Critical Threat

by Nick Oldham

  He was enjoying the process. Mind-mapping, flow-charting, jotting down single words to spark ideas, all designed to foster the thought process. It was a stage of the investigation he loved; those few moments when it was all his; the time before everyone else and their dogs stuck their noses into the pie; the stage when it was all pure and untainted. He felt a bit like a kid at school with a colouring book and crayons, writing with one hand, the other hand curled around to stop anyone else looking at his work.

  It was engrossing work, too, and thirty-odd minutes later, he was sitting there staring into space seeking to get some inspiration from the wall in front of him.

  There was a noise as the door opened behind him. This brought him back to reality. He twisted in the chair, half hoping to see Professor O’Connell – purely for professional reasons, of course – but caught his breath and sat bolt upright when he saw who it was …

  Henry grunted and jumped out of his skin. He had dropped off to sleep, his chin bouncing down on to his chest, and had woken with a start and a shake of the head.

  A ripple of giggles came from the back of the van as he sucked back the dribble from the corner of his mouth with a slurp. He looked sideways at the sergeant.

  ‘You might be mistaken for thinking I dropped off then,’ he said.

  ‘No probs, boss, we all need power naps occasionally.’ She yawned and stretched in the confined space. ‘Is this going to happen or not?’ She peered at her digital watch. ‘We should’ve gone in twenty minutes ago,’ which made Henry realize he’d actually been zonked-out for at least ten.

  His eyes drooped with fatigue. ‘Dunno,’ he said, which was not the most earth-shatteringly incisive thing to say, but was about all he could muster at that time of day as he found himself suddenly very knackered. His brain was becoming spongy, starting to shut down.

  In the personnel carrier the tittle-tattle had also waned as tiredness drew a veil over everyone. Which was not good, he thought; raiding a house with a possible terrorist connection should be carried out by officers who were on the ball, not ones who were dim-witted and sloth-like because they had become fatigued from waiting around. That bred mistakes.

  He inhaled and exhaled deeply in the hope of getting some fresh oxygen into his bloodstream.

  Dawn was creeping in more quickly. Soon it would be a gallop. The sky was starting to turn a pale grey; spots of rain clicked on the windscreen.

  Unable to help it, and assisted by the slightly hypnotic effect of the rain, Henry’s heavy eyelids slid slowly closed even though he fought it valiantly …

  It wasn’t Keira O’Connell entering the office. It was the bluff, angry figure of Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Anger and his sidekick, a DI called Carradine who had been seconded to FMIT recently and who, Henry knew, was the man that Anger wished to replace Henry with. All three of them went back a long way, but it was Anger and the DI who were best mates.

  Behind them trotted a helpless Rik Dean, making tiny gestures to Henry with his hands and shoulders, which said, ‘Sorry.’ He looked pained.

  Anger barged in, Carradine by his shoulder like a parrot.

  ‘Almost pulled a fast one there, Henry,’ was Anger’s opening gambit.

  Henry swung the desk chair round, instantaneously on the defensive. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How did you get this job?’ Anger demanded.

  ‘What job?’

  ‘This murder!’

  ‘I was called out to it – it is on my patch, after all.’ He was responsible for covering Blackpool Division, on which the body had been found.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have been.’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  ‘You’ve been relieved of the job.’

  The chair flew backwards on its casters as Henry shot to his feet. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. DI Carradine is taking it on, so you can hand over everything to him.’

  ‘What?’ Henry was flabbergasted.

  ‘But there is some good news in it for you,’ Anger smirked. Henry waited, not daring to open his mouth lest what came out of it totally destroyed his career. ‘You’ve been transferred off FMIT as of today,’ Anger said, and let the words hang there for effect. Henry’s mouth dropped open with a little bubble of spit on his lips. ‘Yeah – transferred on to Special Projects at HQ.’ Anger smiled winningly. ‘Hadn’t you heard? No? I’m surprised FB hasn’t called you.’

