A Time For Justice (51 page)

And he did not like what he saw.

He should have been sick for the boy, Abbot. He should have
been sick because a stupid young teenager had been blown to pieces
on a motorway verge, his remains scattered far and wide.

But he wasn’t. Henry had been sick for himself alone. A single
idea dominated his thoughts.

That bomb had been meant for
him,
dammit! He glared angrily at
his reflection, but behind the grimace he saw pure terror in his
eyes for the first time in his life.

Hinksman was going to kill him and there was probably nothing
that Henry could do to stop him.

With that thought Henry turned away from the mirror and dashed
back to the toilet cubicle.

To the best of their abilities, the remains of John Abbot had
been collected from the scene of the explosion by the police,
ambulance and fire brigade. They had been bagged and sent to the
mortuary where they had been unpacked and distributed over the tops
of two post mortem slabs.

Henry Christie, together with Karl Donaldson, Karen Wilde, FB,
a couple of high-ranking local detectives and a Scenes of Crime
officer who was recording the PM on video, watched a pathologist
pacing around a third slab. She had been brought in from Merseyside
as Dr Baines was still busy in Lancaster.

Now the pathologist picked up a piece of charred flesh that
could have been part of a hand or foot. She thought for a moment,
surveying the reconstruction work, said ‘A-ha!’ with glee, danced
round the slab and placed it. It was a foot. She was enjoying
herself.

‘
I don’t think I want to watch this,’ said Henry. The smell of
burned flesh was overpowering. He ducked out of the room without
apology.

Karen followed him out.

‘
I just want to thank you for putting my name forward for this
investigation, Henry. I appreciate it. And FB’s been really nice to
me too. He’s even talked to Karl.’

‘
Good. I’m glad,’ said Henry.

‘
You OK
?’
She linked arms with him.

Surprised but touched, Henry gave her a lopsided grin and
admitted, ‘No, not really.’

They were standing in the room where a large refrigerator took
up the whole length and height of one wall. Inside it, bodies were
stored on sliding trays. At the far end of the room a PC and an
undertaker had just placed a body on one of the trays. The PC was
writing a name on the leg with a felt-tip pen.

‘
I suppose,’ said Henry, ‘that I didn’t really expect him to
try something. It’s shocked me. And a bomb again, on the motorway.
That’s just reopened a wound I thought I’d sewn up pretty well.
Obviously I haven’t. I keep seeing the kids on the bus
again.’

‘
We’re dealing with a madman.’I

‘
One who knows exactly what he’s doing,’ Henry suggested.
‘He’s dangerous rather than mad. Don’t forget, he kills people for
a living. Madmen don’t.’

They had been walking slowly towards the PC who, as they drew
level with him, pulled a white sheet back over the body on the
tray. Henry did a double take.

‘
Let me see,’ he said quickly.

The PC obliged. ‘Jane Marsden, local prostitute, shoplifter,
drunk, and all-round lowlife,’ he summed up. ‘No great loss to
society.’

‘
What are the circumstances?’ Henry asked.

‘
Found about an hour ago at the bottom of a flight of stairs
in the fleapit doss house she lived in. Probably been lying there
all day from the state of her. She took some major straightening
out.’ The PC chuckled at the memory. ‘Looks like she fell down
drunk and broke her neck. Post mortem’ll tell.’

‘
Anything suspicious?’ Henry probed. He was trying desperately
to recall some of the things Jane had been saying to him, things he
hadn’t really been taking in because he’d been too engrossed in his
own thoughts.

‘
Not on the face of it. Why?’

Henry ignored the question. He drew the sheet further back.
There was some bruising across her throat. Then he pulled it all
the way down to reveal her naked, now wax-like body. He looked
carefully at it and saw further bruising on her arms.
It
could have happened
during the fall down the steps - the post mortem should be able to
establish that - but Henry wasn’t happy.

He covered her up.

He gazed into space and pursed his lips. ‘Did you get Scenes
of Crime to photograph the body at the scene?’

‘
Yep.’

‘
Right, when that officer in there has finished videoing the
PM, get him to take some shots of her, will you? Point out those
bruises on her neck and arms.’ The PC nodded. ‘Did you search her
flat?’

The PC shrugged. ‘Not really. Had a glance round, nothing
more.’

‘
Is it locked?’

‘
No, couldn’t find a key.’

‘
Henry, what’s going on?’ Karen interrupted.

‘
This gives me the willies,’ he said. ‘I actually saw this
woman last night and gave her a lift as far as my place. She walked
to her own from there.’

‘
Henry!’ Karen said, shocked.

‘
No, I didn’t, I’m not
that
desperate. . . it’s just that when I last saw
her, she wasn’t all that drunk. She’d actually just been kicked out
of the cells at Central ... Look, something’s not quite right here.
She told me some half-baked story about ripping off a Yank who’d
beaten her up.’ He spread his hands. ‘Maybe I’m barking up the
wrong tree, but Hinksman likes beating up and killing prostitutes.
And if my memory serves me right, he specialises in breaking their
necks. Probably practising a technique learned from his Delta Force
days. Perhaps here,’ he pointed at the covered body, ‘he’s
finishing off something he started a few months ago. I hope I’m
wrong, because if I’m not, he’s committed two murders since
escaping.’ He raised his eyebrows at Karen. ‘Fancy a drive round to
her flat? Might answer one or two questions.’

‘
Sure, why not? They’ll be hours in there.’

The aroma of bedsits hit them as soon as they entered the
ground-floor hallway through the open front door. It was a mixture
of cigarette smoke, sweaty socks and underwear, and the
unmistakable smell of lubricant used on male contraceptives
intermingled with cannabis smoke. Here, in addition, was the musty
tang of dampness.

