Unforgiving Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Nick Oldham From Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Recent Titles by Nick Oldham from Severn House

  BACKLASH

  SUBSTANTIAL THREAT

  DEAD HEAT

  BIG CITY JACKS

  PSYCHO ALLEY

  CRITICAL THREAT

  CRUNCH TIME

  THE NOTHING JOB

  SEIZURE

  HIDDEN WITNESS

  FACING JUSTICE

  INSTINCT

  FIGHTING FOR THE DEAD

  BAD TIDINGS

  LOW PROFILE

  EDGE

  UNFORGIVING

  UNFORGIVING

  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.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

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

  Trade paperback edition first published 2015 in Great

  Britain and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 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.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Oldham, Nick, 1956- author.

  Unforgiving. – (A Henry Christie thriller)

  1. Christie, Henry (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Police–England–Blackpool–Fiction. 3. Murder–

  Investigation–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8531-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-635-0 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-695-3 (e-book)

  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.

  This one is for my family – you know who you are.

  ONE

  It looked as though there was going to be trouble at the Swan’s Neck.

  Initially, it was a nothing job.

  The landlord of the only pub in Thornwell, a tiny village tucked away in the furthest reaches of Lancashire Constabulary’s Northern Division, had phoned in on the treble-nine to the police to say he was having problems with a customer by the name of Spencer Bartle. Bartle was drunk, refusing to leave the premises, and had threatened the landlord whose name was McCready.

  In her eighteen months as a special constable, Laura Marshall had never even heard of the Swan’s Neck, known locally as the ‘Sneck’, or the landlord McCready, but she did know Spencer Bartle. He was a young man, early twenties, came from farming stock with the physical build to match. He had a reputation as an evil drunkard, with a predilection for assaulting young women as he walked past them. He worked in a small abattoir which he owned. He usually spent his days dispatching livestock, covered in blood and guts, and when things were not going well for him, he gravitated quickly to drink and violence.

  Bartle often stalked the streets of Lancaster city centre in search of trouble, and Laura had been present twice when he was arrested. On both occasions it had taken half a dozen cops to overpower him, like ants bringing down a dung beetle. In fact he had been arrested earlier that week for violent conduct and was currently on bail, though Laura had not been there to witness the arrest on that instance.

  His family, she had been told, was equally barmy and unhinged, but she had never met any of them.

  When the call came over the radio, Laura, the only patrol free to attend the pub, said she would make her way – she knew, more or less, how to get to Thornwell – but it would take about fifteen minutes or more to get there from the city centre. Her sergeant called her up, warning her to take care and to tell her he was also en-route as back-up, maybe ten minutes behind her.

  It was, in police parlance, a bread and butter incident.

  On that Friday night, police across the country were dealing with hundreds of similar ones. A drunk. A pub fight. Nothing remotely special, although it was sometimes the routine jobs that turned out to be the most deadly.

  Nevertheless, as routine as it was, Laura Marshall was excited. So far, on virtually every incident she had attended as a special constable – an unpaid, volunteer cop, sometimes cruelly referred to as ‘Hobby-Bobbies’ by ‘real’ cops – she had been accompanied by another special or regular constable.

  Tonight she was out and about alone. She had recently passed a driving assessment giving her authority to drive basic police cars, and because the regulars were so short-staffed that evening the patrol sergeant had reluctantly lobbed a set of car keys at her for the first time with a slightly patronizing warning not to get into ‘the shit’.

  She promised she wouldn’t.

  She knew the geography of the area reasonably well, but was assisted by an on-board GPS. She drove out into the wilds, heading east away from Lancaster, passing through the picturesque village of Kendleton, along the narrow, winding, unlit country roads. Just for fun she flicked on the blue light for a few seconds to check out the effect on the hedgerows. Blue light, black shadows, a bit spooky.

  Then the road dipped and she was in Thornwell, nothing more than a tiny cluster of houses and a pub set around a Y-junction that formed a neat village green with a tiny stream burbling through its centre, a tributary of the River Lune. Not even one shop, though there was a small village hall and the pub, of course.

  The Swan’s Neck had a cobbled car park in front and a larger, unmade gravel one at the rear. Three cars were drawn up, and there was no obvious sign of trouble. This was confirmed when Laura’s Personal Radio chirped up and comms told her that the landlord had phoned in again to say that Bartle had left the premises and peace had returned.

  Laura parked up outside the pub. ‘I’ll show my face,’ she radioed in. A moment later she heard her sergeant calling up to say he was diverting to another job.

