A Time For Justice (31 page)

Four other vehicles formed the escort. All high-powered,
unmarked police cars, but fitted with blue flashing lights set into
their front grilles and blue lights on the rear window
ledges.

Two were at the front of the Sherpa, two at the
rear.

They literally forced their way through the traffic, while at
the same time preventing any other vehicle from passing by
ruthlessly blocking any overtaking manoeuvre - just on the
off-chance it might be a hostile act. It was textbook security
escort driving and these officers had it off to
perfection.

Two hundred metres behind the escort was a Mercedes saloon car
being driven by Lenny Dakin. He drove with one hand on the wheel,
the other holding a voice-activated tape-recorder. He spoke
continually into the machine, recording his thoughts and
observations all the while.

This was a recce run to see how it was all handled by the
cops.

It worried him. They were good. Very professional, taking it
all very seriously indeed. ‘Shit,’ he swore into the tape, not
for
the first time.

He realised he had a hell of a task ahead of him and that he
hadn’t yet formulated an action plan to carry it out. And there
would only be one chance after this morning.

They were now north of the Blackpool turn-off.

Suddenly the escort veered sharply out towards the fast lane,
from the middle lane which it had been hogging.

A second later Dakin saw the reason why: some fool in a
clapped-out motor had been day dreaming and forgotten to look in
his mirrors. Without warning he had pulled out into the middle lane
from the slow lane, causing all manner of chaos.

No accident happened.

The man in the car panicked when he realised the problem and
swerved back into the slow lane. Within a matter of seconds the
escort was past him.

A few moments later Dakin passed him too.

Dakin stayed with the escort all the way. It wasn’t difficult
to be inconspicuous as there was a fairly substantial build-up of
traffic behind the police cars and being part of it drew no
attention to him. They came off at Junction 33, south of
Lancaster.

From here they headed north up the A6, through the small town
of Galgate, past the university and into Lancaster itself.
Obviously warned by radio, the cops in Lancaster had ensured that
all traffic was running in favour of the escort. They sailed
through town and up to the castle where the prison doors were
opened and the prison bus drove in.

Hinksman had been delivered with only the whisper of a hitch
And Lenny Dakin had decided how he was going to get him
out.

Henry Christie swore out loud as he looked in his rearview
mirror and realised what he’d done. Lost in his thoughts, he’d
allowed his Metro to drift unexpectedly across to the middle lane;
the ear-shattering sound of sirens confirmed he’d landed slap-bang
in front of a police escort which was conveying a prisoner and
didn’t intend to take any more.

He yanked his steering wheel down to the left and waved an
embarrassed apology as the escort sped past him. The cop in the
front passenger seat of the Sherpa indicated to Henry that he
thought he was a dickhead. Henry didn’t really disagree.

He looked into the rear of the Sherpa, but the smoked side
windows prevented him from seeing anything other than vague,
indistinct shadows inside. But he knew it was Hinksman. He was glad
to see they weren’t taking any chances with the bastard.

When settled back into the slow lane, he tried to concentrate
more so as not to be a danger to other road-users.

He failed to spot Lenny Dakin’s Merc sigh past him.

Henry’s mind gradually returned to his previous thoughts, but
this time he managed to keep his car on track.

He tried to pinpoint where it had all begun to go wrong, but
couldn’t exactly put his finger on it. It was all too recent for
him to dissect it analytically, though he often tried.

There was one thing for certain - he had made a complete
fuck-up of his personal life and career, and they were both
presently in one tangled, horrible mess that even Ariadne herself
couldn’t have unravelled.

On that first night of the murder enquiry he’d gone to
Natalie’s and ended up staying over. When her alarm had gone off at
seven, he’d dashed home for a quick wash and a change of clothes,
and given an open-mouthed Kate some lame excuse which she obviously
didn’t believe.

He had lied to her. Maybe that was the real start of it all.
With a lie to someone he’d never lied to before.

From that point his home-life began to crack.

Lie followed lie, deceit followed deception, until his head
was spinning and his emotions were in such a turmoil he might as
well have had his head in a spin-drier.

Yet lying became easy. The words tripped glibly off his
tongue, and it all seemed so straightforward. In the space of
several days he was’ convinced he’d fallen in love with a young
woman he hardly knew, other than carnally. And he’d fallen out of
love with his wife whom he’d known since school and always regarded
as his friend, confidante and lover.

The children became a dead weight around his shoulders. He had
no time for them at all and they began to suffer too. They avoided
him if at all possible.

He eventually began to hate going home.

Everything that was so familiar to him became
despised.

He was in love with Natalie. A new woman in his life. A new
impetus. And she loved him, her hero, wanted him, needed him,
wanted to be his wife.

The sex was brilliant, like no other he’d ever experienced. He
was swimming in a sea of sensuality with Natalie, caught up in a
tide, drowning. They couldn’t get enough of each other. Every time
they looked at each other they wanted to fuck. It overpowered him.
Drove him.

He began to use the murder enquiry as an excuse for not going
home. He was genuinely working long hours, but could have got home
every night if he wished. He didn’t wish. Often he would book into
a motel in the east of the county and Natalie would come across and
stay the night with him.

It all felt so right. At least he made himself believe it
did.

He didn’t give Kate and the kids a second thought. They simply
became unimportant to him as he began to lose his sense of values
and judgement.

His judgement went on the back-burner at work, too.

