Critical Threat hc-10

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Don’t think you’re that important, pal,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll get round to you if we need a laugh.’

  ‘Funny about those tapes going missing,’ Henry said.

  Anger’s eyes narrowed behind his small round glasses. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said with a twitch of his shoulders which looked like someone had just walked over his grave.

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘Anyway — excuse me.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Anger grimaced a tight smile and eased past Henry on the narrow path.

  ‘By the way,’ Henry couldn’t resist calling. Anger’s shoulders drooped visibly. He turned, a hateful expression on his face.

  ‘What? You want to rub it in? How good she was?’

  Henry crinkled his nose. ‘Nah … I don’t even remember it … is that worse?’ he asked, although he was fibbing. One could hardly forget having sex with a randy young policewoman on the bonnet of the commandant’s car at the regional training centre. Not an experience easily erased from the mind. ‘No, it’s not about that.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘D’you think I’d be daft enough not to have a copy of the tape?’ With a smirk of triumph, Henry continued his journey back to the classroom, hoping Anger would stew, even though it was a lie. He didn’t have a copy.

  The graphic details of the sex change operation — including a toe-curling PowerPoint presentation — made Henry squirm and cross his legs like most of the other guys in the room. The ladies seemed to be revelling in the male discomfort, whilst the speaker, the one who had undergone the op, was very blase about the whole thing.

  When the lunch break came, Henry knew there was no way he could ever eat anything after watching such a gruesome spectacle, so he decided on a stroll around the grounds.

  He mulled over whether his career as a detective was truly over as he walked past the slimy duck pond in the direction of the huge building which housed the firing range. The deal he had hatched with the chief was that if Henry quietly let the Dave Anger ‘thing’ drop, there would be an extra pip on the way and a transfer. That latter bit needed to be worked out, as most of the chief inspector roles within force were filled. FB said he couldn’t promise a detective role immediately and left it at that. Still, Henry thought philosophically, two years more on a chief inspector’s wage before retirement; maybe he could hack it anywhere they put him and then do a runner with the enhanced pension and substantial lump sum he would receive.

  Walking past the rear of the training admin building, Henry bumped into an old colleague of his, a guy called Bill Robbins, a PC who was a firearms instructor. Bill had about the same length of service as Henry and they had worked as constables together in the early eighties. Bill was a cool, laid-back sort of bloke who played a mean bass guitar in a rock band in his spare time, a gift Henry envied. He was also a brilliant shot.

  However, today he looked out of sorts.

  After a bit of mutual back-slapping, they both commented on how miserable each other looked — ‘you look like you’ve seen your arse’ being the exact phrase Henry used to describe just how morose Bill was looking.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he moaned. ‘I work here training all the time and now they also want us to go out on bloody shifts, like we don’t have a day job! They wring every last drop out of you these days …’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘You look like you’ve seen my arse, too.’

  ‘Is it that one with a big black hole in it?’

  They chuckled, then Bill looked slyly at Henry. ‘How do you fancy a bit of a blast, shake some cobwebs off?’

  It was totally against procedure, but what the hell. Henry fancied living dangerously for once.

  He had a pair of ear defenders around his neck, a pair of protective goggles covering his eyes.

  Similarly attired and standing next to him, Bill held up the weapon for Henry to see. He recognized it instantly. ‘Smith and Wesson, 44 Magnum,’ he gasped. ‘Hell.’

  ‘The very one,’ Bill said. ‘Handed in at the recent firearms amnesty and strangely enough, no criminal history to it.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to destroy stuff that’s handed in?’

  Bill smiled conspiratorially. ‘Always keep the cream of the crop — for educational purposes only, of course … and to play with.’

  He handed the revolver to Henry with the cylinder open and empty. Henry took the heavy beast into a sweaty palm, feeling the weight pull his hand down. All thoughts of FB, Dave Anger and other associated things were suddenly banished from his mind. That is what handling a gun does — purges everything.

  It was a wonderful piece of equipment, substantial, black and dangerous looking.

  ‘It came with two hundred rounds of Magnum ammunition. I’ve tested it already,’ Bill said. ‘It’s wick.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Want a go?’

  ‘Yeah, I could do with the release.’

  Bill gave him two speed loaders, six thick, chunky bullets in each, which looked capable of taking down brick walls.

  They turned to face down the firing range, which was fifty metres long.

  ‘How about a walk through? Keep it simple, but fun?’

  The range lights dimmed to recreate conditions a firearms officer might have to face in a building in real life. Right at the end of the range, fifty metres away, were four targets turned facing him, the classic combat target of the charging armed man with the rings centring on his body mass. Ten metres in front of him, jutting out of the right-hand edge of the range, was a waist-high mock brick wall made of hardboard; ten metres further, on the opposite side, was another wall; then ten metres further a stack of old car tyres and an old fridge.

