Judgement Call (13 page)

The click of the shower door opening spun him around.

Kate stepped in, naked. The two of them instantly grabbed each other, kissing passionately under the water jets, their bodies tight up against each other, Henry hard against her belly, the sensation of her skin and small, soft breasts crushed against his chest driving him crazy.

He broke from the embrace. ‘Is this wise?' he asked.

‘Probably not,' she gasped throatily, taking him in her hands. ‘Not at all.'

‘Bad couple of days,' Henry said.

They were having a late lunch at the Duke of Wellington pub on Grane Road. After the shower and a bout of the most wonderful love-making he had ever experienced in his short life, he had dashed back to his rented house in the re-parked Marina for a change of clothing, relieved to find that Jo had disappeared without a trace and nor was there any sign of the naked landlady (or did I dream that, he wondered). Then he flew back to pick up Kate and head out for lunch, although to find somewhere serving food beyond 2pm was quite hard. Much to the annoyance of staff of the Wellington, Henry and Kate turned up at 1.55pm.

‘One rapist allowed to go free, having my car peppered by a shotgun and then losing a prisoner on the M6. I was just pissed off and cross with myself, had a pint, then another, then lost all track of time and completely forgot to call you … and I'm sorry. It all went to rats.'

‘We could've got drunk together if you had. That would've been good.'

‘Mm, we haven't really done that yet, have we?'

‘There's lots of things we haven't done yet.' She gave him a meaningful look.

‘Big tick in the box today, though,' he smirked.

‘I never knew a shower could be so invigorating.'

He smiled at the memory and placed a chunk of steak and ale pie into his mouth. The meat was hot and succulent, having the desired effect of totally re-energizing him. He chewed it thoughtfully, pondering how best to broach the next subject. There was no way he would reveal his encounters with Jo, because he wasn't nuts enough to believe that Kate would be understanding on that score. That was something to keep under wraps, or bury six feet under. But he knew he did have some things to tell Kate.

He placed down his cutlery and looked at her.

‘I came to a very big realization,' he explained. ‘About the way I feel about you.' His spoke hesitantly, not least because he was unused to delving into his heart and unearthing tender words and phrases. Up to meeting Kate he would not have described any of his encounters with ladies as anything but lust- and sex-driven, often alcohol-fuelled binges, rarely accompanied by anything approaching love.

Kate, without guile or manipulation, was changing all that.

‘Really?' She arched her eyebrows. ‘And what would that be?'

Henry shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I love you, I mean really love you.'

‘Oh.'

‘That it? Oh?' Henry saw her chest rise and fall slowly, her sparkling eyes playing over his face. ‘I know I'm a dimwit and stupid, but I'm intelligent enough to know that I'm crazy in love with you. You don't have to come back to me immediately on it. I know it's a big statement to take in, so you can have a think about it and if you don't feel the same, then that's OK … clearly I'll be gutted and all that, but there's no pressure, honest …'

She placed her forefinger over his lips. ‘You're babbling,' she said.

‘I'm babbling,' he agreed.

They held each other's gaze for a long moment and Kate said, ‘I love you too, Henry Christie.'

He exhaled long and hard and wiped the sweat of terror from his brow. ‘Thank the lord for that.'

‘So – bad couple of days?' Kate said.

They were back at her parents' house and, for the first time, had made love in Kate's soft and deep three-quarter-width bed, and despite her reassurances that they wouldn't be back until after six, it had been a slightly nerve-wracking experience and Henry always had one ear listening out just in case the front door went and he was forced to do a runner via the bedroom window.

Kate snuggled up under his arm, a fingertip tracing across his chest, circling his nipples.

‘Yeah, pretty crappy,' he said. ‘Going to end up carpeted.'

‘They don't know how lucky they are to have you.'

‘You're right, they don't. I could do with getting away from here – somehow.'

‘Blackburn?'

‘Further afield.'

‘Darwen?' she giggled.

‘Back to the coast.' He glanced slyly at her.

‘Blackpool?'

