Nick Oldham - Hidden Witness

‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’

‘You heard — send a patrol to that car park.’

Henry, Alex Bent and the comms room inspector were listening, for the third time, to the recording of the telephone call alerting the police to Rory’s murder. It had been downloaded on to a disc and they were in the inspector’s office off the main communications room in the station. There was also a written transcript of the short call, including the time it was made and its duration.

Henry rubbed his eyes and the three officers listened again, all of them shaking their heads.

‘I don’t recognize the voice, but it’s obviously that of a young lad, maybe the one who’d been with Rory,’ Bent said.

Henry nodded. ‘I feel like I know the voice, or I might just be kidding myself.’ He sighed and looked at the comms inspector. ‘Thanks for this,’ he said, taking the CD from the player.

‘No probs.’

Henry handed him a sheet of paper on which he’d scribbled out a basic circulation regarding the shootings, which was for the information of the force, other forces and other agencies that might be interested. It was headed, ‘NOT FOR PRESS RELEASE.’ All it contained was the basic details of the two murders and little else. No speculation that they might be linked, even though this was implicit by virtue of the fact that both were referred to in the same message. Even though he was sure there was a connection, he wasn’t going to admit that just yet. SIO’s had to keep open minds otherwise they screwed up. The message also contained a description of the old man, including a reference to the old bullet wound in his side and asked for suggestions as to identity, giving a number to call.

‘Can you circulate that as normal?’ he asked the inspector, then stood to leave but stopped in his tracks, took the message back. He thought for a moment, then scribbled something else on the sheet and then handed it back to the inspector adding, ‘Can you also send this person a copy of the circulation by email — including a few actual photos of the dead man?’

‘Sure, boss.’

Henry looked at Bent. ‘Shall we go back and work the crime scenes?’

Scowling, Mark had jerked a middle finger up at Bradley’s retreating back, then retrieved his filthy quilt and pillow from the coal-hole, which he rolled up and dumped in the kitchen.

He was famished but could not be bothered making anything for himself, and the thought of a fast food breakfast was very appealing. He hadn’t eaten anything for over twelve hours — since his last burger, in fact — as his intended supper had been whacked into the face of last night’s attacker. He had some money left over from his little crime spree and the McDonald’s on Preston New Road was just about walkable.

He had a quick shower and shave — bum-fluff was sprouting all over his top lip and chin these days and annoyed him intensely — got changed and headed out across the estate, taking all the back routes to keep out of sight.

It would have been easy to avoid Psycho Alley and the car park, but morbid curiosity drew him in that direction. He needed to know if it hadn’t all been a sick dream, because that’s what it felt like.

The fact that the alley was cordoned off with crime scene tape was Mark’s first indication that it definitely wasn’t his imagination. The barrier meant he had to come at the car park from a different direction, and he emerged on to it from the main road to see a huge amount of police activity and public gawping going on. Cops were crawling everywhere, literally in some cases, as a team of overall-clad officers did a fingertip search in a line across the car park. The whole area had been cordoned off. A huge tent had been erected over the exact spot Rory had been shot. Mark wondered if the body was still there, or had it been removed? People in white forensic suits entered and left the tent, clasping samples.

Mark’s empty guts wound sickeningly. He closed his eyes momentarily and thought himself back to the town centre alley, seeing the old man get mown down, then seeing the face of the gunman as he turned to look at Mark and Rory, startled. It had been night-time and the face had only been illuminated by orange street lights, but Mark had seen him clearly with his young, sharp eyes and was certain that if he came face to face with him again, he would be able to ID him.

Good enough reason to do a runner, Mark thought. He spun away, almost stepping into the path of a car pulling up at the front of the shops.

‘Stupid kid,’ Alex Bent said, slamming on the brakes.

‘Eh — what?’ Henry glanced up from the paperwork he had been studying, only catching a fleeting glimpse of the back of the youth who’d nearly been flattened by Bent.

The moment was gone and forgotten as the two detectives got out of the battered ‘Danny’, the old slang term for a plain car used by detectives — in this case an ageing Ford Focus that looked as if it had never seen better days.

They walked to the front door of the chip shop and rattled the handle.

‘Need to find the owners,’ Henry said unnecessarily.

Next-but-one along was a newsagent owned by an Asian, Mr Aziz. He was lounging at the door of his shop. Henry and Bent asked him a few pertinent questions but he didn’t know anything about the incident or the chip shop owner, who was new. Aziz thought he lived somewhere in Preston.

Henry thanked him and went to the scene out back.

He intended to have half an hour here, then head across to the other murder scene in town and start to build up any connections between the two.

Suddenly, Mark was no longer hungry. Suddenly, he was as paranoid as hell as the thought hit him, the same one he’d had last night, that murderers always go back to the scenes of their wrongdoing. At least that’s what they said in TV cop dramas. They liked to gloat, enjoyed the power and Mark realized he was stupid to go anywhere near the scene again. If the murderer was there, milling about with the onlookers, keeping his head down, Mark was a sitting duck.

Hence his thoughtless step in front of a car, almost resulting in him getting flattened.

And then the glimpse of the driver, who he did not recognize, and the even quicker look at the passenger who he did recognize and never wanted to see again.

The horrible feeling was that if Henry Christie was running this case, then it would only be a matter of time before he and Mark came face to face.

‘ You don’t understand,’ the man pleaded desperately. ‘Firstly I cannot tell you anything because I know nothing.’ He was using expressive hand gestures as he spoke. ‘And even if I did, I could still say nothing because I would be dead within days, possibly hours, of speaking to you.’ He snorted derisively. ‘Don’t think that because I will be held inside a Maltese prison that I am unreachable. They can get to me anywhere, so I say nothing, keep myself alive.’

Karl Donaldson tried to look sympathetically across the interview room table, but cared little for the man’s predicament. He was on the trail of a killer and this individual was the best lead he’d had in three years of chasing shadows.

Donaldson shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair, sweat dripping from his scalp, down his neck and all the way to his backside. The heat was oppressive, even here in what were literally dungeons below the streets of Valletta on the island of Malta. He glanced at the stern-looking Maltese cop standing rigidly by the heavy steel door, arms folded, face grim.

‘Any air-con in here?’ Donaldson asked.

The cop shook his head and allowed himself a wry smile. As if. Much of the police station above ground level had been modernized, but the money had not stretched as far as the underground cell complex. There was still a medieval feel to them, as though it was only days since the Knights of Malta might have incarcerated their Turkish prisoners before beheading them with their scimitars.