by Nick Oldham
And Henry knew that he needed enough staff to be able to carry out some coordinated raids, because he didn’t want Terry Cromer to get comfortable. He wanted to start harrying him now, this minute, with lots of cops with big boots kicking down doors behind which Cromer might be hiding.
The chief super pleaded with him to keep a lid on it for a day, so that it would cost less.
Henry had already deployed a plain police car to park discreetly within view of Cromer’s house in Belthorn, just watching and waiting for him to possibly sneak home. Henry doubted he would be daft enough to do that, unless he felt brave enough to bluff things out, but you could never tell. On the whole, most criminals were just slightly more dim than the cops who chased them, and they often did silly things, like go home.
But to the chief super it was a cop sat on his backside in a car doing nothing for double the wages. An expensive resource, though Henry appeased him by offering to pay half from the meagre FMIT budget.
After his conversations with the chief supers, Henry was even more whacked. He breathed, ‘Talk about bad tidings,’ as he tried to work out what best to do — what was a ‘must’, a ‘should’ or a ‘could’. How he could keep people happy by not spending their money. Budgets were a complete minefield. In times past — those hallowed days of limitless government spending — there always seemed to be a spare pot of cash lying about. No longer.
‘Bad, bad tidings,’ he whispered again. He leaned back in the rickety office chair that some thieving bastard had left behind in place of the half-decent chair that used to be there. He chugged back through the day he’d just worked, almost twenty-four hours of it.
His mobile phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. It was Rik Dean calling from Blackburn, updating Henry on the hospital shootings, which Rik seemed to have well under control.
From all that Rik said, it was Bill Robbins that bothered Henry the most. Rik said that he’d sent Bill home despite having spoken to some ‘stuck-up bint’ from the IPCC who insisted that Bill should be arrested on suspicion of murder.
‘I told her to fuck off,’ Rik said crossly. ‘Poor sod’s gone home in a bloody Michelin Man suit because all his other stuff’s been bagged up for forensics. He’s formally had his firearms authorization revoked, he’s been swabbed for gunshot residue and DNA and the bitch wanted him locked up to give her the chance to travel up from London. Stuff that! I’ve arranged for him to come into FMIT at three this aft with a brief, to be interviewed there.’
‘Sounds good. How is he?’
‘Broken,’ Rik sighed bleakly. ‘You know, you shoot and kill once — that’s OK-ish, if you did the right thing, which Bill did. But do it again, whatever the circumstances, it’s the high jump. The force was bad enough with him last time. This time they’ll make Pontius Pilate look like the Good Samaritan.’
‘I won’t let that happen.’ Henry was absently spinning a full three-sixty degrees on his chair and as he looped back to face the office door, he jerked to a halt when he saw that Fanshaw-Bayley was filling the door frame.
‘Everything else sorted?’ Henry asked Rik.
‘Yeah. . Home Office pathologist has been for a look, but it’s unlikely the PMs will get done today. . public holiday and all that.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Henry said.
FB entered the office and helped himself to a mug of coffee from Henry’s filter machine, then parked himself on an office chair. His weight made the pneumatic workings drop down a level with a fart-like thud. He spilled his coffee on the carpet and shot Henry a dagger-like look as he pumped himself back up, muttering, ‘Shit.’
Henry didn’t want the phone call to end. ‘Anything else I need to know about?’
‘No. . is someone taking this over from me?’ Rik wanted to know.
‘No.’
‘How does that work, then?’
‘We stay on duty.’
Rik guffawed uncertainly. ‘Good joke.’
‘No — seriously.’
There was a beat of absolute silence.
‘Gotcha,’ Henry said. He was feeling a bit light headed. ‘I’ve arranged for someone to keep track of things so we can get home and grab some sleep — but I want us back this afternoon, probably for another long day.’
‘Um, all right,’ Rik said. ‘What’s the point of having a personal life when you can be a cop, eh?’
Henry glanced at FB. ‘Talking of which, have you heard from Lisa?’
