Nick Oldham - Backlash

He had been suckered in by Vince Bellamy, the manipulative tyrant.

Franklands had seen Bellamy do this to other people: set them up and then use them. He had vowed not to get caught like that, but had failed. So now here he was, shitting himself every time a new face showed up, expecting to be locked up at any moment, watching, always watching — and now seeing. He saw them coming. Two biggish guys, easing their way through the crowd with no great problem. No way intimidated by the crush of people surrounding them, yet obviously not a part of the protest.

Franklands made them immediately: cops.

Suddenly everything inside him turned to jelly: flesh, bones, blood. It was inevitable this would happen, that the cops would come knocking. One of their undercover guys had been battered to death, of course the cops would come. They had to. And if they smelled a rat, they would be relentless: they would come back again and again. Bellamy had said to keep cool if it happened — say nothing, give nothing, deny, deny, deny. Let him handle them. Do not worry. Easier said than done, especially now that they had shouldered their way through the crowd and were walking purposefully up the front steps of the hotel. Two mean-looking bastards.

The remaining bouncer, Higgins, stepped in front of them, stopping them from entering the hotel. Higgins had been the one who held the undercover man while Longton first set about him and here he was, chatting casually with two other policemen. Franklands despised Higgins, hated his bullying ways, but also envied his poise under the circumstances because, surely, he must now be kacking bricks talking to the cops, no matter how laid back he appeared to be.

Franklands had been right. They were definitely police. One of them, the thinner one, flashed his badge and warrant card. At first Higgins remained firm until the cop stood nose to nose with him and demanded to come in then he backed down.

The cop looked tired, mean and irritable, itching to punch someone in the jaw. Though he was of a smaller build than Higgins, who was a towering shit-house of a bloke, he came over as being harder and tougher and, backed up by the beefier, more filled-out guy with a crew-cut, they made a formidable pair. People would only mess with them at their peril.

They brushed cockily past Higgins, who eyed them dangerously, and entered the hotel through the glass doors.

Franklands was on the verge of wetting himself.

‘I don’t know what this will achieve,’ Donaldson whispered to Henry as they approached the reception desk.

‘Nor do I, but it’ll be fun while it lasts.’

‘Female’ was not a completely apt description of the woman behind reception. She looked more like a man on a building site only with breasts and the irony was not lost on Henry. He knew right-wingers hated men who dressed up like women, but, almost by default, they had got one living among them.

She was as big as Higgins, and not much better looking. Her blonde head was shaved (another irony, Henry thought, these people seemed to mirror the ones they despised) and each ear had a cluster of gold and silver studs fixed to its outer perimeter. She wore a low-cut T-shirt, tight fitting so her bulges were not disguised. Her tattoos were numerous, with the obligatory ‘CUT HERE’ on a blue dotted line across her throat (I wish, Henry thought), down to the ‘love’ and ‘hate’ across her knuckles. The best visible tattoo, though, was Adolf Hitler’s face on the downward slope of her huge left breast, and a woman’s face on the other. Henry assumed it was supposed to be Eva Braun but did not know enough about German history to recognise her.

Trying to prevent himself from cracking into laughter, the first chuckle he would have had in a while, Henry dug out his badge and warrant card again, both housed in a natty leather wallet, and said, ‘DI Christie, Blackpool Central.’ He thumbed to his companion. ‘This is my colleague, Karl Donaldson.’

‘And to what do I owe the pleasure?’ she asked, voice as smooth as gravel being flung off a shovel.

‘Vince Bellamy, please.’

‘Dunno where he is.’ She shrugged her big shoulders unhelpfully and Hitler and his lover seemed to chat to each other with the wobble of her breasts, something Henry found to be vaguely obscene. ‘Like what you see, luvvie?’ she asked Henry, who for a moment had seemed transfixed by the sight.

‘It has merit,’ he grinned, ‘but I’d rather be looking at Vince Bellamy.’

‘As I said, sweetie, don’t know where he is, but I know a man who might — ’ She pointed across the foyer to the double-doored entrance to the dining room where a man was sitting by the window, watching them.

Franklands gave a silent scream as the two cops turned to look in the direction in which the receptionist’s finger was pointing. The silly, stupid bitch. She was telling them where he was.

The smaller of the two detectives, smaller being six foot two as opposed to six foot four, thanked her with a nod. They started to walk towards the dining room.

It was only the timely appearance of Adolf Hitler that gave Franklands the break he needed.

Hitler strutted from the rear of the hotel into the foyer, surrounded by a team of four leather-jacketed bodyguards with jeans and laced-up Doc Martens, stopping Henry and Donaldson dead. He was a perfect replica, from the grey uniform, the swastikas on his arms, the belt and shoulder strap with the Luger pistol in a holster at his hip, hat tucked under his left arm, down to the shiny black jackboots, the shock of black hair down his forehead and the comical moustache under his nose. He went past them, raising his right arm in a lazy Nazi salute and a ‘Heil’. It was all they could do not to respond.

He went through the front door of the hotel and appeared on the top step as though at the Munich Olympic games, flanked either side by the bouncers. He raised his right arm and extended it. A roar of approval emanated from the crowd.

Henry and Donaldson, fascinated, moved to the door for a better view. Both were shocked and sickened to witness a sea of extended hands raised towards Hitler and a chant starting of ‘Heil Hitler.’

It would have been a farcical spectacle had it not been so utterly abhorrent and nauseating.

‘I see he’s still got his pulling power,’ Donaldson commented.

‘I wonder if it’s Bellamy. Andrea said he did quite a good Hitler.’

One of the bouncers handed the Hitler lookalike a loud hailer. He began to address his glorious followers.

‘Shit,’ said Henry despondently.

‘There’ll be tears at bedtime,’ Donaldson predicted.

With overwhelming sadness, Henry turned away. ‘Let’s have a word with this guy anyway-’ He did not manage to complete the sentence because the man they had been directed to see was legging it down the corridor towards the rear of the hotel.

Contrary to what most police officers would like to believe, running away from a cop is not an offence, unless the person already happens to have been arrested. But doing so, whether guilty, innocent or plain stupid, is like a red rag to a bull. Very few cops are able to resist the challenge of the chase because as soon as someone is on their toes, a police officer’s body gets an input of energy and the pursuit is on.

It was a conditioned response in Henry. Almost before he knew what he was doing, or why he was doing it, he was after Franklands. American cops are no different: Karl Donaldson was with him all the way.

Franklands hared down the corridor and burst through the double swing doors into the kitchen. A couple of female cooks and two young girls skivvying looked up from their tasks with disinterest as he ran past them, nippily side-stepping all objects in his way, heading for the exit door at the far end.