by Charlie Owen
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
Upstairs in the CID office, Bob Clarke and John Benson sat at their adjacent desks, sorting through the piles of paper that threatened to engulf them. There were supposed to be in and out trays somewhere on the desks, but they had finally been swamped weeks ago by the ever-increasing piles of blue prisoner files and manila files for crimes still undetected. Larger piles of typed paper balanced precariously alongside their desks. These were the jobs committed for trial at the Crown Court, which took painstaking weeks to put together. First everything would be typed on to 'skins' (the only clerical assistance given) and then each page roneoed and paginated by hand. Each file could run to hundreds of pages, and then copies had to be made. One for the judge, two for the prosecution, two for the defence and six for the jury, until the total number of pages ran into the many thousands. South American Indians hacking down their rainforests seven days a week could barely keep up with the demand for paper. It was not uncommon to see officers attending Crown Court with a porter's trolley to ferry the reams of paper their job had generated.
Clarke and Benson would generally assist one another with committal files, but it was an absolute ball-breaker of a task.
Without doubt, it was the side of the job that all detectives hated. The nicking and interviewing was great, but the paperwork - fucking hell, the paperwork.
Their desks were as they'd left them at 6 a.m. that morning after another horrendous night. They'd got out shortly after 10 p.m. to nick a local for a series of supermarket burglaries, but after booking him in with Custody had spent the rest of the shift dealing with a serious assault that at one stage looked as though it might become a murder inquiry.
The robbery victim had fortunately been found in time by what passed for a Good Samaritan in Handstead, who'd phoned anonymously for an ambulance before relieving the unfortunate man of his watch. The animals who'd fractured his skull with a tyre wrench had made do with just his wallet and the takeaway curry he'd been carrying. He now lay in a coma at the local hospital and Clarke and Benson had spent a long night getting the scene of the attack preserved and examined and forlornly looking for witnesses. Needless to say, none had been forthcoming. In the small hours of the morning the victim's wife had confirmed that her husband's decent Omega watch was amongst the property missing and Clarke and Benson at last had a line of inquiry to pursue. By that time, though, the watch had changed hands twice in a club, and even if they ever managed to trace the original supplier, they would only ever lay their hands on the Fairly Good Samaritan. Unaware they were pissing into the wind, they had left instructions for the Early Turn CID to start getting into known local fences.
Amongst the paper debris, Clarke found the note he'd been looking for. He read it quickly and said in disgust, 'Early Turn got fucking nowhere with the watch. He's still in a coma and surprise, surprise, still no witnesses.' He tossed the note back on to his desk. Benson gave a grim, hollow laugh without looking up from his pile of paper.
'No change there then. You got any of the paperwork for Gough?'
'Gough?' replied Clarke absently.
'We nicked him first thing, remember?' said Benson, tapping the side of his head. 'The supermarket burglaries?'
'Oh, fuck me, yeah. No, not a thing. Didn't you hand him over to Early Turn to deal?'
'Don't think so. Can't remember speaking to anyone about him, can you?'
'No, I don't. We booked him in, brought him up here, stuck him in the cupboard and then we got the shout to the robbery. We didn't get a chance to speak to him.'
'So where the fuck is he then?'
They said simultaneously, 'The cupboard,' got to their feet and went to a large, double-doored, built-in cupboard at the far end of the office. A key hung from a hook on the wall beside it and Clarke used this to unlock the door. He peered inside. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the almost complete darkness within, before he could make out the shapes of two people sitting inside on the floor. The whites of two sets of eyes looked hopefully up at him.
'Mr Gough?' he called.
'That's me. About fucking time too,' said a voice from the darkness.
'You ready to be interviewed?' continued Clarke, looking back at Benson and mouthing 'Fuck' at him.
'I can't fucking move, I've seized up,' said the voice. 'No fucking wonder, I've been in here so long. What time is it?' What day is it would have been a more appropriate question, but Clarke ignored it anyway.
