Nick Oldham - Hidden Witness

But he was still starving and the thought of a Chinese chicken curry was appealing, and things would feel so much better on a full stomach.

He placed his foot on the first step down — which is when he heard the crash from the kitchen at the back of the house.

‘Are we sure this is the one?’

‘Down to three metres, or so I’m told,’ Henry said to Donaldson. ‘This was the location of the last pulse before the phone signal went dead.’

‘Are they ever gonna answer the door?’

Henry pounded on the front door of the house to which the phone company had directed them. They had been standing outside the terraced house on Cornwall Avenue in North Shore for a couple of minutes. Henry’s car was at the kerb, as was the Galaxy driven by Bill Robbins, containing the others.

Henry was getting impatient, thinking the occupants could have seen who was knocking and decided not to open up. He rattled the door, but it was firmly locked.

Then he regarded Donaldson and said, ‘I am about to exercise my power of entry.’

‘Which power is that?’

Henry could have reeled off the many he knew that gave him the right to burst into peoples’ homes unannounced, but just said, ‘I’ll think of one that fits.’

He took a step back, braced himself, then flat-footed the door just underneath the Yale lock. It was a powerful, well delivered kick, but only rattled the door in its frame. He repeated the action, but it still held firmly.

‘Lost my touch,’ he muttered angrily. ‘Getting old.’

Donaldson elbowed him out of the way. ‘Allow me.’

His first mighty kick almost took the door off its hinges. He stepped aside and allowed the English detective to enter the vestibule, shouting ‘Police’ as he barged in, through the inner door into the narrow hallway where he almost tripped over the body that lay diagonally across the floor, slumped half against the wall. Henry just managed to stop himself from pitching headlong on to the floor.

Lee Clarke had a neat bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. He’d obviously been standing when shot, answering the door, facing the person who had killed him. The bullet had entered his skull an inch above the bridge of his nose and removed the back third of his cranium. He’d probably staggered a couple of steps, spiralled and fallen. The remaining pieces of his brains had dribbled out underneath him and he was now lying untidily in a thick, disgusting pool of blood and other matter.

Donaldson peered past Henry. ‘You know this guy?’

‘No — but I know her.’ Henry was looking into the living room.

Still in her PEA uniform, Ellen Thompson was as dead as her drug-addled boyfriend. The crimson flowers of blood on her white shirt were still blossoming and the fingers of her right hand were jerking spasmodically in after-death. She had been shot at the door to the living room, maybe coming to see what was going on in the hall, only to be greeted by a gunman who had stepped over Clarke’s body and killed her just as mercilessly. She had fallen back and was sitting upright on the settee, arms and legs splayed at wide angles and, despite the twitching, dead.

‘Shit,’ Donaldson said. The eyes of the two men locked as they both had the same, dreadful thought. The witness, Mark Carter.

Henry Christie moved into gear, excitement and fear coursing through him, coupled with the experience of thirty years as a cop responding — occasionally — to life and death situations. Of course, there was nothing to say that Mark Carter’s life was really in danger, but at that moment Henry was furious with himself for just allowing the lad to be handed over to social services without adequate protection. Like everything else in the police, it was usually better to do things over the top than to look stupid and investigate a death that might have been prevented. Henry kicked himself for underestimating the ruthlessness, cunning and resources of the people who had killed Rosario Petrone and any witnesses to their crime.

Somehow they had been able to beat the police in tracking the mobile phone signal. Whether that was through the unguarded way in which the location of the pulse had been transmitted via radio communications, or because they too had access to mobile phone companies and tracking equipment, Henry could not be certain. But from what he knew of Karl Donaldson’s suspicions, he guessed it was both, which made him even more irate at himself. How could he have forgotten the lesson he learned that resulted in the death of Billy Costain? How could they possibly have known that the radio transmissions were about the mobile phone that had been used to take the photographs of the murder taking place? Henry was sure that was never mentioned over the air, but he would have to listen to a recording of it to make sure.

It put them ahead of the police in time and distance.

If they could locate a mobile phone signal, if they could listen into encrypted police radio messages, then it would be simple for them to track down and kill the last witness whose only protection was a social worker.

Henry and Donaldson raced out of the terraced house and up to the Ford Galaxy in which sat Bill Robbins at the wheel, with Alex Bent, Rik Dean and Jerry Tope alongside and behind him. He yanked open the passenger door and spoke hurriedly.

‘Alex, Rik, Jerry — you need to cover this scene.’

‘What scene?’ Rik said. He was in the front passenger seat alongside Robbins.

‘They got here before us. Two bodies, both shot to death. You guys cover the scene.’ He handed Rik his car keys. ‘Bill, you, me and Karl are going up to Cleveley House just to make sure Mark Carter is safe and well.’

‘Got it,’ Robbins said.

‘Alex — do you have the phone number of Cleveley House and the social worker who took Mark with him?’

‘No, but comms should have Cleveley House in their records and the social worker’s mobile number is on Mark’s custody record.’

‘Right… I’ll sort them.’ Henry glanced at everyone’s face as no one seemed to want to move. ‘Come on, let’s get shifting… lives at stake, here.’

Mark reached the foot of the stairs in silence and could hear raised, angry voices from the kitchen, furniture scraping on hard floors. He moved along the hallway, edging along the wall, passing the TV lounge, then a door with a toilet sign on it, until he was a few feet short of the kitchen where he flattened himself tight, back to the wall, and steeled himself to peek around the door. That was when he heard the social worker scream, ‘Mark — run.’

At the age of forty, Barry Philips had come late to social work, and actually wasn’t really anything like the stereotype of the profession. He’d ended up there through the path of redundancy than through any great desire to help people, but found that he loved the job. Working with teenage boys was the area he got the most out of. He found them fascinating and a great challenge, and although he had only just met Mark Carter, he could see a lot of good in a boy who was fundamentally decent and intelligent, but had experienced major traumatic events in his life. Because of Mark’s age, Philips knew the reality was that he wouldn’t be spending much, if any, time in care, but Philips was determined to do everything he could for a lad who had definitely been given the shit end of a prickly stick.

Philips already knew Mark would give him a rough ride, but he was looking forward to giving him a settled night in Cleveley House. Maybe at some stage there would be the chance of an exploratory chat about the future and what Mark saw, although he also guessed it would be a difficult subject to broach as the immediate past had yet to be dealt with properly.