Crunch Time (29 page)

He stepped sideways and dropped Connolly's P45 on to the bar.

‘Pressie for you. Your P45.'

Connolly turned his head and squinted at Henry for a moment, then recognized him.

‘Shit,' he said vehemently.

His eyes did an escape check, but, with half an eye on Henry, he saw there was no way of getting out other than trying to bowl Henry over, which was a task too far for Connolly who was slimmer, smaller and shorter than the detective. Resigned to whatever fate awaited, he turned back to the bar and took a long drink of his bitter.

Henry waited for further reaction, but none came

Eventually he did break the silence. ‘Whaddya want?' he asked miserably.

‘A chat, nothing more.'

‘Buy me another pint and you got it.' He downed what remained in his glass, some three-quarters of his drink which, Henry guessed, must have gone straight down to his legs.

Henry eyed the barmaid. ‘A pint of what he's having and a J
₂
0 for me, please, luv.'

Connolly hung his head as Henry slid on to the stool next to him. He did not meet Henry's eyes, but sat there with the cloud of doom hanging over his head.

‘Ken,' Henry said, ‘you are a fuck-wit – and don't even try legging it.'

‘I won't.'

‘But luckily for you, at this moment in time, your ex-employers are not pressing charges for theft and deception.' Henry paused. ‘We do know what we're talking about here, don't we? We don't have to do this the hard way, do we?'

‘We do and we don't.'

‘Good, because the point is, if prodded just a teeny bit, they would make a complaint, yeah?'

Connolly nodded glumly.

‘How many altogether?'

‘Eh?'

‘How many cars?'

‘Thirty, forty.' He shrugged.

‘Nice little earner.'

‘More than my commission, tight fuckers.'

‘But still criminal?'

Another shrug.

‘So how does it work?'

‘I get into conversation, get a feel for a punter, get a cash sale – I mean cash, cash – get all the forms signed with no figures on them, which is easy, then I fill 'em in after the punter's driven off in a banger and take a percentage. Bob's your uncle. It happens throughout the car trade. Salesmen skim.'

The drinks were placed on the bar. Henry thanked the lady and they made eye contact. She looked quizzically at him and Henry did recognize her. A cold chill turned his tum. She'd been ten years older than him in 1982, which would have put her in her early thirties then, which wasn't so bad. A one-night stand in the days of his singledom and the sexual excess of being a young, good-looking cop in Rossendale which, if you wanted it, was a hotbed of sex and booze.

‘Do I know you?' she asked hesitantly.

‘Er, don't think so, love,' he denied.

‘For a moment, I thought I did.'

He shook his head, smiled tightly and she withdrew along the bar, giving him repeated sideways glances. He scratched his head to hide his face.

‘Carry on,' he said to Connolly.

‘I only did it with cash-sale bangers and I diddled the paperwork to cover my tracks. Never had any comeback. Chances of being caught were minimal. You turning up and the company getting sus freaked me out, so I did a runner before the shit hit. Are you gonna lock me up?'

‘Ken, I couldn't be arsed … just so long as you tell me everything about the car I part-exchanged for the Rover and the guy who bought it. The paperwork seems to have disappeared.'

‘The Mondeo?'

‘That's the one.'

Henry fished out a screen-grab from the CCTV images he'd reviewed earlier. He showed the photo to Connolly. ‘Him?'

Connolly barely glanced at it. ‘Yeah, he just wanted the car, wanted to pay cash and it was a deal done quick.'

‘How much did he pay for it?'

‘It was on the lot for twelve hundred …'

‘Twelve hundred? You only gave me seven-fifty for it!'

‘That's business. Anyway, he got it for nine hundred on paper, I skimmed fifty and everybody's happy.'

‘Except the company pay you a commission on the eight-fifty remaining, so that makes you a thief, Ken. I expect it pays for your bad habits, doesn't it?'

Connolly tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘I know. You want his name, don't you?'

‘If you want to remain a free man.'

‘Did he use the car on a job?'

‘He tried to kill a member of my family.'

