Nick Oldham - Bad Tidings

He didn’t faze Henry, who loved stuff like this. Eyeball to eyeball. Henry and a crim. ‘Can I have a word?’ Henry had said.

‘You’re gate crashing our celebrations. . and to be completely honest with you, no one here’s really that worried about Freddy. . He’s nuts, always has been, always will be, and he’ll turn up somewhere drunk and incapable, hopefully face down in a ditch.’

Tension is a strange thing. Invisible, yet possible to slice with a sharp knife. And tension surrounded the two men. Henry watched Cromer as he spoke, could smell a whiff of alcohol on his breath, but could tell he wasn’t drunk.

Cromer’s forehead furrowed as he realized who Henry was. He jabbed a finger at him. ‘You’re the fucker responsible for getting Freddy sectioned all those years ago. . and on top of that, you got my lad convicted for murder, too.’

Cromer had a good memory. In terms of the former allegation, Henry had actually had very little contact with the Cromer family and the sectioning had been done by social workers and doctors. In fact the only time he’d met any of them back then was when he had visited the aunt’s bedside at Burnley General Hospital to check on her progress and the family had turned up en masse to visit. Young Terry had been part of that entourage, Henry recalled; then he had been a slim, wiry youth with a cop-hate, sneery attitude well embedded in his psyche.

Years later, of course, he had got Terry’s son — Terry junior — convicted of murder. That had entailed a lot of very fractious encounters with Terry senior, but at that time no mention had ever been made of the incident with Freddy many years before.

The murder committed by the junior member of the family had taken place outside a nightclub in Blackpool, when he had stabbed a doorman to death in a frenzied attack witnessed by too many people and had been jumped on and restrained by other bouncers, still with the knife in his hands. A simple enough murder — bang to rights — but one for which the real reason was never properly explained. Henry knew it was about drugs and turf, but neither that nor the murder itself were ever admitted by Terry junior, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that included disturbing CCTV footage of the killing. Not that it mattered, because he was stuffed — and the family did not like it.

Henry’s only role had been to oversee the investigation, just to ensure nothing was overlooked. Everyone else did the work, as it should be.

But as SIO Henry could not avoid coming into contact with the Cromers, and at one point he had a stand-up row with Terry senior that almost came to blows in Blackpool police station foyer. Terry’s threatening rants then became a personal attack on Henry, who he blamed for taking away his only flesh and blood.

The lad was eventually jailed for life, with a judge’s recommendation that he must serve a minimum of fifteen years. The full story behind the killing was never revealed and it was played out as just another night out in Blackpool that had gone sour. As they often did.

And now Henry was back facing Terry senior, a man with pure hate etched across his features. Henry said calmly, ‘I’m simply responding to a missing person report.’

‘Fuck off, Christie,’ Cromer spat. ‘You’re just nosying. Just a friggin’ excuse to get into my house. I know. I’m not thick.’

‘OK, fine, have it your way.’

‘Yeah — my house, my way. You’re trespassing, so you’d better get out now or else I’m gonna smash your head in.’

‘Dad!’

Cromer looked over Henry’s shoulder at the young woman who had let Henry into the house. It jolted Henry to learn she was his daughter, mainly because he didn’t know that Terry had one.

‘Keep out of this,’ Terry warned her.

‘Dad. . Gran’s worried about Freddy. . you should be, too,’ she said forcefully, standing her ground. ‘He is your brother.’ She raised her chin defiantly.

Henry saw Terry’s right fist bunch up like a rock as he looked at Janine and seemed to want to utter something. His fist shook.

Henry said, ‘Look — seriously, we are concerned about him, Mr Cromer. I’m not here nosying, as you put it,’ he fibbed a little. He was being nosy, but he also had a right to be there, because he thought there was the outside chance that Freddy was the target for a serial killer.

Should he tell Terry that? As he looked at the man, Henry thought, No, sod it, you bastard. If he gets dead with feathers stuffed in his mouth, then so be it. He actually said, ‘Are you bothered or not?’

‘Get out,’ Terry stated. ‘Janine — show him past the dogs.’

Henry had been ejected from a lot worse places. He hadn’t expected a warm welcome and they were right to be distrustful of his motives — all crims were — but it was frustrating to be hoofed out without being given the chance to fully explain why he had turned up on the doorstep. He knew he could have forced the issue and made Terry pin his ears back, but that could have been counterproductive.

Their reaction to the possibility that Freddy fitted the profile of a serial killer victim would have either been laugh-out-loud dismissed, or taken so seriously it could have got out of hand. So, Henry had thought as he threw his big Teddy out of his cot, if they wanted to be twats to him, he’d be a twat to them.

The best course of action would be to back out gracefully, then go home and get laid. No contest. Or would have been if it hadn’t been for two things.

The first happened as, led by Janine, he walked down the hallway ahead of Terry Cromer. As he passed the door that had been closed when he’d arrived, the one behind which he’d heard male voices, it opened.

Henry could not help but glance to his right.

And just for the instant that the door was open — and it was opened by a man he instantly recognized — Henry glimpsed three other men in what was a large dining room. It was literally a glimpse. A man at the door, three at a table, and on the table a revolver and a sawn-off shotgun, side by side. The door was immediately slammed shut — because, also in that instant, the man who had opened it knew he had been clocked, and Henry could tell from his instantaneous expression of grief that he had committed a faux pas, or in his language, a fucking cock-up.

Henry walked on, internally jolted, but pretending he’d seen nothing. Janine went out of the front door ahead of him and collared the dogs.

As he stepped out, and Terry slammed the door behind him, the second thing happened.

Janine hissed, just loud enough for him to hear, ‘Park up the road and wait for me.’ Then louder, she said, ‘I’ve got the dogs, you’ll be safe.’

Henry didn’t acknowledge either statement, but set off for the gate and out to his car, dropping into it and heaving a big sigh. Then, as instructed in the stage whisper, he drove a couple of hundred metres up the lane, did a three-point turn and parked, lights out, engine idling.

Inside him, his own pistons were pumping. Guns on the table .

And the dining room door had been opened by none other than Iron-man William Grasson, or Bill the Grass as he was known with irony. Henry knew that in the organizational chart of the Cromer crime business, Grasson fitted in very nicely, thank you, as a violent enforcer, a vicious man once convicted of cutting off another man’s little finger with garden shears when chasing up a hundred-pound drug debt.

Henry had recognized him straight away, because Grasson was a difficult man not to know. Although he was an enforcer, he had himself once come a cropper when he encountered a couple of other rival enforcers chasing his debt. They branded him with the triangular and unmistakable imprint of a steam iron, hence the ‘Iron-man’ epithet. He was scarily recognizable, even to Henry, who had never met the man before.