Backlash (42 page)

Henry gave a modest shrug. ‘I think we're well on the way to catching Jack's killers.'

‘Really?'

‘Yep.' But now it was Henry's turn to look depressed. ‘Having said that, I don't know if we're any closer to Jane Roscoe or Mark Evans.'

He sat down heavily on a spare chair. Donaldson perched on the corner of the desk. At the far end of the room a phone rang, picked up by one of the detectives on duty.

‘Or my bomber,' Donaldson said despondently. ‘The president will not be pleased.'

‘Henry? What extension is that?' the detective across the room called. Henry peered at the phone on the desk and gave him the number. ‘It's for you,' the DC said, transferring it across.

‘Henry Christie.'

‘DI Harrison from Cheshire.'

‘Oh, hi,' Henry said, expecting nothing.

‘Got to hand it to you, Henry, I think you got the bastard!'

‘Sounds like you are in deep pooh-pooh,' PC Standring, the constable on suicide watch, said to Franklands conversationally. Standring, the officer who had dealt with Kit Nevison, had now been given the task of baby-sitting the alleged murderer and was actually getting a little brassed off with getting the shitty jobs. However, this was a fairly interesting one and he had been listening to Franklands' stream of consciousness ramblings, trying to pick out any useful gems for the investigating officers to use in interview. Franklands had moved on to wittering about the murder on the promenade, making Standring prick up his ears. Theoretically there should be no conversation between them, but it was a difficult situation to be in and not say something.

‘You can say that again,' Franklands came back, ‘and the rest.'

‘Why, what else have you done?' Standring could not resist posing the question, but he did it almost with feigned disinterest.

Franklands had been sitting on the edge of the cell bed. He stood up abruptly, knowing he had already said too much, but now that he had started to blab, he could not stop himself. It made him feel light headed, light chested and the feeling was just so fantastic.

‘What else?' he said. ‘I planted that bomb.'

Shit, thought Standring.

‘I think I want to talk to the detectives now – and I want a solicitor.' His face cracked. He started to cry.

It was all Henry Christie could do to stop himself leaping up and down, punching the air, planting kisses on everybody in sight.

He had nailed the bastard. Christ, he had done it – or at least a partial fingerprint found at the scene of a murder which should not have been there had done it. And it belonged to one of the inhabitants of Blackpool. It was not enough to be used in a court of law, but it was enough to go and effect an arrest.

David Brian Gill. Born 21/4/58 in Blackpool. The man had come to the attention of the police only once before at the beginning of the year when he had been arrested and cautioned for a minor public-order offence committed outside a pub in the resort. Despite the fact that there had been no prosecution because it was a first offence and not particularly serious, Gill's fingerprints had been taken as a matter of course and then gone into the system, together with descriptive forms.

That was how he had been caught, from the only set of fingerprints taken.

Henry had a copy of the custody record in front of him relating to the time Gill had been locked up. There was a copy of the caution form with it. The descriptive forms which had been submitted to HQ were being searched for. With some pleasure Henry saw that the custody officer on the night in question was the inscrutable Dermot Byrne. PC John Taylor had been the arresting officer. Members of his new shift who had done a good job several months before, who had made sure everything was done and dusted for a minor offence, had played some part, subsequently, in the identification of a serial murderer. So simple. Yet it was the simple things that caught people.

Henry ran a hand over his face.

Outside on the streets Henry knew that the Hitler-led right-wing demonstration had come to nothing and everyone had dispersed. The conference had ended for the day, the PM having made his law and order speech to great acclaim and the home secretary his speech on immigration.

Henry thought about David Gill. Where the hell did he fit into this picture? Had he abducted Jane Roscoe and Mark Evans? Henry struggled to get his head round it all. Had they stumbled onto him from evidence provided by this ‘military type' and therefore been unprepared for an encounter with a seriously dangerous man?

Gill's address was not far away from Joey Costain's. Roscoe and Evans could easily have walked to it, leaving their cars parked near to Costain's flat.

