Screen of Deceit (26 page)

Mark smiled proudly. ‘But what about the stuff in the bag, the games and all that?'

‘Provided by a big retail chain which often helps us out when we need it … and which, incidentally, we need back at some stage.'

Mark reddened slightly. ‘I'd forgotten about them.'

The lads at the counter got cakes, biscuits and fizzy drinks then headed for a table in the far corner. One nodded amiably at Mark as he passed and Mark grinned back like a Cheshire cat.

‘Thing is, the two officers chasing the lads didn't know it was a set-up. They had to believe the lads were thieves and had to behave exactly like cops do, just in case you were being observed – which you were, actually.'

‘Oh? By who?'

‘Recall the oldish couple having a brew in the arcade caff?'

‘My grandparents!' Mark exclaimed, recalling them clearly and how he had pretended to the cops that he was their grandson.

‘Two neighbourhood watch coordinators who do a bit of town-centre watching for us. Both retired cops.'

‘Bloody hell! You've got people everywhere.'

‘Better believe it,' Christie said. ‘Anyway, even when you were arrested for stealing your own bike, the two officers didn't know that was a set-up either. They were acting on information supplied by me. They whole thing had to be as real as possible, otherwise Jonny would've seen right through it. What could've been worse than you getting a nod and a wink from a cop who was in on it? Would've given the whole game away. Even now I haven't told the officers the whole truth … which I must do,' he finished thoughtfully.

Mark's appetite suddenly returned. He picked up the big sandwich and chomped into it, melted butter drooling down his chin. ‘How often do they do stuff for you?' he asked about the lads.

‘Quite often … if nothing else they do test purchases, y'know going into off-licences to see if the storekeeper will sell them booze, fags, that sort of thing. Sometimes they get involved in other, more complicated stuff. Why?' Christie eyeballed him. ‘Interested?'

‘Could be,' Mark said through a mouthful of bacon and toast. He swallowed. ‘Jack's not coming out for a while, is he? Sorry to change the subject, like.'

‘No.' The detective shook his head with a pout. ‘The more we dig, the more we unearth. He's a very big operator, worth millions – money which is currently being chased by our financial investigators.'

‘Hell.'

‘Hell, indeed,' Christie agreed. ‘But it wasn't a turf war he was involved in, by the way.'

Mark stopped chewing, frowned, washed down his mouthful of food with the tea. ‘What was it, then? Why were people after him with guns?'

‘Remember me mentioning Jane Grice?'

Mark nodded immediately. ‘She died of a drug overdose. She went to our school. It got mentioned at assembly.'

‘That's the one. She was actually the daughter of a very iffy businessman from Poulton who's an even bigger villain than Jack, a real gangster.' Mark winced slightly at the words, still finding it hard to imagine Jack as a criminal, let alone a gangster. Christie said, ‘He was after Jack in revenge for Jane's death. At least that's what I believe, but proving it is more difficult. He and his family were trying to destroy Jack because they think he supplied her with the drugs she overdosed on.' He let that sink into Mark's brain.

‘So you know who shot him, then?'

‘No. Jack does, but he won't tell us. We think it was someone from out of town, hired by Jane's family.'

‘Hired killers?' Mark gulped.

Christie shrugged. ‘Maybe.'

‘And the drive-by shooting at the KFC?'

‘Their first attempt to kill Jack.'

‘And they very nearly killed an innocent person, that girl who works there.'

‘Would it surprise you to know that Jane Grice had been going out with Jonny Sparks?' Christie asked.

‘I think I vaguely knew that,' Mark said ponderously. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Christie. ‘Did he …?'

‘Give her the drugs that killed her? Think so. She'd been told by her father to dump Jonny and I think it was his revenge for being jilted. Jilted Jonny, you might say.'

‘The bastard,' Mark whispered hoarsely.

‘Jonny was a psychopath, a very dangerous and manipulative one,' Christie explained. ‘I think he deliberately gave Jane Grice the overdose and did the same to Bethany – although I don't think I'll ever prove either. He loved the power, loved manipulating people – a bit like a Harold Shipman character, you know, the doctor who killed all those old people who were his patients?' Mark nodded. ‘Which in a way was why it was relatively easy for you to gain his trust – because he thought he had power over you, had a hold.'

