Judgement Call

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Henry my boy, how the hell are you? Still allowing prisoners to roam free?’ he cackled, then coughed, his chest reverberating worryingly. Noting Henry’s facial response, Charlie said, ‘Better get used to the jibes, Henry, at least until somebody else does something more stupid, which they will. Only then can you guarantee you’ll be yesterday’s news.’

  Henry shrugged, took a seat.

  ‘So what can I do you for?’ the old detective asked.

  ‘I want to recapture Jack Bowman, obviously; I also want to lock up Vladimir Kaminski and throw away the key; I also want a shot at this armed gang who took a pot shot at me or two. Not necessarily in that order.’

  Charlie’s next drag finished the roll-up. He held the smoke in his lungs as he extinguished the cigarette with the tip of his thumb and forefinger, then placed the butt in a tobacco tin containing his loose tobacco and other butts. Henry knew they would be recycled and cannibalized in the future, such was the way of self-rollers. He blew out and said, ‘You want me to help you?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Firstly I won’t tread on the DI’s toes. He’s my boss and he wants the glory of nailing that gang and I’ve no doubt he’ll get it and it would be unwise to rattle his cage. My advice on that front is just to help out if you can. Not that I can cast much light on the gang anyway. We’ve got a list of suspects a mile long from Manchester, so I guess we’ll try to run a surveillance job on them, or just round up the usual suspects and sweat ’em.’

  Henry listened, nodding.

  ‘As regards Kaminski, it’s another toe-treading job.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The best way to get to Kaminski is to kick his shins on a Friday night and get him riled up. Then you’ll have him bang to rights.’

  ‘Why?’ Henry’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Because …’ Charlie’s voice dropped to a secretive whisper, ‘if you haven’t sussed it already …’ He gave Henry an encouraging gesture – a ‘come on, think about it’ one – but Henry just looked blank. ‘Do I have to spell it out?’

  ‘Sorry …’

  ‘Between you, me and the gatepost, he’s one of the DI’s informants and as such the DI does not like him being meddled with.’ He made a cutting gesture with his hands as if to say, ‘Enough said.’

  A groan emanated from Henry. ‘The bigger bloody picture.’ He slapped his own forehead. ‘That’s what it all meant … but hang on, Charlie, he’s FB’s informant at the cost of him being a rapist?’

  The Collator did not reply, just gave Henry a knowing look.

  ‘That stinks.’

  ‘Maybe, but by the same token, Miss Sally Lee is also a very tricky manipulator.’

  ‘She was raped. I’m certain about it.’

  ‘No doubt she was, H, but she’s almost too much trouble to be worth it. I’m sure FB’d nail Kaminski’s balls to the flagpole if he had raped a complete stranger … but it’s a domestic thing.’

  ‘You really mean that?’

  ‘That’s how it is, Henry.’

  Henry kept his teeth jammed together, unable to believe the pervading attitude, but knowing that Charlie spoke the truth. Henry had a sudden lurching feeling that he was completely out of step with contemporary police, and maybe public, thinking on domestic abuse. That it was more trouble than it was worth to rescue – usually – women from a life of hell. Henry dropped it onto the back burner for the moment and said, ‘What about Jack Bowman, then? Can I have all the Intel you have on him because I showed my arse in Burton’s window and now I want to make amends?’

  ‘You can have everything we have on file.’

  ‘Is there anything you can tell me that’s not on file?’

  ‘Probably not … although … I don’t think this is in, but did you know that Bowman is Sally Lee’s stepbrother, or something like that?’

  ‘I don’t remember reading that in Bowman’s file,’ Henry said, surprised.

  ‘Well, not everything gets in police files, you know.’

  He weighed up sneaking into the morning CID briefing but decided against it, not wishing to invoke FB’s ire. After spending twenty minutes leafing through the files on Bowman, Kaminski (in which obviously there was no mention of him being an informant) and the armed robberies, Henry turned out for a mooch around the towns he was covering that morning – Rawtenstall, Waterfoot and Haslingden, known collectively as Rossendale West – whilst deciding on his plan of action and where he should start.

