by Nick Oldham
He turned: froze.
In the light – and there was enough of it – Henry instantly identified him as the man he had encountered in the car park, same dark clothing, same balaclava, same build.
‘Stop right there, you bastard,’ Henry shouted and lurched across the room towards him, flinging the door fully open.
The man threw down the cover and came head-on to meet Henry halfway across the carpet.
This time Henry was slightly more prepared for a clash, and swung a fist at him.
The man jerked his head sideways and Henry’s punch sailed past, missing him by an inch, which was a long way in a fight.
Alison screamed a warning, but the man forced Henry to the floor as the ex-detective pummelled him about the back of the head and shoulders, hitting him as hard as he possibly could with his fists, connecting with the bone of his cranium and the muscle of his neck.
They rolled back in a clawing, punching lump, but suddenly the intruder had the better of Henry, straddling him, pounding his face mercilessly, blow after blow, hard and accurate as Henry tried to deflect them with his forearms and by twisting his head.
Alison burst across from the door and launched herself into the man, dislodging him and sending him sprawling across the carpet.
Henry tried to move but he was suddenly groggy and in a whirling world of disorientation.
The man backhanded Alison, knocking her spinning away from him, but as she rolled she grabbed his ankles, trying to bring him down. He stepped out of her grasp like he was stepping out of a tyre in an obstacle course, then stamped hard into her face and said, ‘Bitch.’
Henry’s senses flooded back. He threw himself at the man who was too fast, too lithe, and he jigged sideways out of Henry’s grip, sprinted to the door, was gone.
‘How is she?’
‘Still very groggy.’
‘Definitely been drugged, sedated?’ Henry asked the paramedic.
‘I’d say so,’ she said. She was perched on the bed beside Ginny, re-checking her vital signs. All seemed good in respect of heartbeat and breathing but she still had not resurfaced from whatever drug had been administered to her.
The lights were all on now. Henry was holding a cold compress, made from a folded tea towel packed with ice, to the side of his newly swelling face. Alison dabbed a handkerchief at her nose, which dribbled blood. She stood next to Henry and his free arm was wrapped around her shoulders. Both of them were now dressed and he was trying to comfort and reassure her, but she continued to shake like a leaf.
And who could blame her? Henry thought.
He was feeling it too as he looked at Ginny but he was also covering it with rage at the violent intrusion into their lives. He was actually strangely taken aback about how much he was feeling for Ginny, who was not a blood relative. He had two ‘real’ daughters from his marriage to Kate, both now grown and living away, and he would not have said that Ginny was any sort of replacement for them or that he was a ‘dad substitute’ for her. The fact was, she came with Alison and he and Ginny liked each other immensely, maybe even loved each other a little, too. To see her as a victim of a crime in a place where she should have been totally safe had affected him deeply and demonstrated just how deep his feelings were for her. She was part of his family now, he supposed, and anyone violating her also violated him.
After the intruder had gone, after assaulting him and Alison, he had called the cops and ambulance again on the treble-nine system whilst Alison cared for Ginny, who was completely out of it.
This time he got a promise from the operator he’d spoken to earlier that a patrol car would be dispatched, but gave no estimated time of arrival. When he was transferred to the ambulance people, they sent one immediately. It had to come from Lancaster but was there within fifteen minutes.
In that intervening time Henry called the local bobby’s mobile number. He had been at the wedding, so Henry knew him well enough. In fact, Henry had been instrumental in getting PC Jake Niven the job of the rural cop for the area, which was about the last thing Henry ever did as a detective superintendent prior to retirement.
The phone clicked to voicemail three times before Jake picked up in person, answering thickly, probably with his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth.
‘Henry … what the fuck?’
‘Get showered, get dressed, sink a pint of water and get yourself out here if you’re fit enough … Someone’s broken in and tried to abduct Ginny and assaulted me and Alison along the way.’
‘Eh?’
Henry could visualize Jake’s screwed-up face as he tried to make sense of the information, probably thinking he was listening to a hoax call.
‘You heard,’ Henry said bluntly.
‘OK, OK, ten minutes,’ he promised. Henry knew it would take him a little longer than that but at least he was on his way.
By this time the ambulance had arrived and pulled up silently in front of the Owl, no blue lights or sirens, neither being necessary, and few minutes later the nice lady paramedic had delivered her confirmation of Henry’s thoughts, which were not rocket science.
The man, the intruder, had obviously injected something into Ginny, probably via her neck, and this was evidenced by the syringe on the floor by the bedside drawers. He had drugged her to subdue her and had also stuck a strip of gaffer tape across her mouth, though he had probably done this before injecting her. As Henry took this in, the sequence of events was slightly unclear, but the facts were Ginny had been drugged and her mouth taped over.
He had not got as far as trussing her up by tying her wrists and ankles, but this was probably on his to-do list as evidenced by the roll of tape, and it seemed that once this had been done he had intended to roll her into the sleeping bag he had brought along just for that purpose, zip her in tight and carry her out over his shoulder like an old carpet.
Henry and Alison, it seemed, had entered the bedroom just before the trussing-up section of the proceedings.
