by Nick Oldham
Better fill the time constructively.
He slid across to the statement reader’s desk where there were three big fat ring-binders bursting with statements. He grabbed one of the folders marked Fleetwood and went back to the copier.
Please wait 4 minutes. Warming up.
Henry snarled at the machine then set to work scanning through the folder. He found one of the statements very quickly and removed all four pages.
Please wait 3 minutes.
‘Bastard,’ he hissed. He continued to flick through the pages, knowing that each passing second put him in greater jeopardy. He found another, three pages long, and yanked it roughly out of the binder.
2 minutes, the copier taunted.
Henry twitched. Somebody walked past the door.
He found the third and fourth statements he was looking for.
Ready, the copier declared with a prim beep.
‘At last,’ he breathed.
He stacked the four statements to one side and picked up the plastic bag, pulling out the creased photocopied originals. Because they had been screwed-up and flattened out, Henry did not dare feed them into the copier for fear of causing a jam. He would have to do each sheet one at a time. A slow process, especially when there was a total of nine one-sided and four double-sided sheets.
When the paper tray ran out halfway through the third statement, Henry nearly sank to his knees and cried.
He looked around wildly for more paper and saw a stack of it in one corner of the room, behind a flip-chart stand.
As he was unwrapping a ream, Gallagher appeared at the door.
Henry quickly leaned sideways, putting the flip-chart stand between him and his tormentor, became still and prayed.
Gallagher called something to one of the HOLMES operators, who laughed.
Then he was gone.
Shaking, Henry ripped the wrapping paper away from the A4 sheets, returned to the copier and stacked the paper in the relevant tray, which he slammed back into place.
‘C’mon, y’bastard - work,’ he hissed at the machine.
Moments later it was ready to restart.
Henry fed the remaining sheets through.
He placed the new copies into the carrier bag, slotting them in amongst all the other papers.
He had originally intended to photocopy the typewritten statements too, but decided to steal them from the binder and hope they would not be missed. He slid them and Derek’s highlighted copies into anA4 envelope, together with a batch of blank statement forms.
As he turned out of the room, Gallagher was coming towards him. ‘Henry. I thought I saw you come in. What’ve you been up to?’
‘When - now? Or over lunch? If you mean over lunch I’ve been crying in my soup, if you must know. Just now I’ve been to the accounts department to drop my expense sheet off for last month. It’s overdue, you see, and they’ve been on my back to get it in as soon as poss. Life goes on even when you’re corrupt, you know.’
‘Let’s hope you’re not screwing the system. I’d hate for you to make false claims about anything.’
‘Gallagher, why don’t you just shove it. You’ve got me by the balls, I accept that, but unless I have to, I don’t really want to have to talk to you.’
‘You ain’t got much choice, pal.’
Henry eyed him. He wanted to hit him very hard. Instead he shoved the plastic bag into his chest and said, ‘Here, I believe you wanted this stuff’?’
Gallagher took it from him.
‘Have you been through it?’
Henry took a deep breath. ‘If there’s anything in there that tells me more about your squalid little set-up, then I don’t want to read it. I know more than enough now, thanks.’
‘Hey, this is just the beginning, Henry,’ the DI sneered. ‘You’re on board now, one of us. You’ll get to like it. Then you’ll start reaping the benefits. It’s not all bad.’
‘Yes it is,’ said Henry. ‘I hate bent cops.’
‘Then you must really despise yourself. I mean, all those nasty things you’ve done in the last few days. Makes me look like a beginner.’ Gallagher snorted.
Henry had had enough. ‘Finished?’
‘Tony Morton wants to see you. Got a little job for you.’
‘He’ll have to wait.’
Henry shouldered his way angrily past the smirking DI and made his way to the stairs. Gallagher was delving in the carrier bag, not watching Henry, who twisted into the stairwell, then ran down to the public enquiry counter. He opened the security door and handed the envelope through to Karen who was waiting on the other side. She gave him a forced smile, deep concern visible behind her eyes, then left.
