Nick Oldham - Hidden Witness

Henry nodded. ‘I know him.’ He stood up, knees cracking again, and spoke to Bent. ‘He wasn’t alone, either.’

He flicked his torch beam around the ground, seeing the scattered and disintegrating chips and other food, and noting the two sets of wrapping paper.

All the lights seemed to be burning in the house, in spite of the late hour. Henry looked up through the rain-streaked driver’s door window of the Mondeo, his heart sinking.

It was two hours later, two hours spent at the scene of the boy’s murder, ensuring all that could be done was done to secure and preserve evidence. Henry’s second murder scene of the night. The second shooting of the night. Blackpool had its fair share of violence, but two brutal acts of gun crime in one night took the biscuit, and even before Henry knew for certain there was a connection between the two, his gut feelings told him there was. He just knew that post-mortems, forensic and ballistic analyses would confirm his suspicion.

O’Connell was in the passenger seat alongside him. She had done all she could at the scene, which was now covered and protected, and would later be combed by CSI and Scientific Support teams.

Henry hadn’t wanted her to come with him, had said he would arrange for her to be driven back to the mortuary, but she insisted. She was coming with him.

‘You know this family?’ she asked.

Henry nodded. ‘Oh aye,’ he said sourly. He slid his fingers around the door handle.

‘You don’t want me to come with you?’

‘Nothing personal, but not especially.’

‘I may be able to help, be able to offer comfort from a female perspective — maybe.’

‘That,’ he said pointedly, ‘is highly unlikely, but suit yourself, you’ll be in for a treat.’

He opened the door and climbed out of the car, now hearing the dull thud of music coming from a downstairs room. The rain had abated — slightly — and he steeled himself, getting into the right frame of mind. In terms of murder investigations, the buck stopped well and truly with the SIO in almost every respect. That included the delivery of the initial death message to relatives. It was very much his job, one he would not shirk. The flip side of the coin was that, although he had to tread carefully, be sympathetic, empathetic, firm, caring, supportive and everything else that went with telling someone a loved one had died tragically, he also had to bear in mind that the person he informed, or maybe someone else in the house, could well be the killer. It wasn’t exactly unknown for an SIO to tell the actual murderer about the deed they had just done — which was why the SIO needed to do the task. The reaction from the family could be a vital clue to the whole investigation.

It was a tricky balancing act.

Particularly with the Costain family.

O’Connell joined him and they went to the front door.

The house was actually two semi’s knocked into one, previously council owned, but now private. They had been big houses to start with — four bedrooms, semi-detached — and now the house was effectively a mini-mansion on a council estate. Henry knew it had been bought for a knock-down price because no one else wanted to buy houses on this estate, one of the most deprived in the country.

Henry paused at the door and rubbed his eyelids.

‘I sense hesitation,’ O’Connell chirped from behind.

‘You always hesitate before knocking on this door.’ The sound of laughter came from within. The music pounded away, an incessant, never changing beat. Henry raised his knuckles and rapped loudly. No one answered, so he turned his fist sideways and beat the door again, competing with the bass drum. Briefly the music turned down, then reverted to its original volume. Henry then kicked the door, which was flung open moments later by a teenage girl holding a bottle of WKD. She looked wild and unkempt, and was wearing a mini-nightie, had black hair that looked as though it had exploded in ringlets, mascara that made her look like a nocturnal bird and nothing on under the nightwear, leaving nothing to Henry’s imagination.

‘Fuck d’you want?’

Henry had no idea from which section of the family this girl belonged, but she was definitely a Costain. She had the looks and attitude.

‘I need to speak to a grown-up.’ He said, flashed his warrant card and said, ‘Police.’

She was an achingly pretty girl and reminded Henry of an actress from a film adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence novel he’d seen years ago and almost forgotten. That said, she

sneered contemptibly at Henry’s ID.

‘Like I said, fuck you want?’ She started to close the door, but Henry stepped up like an old-fashioned door-to-door salesman, jammed his foot in the way, and surprised her.

‘I want to speak to an adult,’ he reiterated, now standing only inches away from her scantily clad body. She smelled of alcohol, sweat, cigarette smoke and cheap perfume — a heady mixture, no doubt. Behind her, the living room door opened and a male appeared, several years older than the girl. He was smoking and drinking from a beer can.

‘What’s going on, babe?’

‘This cop,’ she said, ‘yeah, wants to speak to an adult…’ She jerked her head in Henry’s direction.

Henry took a steadying breath. It was never — never — easy at this household. It consisted of numerous relatives claiming descent from Romany gypsies and therefore stealing and hatred of authority ran in their blood. It was their default position. However, the Costains went far beyond simple theft. They were like a mini-Mafia family that existed by theft, yes, but also burglary, drug dealing, intimidation and violence. The Costains had a very firm grip on the estate, controlling much of the drug trade and acting as fences for stolen property. Henry had a very chequered history with them.

‘The first thing I’ll do,’ Henry said, ‘is exercise my lawful right to enter this property and rip the plug out of your hi-fi system, because you are causing a breach of the peace. Next, I’ll arrest you both for obstructing me, and then I’ll look into under-age sex.’ Here he gave a meaningful look to the young man. ‘And then, maybe, I’ll do what I came to do — which doesn’t involve arrests or anything like that.’

‘Oh just piss off… I can’t be arsed with cops,’ the girl said, unimpressed by Henry’s threats. She put her weight behind the door, crushing Henry’s trapped foot.

He uttered a gasp of pain, pushed back hard, caught the girl, sending her staggering back down the hall, where she tripped over her own feet, lost her footing and thumped on to her backside in a very unladylike manner, revealing all.

The young man fronted Henry with aggression, but Henry gave him a withering, daring stare and a tiny shake of the head, and growled, ‘If you’re over twenty-four you have no defence to having sex with an under-age girl.’

The lad’s face dropped.

‘What the friggin’ ’ell’s going on down there?’ a huge, booming voice bellowed from the top of the stairs. A man large enough to carry the voice came down a few steps from the landing in a silk dressing gown, his black curly hair in disarray. He saw Henry. ‘You, you fucker.’

‘Good morning,’ Henry said, ‘I need to have words with you urgently, please.’

It was old man Billy Costain, the ruthless patriarch of the family, the ruler of the roost, the father of at least seven Costain children, including Rory.

The estate known as Shoreside was one of the most dispossessed, dangerous and crime ridden estates in the country. Many houses were boarded up, others frequently damaged by rampaging gangs. Residents tried desperately to be rehoused. Unemployment was about eighty-five per cent. Drugs were rife. Gang feuds were a constant. A row of shops within the estate was now a pile of rubbish. Cops, generally, patrolled in pairs.