  Henry stood ready at the fifty-metre mark, jacket off, ear defenders in place, safety goggles secure, feet shoulder width apart, the heavy weapon held in his right hand, left hand clamped underneath it for support, the muzzle pointing downwards to a point about three feet in front of him. Six bullets had been loaded. The tip of his right forefinger rested on the trigger.

  He was suddenly extremely nervous. His mouth had dried up, his legs gone slightly weak with excitement. He had given up breathing.

  Bill, positioned a pace behind Henry, placed a hand on Henry’s shoulder. ‘Be ready for the recoil,’ he warned. Henry nodded, focused on what lay ahead. ‘Are you ready to shoot?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was a hundred per cent aware of how his body was feeling.

  In his hand Bill held the remote control, no larger than a TV remote, which controlled everything in the range from the movement of the targets to the lighting, to background music if necessary.

  There was an interminable pause — probably no more than two seconds although it seemed for ever — giving Henry the chance to scan the range ahead and take in the obstacles.

  Bill pressed a button on the remote and all four targets spun out of sight.

  Henry swallowed nothing.

  ‘As discussed?’ Bill asked — because as against procedure as this little foray might have been, he had gone through a thorough, rigorous pre-shoot safety briefing with Henry.

  ‘Yes.’

  Another pause, then, ‘Watch and shoot.’

  Bill patted Henry on the back and he started to walk slowly forwards, revolver still pointing towards the floor.

  Three metres down, one of the targets spun to face him.

  Henry reacted. He stopped, adopted the classic combat stance, bouncing down on his knees, bringing up the gun at the same time and double-tapped — bam! bam! The gun recoiled wildly as the powerful bullets exploded out of the muzzle. The noise in the confined space, in spite of the earmuffs, was incredible.

  The target spun away, having shown for two seconds.

  Henry knew he had missed at this distance.

  A bead of sweat trickled down his temple. He lowered the gun, gritted his teeth and walked on, two rounds discharged, ensuring he remembered how many he had fired. It was easy to forget in the heat of the mom
ent.

  Two different targets spun to face him. Henry took them in and was surprised to see that one of them was a woman holding a baby; the other was the gunman. He dropped into the combat stance and double-tapped the correct target, again knowing he had missed.

  Four gone, two left.

  The targets clattered out of sight.

  Henry walked another two metres and a single target appeared, into which he drilled his remaining bullets, now having got some measure of the recoil of the huge gun. Before the target disappeared, Henry dropped to one knee behind one of the walls and transferred the gun into his left hand, whilst at the same time flicking open the cylinder and ejecting the spent cartridges on to the floor behind him with an exaggerated flick of his hand. He fumbled in his pocket and found the speedloader, slotting the bullets into their new homes, then stood up, ready again — just as two targets reappeared, both wielding firearms.

  He reacted instantly, a double-tap for each of them, and was feeling pretty good at the result.

  Four bullets gone, two remaining … he walked on, heart pulsating, sweat dripping, adrenaline gushing … ready to shoot again.

  ‘And I am a transsexual,’ the person at the front of the classroom announced proudly, bringing an inner groan from Henry, who began to wonder how much more of this he could stand as his eyes flickered to the transvestite sitting next to the transsexual. It was becoming a freak show and he could sense a creeping feeling of despair in the room from all the other delegates. And there was another session to go after this.

  He could still feel the kick-back of the big revolver in his hands, smell the cordite in his nostrils, and half-wished he had the Magnum in his possession to see how well he could double-tap live targets. I’d give them a head start, he thought sportingly, then hunt them ruthlessly down.

  He twitched as his mobile phone vibrated in his pocket. He sneaked it out and glanced at the newly arrived text message asking him to contact the force incident manager regarding a murder which had just been reported. He didn’t want to jump for joy that some poor unfortunate person had been killed, but at least it got him out of this purgatory, because if he stayed there was every chance there would be a gender-bender-related murder.

  Three

  Six months later

  As much as Henry Christie had been assured at the 3 a.m. briefing that his task, his responsibility, during the operation — codenamed ‘Enid’ — was probably the one with the least chance of risk associated with it, he could not help but feel just a little bit excited.

  It had been stressed that his role was peripheral to the main operation and, more subtly, that he was there only to make up numbers; it was just that they needed someone of his rank to help out and because chief inspectors were thin on the ground for various reasons; the corporate barrel had been scraped and Henry had been found lurking in a crack like an ugly germ.

  Obviously that had not been said out loud at the briefing, but Henry knew this to be the case. He had been called in because no one more suitable — preferable — was available and they needed someone of his rank to hang the blame on should something in his corner of the op go tits up. The ‘no blame culture’ that had been bandied about a few years before was now a dead duck, floating feet up in the water. Today’s climate of fear and failure in policing definitely needed scapegoats, hence Henry’s presence. If it all went well, then he wouldn’t even get mentioned in dispatches. It was one of the things that came with being someone who was considered too hot to handle, someone who nobody even wanted to be near enough to cattle-prod away.