  The problem with being a patrol officer, albeit on the crime car where there was a certain amount of freedom, was that it was impossible to spend all one’s time just doing one thing because, as a local resource, other things always needed attention. There was no way Henry could just say to comms, ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you,’ because he had to respond to the radio.

  This was frustrating, but simply how it was.

  So when he drove out just after eight that morning, with the intention of putting his game plan together, he wasn’t surprised to be deployed to a burglary at an address on Bury Road, Rawtenstall. Someone had entered an old lady’s house during the night and stolen property whilst she was asleep.

  Henry was at the house within three minutes, dealing with a frightened, virtually housebound old woman who had – fortunately – slept through the break-in. Had she woken to find a burglar in her house, there was every chance the shock would have killed her.

  She was distraught enough to find the broken kitchen window and that her fridge had been raided, her purse and its contents stolen and other bits and bats of property gone, including a solid-silver framed photograph of herself and her long-dead husband on their wedding day in 1938, a year before he went to war and never came back. Further evidence of the break-in was the calling-card turd left by the offender on the kitchen floor, a nasty habit quite a few burglars had. Sometimes it was from nerves, but with some it was from a desire to defile other people’s property.

  ‘It’s the photograph that really gets to me, besides the burglar being a dirty little bastard,’ the old lady, Mrs Ethel Fudge, said tearfully. Henry was brewing a cup of tea for her. He brought it through to the living room and placed it on a side table next to her armchair. She was sitting in the chair, her walking frame positioned in front of her knees. ‘The money doesn’t bother me, or the food, or the photograph frame itself … I mean they can have all that lot … it’s just my photograph, me and Kevin on our wedding day. It’s the only one I have of us.’

  Henry sat on the very old leather sofa and watched a tear come out of her eye and felt a surge of anger at the offender of this crime. He knew that in all probability the photo itself would have already been taken out of the frame, ripped up and chucked away; the frame itself would get sold on for a pittance, a few pounds to fund a drug habit, no doubt.

  ‘I won’t make any promises, Mrs Fudge, but I’ll do my very best to find out who committed this crime and recover the frame and picture.’

  She gave Henry a wan, disbelieving smile. ‘Thanks, but I won’t hold my breath.’ She sighed heavily.

  Henry said, ‘Give me a good description of the frame, please.’ He took out his pocket notebook.

  After clearing up the burglar’s mess, Henry felt muted on leaving the house as he told the lady that a scenes of crime officer would be calling later that morning and that he, Henry, would sort out a glazier to attend her house to repair the broken window. His first port of call would be to a couple of second-hand shops in town to alert them about the picture frame, though he doubted if this would be much use. The proprietors were known to deal in stolen property, but Henry could only try his best. Maybe put the shits up them or appeal to their better nature, just in case the frame was offered to them.

  He went and knocked on a few of the neighbours’ houses, but didn’t turn up any witnesses, then searched the back alley, looked in dustbins and over walls to see if he could spot if the purse had been thrown away after being emptied, but he found nothing. He spent about an
hour at the scene in total, probably longer than his bosses would have liked, but he knew there was much more to attending a domestic burglary than just writing down and circulating details. Having a stranger enter your house was traumatic to most people. To an eighty-two-year-old woman it was devastating and possibly life-threatening, which is why he spent some extra time with her, reassuring her and listening to her fears, and promising a result and a revisit.

  As he radioed in he was given two more burglaries to attend, one at a sports club and the other at a town-centre clothing shop. It was way past eleven by the time he had visited and sorted them out.

  Next stop was the police station, where he needed to write up and submit the crime details.

  He also knew he had to get his head around the Crown Court files in his tray. They had ‘urgent’ stickers on them. On the way into the nick he did a last circuit of the town and noticed that one of the second-hand shops he intended to visit was open, so he pulled onto the double yellow lines outside and went in the shop, leaving his hazard warning lights flashing and hoping that the town-centre traffic warden would recognize the car as a police vehicle and not stick a ticket on it.