‘Y'know, I could never work out why he was always after me. I never did owt to him, yet he was always chasin' me. He was just crazy, I suppose. Wanted to control me.'

‘Which doesn't mean to say I don't want to catch his killers. I do, and I won't rest until they're behind bars.'

‘No, I get that,' Mark conceded. ‘However,' Mark went on bitterly, ‘he got what he deserved and he
did
kill Bethany … and do you know why? Because she dumped him, just like Jane Grice did. I had a real go at her for seeing him, she must have realized she was being an idiot knocking about with him and so she decided to ditch him, which is why he killed her—'

‘Whoa – hold on! Impossible to prove now,' Christie said.

‘No, it isn't,' Mark said. ‘Jonny did it and those two lads who traipsed around after him, Sam and Eric, helped him out and stupid as they are, they're guilty of murder too. I just didn't know these things at first. I do now.'

Christie leaned back with a sigh, folded his arms and looked pityingly at him. ‘Mark, Mark, Mark,' he said sadly. ‘I know you're upset …'

‘Don't patronize me, Henry,' he warned the detective. Mark fished out a mobile phone from his pocket, the one Jonny had given him just before he died. The one Jonny used to contact the Crackman with. He selected the media programme, pressed start on a particular file and handed the phone to Christie.

‘Watch this. This was happening while I was asleep upstairs,' he said, swallowing back something in his throat.

He did, appalled by what he saw. When the clip ended he said, ‘I need to keep this.' Mark nodded. ‘Unbelievable, the bastard recorded Bethany dying, bragging about it, laughing … Jesus … and his mates helped too, plying her with more and more drugs, coaxing her to swallow them.'

Christie watched the clip again, which concluded with Jonny Sparks leering into the lens and saying, ‘So, girls, never dump Jonny, otherwise you'll suffer.'

One of his mates, either Eric or Sam, had been recording the mini-speech and as it finished, the camera moved away from Jonny and was pointed at Bethany down on the kitchen floor, her body convulsing and retching horribly as she approached death.

‘He told me he had nothing to do with her death,' Mark said stonily, ‘and you know what? I almost believed him. I feel so stupid.'

‘Their feet won't touch the ground, I promise,' Christie said earnestly, referring to Sam and Eric.

‘Whatever,' Mark shrugged. ‘Beth's not coming back, Jack's in jail and me mam's a slapper.' He looked as though he was going to cry.

‘And you are one helluva lad,' Christie said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

‘Yeah, right, that's me, a helluva lad.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘Get back to school. Get my job back at the newsagent's, if they'll have me. Make my friends again.' He raised his eyebrows. ‘I have unfinished business with Katie, if you know what I mean? Get my head down and get out of this shit hole – eventually. But, first things first.' He pointed at Christie. ‘I want my bike back.'

O
nce again, Henry Christie was sitting in an excuse for a car on a rainy night, just after the witching hour, parked up in a dimly-lit back street, but the location had changed: this time he was somewhere in Rochdale, a grimy town to the north of Manchester. Again, he was shivering as the heater wasn't working properly and as he reached forward to crank up the temperature – without success – and had to wipe the screen with his hand, he wondered if it was the same bloody car.

He glanced at Rik Dean in the passenger seat. ‘OK, mate?'

‘Yep.'

‘How's the leg?'

‘Had a bullet in it, y'know?' He shrugged. ‘Still not great.'

‘But good enough to be out here tonight?'

‘Oh yes,' he said enthusiastically.

Henry smiled and looked forward again, snorting a quiet puff of amazement down his nose. Incredible, he thought, how things could snowball.

Who could possibly have known what would have happened as a result of him picking up his mobile phone four months ago and reluctantly agreeing, despite his terrible hangover that day, to turn out to what appeared to be a run-of-the-mill drugs OD.

What had started as a routine, though tragic, set of circumstances which had not really interested him all that much initially, had led to the brutal murder of a teenager and a shoot-out on a council estate in which one man was almost fatally injured, that man being Jack Carter, the Crackman.

Who Henry had nicked.