Henry was eager to get going, to pull the guy in, but he wanted to do it properly and if possible involve Byrne and Taylor. It would be a nice thank-you for having done a run-of-the-mill job so well and could go some way to reviving Taylor's spirits following his horrendous night when he'd let Geri Peters get murdered and been there when Joey's body had been found. Poor lamb. Henry decided to wait until they came on duty at six.

Henry wanted to do it right. This included having a fingerprint expert on call as well as scientific teams on standby.

There was also the other issue of Franklands. He was Henry's prisoner and he had a responsibility to deal with him as expeditiously as possible. If Henry went out on what could be a completely unrelated matter while his murder suspect lounged in a cell, very serious questions would be asked when the case got to court. Henry had an idea how this could be addressed.

He was sitting in Roscoe's office again.

‘Well?'

Henry looked up sharply at the figure by the door. FB.

‘I hear things are moving.'

‘Yeah – but whether we'll find Jane or Mark is something else.'

FB looked seriously exhausted. ‘Do your best, Henry,' he said without energy. ‘Find them, please.'

‘I will.'

FB disappeared down the corridor.

Henry immediately went back to the papers on his desk. These now included the responses from all the police forces who had had similar murders to Joey Costain's on their patches: Surrey, the Metropolitan and the West Midlands. He had not had the time to look at these yet and he thought this might be an opportunity to do it now. He took each one and read them carefully.

At first he saw nothing to link the crimes beyond the obvious similarity of the way in which the victims had been murdered. Beyond that there seemed to be no connection, but Henry instinctively believed there must be something. He wrote out the names of the victims on a blank piece of A4, listing them down the left side of the paper. Two victims were black. Their occupations did not seem to have any similarity. It was frustrating. Henry read the files again, concentrating on the background and interests of the victims.

Twenty minutes of hard reading and analysis gave him the answer.

Gill's flat was on a small, dilapidated council estate where the number of vacant and derelict properties outnumbered the ones which were inhabited. It was in a small block of flats about six storeys high at one end of the estate with a complex of garages at the back. The flat was on a corner, reached by a concrete stairwell leading onto a walkway which ran along the front of the flats, past the front doors. A quick enquiry with the council had revealed Gill's name on the rent book and that the rent was paid up to date, something which surprised Henry. Council records also showed that Gill rented one of the garages at the back.

Henry and Karl Donaldson sat in a beat-up unmarked Astra about a quarter of a mile away awaiting the arrival of backup before they hit the flat.

‘If we get this guy,' said Donaldson, who was there only as an observer, ‘then tomorrow I'd like to try and catch my bomb-maker, pretty please. My president said I should.'

‘You and your president.' Henry laughed. ‘But of course we can. Serial killer today, serial bomber tomorrow. Piece of piss.'

‘Ahh, such a quaint term – “piece of piss”,' Donaldson remarked. ‘Called your ex-wife, yet?' he asked, filling a gap.

‘Nope.'

‘Going to?'

‘Yep.' Henry nodded. He checked his watch. ‘I wonder how Andrea's getting on with Franklands.' She had jumped at the opportunity to interview someone who might have been present at the murder of one of her officers; it gave Henry the space he wanted to go for Gill and hopefully get a lead on Evans and Roscoe.

‘They're here,' Henry said, glancing into the rear-view mirror. Dermot Byrne and John Taylor pulled in behind them in a plain car, civvy jackets over their uniforms. He gave a wave over his shoulder and moved off slowly. There was going to be nothing loud and flashy here. No blue lights, two-tones or screeching tyres. Just a slow approach, park quietly and trot slowly to the front door of the flat (there was no back door or exit, other than windows) then bust the door down, pile in and disable the suspect.

‘I don't want you to get involved, Karl,' he reiterated to Donaldson firmly. ‘You're just here to watch the finest of the British police in action, OK?'

‘Gotcha.' Donaldson smiled grimly. He picked up the sledgehammer which was wedged between his knees in the footwell. Henry laughed.

They parked a hundred metres away from the target premises, out of sight of it, and alighted. Donaldson, Byrne and Taylor slotted in behind Henry as he strode swiftly towards the flat. A minute later they were up the steps, and at the door.

Henry went to one side. Byrne the other. Donaldson and Taylor hung back. Henry tried the door handle which opened and they were inside.

