His thin torch beam shone at the first door he came to in the hall. Number 1. Next was number 2 and the one at the far end of the hall was 2A. Taylor had crept down the hall behind him. When Henry turned after checking the number on the last door, he bumped into Taylor. Both nearly fell into a tangled heap of manhood on the sticky carpet.
‘Hell fire!’ exclaimed Henry, only just keeping his voice down.
‘Sorry.’
Shaking his head angrily and muttering, Henry brushed past the constable to the foot of the stairs. He peered up into the darkness, beckoned Taylor to follow — not too close this time — and went up, using his torch intermittently until both of them were on the first-floor landing.
Henry stood still, his heart pulsating with excitement. He was enjoying himself, having forgotten how much fun policing could be. He put a finger to his lips and added a ‘Shh’ just in case Taylor didn’t understand the gesture. Too late: both their radios blared out a distorted message with plenty of static. They turned them off immediately and waited for the inhabitants to start coming out of the woodwork like forest animals in the night.
No one came.
The officers listened. Someone, somewhere, was snoring loudly. Music was coming from one of the flats. Henry cocked his ear to it, concentrated — it was barely audible, but he recognised the riff with a flush of pleasure: The Rolling Stones, ‘Midnight Rambler’. From the floor above he heard footsteps and another unmistakable sound, a couple having sex. Henry adjusted his hearing to listen, a quirky smile at Taylor who grinned back with embarrassment. Henry quickly realised the couple consisted of two men.
‘All human life is here,’ he whispered.
But, all in all, nothing untoward was happening. Henry was as certain as he could be that their entry to the building had not been clocked.
The nearest door was number 5. Down the corridor to 4, then 3, the one they were interested in. Both officers made silent progress even though the carpet was worn through to the boards in places.
Outside number 3 Henry realised this was where the music was coming from, which was good — being such a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the Stones himself would give him some common ground with Joey Costain, something to talk about, to break the ice, unless Henry had to break Joey’s head first. ‘Midnight Rambler’ climaxed and ended with Jagger threatening to ram a knife down someone’s throat. If the track was on the Let It Bleed album, Henry expected to hear ‘You Got the Silver’ next, instead, ‘Midnight Rambler’ began again, the haunting Keith Richards’ riff filtering out through the door.
Without knocking, Henry tried the door handle. It opened. He turned to Taylor, winked, and pushed the door open slightly. No lights on inside the flat. Henry paused on the threshold. His senses were now razor sharp. Expect the worst: an attack; an escape — or for this not to be Joey Costain’s flat.
The music was louder with the door open. It was an insistent, urgent riff. Henry knocked gently on the door, almost making no sound with his knuckles, his mind concocting a fabricated story in case Joey wasn’t here and someone else was.
‘Hello,’ he whispered into the flat, not loud enough for anyone to hear. He twitched his head to Taylor who had a look of abject horror on his face.
‘Can you do this, sir?’ he gasped. ‘What about the Police and Criminal Evidence Act?’
‘Didn’t you know — we’re in the police. We can do anything.’ The smile he gave Taylor was mischievous in the extreme. ‘We’re entering premises under section one of the Ways and Means Act. Stick with me. We’ll be OK.’
Taylor remained unconvinced.
The front door opened into a short hallway with two doors off it. One on the right, the other directly in front. No signs of lights under either door. Henry opened the one on the right and put his head and torch round. It was a poky, smelly, toilet and bathroom. He flicked the torch beam round to confirm it was empty, populated only by the putrid smell of urine and shit. Not nice.
He closed the door and walked down the hall. His right hand withdrew his side-handled baton.
Behind him, Taylor followed suit.
Henry extended his baton with a crack as did Taylor, although it took him two tries to extend his because he was shaking so much.
Henry was positive this door would lead into the living room, kitchen and bedroom all rolled into one. Something the upper class would call a pied-a-terre and would cost a quarter of a million in London, but because it was in Blackpool, it was what Henry would call a shit-hole.
The music played on relentlessly. Mick Jagger sang with a sinister malevolence never achieved since. Henry’s guts churned at the words of the song which had been inspired by the antics of the Boston Strangler.
Henry went for the direct approach, knocked loudly on the door, pushed it open and announced, ‘This is the police. We’re looking for Joey Costain.’ The door swung open to reveal another room in blackness. Curtains closed. No light from outside filtering through at all.
A strange smell grappled with Henry’s nasal passage, making him wince. He recognised it immediately. Death. Sweet and sickly.
Without stepping into the room, Henry leaned forward and located the light switch by the door. He touched it with his baton tip and knocked it down.
The light produced by the single, swinging, unshaded bulb, hanging limply from a wire in the centre of the ceiling was not dramatic, but curiously restrained. It did not have to be bright; in fact, a powerful light would probably have reduced the impact of what it revealed. The low wattage produced a dull, grainy light which cast grey-to-black shadows across the tableau — and the effect was terrifying.
Henry whistled, then covered his nose and mouth with his hand. ‘At least we now know why Joey didn’t answer his bail.’
Behind him, PC Taylor stood on tiptoes, eager to get a glimpse of the room, then wished he had not bothered. As soon as he realised what his eyes were seeing, his legs turned jelly-weak and folded underneath him. He keeled over as the blood left his brain and he hit the floor. Hard.
Henry did not move, even with Taylor wrapped around his ankles, groaning as he came round.
‘Feel sick,’ Taylor said, retching.
‘Again? Well don’t do it on my shoes, do it in the hall.’
Taylor got onto all fours and crawled down the hall where he vomited what was left of his stomach contents — a surprising amount since he had already thrown up not long before at the hospital.
Henry gulped. Joey Costain lay dead in the flat. Butchered. Mutilated. Torn to shreds. Ripped open from his pubes to his neck, his insides turned outside, intestines wrapped around his neck like a garland. His hands were bound together by parcel tape, as were his ankles and lower legs. He was lying on the floor, on a rug, in the centre of the room. Dark gobs of blood were everywhere, like puddles of tar on the carpet. The walls were splashed and smeared with the stuff.
Henry tore his eyes away from the body, scanning the room, letting them take in everything they could. He would not be setting foot any further into the room for fear of destroying evidence. He dreaded to think how much he might already have spoiled by actually coming into the flat. His gaze moved across the walls. Something registered. He realised there were words there, written on the wall in blood. He squinted and shone his torch on them. They read: ‘Gypsy scum.’
He switched the torch off. Mick Jagger on the Boston Strangler: ‘He don’t give a hoot or a warning.’
Eleven
Tuesday morning was when the party conference really kicked into gear, good style. It was the day Blackpool was deluged by thousands of politicians, would-be politicians, spin-doctors, hangers-on and everyone and anyone else who thought they had any remote connection with the political bandwagon. The prime minister was expected to arrive in the resort today with his controversial wife; they would show their faces at conference, then disappear until Wednesday afternoon and then stay until the conference ended on Friday after what the prime minister hoped would be a rousing, motivational speech, the quality of which would be measured by the length of the ovation.