Judgement Call (A Henry Christie Mystery) by Nick Oldham

Author:Nick Oldham [Oldham, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2014-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Henry scurried back to the station intending to root out Bowman’s file to remind himself of the burglar’s last known address, because he was going to pay it a visit. Not that he expected to find the escapee there, but he would never know until he knocked, or kicked the door in, and he knew he had enough reasonable suspicion to do that if he had to. Or at least he could manufacture some if necessary.

As he took the videocassettes off his tray and re-stacked them on the table, FB swung into the office on the door jamb. ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

‘Making enquiries,’ Henry responded, picking up a tape to show he wasn’t lying, and waggling it at FB. ‘Why?’

‘We need more monkeys, that’s why.’

‘Eh?’

‘Muscle – we need some muscle. I want to go and hit an address in Salford with the Regional Crime Squad, but I need some cannon fodder.’

‘What address? Why?’

‘Upstairs now,’ FB said and swung back out of the office.

Ten minutes later Henry was sitting in the back of a personnel carrier with four other constables, a PC driving with Fanshaw-Bayley and another detective crushed together alongside the driver on the bench seat.

Henry cynically understood the psychology of it. The superior detectives up front, as uncomfortable as it was, and the dumb-ass riff-raff plebs in the back.

He smiled and didn’t care. He had a sledgehammer propped up between his thighs and he was going to smash down a door. One of life’s little pleasures.

A detective from the RCS joined them at Salford police station, together with a uniformed inspector from Greater Manchester Police who came along for the ride to ensure no funny business happened. The inspector took a list of the names of everyone present in the carrier and issued a briefing about behaviour. GMP was accommodating this raid because of its urgent nature and the fact it was a follow-up to the shooting of a colleague. Normally GMP would have insisted on being fully in control, but acquiesced to the circumstances on this occasion because it was a hot, dynamic operation.

The RCS detective squeezed onto the front seat with FB and the other jack and the inspector sat in the back of the van with the five constables, four of them in uniform, Henry still in plain clothes. The inspector leaned forward and directed the driver to the outskirts of the estate where the raid was to take place and gave a commentary about life in Salford.

‘This isn’t like one of your poxy little estates in Lancs,’ he boasted proudly. ‘Everyone here hates the cops and if they get chance, they’ll have you. There’s knives and guns galore and not many people afraid to use them on the police. So watch out.’

‘What’s the plan, then?’ Henry piped up, as a plan of how they were going to hit this particular address seemed sadly lacking.

‘I’ll knock on the front door for you,’ the inspector said. ‘A few of you need to be behind me. If I get a reply, I’ll step aside and in you go.

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