Backlash

Seventeen

It was desperately cold on the promenade. An icy biting wind slashed in like a razor from the Irish Sea. It was certainly no weather to be dressed in a thin, white silk blouse, unbuttoned to below breast level, the lack of support for a very fine pair of breasts underneath the material very obvious from the outstanding (literally and aesthetically) nipples pushing up and out. A tight leather skirt cut off high above the knee, fishnet stockings and high-heeled shoes completed the outfit.

John Howard, known professionally as Pussy Beaver, flicked his bobbed silver hair, dusted with sparkling glitter, back off his face and inserted a cigarette, in a long, thin, penis-shaped holder between his high-glossed lips. His arms were folded under his splendid breasts and, as he shivered, they wobbled divinely.

As ever, he looked completely amazing — his long tapering legs coveted by many real women — very voluptuous and desirable.

He was standing outside the Pink Ladies’ Club which he owned and ran with ruthless efficiency. The place had become one of the north of England’s leading night spots. People from all over the country and abroad came in their thousands to experience the outrageous shows and behaviour on display every night of the week. It was a favourite venue for hen parties. It had made John Howard, who described himself as ‘Head Pussy’, a millionaire.

There was a long queue outside, several hundred people, mostly raucous groups of half-drunk females. By the time the night was over, two thousand people would have passed through the doors. At?12.50 a head and the cheapest drink at the bar?2.50, the Pink Ladies’ Club turned over?40,000 a night, five nights a week.

‘Oh, thank God you’ve arrived,’ Pussy Beaver fawned and tottered unsteadily over to the police car which pulled into the side of the road.

Henry climbed out, a smirk on his face. Byrne was out less quickly.

Only when he was a few paces from him, did Pussy recognise Henry.

‘My my! It’s Henry Christie,’ he chirped. ‘It’s you! In uniform too! My God, but you look totally fuckable in that outfit! Oh God, I could just lick your dick here and now, in the middle of the thoroughfare.’

‘Jesus,’ Henry heard Byrne remark with disgust behind him.

‘And if you had a fanny,’ Henry bantered, ‘believe me, I’d let you.’

‘That was always your sticking point, wasn’t it?’

‘I’m finnicky like that.’

They laughed and shook hands. Henry had known Howard for several years, first meeting him when the club had been petrol-bombed by some local youths who hated what people like Howard stood for. Henry had arrested two nineteen-year-olds who had been subsequently imprisoned and a friendship of sorts had sprung up between him and Howard.

‘So what’s the crack, John?’ Henry asked. More police cars pulled up, one containing Karl Donaldson and Andrea Makin hotfoot from the police station.

‘I think we might have found a bomb inside. It’s a suspicious package at least.’ John had dropped his high-pitched feminine tones and his voice had lowered an octave to become more masculine.

‘What makes you think it’s a bomb?’

‘Lunchbox left under a table in a dark corner of the main bar. It doesn’t seem right, if you know what I mean?’

‘Anybody touch it?’

‘No.’

‘Anyone see who put it there?’

Howard shrugged his shoulders.

‘How about your security cameras?’

‘I’ll get them checked.’

‘Ah well, at least we’ve done some good tonight,’ Henry said, thinking about the job PC Taylor had been doing, warning people about the possible danger.

‘How have you done that?’ Howard’s face screwed up quizzically.

‘Haven’t you been visited by a PC this evening, dishing out leaflets asking you to be on your guard?’

‘Nope.’

‘Oh, never mind then. He can’t have got round to you yet. Let’s get on with this. How many people are inside?’

‘Hundred and fifty, maybe a few more. I haven’t let anyone else in since it was found.’

‘Good.’ Henry beckoned to Karl Donaldson. ‘You want to come in, Karl, just in case?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, John, lead the way.’

Pussy Beaver twirled on his stilettos, resumed the acting voice and led Henry, Byrne and Donaldson through the clearly irritated and impatient crowd, drawing jeers of contempt.

