Nightmare City hc-2

by Nick Oldham

  And his ear. His lovely ear. Bitten off by a madman. They estimated ten stitches to get it back on.

  He was sitting on the edge of a bed in a cubicle in the casualty department of the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, a curtain drawn across. He removed the remaining items of his clothing, shoes, socks, jeans and underpants, shaking each item of clothing to try and dislodge the fragments of glass which had got into them and were slowly skinning him.

  He was giving his underpants a very thorough shaking when the curtain was swished back. Siobhan appeared.

  ‘ Henry. Can’t you wait?’

  He couldn’t help but smile. She withdrew tactfully and he called her in when he was half-decent, sat there in his Y-fronts.

  ‘ Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘The glass, you know?’

  ‘ How are you?’

  ‘ Shaken and stirred. How ‘bout you?’

  ‘ I’ll survive,’ she said bravely. Henry could see that in spite of her smiles and the outwardly ‘couldn’t give a toss’ attitude, she had actually been terrified when Anderson had opened up and the firearms officer had fallen next to her.

  She took in a long deep breath. ‘At least Dave’s all right, though his shoulder is a real mess. He’ll have pretty restricted movement in it.’

  ‘ I’ll go and see him once I’m sorted out.’

  They regarded each other for a moment. Siobhan’s eyes took in Henry’s bloodied, dangling ear, then lowered to inspect the other injury on his chest. ‘That looks awful,’ she grimaced.

  ‘ I know. Feels like I’ve been hit by a truck.’

  ‘ No, not that,’ she said wickedly. ‘Your beer belly.’

  They caught each other’s eye and burst into laughter — which Henry couldn’t handle because it made him cringe in agony.

  The amusement was curtailed when a fairly fearsome-looking nurse stepped into the cubicle, pushing a trolley bearing an assortment of trays, instruments, dressings and needles.

  ‘ I’ve come to clean your ear up. The doctor wants to sew it back on. He’ll be here shortly.’

  Henry was discharged two hours later, having had an X-ray which showed nothing broken, had his ear re-fitted and visited the firearms officer who had taken the bullet. The guy was in great pain, but stoical about the injury. He was about to go into surgery.

  Henry also made a quick call home, told Kate briefly what had happened and that — God willing — he would be home as soon as possible. Bad as he felt, Henry wanted to get into Anderson’s ribs.

  Siobhan drove him down to Lancaster police station in the surveillance van. She found a space on the lower parking area. Anderson’s Shogun had been seized and was parked in one corner of the yard.

  ‘ I drove it up,’ Siobhan explained, ‘but it hasn’t been searched yet. I thought perhaps you’d want to do that.’

  Henry frowned doubtfully, then dismissed the thought that it should have been searched already. He happily accepted that she believed he would want to supervise a thorough search of the vehicle. She handed him the keys to it, then they climbed out of the van and walked to the Shogun.

  ‘ Oooh, I could do with a wee,’ she declared. ‘You get on with it, Henry, if you like. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve found a loo.’

  She dashed off to the entrance to the Custody Office and was buzzed in through the security door, leaving Henry alone with the keys and the car. Thinking nothing of the situation, he inserted a key into the back door and turned it. As the door opened, Henry saw that a travel rug was laid out over something in the back.

  He tugged it off and what was revealed made him puff his cheeks out in disbelief.

  One sawn-off shotgun — an Italian SPAS 12.

  And two mini-Uzis.

  He did not touch them, merely stared at them in amazement. These were the last things he realistically expected to find in the back of Anderson’s vehicle — the tools of his trade and quite possibly the guns responsible for killing Geoff Driffield and five other innocent people. How could the man be so stupid?

  ‘ What’ve you found?’ Siobhan reappeared behind Henry’s shoulder, peeked into the Shogun and was awestruck by the discovery. She hissed the words, ‘Pure gold,’ into Henry’s good ear. ‘If these guns tied up ballistically…’ She did not need to say anything else.

  Henry stayed silent, blinking at how easy it had been.

  He called in a firearms officer to handle the weapons and disarm them as necessary, then after a full search of the Shogun which revealed nothing else, the guns were booked into the property store and locked in a safe.

