Backlash (19 page)

The paramedics arrived just as they turned the girl on her side into the recovery position.

So sucked in by the emotional drama of it all was he that Henry found himself accompanying the girl as she was stretchered away through the narrow twisting cell corridors to the ambulance waiting in the police garage. He held her hand all the way, squeezing, patting, leaning over her and clucking soft, reassuring words of comfort.

Her eyes rolled like a pair of doll's eyes, fluttered open showing bloodshot whites. They never seemed to focus on him or anything until they reached the ambulance. Then she became more lucid and tried to sit up. Henry gently pushed her back down. ‘It's OK . . . don't move . . . you'll be fine.'

Underneath the transparent oxygen mask, her swollen, cracked lips moved, trying to say something. Henry could not hear the words. He bent over her.

‘Shouldn't,' she said, her voice just a whisper.

‘What?' He did not understand and shook his head. Her lips moved again. He put his ear an inch above the mask.

‘Afraid . . . afraid . . .' she said. Tears streamed out of the corner of her eyes. ‘One of yours.' The effort of speaking drained her, but at least Henry thought he had made some sense of her words, though not all of them. He recalled the fear she had expressed when he had talked to her in the cell: the fear of retribution – that if she said what she knew, something terrible would happen. Was this enough for her to try and take her own life? To do such a thing, she must have been terrified . . . so what did she know?

He had no further time to think about it as the paramedics slid her into the ambulance. One went to the front of the vehicle to drive, the other stepped in beside her. ‘You sendin' anyone up with her?' he asked Henry.

‘Christ – yes.' He clicked his fingers, thinking fast. She needed protection and, technically, as she was still in police custody, someone had to stay with her.

Everyone had slithered back into the station, all onlookers gone now that the drama had ended, except for the constable who had been in the report-writing room earlier. Henry turned to him decisively before he too could skulk away. ‘John, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hop in and go with this lass to the Blackpool Victoria Hospital and look after her while I decide what needs doing, OK?'

PC Taylor looked decidedly unenthusiastic. His shoulders sagged at the prospect of a nannying job. ‘I've just been told to walk the town centre,' he bleated.

‘And now I'm telling you to get in the ambulance, OK?' Henry cocked a slightly annoyed thumb at the open door. ‘Now,' he said firmly.

The officer removed his helmet and climbed in wearily. The paramedic gave Henry a thumbs-up and closed the door. The vehicle moved off.

Henry watched it go, hands thrust deep into his pockets. When it was out of sight a huge lion-like yawn crept up on him from somewhere. Very long, very wide. It went on forever. He shook his head when it had finished and turned – straight into Jane Roscoe. She had been standing behind him.

‘Just how I feel.' She smiled.

‘What are you still doing here?'

‘Love the place so much, can't bear to leave it.'

‘Me too.' He smirked.

She considered the lie for a moment. ‘Beats Barbados, hands down.'

‘Better than the Maldives, I'd say.'

‘And the town. Blackpool has the allure of the Left Bank in Paris, all the pavement cafes. It's somewhere you just want to chill out in and watch the chic world go past.'

‘I think the allure is more akin to a pair of a Blackburn hooker's panties.'

‘Oh, Henry,' Roscoe gasped, ‘you say the most wonderful, evocative things.'

‘It's a gift,' he said modestly.

‘But you did spoil my dreams a little.' She punched him lightly on the arm and at that moment both realised there was something between them. Undefined as yet, but definitely there. A split second of silence passed.

‘Well done – again – by the way,' Roscoe said. ‘The old mouth to mouth. Bit of an expert now. You and your lips.'

‘Another of my many talents . . . Superman, eat your heart out, Inspector Christie's on the prowl.'

‘More Inspector Gadget, I'd say,' Roscoe said cheekily.

‘Now you've spoiled my moment.'

‘Doesn't do to get too far removed from reality.'

‘Not much chance in this place . . . how's Dave Seymour?'

‘Very poorly.'

‘Likely to improve?'

