The Nothing Job

by Nick Oldham

  Downie recognized him first and jerked a middle finger at him. Scartarelli had a tense expression on his face.

  Henry gave them a little tinkle of his fingers, turned away and went back to the office. He picked up the phone and dialled through to the custody office next door.

  ‘Chris, it’s Henry …’

  ‘Boss,’ the custody officer said before Henry could speak, ‘can you make your way back … something odd’s just happened.’

  ‘Uh – yeah … shouldn’t the escorts still be over here with the prisoners?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Yeah, well that’s what’s odd. The escort’s turned up.’

  Henry frowned. ‘Be there in a sec.’

  He hung up and hurried back down the corridor, being buzzed back into the custody office by Eccles. There he immediately saw two uniformed security guards with ‘SecSer’ emblems on their tunics.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘These guys are from SecSer. They’ve come for the morning remand prisoners. Seems a bit of a cock-up. They say they’ve never heard of DellHouse Security and that SecSer still have the contract. What do I do now?’

  Henry stood stock still for a moment, pondering this, mulching it slowly.

  ‘There’s no sign of the escorts in the court holding area,’ Henry said, jerking his thumb in the direction.

  ‘Eh? They should be there.’ Eccles screwed up his nose.

  ‘Or maybe they just snuck off for a brew?’ Henry suggested. ‘Or maybe not …’ A feeling of dread coursed through him. He got his mobile phone out of his pocket and as he tabbed through it for a number, he crossed to the court-corridor door and said, ‘Let me back through, Chris,’ as his hand wrapped around the handle.

  ‘What shall we do?’ one of the SecSer guards asked.

  ‘Sit tight,’ Henry said, yanking the door open on the buzz and entering the corridor with his phone pressed to his ear. ‘Bill, it’s Henry … Get down to the cells … Bill? Fuck!’ The signal had disappeared as Henry entered the corridor, but he hoped that the brief, urgent message had got through before the signal let him down. He moved up a gear and trotted down the corridor.

  Ahead of him he heard two dull thuds close together, then two more, then one more … and he knew what had made the sounds.

  Gunfire.

  His trot became a compelling spurt and he flew through the door into the holding area.

  Now his dull-dumb brain had got into gear and his sharp eyes took in everything: the fact that the shutter door to the prison bus bay was now three-quarters open, that a black Range Rover with smoked windows had reversed into the bay; that the door of cell number three was open. But above all that a masked man was backing out through the cell door, holding a semi-automatic pistol of some sort and that a sliver of smoke rose from the muzzle of the gun.

  The guy was wearing overalls and trainers and for a fleeting second did not notice Henry as the detective pirouetted through the door. But that didn’t matter, because there was a second man, similarly dressed, standing by the rear of the Range Rover who did see Henry and uttered a shouted warning. That man, too, was armed with a pistol and it was aimed at Henry.

  Henry caught a scream in his throat as he dived to one side and rolled towards the toilets as two bullets whooshed past him, embedding themselves just above his head in the wall.

  The man coming out of the cell pivoted in his direction, and suddenly Henry was very open and unprotected, nothing between him and this gunman except for a few metres of open space. As the guy swivelled, he went into a low crouch and swung his arms around and pointed the sharp end of the isosceles triangle formed by his rigid arms at Henry – meaning Henry was in the sights of the gun.

  But Henry still had some momentum, and scrabbling like a demented sprinter, he rolled on to one knee and threw himself at the toilet door, crashing through it into the gents and rolling towards a cubicle just a second before the man fired.

  Henry scrambled down to the far end of the lavatory whilst at the same time trying to get his mobile from his jacket pocket. At the far wall, he regained his feet and stepped into the last cubicle, turning and peering out to see if he had been followed and was about to be executed. He was in no doubt that was the fate which had just befallen one, or both, of the prisoners in their cell.

  He knew for definite that Scartarelli was now a dead man.

  He was more than all thumbs as he tried to redial the last number he’d called. Holding the phone clamped to his ear, Henry waited for the gunman to appear and dispatch him, tremors of fear pulsating through him.

