Substantial Threat (24 page)

‘God, I love you,' she said. ‘I don't know why, I just do.'

‘And I love you,' he admitted honestly for the first time in a long time.

She gently took hold of his face and kissed him, long, slow, warm, wet. She had amazing lips.

‘I know it's late,' she said, snuggling her face into his neck, ‘but how do you fancy making love?'

There was no doubt that his body, though exhausted, wanted to oblige.

‘Here?' he asked.

‘Mm,' she breathed from deep in her throat, ‘right here, right now.'

Henry pushed her gown off her shoulders and ran his hands across her soft, white skin. He knew he was where he belonged.

They were waiting for Miller to arrive, sitting in the living room of Ray's house. Crazy was smoking one of his thin roll-ups and sipping a beer. Ray was staring at the porn channel on satellite TV, the sound turned low. He had a bottle of Stella in his hand.

‘I just don't see Dix doing that,' Crazy ventured reasonably. ‘He doesn't have it in him, doesn't have the bottle.'

‘He had the bottle to nick my money.'

‘That was just a spur of the moment thing.' Ray shot Crazy a hard look and Crazy raised his hands defensively. ‘I'm not defending the cunt. I'm just saying that he probably wouldn't do something like that.'

‘He was a good taxman. He put guns to a lot of people's heads. I think he had it in him. I think Marty found him and Dix popped him.'

‘So who's the other guy? It doesn't make sense. Dix shooting two people – naah.'

‘I don't know who he was, and I don't care,' spat Ray. ‘All I know is that silly twat of a half-brother of mine's been whacked and my money is still missing. As I said, I'm not so much fussed about Marty. It's my money I want back.'

‘What about your mum?' Crazy asked.

Ray shrugged. ‘I'll tell her whenever she lands back. Haven't got a clue where she is and I'm not going out looking for her.'

‘Fine,' said Crazy.

There was a knock on the door.

‘That'll be Miller.' Crazy stood up. He did not look out of the window to check. He should have done.

Jack Burrows knelt at the top of the stairs in the darkness, a wet towel pressed to her face, still trying to stem the blood oozing out of her mouth and nose. Her right eye was swollen and closing rapidly. Her whole body ached. There was a pounding noise in her ears, but she was still capable of hearing the conversation between Ray and Crazy in the lounge.

When the knock came at the door, she pushed herself deeper into the darkness, but maintained a position where she could see Crazy opening the door.

‘Ray,' Crazy said from the living-room door.

Cragg was engrossed in a screen image of a man being given a blow job by a blonde with huge breasts.

‘What?' he said, annoyed.

‘It's not Miller.' Crazy's voice sounded strangely strained.

Ray tutted and glanced round, his head fixing into position.

Crazy was at the door, an expression of terror across his face because a man was holding a gun screwed into his side. The beer fell from Ray's hands on to the carpet where it spilt.

On the TV screen, the fortunate man ejaculated over the blonde's face and neck.

Ray and Crazy knelt side by side. Their faces were pressed into the settee. Their hands were bound behind their backs by plastic handcuffs which dug deep into their wrists. They both had the muzzle of a pistol skewered into the base of their skulls, held there in place by two men dressed in dark clothing.

A third man, similarly dressed, came into the room and spoke to a fourth man, who was sitting in Ray's chair.

‘All clear,' he said.

‘Where is the woman?' the fourth man asked.

Neither Ray nor Crazy answered. To encourage speech, the guns were pressed harder and twisted tighter into their necks.

‘She's gone,' Ray said, his voice muffled.

‘Why is her car still here?'

‘Got a taxi,' Crazy said quickly. ‘She'd been drinking. Couldn't drive home.'

‘What's going on?' Ray demanded. ‘You're gonna fuckin' regret this.'

‘Yes, I'm sure I am,' said the fourth man. ‘The guns are pointed at your heads, don't forget that, Mr Cragg.'

‘What do you want?'

‘My name is Mendoza,' the fourth man said. ‘Have you heard of me?'

‘Should I have?'

‘Your brother has been doing business with me for over a year, maybe you should have heard of me.'

‘Who, Marty? Doing business? He's a fucking useless businessman, or was.'

