Critical Threat by Nick Oldham

after Dave Anger had trashed it and bought an almost new Rover 75, which was slotted into a tight space at the far end of the training centre car park. He rushed across the tarmac in a very ungentlemanly fashion, before manoeuvring it out of its spot and speeding out of the headquarters complex, slowing only for the road humps on the drive.
    He arrived at the scene within half an hour, having managed to elicit more information en route: a burned body had been found on the edge of a piece of woodland not far from the Kirkham exit of the M55, junction 4. That was really all he needed to prepare himself. The rest he would discover on arrival.
    Sitting, eyes shut, in the personnel carrier, Henry could still visualize the body.
    He’d had a bit of a run of bodies that had been set alight. There had been the low-life Manchester drug dealer whose charred remains had been found just inside the Lancashire border; then, unconnected, the sad remains of a young girl in the back of a car in Fleetwood which had been torched when her abductors panicked. That had been the work of Louis Vernon Trent, who Henry had hunted down and who now languished in prison serving life following the successful Crown Court trial.
    Now this one.
    Henry had got results on the first two, but as he looked at what was left of his hat-trick, he had one of those queasy sensations that experienced investigators are prone to, telling him this was not going to be an easy one. No quick glory here, he thought. A hat-trick, maybe, but third time unlucky, too.
    At least he could not fault the initial response of the uniformed officers. It had been done by the book. Nothing at all wrong in that. The first cops to arrive had actually done a great job.
    As ever, priority had been given to identifying the crime scene itself. In this case it was far wider than just the area immediately around the body. Following directions given, Henry found the entrance to a farm track off the A583, about halfway between junction 4 and the small town of Kirkham. And it was from this entrance that the scene was protected. A few police cars were parked on the main road, including a Scientific Support van. Several white-suited people were hanging about as well as officers in uniform and a guy with a broken shotgun over his arm and a spaniel. Henry pulled in a hundred metres away and walked the rest on foot.
    A man broke from the huddle and approached him. It was Rik Dean, a detective sergeant based in Blackpool, and well known to Henry. Rik was one of the good guys and Henry, seeing his potential several years ago, had assisted him to get on CID initially, but his promotion to DS was entirely Rik’s own doing. He was an excellent thief taker and was also proving to be an excellent supervisor, even if he did have an eye for the ladies which sometimes got him into warm water.
    â€˜Henry – glad it’s you.’
    They shook hands. ‘What we got, pal?’
    Rik turned away from the road and looked across the fields. He pointed. ‘This track – it’s narrow, wide enough for one vehicle at most – leads up to those woods.’ His finger was aimed at what was basically nothing more than a copse in a hollow in the middle of a field, maybe two hundred metres from the road. ‘“Staining Woods”, they’re called. The track here leads to the edge of the trees and the body was discovered ten, fifteen feet inside the perimeter of the trees.’
    â€˜Discovered by?’
    â€˜Local guy hunting foxes on the land – with permission,’ Rik added quickly. ‘Literally stumbled over the body in his wellies. That’s him.’ He indicated the man with the shotgun and dog Henry had already noticed.
    â€˜The body?’
    Rik shrugged. ‘Burned to a crisp, almost to the point of breaking up, particularly the legs and arms. Looks like the local wildlife have been having a barbecue.’
    â€˜Male, female?’
    â€˜Hard to say,