Backlash (34 page)

Henry was hitting hard now. Punching, kicking, kneeing, gouging. The rules of restraint deserted him because he was fighting for his life – and the life of an idiot he was duty bound to try and save.

The fat man was running out of steam. Huffing, puffing. The fight was deserting him. His flab, which had been a weapon in its own right in the first few moments of a confrontation, was now draining him of energy and becoming a useless burden. Henry found himself standing over the man, breathing heavily, knowing he had won.

‘You arsehole, have you had enough?'

Blood dribbled out of the fat man's nose and bubbled with his breath.

‘Yeah, yeah . . . no need for that.'

‘There – is – a – bomb in there,' Henry panted. ‘How the hell did you get in?'

‘Whaddya mean? I was havin' a shit.'

So the toilets hadn't been properly searched. ‘Right, we need to get out now, do you understand me? This whole place has been evacuated. Didn't you think something odd was going on?'

‘Yeah, but . . .' he said inadequately.

‘Up, now. Let's get going.'

Henry offered his hand. The man reached up and, rather like the Michelangelo painting on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, their fingers never actually came into contact because the bomb exploded.

It was as though someone had opened a furnace door and at the same time whacked Henry on the shoulder blades with a shovel. He was lifted off his feet by the blast and thrown down into the fat drunk's arms. For the second time in a matter of seconds, every drop of oxygen was forced out of his lungs and out of his bloodstream.

Fortunately for Henry and the fat man they were not in the direct line of the blast and it was this that saved them. Before the blast reached them, it had to do a right turn into the store room, thereby losing some of its hurricane-like force. It was fortunate their conflict had rumbled into the rubbish room. Had they been standing at the foot of the stairwell, they would have been hit by a flying wheelbarrow which had been blown right across the bar, through the doors and halfway back up the stairs, accompanied by pieces of chairs and tables, reduced to matchsticks by the explosion and even more insidiously, the thousands of panel pins which the bomb maker had packed into the device.

The sound of the explosion had been stunning. The loudest bang Henry had ever heard. His brain rang, his ears buzzed and echoed.

He opened his eyes slowly. Swirling smoke filled the room. Several fires had started in the rubbish.

Henry was on top of the fat man, lying between his open legs, holding him in an embrace as though they had just made love. He lifted his head and looked down at the face of the man underneath, which was blank with horror.

‘Well, no thanks to you, we're still alive,' Henry said. He clambered off him, stood up, testing each limb, finding they all worked. He poked his head around the door, wafting the dense smoke away, trying to see into the bar. The smoke was too intense. Flames licked out of it, telling Henry that the next threat was being burned to death. ‘Now can we get out of here without fighting?'

‘Ugh, right.' The man was totally dazed and confused. His drunken state did not assist in his understanding of the situation. Gallantly Henry heaved him to his feet. Not an easy task. ‘What happened?' the man asked.

‘You've just survived a bomb blast,' Henry informed him. ‘Something you'll be able to tell your kids.'

‘I doubt that, unless they start letting gay couples adopt.'

‘At least you'll have something to talk about at dinner parties, then.'

‘Eh? So, what's happened?' he asked, losing the thread again.

‘I'll tell you later, now let's just get out of here.'

The shock hit him about twenty minutes later, sending him into a convulsive, retching fit. It took a large coffee laced with brandy before he returned to anything like normal.

He relinquished control of the scene to a chief inspector on conference duty because the shakes were approaching fast. He thought it would have been unwise to be a blithering wreck while running the next stage of the response to the bomb. Dermot Byrne had driven him back to the station, deposited him in the inspectors' office and somehow tracked down the coffee addition from somewhere.

When Henry picked up the mug, his hand was trembling so much that there was a mini-storm on the surface of the beverage. He had to put the mug back down on his desk, lower his head to it and take the first sip out of it from the desk top.

Deep breathing and some mental-relaxation techniques he had acquired for his stress, helped calm him down. This tranquil state did not last long. His stress levels rose, pulse quickened, when the office door opened without a knock and FB came in, all of a bluster.

