Nick Oldham - Big City Jacks

‘Whatever,’ groaned the old-lag sergeant.

Henry and the DI walked down the corridor.

‘She’s drunk out of her skull,’ Carradine explained. ‘We’ve done a preliminary interview in the presence of a duty solicitor — authorized by the on-call super,’ Carradine qualified; it was a very big no-no to interview drunken suspects unless particular circumstances prevailed and then it had to be signed off as necessary by a superintendent or higher rank. ‘We didn’t get much from her, to be honest. She got stripped and swabbed and banged up for a good sleep. It’ll be the morning detectives who’ll be sorting it.’

‘Fine,’ said Henry.

‘Have I done all right?’ Carradine asked sycophantically.

‘Beg pardon?’

‘I just want to know if I’ve done OK — sir.’

Henry stopped in his tracks and held Carradine back with a touch of his hand. ‘What’s eating you?’

Carradine eyed Henry through slitted lids. ‘Nowt,’ he lied very obviously and carried on walking. ‘She’s in here.’

Mmm, Henry thought, guessing that the earlier dig to the custody sergeant — the ‘temporary DCI’ business — could be the key to Carradine’s less than enthusiastic welcome. Henry wondered if his continuing temporary promotion had ruffled feathers across the world of Lancashire detectives.

As per force standing orders, the cell door was open and the occupant, the murder suspect, was inside, now deep asleep; outside the cell a uniformed constable sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair, reading a magazine and — hopefully — keeping an eye on the prisoner. It was referred to as ‘suicide watch’ and was applied to all people arrested on suspicion of murder in Lancashire, people who often had their minds unhinged and were capable of doing themselves in. The officer engaged in this task — a policewoman — looked glazed with boredom.

‘How’s she doing?’ Carradine asked her.

‘Fine — flat out — no problems yet.’

The DI nodded. He and Henry glanced through the door into the poorly illuminated cell. The prisoner was stretched out on the concrete bench/bed, lying face up, mouth open, snoring. Her own clothes, taken for forensic examination, had been replaced by a paper suit about ten times too big for her. She looked a slight woman in her late twenties, hardly capable of brandishing and using the size of knife Henry had seen embedded in her husband’s chest. However, he also knew what strength rage could bless on a person.

To the policewoman, Carradine said, ‘OK, keep vigilant. Never trust anyone accused of murder.’

‘Sure, boss,’ she responded with surly lack of interest, settled back with her magazine and started to flick through the pages.

‘Shall we talk it through?’ Henry suggested to the DI.

Carradine nodded and led Henry back through the cell complex, out through the custody office and up into his own cubbyhole of an office on the first floor of the building. There was freshly filtered coffee on the side, smelling wonderful. Carradine poured out two mugs of the steaming black gold.

Easing himself into a chair, Henry took a sip, then, over the rim of the mug, got straight to the point. ‘What’s gnawing away at your bones, Barry?’

‘What do you mean?’ he replied innocently.

Henry’s mouth twisted sardonically. He said nothing.

Carradine shrugged and kept up the pretence.

‘I think you know — the attitude.’

Carradine manoeuvred himself to his desk chair and sat down on it. He swivelled slowly around, stopping at 360 degrees and considering Henry. ‘All right,’ he relented. ‘You have severely pissed off a large number of detectives in this force by coming back from suspension and being given your sweet job back — and keeping your temporary promotion to boot! Quite a few people I know were chasing a job on the SIO team.’

‘You being one of them?’

Carradine’s narrow eyes seemed to hood over. ‘I’d been made a promise.’

‘By whom?’

‘Can’t say, but all I can tell you is that a lot of people think you’ve been given preferential treatment. Everyone knows you’re right up the chief’s arse. Pity there isn’t a competence in brown-nosing.’

Henry bridled, feeling his whole body shimmer. He reddened angrily and shifted on the chair. It took a lot of self-control to keep himself from banging the mug down and rising both physically and metaphorically to the bait. Instead, he tried to remain unaffected and calm — except for the redness, which he could do nothing about.

‘All I did was return to the job I left,’ he explained.

Carradine shook his head slowly, in disbelief. ‘Many, many people are not impressed,’ he insisted, sticking to his guns.

Henry cracked a little then and blurted, ‘In that case, a lot of people can go and fuck themselves.’ He winced inwardly as soon as he’d said it; not a turn of phrase designed to get ‘a lot of people’ on his side. Huffily, he said, ‘Shall we talk about the case in hand?’

Henry stumbled out of Burnley police station into the chill Pennine night. The briefing about the domestic murder had gone well, if a little coldly, after his and Carradine’s exchange of views about Henry’s predicament. As he slid back in the car, Henry grated his teeth and grimaced as he reviewed what the DI had said.

Henry had known that his return to work would be difficult. He had envisaged it many times in his mind. He knew that the detective fraternity was a close-knit but intensely competitive bunch of individuals who would have been eyeing his post up like salivating dogs — or a pack of hyenas — the stimulus being the SIO job and their response being their tawdry elbowing and kneeing to jockey themselves into position. Henry almost chuckled as he imagined the insistent lobbying and kow-towing that would have been going on whilst he was suspended.

Being a member of the SIO team was one of the plum detective jobs.

And Carradine had the audacity to accuse Henry of being up the chief constable’s backside.

However, it was only to be expected. Henry had been suspended for allegations of disobeying a lawful order and displaying judgement that was, to say the least, suspect. The resulting disciplinary action had been dropped and Henry exonerated, but he was intelligent enough to know one thing about cops: when mud got slung, some of it always stuck, usually in big clods.

He now had the difficult task of proving that the allegations that had been made against him were unfounded, not to a disciplinary panel but to his peers. Far more difficult.

In some respects it would have been better to have returned to a less prominent role, somewhere out in the sticks, but he was actually glad to be doing what he was doing. He felt very suited to the SIO role. Only thing was, there would be many out there only too ready to take a pop at him, not least the detective chief superintendent in charge of the SIO team, who simply did not want Henry on the squad.

Henry knew he would have to be meticulous in his approach. He would have to work to the book and yet get results — quick. He had a very tattered reputation to repair and it would not be easy pulling the threads together.

This was his sixth week back at work and it was still early days. He had dealt with two other domestic murders successfully and had been given a fifteen-year-old cold case to review. A fair proportion of his time had been spent working on the job he had foolishly got himself involved with whilst on suspension — one of the reasons why the detective super did not want Henry back on the team, because he suspected Henry of telling lies. That case was ongoing and still generating more questions than answers. It would be a long, drawn-out process before the horrible mess was anything like sorted.