Judgement Call

by Nick Oldham

FIFTEEN

  ‘No – you get your uniform on and you help us out. We’re short-staffed and we need you.’

  Though not the words Henry wanted to hear, he didn’t allow himself a ‘But, boss,’ plea because he knew it would be useless to whine. The patrol sergeant’s firm stance said it all and Henry knew his first responsibility was to the uniform section, not to go gallivanting off in the vain hope of catching robbers, murderers and escapees.

  ‘Once you’ve done the court run, you can do whatever you had planned.’

  ‘OK, sarge.’

  Henry grabbed a set of car keys and skulked out of the police station, jumped into a car, envying the detectives who were rolling in for their morning briefing in the hunt for Jo Wade’s murderers. He drove back to his rented house, chunnering to himself, annoyed he wasn’t quick enough not to get cornered for the court run, the thrice-weekly jaunt to take prisoners in custody or on remand to Rawtenstall Magistrates.

  He didn’t get it.

  The court run seemed to be a surprise to supervisory officers every time it happened, even though it happened three times each week. There never seemed to be enough staff on duty and they were always desperate to snatch officers from wherever they could to do the run. But it wasn’t just the run, because officers had to remain with the prisoners in the secure room and then take them up to court for their appearance, and then bring them back afterwards unless they were fortunate enough to be released by the bench. It was a tedious, time-consuming chore that most cops tried to duck.

  Henry had turned up for work in plain clothes, expecting to be able to carry on his illicit role as FB’s private gofer.

  But it was not to be.

  The sergeant had descended on him as soon as he set foot through the door, brooking no argument, and Henry avoided conflict by doing what he was told, for once.

  He was back at the station in ten minutes, spic ’n’ span with an ironed uniform and spit-and-polished shoes.

  There were two prisoners that morning, for which Henry was grateful. It meant he wouldn’t have to spend long hours at court.

  One was a local town-centre drunk called Stuttard, one of those poor unfortunate souls who often became the target for young cops to practise their arrest skills on. Indeed, even Henry had once arrested him for drunk and disorderly just for something to do and regretted it later. He was easy to wind up and subdue, because there was no real fight in him. In reality he should have been in rehab or an asylum, but that would never be. He was destined to remain one of life’s misfits and would probably drink himself to death.

  The other, much to Henry’s surprise, was John Longridge.

  But he didn’t have much time to enquire into that. The prisoners had to be at court for ten o’clock and it was the responsibility of the court escorts – Henry, in this case, and a young PC called Barnes – to sort out their breakfasts and get them washed and shaved.

  Henry did all this with a scowl on his face.

  The breakfasts were provided by a nearby pub and Henry went to collect them, managing to tease a bacon sandwich from the landlord for himself. By the time he returned to the station, PC Barnes had made the brews in the huge plastic mugs for the prisoners and the meals and drinks were posted through the observation flaps in the cell doors. This break gave Henry chance to make a tea for himself and slip upstairs to see FB, whose car he had seen in the back yard.

  ‘I’ll have half of that,’ FB said, eyeing Henry’s large bacon bap with hunger. Henry tore it across and gave FB a chunk which he ripped into ravenously, continuing to speak with an overflowing mouth.

  ‘Why the uniform?’ he asked.

  ‘Roped in for court escort. Couldn’t refuse, couldn’t duck.’

  FB grunted and snuffled.

  ‘What’s the score with Longridge?’

  ‘Well, they don’t really have anything on him … I, er, didn’t mention the Kaminskis to the murder squad,’ he said, slightly shamefaced.

  Henry smirked.

  ‘I thought we’d try and see that one through ourselves – if you ever get free from court that is.’

  ‘I will … then I want to get a statement from Sally and sort out SOCO and a police surgeon for her. I think they have an interview room at the refuge for that sort of thing. Then at least we have something to speak to Kaminski about.’

  FB looked at him curiously. ‘What refuge?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Henry said in all innocence.

  ‘No … but you better had.’

  So Henry did and FB listened, pan-faced. When he’d finished, FB said, ‘And you didn’t think to tell me about this?’

