Judgement Call

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Quite a day. How are you feeling?’

  Henry pouted and shrugged. ‘Dunno, really. Bit stressed.’

  ‘I’d be a wreck,’ Jo said. ‘Especially if someone blasted a shotgun at me. It was bad enough in comms. You must be quite brave … and cool. I was listening to you transmitting during the car chase. I’d’ve been shouting and screaming!’ She lifted her beer to her mouth and looked at Henry across the top of the glass, her eyes moist and sparkling.

  He shrugged modestly, incapable of denying her assessment of him.

  ‘What did it feel like, to have a gun pointed at you?’

  ‘Scary, actually. I could easily have wet myself.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Somehow he could not bring himself to tell her about how he had vomited his fear.

  ‘Brave,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Or stupid.’

  ‘No, brave,’ she insisted.

  ‘Thank you.’ Henry looked her in the eye, knowing this was a mating ritual.

  ‘Have you told your girlfriend about your adventures?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘She’ll be impressed.’

  ‘Not so sure.’ He took another sip of his beer and heard his stomach rumble. It was only then he realized that the last meal he’d eaten was breakfast. ‘I need some food down me.’

  The Chinese was average but OK. Hot and sour soup followed by sweet and sour chicken for Henry, won-ton soup and king prawn chop suey for Jo, accompanied by more beer and a loosening of the conversation, which started innocently enough talking about themselves, asking about each other, but then started to disintegrate little by little into suggestiveness and innuendo.

  After the meal they rolled back to the pub for a couple more pints before closing time.

  Henry used the public payphone in the toilet corridor to call Kate, but wished he hadn’t. She began pleasantly but when she clocked that Henry was talking with four pints down him and then he let slip he was accompanied by a ‘she’, Kate hung up leaving him staring at a dead telephone.

  At which point Jo, who had just visited the ladies’, sidled past and saw the expression of grief on his face.

  She came up close. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Hung up,’ he said desolately. ‘She hung up.’ He slammed the receiver back onto its cradle and turned to Jo who was standing just inches away, looking up at him, lips slightly parted. She had reapplied her lipstick and her lips looked very red and shiny.

  ‘You know, what happens in Dover, stays in Dover. Yeah?’ she said.

  ‘’Scuse me.’ A large man pushed his way between them, heading towards the toilets. They stepped apart to allow him through, their eyes staying firmly locked onto one another’s.

  ‘Let’s get a nightcap,’ Henry suggested.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘Not before this.’ She moved right up to him, slid a hand behind his neck, stood on tiptoe and eased his face towards hers, their lips crushing together, sending a surge of electricity shooting through him as she virtually plastered herself to him. Henry instantly grew hard as his hands cupped her face and he worked his tongue into her mouth.

  They broke apart, gasping.

  ‘I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since I first saw you, Henry. Been watching you for ages, but you’ve never noticed me, have you?’

  Henry’s response stuck in his throat.

  ‘And now I want to … you know?’ she said huskily.

  ‘Yeah, I know … let’s pass on the nightcap.’

  It was the screeching of the seagulls that woke Henry. He had a splitting headache and a left arm very much dead to the world as it was trapped under Jo’s neck. For a moment he thought he was pinned under a boulder and he might have to saw it off. He eased it free, sat up on the edge of the narrow bed, placing a foot on the empty bottle of Asti that had appeared like magic from Jo’s luggage last night (together with fresh strawberries, much to his amazement). A great deal of the wine had been lost or spilled whilst dribbling it from mouth to mouth, or when, as Henry recalled vividly, Jo had filled her mouth with it and then taken him in there too, almost making him leap to the ceiling as the amazing combination of her tongue and the wine bubbles sent a wave of painful ecstasy right through his core. He had howled with pleasure and nearly choked on a strawberry.

  He massaged the blood flow back into his arm, feeling the silent crackle of painful pins and needles as sensation returned to his fingertips.

