by Nick Oldham
She came in hard through the door, panicked, terrified, desperately pleading for help.
The landlord rushed from behind the bar and swooped down next to her.
The other customers did little to help, just milled around and watched in the detached but amused way in which (mainly) men holding pints of beer tend to when something interesting kicks off that isn’t their business.
Henry held back also. Despite his annoyance at the interruption, he placed his drink down and although his inbuilt urge was to go and help, he hesitated. Maybe this would be something that would pan out without the necessity of his involvement and his declaration of being a cop.
He knew he was kidding himself.
Ultimately, he could never just be an observer when someone needed help. Wasn’t in his blood to look the other way.
But for a moment, he watched.
The landlord helped the woman up on to a chair and knelt in front of her.
She was deeply upset, inhaling/exhaling immense gagging chokes. The blood – and there seemed to be lots of it – didn’t seem to be all hers, though her hands and face were smeared with it.
‘First off, love, are you hurt?’ the landlord asked.
‘N–no.’ She shook her head. ‘Yes, no.’
‘So what’s up? Whose is the blood?’
‘My boyfriend’s … he’s hurt, really hurt.’
‘Has he had an accident?’
‘No, no, he’s been assaulted. Oh, God,’ she cried.
The landlord stood up. ‘Bad?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I think so,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t know … he’s hurt.’
She held up her blood-smeared hands, at which point Henry gave a last longing look at his JD, then pushed himself away from the bar. He walked over and showed his warrant card, but didn’t actually introduce himself.
‘Have you called an ambulance?’ he asked her.
Open-mouthed, she looked up at him, shook her head.
‘Does he need an ambulance?’
‘Yes, yes.’
Henry looked at the landlord and arched his eyebrows. The man got the message instantly and scuttled to the bar, grabbing the phone.
‘So you’re not hurt?’ Henry confirmed.
‘No … not really.’
‘What’s happened? There’s a lot of blood.’
‘Oh, I don’t know … it all got out of hand. I dunno …’
‘You must have some idea.’
‘Somebody hit him with something.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Up at … up … look …’ Suddenly she became wary, as if talking to a cop wasn’t such a good idea. ‘It’s all right … no need for an ambulance … I don’t think it’s that bad … really.’
Henry could see she was coming down from a point of virtual hysteria and was now thinking things through. He had no doubt that his unexpected, untimely appearance was now influencing her thought process. A flashed police ID could sometimes do that – make people think twice.
‘I’m on to the ambulance service now,’ the landlord called from the bar. ‘Need some names and locations.’
Henry looked at the girl – he estimated she probably wasn’t much over twenty, so to him she was a girl. She looked as if she had been dragged backwards through the proverbial hedge, her hair a mess. Her clothing was wet, bedraggled and dirty. Her running make-up and mascara reminded him of a badger.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Does he need the hospital or not? But let me tell you this,’ he said, like a parent to an uncooperative child, ‘even if you say no, you’re going to take me to the scene of this assault. I don’t believe he doesn’t need treatment, because of all this blood. It’s no-win for you, lass.’
She now looked like a cornered badger.
‘Where is he?’ Henry demanded.
‘Britannia Top Farm,’ she admitted.
‘Where’s that?’
She pointed half-heartedly in a vague direction.
Henry turned to the landlord. ‘Britannia Top Farm,’ he said. The landlord nodded. Henry turned back to the girl.
‘I don’t want the police,’ she mumbled, afraid.
‘You got ’em,’ Henry informed her.
Her head dropped into her hands and she began sobbing again, gut-wrenchingly so, her stomach tightening.
‘I’m dead … I’m dead,’ she said.
Henry squatted in front of her, smelled the booze on her breath. ‘What happened?’
She shook her head dismissively. ‘Oh, nowt, nowt. Just a fallout – friends, you know … party … release day,’ she blabbered slightly incoherently.
‘What has your boyfriend been hit with?’
‘A pickaxe.’
‘What?’
‘A pickaxe – right up his arse.’
‘Shit.’ Henry rose to his full height and stepped over to the bar. The landlord had just finished talking to the ambulance service. ‘Will you call the police at Burnley and let them know I’m going to attend this incident?’ He flicked his business card on to the bar. ‘That’s me.’ Then he had a thought. ‘No, scotch that, I’ve got a radio in my car. I’ll use it to tell them directly, if I can get a signal.’ He gave his JD on the counter another look – a longing glance – then went back to the girl, who was just in the process of running out of the pub.
He shook his head, gave a sigh and followed.
She hadn’t got far, just to the middle of the narrow road outside the pub – Back Cowm Lane – where she twizzled around, desperately trying to make up her mind which way to flee.
Henry, who had started running, stopped and watched her indecision with a contemptuous twist on his lips.
She saw him and stopped her twirling, defeated. Her shoulders fell and the rain flashed down her sorry frame.