‘C’mon, out of the way, luvvies — out of the way — can’t you see the main act has arrived?’

Henry whispered to Byrne, ‘He once let me feel his tits.’ The inspector laughed, while the sergeant recoiled. ‘Just like the real things,’ he added.

With the efficiency Henry always associated with the man, Pussy Beaver had ensured that his bouncers (woman wrestlers capable of dismembering anyone foolish enough to have a go) had sealed off a good proportion of the bar area. They were standing guard, preventing any punters from entering the exclusion zone around the seat under which the package had been discovered.

As good as the cordon was, though, Henry knew that if it was a bomb under that seat and it did explode, everyone in the club would have a better than average chance of being blasted to pieces.

‘It’s under there.’ With an expertly manicured finger, Pussy indicated the offending spot — a bench in an alcove, out of sight of the bar.

‘Thanks. Now you go and stand well back and get everyone as far away as possible, too.’ Henry touched his radio to ensure it was switched ‘off ’ for definite. ‘Is yours off?’ he asked Byrne, who nodded. It was standard procedure to switch personal radios off because bombs had been known to be detonated by radio waves before now.

Henry took a deep breath and wondered if this was one of those times when the inspector should take a purely strategic view of events and order a lower-ranking officer to do the dirty work. Tempting — but he could just imagine the word that would circulate the station if he did. He would be branded a coward. Having said that, better a live strategist than a dead tactician, he thought. The idea went out of his head as quickly as it had come into it.

‘I want to have a look, too.’ Karl Donaldson stepped forward.

Henry saw the look of determination on the American’s face. He knew it would be useless to object. Donaldson had a very personal interest.

‘Suit yourself, but don’t blame me if you get blown up.’

Donaldson placed a hand over his heart. ‘Promise.’

At least Henry knew he would not die alone.

Henry told Byrne, Makin and everyone else to get well back and take some cover if possible. He and Donaldson then approached the alcove. Henry expected it to be a false alarm. Either a hoax or a mistake, or a piece of lost property. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand this was the case.

But as he walked towards the package, there was the niggle this could be that one time, the possibility it could be the real thing. The only consolation was that if it blew, there wouldn’t be much to feel. A surge of heat, noise and then death.

Some consolation. Both men felt very vulnerable.

‘You made a will?’ Henry asked.

‘Yep. You?’

‘Yep.’ As Henry answered a stab of thought cut through his mind of Kate and his two daughters. He saw all their faces. Then it was gone. It was a short, painful thought.

‘My throat’s as dry as the bottom of my cockatoo’s cage,’ Donaldson admitted.

Henry stopped walking and laid a hand on his friend’s bicep. ‘You have a cockatoo?’ Donaldson nodded. ‘I never knew that, you sad person.’

‘Thanks for that.’

They continued to walk.

‘I’m actually feeling dead cool about this,’ Henry boasted, paused and added, ‘not.’

The short journey seemed endless. Then they were down on their knees on the carpet among the beer stains and fag ash, noses almost to the floor. Henry flashed his Maglite underneath the bench seat.

There it was. A lunchbox. Tucked behind a seat leg. Not in a place where it could have fallen or rolled accidentally. To get where it was it must have been placed there deliberately. Through the opaque plastic, indistinct shapes could be seen inside. Not sandwiches or Kit-Kats. Strapped to it by tape was a detonator.

‘He’s here,’ Donaldson breathed.

Getting the general public to take any evacuation seriously was difficult. No one ever truly believed the danger, that it could be a real bomb, that they could get killed. It did not help when most of them that evening were half-cut.

Once, though, Blackpool had been the target for the IRA when incendiary devices inside several shops had caused massive amounts of damage. So it could happen.

Henry ordered all available officers to attend the scene, including the recently arrived PSU and those officers recently deployed to investigate the possibility of a body in the sea. He began the tiresome job of emptying the club of people who did not want to leave, then trying to evacuate and close all the surrounding premises which consisted mainly of amusement arcades, another night club and several burger joints. Next, the promenade itself had to be closed two hundred metres in both directions. All traffic had to be diverted inland and the trams had to be stopped. Chaos reigned.

