Crunch Time Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Nick Oldham from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Recent Titles by Nick Oldham from Severn House

  BACKLASH

  SUBSTANTIAL THREAT

  DEAD HEAT

  BIG CITY JACKS

  PSYCHO ALLEY

  CRITICAL THREAT

  CRUNCH TIME

  CRUNCH TIME

  Nick Oldham

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in 2008 in Great Britain and 2009 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2008 by Nick Oldham.

  The right of Nick Oldham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  Oldham, Nick, 1956-

  Crunch time

  1. Christie, Henry (Fictitious character) - Fiction

  2. Police - England - Blackpool - Fiction 3. Detective and mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14[F]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6703-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-565-9 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  One

  The Jaguar XJS had seen much better days. Once called British Racing Green, this car’s formerly proud colour had now faded to a patchy, lighter shade with numerous round, pitted craters where the paint had rotted from the acid in the bird shit from the branches under which the car had been parked and neglected for over five years. Rust blistered the bottom edges of both doors and all the wheel arches; the tyres, whilst not technically illegal, were treading a fine line, wearing very thin indeed. Add to that an engine which was temperamental at best from a lack of servicing and tuning – twelve cylinders, almost thirty years old, needed a lot of care and attention – and an exhaust blowing like a tractor, and the picture painted was one of dilapidation and decline, of having seen much better days.

  This was a scenario compounded by the man behind the wheel.

  He was just on the right side of fifty – not such a bad age – but he had the aura of a beaten, defeated man. His eyes were dark and sunken in their sockets, particularly his right, which squinted behind a cheekbone that had been broken months before and didn’t seem to want to heal properly. Both eyes were bleary and bloodshot after four solid days on a bender of epic proportions.

  The man’s breath stank horribly of belched alcohol, a dirty, unpleasant odour to anyone not having lived alongside him for the length of his binge – and no one had. It had been a solitary road he’d travelled, bumping into fellow drunks for the occasional shared hour, but leaving even the best of them in his wake.

  During those four days he had not found time to wash, shower, clean his teeth or change his clothing. In fact, he had been so utterly drunk at one point he had pissed his pants and not noticed. It was at that moment he’d been ejected from the pub and, down to his last tenner, staggered back to his car. Then, somehow, without mowing anyone down, he’d driven to his present location somewhere near his rented apartment on Salford Quays, Manchester, close to the Old Trafford football ground, the apartment he’d just received notice to quit having defaulted on the rent.

  The man in the Jaguar had come to the end of the line.

  He was broke. His latest business deal had turned to shit, leaving him owing serious money. His girlfriend had deserted him after christening him a loser and a drunkard. He was being thrown out of his property and his car was a heap of expensive-to-run shit. As he slumped with his head wedged against the steering wheel, having pulled into the side of the road and managed to manoeuvre three wheels on to the footpath, it seemed that, as he vomited copiously down his lap and shins and over his once beautiful brogues and into the turn-ups of his piss-stained pants, nothing else could go wrong for him.

  But in such pitiful cases there is always something else that can – and will – go shit-shaped.

  Although the man in the car wouldn’t completely realize what the gravity of that ‘something else’ was until he was on the road to sobriety, that ‘something else’ was just about thirty seconds away. It took the form of two uniformed police constables who just happened to be in the neighbourhood when the call came through.

  ‘Patrol to attend anonymous report of possible drunken man in a car on …’ The comms operator gave the location and description of the car and the nearby double-crewed patrol responded immediately. They found the old XJS as described, looking as though it had screeched to a halt after having avoided a cat in the road.

  The police car drew alongside and the female PC in the passenger seat opened her window and peered into the XJS.

  ‘You or me?’ she asked her partner.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  With a shrug of resignation the officer climbed out of the cop car, breath kit in hand, and slowly opened the driver’s door. The man behind the wheel was now half-propped against the door and as the officer eased it open, he slithered slowly out and on to the roadside, lying half in, half out of the ancient sports car. The cop winced and stepped smartly back, crinkling her nose at the terrible stench of vomit, urine, four-day-old body odour and alcohol, all combined into one awful package that cops were almost immune to, but not completely.

  The officer bent slightly to look back into the police car and gave her partner one of those ‘thanks a bunch, you bastard’ expressions, but actually said, ‘What a mess,’ as she glanced down at the drunk driver.

  On the ground, which he hadn’t hit too hard, the driver groaned pathetically. Then his whole upper body heaved, giving the constable just enough forewarning to jump out of the way, as the heave turned to a retch and once more the man hurled. From his twisted position, the vomit shot out like a fountain, then splattered back down across his chest with a sound like hailstones hitting the ground.

  ‘Call for the van, will you?’ the officer said to her partner.

