Nick Oldham - Instinct

‘Can’t say more than that,’ Donaldson added mysteriously.

Henry shrugged acceptance and found himself to be curiously uninterested. He knew Donaldson was deeply involved in the handling, sifting and grading of intelligence in connection with terrorism during the course of his work. From that he often got involved, as an observer, in the knocking down of doors, or surveillance of suspects and then, if arrests followed, the interviews of detainees to gather more intelligence. It was like doing a ten thousand piece jigsaw that was mostly blue sky, no corners and pieces missing. The ultimate aim was to disrupt ‘events’, as terrorist incidents were called, and maybe, just maybe, pick up that one vital clue that would lead the Americans to their ultimate goal — one Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. In respect of today’s operation, Henry did not have a clue about it, but assumed that the Intel must be pretty spot on to lure Donaldson out of his plush office.

‘How did you know…?’

‘That you were here? Bumped into Rik Dean… he told me where you’d sneaked off to and I watched you walk in. Last time we were in here was the day I found out Karen was “up the duff”, as you Brits romantically refer to being knocked up.’

‘I remember,’ Henry grinned.

‘Rik told me about… er…’ Donaldson coughed with embarrassment.

‘That I’d frozen at the scene of a murder?’ Henry said sharply. ‘Had a shed collapse?’

‘Another quaint British phrase,’ Donaldson said. ‘But, yeah, something like that.’

Henry laughed sourly and shook his head at Donaldson’s forthrightness, then looked sideways through the window to hide the bitter kink on his lips. Then he sighed in defeat, peeled the lid completely off his coffee and took a proper mouthful. ‘So what’s your advice?’

Donaldson had been very much alongside Henry over the last year or so as he crashed through an emotional roller-coaster ride, rather like being on the ‘Big One’ time and time again, so he knew what his friend had been through. Hope, despair, tragedy. It was only in the last few weeks that Donaldson, at Henry’s insistence, had backed off and given him his own space.

‘What’s the job?’ Donaldson asked.

Henry drew a breath. ‘One likely to attract lots of attention and scrutiny. Minute fucking scrutiny. Female teenager murdered, something the press will love to bits… and I guess I’m not up to it.’ He shrugged pitifully and swallowed something hard and sour tasting at the admission.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Just feel I’ve lost all my drive, my rhyme and reason. I typed out my intention to retire report yesterday, you know? Three lines and a date. Just waiting to be printed off and submitted.’

‘That what you want?’ Donaldson lounged back and watched Henry grapple with the question.

‘I have no idea what I want.’

‘Let me ask you another question. What were you put on this earth to do?’

Henry knew the answer, but fought the response.

‘But more importantly, H,’ Donaldson said, ‘let me tab back to the previous question and ask not what you want, but what would Kate have wanted you to do?’

Donaldson had gone. Henry was alone again, swirling the dregs of his coffee, watching the grains as though they might give him inspiration, like reading tea leaves. Nothing. He refitted the plastic lid and put the cup in the bin before leaving the restaurant and stepping back into the clear, warm morning.

He crossed the prom and retraced his earlier walk, not so quiet now as the day came to life and people and traffic began to move. He walked up to North Pier, Blackpool Tower on his right, but his gaze was drawn across to the north-west, where the hills of the Lake District were etched clearly on the horizon. It was a place Kate had loved and where Henry, following her wishes, had scattered her ashes.

Everything had happened so quickly, no preamble, no warning. Henry, emerging from a very bad situation in the village of Kendleton, having been shot in the left shoulder — not seriously, as it happened — then had to deal with the detritus that included police corruption and multiple murder, including the death of a policewoman. He had been overwhelmed with the paperwork and interviews and inquests and trials and the CPS and the forensics and the press. The list seemed endless. His mind was completely waterlogged with tasks and it had been a month later, during a breather from the mountain of statements he’d brought home to read that, seemingly, for the first time in weeks, he’d looked at Kate and thought, ‘She looks as whacked as me.’

Her words in response to his enquiry had been simple and uncomplicated. ‘Henry, I need to tell you something.’

He put down his highlighter pen, saw the tear emerge from her right eye and tumble down her face, and that night he held her tightly as they both cried in each other’s arms.

It was a lump in her left breast. Though they acted quickly and decisively, the cancer could not be halted, spreading aggressively through her body. They fought, she fought, but then reached a point when she looked exhaustedly with half-blind watery eyes at Henry and he knew it was over. It had won. She had lost and her final weeks were a mixture of ecstasy, agony, happiness and hopelessness, but above all dignity and love.

The last month of her life was spent in a hospice where the speed of deterioration was terrifying.

And Henry held her as she died quietly.

Now, Henry looked out to the Lakes, his mind whirling with all of those images. He had immersed himself in work for the last two months, even though his heart was not in it. He had thought this was the best way to tackle things. But it always felt as though he was running ahead of something that was coming up from behind with the intention of smothering him. He always knew it would catch up and maybe that morning it had.

The opening chords of Wild Horses interrupted his reverie. He took his phone out and saw it was Rik Dean calling.

Henry had a quick thought. He knew exactly what Kate would want him to do. He also knew what he had to do. He had to stop running — and he also had to find a killer. Because that was what he had been put on this earth to do. And because there was a young girl lying dead on a grass verge and a family who needed him to do his job.

He thumbed the answer button and put the phone to his ear.

Henry threaded his way through the narrow corridors of Blackpool nick. They seemed fit to bursting with staff, unusual for such an early hour, but he could tell they had been brought in for whatever the operation was that Donaldson was part of. There were firearms officers, already tooled up, support unit officers, normal patrol officers, a dog handler — minus dog — and various ranks from sergeant to superintendent, as well as several plain clothes officers and some shady looking individuals Henry did not recognize. He assumed they were spooks from MI5, MI6, SIS and various other clandestine agencies.

There was a scramble for the lift as the briefing was being held on the fourth floor. Henry eased his way though the throng to get through to the CID office which was in the ground floor annexe.

As he stepped through to the large foyer that had once been the main entrance to the police station — the entrance having now been relocated more practically to street level on the other side of the building to allow easier public access — Henry came face to face with four men entering through the old front door. They had walked across from the police-owned level of the multi-storey car park adjacent to the station.

He recognized three of the men, the fourth he did not know at all.

One of the three was Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, Lancashire’s chief constable — known as FB — someone Henry had grown to know all too well over the years; with him was PC Bill Robbins, a firearms trainer who also specialized in putting together any firearms aspects to operational orders. The third man he recognized was a guy called Martin Beckham, and seeing him confirmed Henry’s suspicions that spooks were out and about. Beckham was a mysterious shadow of a man and Henry had encountered him a couple of times in the past. He was usually introduced as being from the Home Office. That may have been true, but Henry knew he was also a high ranking spymaster.