by Nick Oldham
The plane taxied away from the terminal building and trundled out on to the runway where it came to one of those interminable halts; then the engines began to roar as the power increased. Yet still the huge machine remained there, like a racehorse in the stalls, itching to get away. Suddenly the brakes were released, the aircraft surged forwards on the runway, the massive General Electric engines of the Boeing 767–200 smoothly forcing ground speed upwards until the nose began to rise and the clatter of the wheels ceased as the undercarriage left the ground. The huge bird rose steeply away from Reina Sofia Airport. On one side passengers were treated to a breathtaking early morning view of Mount Teide; those on the other side could see the deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean.
Within minutes the plane had risen to 35,000 feet. To the majority of the 270 people on board, their holiday to the island of Tenerife was, even now, no more than a pleasant memory.
Breakfast was a silent affair.
Geena and Alex had been out late the previous night, clubbing, and had returned in the early hours to indulge in a goodly bout of sex. Danny was glad she had taken one of the sleeping pills prescribed by her doctor. She’d had previous experience of their raucous lovemaking. Their relationship was in its infancy and energetic, noisy intercourse was high on the agenda.
Danny stirred the cornflakes in her bowl and sighed.
Geena and Alex, who was ten years her junior, were sitting at opposite ends of the dining table. They were visually engrossed in each other as they ate their cereal, although when Geena’s eyes were momentarily diverted, Alex took the opportunity to evil-eye Danny.
Danny looked away, feeling nauseous.
When the loving couple had finished eating, Geena began to clear away their dishes and Alex slid out of the room to get ready for work. He was employed as a manager at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Danny collected her own crockery and joined Geena at the sink.
The two women had been friends for many years. Geena was a Detective Inspector on the Major Crime Unit and would probably rise to another rank at least. Danny had only comparatively recently achieved the rank of Detective Sergeant and was realistic enough to believe this was as far as she was likely to go. They were both the same age — thirty-eight — but Geena had been through two divorces. Danny had never married. Geena had been married to two cops and both divorces were put down to the stresses, strains and demands of the job. She had two sons from her first marriage whom she managed to see once a month if she was lucky.
Both women worked silently at the sink. Geena washed, Danny dried.
There was something in the air; both could sense it and both reached their decision to tell the other at the same time, breaking the silence simultaneously and also snapping the tense atmosphere with giggles.
‘ No, no — you first,’ Danny insisted, relieved.
‘ Shall we sit down?’
Geena poured them both a cup of tea and they gravitated into the lounge. They sat close together on the settee.
‘ Danny, I’m sorry about this,’ Geena started hesitantly. ‘You are my best friend and I love you. I’ve really, really enjoyed having you stay with me. It’s been fantastic.’ She sighed down her nose, lost for how to continue.
‘ But..?’ Danny probed gently.
‘ I want to make a go of things with Alex.’ She looked at Danny, a pleading, almost pitiful expression on her face, one which begged understanding. ‘He wants to move in and I would love him to. It’s just that, if you were here…’ She shrugged helplessly.
‘ Two’s company, I know.’ Danny made it easy.
Geena clasped Danny’s hands. ‘He’s my last chance of real happiness, Danny. I know we can make it work. I really love him.’
‘ Then that’s what matters,’ Danny said with a little grin.
‘ Oh, thanks, Dan.’ Geena put her arms around Danny and they hugged each other — and all Danny could think was, You poor cow, he’s nothing but a shit. She resolved to tell Geena immediately so that her best friend would not get involved in a relationship that would end in heartbreak and regret — like most of Danny’s had.
‘ You were going to say something, Danny?’
‘ No, no.’ Danny shook. her head. ‘It was nothing, nothing at all.’ She felt like a coward, but then justified it. What was the point in destroying someone else’s prospect of joy, or maybe even wrecking a friendship when she herself hadn’t put her own tragedy behind her, hadn’t even got her mind around the enormity of what had happened three months earlier when her married lover had taken his own life. In her house. In the kitchen. By blowing his head off with a shotgun into the refrigerator which he had thoughtfully opened to catch his skull, brains and blood. This was no time for Danny to risk losing a friend who had taken her in, looked after her, and almost brought her back on to an even keel.
