Nick Oldham - A Time For Justice

‘ Er, Janine something-or-other. Fit little piece. If she wasn’t a druggie, I’d give her one.’

‘ Has she said anything else?’ asked Henry.

‘ There was one thing. She said she’d fucked your Chief Constable’s brains out. A lot of crap, like I said.’

‘ Let’s talk to her,’ said Henry.

The detective shook his head. ‘She’s still floating in the stratosphere.’ He pointed up to the sky. ‘Not fit to be interviewed.’

‘ But this is urgent,’ Henry said.

‘ Then you’ll need a Superintendent’s authority.’

Henry turned to Donaldson. ‘Karl, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Superintendent. Do you accept this?’

‘ I do.’

‘ May I interview the prisoner?’

‘ You may.’

Dave August was getting nowhere slowly. He had spent over an hour leafing through the Hinksman paperwork, and his eyes were getting gritty, his concentration drifting.

He closed the folder he was reading and picked up the next one, headed Unused Material. It contained all sorts of scraps of information, intelligence and musings even, which hadn’t been used in the court prosecution. It was a real mish-mash of stuff.

August swore softly and flicked through the contents with a grimace on his face. Then he closed the file, clasped his fingers, knuckles down, palms up on the desk-top and laid his forehead on the soft cushion they formed.

Within moments he was asleep.

The interview room had three chairs and a sturdy table with a tape recorder on it. Janine was sitting on one of the chairs with her elbows on the table, hands held loosely over the sides of her face and ears. Henry sat down opposite her. Donaldson remained standing, arms folded, like a sentry.

Henry placed an unopened pack of tapes on the table, together with a sealed plastic bag containing the drugs seized from her. ‘Janine, we’d like to have a chat with you.’ He spoke softly, seductively.

‘ Who the hell are you?’ she demanded.

‘ We’re here to help you.’ Henry noticed, with pleasure, that her hands were shaking. She was coming down.

‘ I’m up shit creek,’ she said. ‘I’ll go down for this — importing or whatever. You can’t do fuck-all for me.’

‘ Oh yes, we can,’ countered Henry. ‘But you’ve got to help us first. You see, this isn’t a recorded interview.’ He held up the unopened tapes. ‘It’s totally off the record.’

She gazed defiantly at him. ‘Oh yeah?’ she said disbelievingly. ‘So what can you do?’

‘ Two things actually,’ Henry said, matter-of-fact. ‘First we can give you a fix — I can see you need one — and the custody officer needn’t know about it; secondly, we can get all the charges against you dropped.’

Her eyes seemed to come alive. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘ Trust me, Janine, we have the power. All you need to do is answer some questions. When you’ve done that, we’ll slip you a fix. When we’ve verified what you say is correct, we’ll arrange for you to be released without charge.’

He paused, letting his words sink in, then resumed, his voice hard: ‘Thing is, if you don’t cooperate, Janine, you’ll get no smack and we will push hard for a custodial sentence. Just think — five years in prison, a lovely girl like you. We’ll tell the court what a bitch you were — obstructive, violent, all that sort of shit. Get the drift? So, you can come out of this a winner or a loser. Choice is yours, babe.’

‘ What do you want to know?’

It was 4.15 a.m. when Dave August awoke. He felt terrible. He needed to wash his face and gargle with a minty mouthwash, which he did at the washbasin in his little sleeping annexe next to the office.

As he dried his face he looked at the camp bed. It hadn’t seen much activity since Karen had left him. Bitch. Served her right. Without a shred of conscience, nor even the merest idea that he might have committed rape — after all, how could it have been rape after she’d let him fuck her all those times before? — he strolled back into his office, feeling more or less ‘with it’.

The files on his desk were in disarray. He straightened them up and turned back to the one he’d been reading just prior to falling asleep.

As he skimmed through it again, feeling much more alert, he came across an old 1974 descriptive form — a piece of police bumf that is completed when someone is arrested — which related to a man called Dakin. August wasn’t too sure about Dakin’s role in the scheme of things (Chief Constables only ever want to know the wider picture not the ins and outs of investigations), and he wasn’t too bothered. He speed-read the form without undue interest. It was an old-style form from Strathclyde police in Scotland, containing much more detail than the newer forms, even down to the colour of Dakin’s socks.

August was about to add it to the pile when he paused. Something was triggered in his mind.

Firstly, it was a Scottish form. Interesting.

There was something else too, but he wasn’t sure what.

He read it again, slowly. The officer who had filled it in had been very thorough, even to the point of describing and drawing the tattoo which Dakin had on the back of his left hand. It was in the shape of a heart with a skull superimposed on it.

August stared at the little drawing. His mind swirled back. The factory floor. The shotgun rammed into his neck. His face pressed into the floor, eyes tightly closed except for one millisecond when he’d squinted upwards and seen…

Heart and skull.

And the man with the tattooed hand had a Scottish accent. Time to find out more about Lenny Dakin.

‘ Do you actually have the power to do what you said?’ Donaldson asked Henry. ‘Getting the charges dropped?’

They were back on the M6 motorway, speeding north, Henry at the wheel.

‘ Probably not,’ admitted Henry. ‘But I did get some smack to her and I’ll do my best. If I can’t pull anything off, so what? She’s just a junkie. I won’t be too concerned.’

‘ You’re all heart,’ said Donaldson with a short laugh. ‘By the way, do you always break the rules? That interview wasn’t really legit, was it?’

They both cracked up laughing.

‘ We don’t ever break the rules in the States,’ Donaldson went on. ‘We can’t afford to.’

‘ Neither can we,’ said Henry bleakly.

The consequences of what he’d just done were too horrendous to contemplate if it came out. He’d lose his job and probably get prosecuted for supplying controlled drugs to a person in custody. A very serious offence. A very serious understatement.

He hoped that both Janine and the airport detective would keep quiet about it. Realistically, though, he knew it was probably too much to hope for.

They passed the turn-off to Blackpool and stayed on the M6. In less than fifteen minutes they’d be back at Lancaster.

‘ What d’ya reckon to all that blabbering about screwing your Chief Constable?’ Donaldson yawned.

‘ Puzzles me,’ said Henry. ‘Perhaps it’s one of her fantasies.’

‘ I wouldn’t put anything past him,’ said Donaldson.

‘ Which reminds me,’ said Henry. ‘What’s happening about that… business between him and Karen?’

‘ It’s in the pipeline. That’s all I can say.’

By 6.15 a.m. everyone was assembled in the gymnasium at Lancaster police station in readiness for a briefing.

All the detectives involved in the ‘escape’ enquiry were there, wearing scruffy clothes as requested, together with a heavily armed firearms team, dog-handlers and uniformed Support Unit officers. Also present was the Superintendent in charge of the division and a couple of communications operators.

Henry, Donaldson, Karen and FB were at the front of the room. Donaldson and FB kept a healthy distance between each other, despite FB’s apparent acceptance of Karen now, he and Donaldson still did not see eye to eye. The American tended to bear grudges for a long time, especially where women and their treatment were concerned.