Dirty Old Town

by L M Krier

  ‘I’d rather stay with my wife,’ he said, a fraction too quickly. ‘He can stay too, can’t he? He’s a good boy. He’ll be quiet and keep out of the way. Won’t you, lad?’

  ‘The thing is, it’s a bit crowded in here. And it might be nicer for your wife to have some privacy while I examine her. I have to go and get the equipment I’m going to need, so I could take him and leave him quite safely with one of my colleagues.’

  ‘He’s not supposed to go off with strangers,’ the man said, almost sharply.

  She ignored him and smiled at the boy.

  ‘I’m not a stranger though, am I? I’m the nurse who’s going to be looking after your mum. I’m in my uniform and here, look, here’s my name badge. My name is Jo. So would you like to come with me and I’ll get you a drink?’

  She pulled the curtain partly open for him to go out, but made no attempt to touch him, or take his hand. She sensed he would be resistant to any such gesture.

  ‘I know mum’s leg looks a bit nasty, but we can soon fix her up, so try not to worry.

  ‘Is she a bit accident prone, your mum? Does she often get hurt like that?’

  The expression of suspicion on the small face looking up at her spoke volumes. The boy said nothing. She could almost see the shutters coming down. She handed him over to a colleague without asking him anything more, found the trolley she needed and went back to the cubicle.

  The woman was still sitting with her head lowered, but it was clear she’d been crying. The man stepped back swiftly as soon as the nurse reappeared to begin her examination.

  ‘Can you manage to slip your trousers off all right? And perhaps pop your cardigan off for me. I’ll quickly check your blood pressure, while you’re here, as routine.’

  She didn’t need to take her BP really. She might be reading too much into nothing at all. But she did want to have a quick look for any signs of other injuries.

  ‘Is the leg very painful? Could you manage to walk on it?’

  The man made to answer, but she stopped him with a gesture.

  ‘I’d really like your wife to tell me, please. It’s helpful if she can rate the pain level for me herself.’

  She wanted to hear the woman speak. It seemed clear she wasn’t going to give her version of what had happened with the husband there. But Jo really wanted to hear her say something. Anything. So she could gauge whether or not she was overreacting.

  ‘I’m so sorry to be a nuisance. I’m so stupid. I pulled the door to before I’d moved my leg. The wind just caught it somehow and banged it shut. My own silly fault.’

  She managed to wriggle out of her trousers, the injured leg hampering her slightly, although there was movement there, so hopefully no fracture. The nurse helped her off with her cardigan, positioning herself so the man couldn’t do so.

  ‘That's a nasty looking scar. Are you OK with me taking your BP on that arm? How did that happen?’

  She was careful to ask in a matter of fact way, as she slipped the cuff on the woman’s arm to take the reading.

  The woman gave a nervous little laugh.

  ‘Oh, that was so silly it’s embarrassing. I was trying to sharpen a knife, on the sharpening steel. I’ve seen my husband do it before and I thought it would be easy. Not when you’re clumsy, like me, it seems. The knife slipped and caught me. What a good job my husband had just come home from work and could help me to stop the bleeding and put a bandage on it.’

  Jo was finishing up when another nurse from outside the cubicle said, ‘Jo, have you got a minute, please?’

  She excused herself and went to see what he wanted.

  ‘There’s been a bad accident on the motorway. We have a lot of incoming heading our way so any minor injuries will have to take a back seat for now.’

  She would have liked more time to talk to the woman, preferably on her own. But she had to hustle the couple out with almost indecent haste now to make way for more serious patients coming in.

  She made herself a mental note to find time to put something at the end of the treatment sheet. Something along the lines of, ‘Query possible domestic violence incident??’

  Chapter Five

  Ted was on the phone to Hector once more as he walked briskly back to the station.

  ‘Change of plan, ’eck,’ he told him. ‘It looks like it’s going to take me a bit longer than I thought to knock this lot into some sort of shape. Like I said, Big Jim warned me they might want to push boundaries, but it seems they’re taking the piss more than a bit.