Going into cop mode, Henry warned the paramedics not to touch anything other than was necessary as this was a serious crime scene and it was vital to protect and secure any evidence. He took responsibility for removing the tape from Ginny’s mouth before the paramedics arrived, easing it carefully away and ensuring he only touched one tiny corner of it between thumb and forefinger. There was a good chance of fingerprints or DNA on the tape and the same applied to the roll of tape and the syringe and maybe the sleeping bag left behind. He put the strip of tape that had been over her mouth into a plastic sandwich bag.
‘Will she be all right?’ Alison asked fearfully.
The paramedics were easing Ginny into a wheelchair. One was holding up a saline drip that had been inserted into her arm just for good measure.
‘We need to get her in to be on the safe side,’ the lady paramedic explained. ‘A doctor needs to examine her and we need to get her blood tested to find out what drug has been used on her. The police will want to know. Can one of you come with us?’
Alison looked at Henry uncertainly, trying to think things through.
The male paramedic who was holding up the drip and who had treated Henry and Alison for their injuries, which were superficial, said, ‘She’ll need someone when she comes round.’
Henry knew what Alison’s conundrum was: there were guests staying and it would be another couple of hours before the chef arrived to begin breakfast preparations.
‘What should I do?’
‘Go with her,’ he told her. ‘It’s you she’ll want to see, not me. I’ll sort things out here, not least because I want to go and rouse Rik and Karl from their slumbers.’
‘No, don’t, don’t bother them,’ she pleaded.
‘Trust me, neither will thank me if I don’t wake them and tell them what’s happened. They’ll want to know and help if they can … but I’ll leave it a while … maybe.’
‘OK.’
‘When everything’s sorted, I’ll come out to the hospital, OK?’
&
nbsp; ‘Right, right, OK,’ she said.
They stood aside as the paramedics manoeuvred the wheelchair through the narrow door, Ginny strapped into it to stop her slipping out, barely conscious, her eyes just watery slits.
‘Why?’ Henry whispered.
‘Do you think it’s connected to the guy on the car park? You think it was him?’ Alison asked.
‘I’d put a hundred quid on it … but that doesn’t answer why. Is something happening in her life we don’t know about?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alison answered, then frowned fleetingly, an expression that was gone almost instantly, but one that Henry noticed.
They all trailed out to the ambulance on the front car park. Ginny was hoisted into the rear. Alison put a foot onto the back step of the vehicle, stopped suddenly and turned to Henry. Her eyes were filled with tears.
‘She’ll be all right,’ he assured her again.
‘What if she isn’t?’
Henry blinked at her. ‘Not going to happen, got that?’ He gave her another embrace and a kiss and tried hard to project a strong front. He wasn’t sure how convincing he was, but he did his best, trying to give his impression of a rock face.
She stepped back up again, but then stopped dead again and said, ‘Damn!’
‘What?’
‘Lord Chalmers,’ she said.
‘What about Lord Chalmers?’ he said, but even as he spoke the words, he knew.
‘I said I’d go and see him at ten this morning – about that twenty-first-birthday party for his granddaughter.’
‘I’ll go and see the old git,’ Henry said.
‘B-but …’
‘I’ll be all nice and professional, honest, and we’ll get the gig. You go and take care of Ginny, just concentrate on that.’ Henry saw the shadow of doubt scud across her face. ‘I will take care of everything and then I’ll come over to the hospital and pick you up, because everything’s going to be OK. Now go.’
This time she stepped into the ambulance. The paramedic shut the doors and the vehicle drew away en route to the A&E department at Royal Lancaster Infirmary. Henry watched until it disappeared out of sight, then exhaled, checked his watch and wondered where the fuck the cops had got to.
He went back inside the Tawny Owl to the private accommodation and to Ginny’s room, where he stood on the threshold. He slid his hands into his jogging pants.
It seemed such a long time since he had been to a crime scene but not everything he’d had ingrained into him in over thirty years as a cop had left him, some eight months into retirement. He knew he was blunted, not as sharp as he had been, and was aware that his knowledge of police procedure was not as up to date as it had been, but the basics of crime-scene management – securing and preserving evidence – were not difficult and he had done the thing that he had first learned at the Police Training Centre when attending a crime scene. As the instructor had screamed at him, ‘Put your fucking hands in your fucking pockets and use your fucking eyes first. Look, but don’t touch.’
That little gem, strangely, had stayed with him all his service.
Not that there was an awful lot to see in this particular crime scene, and things had already been moved, but he still took a few moments of reflection which had not been possible earlier because of the circumstances.
The strip of tape from Ginny’s mouth was already in a plastic bag, but neither the syringe nor the full roll of gaffer tape or the sleeping bag had been touched.
Henry knew those items could hold a forensic treasure chest.
Or not.
It depended on how forensically aware the offender was, how prepared he’d been, and, also, perhaps, what this was all about.
Henry closed his eyes tight and tried to re-visualize the scene he had encountered on opening Ginny’s bedroom door.
It did not help that he had alcohol in his system and it annoyed him he could not recall if the intruder had been wearing gloves or otherwise. If he had been, and had prepared everything with them on, then the forensic side could be more problematical.