  Admittedly Henry knew he had a series of missed calls on his mobile which he had been studiously avoiding. One of them could have been FB.

  ‘But then again, why would he call you? It’s usually your divisional commander or department head who gives you that sort of news these days.’ Anger’s smile turned into a snarl. ‘Unfortunately, the transfer comes with a promotion to chief inspector, which completely mystifies me.’ He shook his head and looked as though this news was enough to make him vomit. ‘So you can get lost.’ The smile returned – venomously. ‘DI Carradine is now temporary DCI and despite the fact that I said you’d never make chief inspector as long as I’ve got a hole where the sun don’t shine, I’m a happy man. You know what I think of you, so I won’t go over old ground.’ He gave Henry a little wave.

  Henry was tempted to knock the beam off Carradine’s face as he crossed the room, and was glad to see the DI cringe back slightly as he came within striking distance. Obviously Henry’s body language was pumping out ‘beware’ vibes. However, he did nothing nor said anything, but pushed past the three of them, getting a muted ‘Sorry, mate’ from Rik, and stalked into the corridor. He had only gone a few yards when Anger called, ‘Henry.’ He stopped abruptly and revolved slowly as Anger strolled up to him, a half-smile on his twisted lips.

  ‘You don’t seriously think you’d have won, do you?’ he said derisively. ‘I’m part of a gang, you know.’ His eyebrows arched. ‘You, on the other hand, are just a minion, a nobody, nothing.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Henry said.

  ‘So let’s let bygones be bygones, eh? There’ll be no need for us to cross paths any more. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Anger’s face froze. ‘I’ll fuckin’ crush you, Henry,’ he said almost conversationally, ‘if you don’t let this go. I promise you.’

  ‘Your little army going to do your bidding?’

  ‘I will destroy you if I have to.’

  ‘Oh, stop talking like Lex Luther. What you need,’ Henry said, ‘is an anger management course.’ It was something he’d been longing to say to the DCS, but when it came out it sounded limp and pointless under the circumstances.

  ‘I haven’t heard that one before,’ Anger said mirthlessly.

  Even so, Henry made himself laugh as he turned and set off down the corridor again, head held high, feeling the pierce of Anger’s blazing eyes burning like lasers between his shoulder blades.

  Outside in the car park it was cold and dark and all he wanted to do was scream at the moon.

  Instead, he went and sat in his car, engine idling, heater blowing, churning it all over, wondering how best to progress. He wasn’t certain how long he sat there, but it was a good length of time – long enough for him to watch Anger, Carradine and Rik leave after, Henry guessed, their briefing from the pathologist.

  A knock on the driver’s window made him jump. In his reverie, Keira O’Connell had somehow approached his car without him seeing her. She had tapped on the glass. He opened the window and she bent down to speak.

  ‘I noticed you sitting there.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I can’t believe you drive a Rover 75,’ she mocked him. ‘Bit stereotypical, isn’t it?’

  ‘I used to be Mondeo man before this.’

  There was beat of silence.

  ‘I believe you’ve been replaced.’

  With a sigh, he nodded.

  ‘That was short lived.’

  ‘I’m afraid if I open my mouth I’ll say something I’ll regret and shock you. I’m pre
sently biting my tongue so hard it might bleed.’

  ‘If you fancy a bit of a diatribe, I’m a good listener and I’m parched, too.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure what one of those is, but I could do with letting off steam and I know just the thing for dryness – the Fox and Grapes just round the corner.’

  Henry spent an hour in the company of the professor in the pub. During that time he selfishly overpowered her with an unrelenting barrage of his tales of woe and frustration. It was a tirade not designed to woo or even remotely impress a woman. All thoughts along those lines had been banished by his contretemps with Dave Anger anyway. Once again, Henry was furious with everyone and anything and Professor O’Connell sat opposite him like a patient sponge, soaking in everything he chucked at her with a wry smile and an occasional ‘Oh, no’ delivered at an appropriate moment. Even if she wasn’t interested, she gave the appearance of being so – at least for a while.