  ‘Uh, sorry … but it’s a good thing, isn’t it – under the circumstances?’ Henry held his breath, ready for the tirade.

  ‘I’ll let it slide,’ FB said not impressed. ‘But don’t do stuff without my say-so, OK?’ Henry nodded. FB went on, ‘Anyway, re Longridge … they’re going for a three-day lie down so they can get into his ribs properly, so he’ll be coming back here to lodge with us.’ A three-day lie down was police jargon for a remand by the court to police cells for further questioning and when requested was rarely denied by the magistrates. ‘I’ll keep an eye on how it’s going before I reveal what I know about the ID of Spiderman and his link to Vladimir and the gang.’

  Henry smirked again. Knowledge was power. Henry didn’t exactly know what FB’s game plan was, but he surmised he planned to let the murder squad – of which he was no longer leader – struggle for a while with an uncooperative Longridge before suddenly helping them out and regaining his own credibility. Thanks to Henry, of course, although he doubted that his part in the proceedings would feature too highly. He wasn’t bothered, just so long as he played some part in it.

  ‘Presumably they do think Longridge is connected to the blagging team, even if they can’t prove it?’ he asked.

  ‘Uh-huh – but he won’t admit anything without hard evidence and even then,’ FB shrugged. ‘But I have a little something, don’t I?’

  So Henry was right. FB was playing his cards close. He corrected FB by saying, ‘Yes, we do,’ and turned to leave.

  ‘Oh – you went up to the fire, I believe, at Sally Lee’s place?’

  ‘I did. Two seats of fire. Place was a mess,’ Henry said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘No suspicious circumstances according to the initial assessment by the chief fire officer. Chip pan left on, and a discarded ciggie on the settee. I haven’t crimed it – yet.’

  ‘Kaminski, you think?’

  ‘Well, the chip pan was off and Sally picked her fags up when we left yesterday – so, definitely Vlad.’

  ‘And how is Miss Lee, liar, cheater and manipulator?’

  ‘Miss Lee, the abused girlfriend, you mean? She was OK when I checked with the refuge last night. I didn’t mention the fire, though. I didn’t want to wind her up. She deserved a decent night’s kip. But I’ll tell her when I see her. Don’t know how, but I will.’ Henry glanced at his watch. ‘Time for my court run.’

  ‘Watch out for Longridge, by the way. He won’t be averse to doing a runner if he can – and I know you’ve got form for not keeping hold of prisoners …’ Now FB smirked.

  Bristling and reddening, Henry spun out of the office.

  The prisoners had eaten their breakfasts. Henry and PC Barnes supervised them washing and preening themselves, Henry believing this was one of the few occasions when Stuttard, the drunk, was sober, clean, presentable, affable – a completely different person to the one normally found rolling around the streets, inebriated on cheap cider mixed with vodka.

  But Henry’s eyes were mainly on Longridge.

  That prisoner remained calm, quiet and within himself. He moved with tough confidence and maintained a look of distaste on his face, compounded by a half-smirk. Henry did not trust him and he didn’t need FB’s words of warning to tell him he was an escape risk. He had to be carefully watched.

  When they were ready, Henry cuffed the priso
ners to each other, Longridge’s right wrist to Stuttard’s left. Although Longridge didn’t tower over his fellow detainee, he was bigger, wider and much more of a presence than the drink-ravaged Stuttard.

  The call came over the radio that the section van had pulled up outside the back door of the nick. Henry told Barnes to grip the links between the handcuffs whilst Henry steered the prisoners out of the cell area into the back corridor. He took up a position just to one side, but slightly ahead of them and always walked at an angle so he was able to keep an eye on them and react to anything as necessary.

  The preposterous nature of prisoner escort from Rawtenstall police station to the Magistrates’ Court was never lost on Henry.

  With the premises being just under a mile apart by road, it was always fraught with danger and Henry was surprised the cops hadn’t been caught out more times than they had.

  There were so many weak points in the journey it was laughable.

