Nick Oldham - Instinct

By nine he had screamed and bawled at too many people. Not something the ‘old’ Henry had been prone to do, but since Kate died he’d discovered he was far less patient with people who dragged their feet. Anyway, it seemed to work that morning and something resembling a murder inquiry was coming together. Search and forensic teams were at the scene outside the crematorium, six pairs of detectives were responding to various ‘actions’ that had been generated and house-to-house enquiries were underway in the area around the crematorium.

There was a slight problem in that the location of the murder was actually just over the border in another division, but Henry wasn’t too concerned about it. Natalie was a Blackpool girl and it was more than likely her death was associated with people she knew in Blackpool, so Henry had decided to run the job from the resort.

He was desperate to find the last person to see Natalie alive and his early theory was that it was probably somebody in Blackpool. At the back of his mind, he hoped it wasn’t Mark Carter.

Henry sat back and stretched. Everything ached. Joints cracked and creaked. He felt his age and he scoffed contemptuously at whoever said the fifties were the new thirties.

Next task was to get the Murder Incident Room — MIR — up and running with the necessary staff in it and to get the murder book up to date.

The phone on Rik’s desk rang. The DI scooped it up. ‘Right, thanks, yeah… in an interview room… if he tries to leg it, arrest him… uh-huh… murder… be down, say five minutes. Cheers.’ Rik hung up and looked across the desk at Henry. ‘Well would you credit it?’

‘Mark Carter?’ Henry guessed as though he could read Rik’s mind. He hadn’t mentioned the phone call he’d got from Mark.

Rik nodded. ‘You a mind reader or something?’

The boy was almost eighteen now, old enough to be interviewed without any parent or other responsible adult being present. Not that he had a parent or anyone else that was interested in his welfare. No father, dead mother, jailed older brother, dead sister; Mark was pretty much alone in the world.

‘Good of you to come in willingly, Mark,’ Henry said.

‘There was a choice?’

‘Ultimately, no.’

Mark shrugged. ‘So here I am.’

‘We want to talk about you and Natalie, as you know.’

‘So you said yesterday.’

‘Why did you run?’

‘Because, Henry, you always bring me bad news. You always fuck with my mind and it’s always best to avoid you.’

‘Yet you rang me?’

Rik gave Henry a puzzled sideways glance.

‘Only because you’d have nicked me if I hadn’t — and because I have nothing to hide.’

‘You and Natalie went out together?’ Henry asked.

‘A bit.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Nowt to tell. We went out for while, then we split.’

‘Mutual decision?’

‘Are they ever?’

‘I thought you were smitten with Katie Bretherton.’

Mark screwed up his face. ‘Not now. It’s all over.’

Henry studied Mark, seeing a much older, time-scarred lad than the one he’d first met. He was spotty now, had acne, was sprouting hair all over, looked unwashed and frankly a bit of a mess.

‘What do you do other than work at KFC?’

‘College.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Astrophysics,’ he laughed bitterly. Henry waited, then Mark relented. ‘A course in motor vehicle technology.’

‘Oh, good lad.’

‘Yeah, right. I’m going to be a grease monkey. Ho-di-hey!’ He set his face hard at Henry. ‘What about Natalie?’

‘You tell me.’

‘We went out, we split up.’

‘Did she dump you?’

Mark blinked and Henry thought, yes… another person either leaving or dumping him. Not one person has stayed with him, poor sod. Mark nodded.

‘Why?’

‘Duh — because I wanted a steady relationship and she didn’t. She was a bike and liked being ridden — or didn’t you know that?’

‘A bike as in…?’

‘Shagged left right and centre,’ he said crossly, his body language leaking a touch of rage.

‘So you screwed her too?’ Rik Dean piped up at this point, leaning forward on the table. Up to then he’d sat silent, just shot Henry the occasional quizzical look.

Mark’s mouth snapped shut. His head rotated slowly to Rik, his eyes dead.

‘We need to know,’ Henry said. And they did, because the results of the post-mortem had also shown that Natalie had had sexual intercourse sometime leading up to her death. Samples had been taken, and, together with other samples taken from her skin, underneath her fingernails, and from other orifices, were now with the Forensic Science lab for analysis. But that process would take some time. Even if Henry could sweet talk an official fast-track, it would be at least two weeks before any results came back, even with a tailwind. Henry thought for a moment, then made his decision. ‘This interview needs to be taped, Mark. We’ll need to take various samples from you and at this point the best thing for you would be to get the duty solicitor. Costs nothing.’

‘You’re locking me up?’

‘Tell me when you last saw Natalie.’

‘Yesterday, just before lunch.’

‘When did you last have sex with her?’

‘Yesterday, just before lunch.’

‘Shit,’ Henry sighed. ‘Did you kill her?’

Mark shook his head and Henry believed him, but this was only based on his previous knowledge and opinion of Mark, like a ‘halo effect’. But Henry did not want to miss the chance of nailing a killer just because he thought he was too nice to do it. He had to deal with Mark straight down the line and give him no favours. This was the best thing for Mark, too, although Henry doubted if he would see it that way.

‘Mark, you’re under arrest on suspicion of murdering Natalie Philips.’ Henry then cautioned him.

Mark’s blood drained from his face. He shook his head in disbelief, then said, ‘Now you know why I ran. I fuckin’ hate you, Henry. You’ve done nothing but screw me over since we met.’

Henry took a step back at that point. He did what he should have done in the first place and let Rik Dean appoint two detective constables to interview Mark. He briefed them on what he knew so far, then let them loose on Mark, who had become unresponsive — to him, anyway. He knew their shared history would be a bar to any meaningful interview, so Henry did what any good superintendent was skilled at doing: delegated the job.

This gave him time to ensure the investigation as a whole was moving forwards. If he’d been tied up in interview he could easily have lost the bigger picture and then would have been criticized from on high.

It was all looking good. There was a semi-suspect in the traps, other jacks were out following leads, the scientific people were on top of things, doors were being knocked on, the MIR was almost up and running. Henry was reasonably confident with progress. Now he just had to find out what Mark Carter had to say.

That was when his mobile phone rang. He answered it absently as he skimmed through the first few pages of the murder book.

For a moment, there was silence, then came the hesitant voice.

‘I… I was wondering about that coffee… really, I’m not being pushy… it’s just, I’m in town for the day.’ The voice rushed on a little now. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s fine,’ Henry said, reshuffling everything in his mind, trying to work out if he had time.

‘I know you said you were busy and you’d phone me this afternoon

… and I know all the other personal stuff must be hell…’

‘I’m really glad you called, Alison,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure if I would’ve had the nerve to call back to be honest… so, where are you right now?’ She said the name of a town centre street. Henry said, ‘You’ll find a Starbucks on that street, yeah?’