Bad Tidings hc-19 Read online

  ‘That’s bloody excellent,’ Henry said as the caffeine immediately hit the spot.

  ‘I logged onto the secretary’s computer while I was waiting for the machine,’ Tope said, ‘and checked the misper figures for this week last year. Three hundred and fifty-two people were reported missing in the period we are interested in. Three hundred and fifty turned up unharmed or at least accounted for, leaving two. One, our victim, David Peters, and another, a girl found dead from an overdose. Mostly they were youngsters who went AWOL after parties. There were about twenty, male and female, in the demographics we’re interested in.’

  ‘I think you can assume much the same number this year,’ Henry said. ‘Did you look at last night’s mispers?’

  Tope nodded. ‘Only quickly. . my gut is just to keep a watching brief on things. . a lot could easily roll in hung over or still pissed, tails between their legs. A lot more will be reported towards the end of the day when they haven’t rolled in.’

  Henry nodded, sipping his coffee. ‘The Christmas rush.’ He made a decision and looked at the two murder files. ‘Let’s just spend the next hour going over these two files, make sure we’re all acquainted with the scenarios, then’ — he looked at Rik — ‘you and me will work out strategies for the victims. I’d like to look at the guy from Blackpool — Peters — if that’s OK? Just so I’m on hand if my mum needs me.’ Rik said that wasn’t a problem, he would cover the woman who’d been killed in Blackburn.

  Henry’s first port of call was to the cardiac unit where he found that his mother was still alive, but sleeping. Leanne was at the bedside, but there was no sign of Lisa. He walked into the small ward and his daughter looked up tearfully, then rose to embrace him. He sat next to her and regarded his mother as he spoke softly to Leanne.

  ‘Have you seen Lisa?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  Henry raised his eyebrows.

  ‘One of the nurses said she wants to speak to you.’

  ‘OK. . how long are you staying for?’

  ‘As long as.’

  ‘Great Christmas Day,’ he said sadly.

  ‘We still haven’t exchanged pressies.’

  ‘No, but we will. Later, eh?’

  Leanne nodded. ‘Jenny’s on her way up from Bristol.’

  ‘Yeah — she texted me. Be great to see her.’

  ‘Yeah, I really miss her. Just hope she doesn’t bring that dink of a hubby with her.’

  Henry chuckled. His eldest daughter’s choice of mate hadn’t gone down too well with Leanne, but Henry knew he was a decent enough chap, just had nothing about him except a dreary job in banking that made him a fortune. What could Jenny possibly see in such a guy?

  ‘Mr Christie?’

  Henry glanced around to see the nurse he’d spoken to the evening before standing by the ward door, the one who’d given him the keys to the empty office. She was back on duty already. She beckoned him and he followed her to her office. She then broached a subject that Henry had been mentally tangling with. A very uncomfortable one.

  He emerged drained and dithery, but put on a brave face for Leanne and said he had to nip out to make a phone call.

  He dialled Lisa, but the call went straight to voicemail, so he left a short message and also dropped her a text, the gist of both being to call him as soon as possible.

  He wondered where she was. No doubt licking her wounds somewhere, or maybe with her new ‘lover’ — and Henry imagined Rik’s speech marks around the word. Henry needed to speak to her sooner rather than later. There was a decision to make here and he didn’t want to shoulder it alone.

  He then called Alison and asked if she was still in the vicinity. She was — but getting ready to head back to the Tawny Owl. She wasn’t planning on opening the pub at lunchtime, but was going to open up from four until eleven, even though it was Christmas Day. The villagers of Kendleton would need some escape from home. She and Henry planned to have dinner together that evening, but that idea had been put on hold.

  ‘Can I catch you before you set off?’

  Henry told her he was back in Blackpool visiting a witness, but if she fancied getting to the drive-through KFC on Preston New Road for a coffee in ten minutes, that would be excellent.

  He dropped back in to see Leanne, who said she was going to stay for a few more hours. He kissed them both and left.