  If she was honest, Laura was relieved that Bartle had gone – although she hadn’t seen him or anyone else as she’d driven into Thornwell – but she knew he had a bad habit of returning to the scenes of his crimes. She recalled a number of city centre incidents where he’d been ejected fr
om licensed premises only to roll back later, even more drunk and violent, and wreak havoc. But if he’d gone, he’d gone, and she was glad of it because the prospect of wrestling with him was not appealing.

  A few regulars were gathered around the main bar inside the pub; a few others sat around at tables. All eyes swivelled to Laura as she entered, adjusting her hat and uniform. She had grown comfortable with the interest now, the looks, the leers from men, sometimes out-and-out hatred. It came with the territory of wearing a uniform: people gawped.

  She nodded comfortably and went to the end of the bar. The man she assumed was McCready, the landlord, was pulling a slow pint. He nodded amicably at her, finished his task – Guinness with a shamrock on top – then came to her, wiping his hands on a cloth.

  ‘Mr McCready?’

  ‘Aye, that’d be me … I phoned to say he’d gone.’

  ‘I know – but I was almost here, so I came to check you were really OK.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Spencer Bartle?’

  ‘The one and only.’

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘As a skunk … Take it you know him, love?’

  ‘I’ve met him in town a few times. What’s he been up to?’

  ‘Fighting drunk … don’t know why … but he stopped short of becoming a handful.’

  ‘Where did he get drunk?’ Laura asked.

  A little cloud of guilt crossed the landlord’s face.

  She said, ‘Here I take it?’ It was a prim, school-ma’am type of question-cum-statement. McCready’s little gesture, a slight deflation of the shoulders, confirmed her suspicion.

  ‘I thought he’d be OK … I thought wrong. Him and drink don’t mix well.’ McCready sighed. ‘He broke four glasses, a table and a stool, then stormed out and put his elbow through the back door window on the way out. But he’ll pay up. Might be short of a shilling up here—’ McCready tapped his temple – ‘but he isn’t short of brass … blood and muck.’

  ‘Where will he have gone?’

  ‘Home, probably, or maybe getting a taxi to take him into town,’ McCready said, meaning Lancaster.

  ‘But you don’t think he’ll be back here?’

  McCready shook his head at the question.

  ‘D’you want to make a complaint about the criminal damage?’ Laura asked him.

  McCready shook his head again and said, ‘It’s nowt. I just wanted him out; now he’s gone, and he’ll pay up. He needs to keep on my good side because this is the only watering hole around here he isn’t barred from.’

  ‘OK,’ Laura said. ‘If you change your mind, let me know.’ She handed him one of her contact cards, which he wedged behind the till.

  ‘Will do … Want a drink while you’re out in the sticks, love? On the house?’

  Laura froze him with the expression she had been perfecting over the last year and a half, and his facial reaction confirmed he had got the message. Nothing to do with the offer of a drink on duty, just his reference to her as ‘love’.

  ‘I’ll pass, thanks.’

  Outside it was chilly but clear. Laura stood and shivered for a few seconds before getting back into the Vauxhall Astra, thinking again about this being the first job she had attended solo. OK, so it hadn’t been much of anything, run of the mill, but she’d been alone and had dealt with it confidently.

  From the angle at which she had parked the Astra out front it was easier for her to drive forwards and spin it around in the rear car park behind the pub, do a wide, leisurely circle on the empty, unlit area, feeling and hearing the satisfying scrunch of the tyres on the gravel.

  As the headlights arced past a line of bushes forming the perimeter of the car park, a huge, ape-like figure of a man appeared in the beam. His arms were long, dangling at his side, something in his right hand. He was maybe ten feet in front of the car.

  Laura’s stomach jerked. She wasn’t expecting the apparition, and for a fleeting moment of shock, her mind did not compute what her eyes were seeing. Then she slammed the brake on, the car rocking on its suspension – and Laura found herself with Spencer Bartle in front of the car, framed in the windscreen.

  In that instant she realized the job she thought she had dealt with efficiently was only just beginning.

  He looked immense: his shoulders hunched, his head tilted forwards, his eyes glowering at her from underneath his thick mono-brow, the vehicle beam bathing the contours of his face in light and shade, accentuating his bulbous eyes.

  Slowly, he raised his right hand and showed her what he was holding – a crowbar, a foot long solid metal rod with one curved end and a prying tip at the other.