Then he needed to establish a rendezvous point.

The only easy thing was calling out the bomb disposal squad: they were already resident in the town because of the party conference.

Henry did a lot of shouting, ordering, threatening and cajoling, and found himself very much the centre of attention. In a perverted sort of way he enjoyed it all, even if at the back of his mind the worry remained about Jane Roscoe and Mark Evans.

‘One thing, bud,’ Karl Donaldson said in his ear. ‘Don’t put the RV point in the obvious place, just in case it is our man.’ Henry gave him a blank look. ‘Remember, he bombed the last RV point in Miami with a secondary device. I don’t want that to happen here.’

‘Good point, well made.’

With that in mind Henry decided to use Adelaide Street West, which, though a one-way street, could be used to allow access to emergency vehicles from both directions. It was out of a direct line of sight of the club, some hundred and fifty metres north of it. Henry got the traffic department to cordon off the street and park the big accident unit in it to be the centre of the RV point.

Amazingly this was all achieved within about fifteen minutes, adding fuel to Henry’s belief that the police were a great ‘doing’ organisation. They liked being told to do things, just didn’t like to think about anything else too deeply.

As everything fell into place, the bomb disposal squad arrived on scene.

Within minutes they were reversing the robot ‘wheelbarrow’ out of the back of their vehicle, intending to use it instead of a man. It was a safer option than sending a man in to fiddle about with what increasingly appeared to be a real bomb. The wheeled machine, which resembled a small tank, was equipped with a camera through which the operator — who never left the back of the equipment van — could see exactly where it was going. He could manoeuvre it down, up and around most obstacles using a remote-controlled joystick; the wheelbarrow was also fitted with a double-barrelled shotgun which, when loaded with the appropriate shot, could be discharged into a suspect device to bring about a controlled explosion. The wheelbarrow was a common sight on the streets of Belfast. It was not so well known in Blackpool.

It set off on its journey.

Henry peered over the shoulder of the operator and watched the monitor which was showing the picture from the camera on the front of the contraption. The wheelbarrow trundled up the pavement rather like something out of Star Wars, a very hi-tech piece of machinery, developed over the years by the army to do a dangerous job. It had saved the lives of countless soldiers in the battle against the Provisional IRA.

The journey continued up the promenade to the front entrance of the club. The operator did a right turn and the machine lurched through the first door which Henry had left wedged open.

‘Here we go,’ the soldier said.

The wheelbarrow moved through the door into the entrance foyer, straight across the tiled floor to the stairs leading down to the main bar where the package was located. The steps were easy. Like a tank on Salisbury Plain tackling a steep hill, the wheelbarrow just took them in its stride, even the one-eighty degree turn halfway down was no problem. Henry was impressed. The skilled soldier at the remote control manoeuvred the wheelbarrow round and into the bar, where it stopped and had a look round.

‘Mine’s a pint,’ the soldier said.

Henry looked closely at the image on the screen.

‘Straight across, then bear slightly right,’ he said helpfully.

The machine trundled on, slowly approaching the corner of the room. The soldier made minor adjustments to direction constantly.

‘Under that bench, dead ahead,’ Henry said.

‘ACC to patrol inspector.’ It was FB on Henry’s radio.

‘Shit,’ Henry said. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Sit rep, please. I’m monitoring.’

‘EOD in attendance, wheelbarrow deployed, should have a result soon.’

‘Well that’s nice to know,’ FB whined sarcastically. ‘I’d like to be kept informed.’

‘Understood,’ Henry said, wondering why FB had not just asked a communications operator because Henry had been relaying a blow by blow account for the log.

‘I’ll be in communications if you need me,’ FB transmitted helpfully.

