Judgement Call

by Nick Oldham

  ‘She was raped.’

  ‘Quite probably,’ Fanshaw-Bayley said blandly.

  ‘That seems pretty black and white to me, and even if she eventually decides not to go through with a prosecution, we should at least go through the motions with Kaminski. Send him a warning shot across the bows at least. Grind him.’

  Undaunted, the DI said, ‘And sometimes the bigger picture is more important than the suffering, albeit self-inflicted, of a slag like Sally Lee, PC Christie.’

  Henry stood up. ‘Fuck the bigger picture,’ he snarled and stalked out of the office before he hurled his chair at Fanshaw-Bayley.

  THREE

  The Vauxhall Cavalier wasn’t the fastest or sleekest of cars but it was possible to coax a decent enough turn of speed out of it when the accelerator pedal was floored gradually, the engine sweet-talked slowly through the gears.

  Furious at his encounter with the unwavering DI, Henry headed for the Rawtenstall bypass. This was the dual carriageway that bore due south out of Rawtenstall and eventually became the M66 at Bury.

  He steered through the town with one hand on the wheel whilst leaning across to the glove compartment into which he had fitted, quite unofficially, a tape cassette player, and rigged up a couple of small speakers behind the door panels. He switched it on and slotted in a tape he had made direct from the record of a live Rolling Stones album. As the opening riff of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ blasted out, he veered onto the bypass from the Queens Square roundabout and to the accompaniment of Mick Jagger’s sneering lyrics sped towards Greater Manchester in an effort to alleviate the stress he was feeling. That tightness in his chest, like a devil with sharply filed fingernails was squeezing his heart and lungs.

  Taking a cop car for a razz with the Stones blasting out was always a good way of easing stress and tension.

  Unfortunately when he was two hundred yards up the bypass and committed to driving away from the town, unable to turn off for at least three miles, an urgent voice from Rawtenstall comms came over the PR, that of WPC Wade.

  ‘Report of an armed robbery in progress at Crawshawbooth Post Office, Burnley Road … shots fired. Patrols to attend,’ Jo said, sounding shaky and excited, trying to hold it together. This was a big ask for any young officer.

  Henry immediately responded – with a bit of a white lie. ‘Romeo Seven from Rawtenstall town centre. ETA three minutes.’ He knew the exact location of the post office – in the little village of Crawshawbooth which straddled the main road between Rawtenstall and Burnley. This location was a good thing in some respects, mainly because it meant that the villains could only escape in a car in one of two directions – north towards Burnley, or south, back towards Rawtenstall – and Henry had a good idea they would be coming in his direction. That said, he needed to get off the bypass somehow and get back to Rawtenstall.

  Other patrols shouted up. There were only two single-crewed mobiles available and both were en route, as was DI Fanshaw-Bayley, who was turning out from the police station with a detective constable.

  ‘Shit,’ Henry said, frustrated by his geographical predicament.

  But a lot of other things were also going through his mind.

  Firstly, there was every chance that this robbery was being committed by a violent gang of very mobile armed robbers who travelled up from Manchester and targeted business premises in the Rossendale area. So far they had hit six shops and post offices and had used stolen vehicles, later found abandoned and set alight, before – and this was an assumption, not a certainty – piling into a legitimate or maybe another stolen car or cars to make good their escape. The police believed that the gang, consisting of four or five very hyped-up men, had always returned to Manchester after committing their offences. This meant there would be a good chance of them coming back in Henry’s direction.

  Next, in concurrent thought, Henry wondered about the delay. Often, something reported as being ‘in progress’ had already happened because of the time lag between someone actually picking up a phone and calling in. So he wondered if there was actually any point in tear-arsing up to the scene when it might be more prudent to hang back and take up a position from which he could monitor all the traffic coming through Rawtenstall centre and going onto the bypass. Even if the robbers had swapped cars, even if they had split up into more than one legit vehicle, Henry could at least try to spot possible offenders and if nothing else, he could note down car makes and numbers.

  Not as exciting as rushing to the scene, maybe, but just as important.

  Then a calm voice came over the air – that of Ridgeson, the station sergeant, whose deep, calming, authoritative tones of vast experience echoed Henry’s thoughts.

  ‘Romeo Seven,’ he told Henry, ‘do not attend the scene. Take up a checkpoint on Queens Square and await further instruction … The two other section mobiles continue to the scene … We are currently in telephone contact with the person reporting the incident …’

  Henry acknowledged this and put his mind to exactly how he was going to get off the dual carriageway as quickly as possible and get back to town. First he needed a blue light – which was sitting in the front passenger footwell. Winding down his window first, he then reached over for the light and plugged the cable from it into the cigarette lighter. He then clamped the magnetic light itself onto the roof of the car with a heavy clunk so the coiled lead stretched diagonally across in front of him. The light came on and started to revolve sluggishly. Then he wound the window back up to trap the lead and thought about a U-turn, keeping an eye out for a likely gap in the central reservation crash barrier through which he might attempt this dangerous manoeuvre.