  But all he heard was an engine revving, the screech of tyres on the shiny concrete surface of the bus bay.

  They’d gone.

  Henry stepped out of the cubicle.

  Bill answered the phone.

  ‘Bill – two, possibly three gunmen escaping from the holding cells under the courts. Black Range Rover, fogged windows, 54 reg – that’s all I know – get it circulated now! Possible deaths down here. Get the helicopter up, too.’

  Henry was speaking as he walked out of the toilet, stopping just beyond the door. There was the smell of cordite in the air. A wisp of exhaust smoke rose in the loading bay, the only evidence that a vehicle had just been there, together with the tyre marks on the surface.

  Nostrils flaring, heart pounding, he stepped slowly towards the open cell door, knowing he’d come across an assassination squad conducting business. He was right.

  Scartarelli was dead. He had taken four of the bullets, by the looks of him. Two to the chest – bang-bang – right over the heart, two in the head as compactly aimed as the other two. Both had entered the front of his skull and removed the back of it, splattering it all over the cell wall behind him. He was slumped on the bench seat, having slithered sideways to his left, leaving a trail of blood down the wall.

  The last bullet had been fired into Anthony Downie, just one into the side of his head. He was as dead as Scartarelli.

  Recalling the brief conversation Henry had had with Scartarelli on the plane in Cyprus, Henry mumbled, ‘Oh yes, mate, it definitely was you they were after.’

  He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, inhaled a steadying breath and stepped out of the crime scene as the corridor door opened as Donaldson, Georgia and Bill burst through. Their morning-time sexual haze was now very much wiped off their faces – or so Henry thought with satisfaction.

  SEVENTEEN

  Henry had to fight the instinct, which had occasionally served him well, to commandeer a cop car and go out in hot pursuit of the Range Rover. He knew he would be more useful and effective staying put at the court and the police station. There was a hot crime scene to protect and preserve and a manhunt to coordinate. On top of that there was a double murder enquiry to get up and running – but first things first.

  Trusting Donaldson to protect the murder scene, Henry dashed back to the custody office and phoned the Force Incident Manager in the comms room at HQ. He filled her in succinctly with the current situation and after that left the hunt for the Range Rover down to her to sort. Then he snaffled a PR from Sergeant Eccles in custody, promising to return it. He was on his way back to the crime scene when he heard a local patrol call up.

  ‘Charlie Five – urgent.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ the comms operator responded.

  ‘Behind a Black Range Rover, 54 registered, just turned into Worden Park, vehicle now accelerating away from me …’

  ‘Roger that … Other patrols to acknowledge and make to the area.’

  This time, as Henry surged through the door into the holding-cell area, he decided to let his instinct direct him. He ran in shouting, ‘Bill – you stay here, guard the scene, do the necessary. Georgia, you stay with him … Karl,’ Henry held up the PR, ‘fancy a run out in your Jeep? Suspect vehicle spotted nearby.’

  Instantly Donaldson said, ‘You got it.’ He was a true man of action and didn’t need a second invitation.

  ‘Follow me.’

&n
bsp; Henry ran out through the shutter door and headed towards the front of the police station where Donaldson had parked up. Donaldson loped easily behind him, pointing his remote locking fob at the car.

  ‘Heading towards Worden Hall,’ the officer, call sign Charlie Five, said coolly over the PR, referring to the fact that the vehicle he was following was now in Worden Park and heading in the direction of Worden Hall in the centre of the park.

  ‘I’ll bet they have a change of transport lined up in there,’ Henry guessed as he slid into the front passenger seat next to Donaldson, who started the massive four-litre engine and pulled out of his parking spot. ‘DCI Christie to comms – please reiterate – extreme caution. These men are armed and extremely dangerous.’ He turned to Donaldson and pointed at the big Tesco supermarket over the road. ‘Right across the car park,’ he directed the American, then sat back and added sourly, ‘A bit like World War Two … us Brits do all the hard work, then you lot come along and get the glory.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Georgia Papakostas?’