  But for once, Henry couldn’t care less, because for the first time in an eon, he was feeling enthusiastic.

  It came not from the minor role, but from the feeling that had made being a cop so worthwhile throughout his long, often tortuous career. Here he was, sitting in a scruffy, battered police personnel carrier, kitted up to the eyeballs in protective equipment like a Jedi knight, in the dead of night, amongst a feral gang of Support Unit officers who belched, swore, farted, laughed and joked, and didn’t give a rat’s scrotum whether or not Henry was a chief inspector, because they knew they were good, the best. They knew their job and as soon as they stepped out of their van, they would leave the childishness and inappropriate behaviour behind and become cold, ruthless and professional whilst performing their allocated task. He’d once been on Support Unit and had been just the same.

  It was 4 a.m. now. An east Lancashire dawn was just around the corner. The streets of Accrington were damp and silent and a dozen hairy-arsed bobbies were raring to go on the word of command.

  What could be better than this?

  Henry was back at the razor sharp end after months of lying fallow. A wonderful sensation. Out playing with the lads ’n’ lasses (there were two female officers in the back of the van and the rather butch sergeant next to him), just waiting for the nod via his earpiece. It was something he didn’t do enough of these days, rarely getting the chance to grubby-up his hands with day-to-day policing.

  The buzz was incredible.

  Just sitting in the front of the van on the bench seat with the sergeant squeezed between him and the driver. Biding time. When every other non-crim soul was tucked up in bed asleep, he was out on the streets.

  He was even in uniform, wearing his public order overalls — which, if he was honest, he’d had to cram himself into, steel toe-capped boots and a flat uniform cap with the chequered band. The chief inspector’s model, of course, with a bit more padding for the brain than the plebs of lower rank were issued with. However, no matter what sort of police cap he wore, he always thought he looked more like a bus conductor because, for the sake of comfort, he always wore it tipped on the back of his head.

  Here they were, waiting for the signal, all systems go.

  Despite the air of flatulence, Henry could not mask his smile. In the next few minutes, a collection of size eleven boots and heavy metal, double-handed door openers would combine as his team for the night ‘front-and-backed’ a terraced house and then, as the doors flew off their hinges, they would pour in like wolves. Around the division, half a dozen similar raids were being choreographed concurrently, one of them being a fully armed incursion.

  Terrorism was in the neighbourhood and this was the police response to it.

  Henry’s smile became grim. How the world had changed, he thought sadly, wondering what would greet his team as they roared into the target address. His smile changed again, this time becoming twisted and sardonic, when he realized that if his one and only fleeting experience with the Security Services was anything to go by — and it seemed that most of the intel for Operation Enid (who the hell chose that name?) had come from MI6 — Henry’s raid could go one of a number of ways. Either it could be spot on as promised, or it could be completely the wrong address, or, worst case scenario, they’d barge into a highly dangerous terrorist cell hiding out in a booby-trapped house and get themselves either blown up, or shot to bits.

  ‘Excuse me, boss,’ the sergeant next to him said, interrupting his thoughts, ‘but are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, why?’

  ‘It’s just you had a bit of a strange look on your face, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Henry folded his arms, tilted his head back and tried to relax. There was no point in fretting about anything now. What would be would be. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath through flared nostrils, exhaling slowly and thought, with more than a trace of bitterness, that whilst he was excited to be involved in Operation Enid, the reality was he would have much preferred attending the scene of some grisly murder or other. That was what he really loved doing. He truly believed he had found his niche as a senior investigating officer after years of bouncing around in various detective roles, but other people had other ideas. Obviously.

  He was as sure as he could be that he had investigated his last murder.

  And that irked him personally, because the key word was ‘investigated’, not ‘solved’. He
hadn’t come anywhere near solving it, hadn’t even started investigating it properly.

  He uttered a snort of contempt without meaning to, which he covered up with a cough when he opened his eyes and squinted at the sergeant, who was still giving him curious looks.

  ‘Sure you’re OK, boss?’

  ‘Yep, yep, fine.’

  She regarded Henry as if he were strange.

  The uncontrollable snort had been uttered as he had thought about that last murder six months earlier and how things had changed for him in the intervening time …

  When he had discourteously flounced from the Race and Diversity training course, he had been eager to get to the scene of the murder, even though he had only the sketchiest of details. Because he believed he had been sidelined and given only dross to do, he was desperate to grab this one by the throat and make it his. He knew he had to get in there quick, take charge and stomp his identity on to the front of the policy book. If he dallied he knew there was the probability of some more favoured detective being handed the job by Dave Anger. He needed to ensure a fait accompli.

  He had traded in his trusty Ford Mondeo 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.