'Never mind the fucking time, we've got a few questions to put to you and we're expecting some answers. Otherwise it's back in the cupboard with you. You ready for interview?'
'Yes, yes, I've had enough of this bollocks. I'm coming out, for fuck's sake, just give me a moment.' There then followed the sound of groaning and moaning and the cracking and snapping of stiff joints, before Lance Gough, burglar of the parish of Handstead, emerged on all fours, blinking in the harsh light and shading his eyes as he tried to see his arresting officers. 'Where the fuck have you two been?' he said. 'I've been ready for hours but none of the others would talk to me. I'm busting for a piss. Can I go before we start?'
'Come on, I'll take you,' offered Benson, moving alongside him, expecting him to get to his feet. Instead, Gough began to shuffle across the floor on his hands and knees towards the door.
'Through there, is it?' he called as he increased his speed before his bladder, now the size of a beach ball, burst.
'On your feet,' bellowed Benson.
'I can't. My fucking back's seized solid. Does this sometimes, but I'll be OK in a couple of days. I'll need a hand in the khazi, though.'
'You can fuck right off if you think I'm holding your knob,' grumbled Benson. 'You can piss up the wall like a dog if you have to.' The human turtle hurried out into the corridor as Benson opened the door.
'Can I come out now as well?' said another voice from the pitch-black cupboard. Clarke screwed his eyes up and peered in.
'Who are you?'
'David John Hegg,' the voice replied formally in the manner of someone used to being locked up regularly.
'Who's dealing with you?'
'DC Adams and DC Smith.'
Clarke recognised the names of two of the Early Turn officers he'd seen at 6 a.m. that morning, not due in until 6 a.m. tomorrow.
'What you nicked for?'
The voice mumbled something in reply.
'I can't hear you. You'll have to speak up,' Clarke shouted.
'Flashing,' shouted the voice.
'You dirty cunt. You can fucking stay put for a while. Teach you to wave your old man about,' bellowed Clarke, slamming the door shut and locking it.
'Let me out. I'm sorry. Let me out,' cried the voice in the dark plaintively.
'Shut up, you dirty bastard,' shouted Clarke, giving the door a kick, 'shut the fuck up or you're out the window.' The voice trailed off into silence; its owner knew about the windows at Handstead police station. From the first floor up, every window at the station was barred, not as might be expected to stop the locals breaking in, but to stop prisoners being dangled out by their ankles to encourage meaningful dialogue. Whilst no one had ever been dropped, too many complaints had been made for the matter to be ignored. Rather than issue a memo to the effect that prisoners should not in future be dangled out of windows, the Divisional Commander had arranged for the gradual installation of bars on the upper-floor windows at Handstead. It was a tacit admission that the practice went on, but he stopped short of a witch-hunt that would have resembled the British Raj's attempts to outlaw suttee. But the fact was that Handstead was the only nick in the Force with windows barred for the benefit of its reluctant visitors.
Hegg had been out of a window at Handstead before, and had no wish to repeat the experience. Captured three years earlier showing his blue veiner to a jeering junior school playground, he'd been encouraged to admit to a few other offences, some real, some imagined, by two detectives who'd hung him out of a fourth-floor window
at the back of the nick. Contemplating the long drop on to the roof of a police car below, he'd happily have put his hands up to drilling holes in the hull of the Titanic. It had been a sobering experience and Hegg still shuddered as he debated which had been worse - dangling, stark bollock naked, out of a window over a sixty-foot drop, or having his meat and two veg crushed as the detectives dragged him back into the room over the window sill. He hadn't managed a blue veiner for months afterwards.
As the CID officers began their interview with the recidivist human turtle, the uniformed officers of 'D' Relief were collecting their car keys and radios from the front office. Blister was handing the radios out on receipt of a signature, and having dealt with the Brothers was now impatiently waiting for Ally to sign for the radio he was cramming into his coat pocket.