  DI Gallagher and DS Tattersall arrived at the station as Henry was about to have an initial interview with Anderson.

  ‘ Well done, you two,’ Gallagher said to them. ‘We need to thoroughly debrief what went on and, of course, go through the post-incident procedures for firearms incidents and consider counselling where necessary.’

  He looked knowingly at Henry here, who, following a previous firearms incident had suffered a nervous breakdown caused by post-traumatic stress. Henry was fine at the moment but he knew these things had a habit of creeping up on people and addling their brains when they least expected it. He thought that Siobhan might benefit from counselling, although he didn’t suggest it. The choice rested with the individual.

  ‘ What you need to do now is get your statement done,’ Gallagher told him.

  ‘ We were going to chat to him now,’ Henry said.

  Gallagher shook his head. ‘Bad practice. Me and Jim’ll do that. We’ve been involved from day one. It’s our pigeon.’

  ‘ It should be down to us,’ Henry persisted.

  ‘ No — and that’s final. You’ve done a good job, now leave it be and let someone else take it over.’

  Henry’s nostrils flared. He was getting angry. He put a lid on it and nodded. ‘Did the other targets get arrested?’

  ‘ Two locked up, one still outstanding. They are in custody in Blackpool. We intend to interview Anderson up here though, then take him to Blackpool. They’ll be in court on Monday morning. Look, you’ve both done a superb job today,’ Gallagher concluded. ‘Get the paperwork done, then go home, relax, do whatever you fancy. Enjoy yourselves.’

  The men’s clothing department in Debenhams, Preston, is in the basement. There was a vast array of clothes to choose from. Mind-boggling, really.

  Munrow’s mind was totally boggled. He had already been treated to about six hundred pounds’ worth of gear from other shops in Preston and was therefore loaded with bags crammed to bursting with shirts, ties, trousers, jeans, shoes and chic sporting gear, and was frankly completely pissed-off. He stuck with it because he had not yet induced the woman to make that cash withdrawal he so desperately wanted. When she did and the money was in his fist, the shopping would come to an abrupt end.

  He took a glance at his watch. Almost four. He groaned angrily. ‘We’ve missed the banks.’

  She gave him a patronising look. ‘No, we haven’t, sweetie.’

  ‘ But they close at half-past three!’

  ‘ You have been away a long time,’ she chided him gently. ‘Five o’clock now, mostly.’ She took a breath and her eyes flickered a once-over. ‘You really need a suit.’

  They browsed through the tailoring department, Munrow glumly at her heels. His body language mirrored his state of mind. Fed up with shopping, impatient for her to get her money out. Shoulders slumped. Dragging his feet. Stifling yawns between scowling at her back. He was like a husband being hauled around. He also felt ludicrously out of place.

  ‘ I’d really like you to get some bespoke tailoring,’ he heard her saying ahead of him. ‘Fit you out in a really nice, made-to-measure suit. But that’ll have to wait. For now, how about a couple off the peg?’

  She stopped, turned unexpectedly, a broad smile of pleasure on her lovely lips. Her indulgence was making her extremely happy and at the moment she did not care who knew about it, or saw them. Even her husband.

  Munrow thought he had chang
ed his expression in time, but he was wrong.

  ‘ You’re tired, aren’t you, lovey?’ she said sympathetically, misreading the signs. ‘This is the last stop, promise. Then we’ll book into the Post House and have a fashion show. And then we shall fuck.’ She said those last five words in a dark, husky whisper. ‘How about that?’

  ‘ Sounds good’

  ‘ Now, what about this one?’ She unhooked a suit off the rail and held it up against him.

  They finished the reports in about an hour, sitting in the CID office in Lancaster.

  It was four o’clock. Henry was having trouble keeping awake. The week had shattered him anyway, but now his sore body and soul was the icing on the cake.

  He yawned and slouched back in the chair, glancing very quickly through the statement he’d concocted.

  ‘ You look whacked, Henry,’ Siobhan said softly. She was sitting on the other side of the desk, gazing at him.

  ‘ I admit it. Been a long week.’

  Yes, it had.

