‘Very profound.’
‘But also very true.’
It was a very defensive Superintendent Brooks who faced Karl Donaldson at Rochdale police station. ‘If somebody wants to kill themselves, are determined and devious enough, then no matter what measures you put in place, they’ll do it. They will lie in wait for the opportunity and they’ll top themselves.’
Donaldson glared furiously at him, knowing what he was saying was true, but. . big but. .
‘But,’ Brooks went on, picking up on Donaldson’s thoughts, ‘there is no excuse to let it happen to someone in custody, particularly someone who should have been under constant supervision.’ His head shook as he considered the enormity of the problem. Yes, bad enough if any prisoner does it, but one responsible for the deaths of so many other people was unthinkable. ‘Somehow he managed to secrete a safety razor on him. He removed its blade, then when he got time alone — when we were talking to his solicitor — he stripped off his paper suit, tore it into strips, twisted them like a rope, made a noose and hung himself on the door handle after slitting his wrists.’
‘Double whammy.’
‘I just wish he’d done it elsewhere, the bastard. We’re going to get some real flak for this. Everybody and his dog’ll want a piece of us.’ Brooks looked beleaguered.
‘And not only that, it screws up the investigation. He could have been the direct key to unlocking a whole chain of illegal people smuggling.’ Donaldson’s temper got the better of him and he slammed his fist on to the desk.
A strange, knowing expression came to Brooks’s face. ‘Why are you so bothered, Mr Donaldson? If you are to be believed, you were just an innocent passer-by.’
‘International crime is my remit.’
‘Bollocks! You’ve been really cagey with me and I think I’ve had enough of it. If you were the innocent bystander you claim to be, then it’s time to say goodbye. I’m sorry you were involved in it, but thanks for making a statement. I can well do without you muddying the waters. However, if your involvement is deeper, then I should be knowing.’
They were in Brooks’s office, sitting on opposite sides of the desk, steadily holding each other’s gaze.
‘I made a few phone calls earlier,’ Brooks admitted. He beamed as he revealed, ‘You had a multi-agency team at the Port of Hull yesterday, didn’t you? Please do not continue to duck and dive, Mr Donaldson. I don’t have the time for it. Be straight with me or piss off because I’m up to my neck in shit right now. If you’re worried about confidentiality, don’t be. I’m as honest and reliable as the day is long, and if you’ve got something which will help me, I need to know.’
Donaldson exhaled. ‘OK, I did pull a team together yesterday, but we hit the wrong vehicle. It was a coincidence I was on the motorway when Whitlock got robbed, actually.’
‘His vehicle was the one you should have stopped, isn’t it?’
Donaldson nodded.
‘It’s like getting blood out of a stone, talking to you.’
Donaldson smirked.
‘Can I hazard a guess at something?’
‘Fire away.’
‘You investigate organized crime on the continent of Europe that has ties with US organized crime?’ Donaldson gave a slight shrug. Brooks pushed on. ‘And you were acting on information at Hull, but the information was not quite right, shall we say?’ Donaldson raised his eyebrows. ‘Am I on the right track?’
‘Could be.’
‘But you’re not going to say any more?’
‘Nope.’
‘Why not? Inter-agency cooperation and all that?’
Another smirk crossed Donaldson’s face, this time a very sardonic one.
‘The great myth of modern law enforcement,’ Brooks said. ‘Inter-agency working. . only when it suits, but in most cases, knowledge is power.’
The smirk remained on Donaldson’s face.
‘OK, then.’ Brooks laid his hands flat on his desk. ‘Just tell me one thing. . was it definitely drugs as well as bodies in the lorry?’
The smirk evolved into a smile of confirmation. ‘Millions of pounds worth of coke.’
Brooks’s jaw dropped and his lips opened with a little ‘pop’. ‘Shit!’ he uttered as a scenario dawned on him. ‘Stolen by one gang from another. . gang wars here we come.’
Henry Christie began his policing career in East Lancashire. His first posting as a newly scrubbed bobby off the production line had been to Blackburn — then, as now, the busiest town in the county — closely followed by a move (for manpower reasons he had been told) to the Rossendale Valley, which is where he had really learned to be a cop.
He had attended his first sudden death in Rossendale. It had not been suspicious, just an old lady who had died and not been seen for a few days, nor had she seen her doctor for a few weeks, so there had been the necessity for a post-mortem. This had been carried out in the mortuary situated, appropriately, in the cemetery on Burnley Road, Rawtenstall.
The memories of that first PM were still vivid in his mind, even after all these years. It had been such a big thing: the journey following the hearse from the woman’s home to the morgue, assisting the undertakers to heave the very large body from vehicle to gurney to slab, undressing her ready for the examination; then Henry’s sergeant — in collusion with the pathologist — closed all the doors and windows and turned the heat up so the stench of death would, hopefully, become unbearable and the young officer — PC Christie — would give them some amusement by lurching out and hurling up.
The tyro cop had taken it in his stride. He hated the smell of death, the way it clung to nasal hairs, grabbed and did not let go of clothing, but he had never once been sick.
Ahh, the good old days, Henry thought. That sort of treatment of police probationers these days would probably end up in an employment tribunal.
And now, suitably masked and gowned, he was back at that mortuary, looking at the remnants of a body that had been burned beyond all recognition. It was a shrivelled, blackened mess, parts of it charred away like paper, other parts burned away completely — such as the face. The skin and muscle tissue had been well and truly razed, leaving a burned-black skull. Henry walked slowly round the mortuary slab, taking his time, taking in everything as it was because soon, except for the still photographs and video footage of the PM, very little would be left of this body once the pathologist got his knife into it.
A slightly woozy Jane Roscoe, also masked and gowned, sat in the corner of the room, swallowing heavily, watching the activity: the CSI recording everything, the pathologist carefully preparing his tools, the mortuary assistant doing everything else. . and Henry on the prowl. His eyes watching, studying, his brain clicking over, learning.
The odour of burned flesh was overpowering here, despite the windows being opened. Roscoe was feeling quite unwell.
Henry circled and reached the pathologist who, once again, was Dr Baines.
Roscoe also knew Baines, had worked closely with him previously. He was probably the most popular Home Office pathologist on the rota and always worked well with the police, eager to share his knowledge. He and Henry were in a mini-scrum, muttering under their breaths into each other’s ears with muffled sounds from behind their surgical masks. Roscoe strained to hear, but could not quite make out a thing. She assumed they were discussing the body.
Wrong.
‘I see that bonny, if homely, Mrs Roscoe is here,’ Baines noted.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You still plating her?’
‘What?’
‘Y’know — dinner-plating her.’
‘Eh?’
‘Y’know. .’ Baines pretended to hold a dinner plate between his hands, which he pretended to lick, making a slurping noise. ‘Gravy off a plate?’
Henry groaned at the less than subtle reference to cunnilingus. ‘Sometimes you make me sick, Doc.’