  It was like entering an Aladdin’s cave. Virtually everything was on display in Fat Jack’s Emporium, from settees to bikes, jewellery to kids’ toys. Most of what was visible was legitimate, but Fat Jack, the proprietor, was known to do a nice trade in fencing stolen goods and a lot of people who provided him with such had stolen them to order – his order. He had a vibrant trade in video-cassette players and counterfeit films on video, together with car radio/cassette players, most of which found their way out of town.

  Henry made a point of visiting Fat Jack – real name Dominic Tighe and who was not particularly large and whose nickname was impossible to explain – on a regular basis. He wandered through the goods on display, a winding trail from door to counter, behind which was Tighe, leaning over and reading the Daily Mirror, cigarette in one hand and a cracked mug of tea within reach of the other.

  He didn’t look up at Henry even though he had seen him enter the shop. Tighe always liked to show some disrespect for the law, even though when he came face to face with a cop, particularly a detective, he usually crumbled into false obsequiousness, which often worked in his favour. He had learned that police officers liked people fawning to them because it boosted their ego. If, however, he found himself under arrest he became a completely different character: a bastard.

  ‘Morning, PC Christie.’

  Henry stood opposite, arms folded.

  ‘Can I do for you?’

  ‘I want to go through to the back and search your property for stolen goods,’ Henry lied.

  Henry could almost sense Tighe’s body blanching at the prospect. The man’s head rose slowly, a glint of uncertainty in his eyes. ‘With respect, you’ll be needing a warrant for that.’

  ‘Good job I’ve got one, then,’ Henry said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of A4 paper. Tighe’s eyes focused on it as Henry unfolded it carefully, but his expression changed to one of utter contempt as he realized that the paper was just a badly folded Chinese takeaway menu.

  ‘Got you there, Fat Jack,’ Henry beamed mischievously.

  ‘Not fucking funny,’ Tighe said in a slightly high-pitched voice. He had to cough twice to get it back to his normal pitch.

  ‘Your reaction was, though … which makes me think.’ Henry nodded to the store-room door at the rear of the shop.

  ‘If you’d asked nicely and hadn’t tossed me around, I would’ve gladly given you permission, without need of a warrant, to look in the back. Not now, though.’

  ‘Ho, ho, as if,’ Henry said, enjoying the exchange. He loved antagonizing criminals, truly believed it was one of the jobs a cop had to do. Wind them up, rile them, always make them feel uncomfortable, at every opportunity. Having succeeded in that noble endeavour with this miscreant he said, ‘An old lady’s house was burgled last night, not much taken of value except a silver photo frame, eight by six, with an old wedding photo in it. I want it back,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Bit vague, innit?’ Tighe said.

  ‘Someone offers you a silver photo frame – how vague is that? And don’t scare off whoever it is. Take the frame and call me. I want it back – that’s the main thing. It’s got great sentimental value. And, of course, I want the name of the villain, too.’

  ‘You want me to fork out my money – my money – and then give you the frame?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Henry affirmed.

  The two men had a little stare-off battle of wills for a moment until Tighe relented. ‘OK.’

  ‘And that little gesture will save you a lot of aggro – for a week or two, anyway.’

  ‘Suppose it doesn’t turn up?’

  ‘Then you’ll get aggro – and a real search warrant, not a Chinese takeaway menu.’

  Henry bade him farewell and left the shop, emerging onto the street to see the heartless town-centre traffic warden standing and looking at Henry’s car, flicking open his ticket wallet like it was a Star Trek communicator.

  Henry rushed across. The warden was known for his ruthless streak and had hacked off a few local cops by ticketing illegally parked police cars, much to the delight of the local press which supported his actions to the hilt.

  ‘Cop car, cop business,’ Henry said haughtily.

  ‘I know. Unfortunately I’ve already started to write out a ticket and once that process has begun, it is impossible to reverse.’

  Henry looked askance. He could clearly see that pen had not been put to paper.