With an empty feeling, Henry turned back into the police station and dragged himself unwillingly up to the murder incident room, dreading what might be in store for him next.
‘Something odd happening, boss.’ It was the voice of an NWOCS detective called Hunt who had been told to keep Henry under surveillance. He had trailed Henry home and then back to work after lunch. He was now parked up outside the police station, talking on a mobile phone to Morton, who was in his temporary office.
‘What do you mean, odd?’
‘I followed him home and waited for him to reappear. There was another car in his drive when he arrived. Later he came out with two other people, a man and a woman - not Christie’s wife. Christie got into his own car, they got into the other and followed him back to the nick. The guy stayed in the car. The woman went to the enquiry desk and reappeared after about ten minutes with a large envelope in her hand. Whoa, the car’s just moving off now ... What d’ya want me to do?’
‘Could be nothing. Stick with them. Let me know what they’re up to.’
The call ended at the exact moment Henry knocked on the door and entered the office.
Morton clicked off his mobile.
‘You wanted to see me?’
‘Yes, got a good job for you, Henry.’
John Rider stood on the Promenade at South Shore. He wasn’t dressed for the weather, being in jeans, trainers and a flimsy blouson. The rain was plastering his hair flat on his head and rolling down his face, intermingling with the tears he had thought himself incapable of crying.
He had fucked up everything.
The chance of a settled, normal life, with a woman who loved him and had done so for years. And he had been unaware of it, so obsessed had he been with his macho gangster image, his drink, drugs and other women.
In the space of a couple of days he’d been given the opportunity of a real life, but instead he’d reacted to a difficult situation like the Rider of old, which Isa could not handle.
Straight to Violence. Do not pass Go.
A wave crashed against the sea wall and broke over him, drenching his soul with its icy, salty blobs.
He hardly noticed.
He wanted to drown. To throw himself into the dangerous water.
But he didn’t have the courage even to do that.
‘It’s good to be working with you again, Henry - honestly.’
Siobhan was sitting in the passenger seat whilst Henry drove the NWOCS Vectra. His face was stony and unresponsive. He couldn’t believe that Morton was making him work with her again. Humiliating him, rubbing it in.
‘I was really disappointed when you didn’t fuck me, you know. I was really looking forward to it. I’d have come as soon as you got your dick in me, then lots of times after that. You missed a real treat. I’m so easy to satisfy.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘All these problems and you didn’t even get a jump for your trouble. Poor Henry.’
They had reached their destination. Henry drew the car into the side of the road, stopped and kept the engine running. The windscreen wipers were on double speed to cope with the downpour. He kept his hands firmly on the steering wheel, rotated his head slowly and glared down his nose at her.
‘I’d just like you to know that the decision not to screw you was made because I’m a married man
and your supervisor. There is another reason why I didn’t even entertain shoving my clean cock into you. I was frightened of catching something nasty.’
She slapped him very hard across the face.
Or at least she tried to. This time he saw it coming. His hand whipped up and grabbed her wrist before she connected. His face displayed all the anger and repulsion he felt towards this woman.
She whimpered, ‘Let go, you bastard.’
He flung her arm away from him.
‘Don’t ever tempt me to hit you, Siobhan. I don’t feel like I’ve got very much more to lose at the moment, and it’d give me a great deal of pleasure. A charge of assault on top of everything else wouldn’t matter a rat’s fart to me.’
He glanced into the rearview mirror. A double-crewed police car pulled up behind. Their assistance was here.
It was time to make an arrest.
Donaldson drove north up the Promenade towards Fleetwood. Karen had slipped the statements out of the envelope. On one knee she balanced Luton’s photocopies and on the other the typed statements Henry had appropriated. She read them all carefully and compared them.
