Facing Justice (19 page)

He was in the bathroom situated in the private living accommodation at the rear of the Tawny Owl and the room looked as though it had been recently refurbished, with a large question-mark shaped bath/shower, matching loo, bidet and wash basin. The walls were tiled in white from top to bottom. It was quite a feminine room, Henry observed in passing, no evidence of a man.

The landlady, Alison Marsh – Henry had thought it appropriate to ask her name as he was going to be using her facilities – had been kind enough to show him straight through to the bathroom, in which she'd unpacked his rucksack and laid out a change of clothes from therein. And run the bath. Fact was, she couldn't do enough for him and Donaldson since the unauthorized re-letting of their rooms. She was trying her best to make amends.

Henry pinched his nose and sank under the water like a submarine, then surfaced like a whale, his head covered in nice-smelling bubbles.

He uttered a short laugh at the memory of the phone call he'd made to Kate before heading up to the crime scene on the tractor.

Neither she nor Karen, Donaldson's expectant wife, had any inkling whatsoever of the peril in which their two men had found themselves. Since depositing them in the Trough of Bowland, they had dropped Henry's car in Kirkby Lonsdale, then they'd driven like the clappers in the Jeep to the Trafford Centre in Manchester to have an indulgent shopping trip and they simply had no idea about the weather. Which was a good thing, Henry thought. There had been no worrying on their part and Kate had taken the news of Karl's twisted ankle and food poisoning as though it was nothing. Neither did the fact that the men were now snowed in seem to bother her too much. She and Karen had booked into a hotel close to the Trafford Centre and were going for a meal, then catching a film at the multiplex cinema. There was no concern, either, when Henry told her about finding a dead body.

‘Henry,' she said knowingly, ‘I wouldn't have expected anything less.'

He shook his head, grinned, scooped the bubbles off his head, then shot bolt upright when someone knocked on the door. ‘Hello.'

‘It's me,' the landlady called. ‘Sorry to bother you, but I've brought that bath towel I promised – and I've got those photos printed off. Can I just stick my hand through and drop them in?'

‘Hold on.' Henry gathered suds and built a pile of them to cover his nether regions. ‘OK,' he said.

The door opened. Alison leaned in and dropped a towel, then a few sheets of A4 paper.

Henry, having to peer slightly over his left shoulder, caught her eye. She smiled shyly.

‘I hope the photos weren't too upsetting for you. You really didn't have to print them off. I would've done it.' Henry had of course checked that Alison wasn't Cathy's closest friend and had warned her severely of the content.

‘Like I said, I've seen worse.'

Henry didn't go there. ‘Well, thanks.'

She paused. Henry grinned self-consciously.

‘The food's almost ready. I got the chef to prepare a roast beef dinner. I hope that's OK. Whenever you're ready, Superintendent.'

Henry chortled. He hated officers junior to himself addressing him by his rank, let alone a strange woman whilst he was naked in her bath. ‘That was a bit formal, all things considered. Henry will do nicely.'

‘Henry, then.'

She withdrew, closing the door softly. Henry leaned out of the bath, stretching to reach the towel, dragging it towards him with the photographs on top that Alison had kindly downloaded from her digital camera on to her PC and printed off. There were four photos on each sheet. He dried his hands, picked up the sheets, and settled back to examine what had been produced.

They weren't brilliant, but they did the job well enough. He hoped there would be a chance of enhancing them later, just to sharpen them up. The ones of Cathy's body in situ showed the scene well enough, but the ones he'd taken in the walk-in freezer were very clear, if not terribly well composed. He shuffled through them several times.

As well as his favourite mantra about only getting one chance at a crime scene, another one from the Murder Investigation Manual also went through his head: find out how they lived, discover why they died. For most murders he investigated, this held true. Often the circumstances of a murder reflected the way the victim had lived in the first place. So, he asked himself, how did this apply to Cathy James?

Was she merely doing her job, investigating the report of a poacher, and was she killed just because of that? Or was there something more to her death? Modern, organized poachers were violent men, Henry knew, but the killing of a cop was way extreme. Not that he would discount this theory, but he was already thinking that Cathy James's death was more than a bad luck encounter.

