Baines clambered to his feet when he saw Henry approaching.
‘Henry old boy.’ He beamed and looked down at the uniform. ‘You don’t half look strange,’ he commented.
Henry did a fashion-model twirl in his size ten Doc Martens. ‘Like it?’
Jan, the technician, had a twinkle in her eyes.
‘Naah,’ said Baines, ‘doesn’t suit you at all.’
‘Actually I like it,’ Jan said in a rather unsettling way. ‘Makes you look sexy. I like a man in uniform,’ she admitted.
Henry swallowed nervously. ‘Thanks, Jan.’
She licked her lips provocatively and Henry shuddered inwardly. He knew she was single after a short, disastrous marriage and she was on the look-out, rather like a black widow. Henry got quickly back on track.
‘Doc, I think you’re waiting for Jane Roscoe to land?’
‘I am. Been waiting ages.’ He glanced at the wall clock. ‘Well over an hour now. She said she had a quick enquiry to make and would be along asap. Bad form if you ask me. Time is money, as they say.’
Henry knew just how much Baines claimed for call-outs. A small fortune.
‘I agree,’ he said, ‘but from what I know of her, she’s the sort who wouldn’t let you down without a very sound reason.’
‘Cause for concern, uh?’ Baines said quickly.
Henry shrugged. ‘Unusual, that’s all at the moment. We can’t make contact with her or the DS she’s with.’ He crossed to a desk in the corner of the room and picked up the phone. He dialled the station, feeling very uneasy. He ascertained that communications had tried to call both Roscoe and Evans on their mobile phones without success, paging them had got no response either. What made Henry’s flesh creep even more was that their cars had now been found parked up near to Joey Costain’s flat. Henry thanked the operator and hung up slowly.
Baines and Jan watched him carefully with concerned looks.
‘The family need to be informed of this death,’ Baines said, sliding in some extra information. ‘Perhaps she’s with them. I believe they can be a handful when riled.’
‘You could be right, although her and DS Evans’ cars are still parked near to Joey’s flat in South Shore. I can’t see them having walked two miles up to Shoreside. The whole thing seems out of character. I know Mark Evans well. He’s dead reliable.’ That unwelcome feeling in the pit of his guts was starting. ‘What did Jane say when she last saw you?’ he asked Baines.
‘That she was following something up. She’d been approached by an oldish, military-looking man in the street and been to see him. Seems he gave her some useful information. She didn’t share it with me, but she looked pretty excited by whatever it was.’
‘Who was the old guy?’
‘I’m sorry, Henry, I don’t know.’ Baines looked wounded. ‘He was seventy-odd, maybe, military bearing as I said, well dressed, walked with the aid of a stick.’
‘Right,’ said Henry, ‘do you mind hanging on here for a while longer? We’ll try to get hold of Jane and Mark and I’ll go to see the Costain family and do the dirty deed. I’ll get one of them down here to ID Joey, then you can get on with the PM. I’ll also ensure a detective comes and stays for the PM, and I’ll get scenes of crime.’ Henry nodded sharply to them both.
‘Be as quick as you can. I’ve already done one murder victim for you today.’
‘Oh, the girl, Geri Porter? Suffocated?’
Baines nodded. ‘She also had an interesting bump on her head, caused some time before death, which I don’t know what to make of.’
And for the first time Henry thought, Now what a coincidence. Two people closely linked to a right-wing extremist organisation murdered within a short time of each other. Some coincidence, even though on the face of it their deaths seemed unrelated. Geri Porter could have been killed because she knew too much. She was expendable. But what about Joey Costain? Was he expendable too? Joey the gypsy. What was a gypsy doing being a member of Hellfire Dawn?
‘Henry! You went blank for a moment,’ Baines observed.
‘Far from it, far from it,’ he said. ‘See you soon.’ He hurried out of the mortuary, already transmitting instructions down his radio.
‘Get in,’ Henry shouted to Byrne through the driver’s door window as he screeched the patrol car to a halt on Richardson Street at the back of the police station. Byrne almost slid across the bonnet of the Astra, jumped in and sank down into the tired seat springs. Henry executed a wild three-point turn as quickly as he could, wrestling with the powerless steering. He gunned the clapped-out motor back down the street.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The humble Costain household.’
‘Nice.’
At the Berlin Hotel, Vince Bellamy was talking to one of the Hellfire Dawn committee members, a man called Martin Franklands. He had been a steady member of the organisation for about two years. He helped sort out the money side of things and dealt with day-to-day administration matters for them. The two men were standing in the foyer of the hotel. Bellamy handed Franklands a mobile phone.
‘Sorry to ask you to do this. I know it’s a bit of a pisser, but can you get this phone to Don Longton out by North Pier. He’s near the War Memorial. He’s just phoned in from a public call box to say his own phone’s battery is dead. He needs a charged phone.’
‘Sure, anything to help,’ Franklands said, slipping the phone into a back pocket. He grabbed his donkey jacket from a coat stand. He knew Don Longton was one of the many observers round the town, reporting on police movements and anything else of interest to the hotel control room. Batteries were always crashing, needing to be replaced.
‘Thanks, Martin, see you soon.’
Franklands trotted out and down the hotel steps, glad of the break and the opportunity to get some fresh air. He turned out of sight of the hotel, onto the promenade.
Bellamy watched him go. He unhitched his own mobile phone from his belt and called one of the listed numbers.
‘Don?’
‘Yep.’
‘He’s on his way.’
‘Thanks.’
Bellamy went back to his office.
‘Anything from Jane Roscoe?’ Henry asked Byrne, just in case he had missed something.
Byrne shook his head.
Henry hit the steering wheel with frustration. ‘I suppose she could be up at the Costains, but to remain out of contact for so long is worrying.’
‘Just a bit,’ Byrne agreed. ‘Is that why we’re going there?’
‘One of the reasons, just to check they haven’t beaten the crap out of her and Mark, but I don’t think they would. The other reason is to tell them about Joey Costain, if Jane hasn’t told them already, and the next reason is to quell any possibility of a riot.’
‘Oh?’ Byrne twisted in his seat. ‘And how do you propose to do that, boss?’
‘Community policing at its best and most basic,’ Henry said mysteriously.
The chill on the promenade was bitter and came through the fabric of Martin Franklands’ donkey jacket. The wide paved area between road and sea was virtually deserted. A tram trundled past, lit up brightly, the people inside looking warm and protected.
To his left, Franklands could hear the sea, a sound drowned out as he walked past the entrance to north pier which was basically an amusement arcade. Loud music pumped out, but there were very few punters inside playing the machines. Franklands walked on to the war memorial, leaving the sound of the music behind, once more picking up that of the sea less than twenty metres away.
There was a dark figure lurking by the memorial where the promenade dropped into an incline behind the Metropole buildings, out of sight of the road. Even without seeing the man’s face, Franklands knew the guy was Don Longton, a fellow with whom he had struck up a passably decent relationship over the past few months. Longton was standing in the shadow cast by the memorial, his face completely obscured.