Following Jack's arrest, Henry had pounced on Jonny Sparks's running mates, Eric King (The Kong) and Sam Dale (Rat-head), finding them easy meat. Two dumb-ass no-hopers who'd completely screwed up their lives by associating with Jonny. They had blabbed until the cows came home when confronted with the evidence on Jonny's phone.

Despite their being teenagers, they had been charged with murder, even though he knew it would probably be reduced to manslaughter when, or even before, it came to court. That wasn't his problem. He'd done his bit.

And then they were boxed away. Henry had quickly moved focus.

Like a terrier on a postman's leg, he went for the Grice family.

As much as he was sympathetic to the fact they had lost their daughter through drugs, he did not like the way in which they had gone about exacting their revenge.

The hiring of professional hit men to kill Jack Carter, to drive a knife into Jonny Sparks's heart and to mow down one of Carter's dealers in Fleetwood, was not something Henry could tolerate.

Not only that, an innocent girl had nearly lost her life in the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-by shooting that had been the first attempt on Jack's life. She had almost been forgotten in the mess, but Henry had decided – in a high and mighty way – that someone had to seek justice for her.

He had decided
he
would be that seeker and would not rest until he had ground the Grice family into the dust and hunted down the killers they had hired.

Rik Dean looked at him. ‘How good is this intel?' he asked impatiently.

‘Of the very highest calibre,' Henry assured him.

‘Only my leg's getting stiff.'

Henry was aware that this was the first time that Rik had stepped out operationally since the shooting. ‘You could've stayed in your shiny-arsed office.'

‘Yeah, right.'

Their good-natured bickering ended and silence came down on the pair.

The Grice family had been tough and unapproachable and Henry had got nowhere with them. Not that he had expected anything more. They were all hardened criminals, top professionals, and ran a tight operation, but not as tight as their lips. There was no way they would incriminate themselves, so Henry decided to try and come at them from another angle, but try as he might, that angle eluded him for a long time.

Then, three weeks into it, as he shuffled and reshuffled everything in his mind, something struck him, something that Mark Carter had told him.

Henry had been in Rik Dean's office at the time, filling in some paperwork when the thought hit him. He looked out of the narrow, floor-to-ceiling window and tried to remember if it had rained at all over the last twenty-one days. He was sure it hadn't, not to any great degree anyway.

With an inner whoop, he grabbed his jacket and shot out of the cop shop.

He was at Mark Carter's house within ten minutes.

It was late afternoon as Henry battered at the front door, still bearing the signs of a shoot out. He shouted Mark's name through the letterbox and knew the lad was home because his precious BMX was propped up in the hallway.

Eventually, the door was answered. Mark stood there looking rather flustered, red-faced.

‘Mr Christie!'

‘Hi, Mark, not an inconvenient moment, I hope?'

‘Er, er, no.'

It obviously was, but nevertheless Henry said, ‘Can I come in? Need a word.'

‘Yeah, yeah, sure.' Mark stepped aside and Henry entered the hallway. His eyes caught sight of a girl at the top of the stairs who ducked quickly into Mark's bedroom when she realized she'd been spotted.

Henry raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘Ms Bretherton, I assume?' He gave Mark a completely salacious, OTT wink.

Mark squirmed, shrugged and gave a lopsided grin.

‘Friends again?'

‘Er … we managed to make up … anyway,' the young man pulled himself together, ‘what can I do for you?'

‘Kitchen.' Henry pointed down the hall.

Mark followed him, chuckling as Henry caught his shin on the pedal of Mark's BMX, cried out in pain and limped into the kitchen.

‘Can't you keep that bloody thing somewhere else?' Henry whined.

‘Beth used to say that …' Mark began, but his voice faded into sadness. His mouth twisted with the pain of it.

‘You OK?' Henry asked.

Mark screwed up his features and nodded bravely. Henry realized just how much he had come to like Mark at that moment.

‘Good lad.' Henry turned and looked around the kitchen. ‘When you and Jack were pinned down in the house, you said you sneaked down to the kitchen, didn't you?' Mark nodded. Henry went on, ‘And when you were in here, some guy came looking through the window, yeah?'