  ‘Drunk in charge of a motor vehicle and failing to provide a specimen of breath … oops!’ The arresting officer had just presented the driver of the XJS to the custody officer at Salford nick in Greater Manchester. She’d propped the guy again
st the custody desk and then proceeded to outline the reason for the arrest and was just getting to the spiel when the driver lost his balance and staggered backwards on rubber legs. The officer caught him, prevented him from falling by getting a hand on his back, which seemed about the only part of him without a vomit-veneer covering. She manoeuvred him back up to the desk and held him there, the driver looking stupidly at the custody sergeant, unable to keep his head still on a neck that seemed to be without muscle.

  The long-in-the-tooth custody sergeant, a gnarled, seen-it-all, don’t-give-a-shit kind of guy, watched the episode with a contemptuous twist of his mouth. ‘Circumstances?’ he said wearily to the officer.

  ‘Found him behind the wheel of a parked XJS, opened the door and he fell out. Keys in the ignition. Smelled strongly of intoxicants, he was sick all over everything, as you can see.’ The officer indicated the prisoner’s appearance with a wave of her hand. ‘He sort of blew into the breathalyser, but couldn’t provide enough for a sample. Too drunk, weren’t you, mate?’ she finished patronizingly, as though she were talking to a dumb child. She added, ‘So I arrested him, but I’m pretty sure he’s clueless about what’s going on. Been on a real bender.’

  ‘Right, mate.’ The sergeant’s eyes took in the swaying prisoner, who was having a bit of trouble focusing and preventing treble-vision. To him it looked as though he was being inspected by three sergeants all saying the same thing, just slightly out of sync with each other, like a digital TV gone wrong.

  ‘Did you understand all that?’ the sergeant asked him.

  ‘Er – what?’

  ‘Do you know why you’ve been arrested?’

  ‘I’ve been arrested?’ the prisoner blurted with surprise. ‘I thought thish wush McDonald’s.’

  The sergeant scratched his ear with his ballpoint pen and declared, ‘Too drunk to understand his rights.’ He twisted to the keyboard in front of him and began to enter details of the arrest on to the computerized custody record whilst the prisoner continued to watch him with amazement, having to be held upright by the arresting officer.

  ‘Name?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ the prisoner replied. His watery but bloodshot eyes opened wide. A gush of sweat rolled down his forehead and temple and suddenly he became a pale grey colour – and heaved.

  ‘Get him out of here!’ the sergeant shouted at the PC. ‘He’s gonna chuck up. Get him to the toilets!’

  The constable grabbed the prisoner’s left arm and yanked him roughly away from the custody desk – it was very bad form to allow a detainee to spew his guts over the sergeant and his equipment – and steered him double-quick along the corridor to the toilets. They got there just in time so the prisoner could at least direct this bellyful into a toilet bowl. The prisoner sank to his knees, grabbed the porcelain – this was actually the staff toilet, not one for visitors – and retched and gulped and retched until there was nothing else to come out. This done, he hung his head in the bowl and groaned loudly, the perfect acoustics of the toilet ensuring that the sound travelled back to the custody office.

  He turned his haggard face up to the constable, one eye slightly closed, a dribble of runny sick on his chin. ‘That’s better.’

  ‘You look a real fucking mess,’ the PC said. ‘C’mon.’ She hoisted him up by the elbow, flushed the toilet and steered him back to the patient custody sergeant, where she jammed him up against the desk.

  ‘Right … name?’

  ‘What? My name?’

  ‘Whose freakin’ name do you think I want? Yes, you,’ the sergeant said, with the irritability of someone who had dealt with a thousand inebriates and still had no time for them.

  The prisoner’s chin fell on to his chest and he looked up at the sergeant. ‘Jagger’s the name. Yep, Jagger.’

  ‘Mick, I suppose? And I’m Keith Richards.’

  ‘Duh-duh-do-dah-dah-duh-dah-dah …’ the prisoner sang, attempting to replicate the riff of Satisfaction, the Rolling Stones’ hit song.

  The sergeant’s face – his three faces – hardened. ‘Do not fuck around.’

  Something in the tone of his voice cut through the alcoholic haze and the triple image of the sergeant morphed into one slightly fuzzy one.

  ‘No, itsh true, as God is my witness … the name’s Jagger.’ The sergeant typed the surname into the computer. ‘If you tell me your first name is Mick, you’re straight into a cell, pal.’

  ‘It’s Frank … Frank Jagger … pisshead.’

  ‘You got that right, pal. Time to blow.’