  It was only when her eyes glazed over and she took a surreptitious peek at her watch that Henry realized she was probably bored rigid and he had missed an opportunity, should he have wished it to be one. He had broken the cardinal sin of seduction, or so he’d read in one of the tabloids recently: ‘Get them to talk about themselves, get them to laugh, and you’re on to a sure thing.’

  Henry – so self-obsessed and selfish – had done neither. When she politely thanked him for the drink, then got up and walked – again, politely – out of his life, he kicked himself.

  Losing my touch, he thought as he finished his pint, sidled back to the bar and ordered another Stella with a Jack Daniel’s chaser. He returned to his seat and found it had been snaffled, so mumbling and pulling his face, he squeezed himself into a corner with a chest-high shelf. He sipped his drinks, stone-faced and brooding, and even the thought of the substantive promotion did not appease him, though he had achieved the goal of pension enhancement.

  ‘Special Projects,’ he mused glumly. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ To the best of his knowledge it was a rag-tag bunch of individuals no one else wanted who were tasked to run projects no one wanted to touch.

  Henry knew the writing had been on the wall for some time. Now it was confirmed: his career as a detective was over.

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ he said out loud, drawing looks of apprehension from other customers, several of whom made space for a bloke who was obviously deranged, a prime example of the social mistake that was ‘care in the community’.

  Special Projects wasn’t so bad for anyone who enjoyed sloshing around in the ‘corporate pool’ – that sad bunch of people who had been shelved by the force. He was given a refurbished office in one corner of an otherwise open-plan office on the top floor of headquarters with no windows and lots of artificial light. From his enclave he could observe his new team. They consisted of a mixed bag who had, for various reasons (none positive), been thrown together after having been batted round from department to department and were generally, and often unfairly, referred to as ‘the sick, lame, lazy and loony’.

  He tried not to compare them to the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, because he felt tarred with the same brush.

  Their work consisted of steering various projects from conception to completion – mostly tedious, unsexy ones, all about as dry as birdseed – as well as quality assuring operational orders.

  As far as Henry was concerned, there was one saving grace: being a headquarters ‘shiny-arsed bastard’, he made sure his name was on as many call-out rotas for weekends as possible, which meant he could still keep in touch with the real world of policing and detectives.

  Which was how he had ended up sitting in an increasingly stuffy personnel carrier at an unearthly hour in Accrington, waiting to raid a property which might, or might not, have some loose connection with terrorism.

  He had received the phone call at 8 p.m. the previous evening. Knowing he was on the rota for that weekend, he had not drunk anything for almost forty-eight hours and was experiencing some dithery withdrawal symptoms as he sat down with Kate to watch the typical mind-numbing Sunday evening TV fare. That she was on her third glass of Blossom Hill red, and it looked like the bottle was going to be demolished and she was showing signs of becoming frisky, did not help matters. But he knew it would be the next evening before he could even think about having a drink. Sex, on the other hand, was a possibility.

  In truth, the call-out was not totally unexpected. There had been rumours of a big Special Branch op, but as Henry was no longer part of the inner sanctum, that’s how they remained to him – just rumours.

  The SB detective superintendent had telephoned to turn him out. The tone of the man’s voice made it clear to Henry that he was only making up numbers. ‘Someone’s gone sick, someone else is unobtainable and you’re the only one left, so you’ll have to do,’ the guy might as well have said.

  But what the hell? It ensured he did not have to sit through a double helping of Coronation Street followed by some Sunday evening romantic drama that would have made him want to commit suicide.

  An hour later he was at Blackburn Police Station, ill-fitting uniform, overalls and all, watching an SB briefing and trying to work out who the shady figures were lurking in the background. Spooks, he realized. MI5, MI6: the taskmasters of the Special Branch. When they cracked the whip, SB jumped.

  Henry listened hard and critically and as much as it kicked his already bruised ego, he was glad he had been given a nothing job in the scheme of things.

