Backlash (39 page)

And Henry Christie? What of him? The first man in years who had got under her skin. One whom she had wanted to hate but who, instead, had made her feel something she hadn't felt for years. The only man who could send a shiver down to her sex . . . she had to force herself to stop thinking like this and start thinking about how to get out of here alive. Then you can start making life choices.

She listened to her surroundings for some clue. Nothing seemed to make sense. Was it day or night? If she could only remember what had happened, but all she could bring to mind was knocking on David Gill's door, it being opened by a guy in a motorcycle helmet then – zap! – a huge jolt of something against her chest, the blackness of unconsciousness then awakening here, wherever here was.

Footsteps. A door opened.

He was back. Gill had returned to his lair.

T
he detective inspector from Cheshire was better than his word. A police motorcyclist dropped a thick file off at the front office at Blackpool police station with Henry Christie's name on it at 7 a.m. It was in Henry's hands five minutes later because, try as he might, he hadn't been able to sleep. He had dropped off for about an hour at 5 a.m., but awoken with a start at 6.15 when one of Fiona's patients started howling down below.

The police station was hectic. Seven was the turn-around time for officers working on the conference.

Henry collected the package from the front desk and gravitated to Jane Roscoe's office which, not long ago, had been his own. Not much had changed in it. His own personal belongings and mementoes had been replaced by Roscoe's. Everything else was as it had been. He eased himself behind the familiar desk – under which he had found Jane Roscoe searching the other night with her bottom swaying provocatively in the air, trying to reach a piece of paper. Briefly, the memory made him smile.

He ripped open the package from Cheshire, while thinking that the DI down there must have been another early riser. He shuffled the contents out.

‘Graveson: Lucinda and Thomas. Murder' the file was headed.

Inside were several bound books of crime-scene photographs which Henry flicked through, then put to one side. He picked up the written materials and started to scan them. He had read many murder files. On some murders he had worked specifically in the capacity of statement reader, dedicated solely to reading and rereading statements for clues, connections, leads and discrepancies. He could read a murder file quickly and be certain at the end of it he knew as much about it as anybody.

There were many statements to go through here.

With a note pad by his side, pencil in hand, he started.

Three-quarters of an hour later he picked up the crime-scene photos again. Shots of the Graveson house in Wilmslow, Cheshire, a very different part of the world than South Shore, Blackpool. This time he looked closely at every picture. When he had finished he knew he had something, but did not know what. It was something from the photos. Something that did not quite gel properly.

At 8 a.m. he did not have the answer. He got on the phone to Cheshire and spoke to the DI again.

As soon as Donaldson and Makin arrived, Henry hustled them down to the garage without any explanation and hurried them into a plain, traffic enforcement car. It was a Vauxhall Omega, the fastest and best car he could blag at short notice with the promise to the traffic sergeant that, honestly, he would bring it back in one piece.

He almost had his first accident speeding out of the garage doors, but managed to avoid the bread delivery van.

‘Oops,' he said, giving the white-faced van driver an apologetic wave.

‘Oops, my ass,' Donaldson growled, taking his hands slowly away from his face. ‘Is it safe to look now, you reckless son of a bitch?'

‘Sorry,' Henry said, jamming the brakes on at the first junction, then accelerating left to put the car into a slot in the early morning traffic which did not look wide enough for a mini. ‘Here, have a look at this.' He picked up the envelope from his lap and tossed it across to Donaldson. ‘The murder of Louise Graveson and her husband.'

Donaldson picked it out of the footwell and extracted the contents. As he read each statement he passed it over his shoulder to Makin in the back seat.

Henry pushed the car hard and unlike most police cars it revelled in it. He enjoyed the experience, whizzing past every other car on the motorway and not caring whether or not he was caught on a speed camera. This was a business trip. The firm would have to write off any fixed penalties that came his way. He motored along the M55, then south on the M6, through Lancashire and down into Cheshire.

His two partners were silent as they ingested details of the double murder, each giving the occasional exclamation of horror, particularly when they got to the crime-scene photos, which were appalling in their depiction of the violence suffered by the victims.