  First of all, cops themselves did not make the best prisoner escorts. It was a task, without exception, they hated doing, but the idea of bringing in private security companies to do it usually appalled most police officers. The inbred culture of the service meant that they wanted to hang on to the task for as long as possible. Even so, they did the escort under duress and always moaned about it.

  Next, the journey itself was a potential minefield.

  The short walk from the back door of the nick to the van was a temptation for the baddies to make a break for it. The police vans themselves, although fitted with an internal steel door behind the back doors – though not an internal cage – were designed for transporting prisoners from the streets to the station. They were not prison buses and nor were they armoured.

  The journey to court was a stop-start affair, usually in rush-hour traffic, giving serious villains plenty of opportunity to ambush the van and have a go at liberating their partners in custody if they so wished.

  Once at court, things didn’t get much better.

  There was no secure garage or area for the van to reverse into because the old court did not have such a facility. The van stopped outside a side entrance which was also a public entrance, and the prisoners were unloaded and escorted in, often through bunches of milling, unhappy relatives or friends. A situation that had often resulted in nasty flare-ups. They were then put into a secure room at the top of the first flight of steps which only had a flimsy door and could be accessed by members of the public who constantly hammered on the door, demanding to see their loved ones either before or after their court appearances.

  When the cases were called, the prisoners were taken up a narrow set of stairs leading to the dock in the main court where they faced the bench. If remanded, they came back down and the journey was reversed.

  Much of the smooth running of the operation was dependent on the compliance of the prisoner. One who wasn’t happy could make the whole thing a real nightmare. Henry was just surprised that most villains were so acquiescent and went along with it and that very few escaped or were sprung from custody.

  But that morning he wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  They made it into the back of the van with the prisoners, climbing in and sitting opposite them on the fitted bench seats that ran on either side of the van.

  Henry settled directly opposite Longridge, whose eyes never once left his. Henry returned the compliment, a slight smile on his face. He knew the type of intimidatory tactics that tough nuts like Longridge played with cops, but it didn’t work with him.

  The van driver, that morning’s PC on section patrol duties, slammed the cage doors shut, then the rear doors, then climbed into the front cab and set off.

  Longridge continued to survey Henry.

  In a whisper he said, ‘You and me.’

  Henry felt the PC sat alongside him stiffen.

  ‘You and me what?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Here. Now. You. Me.’

  Henry shook his head, faintly amused. ‘You live in fairyland, mate.’

  ‘Chicken.’

  Henry made a clucking sound.

  The van lurched around a corner, then braked sharply, jerking the four occupants along the seats. Longridge used the momentum to pretend to come at Henry, his left hand bunched into a big fist, his face twisted into an aggressive snarl.

  Henry didn’t move, but simply folded his arms and gave Longridge a sad shake of his head. ‘You’re an idiot, mate.’

  Longridge sat back.

  Then the van stopped. Glancing through the rear window Henry saw they had reached the traffic lights at the junction with Queens Square. Not too far to go now.

  FB had hoped to catch Henry but by the time he had finished the phone call, pulled on his jacket and legged it down to the back door, the section van was drawing out of the yard.

  FB shrugged and jumped in his car, squealing the tyres as he accelerated out of the yard, choosing to go in a different direction to the van, cutting through Rawtenstall centre and gunning his car up Haslingden Old Road, his fingers gripping and re-gripping the steering wheel, beads of salty sweat dribbling from his scalp, down his forehead and temples.

  He was a small man in height, large in girth, but he didn’t often sweat. He was usually one hundred per cent cocksure of every course of action he chose to take and if he showed a misjudgement, or something went belly-up, he would use his bullying bluster, the sheer force of his personality and the general ‘do not question’ power that DIs exercised to bluff his way out of a bad decision.

  Thing was, bad decisions didn’t usually cost lives.

  But this one had.

  The section van went slowly through the lights in the heavy traffic, turning left onto Queens Square, moving across to the outer lane to circumnavigate the roundabout and then peeled off up to the Magistrates’ Court.