‘ I’ll be out of here tonight, Geena. I need to get back home and kick my arse into gear. I can’t run away for ever.’
The catalogue of misbehaviour continued on the Tenerife-Manchester flight as soon as the plane levelled out at 37,000 feet.
Spencer’s Bacardi had disappeared fairly quickly down his throat. He then demanded bar service and a frightened stewardess actually gave him four Bacardi miniatures and a couple of mini-cans of Coke before she was warned not to serve any more alcohol to him. He drank the booze with his knee digging into the back of the seat ahead of him, aggravating the man sitting in it, who constantly pushed backwards against his knee-caps to demonstrate his displeasure. All to no avail.
Next to Spencer, Cheryl was feeling queasy. The indulgence of the previous night — drugs, oral sex and extremely greasy beef burgers — was starting to exact its toll on her slight frame. When the pre-cooked breakfast was placed in front of her on the tray, she retched, belched, but managed to retain control of her stomach contents. Undeterred by the message from her body, she peeled the tinfoil lid off the food tray, sniffed the bacon, sausage and beans. That did the trick. She was immediately sick all over the meal and also the knees of the poor unfortunate woman next to her.
The woman emitted a shriek of disgust, catapulted out of her seat and overturned her own breakfast.
Spencer, whose constitution was far stronger, munched a mouthful of sausage and shouted, ‘Yeah — way to go!’
DS Danny Furness looked despondently at the computer screen in the Custody Office at Blackpool Central police station. Nineteen prisoners were still in custody from overnight; forty had actually been locked up for one thing or another since six the previous evening, but twenty-one had been dealt with and sent on their way. Out of these remaining, about six were possible customers for the CID. However, Danny decided that only two of them would be processed by detectives. These were the two who had been arrested for serious assaults — unconnected — in a night club. One of the victims was critical and the other had been stitched up like a knitted quilt.
Sunday morning, she thought. Wonderful. Loads to do, hardly anybody to do it with.
She trudged wearily up the stairs, forsaking the lift for health reasons, and headed for the CID office. She was particularly ‘made up’ when she saw the note on her desk informing her that one of her detectives had reported sick. That meant she would have to deal with one of the prisoners now.
‘ Listen, you,’ the man said, twisting round in his seat and looking angrily over the headrest. ‘Get your knees out of my back. This is the last time of asking. Next time I’ll punch your dim lights out.’
Spencer eyed the man disdainfully. The guy looked handy but probably hadn’t had a fight since he was a kid. And he was at least forty now with a podgy wife sitting next to him. He probably didn’t really want to mix it. Spencer wasn’t in the least intimidated, yet he nodded and removed his knees as requested.
When the man had settled back down, Spencer jammed his knees back in the seat and wedged himself into such a position that the man in front could almost feel the knee-caps pressing into his spine.
The man shot up and pressed th
e button above his head to summon cabin staff.
The Chief Stewardess, accompanied by a rather effeminate male colleague, arrived within moments. Spencer had been kept under observation throughout the flight which was approaching the halfway stage. The man Spencer had annoyed was irate and bustling. ‘That person,’ he said through gritted teeth, pointing menacingly at Spencer, ‘refuses to keep his knees out of my back. I have asked him several times but he only does it worse then. I want something done about it.’
With placating gestures, the Chief Stewardess tried to calm the situation. The body language, coupled with soothing talk, did the trick. The man settled back down into his seat when she promised some action.
The aisle seat next to Cheryl was now unoccupied. The woman who had been sitting there, who had been vomited on, had been moved to a vacant seat further back — one of only four on the whole plane.
The stewardess sat down on it and addressed the couple.