  The coffee served by KFC was pretty good. Henry and Alison had one each and sat at a corner table next to the window. The place was doing healthy business.

  ‘Have you thought about what I asked earlier?’ he said.

  Alison smiled. ‘It was a hell of a big ask.’

  ‘You should’ve seen it from my side of the court.’

  ‘Did you really, really mean it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply, holding her gaze.

  ‘I. . I feel like I’m teasing you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s something you need to think about, I get that. Lots of things to consider, not least of which is the age difference.’

  ‘That’s bollocks and you know it.’

  ‘Whatev-’

  ‘But that’s not all you wanted to talk to me about, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Something concerning your mum?’

  He nodded.

  ‘DNR?’ she guessed.

  He nodded again. Do Not Resuscitate. ‘Jeez,’ he said painfully and rubbed his tired eyes. ‘If it ever becomes an issue, which it will if her heart packs up again — which it will — does she get pounded and electrified again? Or do we let her die with some dignity?’

  He looked past Alison at the main road, feeling stupid as his bottom lip quivered. He inhaled a steadying breath. Alison reached across and laid her fingers on his arm.

  ‘Has your mum ever talked about it at all?’

  ‘No. She thought she’d live for ever. . she might. But what do you think?’

  Alison paused thoughtfully. ‘It might be her time to go, love. Sometimes keeping people alive is done just for the sake of others, not for the good of the person in the hospital bed.’

  ‘Yeah, I mean what the medical staff did was fantastic. I know they don’t want to lose people, but it was so. . degrading, almost.’ He shook his head at the vivid memory of the doctors and nurses working on his mother’s body. ‘Crikey,’ he laughed, ‘it’s a tough one.’

  ‘You need to talk it through properly with a consultant, not a nurse. It’s all about quality of life. . what are the chances of her ever going home and living any sort of a normal existence? If it’s a good chance, then OK. If not. .’

  ‘Yuk,’ Henry said.

  ‘But there is one thing I do know, Henry Christie.’ Her left hand slid down his forearm and covered his hand. He glanced down at it and his eyes widened with shock. He looked sharply up at her. ‘Let’s get through this, however it pans out, and then when the time is right you can whisk me away for a dirty, sorry — romantic — weekend, and then you can ask me to marry you again. Obviously you’ll know the answer already’ — she held up her hand and wriggled the third finger, the triple diamonds twinkling in the ring he had given her — ‘but I still want it done properly. . down on one knee. . ah-ahh — I know you’ve got bad knees, so I’ll help you back up — without anything else for us to worry about but us.’

  ‘Uh. . I take it that’s a yes, then?’ he said thickly.

  FIVE

  Henry dashed back to the hospital to find no change in his mother’s condition. Leanne had settled herself in for the duration, saying she would be fine when he explained he had some work to do, but would stay local, maybe fifteen minutes away tops, if needed.

  He drove through the still quiet streets of Blackpool, down to the promenade, and found a place to park near the motel at which David Peters had last been seen. Henry had considered going straight to visit the dead man’s wife, but decided to start his own investigation from the point at which Peters was last seen alive. Then he would visit the scene where his body had been discover
ed, on the edge of a farm in Poulton-le-Fylde.

  Henry paid his parking fee — nothing was free in Blackpool, even on a public holiday — and walked the short distance to the motel on Talbot Road. He entered and approached the reception desk, not knowing if this was even worth a revisit, a year down the line. But Henry liked to get the feel of a crime, this was the last place Peters had been seen breathing and he wanted to do a mini recreation of events.

  He knew from the file that Peters had been in a room with the ‘other woman’, the lady who managed one of his shops for him. Henry, Rik and DC Tope had had a quick look at the CCTV footage seized from the motel that had captured Peters arriving and leaving the establishment that fateful night. The disk had been in the murder file.