  Henry and Longridge continued to size each other up. Henry was a bit dumbfounded by Longridge’s antagonism, directed at him for no real reason. But he knew that was how people like Longridge functioned. They lived in a sub-stratum of humanity where violence was offered and taken like currency, and a good payday included smacking a copper with or without reason – which partly explained Longridge’s attitude to Jo Wade’s murder. Nothing wrong with a dead cop. Henry enjoyed being on the outside of this knuckle-headed community, having to delve into it on a daily basis, but always leaving it behind at the end of a tour of duty to return to his normality. It was one of the things that Sally Lee had chided him about.

  Sometimes bits of it came with him, such as bearing the mark of an assault, or the frustration at not being able to achieve justice, or being involved in something as tragic as the murder of a colleague. But on the whole, if he could, Henry left it behind and he hoped that as he progressed in the job in years to come he wouldn’t be one of those cops who got depressed and took work home and then had, as they said in Lancashire, a ‘shed collapse’, meaning nervous breakdown. He didn’t ever want to be one of them.

  The van circled the roundabout, came off onto Haslingden Road, then bore sharp right across a traffic island and over into the steep side street by the court building. The driver cut left into the car park, stopped, then allowed the van to roll back. He turned and manoeuvred it alongside the steps leading up to the side entrance.

  ‘Here we are.’ Henry heard his muted voice on the other side of the toughened screen separating the driving cab from the rear compartment.

  The driver climbed out, unlocked and opened the rear doors, then the inner cage door which had a metal bar handle on a fulcrum that looked like it could have been used to secure castle gates. It opened on its spring with a loud clatter and the driver looked inside, grinning.

  ‘We’ve landed,’ announced. He wasn’t wearing his hat, which was unfortunate. Even his flat cap would have helped a bit.

  His head suddenly jerked sideway and he stepped back. He had seen someone coming at him.

  Fast. Low. Hard.

  His right arm angled up in a protective g
esture. Too late.

  At which point Henry simultaneously saw and heard a Ford Granada screaming through the stone gateposts of the Masonic Lodge fifty yards up the street.

  And the ski-masked, black-clad, baseball-bat-wielding man who had run up to the section PC brought the weapon around in a wide arc and smacked him across the skull, making a sickening noise as it connected. The PC did a full body shimmy like 10,000 volts of electricity had passed through him, his head split open and he disappeared from view as he collapsed.

  The Granada slewed to a stop just feet behind the van. Open-mouthed, Henry peered out, his heart pounding, as the back two doors of the Ford opened and two men, dressed exactly the same as baseball-bat man, jumped out. Dressed, Henry noted sourly, exactly the same as the gang who had violently robbed shops in Rawtenstall, shot at him and gunned down WPC Jo Wade.

  The men from the car carried sawn-off shotguns and they ran to the van and pointed their weapons into the confined space, screaming almost indecipherable warnings.

  Henry exchanged a glance with Longridge, who held up his handcuffed right wrist towards him, dragging Stuttard off the bench seat onto his knees.

  ‘Do it,’ he snarled at Henry.

  Alongside Henry, PC Barnes sat petrified. Henry said to him, ‘Unlock the cuffs, Dave.’

  With his hands dithering almost uncontrollably, Barnes took out his handcuff key and inserted it into the cuff and released Longridge.

  ‘Radios,’ Longridge said, holding out his hand.

  Henry and Barnes took their personal radios out of their harnesses and handed them to the prisoner, who dropped out of the van but turned to Henry. ‘Tell your DI I’ll be coming for him.’ He then slammed the cage door and the metal bar self-locked.

  Then he and his rescuers were gone, leaving two cops locked in the back of their own van and a badly injured colleague just surfacing into consciousness on the ground.

  Henry bashed the back of his head against the van side in rage-fuelled frustration and creeping humiliation.

  With a face that betrayed no emotion, Detective Inspector Fanshaw-Bayley was walked through the scene once more by the detective constable from Haslingden. They were at the top of the stairs on the first-floor landing of the women’s refuge, looking down at two perfect turds on the carpet.