'Come on, Ally, I haven't got all night,' she snapped, eager to get back to her Barbara Cartland bodice-ripper.
He looked at her and smiled, but said nothing, signed the register and turned to walk away. Then he stopped, turned back, put one hand on his hip, threw his head back and began to pout his lips, swaying his hips from side to side, lisping loudly, 'Come on, baby, love that camera for me, love it, baby, love it, lick your lips for me, baby, hmm, love it.'
The rest of the group began to bray like donkeys, with the notable exception of Psycho who stood horrified, looking from Ally to the Blister with the expression of a man having a catheter fitted by a blind, arthritic cobbler. For a moment Blister was nonplussed by Ally's performance, but gradually the lights came on and she fixed Psycho with a stare guaranteed to thicken blood.
'You fucking dirty, slimy, sick bastard,' she hissed venomously, her face turning crimson with rage as she puffed her fat little body up like a Louisiana bullfrog. Psycho didn't bother to play dumb or deny what he had done - he turned and fled along the corridor as the rest of the group cried with laughter and the Blister steamed, swearing dreadful revenge on him at the top of her voice.
Ally finished his display, which rather disturbingly he was quite good at. He'd noticed the dark looks he was getting from the Brothers as he minced and swayed around the front office, and decided to call it a day. The Blister spoke for the Brothers when she said, 'You look like some horrible old drag queen, Ally. Not a poof, are you?' It was an innocuous, inconsequential question that could and should have been swatted away contemptuously, but instead produced absolutely the wrong response.
'Course I'm fucking not. I got crabs from that Aussie barmaid I shagged, didn't I?' he announced proudly. Not everyone on the group had known about Ally's dash with the infested barmaid, but they did now, and erupted in another bout of belly laughs.
'Crabs?' shouted the Blister, shrewdly seeing the opportunity to change the focus of attention from her unfortunate photo session. 'Fucking crabs?' she repeated. 'You dirty bastard.'
'Don't get holier than thou with me, you old cow,' shouted Ally desperately above the laughter. 'At least Psycho didn't shag me and then take pictures.'
'Sure about that, are you, Ally? You were mincing about there like a real shit-stabber. Wouldn't surprise me at all if he'd given you one by mistake when he was pissed.'
Pizza, who was standing nearby, cringed as he recalled the horror he'd felt when he'd woken in Psycho's bed and believed for a while that the hose monster had rethreaded his kitchen towel holder. He wandered away from the uproar and into the relative calm of the custody area where Mick Jones sat grinding his finger into his ears, looking through the custody records he'd inherited from Late Turn.
'Hello, sarge. Got many in?'
Jones glanced up briefly, examined the finger, and then looked back at the papers. 'Just the two at the moment.'
'One of them's Mr Middleton's son, I hear.'
'That's right. So what?'
'Nothing, sarge. Just wanted to know if he was still here,' Pizza replied, the beginning of a plan suddenly forming in his mind.
'Be here a while yet. Still pissed as a fart,' said Jones distractedly as he read Middleton's custody record. 'I'll be phoning his dad a bit later. Got to make arrangements to get him home eventually.'
'But not straight away?'
'No, not for a few hours, that's for sure.'
'Thanks, sarge. See you later probably, hopefully with a prisoner.'
'Great,' said Jones sourly, and Pizza departed in search of Psycho. He'd had an idea that he knew Psycho could help him with.
The Brothers also drifted away from the maelstrom engulfing Ally and the Blister. They had something much more important to discuss.
'He should be at home now,' said H, looking at his watch.
'Yeah. I can't believe he'll break his bail conditions first night out without some help. We've got to find a way to get him out of the house and then we can sort him out.'
'First up, let's make sure he's fucking there. There's a phone book in the report-writing room. I'll give him a bell first.'
They made their way to find the phone book, the first step in their quest to capture Bobby Driscoll and get him back where they felt he belonged.
