Nick Oldham - Fighting for the Dead

‘Lucky you… how are you feeling?’

‘Grog and cross,’ Henry muttered. ‘What can I do you for?’

‘Well, I haven’t done any post-mortems yet, but I have found something that might be of interest to you.’

‘Are you still at the mortuary?’ Henry asked incredulously, his eye glancing towards the fireplace clock.

‘Death never sleeps,’ Baines said mysteriously. ‘Yes, I am still here, surrounded by the dead — and from the looks of the mortuary assistants, the undead too. But needs must.’

‘What have you found?’

‘As you know, I’m a tooth man. I look at dead people’s teeth for various reasons, mainly selfish.’

‘Hence the OBE.’

‘And maybe a knighthood, if rumour is to be believed.’

‘Don’t hold your breath.’

‘OK — banter over. These days I tend to head straight for the mouth first. Which is why I had a peer into the mouth of the woman who was pulled from the river, who has now been identified, I believe. Post-mortem now scheduled for ten-thirty tomorrow, by the way.’

‘Great.’

‘She’d had some bridge work done, some fillings.’

‘Not unusual.’

‘Not in itself, but what I consider to be unusual is that there are now two dead bodies in this mortuary who have had work carried out by the same dentist.’

Henry waited.

‘The work done in the mouth of… ahh… Mrs Sunderland was done by the same dentist as the work carried out in the mouth of the unidentified girl, the murder victim we looked at earlier. Now what do you think about that?’

Flynn was woken by a combination of two things — smell and heat.

The smell was that of petrol.

The heat was from the fact that the petrol had been set alight and flames were whooshing up, along and around the interior of the canal boat.

Flynn was face down, cheek pressed into the wooden floor.

The smell was horrendous, invading his nostrils.

He moved his head, opened his eyes and looked down the length of the boat, burning with intense heat, bright flames crackling and heading quickly in his direction.

He attempted to raise himself, but slid back down on weak, rubbery arms that would not hold his weight.

‘Bastards,’ he groaned.

They’d set the boat alight with him still in it, unconscious.

Flynn pushed himself up again, head swooning, disorientated slightly, but knowing he had to crawl backwards to the door.

Then his brain cells started working again and he realized that he hadn’t been left in the position where he’d been bashed unconscious. The men had dragged him through the galley area, along the floor, through the living room, the full length of the boat and into the bedroom where he’d been dumped. Then they’d doused the boat in petrol and lit it.

Leaving him trapped by the flames.

To get out of the door would mean running through a tunnel of fire, thirty feet long, which was now fearsomely hot and would roast him instantly.

Flynn rose to his knees and peered through the flames at the door beyond, the one which had been kicked off its hinges by the men, and had been loosely pulled back into place when they left.

He felt heat on his face, scrambled backwards against the bed. He kicked the bedroom door closed, and smoke hissed through the gap underneath it.

Now the situation had slightly changed.

Instead of being burned to a crisp, he was probably going to die in the way most people do when trapped by fire — by inhaling noxious smoke. Both were gruesome, terrible deaths.

The bedroom door, thin and not very substantial, even started to glow.

Flynn scrambled across the bed, which almost filled the small room. He ripped the flimsy curtains away from the window, unlatched and opened it and started to squeeze himself out like toothpaste in a tube. It was a very small window. But in his haste to escape the flames he’d forgotten the geography of the boat. It was only when he was halfway out of the window did he realize he should have crawled out of the one on the other side, which would have given him the chance to drop onto the canal bank.

Instead, as he slithered out he dropped straight into the ice-cold muddy waters of the Lancaster Canal just as the flames in the galley burned through the rubberized taps that connected the gas cylinder to the cooker and the boat exploded.

Henry was about to pour his third generous measure of Jack Daniel’s when the phone rang. He picked it up, instinctively checking the time as he did — that ingrained reflex hammered into cops from day one: ‘ Time, time, time. ’ It was one of those simple but fundamental things that can always be challenged. If you got the time wrong, what else did you get wrong? A good defence lawyer could easily slide his stiletto into that crack and prise open what should have been a watertight case.

He saw it was 11.12 p.m. Mentally noted it.

He recognized the voice of DI Barlow at the other end and exclaimed, ‘Why are you calling me?’ He didn’t mean it negatively, just that he expected Barlow to be home by now, off duty.

‘You know how it is,’ he said. Henry knew. Detectives worked ridiculous hours. It was in their nature and, mostly, didn’t even get paid for the overtime worked. They did it because they liked it. ‘I just happened to be earwigging the PR when a job came up. I recognized the name and wasn’t a million miles away, so I checked it out.’

‘Job being?’

‘That guy Flynn, the ex-cop?’

Henry’s heart lurched at the mention of the name. ‘Go on,’ he said guardedly.

‘Says he’s been attacked and that the canal boat he’s been staying on has been blown up.’

‘Are both statements true?’

‘Well, I’m standing here on the canal side. Flynn looks a mess and there’s bugger all left of the boat… and he’s demanding to see you.’

‘Bloody drama queen,’ Henry thought.

Despite Alison’s protestations, he commandeered her four-wheel-drive monstrosity, and with her gentle but insistent haranguing echoing in his ears, he picked his way along the jet-black country lanes, realizing just how hard it was to drive safely with only one good eye and two JDs. Street lighting began to appear spasmodically as he motored into the environs of Lancaster with a sigh of relief, finally dropping into the city from the fells.

He felt haggard and tired and knew he should have left it until morning. He could easily have delegated it to Barlow and the local CID and nothing would have been spoiled or lost. But Henry was insatiably curious, even more so the older he got. He loved to know, see, feel things first hand. This trait actually made him a poor, but popular, manager, always leading from the front, never asking someone to do something he could not tackle himself.

He knew that ‘real’ managers delegated, got others to do the dirty work. They dealt with strategy, not tactics, but Henry loved being hands-on, loved ‘playing out’ as he called it. So far, by dint of a careful balancing act, he’d managed to survive as a detective superintendent, but occasionally he’d had words in his lugholes from his own bosses. Rein back, let others do.

On that night he knew he could have let others ‘do’. Maybe should have done. But couldn’t, especially when Steve Flynn’s name was in the pot. To have him involved twice in one day… a coincidence even Henry found hard to swallow.

Traffic in Lancaster at that time of night was almost non-existent, in complete contrast to its daytime state of total gridlock. Henry made it through easily and less than ten minutes later was at Conder Green, near to where Jennifer Sunderland’s body had been heaved out of the river. Passing the Stork, he then turned right onto the road that led directly to Glasson Dock.