‘Yeah … might be a good idea from a career point of view. I've cooked my goose in this neck of the woods, I think. Blackpool looks a great place to work and my kith and kin are out there.'

Kate became silent, a silence that Henry could physically feel.

‘Do you mean that?' she asked worriedly.

‘Don't know … just musing, I suppose.'

‘What about me?'

‘Well, I mean, I'd obviously take you.'

Kate propped herself up on one elbow. ‘And how would that happen?'

Henry pouted and shrugged. ‘As a leg iron?' he suggested.

‘Eh?'

‘Look … tell you what … why don't we get married?'

Kate sighed with irritation. ‘Henry, if that was a proposal it was pretty dumb.' Her voice was heavy with disappointment. ‘It was more like a business arrangement or something.' She flopped onto the bed, exasperated.

And Henry got the message. He threw the sheet off, stood by the bed, took Kate by the hand, urging her to stand up until both of them stood facing each other, completely naked.

‘OK,' he said … and then saw the look of utter dread. He had intended to go down on one knee and propose, but even he realized that doing it naked and dangly was probably not the most romantic of scenarios. ‘Tell you what.' He drew her close to him. ‘Let me put that proposal on hold for a while until, say, circumstances are more appropriate. Let's just make love again instead.'

‘All right,' she agreed and kissed his chest, then began to lower herself, kissing his stomach until she was the one kneeling in front of him.

An hour later, Henry dressed himself whilst sitting on the edge of the bed. It was almost five in the afternoon, too close to the expected arrival time of mummy and daddy to be dawdling naked around the house.

Kate was also dressing.

‘So what are you going to do?'

‘About what, sweetie?' he responded.

‘Work. The here and now of it.'

He pulled a sock on, slowly and thoughtfully, whilst she wrestled with a pair of tights. ‘Make amends,' he said; then decisively. ‘Catch the little bastard I allowed to escape, catch those bloody armed robbers and, if I can, nail a rapist too.' He put his other sock on.

A
lthough Henry's next tour of duty did not begin until 8am the following day, he went in early, rolling into the nick just after 7.15. He wanted to sort out his return from sickness form first, which he did. He then checked the duty states, a huge sheet of paper compiled by hand by an inspector detailing every officer and their shifts in the valley for that day and the week ahead. He saw Jo was on an early shift which started at six, and she was presently out on patrol. Henry wanted to speak to her later and try to extricate himself as delicately as possible from any entanglement with her. It wasn't something he was relishing, but it had to be tackled.

After leafing through his in-tray, in which two Crown Court committal files had been returned by the prosecutions department for some follow-up work, he booked out a PR and then went up to the first floor to do some digging.

Even though the armed robberies that had been committed by the Manchester gang in Rossendale were very serious crimes – particularly for an area perceived to be such a sleepy backwater (which of course was one of the reasons it had been targeted by the gang) – and all were increasing incrementally in violence, a dedicated incident room and police operation had not yet been set up to investigate. In the main it was just local detectives and uniforms with some help from the Regional Crime Squad, but with no one working full time on the case. That said, Henry suspected that the RCS might be doing more than they admitted to, because arresting the robbers would be a great scalp for them.

Even so, a few detectives from the first-floor CID office had overspilled into the small lecture room and bagged one corner of it so they could spread out a bit, and this is where Henry went. He wanted to sift through whatever they had, which was not much really, A flip chart, a few sheets of paper stuck onto the wall and not a lot else – something Henry found almost incredible. The valley had been subjected to a series of violent attacks and no one deemed it particularly important to devote a team of officers, full time, to sort it. Henry knew that the detectives who were looking into the robberies also had to balance that with the rest of their tasks.

Not good enough, he thought. Things would change when some poor bloody shopkeeper got his head blasted off. Even though shots had been fired at the latest job, and Henry's police car blasted with shotgun pellets, even this didn't seem to galvanize the CID into action.

Standing in the commandeered corner of the lecture room surveying the pitiful amount of work on display, Henry muttered, ‘Need a rocket up their backsides,' to no one in particular.

