Critical Threat (11 page)

In the fast clearing dawn light, and even the misty rain, the canal looked wonderful, very peaceful. Two moorhens squawked off as his heavy boots landed, flapping away and launching themselves into the reeds on the opposite bank.

He stopped, listened to the silence, the sound of traffic merely a vague drone.

To his right was the canal bridge, over which the main road ran, and to his left the canal threaded its way towards Accrington. He walked in this direction for a few metres.

There was no sign of anyone.

He tutted as he realized this was definitely a job for a dog. If he started to search by himself, he would either cock things up for the dog or just waste his time. With reluctance he decided to take a step back and let the experts get on with their jobs when they arrived. And anyway, the search would need armed backup if the suspect was indeed one of the terrorists.

He took one last look and his eyes caught something in the darkness under the arch of the bridge. A shape on the floor in the shadow. The hairs on his neck prickled. He did not move, but allowed his eyes to adjust properly.

It was the shape of a body. Someone trying to hide?

His steps were slow and quiet until he was sure what he was seeing, then he did not hesitate, but ran and crouched down beside the body of a male lying face down, spread-eagled, in a dirty puddle of blood and rainwater.

9 a.m.: Henry Christie, feeling grimy and dishevelled, still dressed in the overalls and boots he had worn all night, sat glumly on a chair in the office occupied by the chief constable's staff officer and other associated staff. He was leaning forwards, elbows on knees, staring blankly at the floor, trying to keep his grit-filled eyes open. He stifled a big yawn, which took some doing and almost broke his jaw, sat up and rubbed his weary face, taking in a deep, slow breath. His eyes flickered around the room. All the desks were occupied: two secretaries, the deputy chief constable's staff officer and Chief Inspector Laker, the chief's bag-carrier, last seen by Henry several months before when Henry had been demanding to have an audience with FB. He was pretty sure Laker had not forgiven him for that day, but to be honest, he didn't give a monkey's something.

He swallowed. God, his throat was dry. He smiled in the direction of the chief's secretary, a young lady by the name of Erica, in an effort to catch her eye. She was engrossed in word processing. Henry coughed. ‘Excuse me, any chance of a cup of coffee?' As there was a kettle, milk and a jar of instant coffee on a table behind her, Henry assumed there was every chance.

‘Yes, certainly.' She saved her work, smiled at him in a sad way, and spun around in her chair.

Henry noticed Laker looking at him, a scowl of disapproval on his mush. He said, ‘Been up all night – operational stuff, y'know?'

‘So I've heard,' said the bagman.

Henry stiffened. ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘You'll find out soon enough.' Laker refocused on his computer. A surge of trepidation rushed through Henry.

The kettle boiled.

‘Here we go.' Erica handed him a cup of coffee, the colour of which reminded Henry of the tidal water in the Wyre Estuary, a sort of murky red-brown.

‘Thanks.' He sipped it. Laker's little off-the-cuff remark had just knocked him off kilter for some reason. He had been summoned to the chief's office following the less than smooth raid in Accrington, he assumed for a pat on the back, but Laker's jibe had made him think differently – or was Laker just being a bastard, wanting to wind Henry up? If that was the case, it had worked.

The coffee tasted as bad as it looked and Henry winced, but managed to transform it into a smile for Erica.

Yes, Laker's remark made Henry wonder, but not for very long because the chief constable's door opened and FB beckoned Henry in.

There was a polished oak conference table in the centre of the chief's office and every seat round it, bar one, was taken. The table itself was an untidy mess of paper cups, mineral-water bottles, catering flasks of coffee and tea and lots of documents.

There was silence as Henry was ushered by FB to the vacant space at the far end of the table. He sat, uncomfortably aware of the looks, and nodded to the assembled dignitaries, several of whom he knew; others he didn't and had never seen before. He wasn't over the moon to see Dave Anger's cruel face amongst them.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' FB said with the same breath he exhaled as he settled his rump back into his chair, ‘may I introduce Chief Inspector Henry Christie …' Henry did note that FB hadn't used the term ‘detective' on the front of the introduction. ‘And just for his benefit, could we go round the table as a matter of courtesy? I'm Bob Fanshaw-Bayley, chief constable of Lancashire Constabulary,' he announced, then looked to his right.