  Peters had arrived alone, paid in cash, given a false name and gone up to the room. This had all been videoed, as had the arrival of the shop manageress twenty minutes later. The two had then indulged in their carnal desires for each other — although, having read the witness statement taken unwillingly from the woman, her recollection had been a bit muted. Peters had departed, about an hour and a half after he’d arrived, and the CCTV showed him skulking out of the motel. The woman stayed for the night, and the camera caught her leaving the following morning.

  So Peters had left and then not been seen until his charred body was discovered a week later in the remains of the chicken coop.

  Henry mulled all this through his mind as he stood at the reception desk waiting for someone to notice him. He flashed his warrant card enticingly.

  A clerk, a young man of mid-European origin, blinked at him with an air of boredom, unconcerned that a cop was at the desk. He was obviously confident that his immigration papers were in order, Henry thought. Henry tried to explain why he was here, but it was either too complicated for the man, whose grasp of English was tenuous at best, or he wasn’t terribly interested. A bit of both, Henry guessed.

  He did, however, understand the words ‘manager’ and ‘I want to see’.

  This turned out to be a smart young lady who was English, and Henry’s explanation to her was received and understood. Henry also recognized her from the CCTV footage as the receptionist who had booked Peters in. And she remembered him, but only because the police had been to see her previously and had taken a statement. Henry had read through it while in his temporary office at the hospital. It was an unremarkable piece of writing, confirming what the CCTV showed and nothing more.

  He asked her if she recalled anything further that might be of use, but she said no.

  The room Peters had used for his little liaison was unoccupied, so Henry asked for the key and went to visit it, even though he realized it wouldn’t be of much use to him, other than to get a sense of a victim’s final hours.

  There was nothing special about it. Just a basic, reasonably comfortable motel room, clear, functional.

  Henry sighed as he looked around.

  The room where Peters had fucked his mistress, then left alive, and never been seen breathing again — although someone would have seen him, not just the killer, because Peters had stepped out of the motel into a bustling Christmas Eve town. But no witnesses had been found, despite a flurry of press activity following the discovery of the body.

  Henry left the room, handed the key back in and exited the motel onto Talbot Road, standing outside the front doors, trying to work out which direction Peters had taken. He had spun a line to his wife that he was out having a pint with a friend that night — a friend who had been tracked down and who denied having had any contact with Peters for over three months and had made no arrangements to meet him that night.

  So, having had a shag, Peters left the hotel and was probably killing time before his return home. It was likely, Henry thought, that he would have headed to a town centre pub to have the said drink and ensure his breath reeked of beer.

  Henry shivered as a blast of cold wind swept in from the very grey-looking Irish Sea, and seemed to wrap him in a shroud. He wondered if it was the ghost of the dead man, the one who had probably stood in this spot a year before, imploring Henry to catch his killer.

  He also wondered if what he was doing was a complete waste of time.

  Still, he went through the motions. He turned right and walked slowly towards the town centre, realizing the futility of his actions. Put simply, Peters could have gone in any direction and found a pub. He could have spent hours in one, or going from one to the next, to the next. There were a lot of hours to play with and no sightings to help pinpoint Peters’ movements.

  Henry walked disconsolately through the streets, shivered again, then made his way back to his car, realizing a couple of things that should have been followed up at the time. First, it was unlikely that the killer was operating alone. From what Henry had seen of Peters in the footage and from post-mortem photographs, he was a biggish guy and for one person to have lifted him from the street was stretching it. He was already convinced that two or more offenders were involved — which gave Henry a bit of heart. Lone killers were notoriously difficult to catch, but more than one equalled weakness. The other thing that Henry wondered about was the name that Peters had used at the motel. Was there any significance in it, or was it just randomly plucked out of nowhere?

  His mind swirled with all these thoughts, but he was enjoying the process. Back in the car, he called Jerry Tope.

  ‘This is one of the best Christmas Days I’ve ever had,’ Tope whinged.

  ‘I’m having a doody, too,’ Henry assured him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. . sorry to hear about your mum, by the way. Rik told me.’

  ‘Thanks. You got anywhere yet?’