‘This is incredible, Karl,’ she said nervously. ‘The statements have been changed, but it’s fairly subtle and well done. I’d say that this DS Tattersall knew what he was going to do when he took the statement initially, so that the subsequent changes wouldn’t be easily apparent. When these come to be presented at court in six, eight, ten months’ time, whoever made them won’t know any different. They’ll just go along with what has been written. Particularly if the prosecutor is on the payroll. This really worries me. If they’ve done it for this one, how many more times have they done it? How many more people have been wrongly convicted?’
‘How many more people have been killed?’
‘Do you think they killed Sergeant Driffield?’
‘It all points to it, from what Henry says.’
‘We need to tell someone.’
‘The problem, as I see it, darlin’, is that we don’t know who to tell. How far does this cancer spread? If we talk to the wrong people, we put ourselves in jeopardy and Henry too. Let’s just take it step by step and see what happens. Now, get that street map out, babe. I don’t know my way around Fleetwood.’
He checked his rearview and his eyes narrowed.
Hands thrust into his jacket pocket, thumbs overhanging, a very wet and bedraggled John Rider came round the corner. He had been walking against the driving rain, head down, not looking ahead. As he turned into the road where his flat was situated, the force of the rain lessened and the wind dropped because of the high buildings on either side.
He looked up.
Two uniformed cops, Henry Christie and a woman cop (he assumed) were standing in a huddle on the pavement.
Their faces lifted simultaneously and saw Rider. Christie pointed at him and shouted something that was lost in the rain. Rider did not hesitate. His finely honed survival skills clicked into place.
He ran.
Three of the four officers gave chase.
Henry let them go. He climbed back into the car and flicked the heater fan onto full blast. Normally he would have been quite happy to join the chase - but nothing was normal any more. He decided to do it from the comfort of a vehicle. No point getting too wet. After all, it was only an NWOCS job.
He executed a leisurely three-point turn and went in the general direction of the disappearing officers.
It soon became apparent they had lost Rider.
Other patrols were being called to the area to assist in the search. Over the radio, Siobhan called Henry and asked to be picked up. Henry guffawed. Some hope. Maybe when the bitch was thoroughly wet through and completely pissed off. He switched his radio off.
Revenge of some sort and quite sweet in a childish way.
Yet even though he had a desire in him not to make any effort, it was an interesting scenario.
John Rider, Henry had been told by Morton, was suspected of putting two bullets into the brain of a no-hoper gangster called Munrow who had died whilst getting a new suit in Debenhams, Preston. This interested Henry because of his previous dealings with Rider - whom he did not like very much. The man might have been involved in the gorilla-shooting in the zoo and the wounding of a man in the leg - and these things kicked Henry’s arse into gear. Even if Rider had not popped Munrow it would give Henry a chance to speak to him at length about these other matters.
Fuck! Henry cursed his conscientiousness. Once a detective, always a detective.
He combed the streets for John Rider. . .
. . . Who had panicked when he saw the cops outside his flat.
He sprinted into an alley, skidded on the cobblestones and pushed himself as hard as he had ever done, with only one thought in mind: evasion.
He concentrated on putting distance between him and his pursuers, knowing that the first couple of minutes were usually the critical ones. If they hadn’t caught you by then, your chances were pretty good.
His other problem was that he didn’t have the fitness or stamina to sustain himself over more than two minutes of hard running. Within the first hundred metres he started to feel a tightness in his chest as his lungs worked at a pace not experienced for probably twenty years.
Now he was over forty, unfit, with too much charcoal in his lungs and alcohol deposits in his veins.
He emerged out of the alley, did a right down the next street, crossed over and zigged out of sight into another alleyway. A quick look over his shoulder before he disappeared told him no cops in sight.
This alley ran behind a series of guest-houses, emerging into Waterloo Road, the main shopping street in South Shore, running at right-angles to the Promenade.
Dodging the cars, he crossed over and took the next right onto Bond Street. Still no cops behind.
He began to feel confident, though his body was sending out warning signals, such as: ‘Please stop, you’re hurting me!’ and: ‘Knackered body, can’t run any further.’
