Big City Jacks

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Drop the gun.’

  It clattered from his fingers.

  ‘And the bag.’

  It landed with a dull thud.

  Snell began to rotate slowly.

  ‘No need to move, Keith my boy.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Snell gasped. ‘I’ve been a fool.’

  ‘Trouble is,’ said Lynch, ‘when you realize that, it’s just too late. Well anyway, it’s all over now. No more need to run.’

  The way in which Lynch raised the revolver in his right hand, supported it in the palm of his left, and double-tapped two bullets into Keith Snell’s back was almost casual.

  Three

  There was nothing special or remarkable about the murder, other than the fact that all murders are special and remarkable to those affected by them. A man and wife. A silly drunken row about nothing which escalated into violence and then a brutal stabbing. Just another something that happened every day that was impossible to prevent but easy to detect. In police terms, a ‘one for one’.

  The only thing about it was that tonight it happened in the sleepy backwater town of Bacup in the Rossendale Valley, tucked away high on the hills in the very eastern corner of the county of Lancashire. God’s country, some say; others would be less enthusiastic about it.

  Following the procedures laid down for such occurrences, the duty police inspector ensured that the scene of the crime was dealt with professionally, as well as the arrest of the offender, then informed the on-call Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), who, at the moment of the phone call, was playing a game of late-night chess with his eldest daughter, Jenny, whilst the rest of the family, mother and daughter number two, were tucked up in bed.

  Instinctively, and before picking up the phone, the SIO – Henry Christie – checked the time and made a mental note of it. Times could end up being crucial to an investigation and several investigations that he knew of had rocked because of disputes over them.

  Henry knew the call would be for him and a frisson of excitement tremored through his whole being. He cleared his throat, announced his name, then, ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Henry, sorry to bother you. This is John Catlow over in Pennine Division.’

  ‘Hello, John.’ Henry knew Catlow and also knew that he was the uniformed night duty inspector in the huge division which covered Bacup, but stretched from the Greater Manchester boundary in the east, right up to abut with North Yorkshire in the north. It was a big, sprawling area, one which used to be covered by an inspector in each of the towns therein. Now it was down to one poor soul. How times had changed. As night-call SIO, Henry had made it his business to know who was on duty throughout the force of Lancashire. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We’ve got a domestic murder in Bacup . . . big drunken row, big falling out, wife stabs pissed-up husband to death . . . twelve times at least. It’s pretty much sewn-up. She called the ambulance, they called us, we went and she gave herself up. Cut and dried, so to speak.’

  ‘Is your on-call DI aware?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s turning out.’

  ‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘Moorside Terrace.’

  Henry knew it. Visualized it. ‘Is everything done that needs to be done?’

  ‘Yes. Body’s still in situ, scene sealed, CSI en-route, police doctor pronounced life extinct. Home Office pathologist informed and on the way . . .’ It was as though the inspector was counting things off with his fingers. ‘Offender banged up, clothing seized, forensic issues addressed – no cross-contamination anywhere . . . yep, all done.’

  Even so, Henry made him go through it in more depth and when he was satisfied said, ‘Right, I should be across there within the hour. I’ll make to the scene and meet the DI there. Can you ensure he meets me, John?’ The Inspector told Henry that the DI was actually at Burnley police station, where the offender had been taken. Henry accepted this and said he would see him there after the scene visit instead.

  They hung up. Henry looked at his daughter. She tilted her pretty head and squinted quizzically at him.

  ‘Dad?’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd?’

  ‘What’s that, my dear?’

  ‘Y’know – sitting around, waiting for people to pop their clogs?’

  Henry pouted thoughtfully. ‘Never really considered it in those terms.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, her expression changing to one of glee as she moved her Queen regally across the chessboard, dramatically wiping out Henry’s remaining Bishop with a flourish. She announced, ‘Checkmate!’ very smugly.

  Father and daughter faced each other over the board for a few silent moments.