  ‘No. . so far the overnight mispers aren’t likely victims. I’m just piecing together what we know about the actual victims. Nothing’s really jumping out yet.’

  Henry asked Tope to consider his thoughts about Peters’ assumed name and the ‘more than one killer’ scenario, and also asked him to do a national check for similar crimes — kidnaps, followed by bodies being shot and dumped and set on fire, particularly around Christmas time.

  Then Henry called Rik Dean to check on his progress on the opposite side of the county. Getting no reply, he left a voice message,

  He decided to visit the scene where Peters’ body had been discovered, thinking dismally that this had all the hallmarks of being a long drawn-out investigation, not made any easier by coming to it late.

  Whenever possible, Henry liked to be in at the death.

  Another person not especially happy to see Henry on Christmas Day was Bernadette Peters. She opened her front door suspiciously to him. He gave her his best lopsided grin (it was getting a little overused on that day), which became a ‘sorry to disturb you’ expression as he introduced himself.

  ‘I’m actually just having my Christmas dinner. . but, hey, what the hell, it’s only an M amp;S meal for one. I can zap it back in the microwave. Come in.’ She stood back and let him walk past her. She was still dressed in her sleeping attire, a long towelling dressing gown tied tightly over her nightdress and a pair of fluffy, tatty slippers.

  Henry thanked her and entered the lounge of the house, which was situated in Blackpool’s north shore on the boundary with Bispham. It was a careworn semi in need of a lot of TLC.

  She had been watching TV with a tray balanced on her knees, on which was her plated-up microwaveable turkey dinner for one. She moved past Henry and picked up the tray, giving him a sidelong glance. ‘I really pushed out the boat this year. . it’s usually a Tesco one.’ She went into the kitchen.

  Henry felt a slight jolt within him. Nothing connected with the investigation, but something that stabbed at his own failings as a man and husband. He had an inner vision of the countless Christmas Days that Kate had been forced to endure without him because of ‘work commitments’. He knew she had often prepared meals of proper turkey, slaved over a hot stove, only for them to go to waste, but at the time it hadn’t meant anything much to Henry, not being home
at Christmas. Kate had always laughed it off. He swallowed dryly.

  And here he was again, working on 25 December. His mouth went tight in self-loathing.

  Mrs Peters emerged from the kitchen and Henry smiled again, noting that under the drabness of her unkempt appearance, she was very attractive. ‘Obviously I don’t know why you’re here, but I guess it’s about David. Can I offer you a brew?’

  ‘That would be great. Tea? Just milk.’

  ‘Coming up. I’ll go back in here’ — she pointed to the kitchen — ‘and you can have a minute or two doing what detectives do — snoop. I don’t mind.’

  Henry chuckled and said, ‘Only on TV.’ But when she disappeared, he snooped, taking in the room, the fixtures and fittings, the framed photographs on the fireplace, one of which was of her and her dead husband. Henry picked it up and studied it, wondering how happy she thought they’d been at the time.

  ‘Don’t know why I keep it there.’

  Henry spun guiltily as she came back in from the kitchen, bearing two mugs of tea, handing one across to him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She screwed up her face and sat on the settee, pondering the question. ‘Dunno,’ she frowned. ‘I thought we were OK-ish. Not ab-fab, if you know what I mean, just pretty standard. Dull, unremarkable, rubbed along all right, mostly, tolerated each other. Clearly he thought I was a boring cow. Two kids — who, incidentally, I haven’t seen for six months — then, Wham!’

  Henry took a seat on an armchair.

  ‘He’s having a sordid affair and then he’s murdered. Double-wham, actually. I’m still not sure I can believe either. He wasn’t exactly a Romeo, but mind you, that bitch isn’t exactly Angelina Jolie — but hey! These things happen.’ She sounded sad, resigned and, despite using the word ‘bitch’, not resentful.

  ‘You think the two are connected, the affair and the murder?’

  ‘It’d make sense, but I doubt it. Her husband isn’t a killer.’