  Beginning with kneeing Shane Mulcahy in the nuts last Saturday evening and ending here, almost a full week later, having been shot. And in between, what had there been? The murders in the newsagents. The dead girl on the beach. Boris the gorilla — Christ, he’d forgotten about the gorilla. The chase with Dundaven after Nina had been shot (Christ, he’d almost forgotten about her too). McNamara. Degsy dying. Long hours. Meeting John Rider for the first time. Virtually no sleep. Dead cops, injured primates. Gun finds and fights. Helicopters. Arguments with Kate. The NWOCS. Being teamed up with Siobhan Robson. That kiss… which seemed to make it all worthwhile.

  Henry’s back was to the door. Siobhan looked past him and nodded at someone entering the office.

  It was Gallagher, having completed the first interview with Anderson, who was being represented by a duty solicitor. Not surprisingly he’d said nothing. The interview sessions with him were going to be long and drawn-out, like pulling teeth, only much more painful. Henry was glad now that it was someone else’s problem. He enjoyed interviewing suspects but all his energy had drained out.

  Gallagher told them how difficult Anderson was being, but he wasn’t worried. ‘He’ll be well stitched-up by the time we’ve finished,’ he said. It transpired that a search of Anderson’s flat had produced a Dolce amp; Gabbana T-shirt, a pair of two-tone shoes and a white pork-pie hat. Exactly the gear the gang had been wearing on the robberies.

  The term ‘stitched-up’ left Henry somewhat cold. It had ominous overtones and wasn’t a world away from ‘fitting-up’. Falsifying evidence and other such illegal practices was a road that Henry would never go down. He believed it was his job to find evidence, root it out, even if the way he found it was occasionally off-centre. He had never resorted to anything underhand. He was just too straight.

  Maybe ‘stitched-up’ was simply one of Gallagher’s favoured phrases and meant nothing. Henry let it pass. It would soon come back to haunt him.

  ‘ Right, Henry, time to go home now,’ said Gallagher. He swapped a quick glance with Siobhan which Henry caught but did not comprehend. A furrowed brow, a questioning look, a brief nod to each other, then the DI said, ‘Oh, I forgot. That surveillance van needs to go back to Blackburn. Siobhan, do you mind? Henry — sorry, pal. The other team’ll need it tonight. Pick up one of the other cars to get you home.’

  ‘ Sure, boss,’ she said.

  ‘ Henry?’

  ‘ No problem,’ he said wearily. However, the prospect of a trip all the way to Blackburn before heading home to Blackpool was fairly daunting. It would add at least ninety minutes to the journey time — on a good day — and this was a Friday, rush hour. Yuk! He was beginning to need his bed desperately.

  ‘ I like that one, I really do,’ she said admiringly, a thoughtful finger on her chin, pretty head tilted to one side. ‘It makes you look sexy.’

  Munrow said, ‘Good, let’s get it.’

  It was a nice suit and fitted him perfectly. He liked it. At two hundred quid, he loved it.

  ‘ Yes, let’s,’ she said gleefully, but grabbed another one from the display, ‘and try this one too. It’s lovely.’

  She handed it over to him.

  He turned the beginning of a scowl into a smile of acceptance and reluctantly took the suit. ‘Then we go — and fuck,’ he said. And you give me plenty money.

  Her eyes sparkled. ‘Yes, darling.’

  Munrow went back into the fitting room and reversed into a cubicle, drawing the curtain behind him.

  He tugged the jacket off and dropped it deliberately onto the floor in a little display of petulance. He unzipped his trousers and let them slither down his legs and kicked them off over his shoes.

  The curtain was yanked back.

  He was about to tell whoever it was to fuck off out of it and maybe give the bastard a push in the chest for invading his privacy, but he didn’t get the opportunity to do either.

  ‘ No John,’ he gasped instead, terrified. He stepped backwards against the wall and raised his hands defensively. ‘No, don’t.’

  They were the last words he spoke.

  The gun in John Rider’s hand roared twice and deafeningly in the confined space of Debenhams men’s fitting rooms.

