Edge

by Nick Oldham

Johnny heard the swish of air, braced himself, not knowing where this one would land.

  Whack! The other calf muscle.

  Johnny dropped to his knees, his head drooping.

  He heard Charlie laugh harshly. ‘This is the cost of betrayal.’

  Through the hessian, Johnny heard running footsteps and breathlessness.

  ‘She’s gone, done a runner,’ he heard Jake’s voice say urgently.

  ‘You what?’ Charlie demanded.

  ‘She’s gone, must have legged it.’

  ‘And how did that happen?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘All I wanted you to do was keep an eye on her while I sorted this scum-bucket out, you useless sack of—’

  ‘I know, Charlie. I just went for a piss and when I got back, she’d gone … sorry, sorry,’ he said piteously.

  ‘We need to get her,’ Luke said.

  ‘Come on,’ Charlie said. ‘This one can wait … you take the Chevette, Jake, see if you can spot her on the lanes, me and Luke will take the Range Rover – hey, and if you see her, run the bitch down. You have my permission.’

  Johnny heard their feet as they ran out, then the vehicles starting up and driving away, leaving him. He immediately started to pull the sack off his head and then, bracing himself against the wall, tried to rip himself free from the ring.

  Without any idea of what had befallen Annabel, but knowing she had managed to escape, Johnny eventually broke free and began to run away from the farm into the night, stumbling through the heavy rain, limping badly from the wound in his backside, along stone-strewn paths, trying to keep his balance, jogging, falling, tripping, but putting distance between himself and the farmhouse.

  But then, vehicle lights appeared behind him.

  He sank down to his knees in their beam, recognizing the sound of the Range Rover engine. He was exhausted, drenched and in a praying position, fully expecting to be killed this time.

  NINE

  The irony of a situation was rarely missed by Henry Christie, or any associated cringing embarrassment.

  The last time he had lost a prisoner who had been in his custody – one who had simply managed to slip out of his cuffs and do a runner, as opposed to one who had been broken free by a gang – was in 1982.

  Over thirty years ago, when he had been a uniformed constable.

  Even now, all those years later, Henry still winced at the memory. He had driven all the way to Dover to pick up a young man who had been circulated as wanted for burglary in Lancashire and had been picked up by Kent Police at the port. On the journey back, whilst the car Henry was driving was stuck in traffic on the M6, the prisoner had managed to squeeze his hands out of his cuffs, unlock the door of the car and leg it across the motorway. Even the fact that he later successfully rearrested him didn’t soften the shame of it all.

  In the bollocking that followed, Henry’s feet hardly touched the ground.

  And that, of course, was the irony. He and the young policewoman who had been accompanying him on the prisoner escort had been obliged to parade on at Rawtenstall Police Station and have their dressing down delivered by the detective inspector.

  That man had been a self-centred, controlling monster, who had ruled the roost with a rod of cold, hard steel.

  His name had been Robert Fanshaw-Bayley.

  The man who, at that very moment, was slumped mournfully in the patrol inspector’s chair in Rossendale Police Station in Waterfoot, which had now replaced all of the old police stations in the valley, including Rawtenstall.

  The man who had gone on to become Lancashire Constabulary’s chief constable.

  FB.

  He was drenched, dishevelled, and looked as though he had been thrown from a coal scuttle into the chair.

  He raised his eyes piteously at Henry, who stepped into the office and gently closed the door.

  ‘Fuck me, Henry,’ FB said despondently; but then, in his true, inimitable style, he reapportioned the blame for the escape. ‘What a pair of silly old twats we must look.’

  Henry blinked, took it on the chin. FB was the chief, after all.

  ‘Those young ’uns out there must be wetting themselves,’ FB said.

  ‘Those young ’uns out there are too busy running around like blue-arsed flies, trying to keep a lid on the town, to be chortling over it. Despite the rain, Rawtenstall and Bacup have both kicked off, big style.’

  ‘And hardly anyone on duty – which I already know.’