‘Thanks for that,’ Henry said. He shook his head despondently and turned his attention back to the monitor.

The wheelbarrow had moved forward and was now peering under the bench seat at the lunchbox, displaying a very clear image to the monitor.

Two army types were whispering to the operator. One nodded then turned and introduced himself and his handlebar moustache to Henry.

‘Captain Renfrew.’ The two men shook hands.

‘Henry Christie.’

Renfrew did not beat about the bush. ‘Taking all factors into consideration, I propose we blow it up in situ, cover the cost of damage as necessary. No point taking any chances.’

‘I don’t have a problem with that,’ Henry agreed. ‘In fact, I think-’ But whatever Henry was about to say was lost forever when the wheelbarrow operator gasped, ‘Oh, fuckin’ Jesus!’

All heads spun to him, then the monitor.

‘I thought the place had been evacuated,’ he said.

On the screen was the face of a man staring directly into the lens of the camera fitted on the wheelbarrow. He was a big, happy, smiling man who was tapping the lens with his knuckles and saying something — more words lost forever. He looked excessively drunk.

Henry ground his teeth and the blood drained from his face. He had assured the army guys the place was empty because he had been so assured by a sergeant from the visiting PSU who had carried out the search and evacuation of the premises. Not well enough, it transpired.

The man on the screen put his tongue out, stuck his thumb in his ears and flapped his hands and blew raspberries. Then he looked in the direction in which the camera was pointing. It was clear he had seen the lunchbox.

On his hands and knees he got down and reached for it.

‘Oops,’ the operator said.

All eyes turned to Henry as the officer in charge. It was as if the world was holding him in sharp focus. Everything else was blurred and only Henry stood out. He did not know what to do. His mind was a complete blank.

‘If there’s an anti-tamper on it and he moves it. .’ the operator said bleakly.

Then, for Henry, the world seemed to resume some of its normality. ‘Move the wheelbarrow. Jab him with it. Do something. Try and distract him from touching the bomb — I’ll go and get him out.’

‘You must be barking,’ Renfrew said. ‘You can’t go in there now.’

‘I’ve been in once and it didn’t explode. If he doesn’t touch it, then it probably still won’t explode.’ Henry’s eyes flashed back to the screen. The man was stretching out towards the lunchbox, could not quite reach it. ‘And if it’s on a timer only, it’s more than likely to be set for a busy period. I’m going,’ he said. ‘Distract him if you can.’

The operator thumbed the joystick. The wheelbarrow arm extended and pushed the drunken man in the ribcage and knocked him over. He rolled and recovered. The extending arm went out towards him again, attempting to push him over again. The drunk struggled to his feet and lumbered towards the wheelbarrow. The screen got a close-up shot of his fat legs and then the sole of his boot as he tried to stamp on the nasty, horrible thing that had attacked him.

Henry moved like lightning.

He ran up the promenade and skidded through the door of the club, hurtling across the foyer and down the steps into the bar. If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been ridiculous. The fat drunk was laying into the wheelbarrow as though it was an adversary in a street fight. He rained kicks on it, which must have hurt him, because they were having no effect on the wheelbarrow which just stood there placidly absorbing the onslaught without complaint.

Henry hurried across, shouting, ‘You need to get out of here now, that could be a bomb under there.’

‘Eh, what? Fuck off, copper.’

That was all the negotiation Henry was prepared to do. With strength induced by fear, anger and danger, Henry looped an arm around the man’s neck, grabbed his shirt and started to drag him across the bar using the momentum of the man off balance. He managed to get him as far as the foot of the steps which led up to the foyer. He dropped the gasping man, who landed on the small of his back, legs akimbo. It was only past bad experience that prevented Henry from booting him in the testicles. Last time he’d done that, the recipient of the kick had lost a ball and caused Henry no end of grief.

Such had been the speed and power of Henry’s attack, there was still a look of utter surprise in the drunk’s face — which Henry tried to use to best advantage.