  Donaldson began to laugh.

  ‘Across here and right across the town square,’ Henry said, directing Donaldson across the supermarket car park and instead of leaving by the usual route by road, he told him to drive across the flowerbeds, then over a tiny cobbled square to join Worden Lane, which led to the park. Henry knew where he was going. Not because he’d been a cop in these parts, but because many of the driving courses he’d attended had used these roads regularly because of their close proximity to headquarters. The area was often rife with cops on driving courses.

  The Jeep scoured deep tracks into lawns and flowerbeds and bounced over the tiny square on to Worden Lane as instructed.

  ‘Straight on,’ Henry said, holding on for dear life.

  Donaldson rammed his foot on to the gas pedal, things becoming much more urgent as Charlie Five screamed, ‘Shots fired, shots fired …’

  ‘Faster,’ Henry said, seeing the walls of the park approaching.

  Charlie Five was a patrol crewed by one cop, Rob Howard, a rather grizzled PC who, though counting his pay days to retirement, was still as keen as mustard and still loved the buzz of coppering and loved seeing villains behind bars.

  He was one of only two mobile-response officers on duty in Leyland that morning. If he was honest, it had been a dull early shift and he was anticipating buying a fried breakfast from the Tesco restaurant across the road from the station, his usual early shift treat.

  In all honesty, Howard had been tootling, certainly not breaking any pots that morning. Very few jobs had come in and as the circulation about the Range Rover came up and the serious incident at the court, his whole demeanour changed. He had been lazily heading back to Tesco and when the wanted vehicle’s details came over the radio he was, in old-fashioned police parlance, heading in an easterly direction along Langdale Road towards Worden Park. He reached the junction with Worden Lane, the road which skims the perimeter of the park, and stopping there just saw the tail end of a vehicle turn into the park gates some two hundred metres to his right. To be honest he wasn’t sure if it was a Range Rover, but it was definitely an off-roader of some sort.

  He screwed his Astra patrol car to the gates and plunged into the park, seeing that the vehicle at the far end of the car park was definitely a Range Rover – as described in the radio circulation.

  His right foot hit the accelerator and his finger hit the transmission button on his PR.

  The Range Rover flew out of the car park on to the narrow road snaking through the park and into the small car park behind the Arts and Craft Centre attached to the old hall. PC Howard was only seconds behind it as the 4x4 skidded to a spectacular, muck-chucking halt and two masked men leapt out, brandishing weapons in the PC’s direction.

  Howard, no coward, knew he was in deep trouble, as he had got too close in his enthusiasm. The two men jogged menacingly towards him, no hurry, and raised their guns at him. Howard slammed the gearbox into reverse, not the easiest gear to find quickly on that particular Astra, and slewed backwards away from them, screaming into his PR as two bullets thudded into the radiator.

  ‘Shots fired, shots fired,’ the PC’s voice squawked distortedly over the PR, the sound of his engine revving in the background.

  Donaldson swerved in through the park gates, urged on by the voice and that of Henry Christie yelling in his ears.

  ‘Go, go, go,’ he said dramatically, even though a little voice in his skull told him how stupid that sounded, despite the circumstances.

  A woman walking her dog had to leap out of the way, dragging her poor pooch, almost strangling the little beast.

  ‘Straight on,’ Henry said.

  The Jeep bounced across the tarmac and ahead of them they could see the Astra reversing, but not the gunmen who were hidden by the hedge surrounding the Arts Centre car park.

  The Astra reversed wildly back down the road, but then the PC lost it and ran it off the edge of the road into soft grass, the wheels spinning.

  ‘There!’ Henry said. He pointed across the wide meadow towards the far end of the car park as the Range Rover emerged on to the grass and sped towards the park exit. Donaldson grimly yanked the steering wheel down and bounced the Jeep off the road on to the grass, going diagonally for the Range Rover, even though it was some two hundred metres ahead of them.

  Donaldson’s pride and joy was now in its element, but so was the Range Rover, which tore across the open space, bounced back on to the park road and raced towards the park gates.