The downpour seemed to have increased in intensity since Henry had been in the pub and was so powerful and noisy that it was only at the very last moment Henry heard a car approaching from the direction of the moors. His head cricked to the left, but although he could now hear the scream of the engine, getting louder and closer, the rain blanketed his view and made it hard to see the car because its headlights were off.
The car was careering towards her.
His head flicked back to the girl’s forlorn figure in the middle of the road – then back at the car. He realized she was going to get mown down if she stood there in her indecisive daze. He didn’t know if it would be intentional or accidental; he just knew it was going to happen.
Henry’s instincts kicked in instantaneously and everything slowed down for him, even though the reality was it was all happening at breakneck speed, and his mind and body reacted in a series of simultaneous thoughts and movements.
All at the same time he started to run towards the girl and his mouth opened to scream a warning. His brain computed the what-if image of her being smashed by the car, being flicked over the bonnet like a fragile gazelle. And also the thought that if he mistimed this, he would be the one ending up as a broken bundle under the front wheels of the car.
He launched himself at her, propelling himself off his right foot.
The car, dark, scary, a screaming menace, was almost on them. Only feet away, engine ear-splittingly revving. Only a nanosecond away. He saw the girl’s face now. Her mouth open in horror and confusion – and also realization. But she was riveted to her spot and Henry powered into her with a scream of his own and smashed into her just below her waistline.
He sensed the car almost on them.
He felt the girl fold over his shoulder, heard the horrible gasp of air as he drove it out of her lungs; also felt the lightness of her as he picked her up in mid-flight and they both went through the air in a tangle of limbs. And the car shrieked as it sped past, throwing up rainwater from the road. Henry felt the rush of air, heard the engine right there – and then it was gone and he and the girl were a bundle in the gutter.
She gasped and sobbed as they disengaged.
Henry picked h
imself up slowly, wondering what he had hurt.
He had landed on his right knee and elbow, but he seemed to be OK, even if his change of clothing was now looking decidedly dodgy. He lifted her to her feet and she swayed unsteadily.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I … don’t think so.’ She leaned against a parked car. ‘Oh, God … mess.’
‘Understatement,’ Henry said. ‘Was that a friend of yours?’ he asked about the car as he tried to visualize the make. It had all happened so quickly he couldn’t say what it was, which annoyed him because he knew his cars pretty well. He exhaled in a Zen kind of way to try and reduce his palpitations.
She shrugged.
‘You’re not a lot of help in any department, are you?’
‘No,’ she admitted.
‘Right, come on. Get into my car, let’s go up to this farm.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Nor do I particularly, but your boyfriend’s up there with a pickaxe up his bum, he’s bleeding and you came to ask for help. Let’s do what we have to do.’ He moved over to her, placed a hand on her shoulder and ushered her to his car. She acquiesced sullenly but without complaint. Henry moved the towel that was on the driver’s seat over to the passenger seat, sat in and reached across to open the door for her. She slumped in like a sack of bones.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, starting the Audi.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Up on the farm.’
She stayed tight-lipped, and Henry groaned crossly.
Henry’s PR was in the driver’s door shelf. He picked it up, switched it on and called up Burnley comms, thinking again how ridiculous it was that it was so far away.
The radio operator already knew of the reported assault, having been given details by ambulance control. Henry asked if another local officer could be sent too but was told that the nearest uniformed PC was in Rawtenstall and was too busy to attend.
‘Charming,’ Henry said, recognizing another result of cost-cutting – a very big lack of cops on the streets. So he wasn’t surprised by the response and also understood that because it was a Friday evening, most police resources in Rossendale would be concentrated in the larger towns – which, of course, was no reassurance to the good citizens of Whitworth.
‘Where’s the farm?’ Henry asked the girl.
‘Back up the road, then when you get to the reservoir, bear right.’
‘Up past Abel Kirkman’s place?’
She shrugged.
‘Is it drivable all the way?’
She nodded. Henry swung the Audi out and around, then set off past the Cock and Magpie up towards the hills. He knew there were huge quarries up on the moor tops and had once been to a murder at one of them, maybe fifteen years earlier, when he had been a detective sergeant on what was then the Regional Crime Squad.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Annabel … Annabel Larch.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Rochdale.’
‘And why are you over here?’
‘With my boyfriend, I suppose.’
‘Who is?’
‘Johnny Asian.’
Henry logged the unusual name.
He drove carefully up the road, which was smoothly tarmacked at first. Despite the continued downpour he could still make out the smooth triangular blackness that was the surface of Cowm Reservoir down to the left. He recalled vaguely that years ago there was a story going around that the water in the lake had been polluted in such a way it could never be used domestically, but didn’t know if that was a myth or not. He did know that the reservoir was currently a popular location for water sports activities.
‘Here – go right here,’ Annabel directed him, and he did turn on to the track that led to Kirkman’s farm. This was Back Lane, a narrow track with dry stone walls on either side. He was already regretting coming back up. It had been a bumpy ride earlier in the gloom and rain of the afternoon, but now, as evening started to turn to real night time, and the rain continued unabated, he knew this was not a route for an Audi coupé. His sump scraped over a large rock and made him wince.