  Henry shrugged. He had just been talking to the patrol inspector, who had filled him in on staff numbers.

  ‘Covering the whole of the valley tonight,’ Henry said, ‘are eight constables, two sergeants, two PCSOs and four special constables … and there’s a dog handler out there somewhere.’

  ‘That’s plenty.’

  ‘Between five towns,’ Henry stated.

  ‘Shit,’ FB said, slumping back. ‘Is that all?’

  Henry nodded. ‘Yep – so there won’t be anyone searching for our lost boy. He’s the least of anybody’s worries. Best thing we can do is circulate him and leave it at that. He’ll turn up. They always do.’

  ‘What do we do then?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you, boss, but once I get my ducks in a row, I’m going to go knocking on a door or two.’

  Henry left FB stewing in the inspector’s office, reasonably sure that he hadn’t even considered any of the historic irony that Henry had seen. He probably didn’t even remember humiliating Henry and the poor policewoman and Henry wasn’t about to remind him.

  He made his way to the canteen, did a search through the cupboards to see if he could find materials to make a brew. He discovered some hidden tea bags, some milk in the fridge, and was able to put a brew together in two mugs. He took one down to FB, then went into the sergeant’s office, which was deserted.

  He had one or two calls to make.

  Johnny had raced away from the back door of the police Land Rover leaving the tubby cop in a puddle of dirty water, sprinted across the road and sprung over the low wall, not knowing what he was jumping into, other than a completely black void.

  From the road, the dry stone wall was about three feet high. On the other side, the drop was about twice that and Johnny fell through the darkness for what seemed like a disorientating aeon before hitting the ground, which fortunately was soft, wet, deep grass. It was also a steep slope and Johnny began to half-cartwheel down the incline before coming to a stop at what was the bottom of a tight valley with a narrow stream running through it.

  The breath was smashed out of his body and he lay there in desperate pain from both his injuries and the bone-jarring halt, staring up into the sky, the rain pounding into his face.

  He remained still, but twisted his head slightly to look back up the slope and could just make out the figures of the two cops peering stupidly over the wall, trying to see him.

  He did not move, got his breath back, his eyes fixed on the cops who walked up and down, gesticulating angrily, then giving up. They were not coming after him and he heard the engines of their vehicles start up and drive away.

  Slowly he got into a kneeling position, feeling the pull of the sutures which had closed the wound on his buttock.

  He knew he had to get going, but spent the next ten minutes painfully easing his left hand out of the handcuffs. It didn’t come out as easily as the right one had done – because he had the ability to self-dislocate his thumb and little finger on the right, which enabled him to minimize the circumference of that hand – painfully, it had to be said – and draw it out of the cuff ring. The left hand wasn’t as simple, but with some very tough manipulation and scraping of skin, he eventually squeezed it free, then tossed the cuffs into the stream.

  He slithered and slid his way back up the slope to the road, reaching the wall and looking cautiously over it. The cops had definitely gone, so he clambered over and began to jog-trot back towards Bacup.

  His mind was on Annabel – and a baby he h
adn’t known about until he’d burst into Charlie’s bedroom with the intention of dragging Annabel out of the situation and declaring everything to Charlie. He had come through the door just as she had revealed her pregnancy to Charlie and the news had stunned both men.

  Johnny ran on in the rain, limping badly from his wounds and beatings, but with only one thing on his mind – to get back to Annabel, rescue her from Charlie’s dangerous clutches, and maybe kill Charlie if he had to.

  The inner chant he kept repeating to himself spurred him on.

  ‘Gonna be a dad, gonna be a dad, gonna be a dad …’

  ‘Have you any idea what time of day – or night – it is?’

  Henry did not respond to the voice at the other end of the phone line. He had expected this type of rejoinder and waited patiently for the tirade to subside, even though the person he was talking to was of a much lower rank. A lowly detective constable, to be exact.