‘Exactly, and that is why I am here. He kept taking credit from me and never paying me back. You are right, he is not good with money – not like you, I understand.'

‘Fuck all to do with me,' Ray insisted. ‘I don't know anything about it.'

‘Be that as it may,' Mendoza said. ‘I called in the debt and decided enough is enough. He had to pay with his life.'

‘So the debt's settled,' Ray said quickly.

‘No, it has been passed on to his next of kin. That is the way things are in my country.'

‘I don't know fuck all about it, so it's nothing to do with me. I'm not his fucking keeper.'

‘Sorry. You now own all the debt.'

‘How much? Just curious, because whatever it is, you can fuck off. I am not paying.'

‘With interest, two hundred thousand pounds, sterling.'

‘You gotta be joking!' Ray squirmed. His head was forced back down by the man with the gun.

‘No joke,' said Mendoza. ‘You now own the debt, Mr Cragg. I know you have the funds to pay it. You have one week to do so, otherwise – you've seen what happened to your brother. The same will happen to you.'

Miller arrived ten minutes later. His senses told him there was something amiss. Something in the air, something about the stillness. Too many tours across the water had sharpened him too much, he thought. I'm always too damned cautious. He drove past Ray's house, noting that the front door was slightly ajar, the lights on throughout. He smelt danger, but did not know why. He drove into the next cul-de-sac and parked his car, walking back slowly through the shadows. He watched Ray's house from a distance and edged closer. His gun was in his hands, in a two-handed combat grip.

It took five minutes to reach the drive, then creep to the front door, flattening himself against the wall, listening, sniffing, breathing shallowly. He moved stealthily to the door and pushed it with his toecap and stepped into the wide hallway.

Voices.

With a shake of the body he relaxed. It was Ray and Crazy talking in the kitchen. Miller kept his gun down by his side and walked to the kitchen door, which he pushed open.

Ray and Crazy turned to stare at him. They were standing back to back, their wrists still cuffed. Crazy had a bread knife in his hand and was attempting to saw through Ray's plastic cuffs without slicing his boss up.

He stopped when he saw Miller.

‘Get these fucking things off me,' Ray said to Miller, and twisted to show him the cuffs.

Miller laid his gun on the kitchen table, glad his senses had pre-warned him of something wrong at the house. ‘What's gone on?' he asked. He took the knife from Crazy's hand and placed it on a work surface. He opened a drawer, found a pair of kitchen scissors and snipped the cuffs off. ‘Some perverted game gone wrong?'

Ray scowled and pushed past him, bounding up the stairs, calling out Burrows' name, angry that she had not come down at his calling. He found her huddled in the cistern cupboard, wedged behind the tank, covered by several bath towels. It was a good hiding place.

P
rofessor Baines crossed one of his spindly legs over the other and smiled at Henry and Jane Roscoe. ‘As you know I am an expert in many fields where the dead body is concerned, and sometimes even living bodies.' He looked from Henry to Jane and gave a knowing smile and a double raise of the eyebrows. Neither of the two allowed their expressions to change. There was a distinct chill between them that morning.

They were in Jane's office – formerly Henry's – discussing the post-mortem findings with Baines, who had been up much of the night pulling everything together. This, however, did not stop him being bright, bubbly and full of mischief. Even so, when the faces of the two detectives did not alter, he cleared his throat uncomfortably and crossed his legs in the opposite direction.

‘It's the dead bodies we're bothered about,' Jane Roscoe said stonily.

‘Yes, well – so may I come to the unidentified body of the male?'

‘You may,' said Henry.

‘Killed in exactly the same way as the unfortunate Mr Cragg. Massive brain damage being the cause of death – in layman's terms, that is.'

Henry glanced down at a set of SOCO glossies of the dead man on the slab, taken before Baines had got to work on him. Henry thought the man had been fairly handsome in a Mediterranean kind of way and it was obvious from his physique that he had been a fairly fit guy in life. No extra fat on him, muscles well developed, even a six-pack gut.

‘I was fortunate enough to go to a pathologists' convention in Miami at the tail-end of last year,' Baines said enthusiastically.

‘Bet that was a hoot.' Henry grinned.