‘Dave Anger, FMIT commander … I think you know me.' He gave Henry a slitty sideways look.

Next along said, ‘Percy Greek, detective superintendent, Lancashire Special Branch.' He gave Henry much the same sort of look as Anger had.

‘Mary Dearden, Security Services.'

‘John Threlfall, Security Services.'

Henry had spotted those two skulking around at the briefing and had rightly tagged them instantly as spooks. They were both young, mid-twenties, and looked wet behind the ears, as though they'd come straight out of Oxbridge and gone into MI5 or 6 to protect the country without having even seen the place.

Next along was Detective Superintendent Jerry Carruthers from the Metropolitan Anti-Terrorist Branch. Henry knew him by sight, having seen him on TV following the 7/7 atrocities in the capital, but had never met him. Carruthers had also been at the briefing.

‘I'm Angela Cranlow, deputy chief constable, Lancashire,' the next person said. She was fairly recently appointed and as Henry had previously noted – when FB had been pushing him out into the corridor following his unannounced gatecrash a few months earlier – she did not look anything like the stereotypical high ranking woman cop. In her mid-forties, with soft features, quiet voice, but with an air of cool authority and, Henry guessed, a trim figure under that unflattering uniform. Based on what he had heard, he had nothing but respect for her. She had done her time on the streets, been a detective at several levels, seen some tough times and was nobody's fool.

‘Martin Beckham, Home Office,' said the last person, a bespectacled, middle-aged man in a nice suit who looked like he might have walked to work over Westminster Bridge every morning at eight, then back home for seven in some leafy south London suburb. He nodded at Henry.

Without a doubt, Henry knew that these were probably some of the main players in the planning and execution of Operation Enid. They all looked weary, as though they'd been up all night.

‘Thanks everyone,' FB said. ‘As you know, I've asked Henry to come in for two reasons … firstly,' he cleared his throat, ‘for him to tell us firsthand what transpired a few hours earlier in Accrington; then for us to bring him up to speed, as a matter of courtesy, with some aspects of today's operation that were, by necessity, not dealt with at the briefing.' FB looked squarely at Henry. ‘That OK with you, Henry?'

‘Mm-yeah,' he stretched out the word hesitantly, ‘so long as it's all right for me to chuck in some personal observations, as well.'

FB shrugged. ‘Don't see why not.' One or two people shifted uncomfortably.

‘OK … I assume you know the task allocated to my team of officers, but in case you don't, as part of the wider operation, the results of which I don't know anything about yet, other than what I heard on Radio Lancashire, we were to enter and secure an empty terraced house in Accrington which was believed to have been used as some sort of meeting place for suspected terrorists … that's about the long and short of it … a “nothing” job, really, and that's what we did … except the intelligence was wrong and the place wasn't empty.' Henry's eyes caught those of Dearden and Threlfall, the MI5/6 bods. Their eyes, however, would not meet his.

‘We followed instructions and found ourselves faced with one young man armed with a pistol and another packed to the ribs with high explosive.' As he talked, he felt himself begin to tremble slightly, reliving the incident and realizing again how close he and others had come to being murdered by fanatics. ‘I need a drink, if that's OK?'

He had left his horrible coffee outside.

‘Help yourself,' FB said.

He found a clean polystyrene cup and poured a black coffee from one of the flasks, which he took neat. It was almost stone cold and tasted like River Wyre mud this time. When would he get a decent brew? he wondered, despairing. He put the cup on the table, noticing his fingers were trembling.

‘Henry?' It was FB again, almost looking concerned. Almost.

‘Well, big do's and little do's, the two young men were disarmed, shall we say, and arrested. We then discovered there was evidence of a third person in the house which we partially searched, but found no one. And the front door was booby trapped, but no other devices were found. A neighbour came and told us that someone'd dropped through his loft hatch and done a runner. Seems that the lofts in the row of terraced houses are separated by breeze block walls which, it transpires, had all had holes knocked into them big enough for someone to slide through and the third person from the house used this as a pre-prepared means of escape. As the neighbour had seen him, we decided to do a street search to see if we could spot him—'

‘By “we”, don't you mean “I”?' Dave Anger interjected.