  His balance wasn’t quite there when he stood up and he staggered slightly, having to keep upright with the help of the wall. He found a pair of underpants that had been discarded with delight by Jo quite early on in the proceedings, and put them on, having to do a balancing jig at the same time. He didn’t realize, or care, that they were on inside-out. All he wanted was to pee, drink some cold water and find some paracetamol tablets from somewhere.

  He took a moment to look at Jo, still sleeping undisturbed, unable to believe they had performed such acrobatic and energetic moves in such a small area without crashing off or hurting themselves.

  They had, he concluded, fucked each other’s brains out.

  Unable to shake his delicate head at the memory just in case it fell off, he walked heavy-footed out of the bedroom and over to the toilet across the corridor. Then he went to the separate bathroom where he had a lukewarm shower with his eyes permanently squinting because his head felt as if an axe was embedded in it.

  After using a hand towel to dry himself – remembering too late that he’d left his bath towel in the bedroom – he scuttled back to find Jo still sleeping.

  Just enough time, he thought, to slide in alongside her. Which he did, after kicking off his inside-out underpants. She murmured something dreamily and without seeming to awaken and without opening her eyes, she rolled on top of him and guided him deep inside her, then started to move languorously above him.

  Henry hurled himself out of bed like he’d been prodded by a red-hot poker. His sex- and booze-blurred mind had assumed it was still early, but a glance and a forced focus at his digital watch on the floor beside the bed told him how very wrong he was. ‘C’mon, c’mon, get moving,’ he said, scrambling around naked for his underwear. ‘We’re late, we’re late.’

  Jo had fallen back to sleep and she looked drowsily at him, hardly able to open her eyelids. ‘Wha …?’

  ‘It’s nearly ten … crimes! We said we’d collect him at nine.’

  ‘It’ll be all right. He’s not going anywhere, is he?’ She sighed, flopped back onto the bed and covered her head with a pillow.

  ‘It won’t be right,’ Henry said, pulling a scrunched-up shirt out of his bag and thrusting his arms into it. He hated being late and he also hated not keeping his promises.

  ‘We’ll tell ’em we got unavoidably delayed,’ Jo said from under the pillow.

  ‘Doing what, exactly?’

  She pulled the pillow down and gave Henry a sultry grin. ‘You know what.’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’ He took a pace over to the bed and ripped the sheets off her, stopping suddenly as he took in her nakedness. His lower jaw sagged and his mouth popped open at the vision.

  For a moment he was entranced – and she knew it.

  ‘Shit … you’ll get me in trouble,’ he said, and reached for his jeans. ‘Come on, we’ve got a prisoner to take up north.’

  ‘He’s been ready an hour … and a half,’ the dour station sergeant at Dover nick said as he took in the faces of the two Lancashire officers. ‘We thought you’d gone home without him.’

  ‘Big apologies,’ Henry stammered, not really knowing what to say. ‘It was a watch issue.’ He held out his left arm and waggled his wrist. ‘It stopped for some reason,’ he lied.

  The sergeant looked as though he was going to say something but instead his eyes simply played over the two shamefaced PCs and the corners of his mouth turned down cynically, knowingly. He was good at simple maths, easily calculating one plus one. He shook his head
sadly and beckoned them through to the cell complex. They walked past a holding cage in which sat the lone figure of Jack Bowman, prolific burglar from the valley. All the paperwork was ready, as was Bowman’s property, which Henry checked, signed for and took possession of. He went back to the holding cage.

  ‘Mornin’, Jack,’ Henry said, starting to wake up. At last. He let his handcuffs dangle off his finger.

  Bowman was a sour-eyed lad in his late teens, rake-thin like all good burglars should be, with the build of a whippet. Not very tall, with a pinched face that displayed no hint of compromise. Henry, who kept abreast of as many villains as possible, knew that Bowman was one of the numerous offspring of the Bowman clan who inhabited the Hall Carr estate in Rawtenstall. The Bowmans were a state-funded enterprise and supplemented their all too generous hand-outs by means of small-time, but large-scale, volume crime. Hence they were experts at breaking into homes and cars and were great at shoplifting, which they had off to a fine art. Jack was probably the best burglar in the valley, moving around like a shadow and entering people’s homes by a number of methods depending on the circumstances. He was real nifty with a fishing rod and hook through letter boxes, and was also a great opportunist having burgled many homes by simply slipping in through open doors. He was also known for breaking and entering by the traditional route – removing panes of glass from ground-floor windows and climbing through. He was also good at shimmying up drainpipes. Sometimes, if he didn’t break the glass in windows, he would replace it on leaving and occasionally victims couldn’t even work out how their property had been violated – until a gust of wind blew the glass out and it smashed.