‘No.’ It was a blunt reply. Only one syllable, Henry thought, but it was incredible what could be read into it. Anger. Hurt. Frustration. Fear. . Henry’s heart, unusually, went out to Rik, who had a lot of years womanizing behind him but then had found someone to really love — someone who, with years of man eating behind her, had rapidly reverted to type.
‘OK,’ Henry said, not having time to go there. ‘DCI Leach should be with you soon. Brief him, then get to bed and be at FMIT at Hutton about one this afternoon. We’ll have to run this thing from there for the time being.’
‘Eh?’
‘Don’t ask. I’ll sort out some staffing, but it’ll be all our people, not division’s at the moment. . It’s all about the money, money, money,’ he said with sad cynicism. ‘Pushing bodies across boundaries.’
‘Yeah, understood.’ Rik knew what Henry meant. In days gone by, when dead bodies — usually old alcoholics — seemed to turn up face down in canals much more regularly than they did in the present day, the officer who found the ‘floater’, if it was close enough to a divisional or force boundary, would often spend hours launching rocks into the water in the hope that the ripples would send the body over the border. Then the police over there could deal with it, though occasionally the reverse happened and somehow, mysteriously, the body would be found in its original location. The good old days, when bobbies really were bobbies, skilled at ducking, diving and avoiding work.
‘It’ll be cheaper all round if we can run it from FMIT, at least until New Year kicks in. We’re a bit of a halfway house here, between Blackburn and Blackpool.’
He ended the call and smiled at FB. After a pause of consideration, FB said, ‘What I don’t get, Henry, is how I give you a simple cold case to deal with and next thing I know, you’re in the middle of a real shit storm.’
Henry could have argued the point. He hadn’t done any of the stirring, but he was definitely at the centre of a vortex.
His last phone call, using the hands-free in the car, was to Bill Robbins. Unable to sleep, Bill was out walking his dog in the woods close to where he lived in the countryside at Hurst Green, between Longridge and Clitheroe, near the River Hodder.
Bill sounded thoroughly depressed.
‘You know, when that bastard swung around with his gun, I actually thought twice about pulling the trigger. I also thought, should I just try and wing him? That was the worst part. In that fucking microsecond, all the shit went through my noggin, as well as the implications of shooting him. Knowing I was right, that I didn’t have a choice, that I had to shoot to stop him, not try and be fancy by just shooting him in the shoulder. I knew there would be months and months of shite to come.’
Henry listened, feeling very sorry for him. It was a tough call being an authorized firearms officer, but when it came to that moment, the one when the trigger had to be pulled, lives had to be saved, lives had to be taken, the resultant fallout had to be lived with. Authorized Firearms Officers were under no illusions about that, but no amount of training could prepare anyone for it.
‘Like I said, though,’ Bill went on, ‘it was the hesitation that was a problem. If that dickhead had been any good, we could both be dead, Henry, and it would’ve been my fault.’ He sounded totally distraught.
‘Bill, you did exactly the right thing. I’ll back you up one hundred per cent, like I did last time. I’ll give a statement to IPCC, too. I’ve just had a long discussion with FB and he promises the full backing of the force.’
‘Excuse me if I vomit disbelief,’ Bi
ll said.
‘It will be OK,’ Henry insisted.
‘Yeah, right. . I know you’ll be there for me. . it’s the other twats that worry me. I need to go, Henry, get my dog. . it’s got something horrible in its mouth.’ He finished the call abruptly, just as Henry drew up on the driveway of his house.
Parked on the road, much to his relief, was Lisa’s Mercedes. On one side of the drive was the tiny SmartCar that Leanne had inherited from Kate. Also on the road was Jenny’s car. But best of all — and completely unexpected — was the sight of Alison’s newish, sporty Hyundai.
He was coming home to a houseful of women.
TWELVE
With a nice, thick, fluffy bath sheet wrapped around his middle, Henry stepped out of the shower, then walked through to the bedroom from the en suite. Alison sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for him. The shower had cleansed him of a full day of grit and sweat and he felt almost human. Tired, sleepy, but better, even if the blow to the side of his head was still open and bleeding.