  Hector chuckled.

  ‘Ask them about cuffing, Ted.’

  ‘Cuffing? Surely Jim wouldn’t have missed them shelving cases they couldn’t be bothered to do the donkey work for? I’m sure he’d have mentioned that to me.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t forget Jim’s area was a lot bigger than yours. You’re sharing part of his workload with another DCI. And because of the size of his empire, he chose to do most of his checking up by video link when he could. Otherwise he’d never have kept on top of it. Sometimes, there’s a lot to be said for the old-fashioned ways, though. Modern technology can’t always tell you what’s really happening on the ground. As you’re now finding out.

  ‘I was having a brew with some of the blokes I know at this nick and they tell me they call the CID office “the black hole”. Because things they send on to that lot have a habit of disappearing, never to be seen again.’

  ‘Have Uniform said what the DS is like? Why he’s not on top of this?’

  ‘Good, knows his theory, but too soft, is the unanimous verdict. Classic case of why officers are usually moved to another team when they get promotion. Pete was allowed to stay on. Compassionate grounds. His mother is severely disabled and his dad can’t always cope by himself. Pete’s the only other relative. So he was given special dispensation to stay on here.

  ‘Trouble is, he and Alan Burgess were always big mates before, and Ramsay hasn’t learned how to leave that behind, now he’s in charge. Burgess is older. He helped Pete out when he was wet behind the ears, so it’s led to problems. Burgess is also a gobby sod, by all accounts. Does the bare minimum and Pete lets him get away with it because he’s not got the balls to jump all over him like he should now he’s a rank higher.’

  Ted sighed. It was a situation he really didn’t need, with such an increased workload. He knew it could happen. His own team member, Rob O’Connell, had been allowed to stay on when he got his promotion to DS, because of his wife’s work in Stockport as an RSPCA inspector. He was coping well with outranking his long-term friends and knew where to draw the line. They respected him for it, so it worked. It seemed Ted would have to waste precious time giving DS Ramsay some guidelines on doing the same. Unless he could look at moving Burgess somewhere, perhaps swapping him for another officer, until the DS got a grip.

  Ted was nearly at the station now. He paused before going in. Getting the inside story from Uniform via Hector would give him a useful head start on how to begin to tackle the situation. He’d walked back briskly but he was not best pleased that there was no sign of the others following him yet. They were clearly not in a hurry to be back within the five minutes he had given them.

  ‘And what about the third musketeer on the team?’

  Hector made bleating noises down the phone, then said, ‘Milo Sharp? A total sheep. That’s his nickname, too. Sharp the Sheep. He’ll always do whatever the strongest collie dog tells him to do. And at the moment that’s Burgess and not Ramsay. Good luck sorting that little lot out, Ted. Let me know when you’re done. I’m happy enough chatting to Uniform while I wait. You never know, I might dig up some more useful info for you.’

  The Civilian Investigator, Lee Wu, was still working away at her computer.

  ‘Have you actually taken a meal break yet, Lee?’ Ted asked her, then went on hastily, ‘Is it all right to call you Lee?’

  He had a sudden anxious moment, a vague memory about Oriental names sometimes being given with the surname first.r />
  She looked at him again. The same mildly curious expression, as if he were some strange alien species she’d never formerly encountered.

  ‘No, not yet. And yes, Lee is fine. Thank you for asking. I thought someone ought to be in the office in case of any calls.’

  It was a statement of fact, more than a dig, Ted thought. She was right, of course. His own team members were careful to work their breaks so that there was always someone in the office unless it was unavoidable.

  ‘The others are on their way back now, hopefully, so please feel free to go and have something to eat. I can answer any calls until they arrive.’

  He was looking round the office space for somewhere to talk to team members one to one. Open plan was becoming popular, with officers on different shifts often hot-desking rather than having designated desk space. Ted rather like the old-fashioned ways. He certainly appreciated having his own broom cupboard sized space partitioned off for the rare occasions when he needed to read the Riot Act to any of his officers.