He placed the photos back down on the bathroom floor, sank deep under the suds again, revelling in the sensation, wishing he'd stayed at home instead of turning out for a stupid walk. Donaldson would still have got food poisoning, but he, Henry, could be sipping Jack Daniel's and watching a film without a care in the world.

He dressed in the change of clothing from the rucksack – light trousers, a polo shirt, trainers. The idea had been that they would have time to dry their outdoor clothing and change back into it the day after for the second half of the walk to Kirkby Lonsdale. Rubbing his close-cropped hair dry as he entered the landlady's dining room, he found Donaldson sitting at the table next to Steve Flynn. Roger the dog was laid out asleep on the floor. Henry winced at the sight of Flynn.

‘You smell wonderful tonight,' Flynn said. ‘All feminine.'

Henry ignored him. ‘How are you feeling?' he asked Donaldson, who had also changed after his bath and looked much better. His right foot was strapped up and propped on a dining chair.

‘Bit better. Guts still churning,' he said, giving Henry a sit-rep. ‘But I'm hellish hungry and need some nourishment. The foot is very sore and swollen, but I don't think it's broken. Alison got the doctor to check it.'

‘Could he focus on it?' Henry asked, settling at the table. ‘I see you two have met.'

‘Yep. You're old friends,' Donaldson said with irony.

‘Old somethings,' Henry said.

Flynn eyed him malignly. ‘Whatever, he'll always believe I took that million, won't you, Henry?'

‘Until you can show different, I'll find it hard to move on.'

‘You know it was my partner, Jack Hoyle.'

‘So you say.'

‘And I found him living the high life in the States.' He exchanged a look with Donaldson. ‘Skippering a fishing boat out of Key West,' he explained.

‘But yet, somehow he wasn't to be found when the cops arrived to question him, detain him, whatever,' Henry pointed out. ‘A real will o' the wisp.'

‘Not my fault if the forces of law and order move with the speed of a tortoise.'

‘Whoa, guys! Knock it on the head, as they say,' Donaldson interjected. ‘Leave it for another time.'

Henry shook his head despairingly.

A door opened and Alison came through balancing three plates on her arms, each with a succulent serving of beef steaming thereon. She placed one in front of each man, instantly picking up the tension. ‘I'll be back shortly with the veg,' she said and withdrew, but not before she caught Henry's eye with a questioning frown, an exchange both Donaldson and Flynn noticed. They waited until she'd gone before speaking.

‘Nice woman,' Flynn said.

‘Pity about the rooms,' Henry said. ‘Don't really fancy bedding down here for the night.'

‘Judging from that look, it's only something me and Steve here will have to worry about.' Donaldson arched his eyebrows.

Henry shot him a withering look. ‘I won't be taking a leaf out of
your
book,' he said, seeing Donaldson redden at the under-the-belt jibe at his recent indiscretion. Henry instantly regretted the dig, but at least it ended that line of conversation.

Alison reappeared with a couple of stainless steel serving dishes, crammed with steaming vegetables, and a gravy boat. ‘Help yourself, guys.'

They fell like ravenous wolves on the food.

Henry felt its immediate effect, warming him from the inside and meeting up with the outside warmth from the bath. Energy returned to him and though he was still shattered from the day's exertions he felt more capable of dealing with the night ahead, which he knew might be very fraught and long.

They ate heartily and in silence, the main course being supplemented by a dessert of sticky toffee pudding and custard that had Henry purring with delight.

Once the food was over, Alison brought in coffee and Henry got down to business.

‘OK, Steve, let's hear your story – all of it.'

Flynn squinted thoughtfully, arranging his brain, and began to relate everything from start to finish. From receiving Cathy's frantic phone calls, the unpleasant encounter with Tom James, finding Henry and Donaldson and then Cathy's body. At least that was his plan, but just as he opened his mouth to speak, Alison burst in.

‘I need some help,' she said, clearly distressed. ‘There's trouble in the bar.'

FOURTEEN

‘
H
im there,' Alison whispered. She had led Henry and Flynn through to the bar. She pointed out a big, unruly-looking man sitting in the far corner of the room at a brass-topped table, diagonally opposite where Henry was now standing by the side of the bar.