Alison tapped the bed next to her. ‘Let me have a look at that.’ On the bed was the small medical kit she always carried in her car.
Henry sat beside her and angled his head. ‘Again, thanks for coming. . a wonderful surprise,’ he said as her fingers went to the cut and she peered closely at it. She had worked hard at the Tawny Owl until past midnight but had left the clean-up to Ginny and her boyfriend. She had driven to Henry’s knowing without having to be told that he wouldn’t make it to Kendleton.
‘Mm,’ she murmured dubiously. There was an accusing look in her eye which put him on his guard. He swallowed nervously. Over the past few hours he had faced a madman who tried to kill him, witnessed fatal shootings, tried valiantly to prevent a drive-by killing, seen a shaved vagina, cracked skulls with an escaping gunman and found a body riddled with bullets. None of these things induced as much terror in him as the look on this woman’s face, even if he did love her truly, madly, deeply, passionately.
‘You didn’t phone or text me,’ she said simply, looking closely at the wound and then squeezing some antiseptic cream into it.
He winced and rubbed a hand towel through his short-cropped hair, which didn’t need much drying. He gave her his best remorseful expression. ‘Things kind of spiralled out of control.’
‘I gathered.’ Thin-lipped, not impressed. She rooted through her first aid kit and pulled out a pack of butterfly strips, peeled one free.
‘I mean — all night long,’ he said.
‘And there was no time whatsoever in all those hours to call or text me?’ She squeezed the sides of the wound together and gently thumbed the butterfly strip into place.
Henry pouted. ‘Somebody tried to shoot me.’
‘As you were texting me?’ She positioned another strip into place.
‘Uh, no, not exactly.’
She applied a third one and inspected her handiwork by taking Henry’s chin between her finger and thumb and holding his head to the light. She seemed reasonably pleased by the surgery.
Then she turned his face so it was head-on to hers, eye to eye. ‘Just let me know. I know it’s old ground even for us, but I expect to be kept in the loop. Nay — demand.’ She paused. Her eyes criss-crossed his face. He tried to keep up with her. ‘Not a lot to ask, even on busy nights. . and by the way, I wasn’t making light of someone pointing a gun at you.’
‘I know.’
‘I just want to know you’re safe, OK?’
‘Point taken.’
She pulled his face to her and their lips met softly, then meshed. Drawing away, she said, ‘When are we going to tell your family?’
‘About what?’ he said stupidly.
She raised her left hand and waggled the significant finger, on which was the ring Henry had placed there what seemed a million years before. His innards sank at the prospect.
‘Haven’t they seen it? They’re women, after all. They home in on things like that. Primed from birth.’
‘I didn’t have it on when I arrived. I didn’t wear it at work just in case it went in the soup.’
‘Do we have to? I need my bed,’ he said dramatically.
Her look of contempt at his cowardice gave Henry the answer.
‘I’ll put my dressing gown on.’
When he’d landed home, his daughters had just arrived from a night at the hospital, reporting that their grandmother had had a good few hours’ sleep. They were downstairs in the kitchen chatting to Alison, who’d arrived before them, while Lisa was upstairs sleeping in Jenny’s old room; no one knew where she’d been, but at least she was safe.
Now, half an hour later, they were all assembled in the lounge, drinking tea, catching up with gossip as a hesitant Henry and a beaming Alison entered. His three relatives stopped talking, turned towards the couple, who were holding hands like gawky teenagers.
Henry cleared his throat, which seemed to have had concrete poured into it.
‘Alison and I have a little announcement,’ he said, noting the instant downward glances of all three women towards Alison’s left hand, then back up at Henry. There was horror on Leanne’s face, delight on Jenny’s and despair, or something like it, on Lisa’s.
