Nick Oldham - Hidden Witness

But he did not cry, just remained silent.

Henry moved to his side, placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Mark,’ he said sincerely.

‘I have no one,’ Mark said, matter-of-fact, glancing up. ‘Best thing for me is to end up in a young offenders’ institute until I’m eighteen. Then I can go on the dole, father a dozen kids and live off the state.’

‘It’s a plan,’ Henry said.

Mark smiled and said, ‘There was a camera.’

Donaldson was just about to pick up his laptop and hurl it against the wall when he glanced out of the study window to see Henry’s car pulling up outside the house. He placed the computer gently down on the desk and watched, slightly puzzled, as Henry got out of the back of the car and trotted up the driveway to the front of the house. He saw a driver at the wheel, but could not make out any of his features because of the reflected light off the windscreen. There was also a dark, indistinguishable shape in the back seat of the Mondeo. He heard a muted conversation between Henry and Kate, before Henry opened the study door and leaned in.

‘Got the lad,’ he said breathlessly. ‘On the way back to the original murder scene for a witness walk-through. Want to come?’

Donaldson was already getting to his feet, even thought he suddenly felt leaden as, because of what Henry had just said, he realized why he’d been unsettled about the conversation he’d recently had with Don Barber.

‘It started here,’ Mark Carter said. ‘Me and Rory stood here.’ He pointed to the spot in the doorway diagonally opposite the shop known as Lucio’s on Church Street, Blackpool. ‘We’d done the girl and the lad, and we had the girl’s mobile phone with us,’ Mark explained. He might have been deeply upset at the news of his mother and his own prospects for the future, but he hadn’t lost his mind enough to tell Henry that he and Rory had also rolled a drunk for a fiver and a tin of cider before committing the two street robberies. His mother might’ve been murdered, Rory might’ve been murdered, killers might be on his trail, but he’d carried out three serious crimes and Henry only knew about two of them. And that’s the way it would stay because Mark knew that despite all the other stuff, the robberies would have to be dealt with at some stage. There would be no weaselling out of them. ‘The old man came out of that shop. It were Rory’s idea to rob him, and everybody else,’ Mark whined, ‘because he thought he’d be an easy target.’

Henry, Mark and Donaldson were on the footpath opposite Lucio’s. Bill Robbins was still at the wheel of the Mondeo at the road’s edge.

‘That’s his shop?’ Donaldson asked. Henry nodded. ‘All fake goods. They make the stuff in factories in Naples and sell it on the high streets.’

‘Why don’t the real manufacturers shut them down?’

‘Because it suits them,’ Donaldson said.

Henry couldn’t be bothered to ask.

Mark went on, ‘We watched him cross the road and followed him. An old guy with a walking stick, pretty rich looking,’ he pondered. ‘He went down there and we went after him.’ He led the men along the route he and his now deceased partner in crime had taken. Down Leopold Grove, over Albert Road, then into the alley which cut north-south to Charnley Road.

Bill followed in the car like a kerb-crawler.

The evil chant, ‘Vic-tim, vic-tim,’ replayed through Mark’s mind. Suddenly he felt very weak, but pushed on. It had been his decision to get this crap out of the way, probably manipulated by Henry, who had convinced him that time was running out to catch killers who were responsible for four deaths in Blackpool alone.

Henry, however, knew he was on wobbly ground here. In the eyes of the law, Mark was a juvenile with all the protective trimmings that came with that status. He had the right to be accompanied by an adult at all times, as Mark had rightly told him, and even getting Mark to run through something to which he was a witness was an iffy thing to do without an appropriate adult present. It was made more complicated because Mark was in custody for robbery offences and everything that happened to him should have been recorded contemporaneously on the custody record.

But Henry was in a hurry and was already working out how he’d cover his tracks if questions were asked.

Mark had now led them to the end of the alley where it opened on to Charnley Road, the scene of the murder, now clear of police activity. Bill had driven around in the Mondeo.

‘Rory had a go at him here,’ Mark said, ‘but the guy whacked him with his walking stick, smacked his head.’

Karl Donaldson walked past into Charnley Road, looking up and down, imagining the scene. Mark went on to describe what had happened — the car, the killer — and the killer looking at the two boys in the mouth of the alley. He had looked directly at them and Rory had shouted at him, stepped forward and taken a photo on the stolen phone. Then the boys had fled.

‘We ran, God did we run.’

‘And the camera, the phone, whatever — where is it?’ Henry asked.

‘That’s the problem. Rory dropped it somewhere.’

‘Somewhere?’

‘Somewhere between here and North Pier.’

Henry blinked. ‘So there isn’t a camera?’

‘It could still be around.’

‘Where did he drop it?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Did you search for it?’

‘Not really.’

Henry’s teeth ground grittily as he fought his disappointment and thought this through.

‘I got a decent look at the bloke,’ Mark volunteered.

‘Mm… walk the route with me, the way you went to North Pier.’

‘Now?’

‘No — next week. Yes, now,’ he said.

‘I might do a runner. I know I can run faster than you can.’

‘Like I said, if you do, I’ll have you shot in the leg — escaping felon.’ Henry beckoned to Bill in the Mondeo to get out and park up. Mark then took the men along his escape route. Back down the alley, left on to Albert Road with the south aspect of the Winter Gardens on their right, then on to Coronation Street, diagonally across into Birley Street — one of the main shopping streets — right into Corporation Street then on to Talbot Square. They had passed the exact spot where they’d robbed the Goth, done a left on to the Promenade and crossed over to the entrance to North Pier by the war memorial.

No sign of the mobile phone.

Henry’s frustration boiled over and he cursed. Mark looked contemptuously at him. ‘All you’re interested in is getting an arrest, isn’t it? You actually don’t give a monkey’s about me, do you? What I’ve been through, what I’m going through, how I feel?’

Henry picked up Mark by the lapel of his hoodie and slammed him hard against the war memorial. ‘Let me make something very clear to you, pal,’ he said. ‘The guys who killed the old man, Rory, Billy and your mum are still out there. They think you can ID them, Mark, and just at this moment I’m the only one who can keep you alive.’

Mark was not afraid of Henry. ‘Or get me dead,’ he rejoined.

Henry was back in his office off the major incident room. Bill Robbins had joined him, as had Jerry Tope, Alex Bent and Karl Donaldson. Mark Carter had been booked into custody and was now sweating it out in a juvenile detection room whilst Henry tried to work out the best way forward.

‘I suppose the humane thing to do would be to have a quick interview with Mark about the robberies — making sure he admitted them, of course, then bail him into the care of social services. The humane thing,’ he said again. ‘Then I want to get him with the e-fit people to get a face down on paper. In the meantime, I want a search team to work that route, turn over every rock and find that phone. It’s vital it turns up.’