  Amongst his other problems was the speed of traffic in both directions – particularly from Manchester – because as they passed over the boundary into Rossendale, the gradient of the road fell sharply and traffic built up speed very quickly, so if he attempted what he thought he was going to do, he would be putting himself and others in a lot of danger, flashing blue light notwithstanding.

  But the danger didn’t deter him in the slightest.

  Being the age he was, he believed he was doing right, believed he would never come to any harm, that he had an important job to do and that he was indestructible. So doing a scary U-turn on a fast, busy dual carriageway was just another of those things.

  He sped up the outside lane, coaxing seventy out of the reluctant Vauxhall, looking well ahead to see if there were any gaps in the barrier. He spotted one. He did a quick mirror check – no one too close behind – and slammed on, yanking the steering wheel down to the right, skidding the car through the gap and right across to the inner lane of the opposite carriageway and, more by sheer luck than judgement, slotted into a long gap in the oncoming traffic.

  The back end of the Cavalier slewed wildly across the surface. Henry struggled to control it, fighting the very skittery car which, even in normal circumstances, did not behave well on the road and resented being thrown unwillingly into a fast U-turn under harsh braking and then acceleration.

  He was thankful he made it without stalling, although he did hear a scraping noise across the car roof and realized as soon as he accelerated back towards town that the blue light, in spite of the magnet clamping it to the roof, clearly not powerful enough for purpose, had slid right off. It was now dangling by its lead from the driver’s door window next to his shoulder, banging on the glass.

  He cursed, wound the window down, hauled the useless light in and tossed it into the passenger footwell where it continued to rotate and flash until he yanked the plug out of the cigarette lighter and threw the lead down by the light. He wound the window back up.

  Within a minute he was back on Queens Square, wondering where best to park for a good view. He circled it and pulled into Queen Street, a minor side street, parking quite illegally right on the junction with the roundabout so that every vehicle coming from the direction of Crawshawbooth wanting to get onto the bypass would have to drive past within twenty fee
t of him. Even though it was a good position to be in, it was still always possible for someone with knowledge of the local back streets to sneak past without being spotted, but he knew he couldn’t be everywhere.

  He called in his position, sat back, watched, listened and waited.

  FOUR

  Patrols had arrived at the scene of the robbery, confirming the offence had taken place, a firearm had been discharged, but no one had been hurt. A gang of four masked men had terrorized the little post office and the proprietor and two customers had been put in fear of their lives. A handgun had been fired twice into a wall, the gang had shrieked and yelled demonically at people, two had leapt over the counter and forced their way into the secure area behind. Then, with about three thousand pounds in cash, they had fled in a car, details of which were sketchy. The car – Henry was pleased to hear – had been seen heading in the direction of Rawtenstall, though that didn’t actually mean it had come into the town.

  The call alerting the police had been made by a neighbour from a house opposite.

  Henry fidgeted as he listened to all the details as they filtered over the air bit by bit, all the while concentrating on the cars passing him, trying to pick one that could be the one the gang had escaped in, or might have transferred to. It was only a pure gut thing, scanning for likely looking young men, but nothing that went past seemed to fit the bill.

  Checking his watch he realized it was now over ten minutes since the original call had come over the PR. That was easily enough time for the offenders to make it from the scene into town, particularly if there had been a delay in reporting the incident. Henry was getting ants in his already itchy uniform trousers. He became more impatient at the thought that if the car was going to zip past him, it would have done so by now.

  He decided to move, believing he was wasting his time sitting there. He thought it would now be better to do a short cruise around and maybe he would come across the gang ditching their car, torching it and leaping into another motor.

  He also knew this was probably a vain hope. But he was a young cop and still believed that luck was on his side and all he had to do was keep his eyes open and villains would just fall into his hands. He had learned that cops can make their own luck to a great extent, so he was going to give it a go, disobey orders, and leave the checkpoint he had been told to stay at until further instructions.

  If he ever had to answer a question about it – which he doubted – he would argue that he’d made a judgement call based on what was happening and his knowledge of the MO of the gang and thought he was just being conscientious.

  He crunched the Cavalier into gear and poked its nose out onto the roundabout, turned left and headed up onto the estate he’d been on earlier attending the report of the rape on Sally Lee, and through which he had chased Vladimir Kaminski on foot. There were tracts of wasteland all around the estate which were likely places to abandon and set fire to stolen cars. He was going to do a quick tour of these ‘bomb sites’ and see what he could find, if anything.

  He came off the roundabout, crossed the bridge over the River Irwell, with a large ASDA superstore to his left, then did another sharp left onto the road which led up onto the estate, a road that rose steeply up the hillside, then began his search, combing the avenues and crescents and cul-de-sacs. He loved cruising slowly around the highways and byways, one of the great pleasures of being a cop in a car, eyeing people and being glared at, and maybe dropping on something of interest.

  Nothing much seemed to be happening on the estate.

  He drove up to its highest point, just below Balladen Hill, from where he got a magnificent view all the way across the bypass where he’d done the U-turn. This road was settled deep in the valley, rising as it left Rossendale. Running parallel to it was the single track of the disused East Lancashire Railway, connecting Rawtenstall to Bury. Henry had once, foolishly, driven a police Land Rover for almost the full length of the train line, a precarious and very dangerous journey that had forced him to drive over almost derelict bridges spanning the River Irwell, and never to be repeated.