  In fact, he was an all-round burglar, and was rarely caught.

  Bowman stood up, saying nothing, and passed his hands clasped together through the bars of the holding cage for Henry to ratchet the cuffs onto his wrists.

  ‘Not too tight?’ Bowman looked disinterestedly at Henry. ‘I’ll take that as a no,’ Henry said. ‘All set for a long journey? Done your number one and two?’

  ‘I’ll expect a comfort break somewhere.’ Bowman broke his silence.

  ‘We’ll see. Depends, doesn’t it?’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Attitude and behaviour, and if I think I can trust you.’ Henry’s face was only a foot away from Bowman’s. He lowered his voice and tried to sound menacing. ‘You fuck about, I’ll put another pair of cuffs on you, OK? If we do stop and you try anything daft, I’ll flatten you and that’s a promise. OK? So just sit back and enjoy the ride and we’ll stay amicable.’

  Bowman kept his eyes on Henry’s but the expression on his face didn’t change.

  Henry manoeuvred Bowman into the back of the Vauxhall so he was sitting behind the front passenger, putting a bit of a diagonal gap between prisoner and driver. There was nothing worse than a prisoner trying to strangle the driver, it made for all sorts of problems. Then he took the handcuff off Bowman’s right wrist and looped it around the elbow rest on the door so that the prisoner was effectively cuffed by his left hand to the car. It wasn’t the most secure of fixtures because the car wasn’t built for transporting prisoners and a good, concerted yank would probably be enough to break the armrest off, but it would have to do. It would keep him in one place and if he started anything it would give Henry and Jo a bit of time to react. The alternative was to keep his hands cuffed in front of him, but that would have given him freedom to move and maybe attack the officers. It would also have meant that the non-driving escort would have to sit in the back with him and neither Henry nor Jo wanted that.

  Transporting bodies in vehicles not made or adapted for the task was always a risky business, which was why Henry re-affirmed his promise to Bowman as he engaged the child lock and closed the door.

  ‘You behave and we’ll be fine, OK?’

  Bowman closed his eyes disdainfully and wriggled himself comfortable.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Jo asked Henry as they stood by the car.

  ‘Nothing’s perfect. Just keep an eye on him. There’s a mirror in the sun visor on your side, so keep looking at him, watch what he’s up to. It’ll probably be all right. Worst he can do is run off, I suppose.’

  ‘Or strangle you on the motorway and we can have a multi-car pile-up.’

  ‘There is that.’

  ‘I’m famished, by the way,’ Jo said.

  ‘Ditto.’ They had missed breakfast because of their late start.

  ‘And thirsty. I need a coffee.’

  Henry nodded. ‘There’s a cafe across the road. You want to get a couple of bacon sarnies and brews from it? Then we’ll set off.’

  ‘It’s a plan. What about boyo?’ Jo nodded towards Bowman.

  ‘Let’s keep him sweet.’ Henry leaned in the car and asked if he wanted anything, offering what they were having.

  Bowman’s expression changed for the first time – to one of shock. ‘You’re offering me something?’

  ‘Bacon butty and a brew,’ Henry confirmed. ‘On us.’

  ‘That would be fantastic. The food in there’ – he jerked his free thumb at the police station – ‘is shit.’

  ‘OK, we eat it here, then get going.’

  Jo bought the food and they had a little picnic in the back yard of the police station. The two officers stood by or leaned on the car, enjoying the revitalizing effect of the food and drink on their systems.

  ‘Our first breakfast together, eh?’ Jo remarked.

  Trying not to show that he nearly choked on his food, Henry gave her a crooked smile and quickly threw a mouthful of coffee down his throat.

