Substantial Threat by Nick Oldham Page B

her he was going to be very late coming home. Then, not really knowing why, he added that it might be better if he spent the night at his flat because it was so central, handy for the police station, and he would not disturb Kate or the girls by coming in late.
    It was all rubbish, of course, but that ‘certain something’ had crept into Henry’s brain again. He experienced a vicious stab of guilt when Kate happily accepted what he was saying at face value, told him she loved him and asked him to ring her if he could – any time.
    He ended the call with an irritated frown on his face. He returned to Jane’s office, replacing the expression with a more positive one.
    â€˜Ready?’
    She grabbed her coat. Henry was going to take her on the town in the hunt for an informant or two. As they descended the stairs, Roscoe asked, ‘Was that Kate you were talking to?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜Oh,’ she said, and clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth.
    By 9 p.m. Ray Cragg, Marty and Crazy had made their way to the counting house. When he was there, Ray always thought of himself as the king counting out his money. Or to be more accurate, overseeing while others counted out his money for him.
    The counting house was in the middle of a short dead-end terraced street in the town of Rawtenstall in east Lancashire. The houses had been built towards the end of the nineteenth century to accommodate workers at the nearby cotton mill on the banks of the River Irwell. Over a hundred years later the mill and the cotton business were long since gone. After having been abandoned and allowed to decay through non-use and vandalism in the decades following the Second World War, the shell of the mill had finally been flattened in the early 1990s. The demolition of its massive chimney had made national TV news. A new industrial park had replaced the mill and the cotton trade itself had been replaced by a variety of businesses and services, none of which would last half as long as cotton had done.
    But the street remained. Two rows of houses with back yards and outside toilets, clinging perilously to the side of the Rossendale Valley. Even its original cobbles remained, now shiny and worn with age, use and weather. On damp, dank, foggy days it did not take too great a leap of the imagination to visualize those bygone days when cotton ruled: clogs clattering on cobbles, the mill chimney belching plumes of unhealthy smoke into the atmosphere, cholera and typhoid.
    However, it had been touch and go for the survival of this street. Most of the surrounding streets had been demolished, grassed over, never to be rebuilt in any shape or form. The bulldozers had been ready to roll to flatten this last one. The required compulsory purchase orders had been served and all the residents, bar one stubborn old lady – ninety years old, who had lived in the street all her life and had never been further than Blackpool – had been evicted and rehoused. It was only a matter of time before the old lady popped her clogs and the bulldozers waded in. The council had been prepared to wait.
    The street had been saved by Ray Cragg. He had spotted its location and potential, and had slipped some fairly hefty backhanders in the form of cash and B-list celebrity blowjobs to a couple of councillors ripe for the plucking.
    It would be a crying shame to flatten the street, destroy history, wipe out our heritage . . . at least that’s how the councillors lobbied on Ray’s behalf. The council were informed that a local businessman and general do-gooder (no name mentioned, obviously) wished to preserve the street, yet also modernize it and let out the properties to the local community at low rents.
    What the council did not hear was the truth: that Ray Cragg had seen the street’s potential. A nice, little nondescript location, tucked out of the way, affording the privacy he craved, close to a motorway link giving him fast