Psycho Alley Read Free

with an angry crunch and screech dramatically out of the police yard with a squeal of rubber. He had a friend, a frequently divorced friend, who had once told him without a trace of irony that women were not worth the hassle. ‘Henry, me old mate,’ he’d said drunkenly once, ‘losin’ it all for the sake of a wizard’s sleeve is bloody crass stupidity.’ He’d gone on to explain what he meant by ‘wizard’s sleeve’, but with a bit of imagination Henry had already worked out what he meant. Henry believed that if he and Jane had tipped over the ‘verge’, as she had called it, he would now be living to regret it. He would have lost his family, which included two great daughters, and would have been nowhere near buying a plasma screen TV … all for the sake of a wizard’s sleeve. He allowed himself a chuckle at his friend’s crude metaphor, started his car, cleared the screen of bird shit and allowed it to warm up before setting off into the night.
    He drove to the Esplanade, Fleetwood’s seafront promenade, then did a right past the North Euston Hotel on to Queen’s Terrace, the Isle of Man ferry terminal to his left. Way across the mouth of the River Wyre were the lights of the sleepy village of Knott End on Sea, and in the far distance to the north the hulking structures of the nuclear power station at Heysham, illuminated by an eerie orange phosphorescent-like glow.
    His intention was to trundle down on to the romantically-named Dock Street, cut right across town then head south towards Blackpool and home, hoping he could make it safely with just the one good eye.
    Henry’s bleat to Jane about having worked long, hard hours for the past three months had only been partially true. With the exception of a two-week family holiday jaunt to Ibiza, he had actually been hard at it for nine months. For the first six he had been running a complex and particularly dangerous investigation into large-scale corruption and murder within the ranks of some Greater Manchester Police officers. This had entailed much overtime – all unpaid, of course – and several trips to Spain. During the course of the investigation, headed nominally by Lancashire’s chief constable, but run directly by Henry, his life had been threatened twice and his firm’s car had been regularly damaged whilst parked unattended in Manchester. These worrying occurrences had not deterred him from completing a job which had sent shockwaves through GMP. There were some loose ends, as there always are in such a far-reaching enquiry, but Henry was as satisfied as he could be at the outcome … and then he returned to the force, immediately being handed the reins of his present investigation and a new posting to boot.
    He was currently a temporary detective chief inspector, a member of the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) team which was based at force headquarters near to Preston. Or at least he had been. Whilst busy in Manchester, there had been some changes to the SIO team and its remit. It had been renamed the Force Major Investigation Team (FMIT) and in order to ensure there was an even better response to serious crime, the staff had been divvied up and given responsibility to provide cover to specific police divisions in the county. In the shuffle, during which Henry had no say, nor was consulted, he had ended up with responsibility for ‘A’ and ‘B’ Divisions, covering the west and north of Lancashire. He had been turfed out of his comfy headquarters office and relocated to Blackpool nick, where he had ended up in a shoe-box of an office with no heating and initially no phone or computer.
    Having spent much of his career in Blackpool, and living there, the move wasn’t entirely unwelcome. At least he did not have to do the forty-odd mile round trip each day through increasingly horrendous traffic. But in his paranoia, he did suspect the move could be the