‘Hero or fuckin' arsehole, can't quite work out which,' he said.

By which time Henry had gone well past the caring and sharing stage.

‘I'm the hero, you're the arsehole – I find that quite easy to work out,' Henry said.

That stopped FB dead, then a smile flickered onto his lips and grew into a good-natured laugh. ‘Good one, Henry . . . I like it.' Then his face became deadpan. ‘Hey, you just called an ACC an arsehole.'

Henry wasn't for relenting. ‘If the cap fits.'

‘Twat,' FB uttered, but, again, without malice. ‘Right. Actually, well done, Henry. I mean the fat guy should not have been left in there in the first place, obviously, but even so, well done. A bit drastic, a bit foolhardy – but well done.'

Praise indeed from FB.

‘Thanks.'

‘Yeah, well, don't get too cocky. You've still got a hundred Asian youths about to land in town intent on causing problems – so don't even think about going off sick again.'

‘What about heading them off at the pass – turning them back onto the motorway at Marton Circle.'

‘Under what power, may I ask?'

Henry had to think. ‘Breach of the Peace. To prevent a breach of the peace – like we did in the miners' strike.'

FB thought for a moment. ‘Go for it. You'd better get moving, then come and see me later. We need to discuss the night ahead again.'

‘Anything new on Jane Roscoe and Mark Evans?'

‘No.'

Henry slurped his coffee and with mug in hand headed to the communications room for an update on the whereabouts of the Asian youths, wondering if his proposed tactics were actually lawful. Under the circumstances it was arguable, but then again, when had that ever stopped the police from doing something which might just prevent any aggro. Once the Asians got onto Shoreside, there would be real problems.

His head was spinning by the time he got to communications. He knew he needed time out from all this, but was unlikely to get it.

At least there was one thing settled for him when he got there: the Asians were almost in town and he was too late to get enough staff together to turn them round and send them home.

The board displaying the number of officers actually on duty was not much help. Almost everyone was deployed at the scene of the bomb blast, dealing with keeping the scene secure, ensuring emergency vehicles could get to and from it, and also dealing with the growing traffic chaos in town.

Which gave Henry an idea.

‘Where is the convoy now?' he asked a radio operator.

‘On the M55 at Wesham, heading towards Blackpool. They'll be coming off at Marton in less than 5 minutes.'

‘How many patrols are with them?'

‘Two motorway, two traffic and a couple of motorcyclists.'

Henry picked up the radio set and called up one of the patrols. He asked, ‘Do you think you could actually keep the convoy on the motorway, stop them coming off at Marton and get them onto Yeadon Way – without putting anyone in danger?'

‘We can try and block the exit.'

‘Do it – try and keep them coming into town. Shepherd them down Yeadon Way onto Spine Road and onto the main town centre car park at the end.'

‘Roger – we'll try,' the patrol said.

Henry smiled at the radio operator, who looked puzzled. ‘You want them to come into town?' she asked.

‘No, I don't. I'd like them to go home, but I don't want them to get onto Shoreside, so if they can get snarled up in the town-centre traffic, maybe that will split them up – divide and conquer.'

‘Oh. Good idea.'

Now, he thought, there's something else I have to do. It came to him. ‘If you need me, I'll be in the custody office.'

The custody sergeant was looking tattered and harassed as he booked two prisoners in who were being particularly obnoxious. He acknowledged Henry with a curt nod. At least, Henry thought it was an acknowledgement, it could have been a nervous tick, often found in stressed-out custody officers.

As the man was busy, Henry did a quick review of what was happening. Only three prisoners in, none requiring his attention. He took out the binder containing completed custody records to see what had happened to Kit Nevison at court earlier that day. The record was marked off as, ‘Released on bail with reporting conditions.'

Henry could not help but chuckle at the outrageousness of it all. Sometimes magistrates seemed to live in a different world to normal people. There was no profit in getting sore about it, it was just a fact of life. A dangerous man was back on the streets.

He replaced the records as the custody sergeant finished off the booking-in process and sent the two prisoners to the comfort of their en-suite accommodation.