He tried to ignore them and jogged as far as the junction with Dean Street into which he turned left, then left again into Bright Street where he had to stop. He leaned on the gable end of a guest-house, gasping for air, his lungs desperate for a rest. He was about to heave up and vomit, he was sure. His head throbbed with the exertion and pain shot through it like a lightning bolt. His vision swam.
He bent forwards and put the palms of his hand on his knees.
He vomited.
A rush of stomach contents, mostly bile, surged through his mouth and erupted onto the wet pavement below.
He wiped his mouth, aware vaguely of a car drawing up nearby.
Hands still on his thighs he looked up, spitting the last remnants of sick out of his mouth. His face grimaced in disgust as he watched the figure of Henry Christie saunter up to him. A pair of rigid handcuffs were swinging tauntingly on the index finger of the cop’s right hand.
Rider tried to run again. His legs refused to carry him.
Without a word, Henry clamped the first cuff onto Rider’s right wrist. He twisted the cuffs in a well-practised movement. Rider screamed but was powerless to resist Henry who wrenched his right arm up behind his back, flattened the luckless Rider against the wall, grabbed his other arm and well and truly handcuffed him, his hands ‘stacked’ behind his back, one above the other. Rider’s cheek was pressed against the stone wall. A trickle of sick ran out of the corner of his mouth.
Rider eyed Henry, who smiled, gave a short nod and said, ‘You’re under arrest. Suspicion of murder.’ He tried to recite the caution, but made a hash of the wording despite the practise. Rider understood its sense and made no reply.
After a cursory body search, Henry directed Rider into the back of the Vectra, after ensuring the child locks were operative. He climbed into the driver’s seat.
‘Bit of a wet one,’ he commented.
Rider did not respond, but slumped sideways across the seat, panting. Henry shrugged
and reached for his PR.
Siobhan stood waiting on a street corner as wet as any person could be.
She pulled the passenger door open and shouted, ‘Where the fuck did you go to, you bastard!’ On the last word she saw Rider in the back seat.
Meekly she got in. ‘Where did you find him?’
‘Coupla streets away.’
‘How did you know where to look?’
‘I’m a detective. It’s my job.’
From that moment on, all the way back to the police station, not another word was spoken in the car.
‘I did my bit. You’ve got him, now it’s down to you.’
‘Not quite so fast, Henry.’ Morton grabbed his sleeve.
‘Look, you asked me to assist in the arrest. I did. Now leave me out of anything else. Take him to Preston and let them deal with it.’
‘Preston aren’t dealing with him. We are, and I want you to interview him.’
‘Why me? I know nothing about the incident and, to be truthful, I don’t even know why he’s been arrested. What evidence is there against him?’
‘There is none - just reasonable suspicion. That’s all you need for an arrest, isn’t it?’
‘Where’s the reasonable suspicion then?’
‘He was tied up with Munrow in some sort of underworld deal. They are believed to have fallen out and bang bang, Munrow’s dead. Rider is prime suspect. And you’re dealing with it.’
Morton waved a file of papers in front of Henry’s face. ‘Here’s all the details of the crime itself, including ballistic reports. What I want you to do is interview him and then charge him with murder.’
‘Simple, eh? Just like that. Where’s the fucking evidence?’
‘That’s down to you, Henry.’
‘Meaning?’
‘If you can’t find real evidence, then stitch him up. Fabricate evidence, get a conviction. Do whatever is needed to get this man a life sentence. This will show us that you are one hundred per cent with us now. Do this for me, do it well, and I’ll consider letting you off the hook. If you don’t do it properly, then the first thing that’ll happen is that your darling wife will get a phone call- anonymously - to say you’ve raped a female officer. That female officer will then lodge a formal complaint against you. Then all that other shit will hit the fan. It’s your choice, Henry, but it would probably be in your best interests to fit Rider up. Then you have my word we’ll part amicably.’