Responses he expected. Leanne had mostly been very negative about Alison from the start, constantly making unfair comparisons to Kate. Henry believed this had something to do with her own rocky relationships with men. Jenny, from afar, and who had only briefly met Alison, was pleased for them. Lisa, Henry thought, was also happy for them, but her facial reaction puzzled him somewhat.
‘Jesus — you’re not up the duff, are you?’ Leanne blurted unkindly. ‘I couldn’t stand some bleeding half-brother or sister, or whatever.’
Henry tried not to get mad; his mind was muzzed enough from his night of action. So he forced a crooked, fatherly grin and said sweetly, ‘No, nothing like that.’
He held Alison’s left hand aloft like a boxing referee lifting up the winner’s hand.
‘We’re engaged to be married.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ — even worse,’ Leanne said.
Jenny beamed, clapped delightedly, got up and hugged them both. Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. ‘I’m really happy, Dad. You’re great together.’
Alison’s bottom lip quivered and her eyelids fluttered. Henry started to blubber a little, too.
Leanne emitted a dreadful moaning noise, showing total disapproval and rolling her eyes.
‘Stop it, Leanne,’ Jenny admonished her.
Leanne’s mouth twisted like wire. Obviously there was an internal wrestling match going on. Then her face softened, and she stood up and embraced Henry as her tears also began to roll. She stepped back from him and turned to Alison. ‘It’s not you,’ she said and opened her arms. The two women embraced.
Henry watched, his own blubbering becoming hard to control, as the girls suddenly decided to examine the engagement ring. Soon they were cooing and clucking over it.
He glanced at Lisa, sitting there with her hands tucked palm to palm between her thighs, her expression forlorn, little girl lost. Their eyes locked.
Henry disengaged his fingers from Alison. He stepped over to Lisa and held out a hand. ‘Come on, sis,’ he said gently. She took his hand and followed him like a puppy into the kitchen. Henry caught Alison’s eye and got a nod from her.
Lisa leaned against the cooker, head bowed.
Henry stood in front of her and tilted up her chin with the tip of his forefinger, forcing her to look at him. ‘What’s going on?’
Her chin wobbled and she blinked rapidly as tears began to fall in perfect droplets. He could see the weariness in her eyes, smell the stale alcohol on her breath and just a whiff of body odour. None of these things fitted with his perception of his kid sister. As whacky as she was, she was always turned out immaculately, day or night, and always smelled great. But here in front of him was a different creature, tousled uncombed hair, make-up that had run, smeared lipstick. She looked a mess — and
, Henry was forced to admit, she looked her age.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake,’ she admitted quietly.
Henry did not fill the next pause. That was up to her.
‘I. . I thought I wanted something else — as usual,’ she snorted in contempt of herself. ‘Always looking for the next best thing. Greener grass and all that. Been doing it all my life — but never looked back before.’
He could not disagree. Although he didn’t have a leg to stand on and was in no position to judge, having lost count of the number of times he’d put a bloody good marriage in jeopardy for stupid, cock-driven reasons. He and Lisa were alike in so many ways, not always good ones. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘I met Mister Bloody-What’s his name. .’
‘Sherbet Lemon, the jeweller?’
‘Perry Astley-Barnes, actually,’ she chuckled. ‘Met him through the business and he’s rich and rakish and good-looking, like a character from a bloody Wilbur Smith novel. He’s divorced, drives an Aston, got a lot of successful shops, makes a mint. .’
‘Ticks all the right boxes. What’s not to like?’
‘Nothing. He’s actually a good guy. I’m the arsehole.’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘But I realized I actually had everything I needed in every way with Rik. And I’ve treated him appallingly.’
‘Been there, done that,’ Henry said.
‘Got the T-shirt,’ they said in unison.
‘Been out all night, just driving and ignoring the phone, trying to get my head around it all.’
‘We’ve been worried about you.’
‘Sorry. . I’ve completely screwed up, Henry.’
He looked at his achingly gorgeous sister, who so far had failed to find any real happiness and stability in her life. She had even fled from London back to the north because she’d had an affair with the son of a London gangster whose psychotic ex had put a contract out on her.