‘Oh.' Connolly swallowed.

‘Name.'

‘I don't know it.' Connolly rubbed his temples.

‘You do want to remain a free man, don't you?'

‘I don't have his name … it would probably be a false one anyway, under the circumstances.'

On that, Henry lost it slightly. It had been going on too long for him anyway. He grabbed the front of Connolly's tweed jacket and shirt in his right hand and twisted him off his bar stool and jerked him towards him so their faces were only inches apart.

‘You're fucking locked up, then.'

‘Let me go.'

‘No … let me tell you something you might not have picked up on, Ken. I'm not a happy soul at this point in my life and I'd just like to beat the living crap out of you for resisting arrest, you lush.' Henry's voice quavered.

‘Resisting arrest …? I haven't—'

‘Oh yes you have.' Henry shook him and rattled his alcohol-mushed brain.

‘OK, OK, let me be.'

Henry eased him back on to his stool. Ken's shaky hand went for his pint which he just managed to get to his mouth without spilling, though he did bang the rim of the glass on his teeth.

‘I want a name,' Henry insisted.

He was feeling something very unpleasant building up inside him now which, like projectile vomit, was close to coming out in a spectacular, ugly way. Something he was going to take out on Ken Connolly, who regarded him and sensed a bubbling volcano. Ken extracted a small notebook from the inside of his jacket pocket and flicked it open. It contained all the details of his criminal transactions.

The speed camera flashed, but did not slow him down. Instead he rammed his foot harder on the accelerator, swerved through a dodgy overtake, slotted back in and gunned the heavy car through the traffic.

His face was grim and determined, his mind focused on driving. He wanted to reach his destination swiftly and in one piece. But he was also focused on the name he had been given, desperately trying to work out what all this was about. To even start to do that, his mind, his memory, had to dig all the way back to 1982.

H
enry Christie's thief-taking potential had been spotted early in his career as a uniformed PC. From the outset he had loved the feel of a villain's collar and from his first day on the beat as a rookie, pounding the pavements of Blackburn town centre (his first posting), he had dedicated himself to depriving lawbreakers of their liberty. The traffic side of coppering had never really interested him at all, but crime fascinated him.

He had started at the bottom end and Blackburn had been a superb training ground for someone like him. Drunks were available all the time, day or night; shoplifters seemed to queue up to be arrested; there were assaults every day, mass fights spilling out of the clubs. It was great. He aimed for an arrest a day and on one occasion, following a brawl in a town centre pub which went on and on, Henry arrested ten people.

It was like shelling peas.

For a young cop with lots of energy, they were wonderful days.

Gradually he moved on to the more complex stuff when he was given a mobile beat covering one of the town's largest council estates. Then he began targeting burglars and one arrest, with which he was justifiably chuffed, resulted in 235 offences being taken into consideration.

His goal was to become a detective and in those days, the late 1970s, early 80s, one of the best stepping stones on to CID was via the uniformed Task Force, a mobile crime patrol used to target crime across the county and to assist in major investigations.

Task Force was on its last legs, though, and was due to be disbanded because of force restructuring. That did not deter Henry from doing his best to get on, and although rumours of its demise stated it would not last until the end of 1982, Henry managed to get a transfer on to the department at the beginning of that year. He was determined to enjoy it as best he could, short-lived though his time on it might be.

He was one of the last officers to join and the first thing he did was to get a clothing requisition signed by his sergeant and then race to HQ clothing stores and claim his car coat – a short cut gaberdine issued only to TF members. It was like a badge of honour, issued only to the elite (as they saw themselves, smugly) and Henry wore it with pride. It was one of the few items of uniform he owned over twenty-five years later, stuffed away in the loft of his house.

His only problem was that a move on to TF also meant a move from Blackburn to be based in Rawtenstall, from where the crime car operated. He was living in digs in Blackburn, being cared for by a little old lady who loved young cops – in a motherly way, of course. Henry travelled daily across to the Rossendale Valley to start with, but to save time, he found a small, damp flat near Rawtenstall town centre, which he shared with another PC on TF, by the name of Terry Briggs.