‘Poor people,' Makin said sympathetically. ‘What a way to die.'

She handed the file back to Donaldson who repackaged it neatly into the envelope.

‘Well?' Henry said. He had stayed quiet while they had read the file. He glanced at Donaldson, then quickly over his shoulder at Makin.

‘Well what?' she asked. ‘Looks like it could be the same offender.'

‘Anything else strike you?'

‘She could've been a target for right-wing extremists,' Donaldson suggested. ‘Looking at her line of work – bit OTT, though.'

‘But a possibility,' Henry said. ‘Anything else?'

They each put forward several thoughts, none of which seemed to satisfy Henry. Eventually Donaldson became irritated. ‘Look, buddy. I think you'd better tell us what you're thinking, because it's darned obvious something has hit a note with you and neither of us two idiots seem capable of seeing it.' He leaned across to Henry. ‘So tell us, put us out of our misery, or I'll smash your face in, one hundred miles an hour or not.'

Henry deflated visibly.

‘I'm not sure,' he said hesitantly. ‘There's something there, but I can't quite see what it is – sorry,' his voice was pathetic. ‘That's why we're going to visit the scene, see if I – we – can pull that “something” out of the ether.'

With the parcel tape over her eyes Roscoe could not see him, but she knew he was there. Nor could she speak to him, the tape having been wrapped under her jaw and over her head as well as across her mouth, sealing her lips, making her jaw immovable.

He had said nothing. He'd come into the room and remained silent.

Roscoe's whole body was rigid with terror and she began to feel the loss of control again, this time down in her bladder and bowels. She had managed to hold on for all this time – somehow – but it would be impossible to do so for much longer.

She tried to speak. The sound was trapped at the back of her throat.

‘Are you trying to make contact?' Gill asked brightly.

She nodded.

‘If I take the tape off your mouth, you will not scream, do you understand?'

She nodded again.

‘If you do, I'll just kill you, OK?'

She could sense him moving nearer. She could smell him and then she felt him touching her face, trying to find an end of the tape.

‘I've wrapped you up too well.' He laughed. ‘I'm going to have to cut a hole where your mouth is. At least where I think your mouth is. If I get it wrong, you'll have two mouths. Then I'd have a real problem shutting you up, wouldn't I?'

She felt a sharp point press onto her face. The tip of a knife. He jabbed it deliberately into her cheek.

‘Is your mouth here?'

She flinched.

‘Or is it here?' He prodded her forehead with the instrument. ‘Or here?' The knife jabbed the top of her head. ‘Or here?' She sensed Gill moving, but this time he did not press the blade into her for a few moments. She waited, trying to anticipate whereabouts on her head it would be pressed next. Then jumped when she felt a sharp jab on her inner thigh and he dragged the knife upwards towards her vagina. Just then it did not matter any more because the abject fear she was experiencing made inner control impossible.

‘Oh, you fuckin' bitch,' Gill cried. ‘You did that on purpose, didn't you?' Fuckin' women! Fuckin' bitches. I hate you all.'

This was it. Roscoe knew she was going to die. She waited for the blade to pierce her. Where would it enter her body? What would it feel like?

Gill placed the tip of the blade under her chin and pressed.

‘We appreciate this,' Henry Christie said to DI Harrison who was waiting outside the Graveson house where the double murder had taken place.

‘Not a problem. We need to work together on this one,' the DI said.

Henry introduced Donaldson and Makin, then they all turned and walked up the driveway to the house.

‘As a murder scene, we've finished with it, handed it back to the family and everything, but I know they haven't been able to touch the place. Nothing's been moved since we withdrew, I know that for a fact. The family are devastated and can't bring themselves to do anything with the house,' Harrison explained.

‘Understandable,' Makin said.

‘And fortunate,' Henry said, ‘for us, that is.'

At the front door the DI asked Henry, ‘What do you expect to find here, if you don't mind me asking?'