  The reason why Henry allowed this person to be such a cantankerous and insubordinate jerk was that Jerry Tope was a little bit of a whizz where computers were concerned. Tope had very ‘well-honed on-line investigative skills’ – as he liked to call them – with an uncanny ability to drill down for information. In other words he could hack into other people’s computer systems anywhere in the world and, if he so chose, leave no trace of his visit. He had once been caught foraging through an FBI database and was pursued around the world by FBI computer geeks, who pinpointed him to his actual computer in his office at Lancashire Constabulary HQ. They were so impressed by him that he had been almost headhunted by the FBI and he had never made the same mistake again. His job was as an intelligence analyst in the Intelligence Unit of the force, and he was much valued and sought after by many people, including Henry, who allowed his obnoxiousness up to a point – especially at this time of day.

  ‘I know exactly what time of day it is,’ Henry said. He checked his watch and raised his eyebrows, not realizing it was that late. He had called Tope at home and disturbed him from his bed, but sometimes that was how it was and Henry did not feel apologetic. Nor did he want Tope to hack into any computer he wasn’t allowed to; tonight he just wanted him to do his job.

  ‘And yet you disturb me.’

  ‘Yes. I want you to do some background and body checks for me,’ Henry said. He was impatient now, just wanted to get on with things.

  ‘Now? Won’t a PNC operator do?’ Tope moaned. ‘I’m in my jim-jams.’

  ‘No; I want you to dig behind the headlines,’ Henry said. All a PNC operator would do was check a name or car registration number, not necessarily delve beyond that. ‘Got a pen?’

  ‘Wait … don’t want to wake Marina,’ Tope said, referring to his wife. Henry heard shuffling, footsteps, doors closing, then a big sigh. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Annabel Larch, early twenties, born Rochdale at a guess. Johnny Asian, ditto. Both from Rochdale or Whitworth, but I don’t think Asian is his real name.’

  ‘Dates of birth would be helpful.’

  ‘Nope … see what you can dig up.’

  ‘For the morning?’ Tope said hopefully. ‘You know I was at work until nine this evening with Rik Dean’s case, the murder of that prison officer.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know, Jerry, and no again, not the morning, now.’

  ‘But I’m sat in my living room in my jim-jams,’ he reiterated.

  ‘And I know you have a computer from which you can access the force mainframe and any other mainframes you bleeding well want to.’

  ‘Not officially.’

  ‘No, not officially, but do it, eh?’

  ‘Why so important?’

  ‘Because I think I’m about to go into the lion’s den.’

  ‘How very fucking dramatic.’

  ‘That’s me, Jerry, a real drama queen. Oh, there is one more thing …’

  Jerry Tope hung up and shook his head crossly, but not too crossly. He had worked regularly for Henry for the past few years and, whilst it would be wrong to say he had enjoyed every moment, Henry was a good boss and had saved him a couple of times from major downfall. Henry looked after his people and in turn expected them to jump when he yelled.

  Tope yawned and stretched, then went back upstairs to the spare bedroom he used as a study. Though he was a computer nerd and it might have been expected that he would have a bank of screens and monitors and stacks all lined up, there were actually only two laptops in the study. Most of the space was crammed with home-brewing equipment, with various beers and wines fermenting away in the room.

  His love of computers themselves was minimal. He saw them only as a means to an end, because what really drove Tope was his inquiring mind, his thirst to search, to get into places he wasn’t allowed to be and discover hidden gems. In some ways he saw himself as the Indiana Jones of the cyber world and sometimes he enjoyed being discovered and chased, likening it to being pursued by a huge boulder that he always escaped from when it hit an opening only he could fit through.

  At least that was the metaphor he had in his mind to explain and make interesting what he did.

  He sat at his desk, shook his mouse and brought one of the laptops to life.

  He hadn’t closed down the work he had been doing for DCI Dean and the Preston murder, although there was precious little at the moment. A couple of witness statements had already been inputted on to the HOLMES system, which was the computer system used by all forces in England and Wales to record and cross-check information generated by large investigations.