  ‘No you haven’t,’ he said.

  The traffic warden gave him a cruel look, extended his arm so his cuff slid back, exaggerated the gesture of putting his ballpoint pen to the tip of his tongue, then began to write.

  Henry stared at him in disbelief.

  It was extremely easy to accumulate paperwork as a uniformed cop, but Henry prided himself that he never allowed himself to get snowed under.

  The crimes he had attended that morning had to be written up and circulated, so he did that task on his return to the station. Then he handed his car keys over to his crime car partner who had come on at ten and asked if he would mind taking over whilst Henry got to grips with the Crown Court files he needed to work on. His colleague happily took over from him and Henry nipped out to a nearby butty shop and bought himself a couple of crispy bacon sandwiches and then, with a mug of tea in hand (made with his own teabags and milk), he found himself a quiet corner of the report-writing room and got to work.

  There was nothing majorly complicated that needed attention. Henry was good at paperwork but every so often queries were generated from the prosecution solicitors or barristers who would be taking the files to court, and all he really needed to do that morning was make a few phone calls to chase up a witness and rewrite a section of one of the summaries. He got on with it, whilst at the same time wondering how to track down the little shit who’d escaped from his custody, kick Vladimir Kaminski’s shins and nail a gang of armed robbers – all before dinner.

  WPC Jo Wade loved being a young single female cop – at least for the time being. It was a great existence, being part of a shift of officers where camaraderie was great, the work was fun and serious at the same time, and being part of a social scene that was exciting and carefree. At first she thought she had been posted to the end of the earth when she was told she was going to the valley, but in a matter of weeks she had settled into the lifestyle.

  The work was wonderful. She treated it professionally and compassionately. She loved helping people, solving problems and also arresting a few miscreants along the way. She had been seriously gutted about the escaping prisoner and she felt guilt – but immense relief – that Henry was taking the blame for the debacle. She was not yet out of the two-year probationary period that all constables had to go through and something like that could have cost her her job. Her services could be terminated withou
t any reason given.

  Which is one of the reasons why she had been extra nice to Henry for the second time, but for the life of her, she could not recall how the night before last had ended. She recalled staggering back to Henry’s house from the night club, getting naked and screwing, but beyond that – nothing.

  Next thing she was waking up alone with no sign of Henry anywhere and no idea when he had disappeared. She thought he’d gone to work but only later found out that he’d reported in sick.

  She knew Henry was back on duty and at some stage she intended to hook up with him for a chat. One thing she was certain of was that she liked what she’d had and wanted more of him, girlfriend or otherwise.

  So far that morning she hadn’t managed to bump into him. She’d heard his deployments to various burglaries over the radio but she too had been busy with other things; somehow she intended to track him down before she finished at two. She knew he finished at four, so what could be better, she pondered, than him coming round to her flat after he’d finished for some more intimacy and a takeaway?

  The prospect put a big smile on her face as she drove her patrol car around Rawtenstall that morning and decided to pop into a Spar convenience store on Burnley Road for a chat with the Asian owner. He was always having racial problems and the shop had become one of Jo’s regular brew stops.

  She parked behind the shop, out of sight, walked around to the front entrance.

  Her mind was full of the prospect of Henry Christie and she paid little heed to the Ford Granada parked on the tiny run-on car park outside the shop, one dark figure on board. She had no inkling whatsoever that she was stepping into the middle of a fully-fledged armed robbery in progress.

  The telephone on the writing table rang. For a second Henry considered ignoring it but he was waiting for a witness to call him back and had told her to ask for this extension. He scooped up the phone.

  ‘Henry … Dave in comms,’ came the voice of the station duty PC.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Just had a call from Dom Tighe at Fat Jack’s,’ the PC began, and even as he was saying these words Henry was rising to his feet, grabbing his PR and jacket and hat, the phone still clasped to his ear. ‘Said you’d been in this morning re some stolen property … apparently some guy’s just been in and tried to sell him a silver photo frame …’