Nightmare City (36 page)

Money had been spent on modernising and refurbishing the
rundown array of buildings, which had proved an ideal location for
the unit, providing office space, secure parking and a reasonably
centralised location in the north-west.

Siobhan drove Henry from Blackpool in appallingly grim, wet
weather, which as they went further east towards the Pennines,
turned to sleet.

Despite the rain, several prostitutes were in evidence,
walking the streets in totally inappropriate gear - high heels,
short skirts, low-cut tops. Whatever the weather, business had to
be done.

In the early part of his service Henry had spent a few years
in Blackburn. He knew the area well and was surprised to see so
little change. The district was still bleak, poorly lit and
slightly seedy, just as it had been way back.

Blackburn was the only town in Lancashire that had a problem
with streetwalkers and their customers. Fortunately, the red-light
district was situated where there were few residents to
annoy.

Siobhan pulled off King Street down an unlit, badly-surfaced
side street and stopped at a reinforced gate with a barbed-wire
top. She opened her window and ran a swipe card through a machine,
tapped a three-digit number on a key pad and the gates swung open
with a clatter. She drove in. Security lights came on and flooded
the car park with bright white light.

On one side was a triple garage with a couple of offices
above. On another side was the main building where the majority of
offices were to be found. The other two sides of the car park were
high walls.

Siobhan led Henry to the main building and after tapping in
another number, this time of six digits, on a key pad, she pushed
the door open. Once inside, the warning beeps of a burglar alarm
pinged out. She went to the alarm control box in the hallway and
tapped in yet another sequence of numbers. The pinging
stopped.

‘
Goes straight to Blackburn police station, the alarm,’ she
explained. She ran the side of her hand down a pad of light
switches. The interior of the building came alive and four
strategically placed permanent outer lights came on too. ‘Welcome
to our humble little abode,’ she said, opening her hands in a
theatrical gesture. ‘Come on through.’

She took him up a set of stairs and along a landing. ‘Tony’s
office, that one,’ she said, passing a closed door. She turned next
left into a large, fairly open-plan office. It had been completely
updated since Henry had last seen it nearly twenty years ago. The
range of desks, PCs, filing cabinets and lumbar-friendly chairs was
impressive. Police offices were usually kitted out with tatty
furniture, broken chairs, telephone lines crossed dangerously all
over the place ... a Health and Safety nightmare. Not this place.
There was even a coffee machine and a pure water
dispenser.

‘
Nice,’ remarked Henry, pouting with admiration.

One thing which resembled police offices everywhere was the
phenomenal amount of paper stacked everywhere in baskets, and the
walls which were plastered with notes, intelligence bulletins,
photographs of crims and all sorts of other non-essential
rubbish.

‘
This is where our team hang out,’ Siobhan explained. ‘The
other team are downstairs.’

‘
You’ve got two teams?’ Henry asked, surprised. She nodded.
‘Why’s that? I thought it was all one big happy family.’

‘
Oh, we’re all happy enough, there’s just two teams,’ she
shrugged.

Henry accepted the fact with a nod. He wasn’t about to
question it. At least he was on the same team as Siobhan
Robson.

‘
This is where Geoff Driffield sat.’ She pointed to the only
desk devoid of paper. ‘I ... er, suppose it’ll be yours when you
get on the squad.’

Henry gave a short laugh at the assumption. The phrase ‘Dead
men’s Doc Martens’ sprang to mind. However, it looked a nice
desk.
Dead man’s desk.
And it hadn’t taken them long to clear it. What a damned
ruthless organisation the police is, he thought.

‘
That’s the radio cupboard.’ She waved in the direction of a
large steel cabinet in one corner of the office. ‘Here’s the key.
I’ll just go and get you a bulletproof vest. They’re kept in the
store over the garage. Book yourself a radio and a couple of
charged batteries out.’

She swished away. Henry heard her footsteps fading down the
corridor, then the stairs, the front door slamming. He walked to
the office window which overlooked the car park and watched her
cross to the garage.

He unlocked the radio cupboard, assembled a PR and grabbed a
couple - of extra batteries. He knew what it was like to be unable
to transmit because of dud batteries, and he had promised himself
he would never be caught out again.

As with all police equipment, there was a book to record Issue
and Return; he opened it and signed out the radio.

His eyes could not fail to notice the entries for the previous
Saturday and the fact that, according to the sheet, Geoff Driffield
had signed a radio out at 1700 hours. As had four other officers -
Tony Morton, DS Tattersall, DJ Gallagher and DC Robson. All at 1700
hrs - 5.00 p.m.

Henry considered this.

Siobhan had said Driffield was a loner who had gone out alone,
presumably armed with details of where and when a robbery was going
to take place, with the intention of arresting the culprits himself
and claiming the glory. Yet the sheet suggested a different story.
Driffield appeared to have been on duty at 5.00 p.m. that afternoon
- two and a half hours before the robbery - and he’d signed out a
PR with four others. They surely would have noticed him sneaking
off alone, wouldn’t they? Maybe asked him where he was going? Shown
a bit of interest?

Henry glanced out of the office window. The lights were on
over the garage. He could see her moving about.

He looked down at the radio book again and frowned. Something
very fucking strange was going on, Henry concluded. The entry in
the radio book posed an awful lot of nooky questions for the squad.
He ran a hand over his face, trying to rub some intelligence into
his brain. The activity did not seem to work. Again he was tired
beyond belief, definitely operating on one amp.

He closed the radio book and locked the cupboard.