‘Who does?'

Henry turned and thought, ‘For a tubby guy, he moves like a ninja.'

FB was standing there, having entered the room via the door at the opposite end. He had done so silently, tiptoeing in to keep his heel protectors from clicking.

‘I thought you were off sick?' FB demanded.

‘I was, now I'm back.'

‘Was the bollocking too much for you?' FB asked cynically. ‘Did I make you cry – blub, blub?'

‘No,' Henry sneered. ‘I got pissed and had a hangover so I decided to take the day off.' This was not far from the truth, although the sick note said upset stomach.

‘Going off sick is for wussies,' FB said, ‘hangover or otherwise. Anyway, what are you doing in here?'

‘Just familiarizing myself with the background to these robberies.' Henry wafted a hand at the flip charts.

‘And have you learned anything you don't already know?'

Henry cast a cynical glance at the corner of the room. ‘Hardly,' he admitted. ‘How come there isn't a full squad on this?'

‘There will be after the most recent job and your shotgun incident.'

Henry brightened up slightly.

‘I've got a team of eight jacks on it for two weeks, starting today – taking over this room.'

‘Can I …?' Henry began to venture.

‘No,' FB said firmly, anticipating the question.

‘Detectives only?'

‘Something like that …'

‘But they tried to shoot me!'

FB guffawed. ‘And that gives you a right to come on the squad? Don't think so … and, anyway, how would it look to other uniform PCs if you were drafted in? Someone who lets prisoners go? How would that reflect on me? Besides which, you're not the only PC who wants to get on CID. There are more deserving guys than you and if I wanted a uniform on the squad, which I don't, I'd be picking one of them first.'

Henry held up his hands in surrender. ‘Point taken. Sir.'

He withdrew from the room and stomped back downstairs, picked up his car keys and jumped into the Ford Escort that had been brought over from the car pool as a temporary replacement for the wounded Cavalier. He set out on patrol alone, his partner in the pursuit of crime that day not coming on duty until ten, so they worked staggered shifts to provide more cover.

Turning out of the station yard, he suddenly slammed on his brakes and reversed back into the space, then went back into the nick and up to the Collator's Office, which was open. The Collator himself, a very long-in-the-tooth detective constable called Charlie Martin, was sitting drinking his first coffee of the day and lighting up probably his fourth cigarette.

The Collator was basically a collector, analyser and disseminator of intelligence about criminals and their activities. The information came from a number of sources, mostly from bobbies on the beat who were encouraged to fill in information slips about anything and everyone they saw or spoke to during their tour of duty. Much of it was dross and simply went on file, some of it was gold – and often snaffled by the CID – and some of it ended up on the Collator's bulletin, a local intelligence newsletter, published a couple of times a week. It wasn't a very scientific process.

DC Charlie Martin, Henry knew, was a great source of information. He had a prodigious memory, filled with twenty-five years of detective work, and he knew a lot about criminals, dates, places, associations, family trees, sometimes family secrets. Charlie had been the Collator in Rossendale for five years and Henry thought he was brilliant at it. Round peg, round hole and all that.

His minus point was that he smoked pungent-smelling, self-rolled cigarettes, and his office always reeked of tobacco smoke, but it was something Henry was prepared to tolerate. Charlie quite liked Henry and regularly drip-fed him information about local villains. In turn, Henry regularly submitted intelligence slips to him.

He glanced up as Henry came into the office just as his thin, weed-like cigarette caught light with a flame that died down to a smoulder. He inhaled a lungful that almost finished the cigarette in one, then exhaled with a long breath of pleasure, the smoke spiralling up towards the suspended ceiling where it hung like a storm cloud.

‘Henry my boy, how the hell are you? Still allowing prisoners to roam free?' he cackled, then coughed, his chest reverberating worryingly. Noting Henry's facial response, Charlie said, ‘Better get used to the jibes, Henry, at least until somebody else does something more stupid, which they will. Only then can you guarantee you'll be yesterday's news.'