Nick Oldham - Critical Threat

‘Yes, certainly.’ She saved her work, smiled at him in a sad way, and spun around in her chair.

Henry noticed Laker looking at him, a scowl of disapproval on his mush. He said, ‘Been up all night — operational stuff, y’know?’

‘So I’ve heard,’ said the bagman.

Henry stiffened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’ Laker refocused on his computer. A surge of trepidation rushed through Henry.

The kettle boiled.

‘Here we go.’ Erica handed him a cup of coffee, the colour of which reminded Henry of the tidal water in the Wyre Estuary, a sort of murky red-brown.

‘Thanks.’ He sipped it. Laker’s little off-the-cuff remark had just knocked him off kilter for some reason. He had been summoned to the chief’s office following the less than smooth raid in Accrington, he assumed for a pat on the back, but Laker’s jibe had made him think differently — or was Laker just being a bastard, wanting to wind Henry up? If that was the case, it had worked.

The coffee tasted as bad as it looked and Henry winced, but managed to transform it into a smile for Erica.

Yes, Laker’s remark made Henry wonder, but not for very long because the chief constable’s door opened and FB beckoned Henry in.

There was a polished oak conference table in the centre of the chief’s office and every seat round it, bar one, was taken. The table itself was an untidy mess of paper cups, mineral-water bottles, catering flasks of coffee and tea and lots of documents.

There was silence as Henry was ushered by FB to the vacant space at the far end of the table. He sat, uncomfortably aware of the looks, and nodded to the assembled dignitaries, several of whom he knew; others he didn’t and had never seen before. He wasn’t over the moon to see Dave Anger’s cruel face amongst them.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ FB said with the same breath he exhaled as he settled his rump back into his chair, ‘may I introduce Chief Inspector Henry Christie …’ Henry did note that FB hadn’t used the term ‘detective’ on the front of the introduction. ‘And just for his benefit, could we go round the table as a matter of courtesy? I’m Bob Fanshaw-Bayley, chief constable of Lancashire Constabulary,’ he announced, then looked to his right.

‘Dave Anger, FMIT commander … I think you know me.’ He gave Henry a slitty sideways look.

Next along said, ‘Percy Greek, detective superintendent, Lancashire Special Branch.’ He gave Henry much the same sort of look as Anger had.

‘Mary Dearden, Security Services.’

‘John Threlfall, Security Services.’

Henry had spotted those two skulking around at the briefing and had rightly tagged them instantly as spooks. They were both young, mid-twenties, and looked wet behind the ears, as though they’d come straight out of Oxbridge and gone into MI5 or 6 to protect the country without having even seen the place.

Next along was Detective Superintendent Jerry Carruthers from the Metropolitan Anti-Terrorist Branch. Henry knew him by sight, having seen him on TV following the 7/7 atrocities in the capital, but had never met him. Carruthers had also been at the briefing.

‘I’m Angela Cranlow, deputy chief constable, Lancashire,’ the next person said. She was fairly recently appointed and as Henry had previously noted — when FB had been pushing him out into the corridor following his unannounced gatecrash a few months earlier — she did not look anything like the stereotypical high ranking woman cop. In her mid-forties, with soft features, quiet voice, but with an air of cool authority and, Henry guessed, a trim figure under that unflattering uniform. Based on what he had heard, he had nothing but respect for her. She had done her time on the streets, been a detective at several levels, seen some tough times and was nobody’s fool.

‘Martin Beckham, Home Office,’ said the last person, a bespectacled, middle-aged man in a nice suit who looked like he might have walked to work over Westminster Bridge every morning at eight, then back home for seven in some leafy south London suburb. He nodded at Henry.

Without a doubt, Henry knew that these were probably some of the main players in the planning and execution of Operation Enid. They all looked weary, as though they’d been up all night.

‘Thanks everyone,’ FB said. ‘As you know, I’ve asked Henry to come in for two reasons … firstly,’ he cleared his throat, ‘for him to tell us firsthand what transpired a few hours earlier in Accrington; then for us to bring him up to speed, as a matter of courtesy, with some aspects of today’s operation that were, by necessity, not dealt with at the briefing.’ FB looked squarely at Henry. ‘That OK with you, Henry?’

‘Mm-yeah,’ he stretched out the word hesitantly, ‘so long as it’s all right for me to chuck in some personal observations, as well.’

FB shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not.’ One or two people shifted uncomfortably.

‘OK … I assume you know the task allocated to my team of officers, but in case you don’t, as part of the wider operation, the results of which I don’t know anything about yet, other than what I heard on Radio Lancashire, we were to enter and secure an empty terraced house in Accrington which was believed to have been used as some sort of meeting place for suspected terrorists … that’s about the long and short of it … a “nothing” job, really, and that’s what we did … except the intelligence was wrong and the place wasn’t empty.’ Henry’s eyes caught those of Dearden and Threlfall, the MI5/6 bods. Their eyes, however, would not meet his.

‘We followed instructions and found ourselves faced with one young man armed with a pistol and another packed to the ribs with high explosive.’ As he talked, he felt himself begin to tremble slightly, reliving the incident and realizing again how close he and others had come to being murdered by fanatics. ‘I need a drink, if that’s OK?’

He had left his horrible coffee outside.

‘Help yourself,’ FB said.

He found a clean polystyrene cup and poured a black coffee from one of the flasks, which he took neat. It was almost stone cold and tasted like River Wyre mud this time. When would he get a decent brew? he wondered, despairing. He put the cup on the table, noticing his fingers were trembling.

‘Henry?’ It was FB again, almost looking concerned. Almost.

‘Well, big do’s and little do’s, the two young men were disarmed, shall we say, and arrested. We then discovered there was evidence of a third person in the house which we partially searched, but found no one. And the front door was booby trapped, but no other devices were found. A neighbour came and told us that someone’d dropped through his loft hatch and done a runner. Seems that the lofts in the row of terraced houses are separated by breeze block walls which, it transpires, had all had holes knocked into them big enough for someone to slide through and the third person from the house used this as a pre-prepared means of escape. As the neighbour had seen him, we decided to do a street search to see if we could spot him-’

‘By “we”, don’t you mean “I”?’ Dave Anger interjected.

Henry looked quizzically at him, shrugged and said, ‘Whatever … but we ended up chasing a stolen BMW which crashed, severely injuring the occupant.’

‘And who was the occupant? The missing terrorist?’ Anger asked.

Henry licked his lips. ‘Unlikely … he was a local car thief, name of Spencer Crawford, a fourteen-year-old … he’s in intensive care now, but not likely to prove,’ he added, meaning there was a good chance the lad would live. He rubbed his tired eyes, which squelched, and shook his head.

‘So let me get this straight — you left the scene of a major incident, which you should have stayed on site to manage, and went gallivanting around town in some half-baked search which resulted in a Starsky and Hutch car chase and a near fatality which had nothing to do with the task you were given?’ Dave Anger had spoken these words and they rose in fury as he reached the end of them. He threw down his pen and looked away from Henry in disgust.