Panting and sweating, Henry and Kate surveyed their handiwork.
‘I’ve never seen him drunk before,’ Kate said. She bent down and eased his shoes off.
‘I have, but for a different reason.’ Henry attempted to get Donaldson’s jacket off him, but could not manipulate his arms. Eventually he gave up.
‘He’ll be OK,’ Kate assured him. ‘How much has he had?’
‘Not too much. He’s just not used to it.’
‘So what’s up with him?’
Henry shrugged. ‘I think that to say he’s had a bad day is an understatement.’ He had no desire to tell Kate exactly what his friend had experienced over the last twenty-four hours. ‘I need to go into Blackpool. There’s someone come in to see me, says they have some vital information about something.’ He raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. ‘Not sure how long I’ll be. Not long, I hope. I could do with a good night’s sleep.’
Kate touched Henry’s face with the tips of her fingers, a tender, loving gesture. She tiptoed up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You look tired, sweetheart.’
Henry took hold of her and kissed her hard on the mouth, letting his lips and tongue linger. She pushed herself into him and their mouths crashed together, but the moment of passion was destroyed irrevocably by one of the loudest and longest and perhaps most perfect farts either of them had ever heard, which emitted from the arse of the sleeping drunk.
‘Middle C,’ Henry said. In a fit of giggles the pair backed out of the room and closed the door behind them. ‘Hope you have a good supply of air freshener,’ he added.
Sweetman was standing and pacing the conference room like some executive on a creative roll, banging a fist into the palm of his hand, making points, spinning on his heels as he tested his hypothesis on his workers.
‘Just think back — two and a half, three years. What was happening to us?’
‘We were establishing ourselves across the city,’ Grant ventured. ‘We set up the contract with the spic.’
Sweetman pointed, nodded.
‘And we had a whole lot of trouble with the niggers in Stockport,’ said Teddy Bear Jackman. ‘Soon sorted them out, though.’
‘Go on,’ the boss urged.
‘We dealt very firmly with a couple of them.’
Sweetman laughed. ‘Yep, we did.’
‘We professionalized the organization,’ Grant suggested.
‘And as a result of that, what happened?’
All three faces remained blank. Sweetman closed his eyes despairingly, opened them and said, ‘We got our best ever supplier, yeah, and we built up a business which stretched from here to Birmingham and across the hills to Sheffield. . yeah?’ he finished hopefully.
They all nodded enthusiastically.
‘We got the contact, we got the goods, we crapped on the opposition, we forged new links, we set up good structures with firewalls and we made real money. . yeah?’
More enthusiastic nods.
‘So who came into our lives?’
‘Mendoza,’ blurted Jackman.
Sweetman glared hard at the man. ‘No names,’ he warned him. ‘No names. . never trust that anywhere could be safe unless you can put your hand on your heart and say it is.’ He waved his hands at the conference room. ‘It’s two years since we’ve been in here, so you never know. . OK, who else?’
Blankness returned to their faces.
‘How much heat did we start to get from the cops?’
‘A lot,’ Cromer ventured.
‘Too much,’ Sweetman corrected him. ‘Who’s the guy that’s been harassing me all the time?’ He held up a finger to stop them from replying, even though he was beginning to think that any reply would be good. So far it had been like trying to get blood from millstone grit. ‘Do we now know who we’re talking about?’
They nodded unsurely, but guessed he was referring to Detective Superintendent Carl Easton.
‘So why has he had a vendetta against me for the last two years?’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t like you.’
‘Or perhaps he had another reason? Perhaps it’s not personal, perhaps it’s business. Y’know, c’mon, let’s think outside the box here. I’m put into bat for a crime I definitely did not commit, one you all know I didn’t commit, which he knows I didn’t commit. . why? What’s his agenda? A cop with a grudge? OK, they exist, but it’s going a bit far, don’t you think?’ Sweetman’s eyes narrowed. ‘So I ask again — why?’
‘Perhaps we should ask him ourselves,’ Teddy Bear said. All eyes turned to him. ‘I could put the squeeze on him. He’d chat then.’
‘That,’ said Sweetman, ‘could be a bloody good idea.’
‘Hang on, hang on,’ Grant cut in, dissatisfied with this thinking. ‘Is he not just a cop who wants to be the one that catches the big bad wolf? Y’know — career aspirations. You’re not suggesting he stole your consignment, are you? That’s taking it a bit far, isn’t it?’
Sweetman considered this, then relented. ‘Yeah, I suppose you could be right.’ He sighed, scratched his head. ‘He’s just a mean bastard prepared to break the rules for a big result, nothing more. . you’re probably spot on there. Maybe my thinking’s skewed because I hate the twat so much. It’s a bit much to think he’s after my business, isn’t it?’
* * *
If he was honest, Henry Christie would say that he could have done without traipsing into Blackpool police station at that ungodly hour on the strength of some half-baked message or other. He would very much have liked to crawl into bed with Kate, clamber all over her for a while, then get some sleep and hope there would be no call-out during the night.
However, he was on-call, no escaping that. Blackpool nick was only a few miles away and he fully intended to fob off the person and head back home ASAP to a warm bed.
It took him less than ten minutes to get to the station. He parked in the basement car park, making his way into the multi-storey building past the entrance to the custody office. There was a lot of noise emanating from there. He took the stairs to the ground floor and went to the back office of the enquiry desk where the front counter clerk was closing down for the night: it was midnight and, like most stations in the county, the enquiry desk closed down at that time.
Henry did not know the woman clerk, so he introduced himself.
‘Oh, yeah,’ she said to his query, ‘I’ve put her in the waiting room.’
Henry thanked her, sauntered to one of the rooms just off the public foyer and walked in.
His heart literally sank in his chest. He felt it drop to the floor, like a lift hitting the basement. His throat dried instantly and he found it hard to get the words out of his mouth, even though they were only short ones.
‘Tara,’ he said. ‘Hi.’
Ten
The two uniformed constables stared impassively at each other. It was a stand-off, neither of them wanting to give way, rather like Robin Hood and Little John.
There was little to choose between the two officers. They had both been patrol constables all their service and their uniforms were very similar, other than for the insignia they bore. The crest on one of them proclaimed him to be a member of Lancashire Constabulary, whilst the crest on the other identified him as a serving officer of Greater Manchester Police.
Although there was nothing to choose from them in this respect, there was, literally, something between them, and this ‘something’ was the cause of their disagreement, their bone of contention.
‘Definitely not on us,’ the GMP officer stated, shaking his head whilst pouting.