  ‘You’ve been toying with me,’ Henry accused her.

  ‘Yep – out-thought and outmanoeuvred,’ she admitted, stood up and said, ‘Bed for me.’ As she walked past him, she patted him patronizingly on the head.

  In terms of the county of Lancashire, Bacup and Blackpool – where Henry lived – could not be much further apart, but he arrived within the environs of the small Rossendale town in about fifty minutes without breaking the speed limit too many times.

  Henry knew the area well, having spent a large proportion of his early police service in the east of the county. He had been on the Task Force prior to its abandonment in the early 1980s and in that time – those ‘hallowed times’ Henry called them – he had regularly worked the ‘Crime Car’ as it had been known, in that neck of the woods. He was very comfortable about finding his way around, ably assisted by a detailed street map.

  Whilst driving across the county from the flatness of the Fylde coast up into the hilly region of the east, Henry reminisced a little about those days. A time when coppering had been a simple fun job, when a guy in uniform could do almost anything – and get away with it.

  In some ways he missed it, but some of his memories made him cringe and wonder how the hell he’d survived some of the things he’d done.

  Society had been very different then. The Toxteth riots and subsequent public enquiries had changed the face of policing forever.

  But one thing that could never be changed was the popular music of that era, and on his late-night journey Henry allowed himself to wallow in some nostalgic rock of the time by sliding one of his ‘sad old git’ compilation tapes in and turning it up. He arrived in Bacup accompanied by Queen.

  He found Moorside Terrace easily, parked up some distance away and got out of the car.

  The cold hit him hard and immediately. A cold he had not felt for years. Half-past midnight in Bacup on a braw windy night was no place for the faint-hearted. He wrapped his coat tightly around him, pinned his ID to his chest and trudged towards the crime scene, hoping that most of the scientific work had been carried out by now. The house was slap-bang in the middle of a terraced row on a steep cobbled street which seemed to be holding on to the hillside by its fingertips.

  The street was a buzz of activity. Staring, nosy people, and cops.

  Every available officer in the division seemed to be hovering around. Probably all been to have a sneak peek at the body. A job like this was a magnet for the curious and it was often surprising how many cops turned up out of the woodwork. Henry prayed that the night-duty inspector had been telling the truth about scene preservation. Nothing fucked-up a crime scene better than a bunch of wanna-see bobbies in size elevens.

  As it happened, the scene was well preserved. The only people who had trudged through it were the ones who’d had no choice: the paramedics, the first officers on scene, the CSIs and the Home Office pathologist who, as Henry poked his head around the kitchen door to have a look at the carnage, was just rising to his feet having examined the body which was still in situ.

  The room was swathed in blood and the body itself lay pretty much in the centre of the floor, skewed at an awkward angle, limbs splayed to all points of the compass. Theatrically, Henry thought, the murder weapon was still sticking in the man’s chest. It was a very big kitchen knife. Henry winced.

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nbsp; Backing off carefully, placing his feet with caution, the pathologist turned away from the body to be greeted by Henry’s beaming smile.

  ‘Hallo, H,’ he said pleasantly, easing his hands out of his latex gloves.

  ‘Dr Baines, I presume,’ Henry responded. The two men had known each other for many years and had established a friendly rapport which, on occasion, spilled beyond the professional and into drinking establishments. Baines was as thin as a post, with ears like car doors, but Henry knew his ability to imbibe was second to none. All the beer, Henry guessed, went straight to his legs. ‘You’re a bit off your patch, aren’t you?’ Henry asked. Baines covered the west of the county usually. ‘Filling in for a colleague out collecting dead bodies, or something?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Baines replied as though hurt.

  ‘OK, pleasantries over – what’s the prognosis?’

  Baines and Henry both turned their heads down and looked at the body on the kitchen floor. ‘Not good. Not likely to recover. He’s been stabbed to death, probably over a dozen times. The knife is in the heart at the moment, but any one of six other wounds could have been the fatal one. I’ll know for sure when I carry out the PM.’

