But instead he did a very stupid thing.
He slept with her.
Their discussion at the Imperial Hotel had gone round in circles, getting nowhere fast. Eventually Henry had looked at his watch and told her he needed to go. She looked disappointed, but nodded. She sighed and held Henry’s eye.
He felt something stir in him.
‘Just walk me to my room, will you?’
‘OK.’
Should have said no.
They rode the lift in silence, side by side, arm in arm. On the second floor she turned left and he followed her down the corridor as though he was in a trance. She stopped outside her room and faced him.
‘I did what I did because I thought it was right and proper,’ he reiterated his argument. ‘In the eyes of the law I have done wrong. I’ve perverted the course of justice, big time. If it comes out, I’ll lose everything,’ he concluded simply.
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I’m just having difficulty dealing with it. There’s no one else I can talk to about it, not even a professional counsellor. They have rules about clients revealing stuff about committing crimes that harm others, stuff like that. . a counsellor would be duty bound to tell the authorities. I can’t talk to my boyfriend or my daughter, or my mum. . there’s just you, Henry. Just you and me. We know the secret.’
He nodded, understandingly.
‘And I am grateful for what you did, even if I am having trouble with it.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
There was a silent moment. She was standing in front of Henry, less than a foot away. Their eyes played over each other’s faces. Henry could smell her sweet aroma, could see the detail in her face, the fine hairs on her cheeks. Her skin looked wonderful, despite the tiredness in her eyes. Henry felt himself struggle for breath. She had kept the beret on, tilted to cover the head injury she’d received all those weeks ago. Slowly she removed it and turned slightly for him to see.
‘Healing nicely,’ he commented. It had been a hell of a blow, splitting her head open. She had looked more than a mess.
‘I owe you a lot. . my freedom for one thing, but I feel weak and helpless and on the verge of blowing it,’ she admitted. ‘And I just need someone who knows what I’ve been through to hold me tight, reassure me, and I can’t think of anyone else but you.’ She edged an inch closer to him and laid a hand on his chest, looked pleadingly up at him with eyes blue, moist, sparkling. Henry’s throat tightened. He had once imagined holding her, making love to her, but it had been just that: imagination. Sex with no strings. This was now very different, almost like blackmail, but the feelings were overpowering him and he could not resist sliding his arms around her, one around her shoulders, one to the small of her back, pulling her slim, taut body towards him, feeling her contours moulding themselves against his. Suddenly his blood surged, torrenting through his veins. She ground her hips into him; her head went back as a small gasp escaped from her lips. Then his mouth crushed down on to hers.
And now she was calling him again.
‘Henry, I need to speak to you. . please,’ Tara said over the phone.
‘Look, Tara, I’m sorry but I haven’t got time. I’m really busy.’
‘I know you are-’
Henry ended the call with one press of the thumb and felt more like a bastard than ever. He expected an immediate recall, staring at the display on the phone. It never came.
He veered away from his car and strode across the road to the pub on the corner opposite the station. He was urgently in need of a pint of Stella Artois.
‘I thought you said you’d fixed it? I thought you said you’d sorted it. . well, it’s plainly obvious that hasn’t happened, has it?’
Lynch stood there white-faced as he was dressed down by the top boss of the drug-dealing organization for which he worked.
‘You told me you’d dumped that body in Greater Manchester.’
‘I thought I had. In fact, I was sure I had. I misjudged.’
‘This could cause us problems.’
‘I know, I fucking know.’
‘Have they identified him yet?’
Lynch shook his head.
‘Only a matter of time,’ the boss said. ‘Only a matter of time before they start crawling round us. . and as if we haven’t got enough shit to deal with.’
Lynch hung his head and mumbled, ‘Our tracks’re covered.’
‘Son, they better fucking had be.’
Lynch expelled an unsteady breath.
‘And what about your chum, PC Bignall? How much does he know? How far can he drop us in it?’
‘He won’t say owt.’
The boss eyed Lynch. ‘His colleagues’ll be all over him like a rash when he wakes up. They’ll very much be wanting to know how the hell he managed to get shot, won’t they? He’ll be weak and vulnerable and I’ll lay you a pound to a pinch of shit, he’ll blab. Do we need that? Do we fuck!’
‘What’re you suggesting?’
‘Finish what you should’ve done in the first place.’
‘Kill him, you mean?’
The boss did not respond, but he did not need to. His look said it all.
‘Kill a cop?’
Silence.
‘You’re saying I kill a cop?’
‘I’m saying he’ll be one less thing to think about.’
The pint of Stella was ice-cold. Beads of condensation dripped down the outside of the glass. It tasted wonderful. Ice-cold in Rawtenstall, he mused. He took several large gulps and within seconds half of it had disappeared down his throat. Then he checked himself. He could easily have sunk it all, but then he would have wanted another because he would not really have appreciated the first. One, though, was all he was going to have. The length of the journey home saw to that. He moved away from the bar and found an empty table, surveying the pub as his mind churned.
He was annoyed with himself. He had been given a very meaty murder, one with which he could re-establish his reputation as long as he concentrated on it, did all the right things and got a result. The necessity was concentration. A job like this demanded 110 per cent and already he was failing in that department. His personal life was cutting that back to about 70 per cent.
Shit. Another misjudgement. Firstly in that he had covered up a crime and now because he had slept with Tara. Somewhere in his brain was a self-destruct button marked, ‘Press Me — It’ll Be All Right.’ His teeth ground together. It was bad enough having to deal with Tara’s guilt not having had sex with her; now it was a million times more difficult. And on top of that was his own guilt. Once again Kate had been betrayed. He had been desperately trying to change, keep a lid on his behaviour, but as the saying went, ‘A bastard never changes his spots.’ He could not help but want to have sex with other women.
About three-quarters of the pint had gone when his phone rang again. The words ‘Number Withheld’ on the display made his heart sink. He almost pressed the ‘C’ button, but reluctantly he answered.
‘Henry Christie,’ he said cringingly.
‘Henry — John Gornall, Forensic Submissions.’
‘John — hi.’ Henry instinctively checked his watch, but did not make any comment. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I stayed on because ballistics said they’d get back to us today and I was curious. Couldn’t wait until tomorrow.’
‘They got back to you, then?’
‘Yep.’ He sounded pleased. Henry waited. ‘It’s only a phone call from them, remember, but the paperwork will follow.’
‘Fine.’
‘About the bullet we dug out of that stolen car in Blackpool?’
‘Yeah.’ Henry tried not to come across as disheartened. He was expecting something about two bullets dug out of a burned corpse’s back.
‘Interesting stuff. . the bullet we found in the back seat of that car was fired from a gun used in a building society robbery in Manchester about six months ago.’
‘Oh, that is interesting.’
‘The scientist at Huntingdon said it was recently fired, too. . so it hasn’t been in the car all that long.’
‘Is it linked to any arrest?’