Bad Tidings

by Nick Oldham

  Henry and Bill jog-trotted away from A&E, up two flights of stairs that took them onto level 3, on which gunfire had most recently been reported. The corridors, in the main, were deserted. Official visiting times to the wards were over and virtually all hospital activity was now taking place on the wards themselves.

  Henry was curious as to why Bill Robbins was out and about operationally – his job, after all, was in firearms training. But Henry did know there was a requirement for training staff to perform operational duties from time to time to keep their hands in. Up until recently, as Henry also knew, Bill’s authorization to carry firearms had been revoked following a shooting incident over two years before, but now it had been reinstated following a long drawn-out inquiry and – sadly – an inquest at which a verdict of death by misadventure had been recorded and Bill had been exonerated.

  But there was no time for discussion.

  They came out onto level 3, turned right towards the wards.

  The radio chatter was unceasing and all very excitable, so Henry cut across it and told the comms operator to stamp his authority on it as he and Bill approached the scene warily.

  They stopped at the entrance to a long, wide corridor, partitioned by several sets of fire safety doors, off which were the wards. Looking along its length, Henry saw it was deserted.

  They shouldered through the doors, walking side by side. On the left was the entrance to ward C14. They stopped, glanced into it. No sign of untoward activity. Next along, this time on the right, was the Spiritual Care centre. The door to this was locked.

  Next on the left was C10.

  Henry moved to his left, up to the wall, fighting the urge to push Bill ahead of him and use him as a human shield.

  Bill, his round face serious, had the H&K in a firing position and the two men crept the last metres to the ward entrance, hearing nothing.

  They exchanged looks.

  Then a terrifying scream emanated from the ward.

  There was a gunshot. Henry ducked instinctively as a slug slammed into the corridor wall opposite the ward entrance.

  There was the thudding of running feet.

  Another shot. Then a man tore out of the ward, running hard and fast, too hard and fast to stop, and slammed into the wall ahead of him, where the bullet had entered the plasterwork only seconds before. He crashed into it with his right shoulder, pushed himself off and ran in the opposite direction to Henry, not even having noticed the two officers, who watched him in amazement. The man was clearly running for his life – on the wall, he had left a thick smear of blood from a wound somewhere around his right shoulder.

  He was pursued by another man who followed almost exactly the same route, moving so quickly he too hit the wall, bounced off and went for his quarry.

  Difference was, this guy wasn’t injured.

  And he was carrying a handgun.

  Fifteen metres ahead of him, the first man stopped and turned, and for the first time Henry saw that he also had a gun. This was in his left hand, and the weapon wavered.

  The second man weaved to one side, and holding his own handgun – a large pistol of some sort – in the manner of a film gangster, he fired at the first man.

  Four shots, quick succession.

  The gun jerked at each discharge.

  Each bullet hit the first man in the abdomen, sending him staggering backwards, arms windmilling, his gun flying out of his hand, until he tipped sideways and over.

  By which time Henry and Bill had moved.

  Bill screamed, ‘Armed police – drop your weapon. Armed police – drop your weapon – or I will fire!’ The words were loud, clear and unambiguous and Bill could not have been mistaken for anything other than an armed cop – full regalia, including the chequered baseball cap.

  But the man was at that moment probably charged with a super-shot of adrenalin. He spun – Henry recognized who it was – not reacting to Bill’s words, but driven on by the situation and his own heart rate and red-mist rage.

  Bill – rightly – took no chances.

  The man had just murdered someone in front of him, may have killed others, might try and shoot at them.

  So he cut down Iron-man Bill Grasson with a four-bullet strafe across the chest, sent him pirouetting like a demented ballet dancer down the corridor, where he stumbled and tripped over his own victim, their blood mingling and spreading fast on the highly polished tiled floor.

  Bill lowered his weapon, his chest rising and falling.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Times like this I wish I’d had the shits, not my mate.’

  NINE

  As a police manager, the key to success at an ongoing, complex incident was to detach yourself from it, keep an overview, bring calm to chaos and in the process keep a firm eye on securing and preserving evidence. But above all, to ensure that people were safe and the danger had passed.

  It was easy to become an imitation of Miracle Mike, the Headless Chicken, particularly when blood was being splattered – but as soon as Bill pulled the trigger on his MP5 and two people lay dead at his feet, Henry went straight into auto-mode, took charge of the scene and imposed his authority.

  Once it was confirmed that the two men in the corridor were first, no longer a threat and second, dead, Henry went to check there was no further danger in ward C10. There wasn’t, but there was another dead body also containing several chunks of lead. And he needed to confirm that no one else had made good their escape. The process itself was just like dealing with a burglary scene, using the same skill set – but with the addition of more blood, emotion and chaos.

  Once all that was established, Henry seized Bill’s weapons and sat him in a nurses’ office on ward C14, got him a cup of tea, then carried on with the job in hand.

  And despite people having lost their lives, and his day being ruined, Henry relished it.

  What astonished him as he began to piece it all together was that as well as knowing Bill Grasson, who he’d seen earlier at the Cromers’, trying to stop Henry from getting an accidental eyeful of a table full of guns, he also knew the other dead men.