Henry looked at the guy, dressed in a heavy, mud-stained donkey jacket, jeans, steel-toecapped work boots with the caps exposed. He was a big, broad man, looked like he could be a handful, with thick, calloused hands and a brooding, menacing expression enhanced by heavy eyebrows. Henry put him mid-forties and in manual labour.

He had one big hand wrapped around a half-drunk pint of beer, next to which were a couple of empty whisky tumblers. He was hunched over the table, staring, deeply thoughtful – troubled, Henry surmised – into what remained of the beer.

‘What's he done?' Henry asked.

‘Nothing so far, but he's obviously been drinking before he came in, and he was really nasty to Ginny, who was too scared to refuse him a drink.'

‘Then what?'

‘He went and sat at that table.'

Henry considered this, tried to assimilate what she'd just told him. A pissed-up guy comes into the pub, orders more drinks, is offhand with the staff, then goes and sits down with his drinks and, basically, does nothing.

‘I think I'm missing something here,' Henry said. ‘I take it you want him ejecting, is that it?'

‘No . . . no . . . yes . . . but . . .'

‘But what?'

‘He's got a gun.'

One of the things Henry had loved most about being a uniformed cop – back in the day – was dealing with pub brawls and incidents in licensed premises. Bread and butter stuff for uniforms, and Henry had been witness to, or involved in, many disturbances that wouldn't have been out of place in Dodge City. He had also been called out to a few reports of people in pubs carrying weapons, firearms or knives. The customer who had tried to conceal something that someone else had spotted, such as this man.

These incidents were fraught with much more danger and unpredictability than good old-fashioned fisticuffs, with many awkward questions zooming through a cop's head as the suspect was approached. Not least of which was, ‘Am I going to be the one the weapon gets used on?'

Henry said, ‘You sure?'

‘Yes, well, Ginny said she saw what looked like a double pipe thing inside his jacket.'

‘A sawn-off shotgun?' Flynn said. He, too, had attended numerous pub fights when he'd been a uniformed constable on the beat, and had revelled in the excitement as well as the opportunity to land punches of his own in the melee.

‘We think so,' Alison said.

Ginny was still at the bar, serving a new customer. The place was getting a little busier, a few more locals braving the weather to get stiff drinks inside them in the warm atmosphere. There was a pleasant buzz about the place, people coming together to face the adverse weather and all that. There was, however, a space around the sullen man, rather like a no-fly zone.

‘Is he local?' Henry asked.

‘Yeah, Larry Callard. Local tough guy, or so he reckons. He's one of Jack Vincent's drivers. Was in here yesterday, pissed up.'

The mention of Vincent gave Henry a jolt and he flicked a glance at Flynn, who had listened to all this eagerly. Henry sensed he wanted to get involved. ‘Not your call, Steve, no need to pitch in.'

‘Not much chance of that,' Flynn responded. ‘I'm here, mate.'

‘What do you think, then?'

Flynn pouted. ‘Play it cool, get a drink at the bar, gravitate to him, sit down, strike up a pleasant conversation. See where it leads.'

‘I thought you'd be for the more direct approach,' Henry said cynically, but was secretly pleased that Flynn had volunteered to help.

‘Not when there's a chance of getting my guts blasted.'

‘Ahh,' Alison said knowingly. ‘You used to be a cop, too? That's how you know each other. I wondered.'

‘Now you know,' Flynn said.

‘Amazing.' She shook her head.

‘OK, then, that's what we'll do,' Henry said. ‘I don't think the guy's clocked us, so we'll go to the front of the bar, you give us a coke each and we'll take it from there, Alison.'

She went behind the bar whilst Henry and Flynn leaned on it, pouring them two colas from the soft drinks dispenser. They turned, elbows on the bar, and watched Callard.

‘Be careful,' Alison said. Both men nodded.

‘If he's right handed and he's got a big pocket inside his jacket to hide the thing, then it'll be on his left side. Not rocket science,' Henry said. Flynn nodded. ‘So keep an eye on the right hand and let's see how close we can get to him.'