Sherridan stood up. Donaldson tensed again, but this time the prisoner walked slowly round the interview room, hands deep in trouser pockets, dragging his feet along the tiled floor.
‘It’s your life you’re talking about here,’ Henry tossed across to him.
He stopped in one corner of the room and rested his head against the wall, speaking down to his toes. ‘There’s some bad people involved here.’
‘And fifteen years of your life is a long time to spend banged up. Okay, you can start again at fifty-three, but it’s a lot easier at forty-three. People have mid-life crises at that age and start all over again, I should know,’ he muttered to himself.
Sherridan came back to his seat. Where before his eyes had been dead and lifeless, now they sparkled with hope. Henry knew he had seen the possibilities.
‘If you tell me all I want to know, I’ll get the charge reduced to manslaughter.’
‘When do I need to decide?’
‘Now. And the first thing I want to know is the girl’s name.’
‘Julie, they called her Julie, but she couldn’t understand most of what I said to her. Foreign, she was. Albanian, I think he said.’
‘Julie from Albania,’ Henry mused. He looked at Donaldson and repeated, ‘Albania.’
‘Sorry it took so long, Karl. I’ll come back and speak to him again tomorrow, by myself. I know you’re up here for a specific reason and I’m delaying you.’ It was almost two hours later and Henry and Donaldson were just leaving Risley Remand Centre.
‘It’s okay, pal. What he said was very interesting to me.’
‘Oh, good,’ Henry said dubiously.
‘One thing I would like clearing up, though. Is it true that only his sperm was found inside her?’
Henry blanched with discomfort. ‘Not necessarily, but he didn’t need to know that, did he?’
Donaldson laughed. ‘You are a twat, then.’
‘Goes with the territory.’
‘And it’s such a nice, English expression too, so quaint,’ said Donaldson who was always intrigued by the vernacular. ‘I’d put you down as more of a cunt.’
Miller and Crazy strolled innocently down the street past the house in Fleetwood they knew belonged to Debbie Goldman, Dix’s girlfriend. It was in darkness, as they had fully expected it to be. Crazy had a carrier bag in his hand. They walked to the end of the street and lit a cigarette each, two friends chatting in the early evening, certainly doing nothing remotely suspicious.
Miller drew deeply on the cigarette but exhaled the smoke without breathing it into his lungs. He was not a smoker, never had been, but it seemed appropriate tonight for the sake of cover.
‘Looks like no one’s home,’ Crazy said.
‘Didn’t expect there to be.’
‘You done much burgling in your time?’
‘Yeah, course,’ said Crazy, affronted. ‘Screwed my first house when I was eleven.’
‘Ah, late starter then?’
Crazy grinned. ‘Made up for it since.’
‘Ever broken in and left something behind?’
‘No, always taken what was rightly mine. I’m not Robin Hood, just Robbin’ Crazy.’
Miller smiled. ‘Let’s reverse the trend then. Did you see an alarm on the house?’
‘Negative, don’t think there is one.’
‘Me neither.’ Miller looked at the sky. Cloudy, overcast, dull — the usual. ‘Let’s break and enter.’
They ground out their cigarettes in the gutter.
Henry switched the lights on. They flickered and pinged and eventually lit the room brightly. Down one side were the refrigerators, over a dozen doors, each one with a body behind it.
‘Welcome to my home,’ Henry said, adopting a creaky, witch-like voice. ‘This is my kitchen and those are my freezers.’
Karl Donaldson was not amused.
‘Sorry,’ said Henry quickly, sensing his friend’s serious mood. ‘But just at the moment places like this are second homes to me.’
He walked along the fridge doors, reading the name cards as he went, until he found the one he was searching for.
He opened it and pulled the drawer out. It slid easily and noiselessly on its runners.
The body on the tray inside was wrapped like a ghost in a white muslin shroud. Henry hesitated.
‘Do it, please,’ Donaldson said.
Henry obliged and folded the material away from the face, revealing a grotesque mess, part of the left side of the face blown away.
‘Two more bullet wounds in the back of the head,’ Henry informed Donaldson.
The big American looked as close to tears as Henry had ever seen him.
‘It is Zeke,’ he whispered. ‘Real name Carlos Hiero, FBI field agent, expert in undercover work — a good man.’ Donaldson choked and cleared his throat.
‘I’m sorry,’ Henry said, knowing the words were inadequate.
‘How was he killed — exactly?’
‘He was shot in the back of the head. The pathologist believes that the first was to the base of the skull, the gun angled upwards a touch, so it would be a fatal wound. The other two to the back of the head were make-sures, not that they were needed because the first one did the job.’
Donaldson took the information in. ‘Calibre of weapon used?’
‘Nine mill. Two bullets have been found inside the brain and we can match them to a weapon if we ever find one — your thoughts?’ Henry asked. He could see Donaldson was pensive. The American had brought his attache case with him. He hoisted it on to the edge of the drawer and flicked open the catches. He pulled out some glossy photos of a crime scene and handed them to Henry, who blinked when the images registered fully with his brain.
‘That’s another undercover agent, codename Barabas. He infiltrated Mendoza’s gang and was killed in exactly the same manner as Zeke.’
‘And Marty Cragg,’ Henry added.
‘And at least four other people in Spain and France. Same MO. What particularly worries me is the fact that two undercover agents have been shot dead within the space of a few months, two very experienced guys.’
‘Like I said in the car, you need to be asking who knew about them from your side. Maybe there’s a leak somewhere. Did you control both of them, Karl?’
Donaldson nodded reluctantly.
‘Who else knew — if it wasn’t you who leaked?’ Henry asked, striking a chord with the American.
‘That’s what worries me.’ Donaldson scratched his head, took back the photos from Henry and slid them into his briefcase.
Henry’s mobile rang. He stepped away from the body on the tray and answered it while Donaldson stared sadly down at his shrouded colleague. It was Rik Dean speaking from the Major Incident Room at Blackpool.
‘Sir, I’ve been speaking to Jack Burrows. She wants to talk to you and not only that — she wants to look at Marty Cragg’s body. Here’s her number.’ Dean read it out while Henry, with his phone lodged between ear and shoulder, wrote it down on the back of his hand.
‘Is that it, Rik?’
‘Er. . yeah, that’s it.’ He sounded doubtful.
Henry immediately telephoned the number, not being one to miss an opportunity. She answered quickly.
‘Thanks, thanks for ringing — I need to see you.’ Her voice wavered.
‘I’m at the mortuary at Chorley hospital. I think you know where that is, if you want to make your way.’
‘I’m about half an hour away. Can you wait?’
‘Yes.’ Henry thumbed the button to end the call. ‘Interesting,’ he frowned. ‘Mind staying for a little while longer? Call me an old-fashioned detective, Karl, but I think we might have some sort of breakthrough here.’