He had watched Gill for a while. Learned about him and his habits. Saw his occasional friend. Saw where he lived and had come to the conclusion that he could easily become David Gill whenever the situation required. He could pull Gill on like an overcoat and that would offer him a veneer of protection should he ever get caught — which was something he never intended to happen.
He had befriended Gill, something that had not taken long once Gill’s natural reluctance had been broken down. And then he had killed him and frozen the body.
And from that day on he came to believe that it was David Gill who had committed all the murders. It was Gill, not him, who came out of the dark and actually carried them out. But now Gill’s body had been discovered. Unfortunate. He would have to find some other poor, sad soul who could be bought for the price of a pint and then disposed of.
But before any of that could happen, two things had to be sorted out.
He had decided Jane Roscoe had lived long enough. He was getting tired of her now. He would just kill her quickly, nothing flashy, just slash her to pieces in a frenzy and enjoy it for what it was. And secondly he had to do the thing that would show the world that the backlash had truly started: kill the wife of the prime minister.
‘Sorry, boss, I was miles away,’ PC John Taylor said. He was sitting in the report-writing room. He looked up at Henry Christie.
‘I said, how are you feeling?’
‘Oh, much better.’
Henry hovered by the doorway.
‘Just redoing my statement from last night. Want to get it right,’ Taylor explained.
‘Good. I just wanted to ask you something.’
‘Go ahead.’
Henry waved the note Taylor had left him about the neighbourhood watch co-ordinator. ‘I know you got no reply from that neighbourhood watch co-ordinator. It says one of the neighbours told you he’d gone on holiday, didn’t say where to.’
‘That’s right,’ Taylor nodded.
‘Did you find out when he was coming back?’
‘Er. . next week sometime. . Tuesday, I think.’ Taylor seemed flustered.
‘Can you give me the name of the neighbour?’
Taylor thought for a moment. ‘No, don’t recall it,’ he said worriedly.
‘Where does he live?’
Taylor scratched his head. ‘Next door but one — no, two.’
Henry sighed. ‘Would you be able to take me there? One way or another I need to identify this military man who Jane spoke to. It’s just possible the neighbourhood watch co-ordinator might know who he is if he’s a local character, or it could even be the man himself — after all, the co-ordinator is called Captain Blackthorn. But, whoever it is, I need to get hold of him. He’s the key to this and the sooner I see him the better.’ Henry dangled a set of car keys between his fingers. ‘I’ll drive. You show me which house it is. If we can’t bottom it tonight, we’re going to have to go house to house in the morning, major style.’
Taylor looked rather peeved to be interrupted from his paper work.
They drove silently to South Shore. Taylor sat primly with his hands clasped between his thighs, slightly distracted.
‘How’s things?’ Henry asked.
‘OK.’ Nothing more was forthcoming.
‘What’s your background?’ Henry asked, more to keep the conversation going than anything. He found Taylor quite difficult to connect with. He had seen him around over the years but never really spoken to him at all because Henry had been so CID-focused and Taylor had been in uniform. It wasn’t unusual not to know someone at Blackpool police station with it being so large.
‘University of Salford 1980, then into the police. The rest is history.’
‘What degree?’
‘Psychology.’
‘Interesting delving into people’s minds. Never got any qualifications myself. Bone idle, that way. Too interested in girls and getting a job.’
Taylor smirked.
They reached Winston Road.
‘The neighbourhood watch co-ordinator is that one,’ Henry stated, peering at the numbers on the doors, shining his torch out of the car window at them. ‘Which way did you go to see this neighbour, up or down?’
‘Down, I think. That one there I think.’
Henry stopped. ‘Can you just hand me my radio?’ He had tossed it into the passenger footwell at the start of the journey. Taylor reached down and fumbled in the dark, dropping it once, then handing it to Henry who got out of the car saying, ‘This one, you reckon?’ pointing to the house.
Taylor nodded.
‘Come on then.’ Henry walked across the pavement to the front gate of the house, went through and up the steps to the door. It was a house divided into flats with six doorbells in the wall next to the front door. ‘Who did you speak to?’ Henry asked. There was no reply from Taylor, who he expected would be right behind him. Instead the officer was standing by the gate, looking sheepish. ‘Which one did you speak to?’ Henry raised his voice, shining his torch on the cluster of doorbells.
‘I’m trying to remember,’ he said feebly.
Henry felt a gush of impatience and anger well up. He came back down the steps, face to face with the PC, who was actually as tall as him and quite a bit broader. ‘This is a murder inquiry and I’m just about getting pig sick with you, PC Taylor. You volunteered to do this job for me, to come and see the co-ordinator, and as far as I can see you’ve made a complete balls of it.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ he gulped.
Henry grabbed his shoulder and propelled him up the stairs to look at the names on the doorbells. ‘Which one was it?’ Henry demanded.
‘I can’t remember,’ he wailed.
‘Right, in that case I’m going to have to apply a process of elimination here and ring every one of the fuckers, aren’t I?’
Taylor’s shoulders drooped. He looked ready to cry.
‘You did actually go and knock on the co-ordinator’s door?’ Henry asked suspiciously.
‘Yes I did,’ Taylor came back defiantly. ‘And he wasn’t in.’
‘And you did visit a neighbour?’
Taylor’s mouth pursed. He looked down at his feet. ‘No,’ he mumbled.
‘Fuck-shit!’ Henry shouted, turning on him. He grabbed hold of his blouson and slammed him up against the front door of the house. ‘How dare you?’ Henry said through gritted teeth. ‘How dare you fuck-up and tell me a lie? One of our officers has been murdered by a fucking maniac and another is missing, probably dead too — and you tell a fucking lie!’ Henry let go of him like he was flicking shit off his fingers. ‘I don’t know what your game is, pal,’ he growled, ‘but when this is over I’m gonna pin your hide to Blackpool Tower, and now, just for my own piece of mind, I’m going to knock on the door of the neighbourhood watch guy because I’m not sure I believe you even did that!’
He trotted down the steps and marched down the street to the relevant address, absolutely boiling over with rage, vowing that Taylor would lose his job if it was the last thing he did.
Up the steps, putting his thumb on all the doorbells until some irritated resident buzzed open the front door. That the door opened did not surprise Henry, it was a tactic police officers often used to gain entry to multi-occupancy premises. He stepped into the hallway.
He knew Captain Blackthorn’s flat was number one, the first one on the right on the ground floor. He knocked hard on the door. Knocked and knocked. There was no reply. Maybe Taylor had been telling the truth. He swivelled away in frustration, his hand going for the door knob in a gesture of despair, not expecting it to open, but it did. The door swung open — creepily — with a long moan of the hinges.
PC Taylor came through the front door of the building and Henry looked at him before pushing the flat door open fully. The short hallway was unlit. Henry called out, ‘Captain Blackthorn. It’s the police. May we come in, sir?’