were two sets of prints. One from the dead man in the freezer, one from the man arrested six months earlier, giving the name of David Gill.

‘They don’t match,’ he said flatly.

‘Is that your final answer, or do you want to phone a friend?’ Henry said.

‘The prints of the dead man in the freezer are not the same as the prints taken from the man who was arrested six months ago for a public-order offence. However, the partial print recovered from the scene at Cheshire matches the forefinger of the prisoner who gave his name as David Gill.’

‘So if the dead guy in the freezer really is David Gill, then who the hell do the prints belong to which were taken by PC Taylor?’ Henry pointed to the offending set. ‘Because they are the prints of a serial killer who, it would seem, has taken on David Gill’s identity after killing him — or something,’ he finished unsurely.

Henry was suddenly depressed. He felt nowhere further forward and believed that every minute now was wasted time and made it even more unlikely that Jane Roscoe would be found alive, particularly if the abductor knew that the police had found Gill’s and Mark Evans’ bodies.

Roscoe was dead. Henry was certain of it. But why wasn’t she in the freezer too?

Lane, the fingerprint officer, left.

‘It’s doing my head in, this,’ Henry said when he was joined by Donaldson and Makin. ‘How is it going with Franklands?’

‘Better than good. I’m going to arrange protected status for him. He was there when the two guys kicked Jack to death, but maintains he took no part in it, and I believe him. And he planted the bomb in the club. Both things were done on Vince Bellamy’s instructions. So Franklands is going to be a witness for us and one way or another, the demise of Hellfire Dawn is on the cards.’

‘Excellent.’

‘He also told me something else, which is very very interesting.’ Makin went on to tell this to Henry. It was fascinating stuff, but did not help Henry with his task.

When she had finished Henry asked her how she intended to take it forward and she said she had an idea, but added nothing more.

Which left Henry holding two sets of fingerprints which did not match and a puzzle that was beginning to stress him out.

He watched with distress as the clock ticked up to midnight.

There could be no post-mortems carried out until both bodies had defrosted sufficiently for the pathologist to stick his knife in. Mark Evans’ body was less frozen and Dr Baines reckoned he would be ready to start on it in about eight hours; David Gill, literally a solid block of ice, could take up to thirty-six hours before he had thawed enough to be autopsied. Which meant nothing could move forward on the pathology front other than some general observations by the pathologist which boiled down to: it looks like their throats have been cut.

Gill’s flat and garage were being top-to-bottomed by all manner of experts, forensic, scientific and search. Henry had decided that this might as well happen. He had thought about withdrawing everybody and mounting an observation on the place on the off-chance that Gill — or whoever the hell it was — would turn up and the police could nab him. He had decided against that because there had been so much police activity anyway that there was a good possibility that whoever was using Gill’s ID and home had already been alerted and would not be coming back.

It was half-past midnight. Henry was alone in Roscoe’s office, thinking about her.

The office door opened, FB came in. He drew up one of the chairs and plonked himself heavily down on it, throwing his heels up onto the edge of the desk.

‘Y’know what’s really shitty?’ he asked.

Henry said no.

‘Special Branch have just told me that the Irish cops have uncovered a plot to assassinate the prime minister at the conference this week.’ FB laughed, cackled really, as though he was on the verge of going under. Henry had never seen him like this. Normally supremely confident and brash, the stress of the week, the lack of sleep, the pressure of ambition were pulling him down. ‘And you know what? There’s absolutely fuck-all I can do about it, and what’s more I don’t care. I’ve had one officer seriously injured this week who is still on life support, another has turned up dead in a fridge and a third is missing, probably dead too, and I’ve just spent two hours with Mark Evans’ widow — ’ he shook his head. ‘She’s devastated.’ His head continued to shake. ‘And on the back of that the government is in town demanding to be protected. Every available cop I’ve got is here, looking after the namby-pamby idiots, and I can’t even pull a full murder squad together to dedicate to the death of one of my officers and the possible death of another. It’s absolute shite. I need a drink.’

Henry remained silent, watching FB open up. It was an amazing sight.

‘It’s all power games to them, one big fucking ego trip — then they’ll be gone on Friday afternoon and won’t even give us a second thought as we clean up all the dross left behind them.’

‘I thought you liked politicians.’

FB gave Henry a hard stare. ‘I was angling for a job, I admit it. Still am. Doesn’t mean to say I like ’em.’

‘We need more people on Jane Roscoe,’ Henry said. ‘Sooner rather than later. We can’t afford to wait till weekend. The trail will be well cold by then.’

FB sighed. ‘If I could give you more, I’d give you more, but I can’t and I don’t feel good about it because, and you probably won’t believe this, I do care. I even care about you, which is why I pulled you off CID. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly, Henry. I thought I was acting in your best interests.’

Henry shuffled the papers in front of him and sniffed. ‘Yeah, well, it would have been nice to be consulted about that. Anyway, that’s by the by now. Catching the bastard who killed Mark is all I want to think about now, that and finding Jane dead or alive. I hope you won’t take me off this.’

FB shook his head. ‘I won’t.’

The man who had used the name and taken the identity of David Gill was sitting and thinking about the events of the last few hours.

The police had finally rumbled his address. Mentally he worked through the flat inch by inch, visualising what was there, what he had left behind, what might be used to incriminate him or reveal his true identity. He was pretty certain there was nothing.

The relationship with Gill had been good while it lasted. Gill had been just the sort of low-life thicko he had been searching for. A man of low intelligence, who had few friends, and lived alone with no family who gave a shit about him. A bit of a druggie, a bit of a tealeaf, living for the most part on state handouts in a flat with no neighbours, whose only interest in life was his clapped-out motorbike. He had been perfect. The real David Gill had been the fourth such person he had used over the years to provide a cover for his murderous activities.