Critical Threat (5 page)

He exhaled and rubbed his face, turned and walked towards the stairs as his mind tumbled over what had just taken place in FB's office. He was only vaguely aware of the door reopening behind him and the quick approach of footsteps – then a hand on the shoulder.

It was Chief Inspector Andy Laker – bag carrier extraordinaire.

‘Henry,' he growled low, ‘don't you ever do anything like that to me again. I can see why you're a pariah. You are a loose cannon and you need putting out to grass.'

With disdain, Henry peeled Laker's fingers off his shoulder and flicked them away. ‘Fuck off,' he said, proud of his well thought out retort. ‘And another thing' – Henry turned and stepped menacingly towards Laker, making the smaller man step nervously back – ‘don't mix your metaphors. It doesn't suit you.'

With that, he spun away, leaving the staff officer speechless in the corridor, his mouth popping like a grounded fish.

Henry could not quite face going back to the classroom and being bombarded with race and diversity, particularly as the theme of the day was gender issues, including transsexuals, transvestites … trans-everything, most of which just made him angry. The race stuff had been quite interesting, all about Islam and religion, but men becoming women, or wearing women's clothing other than in a pantomime? It made his blood boil. It was like most things these days. He felt like he had become an angry old man and it didn't feel good.

Instead he meandered down to the HQ canteen and was just in time to rescue two sausages and wrap them in bread before breakfast time ended. Then, with a strong coffee he found a table in the corner of the room, and sat, observed and pondered as the food and drink calmed his soul.

With the dubious expectation that he was about to meet and be treated to the tale of woe of a man who had undergone a sex change operation and been discriminated against as a result – boohoo, Henry thought – he made his way back to the training centre with a heavy heart, wondering in a very un-PC way where they managed to unearth such people who were happy to be wheeled out in front of a class of cynical cops to face a barrage of nooky questions. He guessed a nice, fat daily rate helped to grease the wheels.

The footpath across the sports pitch carried on through the pleasantly wooded grounds of the centre, past the FMIT block, which he had no intention of visiting. Even his training course had more allure than that.

As he rounded the corner of the block, he ran into Dave Anger emerging from the front door, pulling on his jacket. They almost collided face to face, but managed to stop a foot apart.

Henry's heartbeat moved up a pace.

‘Henry,' Anger said. At least the guy looked as rough as a dead badger, with dark circles under his eyes, his skin a deathly pallor, his lips drawn and scrawny.

‘Dave.' Henry didn't bother with a ‘sir' or anything approaching respect. ‘I've just been to see the chief.'

‘I know – that's where I'm going now.'

‘To discuss yours truly?'

‘Don't think you're that important, pal,' he said. ‘Maybe we'll get round to you if we need a laugh.'

‘Funny about those tapes going missing,' Henry said.

Anger's eyes narrowed behind his small round glasses. ‘Nothing to do with me,' he said with a twitch of his shoulders which looked like someone had just walked over his grave.

‘Course not.'

‘Anyway – excuse me.'

‘Certainly.'

Anger grimaced a tight smile and eased past Henry on the narrow path.

‘By the way,' Henry couldn't resist calling. Anger's shoulders drooped visibly. He turned, a hateful expression on his face.

‘What? You want to rub it in? How good she was?'

Henry crinkled his nose. ‘Nah … I don't even remember it … is that worse?' he asked, although he was fibbing. One could hardly forget having sex with a randy young policewoman on the bonnet of the commandant's car at the regional training centre. Not an experience easily erased from the mind. ‘No, it's not about that.'

‘What then?'

‘D'you think I'd be daft enough not to have a copy of the tape?' With a smirk of triumph, Henry continued his journey back to the classroom, hoping Anger would stew, even though it was a lie. He didn't have a copy.

The graphic details of the sex change operation – including a toe-curling PowerPoint presentation – made Henry squirm and cross his legs like most of the other guys in the room. The ladies seemed to be revelling in the male discomfort, whilst the speaker, the one who had undergone the op, was very blasé about the whole thing.

When the lunch break came, Henry knew there was no way he could ever eat anything after watching such a gruesome spectacle, so he decided on a stroll around the grounds.