‘Well,' Roscoe folded her arms, ‘if we are talking reality Dave is overweight, drinks like a fish, eats like an elephant, y'know, twenty hours a day grazing, smokes like a factory – and not one of those things helps his cause. Even if he was the fittest guy in the world, it'd be touch and go.' Her voice trailed off miserably. She sighed and admitted, ‘I want to cry . . . but I'll get home first.' She walked past him and touched his arm. ‘By the way, thanks for getting us out of that shop.'

‘Superman.' He winked.

‘Yeah, you could be right. Bye.'

He watched her walk away. He had wanted to dislike her but had found out that she was OK. Nothing ever seems to work out as planned, he thought. What he disliked was the way in which the job itself had put them both into a position where they had wanted to dislike each other.

PC Taylor stayed with Geri Peters from her reception at A&E, all through her treatment at the hands of skilled casualty doctors and nurses, and then remained with her in a tiny curtained cubicle while efforts were made to admit her to a ward. They wanted to keep her in for observations. Taylor was bored rigid with the deployment. He had watched disinterestedly as the staff had poked and prodded her but had actually done very little because there wasn't much they could do. What was wrong with Geri Peters was more in her head than anywhere else.

It was hardly a riveting episode of
ER
. Come to that, Taylor thought, it was hardly an episode of
Casualty
either. The doctors, nurses, porters and paramedics were exceptionally polite to each other, and no one seemed to be having an affair. It was all very dull.

In the cubicle, Taylor became restless. The thought of a cup of coffee from the machine down the corridor was a good one. He checked the prisoner: sleeping now, drugged up to the eyeballs with a hell of a concoction. She was going nowhere fast. He placed his helmet on the bedside cabinet and pushed his way out through the curtains.

Almost as soon as he had gone, the curtains swung open again. A man entered the cubicle. David Gill. He approached the girl on tiptoe, gently removing a pillow from underneath her head without disturbing her. He fluffed it up and smiled.

It was time to kill again.

P
eace at last. Henry strolled slowly through the corridors of the station, unable to inject any speed or purpose into his step as he came down from the high of his recent experience. He made it to the inspectors' office and plugged in the kettle. Next to it were several mugs, all obviously personally owned by other inspectors, a box of teabags, some powdered coffee, sugar in a stainless-steel bowl (appropriated from the canteen, probably) and a couple of jars of Teamate. No doubt he would be required to join the inspectors' tea fund. As he helped himself to a teabag, a spoonful of Teamate and dropped both into someone else's mug, he hazarded a guess that the wonderful Inspector Burt Norman would be the tea-fund administrator. It seemed the type of thing he would relish taking on and running with a rod of iron. He would savour telling Henry about the unwritten rules concerning payment of monies, the use, or otherwise, of other people's crockery (not permitted, Henry assumed) and the penalties levied for late payment of dues.

Henry smirked as he thought back to the welcome Norman had extended to him at the start of the tour. It seemed days, not hours ago, so much had happened since. All in all a pretty usual sort of night for the reactive inspector in Blackpool, Henry guessed. Reactive inspectors had to be the jacks and masters of all trades; it was something Henry had not realised before. God, get me back onto CID, he prayed.

No, the meeting with Burt Norman hadn't just been hours ago. It had been a lifetime ago.

The kettle boiled and clicked off. Henry made his tea and because of his distinct lack of energy, heaped a large spoonful of sugar into it. False, short-lived energy, maybe, but energy nevertheless. He sat slowly down, easing his aching back and other joints into the chair. He lifted both feet onto the desk. They were throbbing continually in his boots, a persistent thud, thud, thud. He unclipped his tie, tore open his shirt collar and looked forward to his proposed oasis of calm.

Only when he had chilled out, drunk his tea and enjoyed its effects, would he get his mind round the things he had to do. First, the hospital. He had to decide what protection, if any, the girl needed and more importantly, perhaps, whether or not the police had the resources to keep a constant watch on her. Then there was her attempted suicide. Some searching questions had to be asked soon.