Life as a cop continued to be fantastic.

Henry found himself working around the county regularly on several high-profile investigations, including the infamous Mr Asia murder case, as well as around Rossendale and Accrington on general crime patrol.

He spent a lot of time assisting detectives, although he did try to avoid the DI who was based in the valley, one Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, who was later to become the Chief Constable of Lancashire. At that time he was a rotund, sweaty individual, who barked orders, blew smoke into people's faces, belittled anyone who disagreed with him and rode roughshod over feelings, rules and regulations, as it suited him. In those days, that was how DIs could operate and get away with it.

Little did Henry know that their love–hate relationship would begin in the valley and continue throughout his career. At that time he did his best to steer clear of FB, as people called him, whilst doing as much for other detectives as possible.

It was the summer of 1982.

The summer when the little girl went missing.

The briefing was at 8 a.m.

Arriving early, Henry made his way up to the refreshment room on the first floor of Rawtenstall Police Station, now commandeered as the incident room in the hunt for the girl.

He was first to arrive and spent some time looking at the walls, which were covered in charts and photographs, detailing all the information known about the last movements of the girl, her family, possible suspects, everything the police knew. Except what had actually happened to her, and where she, or her body, was.

There was a school photograph of her on the wall.

Her name was Jenny Colville and she'd been missing a week by the time the inquiry really got under way and the police took her disappearance seriously. Par for the course in those days.

Henry looked at the list of possible suspects.

Today, it was rumoured, would be the day when they would be rounded up for questioning. He wondered which one he would be asked to pull.

An arm shot past his shoulder and two stubby fingers with a cigarette trapped between them tapped on one of the names.

‘That one.'

Henry looked round. FB was standing behind him. He took his hand away from the list and took a deep drag of the cigarette, exhaling the smoke up towards the ceiling. Henry coughed slightly.

‘Sorry, mate,' FB said, squinting through the smoke. ‘Anyway, my money's on that toerag,' he said, nodding at the list on the wall.

‘Why's that, boss?'

FB took another drag. ‘Gut feeling.'

Henry blinked. ‘Do we need a bit more than that?'

‘OK, he's a perv. Been done for exposing himself to kids, indecent assault, and last year he tried grabbing a little girl off the street. Well,' he said dubiously, ‘I know it was him, but I couldn't prove it … but he's my favourite.' FB raised his eyebrows. ‘You wanna bring him in for me?'

Henry did not want to seem to hesitate, not particularly liking FB, nor his total reliance on gut instinct. Something more concrete was reassuring.

‘Arrest him, you mean?'

FB looked at the young PC as if he was an idiot. ‘Coax him in … for a cosy chat, eh?'

A telephone on a desk rang. FB waddled towards it, but his body was twisted in Henry's direction, his two cigarette-bearing fingers pointing at him. ‘I hear you've got a bit of a nose.' He picked up the phone. ‘DI here.'

As he listened to what was being said, his eyes rested on Henry.

‘Where … who by? Exact location? OK, I'm on my way.' He slammed the phone down. ‘They've found a body … you got a car?' Henry nodded. ‘Let's go then. Briefing's cancelled.'

The A6177, Grane Road, threads across the high moors between Haslingden in Rossendale, to Blackburn. In winter it can be impassable, in summer glorious, but always bleak and beautiful.

Directed by FB, Henry drove on to Grane Road and towards Blackburn, climbing steadily, passing the two large reservoirs on the left-hand side before the road twisted slightly and on the right was a car park and visitor centre for the more adventurous souls who liked to don walking boots and brave the elements.

As they drew into the car park, Henry saw the liveried section vehicle, a Ford Escort, still called a Panda Car for some reason, even though the stripes had long since gone. A uniformed PC was talking animatedly to a pretty young lady, dressed for the outdoors, accompanied by a shaggy Golden Retriever. Henry drove up to the pair, stopped and both he and FB climbed out of the maroon coloured Vauxhall Victor, which was the favoured car of Task Force.