  There was a blinding flash as a CSI moved in with his SLR to record the scene.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned you can move the body to the public mortuary. I’ll do the PM now and get it over with. No point trailing all the way home only to have to come back in the morning.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  He and Henry withdrew from the scene. After ensuring continuity of evidence regarding movement of the body – an officer had to accompany it to the morgue – Henry took his leave of Baines and headed back towards his car, thence on to Burnley custody office to take a look at the perpetrator of the foul deed.

  It took about fifteen minutes to get there, travelling over the wild moors at Deerplay between the two towns and dropping down into Burnley. Henry spoke to the on-call DI on the way.

  Burnley’s custody office had been recently refurbished and this is where Henry met up with the local detective inspector. His name was Carradine, one of the old school who had adapted pretty well to the new ways of doing things. Henry had known him for many years. They had been together at the Police Training Centre at Bruche near Warrington, having joined the job at the same time. Carradine had originally been a member of Merseyside Police, but had transferred quite a few years before to Lancashire. The two had never been close friends, but were comfortable enough with each other. At least Henry thought they were.

  ‘Hello, Barry.’

  ‘Henry,’ Carradine nodded curtly.

  Henry picked up a strange tension in the DI’s manner which he had not locked into during the phone call.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Yeah – shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ Henry shrugged uncertainly.

  ‘Wanna see the prisoner?’

  ‘Yeah . . . yeah.’

  ‘This way.’ He beckoned Henry, calling out to the custody sergeant, ‘Bernie, me and the temporary DCI are going down to the female side to have a glance at our murderess. Make a note on the custody record, please.’

  ‘Whatever,’ groaned the old-lag sergeant.

  Henry and the DI walked down the corridor.

  ‘She’s drunk out of her skull,’ Carradine explained. ‘We’ve done a preliminary interview in the presence of a duty solicitor – authorized by the on-call super,’ Carradine qualified; it was a very big no-no to interview drunken suspects unless particular circumstances prevailed and then it had to be signed off as necessary by a superintendent or higher rank. ‘We didn’t get much from her, to be honest. She got stripped and swabbed and banged up for a good sleep. It’ll be the morning detectives who’ll be sorting it.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Henry.

  ‘Have I done all right?’ Carradine asked sycophantically.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘I just want to know if I’ve done OK – sir.’

  Henry stopped in his tracks and held Carradine back with a touch of his hand. ‘What’s eating you?’

  Carradine eyed Henry through slitted lids. ‘Nowt,’ he lied very obviously and carried on walking. ‘She’s in here.’

  Mmm, Henry thought, guessing that the earlier dig to the custody sergeant – the ‘temporary DCI’ business – could be the key to Carradine’s less than enthusiastic welcome. Henry wondered if his continuing temporary promotion had ruffled feathers across the world of Lancashire detectives.

  As per force standing orders, the cell door was open and the occupant, the murder suspect, was inside, now deep asleep; outside the cell a uniformed constable sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair, reading a magazine and – hopefully – keeping an eye on the prisoner. It was referred to as ‘suicide watch’ and was applied to all people arrested on suspicion of murder in Lancashire, people who often had their minds unhinged and were capable of doing themselves in. The officer engaged in this task – a policewoman – looked glazed with boredom.

  ‘How’s she doing?’ Carradine asked her.

  ‘Fine – flat out – no problems yet.’

  The DI nodded. He and Henry glanced through the door into the poorly illuminated cell. The prisoner was stretched out on the concrete bench/bed, lying face up, mouth open, snoring. Her own clothes, taken for forensic examination, had been replaced by a paper suit about ten times too big for her. She looked a slight woman in her late twenties, hardly capable of brandishing and using the size of knife Henry had seen embedded in her husband’s chest. However, he also knew what strength rage could bless on a person.

  To the policewoman, Carradine said, ‘OK, keep vigilant. Never trust anyone accused of murder.’