Henry looked quizzically at him, shrugged and said, ‘Whatever … but we ended up chasing a stolen BMW which crashed, severely injuring the occupant.'

‘And who was the occupant? The missing terrorist?' Anger asked.

Henry licked his lips. ‘Unlikely … he was a local car thief, name of Spencer Crawford, a fourteen-year-old … he's in intensive care now, but not likely to prove,' he added, meaning there was a good chance the lad would live. He rubbed his tired eyes, which squelched, and shook his head.

‘So let me get this straight – you left the scene of a major incident, which you should have stayed on site to manage, and went gallivanting around town in some half-baked search which resulted in a Starsky and Hutch car chase and a near fatality which had nothing to do with the task you were given?' Dave Anger had spoken these words and they rose in fury as he reached the end of them. He threw down his pen and looked away from Henry in disgust.

Most people at the table had their eyes averted, FB and the deputy chief being exceptions.

Henry sat back and closed his eyes, the combination of tiredness and the bollocking making him feel faint. He fought a wicked battle inside himself to remain calm, then reopened his eyes.

‘The only half-baked thing here is Operation Enid,' he rejoined. ‘It seems to have been based on sketchy intelligence and poor planning.' FB opened his mouth to speak, but Henry, having none of this, said, ‘Let me finish, boss … I won't say anything I shouldn't … at least that's how it appears, particularly, as the radio reported that only two arrests were made from what, six raids? I presume those arrests were the ones I made …'

‘And what the hell made you tackle two heavily armed terrorists?' Anger demanded.

‘I saw that the wire connecting the switch to the detonator had come free and the lad with the gun had been distracted by it,' Henry explained. ‘But, what I'm saying is that officers were put in danger as a result of poor intelligence, which I won't even ask where it came from. More work should have been done, more surveillance to ensure that unarmed officers were actually going to raid an empty house, not a bloody bomb factory!'

‘You have no conception of the complexity and scope of the work that went in to this operation, Chief Inspector,' Threlfall, the Security Service guy piped up with a round, plummy, authoritative voice.

Henry held up a hand. ‘No, I think I do … do not patronize me.'

‘Henry!' FB shot warningly.

Henry shrugged a submissive gesture. ‘I'll back off, but only after I've said one more thing.' He thought he heard a collective groan from around the table, but he was on a roll. ‘Which is … because it all went awry' – here he refrained from saying “shit-shaped” – ‘it became a very fast-moving incident and yes, I made a judgement call in the way I dealt with it.'

‘So you're saying your judgement shouldn't be challenged?' Anger asked. ‘Your judgement which has been, at the very least, suspect in the past.'

‘I'm not saying it shouldn't be challenged—' Henry's mouth was still open when Anger cut him off.

‘In that case, I'll challenge it.'

‘OK, OK, OK, enough's enough,' FB barged in through the crap with a chopping motion of his hand. ‘End of, OK?' He shot Anger a cold stare. ‘Let's save it for the formal debrief.'

‘All I'm saying is that if he'd done his job right and stayed at the scene and directed it all from there instead of swanning off, we might have had a result on the third guy, but no, he had to take it all on himself and now one of the world's most wanted terrorists has escaped …' Anger's mouth snapped shut.

‘Enough!' FB said again.

‘Cop in-fighting,' Threlfall the spook chuckled.

‘Sooo professional,' his female colleague added. They both shook their heads pityingly.

FB glared at them, but the smirks stayed on their faces. ‘Let's pull all this back, please … Henry, despite the, er, questions, you did a brave thing earlier.'

‘Lucky, if you ask me,' Anger said under his breath. ‘And stupid.'

‘I'll have that, brave and lucky, they go together hand in glove,' Henry said, raising his chin. ‘Maybe stupid, too.'

‘Well, whatever … by all accounts you put your life on the line and two terror suspects have been apprehended. So well done,' FB said.