‘ I have spoken to the Captain about your behaviour,’ she said firmly, but with a faint touch of nervousness in her voice, because she recognised the instability of the two. ‘If you continue, he has told me that there will be no alternative but to restrain you and ensure the police are waiting for you when we land at Manchester. I don’t want that to happen, and I’m sure you don’t either, so I suggest you start to behave now, otherwise you’ll leave us with no choice in the matter.’
The detectives flicked a coin for which prisoner they got.
Danny ended up with the anonymous male who had slit another guy’s throat in an argument over a girl. The first job was to find out who ‘Mickey Mouse’ was, as he had named himself on arrival at the station at two o’clock that morning. Had Danny been paid a pound for every Mickey Mouse she had met in her service, she would have been a rich woman.
Mickey was in a foul mood. The alcohol which had worked through his system had left him feeling very poorly and very obnoxious. When a gaoler brought him from his cell to the Custody Office, he was dressed in a white paper suit because his clothes had been seized for Forensics as soon as he’d arrived in custody. He looked like a prisoner in some science fiction film.
‘ Now then,’ the Custody Sergeant said amicably. ‘Would you like to begin by telling me your real name? Because it’s not really Mr Mouse, is it?’
Mickey did not speak. He closed and opened his eyes in an expression which said ‘Fuck you!’ He then gave voice to the expression.
The Custody Sergeant remained unperturbed. Danny wanted to slap the prisoner.
‘ The implications of refusing to give your name are that you will not get bail whatever you might have done and you’ll definitely go to court in the morning without passing Go.’
Mickey spat at the Custody Officer.
The problems on the Manchester-bound flight from Tenerife eased when Spencer and Cheryl fell asleep. Cheryl claimed the vacant seat next to her, propped her feet on it, curled up and dropped her head into Spencer’s lap. Peace then reigned for about an hour.
Until Spencer woke up. Cramped, ill-tempered and bursting to go to the toilet.
Cheryl was still sleeping. He poked her roughly and she came to, sitting up groggily, feeling dry and with a head thumping to the beat of the dance music she’d bopped to for most of the previous night.
‘ Jesus,’ she moaned pitifully. ‘God, I feel so rough. I want to be sick again.’
‘ Well, don’t fuckin’ do it on me,’ Spencer warned her unsympathetically. He stood up stiffly, using the headrest of the seat in front to lever himself on to his feet. In the process of so doing, he yanked the seat back several degrees. The man in it, Spencer’s tormentee, turned and glared up at him. On seeing the man’s face, Spencer leaned aggressively forwards, hissing, ‘And as for you, just fuck off, you cunt.’ He flicked the man’s face with his middle finger, very, very hard. An action which prompted an angry outburst.
‘ You little shit!’ the man shouted. He shot to his feet, but before he could spin round and lay a good punch on Spencer, one which had been festering for almost three hours, Spencer got in first. His fist powered into the back on the man’s neck, sending him sprawling across the seat in front of him.
‘ Ha!’ yelled Spencer gleefully.
With a roar, the man lunged for Spencer. The youth got another good punch in before they both grappled into each other’s arms. There then followed a scrap which spilled out on to the aisle, across seats, across other passengers, on to the aircraft floor.
Bedlam ensued. Cabin crew raced to the scene, by which time Spencer had bloodied the man’s nose and knocked a tooth loose.
The crew grabbed both participants and hauled them apart.
But Spencer had flipped. He head-butted a stewardess on the nose, kneed a male steward in the testicles and struck, slapped, punched and scratched anyone else who came near him. Eventually force of numbers overwhelmed him. The staff, assisted by some helpful passengers, began to subdue him — a situation which unfortunately provoked another reaction. This time from Cheryl.
‘ Let go of my boyfriend, you poxy slag!’ she screamed, and launched herself like a wild cougar at the Chief Stewardess; the woman crashed to the floor, stunned. This did not stop Cheryl, in the tight space available, from raining kicks into her curled-up body.
This new attack startled and distracted those who had been restraining Spencer. He broke free with a surge of angry energy, scrambled to his feet and raced headlong down the plane with some wild thought in his mind of bursting on to the flight deck and having a go at flying the plane.