On the table next to the door was an A3-sized book with the
words
Duty States
imprinted on the brown cover. This was where officers booked
on- and off-duty. Most officers in Lancashire now recorded their
duties on a computer, but some specialist departments, not on the
mainframe, were still obliged to use good old pen and paper. The
fact that NWOCS used written Duty States did not surprise Henry. He
opened the book and had a quick look at last Saturday’s entry. Same
story: Geoff Driffield and four others had booked on at 5.00
p.m.

With his tongue making a thoughtful clicking noise at the back
of his throat, he closed the book, feeling
uncomfortable.

A glance across the car park. Siobhan was still moving around
over the garage.

Henry stepped out of the office, twisted into the corridor and
tried Tony Morton’s office door. It opened.

There is a term in policing circles for what he did next. It
is called ‘Dusting’. ‘Dusting’ is where, out of normal office
hours, you sneak into a boss’s office and search the place from top
to bottom in the hope of finding anything of interest. ‘Dusting’ is
a pastime in which many officers on night duty indulge, flitting
through offices like burglars, hoping to uncover some dirt on
anyone except themselves.

Henry was restricted by being unable to switch the lights on;
however the car-park lighting cast sufficient for him to be able to
conduct a cursory search.

He found nothing.

Then he looked at the walls. One was covered in an array of
photographs and framed certificates, all relating to Tony Morton,
his career and his qualifications; it was sometimes known as an
ego-wall. Tony Morton had a big one.

Henry peered closely at the photographs, many of which were of
Morton’s classes in various police learning institutions throughout
the years. One fairly recent one was of a Senior Command Course at
Bramshill and Henry chuckled when he saw Karen Donaldson sat in the
middle of the front row, named as Course Tutor.

One photograph showed Morton shaking hands with the Princess
of Wales, another with Margaret Thatcher.

Two others particularly grabbed his attention. Actually
grabbed it by the bollocks.

The first one was a large framed photograph of the front page
of the
Lancashire Evening
Telegraph,
bearing the headline: POLICE
SQUAD FOUND NOT GUILTY. A story followed, which Henry vaguely
remembered, about an investigation into the activities of the NWOCS
six years ago, following allegations of corruption.

A team headed by an ACC (one from Lancashire called Roger
Willocks, now retired) had been tasked to investigate the squad,
some members of which were supposedly feeding information to
criminals about police operations. Nothing was ever proved and a
six-month enquiry produced zilch by way of evidence. A photo of the
ACC showed a very frustrated, pissed-off-looking man. Underneath
the photo was a quote from him about what a superbly run unit the
NWOCS was, and how it should be held up as a model for all such
similar units. There was some incongruity between the picture and
the words. They didn’t seem to gel.

By counterbalance, there was another picture next to the ACC
of a beaming Tony Morton; he was quoted as saying that the unit had
been open, frank and helpful to the enquiry and was delighted to be
completely exonerated of all allegations.

The next photograph, taken in 1993, Henry found both
interesting and disquieting. It showed Morton shaking hands with
the current Prime Minister and in the background lurked the bulky
figure of Sir Harry McNamara. The caption, underneath was about the
PM visiting the NWOCS which had been established for some seven
years and had produced some sterling results in terms of arrests
and convictions.

Sir Harry McNamara. Suspect in a murder case which Henry was
no longer investigating.

He heard the outer door slam, then the sound of Siobhan’s
footsteps running up the stairs. Shit!

Rider stretched out in the bath in his basement flat. The
water was too hot, and could have been doing terrible things to his
arteries. But it was bliss, laced as it was with Sainsbury’s bubble
bath. Things happen after a Sainsbury’s bath, he thought
languidly.

His body was a mass of bruises from the beating he had
received. They were on the turn colour-wise, being a few days old,
from livid purple to a manky sort of green which reminded him of
cow-pats.

He had brought some reading material in with him. A novel he’d
been intending to devour for some while and a couple of old evening
newspapers. He went for a newspaper first, wanting to catch up on
local news. The headline screamed about the shooting of a
policewoman and the subsequent arrest and charge of a man called
Dundaven, who was found to be in possession of a large number of
firearms. An accompanying photograph showed the latter displayed on
a table with the detective leading the hunt stood behind. Henry
Christie.

Rider sneered at the face, but his mind was really on
Dundaven, who he knew was one of Conroy’s men, very high up in the
scheme of things. He had been in Blackpool on the same day as
Conroy, when the latter had been trying to get a piece of Rider’s
club - presumably as a means of selling drugs. Or did Conroy in
fact want to stash
firearms
at the club?

There was a timid knock on the bathroom door. Rider knew it
was Isa. Ever since returning from his jaunt with Jacko to sort out
Munrow, she had been in a strange mood, like she wanted to say
something but didn’t know how. Rider hadn’t given her the
opportunity either because he suspected a potential ear
bashing.

‘
Yeah?’ he said gruffly.

‘
I’ve got a couple of warm towels,’ she called back from
behind the door.

‘
Just leave’ em outside, thanks.’

‘
Can I come in, John? I want to talk.’

‘
I’m in the bath, Isa.’

‘
I bloody well know you are,’ she replied sharply. ‘I’ve seen
you before, haven’t I?’

That was true. A long time ago on a different planet, when he
was a hardened criminal with a tough body and conscience to match.
‘Come on then,’ he relented and strategically moved a mass of
bubbles so as to hide his pride and joy.

She came in and sat down on the toilet seat, dropping the
towels on the floor. She was dressed in a bathrobe which was quite
short and showed a good length of leg, reminding Rider how nice
they were. Since Rider’s beating; she had moved out of the hotel
and into the spare room in his flat.

She looked at him, wondering how to start. ‘I hope you realise
you frightened the life out of Jacko,’ she began. ‘He’s not used to
that sort of thing, poor soul.’

‘
Nor am I,’ Rider said defensively.