‘C’mon, brain, work,’ he chided himself.
But he knew this wasn’t the only crime scene. The man had entered the Tawny Owl somewhere else and Henry knew it was vital to identify the point of entry. The whole of the old part of the premises was therefore a crime scene.
With that depressing thought, Henry decided he needed a coffee to give him some stability and brain power. He walked back down the corridor and out into the public reception area just as the local cop, PC Jake Niven, arrived. He was in uniform, smart, but his face betrayed a night of boozing and it looked as though Henry’s instructions about water intake and a shower hadn’t worked well.
‘What’s going on, Henry? I’ve had comms bleating at me, but I’ve cancelled any other patrols for the moment – even though this is my day off,’ he stressed.
‘Oh yeah,’ Henry said sarcastically. ‘My heart bleeds for you. Coffee?’
It was at that moment Jake saw Henry’s injured face properly for the first time and his jaw went slack.
‘What the—’ he began.
Henry silenced him with a wave of the hand. ‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’
Henry switched on his amazing coffee-making machine behind the bar, ground some Kenyan beans and began the brewing process for which he had even become a trained barista. He was a great coffee-maker now.
Then he took a half-pint glass from a shelf and filled it with cold tap water and guzzled it in one, tipping it down his throat, feeling his Adam’s apple rise and fall as the cold liquid spread downwards.
He looked at Jake who had watched the little ritual with patience.
‘Yeah, I’ll have a coffee,’ he said.
Henry made two Americanos with hot milk and explained the night’s events to him. Jake listened, increasingly perturbed.
‘Shit,’ he said as Henry concluded. ‘Is she OK?’
‘We don’t know yet … she’s in medical hands.’
Henry looked expectantly at Jake as the incident had now been officially reported to the police – something that filled Henry with dread. No disrespect was intended towards Jake or to other individual officers or staff, but Henry thought that police forces had completely forgotten how to give the public what the public wanted – a response.
He did not want to tell Jake what to do, but knew that if it had been him in this situation, having just been told of such a serious crime, he would have been calling for backup. He would be on the blower for CID and Scenes of Crime and also maybe thinking about putting together a search team come daylight to start combing the area for an offender still at large. He would also have an officer at the hospital to check up on and possibly guard Ginny, the victim.
Henry watched the cogs rotating through Jake’s skull for a moment. The PC then took his coffee outside and began to make some radio calls to mobilize what Henry called ‘the Circus’.
Henry sipped his coffee, watching Jake, fairly certain he was at least trying to put some of Henry’s thoughts into action. Jake was a good cop and knew his business well, one of the reasons Henry had supported him in getting the job in the village. He and his family had had a baptism of fire but as he came out of that, Henry knew he had been taken to the heart of the locals … but as an example of the way Henry’s mind had just been working in the respect of the police losing focus, Jake was already feeling the tug of being pulled away from the village to cover staff shortages in Lancaster. So far he had managed to resist, but it would not be long before the bosses ordered him because policing the city was more important to them and they thought rural beat officers were a luxury these days. In fact Jake was one of only a handful of such officers left in the county, those who lived and worked in the communities they policed.
Anyway, Henry thought with a heavy heart, he was here at the moment – and on his day off, as he had so bluntly reminded Henry.
The water rehydrated Henry and the coffee gave him the kick he needed to start
the day which, he knew, would be long, wearying and emotional.
And he still had a peer of the realm to see.
Jake came back in. ‘Right,’ he declared, ‘crime scene investigators turned out, a detective’s on the way and we’re looking at the possibility of getting a support unit serial over later and there’s a PCSO on the way to the hospital to meet up with Alison and Ginny.’
Henry nodded. Good enough for the moment.
‘He’s out there somewhere,’ he said.
‘But if he has a vehicle, he could be miles away.’
‘Mm.’ Henry mulled that over. ‘I’ve been trying to think what he smelled of.’ He searched his olfactory memory because it seemed important. Then he had it. ‘He stunk of grass, that’s what it was.’
‘Weed, you mean? Marijuana?’
‘No. Actual grass, the stuff cows eat … like maybe he’d been lying low in it.’
‘Watching and waiting?’
‘Maybe, maybe.’
They regarded each other.
‘You’re certain it’s one and the same guy who assaulted you in the car park?’ Jake probed.
‘Yeah.’ Henry scratched his rather ragged left ear, the one he had nearly lost when someone fired a shotgun at him some time ago. It resembled a half-made gear cog, but at least it didn’t hurt any more, though it remained intriguing to play with. ‘I’m sure.’
They chatted some more then when they had finished their coffees, Henry refilled the mugs.
Outside, the late-summer dawn was not very far away. Henry suggested it could be worthwhile checking the exterior of the pub to see if the intruder’s point of access could be found.
Essentially, the Tawny Owl consisted of two main sections. The old part contained the public bars, dining room, kitchen, the living accommodation with guest bedrooms upstairs, plus the refurbished function room where weddings were held; this old section was connected to the newly built annexe by way of a nice conservatory. The annexe consisted of a dozen bedrooms, six either side, all on the ground floor, all en suite and all with terraces looking out towards the village at the front or the woods at the back.