Fighting for the Dead by Nick Oldham Read Free Book Online Page A

touched them gingerly with his tongue.
    â€˜What the hell do they want?’ Henry uttered.
    Baines shrugged. ‘Stealing from dead bodies?’ he suggested.
    â€˜Or stealing from a particular one,’ Henry said and crossly rattled the door handle again.
    The constable’s mobile phone rang and he answered it. ‘Yeah . . . in the viewing room . . . they locked us in here . . . right . . .’ He ended the call and looked at Henry. ‘Backup’s here – but the bad guys have gone.’
    â€˜You need to go to A&E,’ Baines said firmly. He was following Henry around with his arms open, ready to catch him if he suddenly fell.
    â€˜I know,’ Henry agreed, the tip of his tongue still touching the inner mouth cuts and also finding a loose tooth. He felt the side of his face with his fingers, carefully pressing the new swelling under his eye. He’d broken his cheekbone once before and it had taken a long time to heal, and still gave him gyp. He hoped it wasn’t bust again, but his face was very tender and sore, reminiscent of the pain from the previous fracture.
    He and Baines were standing next to the gurney on which the drowned woman lay . . . or at least the woman who’d been pulled out of the river lay. Only a post-mortem could establish for certain how she had died. And because of the events of the last fifteen minutes, Henry now wanted to be one hundred per cent positive she had drowned.
    Suddenly his head went muzzy.
    He fought it and leaned both hands on the edge of the trolley, hoping to disguise what was happening to him. He might well have needed to go to A&E, as Baines suggested, but he didn’t want to go.
    His mind started working again.
    The armed men had assaulted Henry probably as a show of their capabilities so no one was in any doubt that they meant business. He hoped it wasn’t anything personal, just something to encourage everyone else to follow their orders.
    Briefly unconscious as he hit the floor, he hadn’t been privy to what happened next. According to Baines and the constable, the men had yelled and screamed and herded everyone at gunpoint into the viewing room. They had made the constable and the mortuary technician drag Henry – one leg each – in with them, then ripped the PC’s personal radio off. They’d sprayed the technician when he’d stood up to them.
    Henry’s blood was smeared across the tiled floor, then along the short carpeted corridor to the door of the viewing room, like a leopard had dragged a gazelle across the jungle.
    Then they were all locked in, including the staff who’d been working in the examination room.
    Ripping the constable’s PR off him had only really been a gesture, Henry thought. The intruders must have realized that at least one person amongst their captives would have a mobile phone. The only thing achieved by grabbing the police radio was that it cut off a direct line of communication to the police control room. Using a mobile phone, even on a treble-nine, would be far slower than a PC screaming for assistance down a PR.
    So the men had bought themselves some time. Not much, but presumably enough to achieve their goal.
    Which was what? Henry asked himself.
    His eyes – one gradually closing to a hazy squint as his cheek swelled – moved to the bags containing Jennifer Sunderland’s property that he and the PC had been recording.
    They’d been ripped open and the contents tipped onto the floor, and scattered as the men searched through them.
    So this was the answer: they wanted something that she possessed, or thought she possessed. And whatever this something was, they were prepared to be utterly ruthless in finding it. Ruthless enough to smash a gun into someone’s face. And maybe kill if necessary.
    The captives had been released from the viewing room by the first officer on the scene. Now more cops had arrived and