  The legal drink-drive limit in Britain is 35 mg of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. Anything over that limit warrants prosecution, but most police forces will warn a driver who blows between 35 and 40 mg, but anyone over 40 mg will end up in court. It takes a lot of alcohol to put an individual’s reading to 70 mg – twice the legal limit – and those people who come into custody swearing on their mothers’ lives that they only had a couple of pints or two small glasses of wine, yet blow over 70, are liars; they have been drinking heavily to get to that point and anyone blowing above that figure has been imbibing alcohol as though it’s going out of fashion.

  As was the case of Frank Jagger.

  After allowing him to wash and freshen up, though this had little overall effect or benefit on him, Jagger was taken into the room in which the breath test machine, the intoximeter, was kept. Here he was seated next to the custody officer at the machine. Jagger watched through bleary eyes as the sergeant fired up the machine, tested it, then inserted the sterile mouthpiece into the extendable tube and gave Jagger the instructions: take a deep breath, put the mouthpiece between your lips and blow in one continuous breath until told to stop.

  ‘You got that?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Sorta.’

  ‘Here.’ The sergeant pulled the tube. Jagger took it, put it in his mouth, started to blow.

  ‘Keep going … keep going,’ the sergeant encouraged him. ‘Bit more … stop!’

  Breathless, Jagger took the tube out of his mouth and slumped in the chair. ‘Whassa reading?’

  ‘You need to do it once more, then I’ll tell you.’ The sergeant waited for the machine to carry out the first reading, which he kept to himself, then to purge itself. He then asked Jagger to blow again, which he did, and, exhausted by the effort expended, he slithered down in the chair again, his head lolling uncontrollably.

  The machine did its work. The sergeant snorted and said, ‘Wow – you really have been drinking.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘One hundred and eight … my highest score this year. Congratulations, three times the legal limit.’

  ‘Do I get a prize?’

  ‘Yeah, a night in the cells, a visit to Salford Magistrates Court in the morning, a three-year driving ban, probably and a helluva fine. How does that sound? First prize.’

  ‘Sounds …’ Jagger’s head rolled in a wide arc as he tried to focus in on the sergeant, but in so doing he managed to overbalance and tip off the chair before the officer could catch him and before he could say ‘good’. He hit the tiled floor hard and cracked the back of his head.

  Two gaolers dragged him between them to a cell where they hefted him on to the bed, arranged his body in the recovery position – on his side, knees drawn up – just in case he was sick in his sleep so he wouldn’t choke on his vomit and die. They threw a rough blanket across him and kept a fifteen-minute interval watch on him for the night. Too many drunks had died unnecessary deaths in police cells, but under the care of that particular custody sergeant, Frank Jagger – if that was truly his name – was not going to become another sad statistic.

  Jagger was asleep immediately.

  It is police policy to rouse sleeping drunks every fifteen minutes – rouse them enough to get some sort of response – and this happened to Jagger for the remainder of that night, the cell door opening, the gaoler prodding him and making him talk, just enough for him to mutter, ‘Fuck off and leave me alone.�
� So, although Jagger slept in fifteen-minute blocks, it was a disturbed slumber and not one designed to combat the excessive amount of alcohol he’d drunk.

  When the cell door opened at 6.15 a.m. the following morning, he was still drunk and in desperate need of a serious spell of uninterrupted kip. He raised his head and peered groggily through one caked-up eye and said, ‘Leave me alone, you fuckwits,’ and yanked the blanket tightly over his head.

  ‘You got company,’ the gaoler announced, then Jagger heard him say, ‘Sorry mate, you’re in with a pisshead,’ then the door slammed shut.

  Underneath the blanket, Jagger’s eyes flickered and he listened as hard as his drink-blunted senses would allow and at the same time started to try and get his brain working. It was a tough requirement. He felt worse than awful and a terrible clanging was going on in his head as if out-of-tune church bells were being rung by a vicious gang of demented campanologists.

  It had been many years since he had felt so bad from alcohol and it wasn’t an experience he would be repeating any time soon. It was an age thing.

  He had become totally aware, though, that someone else – another prisoner – had been put in the cell with him. He could hear that other person breathing, could hear them shuffling around.

  Jagger peered over the edge of the blanket and peeked at his fellow prisoner. It was a man – obviously – about Jagger’s age, looking lean and fit, dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a black tee-shirt. His head was bowed as he stood by the door and he looked deep in thought.

  Jagger groaned. ‘Wanna sit?’ he asked, though his mouth felt as caked-up as his eyes. He was very dehydrated and needed about a gallon of cold, cold water, some food and a plateful of aspirin. He bent his knees to make room on the end of the bed.

  ‘You must be joking,’ his fellow detainee responded sourly. ‘Stuck me in with a drunk, the shower of shit.’ His lip curled and he shook his head. ‘Bastards.’

  ‘I’m a drunk-driver, not a drunk. There’s a difference,’ Jagger retorted. ‘Suit yourself.’ His legs extended again and he immediately fell asleep.