On silent feet all four moved into the short hallway towards the living room. Henry gently opened the door. The back of the tatty settee was facing them and on the settee was a dark figure, totally engrossed in a game show on TV and also cranking up. A belt was wrapped round his left arm, tightened by pulling the end of it with his teeth and he was injecting the bulging vein on the inner elbow with a blood-filled hypodermic.

On a signal, Henry, Byrne and Taylor leapt on the guy. Henry focused on the needle, ensuring it presented no danger. It was over in a few seconds, the man did not have a clue what was happening and within moments he was cuffed, face down, arms up behind his back.

‘Turn him over,' Henry said excitedly, wanting to see the man he believed had murdered so many people.

They did.

‘What the fuck's going on here?' the man demanded to know.

It was Kit Nevison.

Henry was reluctant to take the cuffs off him. By negotiation and threat, Nevison's hands were re-cuffed across his stomach for more comfort and he was allowed to sit back on the settee on pain of death if he caused trouble. The towering figure of Donaldson brandishing the sledgehammer just in the periphery of Nevison's vision was sobering enough to keep him sitting there.

‘What are you doing here?' Henry demanded.

‘I've come to see me mate, Davey. I haven't seen him for months.'

‘David Gill?'

‘Yeah.'

‘And you let yourself in?'

‘Yeah, got a key. Couldn't find it for ages, then I found it today, so I thought I'd come an' see 'im.'

‘Where is he, then?'

‘I don't know. Told ya, haven't sin him for months. I just woke up an' thought I'd bob round and see if he'd let me in. He's always bin good for a bit o' junk.' He nodded to the needle out of reach on the top of the TV.

‘What d'you mean, you thought you'd see if he'd let you in?' Henry asked.

‘Er . . . well . . . I bin round once or twice recently an' he told me to fuck off through the letterbox. I thought he were ill, like.' Nevison looked confused. ‘What's this all about, anyway?'

‘Do you know where he is?'

‘No, I fucking don't,' Nevison said crossly. ‘Now unless you're gonna lock me up for somethin' I haven't done, tek these fuckin' things offa me.' He held out his manacled hands.

‘I want David Gill for murder,' Henry said, bending close to Nevison's face. Nevison blinked and thought about the words. Then he was engulfed by racking laughter.

‘What's so funny?'

‘Davey? Murder? He wouldn't hurt a fly. Soft bugger, soft as shite.' Nevison roared. ‘He's a fuckin' namby-pamby veggie.'

His laughter continued unabated.

Henry stood up straight. He looked at Byrne who, together with Taylor, had done a quick visual search of the flat and found nothing. They shrugged.

‘Shit,' he breathed. Then he had a thought. ‘Let's check the garage.'

Kit Nevison was having a whale of a time now. Still laughing fit to burst, he followed the officers out to the garage. His handcuffs had been removed on the understanding that if he tried anything, or did a runner, he would be arrested on suspicion of burglary and possession of controlled drugs and that Donaldson would whack him across the back of his head with the sledgehammer.

The garage was in the middle of a row of about a dozen. Most of them were unused with broken and twisted doors or none at all. Only a couple, including Gill's, had locked up-and-over doors on them. It was very well secured with padlocks on either side of the door. Without the necessary keys, the officers resorted to force. Donaldson, who was itching to get swinging with the sledgehammer, smashed the padlocks off with perfectly aimed blows.

‘Very good,' Henry congratulated him. He pushed the top of the door and up it went. There was no electric light inside, so four torch beams criss-crossed the interior. Not much inside. A powerful motorbike with a helmet on the seat and a large chest freezer along the back wall.

‘Is the bike Gill's?' Henry asked Nevison.

‘Never sin it before.'

‘Don't touch it,' Henry instructed everyone. He recalled that around the time of Louise Graveson's murder in Cheshire, a motorcyclist had been seen in the area. Henry walked round the bike and went to the freezer. Although Henry, in his married days, had had a chest freezer in the garage, it seemed odd to have one in this garage. It wasn't as though it was an easy trip to get frozen food back up to the flat, especially in wet weather.