‘The Long Good Friday,’ Grant offered.
‘Yeah — that one. I think that’s what I’ll have to do, hang ’em upside down.’
Grant coughed nervously.
‘What’s that for?’ Sweetman demanded savagely.
‘Not a good idea, boss. Recriminations afterwards.’
Sweetman was on Grant before he knew what was happening. He spun fast and grabbed the solicitor’s face between the fingers of his right hand, squeezing the man’s face, digging his nails into the soft skin of his cheeks, puckering his mouth, distorting it and making him whimper fearfully, his eyes almost popping out of his skull.
‘Never, ever, question my decisions,’ he whispered into Grant’s face. He was almost nose to nose with the solicitor, his own eyes glaring and wide. He let go with a flick, stood up and started to pace the room again, trying to control his breathing. Grant rubbed his face, which now bore the deep, half-moon-shaped marks of five fingernails. ‘But maybe you’re right,’ Sweetman conceded. ‘It wouldn’t do to upset them all at once, would it?’ It was a rhetorical question, made even more so by the reluctance of anyone else in the room to answer it.
Having composed himself, Grant spoke hesitantly. ‘What about your thoughts on Superintendent Easton?’
Sweetman sneered derisively. ‘Hm, been giving it a bit of thought, yeah, but I don’t see a detective superintendent dealing a few million quid’s worth of coke, do you? Or robbing it in the first place? Naah,’ he dismissed the idea. ‘He got into my ribs as a coincidence, I reckon. Just got a downer on me.’
‘Enough to frame you for a murder you didn’t commit?’
‘Cops do shite like that. I’m a good target, they want me off the streets, yeah? Nothing else.’
‘OK, so who committed the murder you were framed for? That has to be answered, hasn’t it?’
‘Not my problem,’ said Sweetman. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t finished with Easton yet, I just don’t think he’s capable of being a drugs dealer, do you? Mr Big? I don’t think so.’
Grant shrugged.
‘I’m gonna back-shelf him for a while, come back to him later and get this sorted. My first priority is to find out who’s got my gear, because it’s mine and I want it back and if I don’t get it back, I’ll be under the hammer.’ Sweetman exhaled as though he had just gone ten rounds. He turned back to his two negotiators and influencers. ‘Do you think you’re up to this, or do I hire people in from the Smoke?’
They looked at each other, their professional pride dented. ‘We’re up for it,’ Cromer assured him. ‘Big style.’
‘OK,’ Sweetman said, accepting this. ‘I want to send out a big message, boys. I want to root out the do-badder, here. I want people to come out screaming, “It’s him, it’s him,” because they think they might be the next ones on your list. It’s time to stop treating people nicely and time to start cutting bollocks off.’
Henry was back at the scene of the murder. It was still sealed off tight as police officers, CSIs and forensics continued to comb it for clues. Not much of interest had been found, actually. A partial tyre track had been lifted and was now being analysed down at the forensic science lab near Chorley. Little else found seemed to be of much evidential use.
Being a fantastic detective, Henry guessed — not too smartly — that the body had been set on fire by someone dousing the victim with petrol from a can. No great intellectual leap there. Further to that, he speculated that, maybe, the can could well have been bought specifically for that purpose, so he already had detectives visiting petrol stations in the locality to see if any cans had been sold recently. A long shot, maybe, but one worth trying, especially as most garages were equipped with CCTVs and video-recording facilities.
He gazed around almost from the spot on which the body had been discovered.
‘Why here?’ he asked himself again. He narrowed his eyes into the sunshine as the cogs in his mind whirred and clicked. Deeply Vale was not that well known a place. Whoever brought the body here could not have done so by accident, Henry believed. So what was it that linked the killer to the victim and to this location? That was always the puzzle, those three elements in every murder: killer, victim, location. Always a connection, always a reason.
A support unit personnel carrier, windows darkened, riot grilles tilted back in place on the roof, was parked a hundred metres from where he was standing. It was the vehicle in which the support unit team doing the scene search had arrived. A number of officers in their blue overalls were gathered around the open back doors of the van, sipping tea from the urn they had brought along with them. Hm, Henry thought, and sauntered across. They parted as he reached them.
He nodded at a few faces he recognized and said, ‘Any chance of a wet?’
‘Sure, boss,’ a PC responded, grabbing a polystyrene cup and filling it with hot, dark-brown liquid. ‘Milk, sugar?’
‘Just a drop of milk, thanks.’ Henry took the brew and sipped it. The metallic taste evoked many memories for Henry. Days and nights spent at the Toxteth riots on Merseyside in ’81, the Messenger dispute in Warrington and, of course, the famous miners’ strike in ’84. Milestones in Henry’s career in terms of massive social and industrial unrest. The tea always tasted the same. You’d throw it away at home, but somehow its appallingness was a comfort in these circumstances.
‘Your sergeant about?’ Henry asked the PC who had served him.
‘In the front seat.’
‘Ah, so she is.’ Henry spotted the officer sitting alone in the front of the carrier, head down, concentrating on something. Henry walked along the vehicle and tapped on the window. The sergeant looked up, startled. She had been completing the search logs which were spread out on her knees. A large-scale map of the area was on the seat next to her. She put the logs to one side, opened the door and swung her legs out.
‘Boss.’
‘Hello, Hannah,’ Henry said. He knew her reasonably well. She had been originally posted as a PC to Blackpool probably ten years before, promoted after about six years’ service. She had spent a short time on CID, which is where Henry knew her from. She preferred the uniform side, though, and as she was a bit of a tomboy, graduated to the rufty-tufty life on support unit, or the ‘bish-bash-bosh’ squad as they were often called, or even ‘Ninjas’ because of their skills in defensive tactics. ‘How’s the search going?’
‘OK — but nothing much has come of it.’ She sounded apologetic. ‘I think we’ll have finished later today, to be honest.’
Henry knew the support unit were meticulous in their approach to jobs like this, very proud of their professionalism, so he did not doubt her word. . but he had been part of search teams in the past and knew how easy it was to miss things. Even objects like knives and guns. ‘Will you do me a favour?’ he asked, because he hated searches which uncovered nothing. Hannah, the sergeant, nodded. ‘Redo the scene, say to a radius of fifty metres?’
She took it in her stride. ‘Sure.’
‘Thanks, appreciate it.’
The afternoon heat was stifling at Alicante Airport on the Costa Blanca. The asphalt on the roads and the concrete of the multi-storey car park burned to the touch. The hundreds of tourists disgorging from the terminal buildings seemed to put the heat even further up, but inside the structure itself the air conditioning actually made Lopez shiver.
He was standing at the bottom of the dog-leg concourse, down which arrivals walked in order to reach awaiting tour reps, buses, taxis and car-rental firms. He lounged idly behind the array of people who were meeting and greeting — friends, businessmen, reps. His eyes roved continuously, checking and rechecking every face, every movement, because you could never tell when it might come. The arrest or the bullet. He had to keep keen and vigilant.