Nick Oldham - Instinct

The Mercedes engine barely made a noise as he drove up the avenue away from the FMIT block, towards the HQ building. At the junction he was faced with a slight dilemma: turn right and exit, or go straight on to the sports and social club, aka The Grovellers’ Arms. The beer was cheap but at that time of day, between five and seven, it was full of office staff and bosses, none of whom he cared to mix with. He rarely socialized with other cops, other than a few close friends, and was a bit worried now that he’d reached the rank at which others might want to brown-nose up to him. The thought worried him. He had always disliked rank and authority, yet was now part of the establishment. Sort of like Mick Jagger accepting a knighthood.

With that in mind, he selected a very old Rolling Stones album from the in-car iPod, from the days when they were the bad boys, and swung the car right, spurting under the rising security barrier quickly, because he never quite trusted it. Then, to the strains of Gimme Shelter, he hit the road.

He joined the traffic heading into Preston, bearing left after crossing the River Ribble, out towards Blackpool, past Preston docks. He enjoyed the drive in the new car, although his left shoulder was giving him some gyp, the one which had been peppered with shotgun pellets during the blood-soaked stand-off in Kendleton, where he first met Alison. A slight sweat came at the memory of his lucky escape.

As he drove he did his retirement sums again. The house was now paid off. The pension would be good. He could buy a dog… Or maybe just keep going until they forced his hand? Then he could come back as a cold case consultant on half the salary, no responsibility and all the fun.

In Blackpool he turned into the KFC on Preston New Road and parked in one of the wide grill bays. Once inside he stood at the back of a long queue and kept an eye out for Mark Carter, who was nowhere to be seen. He ate in the restaurant, glumly avoiding standing on the chips on the floor, having had to wipe the table before sitting at it. But the food was OK and gave him that short energy burst he needed.

At seven thirty he was at Blackpool nick in the CID office with Rik, awaiting a call from the public enquiry desk to say that Mark Carter had answered his bail.

He chatted with Rik about the serial rape inquiry, and whether he had sorted anything out for later. The DI looked sheepish.

‘Singularly unsuccessful. Tomorrow night, maybe, plenty of bodies about, but tonight, too short notice.’

‘Which means?’

‘Uh, well, after we’ve finished with Carter, I’ll get changed into my scruffs, grab the crappiest CID car I can find and troll about myself until midnight.’

‘Yourself?’

Rik nodded.

‘Keeping obs for a rapist?’

‘Yep.’

‘Not exactly the well-resourced operation I had in mind,’ Henry sighed. ‘Tell you what, I’ll come with you. Wouldn’t expect you to do it alone.’

‘Seriously?’ Rik sounded doubtful. ‘Only thing is, every time I go out on a job with you, I seem to end up getting injured.’ He was referring to the times when he’d been stabbed once and shot once, each time out with Henry.

‘You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

‘Just.’

Henry winked, checked his watch and picked up a desk phone, dialled the front desk and asked if Mark had shown his face. Negative. Cradling the phone, Henry checked his watch again and decreed, ‘I’ll give him until half eight, then I’ll go looking.’

‘Probably done a runner,’ Rik said. ‘Guilty and all that.’

It was a ten minute walk to the creek in which Boone’s houseboat was moored. As Flynn turned on to the unstable quayside, his insides seemed to drop from a great height. The tropical evening had drawn in and his way was illuminated by lamp posts along the quay which varied in strength. Some flickered, some glowed dully, others cast intense white light. Even so, Flynn could clearly see the big shape that had once been the Ba-Ba-Gee, Boone’s houseboat and home.

The old concrete barge was tilted at a forty-five degree angle away from the quay, like an immense, dead, beached whale. It had been completely gutted by fire and everything that had been so lovingly and expensively refurbished by Boone — upper and lower decks, the outside seating area, the galley, the bedrooms — was all destroyed. All that remained was the seemingly indestructible concrete hull, half sunk in the water.

Flynn approached the wreck slowly.

Inside he was cold and raging. Outside his skin had tightened on his skeleton, and now his breathing was laboured and he started to dither.

He walked alongside the barge and up to the point on the quay where the fleeing Boone had been shot in the back of the head. His body draped across the old railway sleeper that was still there.

Flynn stooped to one knee and touched a bullet hole in the planking, slipping his little finger into it. Then he looked up sharply, his face distorted by venomous anger. He came upright slowly, carried on walking along the banking to the next inlet where Boone’s fishing boat Shell had been moored. Flynn had originally moored Faye2 alongside, such a long, long time ago. A light year away. Since then he had been shot, and managed to make it back to Gran Canaria, where a discreet Spanish doctor had treated the wound and taken an excessive amount of money to keep quiet. During his recovery, Flynn had done his research, remembering the Internet pages that he had briefly looked at on Boone’s laptop in the seconds before the man himself had rushed back, pursued by desperate killers.

Splattered all over the news pages that Flynn had accessed back in Gran Canaria was the face of the man he’d watched getting off Boone’s boat. The man who had been injured, the same man suspected of involvement in the planning of terrorist activities in the UK. The man who was now wanted by the authorities and whose name was Jamil Akram.

Flynn had only seen his face briefly from his hiding place behind some oil barrels, but he was convinced it was Akram. His eyes were as good as they’d ever been, honed by five years of searching sun-glistening waves for the sight of blue marlin on the move.

It wasn’t a difficult equation for Flynn to work out.

Boone was clearly still in the cargo trade. He had brought Akram back to the Gambia from wherever — the news reports, Flynn noticed, were sparse on the details of where Akram might have gone to. But Boone was involved. Old habits and all that shit, Flynn had thought. Boone was just keeping his hand in, making money as and when. It was in his blood. That’s what he did. And it had led to his death because the men who came after him were the ones who had been guarding Akram.

So what had Boone done to incur their ire?

He’d delivered the package. But then what? The fact was that Boone had been browsing pages on his computer about a man who, it was alleged, had been helping some young Islamic fundamentalists to cause carnage in Blackpool, a place Flynn knew well. He’d been a cop there once. Had lived with his wife there — until it had all gone wrong.

Flynn concluded that Boone hadn’t known who he was transporting at first. Then he’d found out. And had that knowledge killed him?

Flynn asked himself again — what had Boone done to bring about his death?

The answer was a guess. Boone was a hothead, a guy with an eye for the main chance and not above blackmail.

Could that be it? Had he discovered the true value of his cargo and gone to demand more money, or had he threatened to go to the authorities? Or both? Flynn could imagine Boone combining the two with the subtlety of a bull elephant’s charge.

What Flynn had also found interesting in the news reports he had read was a name that cropped up a few times — that of Detective Superintendent Henry Christie who had been at the scene of the police shooting of one of the suspected terrorists. Henry Christie — a name Flynn could conjure with all day. But, interesting as the name was, Christie was peripheral to Flynn’s own investigations and intentions.