Nick Oldham - Fighting for the Dead

This was a place Henry knew well, somewhere he had a personal history. A place where, over a dozen years earlier, he’d almost died when he came face to face with a Mafia hitman who’d been after his blood.

He shivered at the memory. Even though it was so long ago it occasionally still came back to haunt him. Not simply because of the personal danger he’d faced, but because of the jeopardy his wife Kate had been put in, through no fault of her own. She too had been lucky to survive.

Mentally shrugging off the cloud, he drew onto the rough stone surface of the large car park adjacent to the yacht basin and parked the nose of the four-wheel-drive facing the water.

He climbed stiffly out and was immediately struck by the biting, unforgiving wind coming in from the estuary. It was tinted, though, with a whiff of smoke and petrol which he could smell clearly even through his facial injury.

He palmed a couple more paracetamols into his mouth, swallowed them using saliva and hoped they would complement the painkillers he’d already taken that night. Last thing he needed was to overdose.

Then he started to walk the hundred or so metres to the point where the yacht basin and the Lancaster Canal joined.

There was a line of emergency vehicles nose-to-tail, crammed onto the canal towpath, together with emergency lighting. Two fire tenders headed the queue, so wide they virtually blocked the path. Two marked police cars were behind, then a plain car and then an ambulance on the grassy area at the end of the car park. Lots of blue lights flashed, lots of people scurried around, and it was apparent that the explosion had brought out most of the local population, eager to see some fun. A police crime-scene tape had been stretched across the path to keep the onlookers back.

A little further on, just out of Henry’s eye-line, thick, heavy smoke plumed upwards into the atmosphere, visible even against the dark night. He assumed this was from the remnants of the barge.

He walked towards the ambulance which had its back doors open, activity going on inside. As he got closer he could see two people, a female paramedic, clad in the usual hospital green overalls, and a casualty: Steve Flynn.

Flynn was leaning back on the bench seat inside the ambulance holding an oxygen mask over his face whilst the paramedic squatted in front of him, gently dabbing the side of his face that Henry could not see with an antiseptic cloth of some sort. Henry recognized the paramedic as one of the two who had been at the drowning scene earlier and he wondered quickly what sort of hours they worked.

‘That’s nice — cool,’ Flynn’s muffled voice said through the mask, commenting on the work being done by the paramedic. He didn’t seem to have noticed Henry yet.

‘You really should let us take you to hospital… you need looking after,’ the lady paramedic said. The last four words were spoken with more than an undercurrent of suggestiveness and, maybe, Henry thought sourly, a little unprofessional.

‘You’re doing a great job as it is,’ Flynn said. ‘Lovely touch.’

‘Thanks,’ she gasped and dropped her face so she had to angle it at Flynn with a look of lust tempered with shyness.

Henry, trying not to vomit, cleared his throat.

The paramedic’s head turned quickly, guiltily.

Flynn turned less quickly and Henry realized he’d known he was there all along and was just winding Henry up by flirting with the lady medic. Henry saw the injuries to Flynn’s face and saw they looked similar to his own, though clearly not as serious.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

The blast had ripped the canal boat apart. The roof had been blown off, scattering debris across a wide area, and what remained of the boat, basically just the hull, had keeled over and sunk into the canal, which was about six feet deep at this point. It reminded Henry of the German merchant vessels that had been blown up in Bordeaux harbour in a commando raid in World War Two. The boat had slumped over, torn apart by a ferocious blast, and was obviously beyond any sort of repair.

Henry had listened to the early conclusions of the chief fire officer at the scene, which supported Flynn’s version of events, at least as to the cause of the explosion, if not what happened beforehand.

A combination of accelerant, gas from the bottle underneath the sink and deliberate ignition equalled big BOOM.

And if Flynn’s story was true, he was lucky to have escaped with his life. If he hadn’t regained consciousness in time, he’d have been vaporized.

As Henry surveyed the mess, Barlow came towards him.

‘Boss, I take it you’ve spoken to Mr Flynn?’

‘At the ambulance. You think he’s telling the truth?’

‘Not sure. He wouldn’t tell me much, wanted to speak to you. What did he say?’

Henry pulled a face. ‘Not much, either,’ he replied, uncertain as to why he wanted to keep Flynn’s story under wraps for the time being. Detective habit, possibly. The old-fashioned state of mind, knowledge and power, coupled with the mental jigsaw of bits of evidence and information slowly coming together, gradually forming a picture.

‘Surely he must’ve said something?’ Barlow insisted.

‘Well, yeah, something… just remembers waking up and finding the boat on fire, so he squeezed out of a window. It was a bit jumbled, though. He must’ve cracked his head.’

‘You think it’s something to do with Jennifer Sunderland? It sounds like it was started deliberately.’

Henry shook his head. ‘Nah — doubt it. Why should it be?’

Barlow gave a little shrug and said, ‘Dunno, just a thought. What then?’

‘Don’t know,’ Henry said.

The paramedics could not persuade Flynn to let them take him to hospital, so when another emergency call came up, they had to leave quickly.

Henry witnessed the parting of Flynn and the lady paramedic, heart-rending to nauseating. She was clearly smitten by Flynn, even though he estimated Flynn was at least double her age.

The refusal to go to hospital meant Flynn was left abandoned next to the canal, shivering, with an ambulance blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and no home to go to.

Henry felt no sympathy for him, even if his predicament was not of his own doing.

‘What’s your plan?’

Flynn shook his head. ‘I’ll crash down in the shop.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the chandlery.

‘When are you going to tell them about the boat?’ Henry asked, referring to the friends he had come to help.

‘On top of their already massive problems…’ Flynn’s voice faded out and he sighed, deflated. ‘Maybe in the morning… Diane’s spending the night at the hospital.’

Henry regarded him. Already he had briefly considered offering him a room for the night at the Tawny Owl, knowing that there were two unoccupied ones, but he’d dismissed that idea, wanting to keep his distance from Flynn, and also keep him away from Alison. But he could already hear Alison’s voice ringing in his ears if she ever learned that he had left Flynn out in the cold.

With a reluctant change of mind, Henry said, almost under his breath so Flynn might not hear, ‘You’re welcome to stay at the Owl tonight.’ His voice sounded like someone else was saying the words. Henry, doing something nice for Flynn. It was like he’d been taken over by some benign spirit.

Trouble was, as much as it irked him, he knew it was the right thing to do. Even so, it made him shiver with repulsion.

Flynn gave him an incredulous look. ‘Seriously?’

Henry nodded. ‘You want to follow me back in Diane’s car?’

‘Breakfast, too? Full English?’

‘Don’t push it,’ Henry growled.

‘I just need to nip into the shop, though — and liberate some more clothes.’