He said menacingly, ‘You get the fuck up them steps, or I’ll beat the living shit out of you here and now. There’s a bomb in here.’

It was as if the man had not heard.

‘Fuck you,’ he shouted and dived for Henry’s feet. He got them before Henry could move out of the way. Henry cursed as he fell onto his hands. He kicked back at the man’s chest and extricated himself from the grip.

Large and drunk though the man was — and the stench of booze on his breath was overpowering — he was moving pretty quickly now that Henry had lost the element of surprise. He threw himself onto Henry’s back and flattened him on the floor. It was like being crushed by a bed and doing a belly-flop at the same time. All the air whooshed out of him, winding him. The man pummelled him, though the punches were not well placed or particularly effective. Henry rolled away, jerking his elbow into the man’s face, satisfyingly connecting with a hard bone somewhere. The man emitted a scream of anguish, but only got madder. He came after Henry with his feet, starting to boot him before he could stand up properly.

‘You idiot,’ Henry yelled to no effect.

He took a kick in the lower stomach and recoiled against a pair of double doors marked ‘Store Room — Private’. The doors did not give even when the back of Henry’s head whacked hard against them.

The drunk bore down on him, a snarl on his lips. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a cop.’

Henry’s mind clicked into clarity. He ducked and sidestepped, spun on his heels and drove his fist into the side of the man’s head, hard, right on the ear. The blow had no effect, except to make the guy even angrier. Henry hit him again, hurting his knuckles on the man’s cranium. Still no effect. The man turned like a Challenger tank, roared and grabbed Henry. He wrapped both arms around him, pinning Henry’s arms to his side and squeezing tight. The men were stomach to stomach, chest to chest, both now with red faces: the drunk’s from exertion, Henry’s from his chest being constricted. The man swore at Henry, who felt his feet leave the ground. The drunk started to move in a circular motion, round and round, still trying to squeeze the life out of Henry, to crush him, while bouncing up and down.

He began to laugh. ‘I’m gonna kill you, cocksucker.’

Which was OK, but why? Drunks do not reason well and Henry did not want to die by being squeezed to death by a bloated, admittedly strong, inebriate, nor by getting blown to bits by a bomb. This thought gave him a surge of self-survival.

He braced his arms and, using all his strength, pushed them outwards and upwards and broke the man’s vice-like grip. Henry’s hands went to either side of the man’s head, each grabbing an ear, holding the head steady as he head-butted the bridge of the man’s nose with his forehead. The nose did not burst as expected, nor did the man seem to have an adverse reaction to the blow. He just laughed and tried to grab Henry again. Henry pushed against the man and they crashed back against the double doors. This time, they flew open with a clatter. The men reeled through into a room full of collected rubbish onto which they tumbled. They continued their struggle amongst black bin liners crammed with all sorts of debris which burst open, spilling everywhere as they fought.

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.

The sergeant looked down at the tiled floor.

‘I do not like what I’ve just said.’

‘Nor do I,’ replied the sergeant.

‘Right, keep this cell out of use. Get scenes of crime to come and take some photos of the door, the hatch and everything — just keep it a matter of course for now. No scaremongering, OK? Find out, if you can, the name of everybody who came into the custody office last night from when I brought her in to when she was found and obviously anybody who you saw going up to the female cells — not easy, but do your best. And let me have a think about how to take this forward. Bob, I don’t like what you’ve turned up here, but well done.’

The relief of unburdening himself was very visible on the sergeant’s face. ‘I’ll let you have a list of everybody I remember within the hour.’

‘Right.’ Henry nodded. ‘Let’s just keep it low key for the moment, between you and me. If what you’re suggesting is right, we don’t want to spook whoever might have done this. In fact, we don’t really want anyone to know that we might have an attempted murder in our own cells, possibly committed by one of our own people.’

Henry did not have any time to consider what course of action he might take in the matter as once again, his accursed personal radio squawked up and asked him to make his way to see ACC Fanshaw-Bayley urgently.