He mulled over whether his career as a detective was truly over as he walked past the slimy duck pond in the direction of the huge building which housed the firing range. The deal he had hatched with the chief was that if Henry quietly let the Dave Anger ‘thing' drop, there would be an extra pip on the way and a transfer. That latter bit needed to be worked out, as most of the chief inspector roles within force were filled. FB said he couldn't promise a detective role immediately and left it at that. Still, Henry thought philosophically, two years more on a chief inspector's wage before retirement; maybe he could hack it anywhere they put him and then do a runner with the enhanced pension and substantial lump sum he would receive.

Walking past the rear of the training admin building, Henry bumped into an old colleague of his, a guy called Bill Robbins, a PC who was a firearms instructor. Bill had about the same length of service as Henry and they had worked as constables together in the early eighties. Bill was a cool, laid-back sort of bloke who played a mean bass guitar in a rock band in his spare time, a gift Henry envied. He was also a brilliant shot.

However, today he looked out of sorts.

After a bit of mutual back-slapping, they both commented on how miserable each other looked – ‘you look like you've seen your arse' being the exact phrase Henry used to describe just how morose Bill was looking.

‘I can't believe it,' he moaned. ‘I work here training all the time and now they also want us to go out on bloody shifts, like we don't have a day job! They wring every last drop out of you these days …' He shook his head in disgust. ‘You look like you've seen my arse, too.'

‘Is it that one with a big black hole in it?'

They chuckled, then Bill looked slyly at Henry. ‘How do you fancy a bit of a blast, shake some cobwebs off?'

It was totally against procedure, but what the hell. Henry fancied living dangerously for once.

He had a pair of ear defenders around his neck, a pair of protective goggles covering his eyes.

Similarly attired and standing next to him, Bill held up the weapon for Henry to see. He recognized it instantly. ‘Smith and Wesson, .44 Magnum,' he gasped. ‘Hell.'

‘The very one,' Bill said. ‘Handed in at the recent firearms amnesty and strangely enough, no criminal history to it.'

‘Aren't you supposed to destroy stuff that's handed in?'

Bill smiled conspiratorially. ‘Always keep the cream of the crop – for educational purposes only, of course … and to play with.'

He handed the revolver to Henry with the cylinder open and empty. Henry took the heavy beast into a sweaty palm, feeling the weight pull his hand down. All thoughts of FB, Dave Anger and other associated things were suddenly banished from his mind. That is what handling a gun does – purges everything.

It was a wonderful piece of equipment, substantial, black and dangerous looking.

‘It came with two hundred rounds of Magnum ammunition. I've tested it already,' Bill said. ‘It's wick.'

‘OK.'

‘Want a go?'

‘Yeah, I could do with the release.'

Bill gave him two speed loaders, six thick, chunky bullets in each, which looked capable of taking down brick walls.

They turned to face down the firing range, which was fifty metres long.

‘How about a walk through? Keep it simple, but fun?'

The range lights dimmed to recreate conditions a firearms officer might have to face in a building in real life. Right at the end of the range, fifty metres away, were four targets turned facing him, the classic combat target of the charging armed man with the rings centring on his body mass. Ten metres in front of him, jutting out of the right-hand edge of the range, was a waist-high mock brick wall made of hardboard; ten metres further, on the opposite side, was another wall; then ten metres further a stack of old car tyres and an old fridge.

Henry stood ready at the fifty-metre mark, jacket off, ear defenders in place, safety goggles secure, feet shoulder width apart, the heavy weapon held in his right hand, left hand clamped underneath it for support, the muzzle pointing downwards to a point about three feet in front of him. Six bullets had been loaded. The tip of his right forefinger rested on the trigger.

He was suddenly extremely nervous. His mouth had dried up, his legs gone slightly weak with excitement. He had given up breathing.

Bill, positioned a pace behind Henry, placed a hand on Henry's shoulder. ‘Be ready for the recoil,' he warned. Henry nodded, focused on what lay ahead. ‘Are you ready to shoot?'

‘Yes.' He was a hundred per cent aware of how his body was feeling.