  Henry gave the commentary over the radio: ‘Range Rover now on the road leading to the park exit. Three on board, I think, all males. For your information I am following in a green Jeep, a private vehicle …’ Henry held tight as Donaldson’s 4x4 shot up the banking from the grass and on to the road. Even though he was strapped in, he bounced high and smacked his head on the roof, and was thrown hard against the door. Undeterred, Henry continued into the radio, ‘Vehicle heading at speed towards Worden Lane.’ His voice was level and controlled over the air.

  The Jeep screamed its way through the automatic gear box.

  Ahead of them the Range Rover reached the park exit, skidded out on to the main road and went right. Henry relayed this, then turned to Donaldson. ‘Won’t this bus go any faster?’

  The American shot him a warning glance.

  ‘Big car, little dick,’ Henry said spitefully.

  ‘Up yours,’ Donaldson said as his car passed through the gates and emerged on to the main road – and was broadsided by a large articulated milk lorry coming in the opposite direction.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘That was lucky.’

  ‘Luck is comparative.’

  ‘We got out alive, unscathed – a miracle.’

  ‘Admittedly that was lucky.’ Henry could still feel the impact, the unbelievably loud crash and crunch, the tearing of metal. He could see the Jeep being spun and lifted across the road into the front garden opposite. The airbags deploying. The thoughts made him go cold. ‘The other side of the coin is that – actually, the other sides of the coin are – your precious American piece of shit is a write-off and your reckless driving allowed three major villains to escape.’

  ‘You sound pissed at me, but do I detect an undercurrent of hostility, even deeper than the facade?’

  ‘Fancy talkin’ for a Yank,’ Henry said. ‘Maybe your brain got mashed after all.’

  ‘Hey!’ Donaldson stopped and spun Henry around. They were at the front of Leyland police station having returned from a four-hour sojourn at the infirmary at Preston for a check-up following the crash. Bill Robbins had collected them and was walking behind them as they bickered their way towards the station. ‘You got somethin’ to say, say it, pal!’

  Henry glowered at him and shook his arm free. ‘I’m annoyed because villains got away – OK? And once again, no doubt, I’ve had the proverbial investigative rug pulled away from under me. Duh!’

  ‘OK, fair
enough.’

  Henry shook his head, annoyed.

  ‘I thought you were pissed at me for more fundamental, personal reasons.’

  He shook his head again and walked in through the front revolving doors of the station to find the small foyer crammed full of the media, a hum of anticipation reverberating around the room. A double murder at the Magistrates’ Court. Juicy stuff. Great headlines and a story that would probably run for weeks.

  Henry stopped, not expecting the sea of humanity, some might say dregs of the earth, but knew immediately that such a serious, violent incident would be a magnet for all sections of the communication trade. There were probably about thirty people crammed in there, but through them all he caught sight of Georgia sitting squashed on a chair in one corner. She did not spot him or Donaldson immediately. Henry eased his way towards her.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

  She jumped to her feet, hugged him, then hugged Donaldson longer and said, ‘How are you, how are you?’

  ‘To say we came face to face with the business end of a milk truck, we’re doing fine – a remarkable story of survival. If either of us had been going any faster …’ Henry left the words unsaid. ‘As it is, I’ve got a bruised arm and he’s got a thick head. But that doesn’t answer my question – what are you doing out here?’

  ‘I was asked to leave by Chief Superintendent Anger.’

  Henry left Donaldson and Georgia in the foyer, the American chivalrously saying he would stay and keep her company and that he had some arranging to do re his car and its recovery and replacement anyway.

  Henry went through into the guts of the station and up the steps to the second floor, where he knew all the activity would be located in terms of the investigation. He found that the canteen had been transformed into a Major Incident Room as if by magic. It was hardly recognizable as the room he’d had a coffee in earlier.

  It was buzzing with activity, many people having been brought in quickly at short notice. Henry recognized some old regulars, those detectives who were brought in for investigation after investigation. Those who knew their roles backwards and could be relied upon time after time to do the business.