Nick Oldham - Critical Threat

‘Unexplainably gone AWOL.’

FB looked away.

‘It bloody has, hasn’t it?’ Henry had only ear-wagged a rumour that the film he’d managed to obtain of Dave Anger merrily smashing his Mondeo to pieces had gone walkabout. There had been nothing confirmed about it — until now.

‘I’m afraid it has.’

‘Oh dear.’ Henry sighed.

‘These things happen.’

Henry slumped back on to the sofa, his face angled towards the ceiling. ‘Was anybody going to tell me officially?’

‘At an appropriate moment, of course, yes.’

‘I take it the mobile phone records are still intact?’ He was now referring to the phone company records of the text messages that Anger had sent him, mostly of a threatening nature.

‘They are.’

‘Well, that’s something.’ Henry chewed the inside of his cheek noisily for a while as though chewing the cud. ‘This ain’t going anywhere, is it?’

‘Probably not,’ FB said, pouting.

‘And what’s happened to my extra pip?’ He touched his shoulder. Now he was talking about the promotion to the substantive rank of chief inspector FB had promised him, which had never materialized. At the moment Henry was still temporary in the rank, which meant it could be taken away from him in the blink of an eye.

FB remained silent, cogitating, doing what chief constables do best — as little as possible. He stood up and thoughtfully paced the large office, pausing at the window to gaze blankly across the sports pitches that Henry had hurried across a few minutes earlier. He turned.

‘What exactly do you want out of this?’

‘It’s not about wanting something. It’s about principles. About seeing justice done,’ he spouted grandly. ‘A bit of belief that the organization actually does what it says in all those highfalutin policies about equal opportunities and fairness and all that — y’know, the drivel that’s being rammed down my throat across at the training centre right now. How can I be expected to “walk the talk”’ — Henry twitched the first two fingers of both hands to represent speech marks — ‘when I don’t have any faith in the firm itself?’

FB blinked theatrically, then looked at Henry as if he were dumb. ‘Fine words, noted … now what do you want out of all this?’

‘Anger to be dealt with. Him to suffer, not me.’

‘And in the real world?’

The words permeated into Henry’s noggin. He held up his hands in submission. ‘It’s quite obvious you don’t want the stink this would cause, making the organization look bad.’

‘Thing is,’ FB explained, ‘other than his minor problems with you, Dave Anger is the best head of FMIT yet. He’s respected and liked by the divvy commanders and his clear-up rate is excellent. Everyone who works for him likes him … but then again, not every one of them has screwed his wife.’

‘It was a drunken one-night stand over twenty-five years ago and she wasn’t even his wife then,’ Henry bleated. ‘They weren’t even going out with each other.’

‘I know, I know … I just didn’t expect the kind of backlash that came with all this, OK?’

‘All right,’ Henry said, taking in the reality of the situation and the invertebrate in front of him, ‘what do I want? Substantive DCI … somewhere other than FMIT, say Major Crime … otherwise I’ll be knocking on the doors of the federation’s solicitors with my tale of woe and I’ll drag this whole thing through an employment tribunal, the press and maybe the court. The local rag loves dishing the dirt on us.’

‘Henry,’ the chief declared, ‘I always knew you were a cunt.’

‘And I always knew you were one, too. Sir.’

They came out of the office, all smiles and handshakes for the benefit of the chief’s entourage.

‘How’s the trial progressing?’ FB asked. ‘I know it constantly makes the papers, but I only get a chance to glance.’

‘They’ve had a break this week … the final summing-up begins next Monday. Hopefully verdicts by the end of the week. Looks good, though.’

The trial at Preston Crown Court of Louis Vernon Trent had been going on for six weeks and Henry had been present every single day. Trent stood charged with the murder of several young children and a police officer, amongst many other serious matters. The trial had attracted massive media attention across the world. Henry had been involved in Trent’s arrest and had spent the bulk of his time leading up to the trial ensuring that the complex case was watertight — and the proof was now in the pudding. As difficult and challenging as it had been putting the case together, Henry was convinced Trent would be spending the rest of his misery-causing life behind bars, unless he escaped, something he had a knack for.

‘Good stuff, but he really deserves to be hung,’ FB said, patting Henry on the shoulder and opening the door which led out into the corridor, ushering him out with an ‘I’ll let you know about things, but don’t harass me for a while, OK?’ Just before he closed the door, Henry caught sight of the new deputy chief constable, Angela Cranlow, emerging from her office. It was the first time he had ever seen her in the flesh and he was quite taken aback, but didn’t get much chance for a lengthy appraisal as FB’s hand in the middle of his back propelled him out like a drunk being ejected from a bar into an alley.

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.