Nick Oldham - Bad Tidings

Henry was struggling.

‘I know she’s my mum,’ Lisa whined, ‘but things aren’t going well with Rik. .’

‘You’re going to get freakin’ married, aren’t you?’ Henry exploded.

‘And that’s the problem. We both have cold feet. . Well,’ she said awkwardly, ‘I do.’

‘Just keep living together, then,’ Henry suggested wearily.

Lisa shrugged. ‘I might’ve. . kinda, er. . been seeing someone else. .’ The words became almost inaudible.

Instead of anger or sympathy, Henry said pragmatically, ‘Well if you split with him, then you’ll have more time for Mum, won’t you?’

‘You’re all heart.’

Henry shrugged. Struggling.

‘And I’m thinking of moving back to London, maybe.’

‘Shit,’ Henry said, sinking in an emotional mire. ‘How imminent is all this?’

Lisa shrugged this time.

‘Are you splitting or not?’

‘I think so. . things’re a bit fraught.’ There was real pain behind her eyes, and Henry felt sad for her and Rik. He thought they had confounded everyone and found some peace and happiness.

‘You can crash at my house whenever you need to,’ Henry offered. ‘But,’ he said, raising a finger, ‘no shagging there, OK? And you start visiting Mum more. For some reason I can’t fathom, she still quite likes you.’

The months following that conversation had been hard and tiring. Lisa did split with Rik after a few unpleasant weeks and bedded down occasionally at Henry’s house in Blackpool, the one he and his late wife, Kate, had shared for much of their married life. Henry spent too much time at work, and had also gone abroad to Cyprus to follow up connections uncovered whilst looking into Joe Speakman. He visited his mother’s flat as often as possible and enjoyed as much time with Alison as he could, but with her running and living at the Tawny Owl in Kendleton, their moments together were limited and unsatisfactory.

And no matter how he tried, he could not convince his mother to move to a proper care home. It was easier getting a confession from a murderer.

Lisa’s visits started strongly, then dwindled as her private life became increasingly messy (Henry keeping well out of it) and her relationship with Rik swung on and off. It was fortunate that she and Leanne had been there when Mother collapsed after suffering shortness of breath, followed by a twinge in the chest that suddenly felt like a sabre had been stabbed through her left shoulder joint. She fell at Lisa’s feet.

Twenty minutes later she was in A amp;E. An hour after that Henry was on the scene, consoling Lisa and Leanne and watching as his mum was transferred up to the cardiac unit.

The second big scare. The first time she’d even denied that she’d had a heart attack and had recovered sufficiently to be allowed home. She had been lucky that time. This time, Henry thought, might be different.

Henry was eventually left alone with his mother, who was under sedation and very much out of it. He sat by her bed for a long time, clasping a thin bony hand in his, looking at her, pain etched across his face.

Two murders — and this, he thought creakily, feeling his mind splitting, wondering if he could handle it all, unsure if he had the mental resilience to do so.

He stood up and stretched, then walked out into the corridor, shuffling along, his mind swirling like thick pea soup. He was heading for the coffee machine when he walked past an office where a young nurse was working hard at a desk, filling in paperwork. Henry had zoomed in on a filter coffee machine on a shelf behind her.

He knocked, and the nurse glanced up with an instant beaming smile that made him feel much better instantly.

‘Can I help?’

Henry introduced himself and they chatted for a few moments about his mother, then he broached the subject timidly, scratching his head like Stan Laurel: ‘Is that coffee machine broken?’

The nurse glanced over her shoulder, then back at Henry, with a knowing look. ‘No, just not had time to fire it up today.’

‘If I get the water. .’ He gave her one of his well-used, probably overused, lopsided, boyish grins (designed, he believed, to melt any woman’s heart). ‘Do you have any coffee for it. .? I’ll gladly pay.’

It worked. A deal was struck and Henry walked down the corridor with the jug to fill it up in the restroom.

On his way back he spotted a small room. He put his nose up to the window in the door and peered through, seeing a space about the size of a police cell with a desk and a couple of chairs in it, with stacks and stacks of files backed high against the walls and no sign of occupancy. There was no computer on the desk, nothing to suggest the room had been used recently.

Back in the nurse’s office, filling the coffee machine with water from the jug, then heaping coffee into the filter section, Henry broached the next subject. The office down the corridor.

Won over again by his charm, the nurse rooted in a drawer and produced a key, saying, ‘I’m sure no one’ll mind.’

With his mother fast asleep and snoring like a chainsaw, Henry went back to his car and recovered the two murder files which he had efficiently scooped up as he’d raced out of his office. Ten minutes after that, in the small office he had commandeered, he opened the first file, the title of which read: MURDER: CHRISTINE BLACKSHAW.

Christmas Eve two years earlier, and a woman in her mid-forties had been staggering through the streets of Blackburn, very much the worse for wear from drink. She was twice married, twice divorced — but had reverted to using her maiden name — and had two children both now in their twenties, each by a different father. Now single, she lived alone in a council flat in the Eanam district of town. She had a job at ASDA and worked long hours to keep her head above water and to pay for an annual two-week burnout in Benidorm. She liked drink and men, but could not hold either.

She had spent the evening with some friends, getting drunk, and just before midnight they had gone their separate ways.

Christine had been making her way to a pub on Darwen Street to meet up with her latest man friend, a relationship that like most of her others was volatile and violent. That said, they had planned to get a Chinese takeaway, hop into a cab back to her flat, eat, watch the box, hopefully not argue, then crash out.

She never made it to the pub.

Her body was discovered a week later stuffed into a wheelie bin behind a derelict shop in the town centre, where it had also been set on fire.

Henry winced a little as he skim-read the pathologist’s report. It painted a gruesome picture of the suffering that Christine must have endured before finally being put to death with two gunshot wounds to the head. In short, she had been tortured repeatedly, although there was no sign of sexual assault.

Her body had only been partially burned, almost as though her killer was simply making a statement. She had been tipped and folded into the wheelie bin, then the bin had been stuffed with kindling and balled-up pieces of newspaper and an accelerant had been poured over her and a match tossed in. All this had happened, the pathologist said, after death.

It had only been because her body had been stuffed into the bin that enough of it was preserved to allow the pathologist to make his deductions.

The subsequent murder investigation, led by Joe Speakman, was thorough, as far as Henry could see. Everything had been done. Boyfriends, ex-husbands, one-night stands and family were pulled in and sweated. Leads were followed up painstakingly and everything was done scientifically and forensically. Crimewatch even did a short item on it which brought forth a glut of nothing leads.

Six months down the line, the investigation began to peter out. The murder squad was reduced, and even though an investigation room was kept going, Speakman was floundering.