  The first of the. 357-calibre bullets left the barrel of the revolver and flashed its short way through the air, entering Munrow’s face by way of his top lip, blowing a huge hole below his nose, destroying the upper set of teeth, tearing through the back of his throat and exiting through the base of his skull.

  The next one whacked into his cranium, above and to the right of his left eye. This one did not exit, but remained inside the skull, ripping his brain to shreds with the glee of an angry bull in Debenhams China shop.

  Rider was gone before Munrow’s twitching body shimmied to the floor. A mass of blood, deep red, almost black blood, full of oxygen, and particles of bone were smeared down the cubicle wall. A fine haze of pink spray hung in the air, mixing with the smoke from the gun.

  His new suits were ruined.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Henry was never completely sure how it started. He didn’t think he was responsible, nor did he think he did anything to further it. There was a blur, then he found himself almost at the point of no return before his senses clicked into gear.

  Siobhan drove from Lancaster, all the way to the NWOCS offices in King Street. It was a fairly uncomfortable journey in the high-seated Transit but Henry, well strapped in, dozed off quickly. His head rolled and jerked with the motion of the van and his partly opened mouth allowed spittle to dribble down his chin and jacket. He was away with the fairies and would have been no use in an emergency.

  Before he knew it, they were in Blackburn, pulling into the secure yard.

  Siobhan parked in one corner whilst Henry shook himself into wakefulness and rubbed the dried saliva from his face with a sheepish glint at Siobhan to see if she had noticed. She had.

  ‘ Ole sleepy head,’ she said with a soft chuckle.

  He had a painful crick in his neck from his sleeping position and a heavy sensation behind his eyelids, as if grains of sand had been surgically implanted. His eyes were gritty and sore, his chest was throbbing and his ear screaming.

  He was not in good shape.

  Siobhan unbuckled her seat belt and dropped lightly out of the van. Henry duly followed suit. His movements were like an old man’s. His injuries had tightened him up and the pain in his chest on moving was initially like a heart attack until he straightened up. He was also beginning to appreciate how hard Anderson had punched him in the face during their fight.

  A couple of minutes later, having negotiated the alarm system, they entered the deserted offices and signed their guns and equipment back in. Henry was switched on enough to see that Morton had not countersigned the firearms log-sheet. Siobhan told him not to worry. It was something that often happened. He would do it later.

  Henry was holding his bulletproof vest in his hand. He proffered it to Siobh
an, who was holding hers.

  ‘ Come on, I’ll show you where we keep stuff like this.’

  ‘ I thought the other team would be on duty,’ Henry remarked.

  Siobhan just shrugged.

  They went back downstairs and walked across the car park to a door to the right of the garage doors. She keyed in a number on the pad and opened it. They entered a small vestibule. The main garage was through a door to the left. A staircase was dead ahead. Siobhan went straight up in front of Henry. He glanced into the garage which housed three saloon cars. He assumed they belonged to the unit. Then he was right behind her, with her compact bum at his face level, her flesh packed into the tight jeans she’d been wearing all day. Henry attempted not to notice. And failed.

  Upstairs there were two offices. The larger was a store-room-cum-equipment room with shelving and large metal cabinets lining the walls. An old settee and table were also in the room, probably remnants from previous occupants, Henry guessed.

  Siobhan unlocked one of the cabinets and hung up the body armour. Henry stifled a yawn.

  ‘ Am I boring you?’

  ‘ Far from it.’

  A wave of deja vu skittered through him as once again he found himself within inches of her face. Inexplicably he became weak and open for offers.

  ‘ Henry,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I was terrified today — when Anderson opened up and Dave got shot right next to me. I thought I’d be next.’ The words tumbled out, becoming increasingly shaky. ‘I’ve never experienced anything like that. It happened so fast, too. I mean, suddenly I was on the ground and Anderson was firing. It was all so unreal, yet so utterly frightening. I can’t find the words to describe it.’

  ‘ I know.’

  ‘ You’ve been through it before.’

  ‘ Doesn’t get any easier. I was frightened too. There’s nothing wrong admitting it. If you bottle it up, it’ll do your head in.’

  ‘ Henry.’

  ‘ Yes?’

  ‘ Will you hold me? I need some… comfort. I feel all dithery.’