  ‘Is there a room anywhere? If I want to talk to people one at a time?’ he asked Lee, who was standing up and putting her things together in readiness to go out.

  ‘There’s one next door,’ she told him. ‘It’s a small kitchenette place where we can brew up or make toasties and such like. If you need the loos, they’re directly opposite. I’ll see you shortly, then, if you’re sure it’s okay to leave you to it.’

  ‘Not too shortly,’ Ted told her. ‘Take a nice leisurely break. An hour should do it, especially if you haven’t yet had a meal break.’

  The door opened as she was about to leave the office. Ted noticed she had to stand aside as the three officers trooped in. He didn’t like that. He’d been brought up the old-fashioned way by his father. He was prepared to accept that it might be her own preference, although he doubted it.

  ‘Right, DS Ramsay, I gather there’s a rest room next door, so shall you and me adjourn there for now, for a little discussion?’

  This time Ramsay made sure he opened the door and stood aside for Ted to go through first. Ted spoke quietly and politely enough but Ramsay sensed he was in trouble. He made another to pre-empt things and excuse his actions.

  ‘Sorry again, guv. I wasn’t really sure what time you were coming here so I thought me and the lads could have a catch-up over a pint. We were talking shop, though. And not drinking alcohol on duty, of course.’

  ‘I don’t expect officers to be talking about work in a pub where they could be overheard by anyone. I also expect to find some sort of activity log, so I know where people are when I call in.’

  Ted was leaning against a work surface in the small space, his arms folded. He left Ramsay standing like a spare part, although the DS had the grace to look contrite.

  ‘Sorry, guv, understood.’

  ‘So what are you and the team currently working on? Who’s on what? It has to be said that your clear-up rate to date is not very impressive, in the absence of your DI.’

  Ramsay looked uncomfortable now. It had clearly been simpler to spin Jim Baker a line via video link than to stand in the confined space of the kitchenette looking into the unwavering hazel stare of this DCI from Stockport. He wasn’t sure quite what he’d been expecting. It certainly wasn’t the intensity of his gaze and the set of his jaw.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Ramsay thought he’d better make a bit more of an effort. ‘Me and the lads have got this alleged assault and robbery. A young lad. The report came in from Uniform. Apparently he was jumped by two blokes who’ve knocked him about and stolen his wallet and his phone. The thing is, there’s no witnesses, so it’s just his word, and the descriptions he’s given. We’re thinking it’s not likely to go very far with only that to go on.’

  ‘There are no witnesses?’ Ted asked levelly. ‘Or you haven’t found any yet? What about CCTV? What does that show?’

  He could see from the DS’s guilty expression that they’d clearly made little effort to find any. He hoped they were simply lazy and incompetent rather than bent. Massaging the figures and marking crimes as No Further Action to lessen their workload was something he could probably sort out with a few chosen words. He didn’t like to think it might go any further than laxity, because there was nothing Ted disliked more than a dishonest copper who might be taking backhanders to cover up crimes.

  Ramsay was starting to sweat, visibly, finding himself on the spot.

  ‘We were going to get started on that this afternoon, sir. It’s one of the things we were talking about just now.’

  He must have realised how lame his excuse sounded.

  ‘When did this incident happen?’ Ted asked him, trying to keep the rising irritation he was feeling out of his voice.

  ‘At the weekend, sir. Saturday night, to be precise.’

  ‘The weekend?’ Even Ted’s normally quiet voice rose at that. ‘It’s Thursday today. What have you been doing, for goodness sake?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He had a feeling there wasn’t one.

  ‘And what about the victim? How serious was the assault?’

  Ramsay looked relieved at a question he could, at least, answer.

  ‘Not too bad, sir. The hospital only kept him in a couple of nights and now he’s back home. One of us is going to see him this afternoon for a full statement. To see if he’s remembered anything more since he spoke to Uniform when the incident was reported.’

  Ted took a moment to look up at the ceiling and count silently to ten. Now he couldn’t decide whether Ramsay was stupid, inept or dodgy. Or possibly all three. He was starting to wonder how he’d got his promotion in the first place.