Even though he had been ordered not to hand out overtime, he
did so. By the end of the first month each man had worked in excess
of eighty hours, totalling over eight hundred hours which had to be
paid from somewhere.

And yet the investigation seemed to get nowhere.

He was losing all control of it; couldn’t keep his mind on it.
He regularly had to confront a sea of blank faces as detectives
under his direction floundered and turned to him for inspiration -
inspiration which never came.

The pressure grew on him from all sides.

Family - work; wife - daughters; Detective Constables –
Detective Chief Superintendent; wife - lover.

All breathing down his sweaty neck.

He did not know which way to wriggle for the best.

Yet he thought he had a bolt-hole of sanity to escape to, or
so he believed.

He eventually left home after a particularly fraught period
with Kate when, at the end of it, he confessed everything. She took
it all with great dignity and poise. She cried, of course. She was
devastated. Her life had suddenly crumbled around her, although if
she were ruthlessly honest with herself, she had seen it coming but
had avoided it.

She forgave him immediately. She knew that you didn’t just
fall out of love with someone, but he couldn’t see that. She held
him in her arms that night and rocked him gently as he cried too.
But he found he could not stay. His betrayal had been too great and
the cracks it had caused too wide to paper over. And he loved
Natalie.

‘
We can’t ever go back to what it was,’ he remembered telling
Kate.

‘
But we can go forwards,’ she insisted.

He was having none of that. His foolish stubborn streak could
not be shaken.

He moved in with Natalie.

Bliss. Initially.

Then the nightmares started again as the stress of his
marriage bust-up and the disintegration of the murder investigation
crept clammily on to and all over him.

He woke up with a start, sweat pouring down him.

He’d seen the faces again. Those children clawing at the
windows. Begging him for help. Fish caught in a bowl. Yet he
couldn’t help them. He had been powerless and they had
died.

There was something new, too.

The head of that drugs dealer exploding all over his chest.
Brain and snot and blood. The way his head had been distorted
before finally bursting open. Frame by frame, in slow
motion.

Then Ralphie’s execution by the wall. Then that breathless
chase down Blackpool Front, his clothing splattered with
blood.

The woman taking the bullet meant for him.

Pointing that shaking gun at Hinksman - then having to fire
it.

In his dream he could see his forefinger curled around the
trigger, pulling it. He could see the hammer going backwards, the
cylinder slowly revolving and the hammer falling and
bang!
He had shot
someone.

He woke with the sound of the gun going off reverberating
around his cranium like thunder.

At first Natalie was wonderful and understanding. She couldn’t
do enough for him. Comforted him. Held him. They made ferocious
love after that first nightmare and he slept well afterwards,
drained of all his strength. It was a black sleep.

After a dozen nightmares the sheen began to wear off for
Natalie. She wasn’t so wonderful after all. She grew tired and
irritable and told Henry to pull himself together. She began to
wonder exactly what she’d taken on here, as though she’d been
deceived. A man possessed by demons? He was supposed to be tough.
He was a hero, wasn’t he? Not a wimp.

The love-making after the nightmares fizzled out. Instead she
turned over and yanked the sheet over her head. He would lie there
awake, dreadfully tired, but terrified of sleep.

Then he would get up and tiptoe to the tiny lounge of her flat
where he would slide into the warmth of a bottle of whisky - and
remain there.

In the end Natalie asked him to leave. She didn’t understand,
as it turned out, didn’t want to understand. She had her life to
live and didn’t want the burden of a man verging on middle-age, who
actually hated going to nightclubs if the truth were known, and who
was probably having a nervous breakdown.

He moved into the flat over the vet’s surgery. It was small,
cheap, adequate, warm, slightly smelly, furnished.

Here he could indulge himself without infringing on other
people’s needs or emotions. Here he began a life clouded by alcohol
and cheap sex whilst considering the question - Am I having, or
have I had, a nervous breakdown?

Never having had one before, he couldn’t be sure.

When FB called him to his office at Force Headquarters and
dismissed him from the murder enquiry, and also told him he was
being transferred from RCS back to normal CID duties, Henry broke
down.

He cried like a baby in front of FB.

The astounded Detective Chief Superintendent immediately
called the Force Welfare Department who dispatched a counsellor to
FB’s office. Within minutes she confirmed Henry’s worst
suspicions.

‘
You mean I
have
had a shed collapse?’ he blurted. ‘That’s a relief. I thought
I was going barmy.’

Henry was allowed to park outside the Crown Court after his
car had been searched for bombs.

After several further searches of his person, he entered the
building and settled himself down in the Shire Hall to wait for the
trial to begin.

He truly believed he had got over the worst of it. The
nightmares were still there occasionally, but they were less of a
problem now and much more vague, less real.

All he needed to do was get his drinking under control and
then his sexual excess - not necessarily in that order - and maybe,
just maybe, he could regain control of his life and get back with
his wife and girls, whom he missed desperately.

He knew that the trial would be the first test of his mental
state.

Here, he would find out if all those ghosts and devils he
believed were being laid to rest would get resurrected to haunt him
when he stood up to give evidence and relive those experiences once
again.

Chapter Eighteen

Agent Eamon Ritter had made a conscious, considered
decision.

He was going to kill Sue Mather.

His life had become intolerable since she had seen him down at
Bayside. He kept bumping into her, or so it seemed to him, both in
the FBI building and out of it. Every time he turned a corner or
came out of a door, she was there. Fat and unmistakable.