  ‘Sure, boss,’ she responded with surly lack of interest, settled back with her magazine and started to flick through the pages.

  ‘Shall we talk it through?’ Henry suggested to the DI.

  Carradine nodded and led Henry back through the cell complex, out through the custody office and up into his own cubbyhole of an office on the first floor of the building. There was freshly filtered coffee on the side, smelling wonderful. Carradine poured out two mugs of the steaming black gold.

  Easing himself into a chair, Henry took a sip, then, over the rim of the mug, got straight to the point. ‘What’s gnawing away at your bones, Barry?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he replied innocently.

  Henry’s mouth twisted sardonically. He said nothing.

  Carradine shrugged and kept up the pretence.

  ‘I think you know – the attitude.’

  Carradine manoeuvred himself to his desk chair and sat down on it. He swivelled slowly around, stopping at 360 degrees and considering Henry. ‘All right,’ he relented. ‘You have severely pissed off a large number of detectives in this force by coming back from suspension and being given your sweet job back – and keeping your temporary promotion to boot! Quite a few people I know were chasing a job on the SIO team.’

  ‘You being one of them?’

  Carradine’s narrow eyes seemed to hood over. ‘I’d been made a promise.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Can’t say, but all I can tell you is that a lot of people think you’ve been given preferential treatment. Everyone knows you’re right up the chief’s arse. Pity there isn’t a competence in brown-nosing.’

  Henry bridled, feeling his whole body shimmer. He reddened angrily and shifted on the chair. It took a lot of self-control to keep himself from banging the mug down and rising both physically and metaphorically to the bait. Instead, he tried to remain unaffected and calm – except for the redness, which he could do nothing about.

  ‘All I did was return to the job I left,’ he explained.

  Carradine shook his head slowly, in disbelief. ‘Many, many people are not impressed,’ he insisted, sticking to his guns.

  Henry cracked a little then and blurted, ‘In that case, a lot of people can go and fuck themselves.’ He
winced inwardly as soon as he’d said it; not a turn of phrase designed to get ‘a lot of people’ on his side. Huffily, he said, ‘Shall we talk about the case in hand?’

  Henry stumbled out of Burnley police station into the chill Pennine night. The briefing about the domestic murder had gone well, if a little coldly, after his and Carradine’s exchange of views about Henry’s predicament. As he slid back in the car, Henry grated his teeth and grimaced as he reviewed what the DI had said.

  Henry had known that his return to work would be difficult. He had envisaged it many times in his mind. He knew that the detective fraternity was a close-knit but intensely competitive bunch of individuals who would have been eyeing his post up like salivating dogs – or a pack of hyenas – the stimulus being the SIO job and their response being their tawdry elbowing and kneeing to jockey themselves into position. Henry almost chuckled as he imagined the insistent lobbying and kow-towing that would have been going on whilst he was suspended.

  Being a member of the SIO team was one of the plum detective jobs.

  And Carradine had the audacity to accuse Henry of being up the chief constable’s backside.

  However, it was only to be expected. Henry had been suspended for allegations of disobeying a lawful order and displaying judgement that was, to say the least, suspect. The resulting disciplinary action had been dropped and Henry exonerated, but he was intelligent enough to know one thing about cops: when mud got slung, some of it always stuck, usually in big clods.

  He now had the difficult task of proving that the allegations that had been made against him were unfounded, not to a disciplinary panel but to his peers. Far more difficult.

  In some respects it would have been better to have returned to a less prominent role, somewhere out in the sticks, but he was actually glad to be doing what he was doing. He felt very suited to the SIO role. Only thing was, there would be many out there only too ready to take a pop at him, not least the detective chief superintendent in charge of the SIO team, who simply did not want Henry on the squad.

  Henry knew he would have to be meticulous in his approach. He would have to work to the book and yet get results – quick. He had a very tattered reputation to repair and it would not be easy pulling the threads together.