They turned into the narrow staircase and began the ascent. It
was almost 9.30 p.m. and it was getting dark. The stairs were lit
by low wattage bulbs operated by switches that sprang off after
about twenty seconds in order to save electricity. They trod
carefully, as some of the treads were carpeted; some
not.

On the last flight up to Jane’s flat Henry inspected each step
carefully. This was actually the only part of the staircase on
which the carpet was well-laid and fitted. There was nothing on
which a person could have tripped. Even so, the stairs were still
steep and narrow, and possibly treacherous to someone who’d had a
drink.

As expected, the door to Jane’s flat was unlocked. They went
in.

‘
Very salubrious,’ remarked Karen.

Henry stood still and allowed himself to look the room over,
his eyes taking in everything: the mattress, the bottles of booze,
the sink, the settee, cooker and cupboards. Eventually his
attention returned to the bottles which stood side by side on the
draining board. He stepped over to them, and picked one up
carefully by inserting his forefinger into the neck. He held it up
to the light and rotated it carefully, inspecting it at different
angles. He did the same with each bottle.

Karen was standing behind him. ‘Got something?’ she
asked.

‘
Well ... if she was drunk when she fell down the steps, it’s
safe to assume she’d been drinking after she left me - presumably
from these bottles. I don’t see any glasses about, so she must have
swigged straight from the bottles... ‘

He moved aside for Karen, who bent down and looked at the
bottles in situ.

‘
They’ve been wiped,’ she stated, puzzled.

‘
Exactly. Even if she didn’t take a drink from these last
night, there would have been some marks on the bottles.’

Henry surveyed the room again. Years before he’d searched it
for drugs and found some, but he couldn’t quite remember where the
stash had been. His eyes lit on a ventilation cover on the wall
above the cooker. He smiled. Now he remembered.

The cover was metal with a sliding opener. He looked at it
carefully and saw that there were recent marks in the screws which
held it to the wall.

‘
Don’t suppose you’ve got a screwdriver?’

Her reply was a wilting look.

Tut-tutting, he opened the kitchen drawer and rummaged through
the meagre collection of utensils for something suitable to remove
screws. All he could find was a flimsy table knife which twisted
and buckled when he put it to use.

After much patience he managed to remove three screws from the
ventilation cover, which then swung free on the remaining screw,
revealing a square hole in the wall about eight by six
inches.

Karen dragged a wooden kitchen stool across for him. He stood
precariously on it and put his arm all the way into the ventilation
cavity. He immediately found something. He gave a cry of victory
and carefully, so that he would not drop it, extracted what he’d
found.

‘
How did you know where to look?’ asked Karen,
impressed.

‘
Cheated,’ he confessed. ‘Did the place a few years ago for
dope and found this hidey-hole then. There’s a sort of lip a couple
of feet down where she stored her stuff. Very tricky and pretty
secure. I couldn’t quite remember how far down the lip
was.’

What he’d pulled out was a brown A4-sized envelope. He opened
it and shook out the contents on the cupboard top.

‘
Jane’s nest-egg,’ he said sadly. ‘Her passport to the better
life.’

There were three bundles of Bank of England notes totalling
about £2,000. What was more interesting was the wad of dollar
traveller’s cheques, a driving licence and six credit
cards.

Henry handled them carefully.
‘Voila,’
he said. ‘Recognise the
name on the driving licence?’

‘
Yeah,’ said Karen sheepishly. ‘It’s that poor guy I locked up
after raiding his house with the support unit.’

‘
The innocent man, you mean?’ said Henry wickedly.

‘
Don’t rub it in. It’s the driving licence Hinksman used to
hire cars with. Don’t recognise the names on the credit
cards.’

‘
No, I don’t either. Hinksman probably has plenty of
identities, but he’s used his own name on the traveller’s
cheques.’

‘
So she stole all this from Hinksman?’

Henry nodded and sat down on the settee. ‘What we’ve got here
is this: a dangerous man on the loose who will not tolerate anyone
getting the better of him. Jane got the better of him by stealing
from him - so he murdered her; I got the better of him by arresting
him, and shooting him, and he’s tried to murder me. The question I
ask is this: has he finished yet? Has he made his
point?’

Karen slumped down heavily next to him. ‘I’d like to say
yes.’

‘
But we know what the real answer is, don’t we?’ Henry said
grimly. The terror was creeping up on him again.

‘
I’ll say this for you, Joe, you’re one hell of a cool son of
a bitch.’

It was Ritter talking. He was sat next to Kovaks in the back
seat of the Bucar. Ram Chander was in the front passenger seat; one
of Corelli’s men was driving. Behind them was another car in which
Damian was being transported. They were heading south towards
Miami.

‘
This must be a pretty big shock for you, after
all.’

Kovaks gave Ritter a contemptuous sidelong glance, then gazed
back out of the window. He’d decided that to lose his temper would
lose his life. Inside though, he seethed with anger and sadness.
After a pause he said, ‘How long you been working for
him?’

‘
Long enough,’ admitted Ritter. ‘Long enough to have a healthy
bank balance and a bolt-hole in the Caribbean.’

‘
Lucky ole you ... and you, Ram? How about you?’

Ram twisted round and dangled his right hand across the
seat-top. He was holding a gun which jerked dangerously around as
he talked. Kovaks thought bleakly about the scene in the
movie
Pulp Fiction.
‘A long, long time, Mr Joe,’ he said.

Kovaks shook his head. ‘Sad ... fucking sad. So, Eamon, why
kill Sue?’

Ritter’s mouth twisted down at the corners. ‘Simple - she was
on to me. I had to do it.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, I really enjoyed
sticking my knife up her cunt.’

‘
Sick bastard.’

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Ritter crashed
his gun into the side of Kovaks’ head.