Blocking his way was the effeminately-mannered male steward, holding out his right hand in a number one stop signal: hand raised to shoulder height, arm extended, elbow locked, palm facing out.
Spencer’s expression turned to a scornful snarl as he hurtled towards the petite man. A roar grew in his throat and he adjusted his pace to deliver a flying kick, aimed somewhere around the steward’s midriff.
Had it connected, the force behind it would, at the very least, have broken bones and could possibly have damaged internal organs. However, rather like a balletic bullfighter minus the cape, the steward side-stepped gracefully out of Spencer’s flight path at the last possible moment. As the youth hurtled past him, the steward delivered a well-aimed blow on the side of his head which had the immediate effect of making Spencer think he’d slammed against a brick wall. He crumpled and thudded down into the aisle, a quivering blob.
Within seconds, the steward had skilfully turned Spencer over on to his stomach, wrenched his arms behind his back and secured his wrists with a pair of clear plastic handcuffs which resembled the plastic rings which kept six-packs of beer together.
Halfway down the plane, Cheryl was continuing to cause havoc. She bit, scratched, kicked, clawed and continually broke free from the fingers of would-be captors. She connected several good punches and many of the people around her were bleeding or bruised.
The steward who had successfully subdued Spencer left him pinned down by a colleague — knee jammed hard down between the shoulder-blades — and turned his attention to the wildcat down the aisle.
He approached on the balls of his feet, lightly, with a spring. He cut in at the right moment and seemed only to touch Cheryl on the side of the head, underneath an ear somewhere. Her legs gave way instantly. She wobbled to her knees and before she hit the deck, the steward eased her head down, cushioning the fall. He applied a second pair of handcuffs to her.
It was the first time he had ever used his skills in anger. The first time that fifteen years of Kung-fu training had been transferred into a real-life fight. Modestly, the steward acknowledged the appreciative ripple of applause and few cheers and whistles from the passengers.
Ten minutes ahead of the Tenerife flight into Manchester was a cargo flight from Brussels, bringing in a few tons of electrical equipment. With a total of only three people on board — pilot, co-pilot, navigator — the flight had been uneventful, boring even. It was landing bang on s
chedule, the weather had been fine and the plane was working well. All three crew lived in the South Manchester area and were eager to get home as soon as possible.
They slotted into the approach to Manchester and began their descent. The undercarriage was lowered. On the port side, the wheels dropped and clicked into position correctly. On the starboard side, no undercarriage came out of the wing at all. It refused to drop.
The plane was going to have to land with only one set of undercarriage down.
‘ Manchester,’ the pilot said coolly, ‘we have a problem.’
‘ Shove him back in his cell,’ Danny said stonily to the Custody Sergeant. ‘He’s made no admissions in interview. I’m going to make further enquiries with the victim and see if I can root out any other witnesses.’ It was just after midday. ‘And I’m going to get some lunch first.’
‘ OK.’ The Sergeant addressed the detainee. ‘Anything to say?’ There was no response. The Sergeant indicated to the PC gaoler to take Mr Mickey Mouse away. He began to scribble an entry into the custody record, translating what Danny had said into the appropriate jargon and abbreviation, which she signed.
‘ He’s done himself no favours in interview.’ Danny leaned on the desk. ‘Not least because he won’t admit who he is.’
‘ If it comes to it, we’ll ID him through his prints. He can be as awkward as he wants. We’ve got all the time in the world.’
Danny nodded. ‘I aim to be back by three. Will you try to get him to have a solicitor for the next interview? It would be better for all concerned.’
‘ Will do, Danny.’
Ten minutes later Danny was tucking into a large tuna salad in the dining room, a mug of tea and several slices of white, unhealthy bread. It tasted wonderful. She found she was famished. She rounded off the meal by indulging in an Eccles cake which seemed to add a centimetre to her waistline as she digested it.
Her pager bleeped: The message read, Phone Comms. She reached for the phone. ‘DS Furness. I was paged.’