The first sip of the hot brown tea was a wonderful experience. He sighed and his mind drifted to the subject of Jane Roscoe. He had wanted to hate her with a vengeance, but had found he quite liked her. Liked her a lot, to be truthful. Firstly because she seemed very capable and no nonsense. She was a good DI, of that there was no question. Secondly because he actually quite fancied her. He liked her manner, her appearance, voice, hair, face – whoa, Henry! Put on the brakes. He stopped this line of thought with a sardonic grin: do not even think about it; do not let what lurks behind your Y-fronts rule your mind. That had happened far too often and, anyway, he was in a ‘relationship' now with the vet lady.

His face creased at the thought of a situation he was not a hundred per cent comfortable with. Fiona did not seem to be on the same intellectual plane as him: she was several places higher and the only common ground seemed to be bed and sex. And even Henry knew that was no basis for a lasting relationship. How he hated that word. It meant nothing these days. He took a second sip of the tea. He never got the third sip.

PC Taylor thundered down the hospital corridor, heaving a nurse to one side. A second nurse took shelter in the doorway of a side ward and almost ducked as he flew past. The constable screamed, ‘Stop him! Stop him!' He was hampered by the weight of his uniform and the cumbersome equipment belt around his waist. Police appointments were not designed with speed in mind. Nevertheless, Taylor ran hard and fast after the dark figure, his strong physique enabling him to move pretty quickly.

His right hand fumbled for the radio transmit button on the mike attached to his shoulder. He shouted his collar number and then screamed, ‘Assistance! Assistance needed at the Blackpool Victoria Hospital. Chasing suspect down corridor away from A&E. Murder suspect – killed a prisoner – ASSISTANCE!'

Henry shot out of his seat. There was a special radio set in the inspectors' office which gave the inspectors the facility to listen to both sides of radio conversations. He had heard Taylor's desperate transmission and could hear the breathlessness, the pounding of the feet, the rustle of clothing and the fear in the voice. Something bad had happened.

‘Inspector to PC Taylor, what's the job, John?'

‘Ahhh – chasing –' pound, pound, pound of boots – ‘Chasing suspect – GET OUT OF THE WAY! Girl in custody – dead, I think––'

The radio went dead.

Then: ‘Jesus – fucking move, will you!'

Henry was not absolutely sure what was going on.

‘Inspector to all available patrols, make for BVH. Urgent request for assistance – officer chasing a suspect,' he instructed over the air. ‘Inspector to Blackpool – put talk-thru on and get a grip of this job, please.'

‘Roger. Talk-thru on.'

‘Inspector to PS Byrne. Are you in a position to pick me up?'

‘No. I'm thirty seconds away from BVH.'

‘Roger. Forget it.'

Henry grabbed his hat and a set of car keys from the hook on the wall and ran out of the office, giving one longing look at his tea. He tore down the steps eight or ten at a time, down into the basement car park.

All the while, the radio transmissions continued.

Byrne shouted, ‘PC Taylor. Exact position within BVH?'

‘Not sure, not sure – heading from A&E towards X-ray. He's gone in that direction.'

‘Got that,' responded another patrol. ‘I'll drive round to that side of the building.'

‘Me, too,' a dog handler cut in.

‘PC Taylor – any description?'

The winded officer was doing his best to respond, but was getting more out of breath all the time. ‘Big guy – dark clothing – dark hair –'

Meanwhile, Henry Christie was standing in the covered car park with a set of car keys dangling between his fingers, feeling very stupid and frustrated because he did not know which car they fitted. There was no number on the fob – it must have fallen off and never been replaced – and there were four cars parked around the garage. It didn't help that they were all Astras and the keys in his hands were Vauxhall keys. No process of manufacture elimination to go through there. Just straightforward trial and error.

He dashed to each car like he was on some sort of game show: how long will it take you to find the car which the keys fit? Do it in less than thirty seconds and the car's yours! He could almost hear Bruce Forsyth wittering in his ear.

Sod's law kicked in. It was the last of the four cars he tried. Valuable time wasted doing a completely idiotic thing. He got in, the seat wobbling precariously and started up the reluctant engine, revving it hard, blowing out a mushroom of blue smoke with a serious sounding backfire. He saw immediately that the petrol gauge did not budge. He swore and prayed there would be enough fumes in the car to get him as far as the hospital. He drove the much-abused car out of the car park and accelerated away, re-tuning his ears to the radio transmissions.