‘Sorry I couldn't make it earlier, Bob,' Henry apologised. ‘Got a bit tied up with one or two things.'

‘Believe so.'

‘You wanted to talk about the suicide attempt last night?'

The sergeant looked deadly serious and worried. ‘Have you got a few minutes? I want to show you something.'

Henry followed him to the female cell wing. It was all quiet, none of the cells were in use.

‘There's something troubling you, I can tell.'

‘You're not kidding.'

The cell in which Geri Peters had been incarcerated was locked, unlike the others where the doors were wide open, ready for the next incumbent. The sergeant opened the cell door and at the same time took something out of his pocket which he held up, dangling. It was a bootlace.

‘This is the same length and thickness as the one she tried to hang herself with. The original is bagged up.'

‘OK.' Henry was intrigued.

The sergeant took a breath. ‘It's been on my mind ever since she tried to top herself, so much so I couldn't sleep. I was back in here at ten o'clock this morning. The first thing is that I'm a hundred per cent certain the prisoner was thoroughly searched. You were there, boss. Two WPCs searched her, found some drugs and a hidden knife. She was strip searched and given a zoot suit, so how she got the bootlace worries me.'

‘Maybe it was in the cell already.'

‘When I come on duty, I make a point of searching all the cells in the complex. I did that last night and this cell did not have a bootlace left in it. I had a prisoner kill himself on me once using a razor that'd been left lying about. I'm very touchy about things like that.'

‘So you searched this cell when you came on duty last night?'

‘I did. But OK,' he said slowly, ‘it is possible I could have missed the lace. I admit it,' he said honestly, ‘but I don't think I did. I am as certain as I can be that she was put into a clean cell, which had been searched properly. Of course, she could have had it stuffed up her vagina or anus – but the lace was dry and it didn't smell, so I don't think she did.'

Henry waited uncomfortably. The sergeant was obviously a professional who cared deeply about the job he did. Henry was impressed.

‘So that's one part. The next part is this.' He dangled the bootlace. ‘I know full well that it's possible to loop ligatures around the door hatch plates and it causes us major problems. Hatches come loose with use, the metal warps and prisoners who are intent on taking their own lives will do it. Having said that –' He went to the door and closed the cell hatch. From inside the door he pushed the hatch and was able to feed the bootlace through the gap between the bottom of the hatch and the door where the metal had twisted slightly. ‘I can do this, but I can't manage to loop the lace around the hatch handle like the girl did.' To prove his point, he made a loop in the lace and tried to manoeuvre it around the handle without success. ‘I spent an hour trying to do it this morning. I tried it on other cell doors and I could do it on some of them, so it's not as though it's impossible. But I cannot do it on this cell door,' he said firmly.

‘Let's have a go.' Henry took the lace off the sergeant. He held both ends of it and fed the loop through the gap, letting it hang down. He tried to swing it up over the catch. Missed. Tried again. No joy. After five minutes he gave up.

The sergeant stood and watched patiently. Henry handed the lace back to him. A horrible feeling was in the pit of his stomach.

‘You believe there is no way she could have got into the cell with that bootlace in her possession, unless it was maybe inside her, and you don't think that was the case?'

‘No.'

‘And even if she had somehow smuggled it in, she could not have used it to hang herself in the way she did?'

‘Correct.'

‘What are you saying?'

The sergeant inhaled a deep breath and shook his head despondently. ‘I don't know, I just don't know.' He looked to Henry for assistance.

Henry stalked up and down the corridor, kicking an imaginary stone, reviewing what had just been revealed. He stopped walking abruptly.

‘She must have had help to hang herself, or she must have been hung by someone else. Either way, another person is involved,' Henry stated. Then what had been a vague memory came back into his mind: the comment the pathologist had made about a bump on the dead girl's head sometime prior to her death. Henry was certain she did not go into the cell with any injuries, even after the tussle he'd had with her when he made the arrest. Perhaps this explained the bump – being overpowered in a cell, maybe knocked senseless while the bootlace was wrapped round her throat then attached to the door. Henry felt slightly queasy. He said nothing to the custody officer.