'If he's in, how the fuck are we going to get him outside?' mused H as he flicked through the phone book until he found the number he was after. Picking up the phone, he got an outside line, dialled, and then waited as the phone rang and rang. He was about to put it down when a very sleepy woman's voice answered it with an irritated 'Hello?'
'Bobby there?' said H curtly.
'Who wants to know?' replied Driscoll's mother suspiciously.
'Jimmy Anderson,' he said, giving the name of the brother of one of the Mafia on remand in Strangeways. She knew Des Anderson well and knew he had a brother, but not his name.
'Yeah, he's here, Jimmy,' she said, her doubts about the caller allayed.
'Can I have a word? It's important.'
'Hold on a moment.' H then heard Driscoll's mother call, 'Bobby, phone.' After a few moments he heard Driscoll ask 'Who is it?', his mother reply 'Jimmy, and Driscoll repeat the name in surprise as he picked up the phone.
'Hello?' he barked.
'You piece of fucking shit, I'm going to rip your throat out before the end of the night. Die, you cunt,' said H pleasantly.
'Who's that,' shouted Driscoll.
'Your worst fucking nightmare, you scumbag. I'm going to set fire to you, then cut your mummy's throat from ear to ear and skull fuck her while she bleeds to death,' said H, warming to his task and oblivious of the concerned looks Jim was shooting him.
'You fucking bastard,' screamed Driscoll, covering his phone with spittle. 'When I find you you're fucking dead,' he added rather impotently.
'Don't go to sleep, Driscoll. I'll be over later to gut you like a fish,' said H calmly, before he put the phone down and sat back with a contented sigh.
'You've done that before, haven't you, you fucking head- banger?' said Jim, looking closely at his colleague.
'Certainly not,' replied H indignantly, but not altogether convincingly. 'Inspiration came to me, that's all. Got him going, though, didn't it? Fuck me, he was foaming, but we've still got to get him out of the house somehow.'
'A fire might do the trick.'
'Yeah, right, Jim, we'll set fire to the house,' replied H, shaking his head mournfully.
'No? Well, give the impression that it's on fire, then. Get something smoking nicely, evacuate everyone and have him away outside somewhere.'
'We can't be seen anywhere near the house. We've got to be able to say we nicked him miles away.'
'Or have him away then, keep him somewhere safe and produce him hours later having just found him.'
'Yeah, I like that, Jim. Keep him somewhere until much later. Yeah, I really like that. Where could we keep him, though?' said H thoughtfully.
'Boot of the car?'
'We'd never get away with it. How the fuck can we get him out of the house?'
'Don't fancy the fire, then?'
'Nah. Even if it got him outside, there'd be too many people about who'd see him and ther
e's no way he'd wander off too far. He'd hang around the garden or on the pavement. We've got to get him some distance away from the house on his own. Come on, Jim, think. What would get him away from the house at this time of night in breach of his bail conditions?'
Outside, as the temperature hovered around the freezing mark, it had begun to snow. Not the big, fluffy, cotton-wool snow beloved of Hollywood film producers, but thin, wet snow driven by an icy wind that stung the face and eyes, forming a treacly black film on everything it touched after dark. Only a villain or a copper would venture out in weather like this. The rest of mankind took one look at it, muttered 'Fuck that', and shut the front door. Those coppers unfortunate enough to be working in shit weather regarded it with mixed emotions. It was no fun being out and about in it, especially on foot, but it was a truism: only they and the villains would be out in it. The chances of pulling a completely innocent Joe Public were substantially reduced. Lazy old lamp-swingers often solemnly intoned that 'bad weather was the best copper of them all', because it kept most people at home out of trouble. Elsewhere perhaps, but not in Horse's Arse, where the villains mistakenly believed that the Old Bill would be tucked away in the warm and dry, and repeatedly got locked up on what they regarded as 'dead cert' jobs. The Old Bill had worked it out, but the villains had still to see the light on the road to Damascus.