  Tope had been looking through the statements to see if there was any information he could extract that would be useful in helping to nail the offenders, but there was very little in a statement from a window cleaner or one from the woman who had been having an affair with the dead prison officer. Statements would start to flood in later; then he would be really busy.

  His eyes glanced briefly through the two statements, then he shut them down and diverted his energies to Henry Christie’s requests.

  Annabel Larch knew she would eventually have to face Charlie and she was dreading the moment, but the way she envisioned it working out was nothing like the horrific reality that transpired.

  She had well and truly fallen for Charlie four years earlier when she was eighteen and coming under the spell of a guy like him was no surprise to her. From the age of twelve when she had lost her virginity in a backyard shed on a Rochdale council estate to a lad very much like Charlie, she had gone for the bad boys.

  Loved them, ran with them, was there for them whatever.

  She went through a series of low-level drug dealers, drunks, fighters and loud-mouthed oafs who treated her badly because she let them, but they also gave her a good time in return for lots of sex and excitement.

  It was a period in which she drank heavily, snorted coke, smoked cannabis and generally had a ball, with a few minor convictions chucked in there for good measure.

  Then she met Charlie in a pub in Rochdale and hooked up with him, realizing he was a very big step up from the other lads she had been seeing.

  He took his violence to another level.

  At first, this excited her.

  Over a four-week period, once, she witnessed him seriously assault six people, not one of whom deserved it. But that didn’t matter. It made the violence more compelling, watching the victims’ incomprehension as Charlie jumped on their arms and heads, hearing them sometimes plead, ‘Why?’

  The fact that Charlie also headed a small gang of criminals also sent a shiver of anticipation through Annabel. He was on welfare benefits, but made some real money carrying out armed robberies at corner shops and convenience stores around Manchester. The gang was even nicknamed ‘The Surgeons’ because of the modus operandi of always using a surgical face mask and back-to-front baseball caps to hide their identities, and, of course, they were never caught. This was, Charlie boasted, because he led them well – plus they always ran back over the border into Lancashire to lie low after a job.

/>   Strangely, Annabel thought it was evidence of Charlie’s love and devotion to her when once, after a robbery, when he was buzzing on adrenalin and she had given him a blow job to bring him down, he had grabbed her by the hair, twisted her face up to his and warned her, ‘You know you’re mine, don’t you?’

  She swallowed. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘And if you ever – ever – go with anyone else, I’ll fuckin’ kill you and him. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, Charlie, I won’t ever do that. I’m your forever girl … I love you.’

  That was before she wanted a baby.

  That in itself had been a very odd, unsettling sensation, one she never ever thought she would feel. It was probably not helped by the fact that most of her girlfriends were now pushing kids around in prams, meeting up in cafes and pubs, and having a completely different social life to hers. She was being left behind and, also, when she looked at a tiny baby, something inside her melted like soft toffee, but she couldn’t quite understand what she was feeling. She just knew she had to have a rug-rat, as Charlie so colourfully called them.

  She had broached the subject during one night of sex with Charlie when, as he rammed himself into her, she stopped him gently and looked into his lust-tinged eyes.

  ‘Charlie, Charlie, stop,’ she’d cooed.

  ‘Why? I’m nearly there,’ he gasped.

  ‘I know, I know, I know …’ She kept her eyes locked into his. ‘Charlie, d’you love me?’

  ‘Yuh, now can I—?’

  ‘I want us to have a kid – your kid,’ she informed him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to be a mummy, I want you to be a daddy.’

  He was excruciatingly close to his orgasm, although he was encased in a condom. ‘OK, so what are you saying?’

  ‘Take it off.’

  He did, and the intercourse was over seconds later.

  Almost six months later she still wasn’t pregnant and the tension was growing between them, arguments, disagreements bubbling constantly, until the night in the pub in Whitworth when Charlie’s anger spilled on to the streets and he made the mistake of attacking a man walking a dog.