In his hand Bill held the remote control, no larger than a TV remote, which controlled everything in the range from the movement of the targets to the lighting, to background music if necessary.

There was an interminable pause – probably no more than two seconds although it seemed for ever – giving Henry the chance to scan the range ahead and take in the obstacles.

Bill pressed a button on the remote and all four targets spun out of sight.

Henry swallowed nothing.

‘As discussed?' Bill asked – because as against procedure as this little foray might have been, he had gone through a thorough, rigorous pre-shoot safety briefing with Henry.

‘Yes.'

Another pause, then, ‘Watch and shoot.'

Bill patted Henry on the back and he started to walk slowly forwards, revolver still pointing towards the floor.

Three metres down, one of the targets spun to face him.

Henry reacted. He stopped, adopted the classic combat stance, bouncing down on his knees, bringing up the gun at the same time and double-tapped – bam! bam! The gun recoiled wildly as the powerful bullets exploded out of the muzzle. The noise in the confined space, in spite of the earmuffs, was incredible.

The target spun away, having shown for two seconds.

Henry knew he had missed at this distance.

A bead of sweat trickled down his temple. He lowered the gun, gritted his teeth and walked on, two rounds discharged, ensuring he remembered how many he had fired. It was easy to forget in the heat of the moment.

Two different targets spun to face him. Henry took them in and was surprised to see that one of them was a woman holding a baby; the other was the gunman. He dropped into the combat stance and double-tapped the correct target, again knowing he had missed.

Four gone, two left.

The targets clattered out of sight.

Henry walked another two metres and a single target appeared, into which he drilled his remaining bullets, now having got some measure of the recoil of the huge gun. Before the target disappeared, Henry dropped to one knee behind one of the walls and transferred the gun into his left hand, whilst at the same time flicking open the cylinder and ejecting the spent cartridges on to the floor behind him with an exaggerated flick of his hand. He fumbled in his pocket and found the speedloader, slotting the bullets into their new homes, then stood up, ready again – just as two targets reappeared, both wielding firearms.

He reacted instantly, a double-tap for each of them, and was feeling pretty good at the result.

Four bullets gone, two remaining … he walked on, heart pulsating, sweat dripping, adrenaline gushing … ready to shoot again.

‘And I am a transsexual,' the person at the front of the classroom announced proudly, bringing an inner groan from Henry, who began to wonder how much more of this he could stand as his eyes flickered to the transvestite sitting next to the transsexual. It was becoming a freak show and he could sense a creeping feeling of despair in the room from all the other delegates. And there was another session to go after this.

He could still feel the kick-back of the big revolver in his hands, smell the cordite in his nostrils, and half-wished he had the Magnum in his possession to see how well he could double-tap live targets. I'd give them a head start, he thought sportingly, then hunt them ruthlessly down.

He twitched as his mobile phone vibrated in his pocket. He sneaked it out and glanced at the newly arrived text message asking him to contact the force incident manager regarding a murder which had just been reported. He didn't want to jump for joy that some poor unfortunate person had been killed, but at least it got him out of this purgatory, because if he stayed there was every chance there would be a gender-bender-related murder.

A
s much as Henry Christie had been assured at the 3 a.m. briefing that his task, his responsibility, during the operation – codenamed ‘Enid' – was probably the one with the least chance of risk associated with it, he could not help but feel just a little bit excited.

It had been stressed that his role was peripheral to the main operation and, more subtly, that he was there only to make up numbers; it was just that they needed someone of his rank to help out and because chief inspectors were thin on the ground for various reasons; the corporate barrel had been scraped and Henry had been found lurking in a crack like an ugly germ.

Obviously that had not been said out loud at the briefing, but Henry knew this to be the case. He had been called in because no one more suitable – preferable – was available and they needed someone of his rank to hang the blame on should something in his corner of the op go tits up. The ‘no blame culture' that had been bandied about a few years before was now a dead duck, floating feet up in the water. Today's climate of fear and failure in policing definitely needed scapegoats, hence Henry's presence. If it all went well, then he wouldn't even get mentioned in dispatches. It was one of the things that came with being someone who was considered too hot to handle, someone who nobody even wanted to be near enough to cattle-prod away.