  ‘Are we an item now?’ she enquired.

  That question, too, was asked as a mixture of bacon and bread was about to pass into Henry’s throat. Once more he managed to avoid spluttering it all over her. He took a swig of coffee, looked at her and said, ‘No,’ quietly. He saw her face harden.

  ‘What about last night?’ she hissed dangerously.

  Another question, bowled so low that it turned Henry’s stomach. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘You said …’ he spluttered.

  Jo took over. ‘What happens in Dover stays in Dover?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly,’ he said, as if he had just proved a point of law.

  ‘That was before it happened.’

  ‘So what changed?’

  ‘Us. You. Me. I didn’t expect …’ Her voice trailed off whimsically. ‘It was wonderful, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Uh – yeah.’ Henry’s eyes shot back and forth like a man standing before a firing squad.

  ‘So we’ve got a thing, yeah?’

  ‘Look. This isn’t the time or place to talk about this,’ Henry said quietly. ‘We’ve got a prisoner to transport three hundred miles. Let’s just get that over with, shall we?’

  Her glare could have frozen hell at one end of the spectrum or fired up Vesuvius for a surprise eruption at the other, and Henry had a sudden hollowness in his legs which, ironically, both also felt like lead weights. He also felt like vomiting up his newly eaten breakfast.

  ‘OK,’ she clipped, and the one word sent a tremor of apprehension through him.

  But yet, he thought as he climbed into the driver’s seat, what is the problem here? He tried to rationalize it with his male brain whilst reversing and then negotiating the tight yard before nosing out on the street.

  He was young and single. OK, he might be seeing someone, but the bottom line was that he was single and in theory could see anyone he chose. That was his right as a hot-blooded male. As it was Jo’s right as a single, horny female. And, he believed, she couldn’t expect anything more from him than a one-off one-night stand of passion. It had been a no-strings agreement, so what did she expect? An engagement ring? These things happened. Get a grip, girl.

  These thoughts swarmed through his mind as he headed towards London, intending to loop around the south-west of the city and join the M1 north.

  From a logical, objective viewpoint, there was no case to answer.

 
He was seeing Kate, but they’d made no actual pledges to each other, so he was free and all he’d wanted from Jo was a bit of fun near the white cliffs of Dover and as nice a girl as she was, and great fun in bed, Henry knew she wasn’t the girl for him.

  But yet, what was really playing on his mind was his deep regret in having spent the night with her … and try as he might he could not quite finger the reason why he was feeling the way he did.

  By the time he linked up with the M1, none of the occupants in the car had said anything. The prisoner was dozing and Jo, who had started the journey with her arms folded crossly under her bosom and her sun visor angled down so she could watch Bowman, had also fallen asleep. Henry was grateful for the peace and quiet.

  Progress was slow and unspectacular on the M1, but Henry was aware that he needed to pull into a service area soon to refuel because he’d neglected to do so in Dover and the gauge was hovering in the red. He also needed to visit the loo.

  Jo had surfaced from her slumbers, glancing occasionally but silently at Henry, fidgeting on her seat.

  Bowman, too, was now awake. ‘I need a piss, maybe take a shit, too,’ he declared.

  Henry saw Jo smirk.

  Toilet breaks were of course another problem for a long-distance escort. These were the vulnerable moments, the logistics of taking a prisoner to a public toilet. So far the journey had been safe and self-contained, but once Henry drew onto a motorway service area, it was a whole different scenario. He had to allow Bowman to use the toilet, but how he did it was another thing.

  Once they stepped into the public areas, Henry would prefer to be handcuffed to Bowman, but that made a toilet visit very unpleasant for both men. If Bowman insisted that he had to take a shit, there was no way Henry could be cuffed to him anyway. He would have to be released and Henry would have to stand guard outside the cubicle like a lemon as the prisoner performed and no doubt messed about, too. None of the scenarios appealed. The possibility of an escape was very real.

  They came off at the next service area.

  Henry stopped as close as he could to the building that incorporated the shops, cafe and toilets.