He leaned on the car and waited.
‘Hello, Henry,’ she panted, slowing up as she reached him. He nodded, now heartily sick of his interactions with her over the last few weeks. It was like having a Jack Russell terrier attached to his trouser leg. Nor did it help the situation that she and Henry had been lovers in the past and both had a bitter aftertaste of the affair in their mouths. ‘I’ve just spoken to Dave Anger.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘He said you were going on a job down in the Valley.’ By ‘Valley’ she was referring to the Rossendale Valley, but everyone in the Constabulary knew it as the ‘Valley’. A posting that often struck fear into most bobbies’ hearts.
‘He was right.’ Henry braced himself, knowing what was coming.
‘Said I should tag along with you.’
‘That’s nice. As a chaperone?’
‘No, your assistant.’
Henry’s mouth distorted and morphed into a sneer. He shook his head and opened the driver’s door. ‘You’d better get in,’ he said with resignation, knowing he would be powerless to fight the decision. Under his breath he mouthed the word, ‘Fuck’ and his lips twisted grotesquely as his face took on the expression which, in Lancashire, would have been described as ‘like a bulldog licking the piss off a nettle.’
They drove in silence for the first part of the journey, Henry at the wheel of his Mondeo, acutely aware of Jane Roscoe’s presence, trying to concentrate fully on the road, yet desperate to glance at her. He was certain she was eyeing him surreptitiously. The tension between them was almost like a living, breathing thing, could be felt, could be touched. Like a pair of lungs being pumped up, it was almost ready to explode.
In the end it was Henry who broke. He could stand it no longer.
As the car accelerated on to the M65, he blurted, ‘OK, so what’s the bottom line here?’
There was a beat of silence as Roscoe considered the question, then came back, ‘Why Henry, whatever do you mean?’
‘I mean — what are you doing here? Why are you here? Why are you accompanying me to this job? Are you harassing me, or what?’
‘Henry! Questions, questions, questions,’ she tutted, then sniffed. ‘Superintendent Anger thought this would be an interesting case for me. He wants me on the SIO team, so he thought I should go and “sit by Nellie” as they say, and watch a master detective at work.’
Henry grunted. ‘It might not even be on our patch.’
‘But if it is. .’
‘I think we’ve worked closely enough together in the past, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, well, this is on a professional basis, not clouded by any personal agenda. As we are no longer “seeing” each other’ — here Roscoe tweaked the first and second fingers of each hand to indicate speech marks — ‘I’m just happy to learn.’ She smiled.
‘Mm,’ Henry murmured doubtfully. ‘How is the investigation going?’ he asked, referring to the Tara Wickson debacle. ‘You still not happy with my version of events?’
‘Not remotely. . something just doesn’t sit right with me.’ She and Henry then did look at each other, eye to eye. Henry felt a cold chill ripple through his heart and guts as he thought, Shit, she might get me here if I’m not careful. . tenacious bitch.
‘Still,’ Roscoe continued, ‘I’ll keep digging.’
Henry looked back at the road again, grim-faced. At least the only living witness to the murder he had covered up was Tara Wickson. The other people present were now dead and gone. Henry took a crumb of comfort from that, but not a big one: Tara was still a wild card and he was not sure which way she would fall, especially now that the full inquest was looming.
‘You’re woofing up the wrong tree,’ Henry said, trying to sound confident. ‘You’re looking for something that isn’t there.’
‘Am I?’ Roscoe said. ‘Did you know Tara Wickson’s back in the country?’
‘Yes. . no,’ Henry said quickly. Fuck, he thought again.
Roscoe sniggered. ‘Seen her, have you?’
And it was on that question that Henry closed his mouth and said no more on that subject because he wondered whether Roscoe was wired up to record the conversation. His mind, however, returned to the early hours of the morning, when he had, indeed, seen Tara Wickson.
‘He’s in with the duty solicitor,’ the detective superintendent said to Karl Donaldson. They were seated in the canteen at Rochdale police station facing each other over a coffee. Donaldson was feeling a little better, but not much. His head still felt hollow and achy. The superintendent’s name was Brooks. He was a member of GMP’s SIO team and had been drafted in to run the inquiry into the deaths of the illegal immigrants. He was looking very stressed about the whole thing. He shook his head. ‘As you can appreciate, this is a mega-job. The press are all over it, the immigration service — God love ’em, the useless bastards — Customs and Excise, the Home Office, the local MP, you and every bugger else and his dog and I’ve got to keep them all sweet. The hospital mortuary is full to bursting with dead bodies, none of which have any ID on them. . we think they could be from Albania, but who knows? It’s a mess,’ he admitted. ‘Our chief constable is very twitchy about it, as you would expect. He wants to know everything. Our ACC Ops is running the show, but I’m the one doing the donkey work.’ He gave an imitation of a silent scream, shook his head and blew out his cheeks. ‘And you, where do you come into all this, Mr Donaldson? Other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. . which I’m having trouble buying, by the way.’
Donaldson filled him in with as much as he felt he needed to know, which wasn’t much, but when he had finished, Brooks said, ‘What’s your view on how we progress this?’
The American glanced briefly at the townscape of Rochdale, gathering his thoughts. ‘Depends on how deep, long or complicated you want it all to be. The easy thing is to charge the driver with the appropriate offences, try to ID the bodies and pretty much leave it at that. Just another sad tale of illegal immigrants.’
‘Or?’
‘Or do your job. Go deeper. Spend time and resources on ensuring the bodies get identified — and that will cost a lot of money in man hours — interview relatives, friends, trace their journeys back to source and start identifying the people behind this whole sorry mess. . whilst at the same time trying to track down the guys who robbed the driver. My guess is that both lines of inquiry will intermesh somewhere along the way.’
Brooks eyed Donaldson. ‘What do you think was stolen from the driver?’ The two men stared knowingly at each other. ‘Drugs?’ Brooks ventured.
Donaldson shrugged slowly. ‘Who am I to say? But whatever you choose to do, I would like to speak to the driver, if that is possible.’
‘Why?’
‘Purely from an intelligence point of view,’ Donaldson parried.
Brooks nodded sagely. He was a very experienced detective and reading people was his game. ‘So you were at the scene purely by accident?’ Donaldson nodded. ‘An FBI legal attache on the scene purely by accident — when twenty bodies turn up and a robbery takes place. . mmm. . let me think about that one.’ He put his chin on his thumb and gazed at the ceiling. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘There always seems to be a doctor or nurse on the scene on a road accident, doesn’t there? Same sort of thing.’
‘Run it by me again — why do you want to see the driver?’
‘Intelligence-gathering. . the FBI are heavily involved in investigating human trafficking.’
‘I’ll let you speak to the driver just so long as the interview is fully recorded and a member of my team is present. . how does that grab you?’