  As he looked down at them, one in the corridor, the other in the ward, he couldn’t help but say, ‘Well, well, well.’

  Because they were members of the Costain family from Blackpool. Rather like the Cromers, Henry had known the family for much of his police service, but unlike the Cromers, he had had regular contact with the Costains because of their geographic location and nefarious activities. They were a very extended family of several generations, mainly resident on one of Blackpool’s most crime-ridden council estates – Shoreside. From ragged beginnings, they had become an organized gang and largely controlled the supply of drugs in Blackpool and Fylde.

  The two members of that family lying dead at the hospital were Stuart and Benji Costain. From the younger end of the family, cousins of the main branch, they were ruthless villains of the highest order, doing a similar job for the Costains to that performed by Bill Grasson for the Cromers.

  They were enforcers and tax collectors. Finger breakers and ball busters.

  And Henry knew it didn’t take the detective of the year – an accolade he had never achieved, incidentally – to know that he had stumbled into a turf war. Either the Costains were expanding onto Cromer territory, or vice versa, or they were in dispute over something else. And if this was the opening salvo, the rest of Henry’s festive season was going to be a real hoot.

  It took him two hours to gain complete control, a complication being that the body of Benji Costain was lying in one of the side wards of C10 and there were six extremely old and ill patients in the beds. They had to be relocated into other wards, as well as having their blood-splashed bedding removed, bagged up for forensics, then replaced. Fortunately none of them seemed to have taken a turn for the worse because of the incident, which had happened quite quickly. Henry guessed they probably thought they were hallucinating . . . but even so, each would have to be interviewed soon.

  A
s he worked, he was mentally calculating all the time. Not forgetting that he had a prisoner to deal with at Blackburn police station, a picture started to come into focus of what had happened . . . and one thing he didn’t leave out of the scenario was the presence of Freddy Cromer at the hospital in the first place, which Henry suspected might be relevant to what subsequently transpired.

  Freddy had been discovered by a paramedic on one of the roads outside A&E, lying in the middle of it in a state of semi-consciousness, injured, but not seriously. He looked like he’d been dumped there.

  He was taken into the department, where after a quick triage examination he was sent up to X-ray; not only did he have a facial injury but he was acting strangely, rambling on that he’d been kidnapped, drifting in and out of sense. Because he’d clearly cracked his head, it was thought best to check whether he’d got a more serious injury underneath his scalp.

  As he lay on a trolley in X-ray he had suddenly decided that the nurse with him was one of the kidnappers. A knife was produced from somewhere and it all then kicked off.

  Henry had arrived soon after and it looked, even though he couldn’t be certain, as if the Cromer family had been informed Freddy was at hospital, and Bill Grasson and another – as yet unidentified – had turned up to collect him. They had been confronted by the hoods from the Costain crew and a deadly shoot-out had ensued.

  One question was already making the back of Henry’s mind tingle: had the Cromers been lured to the hospital? It was just one of the myriad hypotheses tumbling through his grey matter.

  Henry snatched a few minutes with Bill Robbins in the nurses’ office.

  They had known each other a long time, since being PCs in fact, and recently Henry had used Bill on some enquiries. During one of these Bill had come up against two rogue FBI agents turned vigilantes and shot them dead. The killings had been absolutely justified, but it had taken an agonizingly long time for Bill to be exonerated through the justice system. There was then further dithering by the force before he was reinstated as a firearms trainer, and an even longer delay before he got his firearms authorization back. Bill’s perception was that, apart from Henry’s support, he had been left very much to fend for himself, with the force keeping him at cow-prod length.

  And now he’d pulled the trigger again. Killed someone. Again. Not good.

  The two men eyed each other acerbically.

  ‘I think I’m a serial killer,’ Bill said. He looked ill, and pale.

  ‘No, you just did your job.’

  ‘Again,’ Bill said. ‘But this time I’ll never see a firearm again, will I?’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Henry said. That was a truth Bill had to face. ‘But you did the right thing.’

  Bill nodded vacantly.

  Henry left him to his thoughts, backing out of the office as his mobile phone rang. It was the custody officer at Blackburn cells, apologetic, although he didn’t need to be.

  ‘Boss, sorry. Know you’re busy, but . . .’

  ‘I’ve got a prisoner to deal with. Yeah, I know.’

  ‘’Fraid so. I’ve got Cromer’s solicitors on the blower giving me earache. What do you want me to do with the little fella?’

  ‘Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be down there,’ he promised, but only because he glanced around to see Rik Dean walking towards him. Someone he trusted to take on the management of the scene. ‘Sorry, bud,’ he apologized to Rik.

  Rik shrugged and said, ‘I didn’t even get home, actually.’ He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘Been trying to track Lisa down.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s still not got back to me,’ Henry said, automatically checking his phone for texts and missed calls, even though he knew there were none. ‘Look – I need you to take this over while I go and process a prisoner.’ He explained quickly what had happened, knowing that to say it out loud would help him get the story, the chain of events, straight in his mind. He would have to tell it over and over to people including the chief constable (already turned out), the ACC (Ops), turned out too, someone from the Independent Police Complaints Commission – already informed – and a multitude of others he could only guess at. It would soon be a very slick story. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can down at the cells, got an idea on that score, and then I’ll be back. Sorry about your Christmas Day.’