  ‘Control to Echo Echo Two-Zero,’ the earpiece burst to life, making Henry jump awake. The call sign of his team.

  ‘Receiving.’ Everyone in the van stiffened with anticipation.

  ‘Green light, I repeat, green light. Understood?’

  ‘Understood – responding.’ Henry turned to the Support Unit team. ‘OK, folks, show’s on the road.’

  Four

  There was never an easy way to approach a target address, particularly with a gang of cops kitted out like storm troopers. Sneaking up wasn’t really an option and so it had been declared at the briefing that the way in which every property would be hit was through ‘shock and awe and professionalism’. Henry had shuddered at the phrase, not only because it probably meant that somewhere amongst the lurking spooks were Americans; but it also meant fast and furious and hope to hell you were piling into the correct address. As everyone was repeatedly assured that the intel was spot on, there would be no problem on that score unless, it was insinuated, thick bobbies misread door numbers. Henry, who felt he was sitting alone in the naughty thinkers corner, remained to be convinced about anything and the look on his face probably said it all.

  But that did not mean he wasn’t enjoying himself and wouldn’t do his best.

  The personnel carrier moved off without any undue haste and cruised as quietly as the 3.5 litre diesel engine would allow towards the street on which their target house was situated. It was a terraced house in a row on a steep incline, typical of Accrington. Two-up, two-down, bathroom and toilet upstairs and an extension at the rear which housed the kitchen. The front door opened directly on to the street one side and into the lounge the other. It was the sort of house that had been built over a hundred years earlier for the mill workers in the town and was familiar in style to the millions of viewers glued each week to Coronation Street. Unlike Corrie, though, the white families were long gone and most of the inhabitants of these houses were of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin.

  At the top of the street, the personnel carrier halted to allow three officers to de-bus and jog as silently as their noisy kit would permit, crouched low, to the back of the target house, six houses along. Their job was to cover the back, wait until the front door got caved in, then enter through the kitchen door, which would be opened for them. They were also expected to grab anyone who bolted from the house.

  Not that anyone was actually expected to be there. This was supposed to be an empty property in which, the briefing had informed them, it was susp
ected that illegal meetings had been held by would-be terrorists and extremists to plan their campaigns. It was possible that traces of explosives might be found, maybe other weapons and DNA traces, but no – definitely no – living creatures. It was the task of Henry’s team on that grey, drizzling Accrington dawn to enter, secure it and keep it secure until the arrival of a specially-briefed forensic team. They had been told to touch nothing once inside.

  ‘That should be easy enough for you,’ the SB superintendent had said to Henry. His name was Greek and he added, ‘Shouldn’t it?’

  Henry had ground his teeth, even though he thought that ten bobbies, a driver and a sergeant was perhaps overkill just to secure an empty property. That query had been greeted by a sneer and a ‘Better safe than sorry’ quip. But, judging by the huge number of officers taking part in the operation as a whole, it was apparent that the police were out to make a statement of intent that day.

  ‘We’re in position,’ Henry’s earpiece crackled – the message coming from one of the officers in the back alley. That meant they were waiting at the backdoor. Henry nodded to the driver, who slammed his right foot down to the metal and set off down the street, unintentionally kangarooing the van and drawing an unrelenting barrage of laughter, complaints and insults from the people in the back as they lurched in their seats.

  Another smooth policing operation, Henry thought wryly, as he discarded his flat cap and squeezed his head into a blue riot helmet, squishing his face up, as required by the Health & Safety risk assessment. It hurt his ears as he forced it down over his skull, making him suspect that the size of his head had also expanded in line with his body.

  Fortunately the journey was over quickly. They stopped outside number twelve. Henry shouted, ‘Go!’ whilst dropping out of the carrier at the same time, closely followed by the sergeant. Henry stood to one side as the well-trained and regimented team descended on the front door. He glanced at the house, only ever having seen photographs of it in the operational order. He took in the door and windows, saw curtains drawn upstairs and down, no lights visible.