  ‘Two nights in hospital is significant, DS Ramsay. These days more than ever, patients don’t get kept in for no good reason. So to sum up, you’ve had this case on your books for five days now without making any kind of progress at all. Would you agree with my summary?’

  There wasn’t a lot Ramsay could say to that. He gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘Not a good start, really, is it?’ Ted asked him, now he had his voice under control again. ‘Not to the case, nor to our first meeting. There are other places I need to be now, so here’s what’s going to happen. Before you leave here today, you’re going to send me a detailed report on everything you have on this case to date, and who is investigating what aspect of it.

  ‘I suggest you make good use of your CIO. She made a good impression on me. You seem to forget that the team is not just “you and the lads”. You and the other two get out there and do some proper policing. Track down any CCTV close to the scene. There’ll be some somewhere, even if it’s from private premises. Get Lee onto checking that while you and the others go out and find some witnesses.

  ‘It would seem to me, at first sight, that you haven’t tried hard enough from the beginning to find anything to make a case out of this. I’d like to see a lot more of an effort made before you start deciding it’s not got legs.

  ‘I’ll be back to check on you soon. And unannounced. Count on that.’

  When Ted went back to the car where Hector was waiting for him, he got into the front seat.

  ‘Before you say anything, I want the ins and outs of everything Uniform told you about that useless shower who have underwhelmed me with their progress, or lack of it, to date.’

  ‘Right you are, Ted. So where to next?’

  ‘I really wish I could say take me to the nearest pub, after that experience. But I’ll settle for Longsight nick. My old stamping ground from my time in Uniform. I hope the CID lot have changed since my days there. We didn’t exactly hit it off.

  ‘But meanwhile tell me anything else you found out about the three not so wise monkeys.’

  * * *

  He stopped to buy things several times on the way back home from the hospital. He didn’t say anything by way of explanation. Each time, he came out of the shop carrying a small, white, paper bag with a green cross on it, which he dropped into the foot well by the woman�
��s feet.

  The boy took the opportunity of one of his absences to ask his mother, ‘Why did you say that about the wind to that nurse, mum? It wasn’t windy. There was no wind when we were walking away from school. Why did you say something that wasn’t true?’

  She gave one of her short, nervous laughs.

  ‘You wouldn’t have noticed because you’d already got in the back seat and shut the door. It was one of those funny little gusts that suddenly blows up from nowhere. And at the very minute I was pulling the door to. I probably did that a bit too hard, I think. You know how clumsy your silly mum can be.’

  Then she went on, trying to sound casual, ‘What did the lady say to you when she took you somewhere to sit down? Did she ask you anything?’

  The boy frowned at her question. It wasn’t right to tell lies. He knew that. He’d been told that often enough, at home and at school. But mum had just told him a whopper. There’d been no gust of wind. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t a little child. He knew when it was windy or not. And there’d been no wind to slam the door shut on her leg. He didn’t know why she’d lied, but she had done. It was true that she often got hurt. Perhaps for some reason she didn’t want the nurse to know that. But if she’d lied to him, then he could reply with a lie of his own.

  ‘She asked me what sort of drink I wanted and if I needed anything to eat with it. I said a fizzy orange, please, and nothing to eat, thank you.’

  Despite the pain and the anxious anticipation tying knots in her stomach, she had to smile her pride at him. He was always such a good boy and so polite. They both instinctively stopped talking when the man came back, clutching another bag with a green cross on it, which joined the first one on the floor.

  There were three such bags lying there by the time they got back to the house.

  ‘Look, here’s the key, lad. You go on ahead and open up while I help poor mum out of the car. Can you amuse yourself on your Playstation for a while? I’ll have to sort out a bit of supper for us all, because clearly mum is going to need to lie down and rest, and that might take me a bit of time. Off you go, and don’t worry about your mum. I’ll take good care of her. I’ve bought her something to help with the pain, so that’s a start.’