D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

Stafford looked at the piece of paper again. He went to the office door and called Styles into his office.

‘Close the door,’ he said and wagged a finger for Styles to come over to his desk. ‘I received a tip-off this morning.’

‘About?’

‘About the murdered Polish woman. It seems a man was seen running away from the flat on the night of the murder, chased by another guy.’

‘Where’d the tip-off come from?’

He waved the paper. ‘An old acquaintance of mine, one Robert Courtney. He’s been down for a number of offences in the past, mainly stealing cars and the like. Nothing major. He’s been going straight, so he says, but has now got a wife and kids to feed. Makes a little extra by feeding me information every now and again. Still has his contacts on the streets. Any light we could shed on this case could help bring Maloney down,’ he added.

‘OK, give it here, I’ll see what we can do,’ said Styles.

‘Bugger that!’ he said. ‘This is still my baby.’

‘You don’t want to do this, Stafford,’ said Styles. ‘Leave it up to us.’ He held his hand out for the paper.

‘Like hell I don’t,’ he said. He pocketed the paper.

‘You really don’t have to get involved any further.’

‘Maybe I do. For my own good.’

Styles looked down at his feet. ‘OK, bring the man in. We’ll both see him.’

He shook his head. ‘Not that simple. He wants me to go to him. We arranged to meet in the Collyhurst area an hour from now.’ He checked his watch: 8pm.

‘Can you trust him?’

‘Getting as you don’t know who you can trust these days,’ he said, and for some reason Charles Rayne’s anxious face and his delivering of his whispered warning sprang disconcertingly to his mind. He shrugged it away.

‘You’ve got to take me along with you then,’ he insisted.

‘But it’s my shout. Let me run things,’ he said. Styles shrugged his assent. ‘Gareth Davies has also gone missing.’

‘Forget him, his alibis stack up.’

‘No, I can’t; somehow the man is involved in all this. I just don’t know how yet. If he’s guilty in some way I want his arse for shoes. If he’s innocent he may just well be in deep trouble and he’ll need my help.’

The car pulled up near a railway viaduct just as a commuter train rumbled across, the lights from its windows flashing down on them as the carriages whipped by. They got out of the car.

‘Why here?’ asked Styles.

They were standing on the edge of waste ground where houses had been demolished. Across from them were empty, derelict Victorian terraced housing, evidence that this had once been a busy and popular area. It had gone downhill fast. There was never enough money, even with the massive amounts spent on regeneration projects in Manchester. Some areas were being raised up, given new life, but some pockets, like here, were slowly sinking into crime and poverty, the recession feeding off these places like a ravenous hound.

‘Because it’s far enough out of the way not to be seen,’ explained Stafford. ‘He’d get short thrift if he were seen talking to me.’ He leant over into the car and took out a torch. Street lighting here was in dreadfully short supply. ‘This way,’ he directed. They picked their way over a rubble-strewn landscape to the row of empty houses, most of the windows boarded up, walls defaced by graffiti. ‘It’s this house on the corner,’ he said.

They glanced around but the place was deserted. Styles pushed at the old door to the house and it swung stiffly open. ‘Wipe your feet,’ he said, grinning widely as he stepped inside, his shoes crunching noisily on broken glass.

Stafford followed, shining the torch into the pitch-black living room, once home to hard-pressed working-class families who worked in the factories, nowadays not even a ghost of a home. ‘Courtney!’ he said. ‘Cut the games. Where the fuck are you?’ His voice came back at him, hollow and otherworldly. ‘Watch out for the holes in the floorboards, Styles,’ he warned, playing the torch beam over the floor.

Stafford narrowed his eyes. ‘You smell something?’ he asked, sniffing the air.

Styles stepped closer. ‘I smell piss,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been using it as a doss house.’

‘I think it’s gas.’

‘Yeah, maybe, faintly,’ said Styles. ‘Residue from a severed gas pipe, no doubt. The place looks empty, sir. This Courtney man’s playing games with you.’

‘Not his style,’ said Stafford.

They passed the stairs that divided the house up the middle, as it was in a lot of two-up, two-down terraced housing, and moved slowly into the kitchen area, shining the torch into the gloom. The windows were blacked out, with boards nailed on the outside.

‘Empty,’ said Stafford. ‘What’s that man playing at?’

Styles froze and lifted his head. ‘You hear that?’

‘No. Nothing.’

‘There’s someone upstairs, sir.’ He shone the torch back to the stairwell and made a move as if to investigate.

‘Leave this to me,’ he said. ‘Courtney’s twitchy at the best of times. He’ll freak on seeing you.’

He began to climb the narrow wooden treads which gave painful creaks as he put his weight on them. He reached the tiny landing at the top, a bedroom directly on either side of him. He shone a torch inside one room. It was totally empty. ‘You in here, Courtney?’ he said, stepping across and into the other room. Again it was empty, save for a pile of soiled rags in a corner of the room. The windows boarded up. ‘I’ll have your guts for garters when I get my hands on you, Courtney,’ he said under his breath, carefully descending the stairs. ‘Let’s get out of here, Nobby,’ he said, his frustration mounting. But he didn’t get a reply. The smell of gas was becoming stronger. There certainly was no mistaking it now. He reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘Styles?’ he said. ‘Where the hell are you?’ What the fuck was going on here, he thought. With a grimace he choked on a sudden wave of gas and put a hand to his mouth. He looked towards the kitchen and saw something dark and formless lying on the floor. To his horror his torch beam revealed it to be a body. ‘Styles!’ he said.

He couldn’t explain why but in an instant his mind was filled with the vision of Inspector Thomas Rayne of the Yard being put out of action by his own nark, and how the case of the Body in the Barn had become his lifelong curse.

‘Christ, no!’ he said, just as the explosion threw him off his feet and a massive fireball bowled through the rooms, engulfing him completely. He had no time to scream, no time to shield his face. As he hit the floor, the searing heat enveloping him like a thousand slashing razors, he was vaguely aware of the fragile ceiling above him giving way and come crashing down in a deafening cacophony, his helpless body being pummelled by falling timbers.

He did not recognise the reflection in the mirror as belonging to him. In Lambert-Chide’s mind he remained young, but this perversion, this dried-up, time-eaten man in the mirror stood like a skeletal reminder that though he might control almost all his life with the flick of a finger, he could not exercise any control over this, the most fundamental aspect of all. He could not control growing old.

He had been so close all those years ago and it had been snatched from him. And now, just as he thought it might once more be within his grasp it might all be an illusion. DNA tests would prove if Davies and the woman were related one way or another, but the thought that the woman locked away downstairs might not be Evelyn caused his insides to screw into a tight ball. Time was fast running out, he knew that, even for one as powerful and as tremendously wealthy as he. He didn’t like to dwell on the fact that even if she were Evelyn there wouldn’t be enough time to unlock her secrets, despite the huge amount of revenue at his disposal. And in truth did he really care about immortality for the masses? No, he cared only about finding it for himself first and foremost. Yes, find it soon and he’d become one of the world’s most powerful men, but what use to him the discovery after he had died?