Free Big City Jacks by Nick Oldham

Troy relented and looked away.
    â€˜OK, what have the little shits been up to . . .?’ Troy’s words stopped suddenly. He and Henry had a lot of history between them, as well as a lot of up-to-date dealings, so Troy knew Henry’s status in the police. ‘You still an SIO?’ he asked Henry, who nodded. Troy gulped. ‘So what
have
they been up to?’
    â€˜Let me come in and I’ll explain.’
    Keith Snell took a long time to catch fire. Lynch doused him thoroughly with petrol from a plastic can he had just bought from a twenty-four-hour service station. He flicked a lighted match on the dead body he’d had to drag out of the boot. The trousers ignited quite well, but for some reason the upper part of the body did not get going. The two extra matches he threw down extinguished themselves before they even touched the body.
    â€˜Fucking weather,’ Lynch cursed and added more fuel. He almost set himself alight as he splashed more and more petrol around.
    Even then, Keith Snell did not burn well.
    â€˜Too fucking riddled with drugs,’ Lynch muttered, flinging match after match at the body which refused to burn. ‘Come on you wiry bastard.’
    Flames flickered uncertainly, then there was a restrained whoosh and they began to lick Snell: lick, burn and take hold.
    â€˜Thank fuck for that.’ Lynch turned and trudged back to the car in which Bignall was ensconced, the agony of the gunshot wound increasing incessantly as he faded in and out of consciousness.
    The knock on the door had roused various members of the clan from all points of the household and several faces showed themselves, none friendly. Henry’s ears caught a few under-the-breath obscenities. He decided to ignore them. Troy led the two detectives into the living room, adorned gypsy fashion with horse brasses, intricate ornaments, figurines and a lot of sepia photographs of distant relatives. The Costains claimed a line back to Romany gypsies, but Henry had to be convinced. He thought it was just a clever ploy to use when they got discriminated against, which was quite often.
    In the lounge, a teenage girl was splayed out on the deep, black leather settee, dressed in a micro-nightie and nothing else. She left the room unwillingly when Troy jerked his thumb at her. She flounced out, offended, displaying what Henry could only describe as a ‘pert little bottom’.
    â€˜Sit,’ Troy said generously with an open wave of his hand.
    â€˜You too, Troy,’ Henry said, easing down into an armchair.
    â€˜OK – fire away,’ yawned Troy, scratching his head with his fork, then plunging it back into the Pot Noodle. Rik Dean’s disgusted face said it all. ‘What’ve they done? Murdered somebody?’
    â€˜No . . . they were in a stolen car, a Ford Escort, nicked earlier from Manchester,’ Henry explained, seeing Troy tighten up ever so slightly. Henry had built a career on responding to body language and he immediately knew that Troy was not surprised by this news. He had interacted with Troy many times over the years and felt he particularly knew Troy’s non-verbals. He could tell that he knew something about the stolen car. He paused.
    â€˜And . . .?’ said Troy.
    â€˜There was a chase and an accident, I’m afraid.’ Troy’s face drained to the grey colour of the noodles he was devouring. ‘We think Roy is OK. He legged it from the scene.’ Again, Henry paused. Delivering a death message was never easy, even when there was no real sympathy. He had been doing it since the age of nineteen and it never got easier. ‘I’m afraid Renata did not make it. She was killed in the collision. She is dead.’ Henry said the words forcefully because he had learned that people had to be told that a person was dead. Not passed away. Not lost. Not gone to a better place. Not couched in any other term but dead. Otherwise the recipients often hung