This was Land Rover territory.
After a couple of hundred metres there was a sharp bend and, as Henry negotiated this, he came face to face with a Range Rover blocking the track, its headlights on full beam and several figures silhouetted in the beams.
Two men were all Henry could make out at first.
Then he saw a third man lying between them on the lane. The two standing up were savagely beating him with either pickaxe handles, baseball bats or thick sticks. The appearance of Henry’s vehicle did not seem to deter the attack.
Annabel screamed.
Henry braked, grabbed his radio and leapt out of the Audi, marching towards the scene.
‘Oi! Police,’ he shouted. The words stopped the men, who turned to face him, and for the first time he saw they were wearing baseball caps backwards. Even though they were bathed in light he couldn’t see their faces clearly, as his eyes were squinting against the headlights of the Range Rover. ‘Drop the sticks,’ he ordered them.
‘Up yours, pal,’ one said.
Henry saw the quick exchange of looks between them, then they came at him, wielding the bats.
Henry was not a great fighter. He mostly relied on sweet-talking people into submission, or if that failed, overpowering them as opposed to beating them up. The fast approach of these two guys, sticks raised, made him realize that the talking stage had already been passed, that he was unlikely to overpower them and that, against his better judgement, the best thing he could do now was attack rather than defend.
They loped menacingly towards him.
Dark shapes, silhouettes, unrecognizable.
Henry ducked, and ran at the one on his right, dropping his shoulder low, trying to bend under the fast swinging stick that was arcing around to his head. He felt the whoosh of fresh air just above the back of his skull as he tucked in and drove his shoulder hard into the man’s sternum like a rugby player (which he had once been), almost lifting the man off his feet because he was much lighter than Henry had expected. He lifted and drove him back against the front grille of the Range Rover – Henry’s second rugby tackle of the evening.
The bat flew out of the man’s grasp as his spine arched painfully backwards over the bonnet of the four by four.
The man fought hard, trying to clatter Henry around the head, but Henry kept hunched low into him, punched him on the lower belly, whilst at the same time trying to keep some sort of tab on the other guy. But he had moved out of Henry’s line of sight – a worry. That knowledge made Henry haul the man he had tackled to one side, turn and face number two, wherever he was.
But though Henry had moved quickly, he really wasn’t quick enough.
The second guy’s bat was already coming around at Henry’s head.
Henry dropped, raised his right shoulder and angled his body just enough to protect himself from a head blow, but with tremendous force the bat still connected with Henry’s upper left arm, just below the shoulder joint.
He emitted a squeal as pain coursed through him.
The man struck again, knocking him sideways across the front of the Range Rover. Henry’s whole body jerked with the blow. He raised his hands protectively, but the man managed to smash the next blow into his rib cage, creasing him agonizingly. He slumped down to his hands and knees.
Somewhere he heard the girl scream something.
The first man now came back at him, delivering a flying kick into his side, sending him rolling on the hard, stony ground.
He curled up, expecting more, but heard a, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’
Annabel screamed again. Henry saw one of the men grab and drag her across to the Range Rover, then heard a door slam, the engine rev, a gear crunch into place. The car lurched backwards, swerving side to side along the constricted
lane, not quite hitting the walls.
Henry rose to one knee, hugging himself as he watched the car go, the headlights jumping. Then he got to his feet and stumbled over to the figure who had been the victim of the attackers. He lay there unmoving but conscious, the rain pelting into his face.
Henry stood upright and only then realized why the men had run away: the flashing blue lights snaking up towards them from further down the lane.
They had probably mistaken them for the approach of a police car, but Henry knew otherwise.
He had never been so glad to see an ambulance.
SIX
Henry Christie was thankful that the baseball bat wielded by the attacker – because he was now sure that was what it had been, not a stick or a pickaxe handle – had only connected with the biceps of his left arm and the left side of his rib cage. A few years before he had been winged by a shotgun blast in his left shoulder, an injury that could have been serious but had only resulted in flesh and muscle wounds around the joint. After an operation to pick out the pellets the shoulder had healed well.
After that he had taken a bullet in his right shoulder – just to balance things up – when a very irate woman who had just murdered her father and uncle had shot him at almost point-blank range. That had been a much more serious injury than the shotgun wound and, though it was technically healed, it still caused him a lot of pain and discomfort and, to a degree, a loss of movement in that joint.
He was therefore very protective of his right shoulder, the left slightly less so.
If he had been whacked on the right, he knew he would have been in triple the agony. As it was, he was in agony, but manageably so.
He raised himself tentatively on the hospital bed and looked at the nurse, giving her his signature lopsided grin, the look he’d once believed could melt the heart and willpower of any pretty female in his sights. Now it was just a lazy expression that meant he couldn’t be bothered to smile properly. In fact, he hardly noticed just how pretty she was.