  As he looked across, the wildness of the upper moors took his breath: Cribden Moor to the north and Musberry Heights across to the west. But he didn’t get much time to consider their grandeur because a plume of black smoke rising from an industrial area on the valley bottom caught his eye, in the space between the railway line and the bypass. And it wasn’t smoke rising from a chimney. It was a bonfire of sorts, but its actual source was impossible to see from his position high on the estate, about a mile distant.

  He knew it could be nothing, probably just junk being destroyed out in the open. Illegal, but not his problem.

  Or it could be a car on fire.

  Henry slammed the Cavalier into first and hurtled downhill, taking chances at some of the junctions on the estate, but as he came to Bury Road, previously the main road south out of Rawtenstall before the bypass was built, he had to anchor on. He needed to do a left turn, then a right onto Holme Lane to take him down to the industrial area in the valley bottom.

  He waited impatiently for traffic to clear, pulled out, then after a couple of hundred yards swung into Holme Lane, his eyes constantly on the rising smoke, trying to work out exactly where it was coming from. He was focused so intently on this that he almost took no heed of the car stationary at the junction, waiting to pull out onto Bury Road. He saw it and part of his mind registered it, but it was only when he was fifty yards past that he screeched to a halt and realized what he had seen. Three men in a car – just the sort of thing he had been on the lookout for whilst parked up on Queen’s Square earlier.

  Perhaps it was the make and model of car that had thrown him off guard – a somewhat sedate, dull-looking Rover 3.5 coupé, two shades of brown, a sort of middle-aged man’s motor, not one he’d necessarily expect to see three buckos in, even though he knew the car itself was a fast mover. He had expected to see them in something sleeker.

  And there was also something familiar about it, but he couldn’t quite place it as his brain shuffled through all this information.

  He braked sharply, looking into his rear-view mirror to see the car pull out onto Bury Road and head south.

  He yanked the wheel down and executed a fast three-point turn, his car rocking on its bouncy suspension.

  He was going to check out the Rover, but because he wasn’t remotely certain that the fire he could see down in the valley had anything to do with the robbery, or that the Rover itself was even suspicious – and that he had left his checkpoint without permission – he decided he wouldn’t trouble comms for the moment, just see how things developed.

  By the time his car’s nose had reached the junction, the Rover was almost out of sight. Henry skittered out with a slight misgiving at the sight of clouds of very iffy-looking exhaust smoke behind him as he floored the Cavalier in first, then second, and with a very rough gear change between that might well have sheared off some nasty cogs, he accelerated after the Rover.

  It was moving quickly and by the time he came up behind it, it was approaching the set of traffic lights just outside the village of Edenfield, basically the last outpost of Lancashire Constabulary before entering Greater Manchester’s area.

  The brake lights came on as the car slowed for a red light.

  Henry could actually now see the outline of four people on board – in his first glimpse back down the road he thought there had only been three, so maybe one of them had been bent over tying a shoe or something. The two in the back, their features indistinguishable, turned to look out of the rear window.

  The car stopped for the light, giving Henry chance to catch up. As he slowed behind it he reached across for his flat cap and fitted it onto his head. Just in case there were any shenanigans here, he didn’t want anyone to claim he couldn’t be identified as a cop. Whoever was in the car, innocent or otherwise, had to know what he was before he even spoke to them.

  The light was still on red. Henry pulled up t
wenty feet behind the Rover.

  The men in the back were still looking at him.

  He had their attention.

  He pointed at them with his right forefinger and jerked it to the left: pull in.

  Suddenly both rear doors swung open and the occupants got out, faces angled downwards, pulling balaclava masks over their faces.

  Both brandished sawn-off shotguns.

  ‘Holy crap,’ Henry uttered.

  Both guns arced up in his direction.

  He crunched his car into reverse – blunting more cogs – and literally stood on the accelerator pedal, his back pressed hard against his seat, and the car swerved backwards, Henry with his right hand on the wheel, his torso twisted at forty-five degrees, his head jerking forwards and backwards.

  The men ran fast and low, catching up with him, and then, as if synchronized, they aimed and fired. Henry heard the slightly delayed stereo of the discharge, then physically felt the impact of the blast from the shot as it hit the car, thudding into the bodywork like pebbledashing being flung against a wall.

  Henry screamed, ‘Shit,’ kept his foot rammed on the pedal, thankful there were no other cars behind him to impede his ignominious retreat.

  Message delivered, the two men ran back to the Rover and bundled themselves into the back seat, their doors slamming as the car sped off through the lights.

  Henry stalled his car, swore, slammed in the clutch and twisted the ignition key with his right hand, using the forefinger of his left hand to press the transmit button on his PR and call for assistance. As the engine fired up, he went after the Rover, still speaking into his radio, trying his best to sound cool and laid-back, even though the front of his car had just been blasted by two shotguns.