‘It was – actually,' Baines said, slighted slightly. ‘Anyway, there was a very interesting session on dental records, fascinating, actually.' He gave Henry a quick smile.

‘Something to get your teeth into?' Henry quipped. Even Jane smiled.

‘Part of the session,' Baines proceeded, ignoring Henry, ‘was dentistry from around the world. It's absolutely fascinating how much difference there is between countries and how stereotypical dental work can be in particular countries. They all have their own way of doing things. I had a very good look inside the mouth of our unknown victim and he'd had some bridgework done. I would say, from my bridgework spotter's guide – yes, it does exist – that the work was done in America. That's not to say he's an American, though his appearance could be classed as Hispanic, but it could assist you in identifying him.'

‘Nice one, Prof,' Henry said.

One of the problems in being a nomad investigator, going out to divisions all the time, was that you always had to find office space to make phone calls, or to get some sleep. It really was like being a nomad in some ways. Henry managed to find an empty office and slid in behind the desk into a big, comfy chair. He leafed through his pocket diary, found the number he needed, swung his ankles up on to the edge of the desk and picked up the phone. He punched in the number. And waited for the reply.

‘FBI Legal Attaché Karl Donaldson speaking. How may I help you?'

‘I wish we could get our bloody employees to answer phones like that,' Henry said.

Donaldson recognized the voice immediately. ‘Henry! You wearin' your cloth cap and clogs?'

‘I am that, lad,' he replied, dropping into his best broad Lancashire. ‘Eeh, look, I can see a red London bus drivin' past and I can 'ear Big Ben chimin' away – an' look over yonder, it's a London copper rockin' up an' dahn on his toes.'

Donaldson chuckled. ‘Actually I can see a London bus, but there are no coppers about these days.'

He and Henry had met several years earlier on a case Donaldson was dealing with in the north-west, when he was a field agent, concerning Mafia activities. Since then they had worked together on several occasions and had become very close friends, though they had not spoken to each other for a couple of months now. They exchanged a few pleasantries, gossiped about families and proposed holidays, then the American cut to the chase.

‘You only call me when you need me, H. What is it this time?'

Henry explained about the double murder with one unidentified victim with the mouthful of American-style dental work. ‘I was wondering . . .' he said hopefully.

‘Fast track? Sure, why not? What have you got?'

‘Description, photographs of dead person – not nice – fingerprints, dental observations. We're waiting for a DNA profile.'

‘Fax 'em down and I'll put them through our system as soon as I get 'em.'

‘Thanks, pal. They're on their way.' From his experience of life, Henry knew it wasn't what you know but who you know that gets results.

It was good to have such a direct and personal connection into American law enforcement. It gave Henry access to FBI computers, albeit unofficially. His relationship with Donaldson, though well known in the higher ranks of Lancashire Constabulary, was not something he boasted about. He kept it to himself, knowledge being power.

He sat back and literally twiddled his thumbs, impatient already for a result from the information he had sent to Donaldson. ‘Get a grip,' he told himself. ‘Even a fast track will take time.'

He riffled through his pockets and found a folded piece of paper from a jotting pad. He opened it and flattened it out. It was his ‘To Do' list written with the splendid assistance of Mr Jack Daniels. One thing that sprang out that he could have done before was the item ‘four in a car'. The suspicious motor he had seen near to Ray Cragg's home with four people on board. He dialled the PNC bureau and requested a check on the number he had committed to memory. The reply came back within seconds. Henry closed his eyes in despair. He sighed and kicked himself.

The car had been stolen from London two days earlier. The cop in him was extremely pissed off at having missed the opportunity to make an arrest. But more than that was the question burning in his mind: what was it doing there, within yards of one of the country's biggest drug dealers? With four shady characters on board? What were they up to? Did it have anything to do with Marty Cragg's untimely demise?

As soon as he had finished the call from Henry, the internal phone on Donaldson's desk rang and he was summoned into Philippa Bottram's office to discuss the progress of a case being run jointly with the Metropolitan Police. As the American left his office he heard his fax machine start up and much as he would have liked to wait for it to spew out the stuff from Henry Christie, he did not wish to incur his boss's ire. With a ‘Damn' under his breath he closed the door behind him and strode to her office down the corridor for what he knew would be a long meeting.