  Rik blew out his cheeks. ‘Yours looks pretty screwed up, too.’

  Suddenly weary, Henry walked back through the hospital. He called Alison – so far away at the Tawny Owl – and was relieved to hear her voice. She sounded tearful and drained, and he heard a little choke in her voice when he told her what had happened and said he thought it unlikely he would get to Kendleton now. It was a tough call to make – she clearly had been looking forward to his arrival at some stage, particularly after a long, tiring day at the pub. The call ended very mutely.

  Fuck this job, Henry thought bitterly.

  He walked back to A&E hoping that Janine Cromer hadn’t got bored and disappeared. He was amazed to see she was still in the waiting room, looking pale, in shock and staring blankly ahead. She shook herself out of her reverie on Henry’s approach.

  ‘Right, we need to get down to Blackburn nick and sort out Freddy – and on the way down, you need to tell me what the phrase “not as such” means.’

  They were in the Audi, heading down Shadsworth Road towards Whitebirk, the location of Blackburn’s new police station. In fact it had been open several years, having replaced the old Victorian one in the town centre.

  ‘You said you didn’t know “as such” what all this shit was about,’ Henry said harshly to Janine. ‘Not knowing “as such”,’ he persisted, ‘means you know something. So fire away.’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ she stuttered.

  ‘Look, Janine, there’s three dead men back there. This isn’t just about protecting a family or looking the other way, trying to distance yourself from them. I need to know what you know. This is serious fucking stuff now, and I’ll get to the bottom of it, with or without you. If it’s without you, don’t be surprised if you get dragged into it as well.’

  Henry slammed on at a red right.

  ‘Then it’ll be without me,’ she said. She crossed her arms. Defensive, withdrawing.

  Henry angled sideways. ‘Your decision.’

  She stared dead ahead.

  ‘It’s all going to get much worse,’ he warned. ‘And then worse still. There’s no upside to this shit,’ he said relentlessly.

  ‘The lights’ve changed.’

  Henry shot through.

  Janine said, ‘You didn’t just turn up at the house because Freddy was missing, did you? You must have known something about all this. Like we said, superintendents don’t come knocking just because some nutter goes AWOL.’

  ‘Some nutter?’

  ‘Medical term.’

  They glanced at each other and the tension was eased slightly.

  ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,’ Henry said.

  They hit the first roundabout at Whitebirk.

  ‘Honest, I don’t really know much. I do keep them at a distance. And they keep me away, too. Just occasional family get-togethers, and Christmas. That’s pretty much when I see them.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you don’t know things.’

  ‘Only bits. I’m not included in the “family business”, whatever that is, OK?’

  Now they were at Blackburn nick. Henry drove into the secure parking compound and parked close to the custody office entrance.

  ‘Which bits do you know about? Men with guns bits?’

  ‘There’s been a big fallout with a Blackpool crime family . . . the Costains?’

  ‘Could Freddy have been kidnapped by them?’ Henry speculated.

  ‘Why? I don’t know . . . maybe . . . there’s a lot of goading going on, a lot of posturing, some skirmishes. Bit like a schoolyard scrap, no one really wanting to throw the first punch. But something did happen at one of the clubs a couple of nights ago.’


  ‘Clubs?’

  ‘One of my dad’s places in Blackburn. It got a bit yucky. Bouncers, knives and such.’

  ‘Which club?’ Henry racked his brain to see if he could recall any mention of this on the chief’s daily briefing or in the other incident logs. Janine told him and he frowned. ‘Was it reported to the police?’

  She uttered a snort of disbelief. ‘Yeah, right. What world do you live in? Cops don’t hardly hear of anything that goes on, they just think they do.’

  ‘OK,’ Henry conceded. ‘I take it Freddy has no part in this crap? Y’know, with him being some nutter?’

  ‘Not really. He thinks he’s part of it – in some of his lucid but ludicrous moments. But Dad won’t let him near. The violence that gets used needs to be for a purpose. The violence Freddy uses isn’t for anything. And there are enough nutters in the business to start with. Adding one who’s out of control all the time would be too iffy.’

  So it is a turf war, Henry thought. And he knew it needed to be stamped on now.

  ‘Now yours,’ Janine said.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Show me yours,’ she insisted.

  There passed one of those indefinable moments. The look. The insinuation. The double meaning. And Henry’s guts lurched. Ten years ago – less – he might have done something very, very stupid, such as fall into bed with the daughter of a dangerous gangster. Now, in his mid-fifties (an age he was becoming increasingly vague about), he was above and beyond such actions. Plus he was so much older than Janine and he could just imagine her disappointment when she saw his naked body. Even he was disappointed with it. Every day.

  He cleared his throat and cleansed his mind of the image. ‘I’m investigating the activities of a possible serial killer.’