  The two were in eye to eye contact, and a yelp jumped from Laura’s lips. She fumbled to slot the gear lever into reverse, somehow not depressing the clutch far enough in, making a terrible grating noise as the cogs failed to mesh.

  Bartle stepped quickly to his left, and then with one long stride he was alongside the driver’s door.

  Laura twisted and slapped her left hand down on the door-lock button – which wasn’t there. Though the Astra was a battered cop runabout car, it was a newish model, and all the doors were locked centrally either from the ignition fob or from the button on the dashboard, thereby eliminating a need for a press-down button on the door itself. But a succession of cheap old cars and her unfamiliarity with this one had conditioned Laura to reach for a button that wasn’t there, a realization that momentarily stunned her.

  Bartle was bent over at the door, staring in, but he didn’t wrench it open.

  He drew back his right hand as Laura still desperately fought to force the gear lever into a reverse that suddenly did not seem to exist. She was consumed by a terror that also blinded her to the fact she should have slammed it into first and shot ahead now that Bartle was at the side of the car. But she was trapped in a terrible moment, her eyes widening as Bartle raised his right hand across his body, then backhanded the curved end of the crowbar hard against the driver’s door window. The glass smashed spectacularly, crumbling instantly, falling out of the door frame like a sheet of snow sliding off a roof.

  Bartle dropped the crowbar, then reached through the opening with both hands. He grabbed Laura, his boots crunching on the broken glass as he manoeuvred himself. His thick, strong fingers gripped her blouson jacket, and she screamed as she cowered, yet tried to fight him off. He seemed immune to her slaps. His stench, an overpowering blend of booze, sweat, cigarettes and cheap deodorant, shrouded and invaded her nostrils. Then he let go with his right hand, but bunched it into a huge fist and slammed the half-brick sized hand into the side of her face so incredibly hard that her face distorted, her jaw broke and any fight she had inside her went with a moan and a hiss of breath as her brain ceased to function.

  She did not even realize that Bartle then dragged her head first through the broken window, her slim frame sliding easily through the space. He dumped her face down on the gritty surface of the car park. Her hat came off her head and rolled across the ground like a huge coin, coming to rest under the bushes at the edge of the car park.

  Laura’s senses returned with a rush. Too quickly. Her mind was like a whirlpool. She tried to force herself up and try to find the emergency button on her PR which, if activated, would sound an alarm in the comms room, inform the radio operator who was calling and remain live for twenty seconds so that the cop in trouble had time to transmit hands-free. She groped for the button but could not seem to find it.

  Bartle straddled her then dropped the whole weight of his body on to her shoulder blades, crushing her back down and trapping her arms underneath her. He took hold of the tennis-ball sized hair bun at the back of her head, held it tight and slowly twisted her head around so her left cheek was crushed against the ground and on the tiny chunks of glass from the broken window.

  She felt something hard, cold and circular being pressed into the side of her head, just slightly forward of her right ear.

  In that instant, she kn
ew exactly what it was.

  The muzzle of a captive bolt gun, the device used to stun animals prior to slaughter.

  TWO

  Three months later

  Unlike the others, PC Jake Niven didn’t mind the waiting. He saw it simply as a slice of the cake. You trained. The job came in. You were briefed. You prepared. If you were lucky it was fast moving and instant, all blur and rush. If not, you waited. But somewhere along the line there was always some waiting. Sometimes it was short; sometimes – more often than not – it dragged. And sometimes it came to nothing: you packed up and went home without even breaking sweat. And how often did that happen? Many, many times.

  So there was no point in doing anything other than dealing with it.

  Jake Niven didn’t whinge, just accepted the waiting game.

  If nothing else it gave him time for introspection, but he tried not to delve too deeply into his own psyche, or his personal situation. That could be unsettling. Instead, he wrestled with more practical problems: dealing with that bastard of a third hole at Lytham, by improving his golf swing, or maybe visualizing the walk he’d planned over the Trough of Bowland.

  Interesting, simple things. Not difficult ones like the precarious nature of his relationships, or how he might just be kidding himself about keeping his head above the water line.

  Far better to re-imagine the golf stroke that was eluding him.

  ‘Here.’

  Jake blinked out of his reverie and looked at Dave Morton, his partner on the team that day – that night, to be precise. Morton was a twitchy waiter, one of those who could never settle and always had to be doing something, which was OK unless the whole team happened to be crushed together in the back of a battered Ford Transit van, which they were. Six fully kitted-out firearms cops, three teams of two, three down either side of the van, facing each other along the narrow, arse-numbing bench seats fitted in the back of the van.