Henry shrugged. ‘Dunno.'

No house which had been the scene of such tragedy could ever be the same again. The nature of what had taken place had seeped into the very fabric of the building and destroyed what was once a happy and loving environment. Now ghosts drifted around, demanding justice. Not revenge, but justice. And until it was achieved there could be no rest for them.

Henry walked around the house alone. From the kitchen where the husband had been murdered, into the lounge, then up the stairs to the bathroom where Louise Graveson had been butchered. Dried blood was everywhere. It was a mess.

He closed his eyes and wished both dead people peace, and made a vow to them, there and then, that he would do his best to find that justice for them. When he opened his eyes, the DI Harrison came into the bathroom.

‘Not pretty,' he commented. ‘We've offered to get cleaners in for them, but the family have refused.'

Henry thought he understood why. ‘As gruesome as it is, it gives them some sort of lifeline to their loved ones. To get it cleaned up, wash the blood away, would be like washing their memories away.'

‘I suppose so.' The DI shrugged. ‘So – found what you're looking for?'

C'mon Henry, time to get operating, he told himself. ‘Let's go back downstairs,' he said, ‘I think it's there, but I'm not sure.'

Makin and Donaldson were in the living room.

Henry stood by the hi-fi, a modern Bang and Olufsen contraption which would have looked more at home in an operating theatre. ‘The cleaning lady found the bodies, yeah?' Nods all round. ‘She doesn't mention any music playing in her statement. I think she needs asking if there was any.' Henry was musing out loud. ‘She came in the front door and though her statement doesn't say it, I'll bet she came into the lounge before she found the husband in the kitchen.' He looked at Harrison. ‘You say this crime scene hasn't been touched, nothing been moved?'

‘Nothing,' he confirmed.

Henry switched on the hi-fi and pressed ‘play' on the CD. Immediately and automatically the haunting opening chords of ‘Midnight Rambler' began. He bent down and inspected the controls. It was on repeat play.

‘This is a connection with our job. I'll bet the cleaner came in, switched this off and then found the husband. She probably totally forgot about the music with the shock of finding him, and who could blame her?'

‘Well done, H,' Donaldson said.

He took a small bow. ‘But that's not all.' He looked round the room, with the exception of some newspapers spread around, it was all very neat and tidy.

‘Have you taken eliminatory prints off everybody? Family, friends?'

Harrison feigned offence.

Yet, still, Henry did not know what it was that had drawn him to the scene of this murder. ‘C'mon, it's staring us in the face,' he mumbled. His eyes roved around the room as he mused out loud. ‘They spent the morning with friends, dossing around, having brunch, whatever.'

One Sunday newspaper, the
Mail
, was on the floor by the sofa, its separate sections spread around. Another, the
Telegraph
, was on a chair, having obviously been opened and read. Then it hit him, yet it seemed so pathetic and minor that it did not seem enough but, he tried to assure himself, it was the little, inconsequential things that often solved murders. He pointed at the newspaper on the coffee table. The
Sunday Times
. ‘That's it,' he declared. ‘I think.'

‘Better explain yourself,' Donaldson cut in.

‘OK. The Gravesons have two friends round on a Sunday morning, yeah?' Nods. ‘They doss about. Chat. Have brunch. Read the newspapers?' Nods again. Henry jabbed his finger towards the newspapers in disarray. ‘These ones look like they've been read,' he said, trying to work out what message he was trying to get across. ‘Yet the
Sunday Times
here looks almost pristine. Why?'

‘Tidy people?' suggested Makin.

‘Who only tidy up one out of three newspapers?' Henry was as frustrated with the process as anyone else in the room. ‘It just doesn't sit right with me. Why do two newspapers look as though they've been read and one doesn't?' He addressed Harrison. ‘Is it possible for you, or me, to talk to those friends now? See if they recall reading the
Sunday Times
, see if they remember anything at all, what they did with it. Did they refold it?'

‘I'll do it now.' The DI pulled his mobile phone out from his jacket and went out of the house to get a good signal.