Unforgiving

by Nick Oldham

  Alison’s face creased, registering her distaste at the name. ‘You still think …?’ she asked.

  ‘I still think,’ Henry confirmed. ‘I just can’t prove.’

  For a moment, Jake Niven wasn’t sure where he was. He was awake, but his eyes were closed, and he was uncomfortable. He wasn’t in his bed, for sure. Then he groaned and remembered. He was on the settee in the living room.

  Still not having opened his eyes, he explored his bodily sensations, starting with the horrible thing that was his mouth. Dried up with alcohol and having slept with it sagging open, it tasted disgusting.

  Next his head, which ached dully and persistently and poundingly.

  His eyes stayed tightly shut.

  ‘You didn’t come back up.’

  Then his eyes shot open and he sat up, seeing Anna sitting in the armchair across the room, still in her night gear, with her dressing gown tucked primly underneath her legs.

  Jake gave a short laugh. ‘No … Must’ve fallen asleep … Downed a couple of shots of Tullamore Dew, then must’ve nodded off. Sorry, love.’ He rubbed his face, knuckled his gritty eyes, feeling them crunch and squelch.

  ‘You must be tired,’ Anna said.

  Her tone of voice made him frown warily. ‘Yeah, busy couple of days. What time is it?’

  ‘Just after seven. Are you in today?’

  ‘Yeah, back to normal … In at eight.’

  She rocked slightly as she regarded him through tired eyes.

  For the first time Jake noticed she had a piece of paper on her lap, A4 size. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’ Her voice was croaky.

  ‘What’s that?’ He propped himself up and nodded at the paper.

  ‘It’s an extract from a custody record, a photocopy.’

  ‘A custody record?’

  Anna nodded.

  Jake’s brain was still muzzy from the alcohol and sleep. ‘Why have you got a custody record?’

  Her eyes dropped to it. ‘It’s for a man called Wayne Oxford, and you arrested him in the early hours of yesterday morning.’

  Jake’s mouth dried up even more, but not with alcohol. This time with fear.

  ‘I know about custody records, Jake,’ Anna said. ‘Used to be a cop, remember? Dim, distant past.’

  He said nothing, just stared at her.

  ‘The time of arrest is logged, as is the time of arrival at the nick, and then anything else that happens to the prisoner and who deals with him or her.’ She lifted the paper and peered at it. ‘Says you arrested Oxford at 2.45 a.m., then arrived at the police station ten minutes later.’ She nodded and said, ‘Sounds reasonable. You presented him to the custody officer and then …’ Anna made a show of looking at the sheet and pretending she was not finding what she was looking for. ‘And then, you don’t have anything else to do with him, Jake, because a prisoner reception team was waiting for him, and once he was booked into the system, that was you done and dusted, and—’

  ‘Whoa,’ Jake cut in.

  ‘No – whoa yourself, Jake,’ Anna said. ‘Even allowing for a quick statement to be written and a debrief and a journey across to HQ, there is no fucking way on this earth you had to come home after eight o’clock in the morning, five hours after the arrest, smelling of fucking bubble bath.’

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ he demanded, sitting up and realizing. ‘That bloody bitch Jackie Powers … She’ll be in the shit for this …! Data protection.’

  ‘Don’t you even mention her name,’ Anna said ferociously, ‘because if you threaten her with anything—’ she swept her hand down like a knife – ‘I’ll divorce you.’ A tear dribbled down her cheek.

  ‘Anna!’

  She crumpled up the custody record into a tight ball and threw it at him, making him duck instinctively, then stood up.

  ‘I had lots to do after the arrest,’ he defended himself weakly. ‘Statements …’

  ‘Rubbish! You did nowt,’ she said with contempt. With one last look, she turned and left the living room, closing the door softly, and went upstairs.

  Jake slumped back on to the settee, covering his face with his hands.

  Henry’s first port of call that morning was to the incident room he had set up to deal with the disappearance of Laura Marshall, which, following his quick discovery of her police hat and the broken glass (later identified as the same type of glass used for the side windows of Vauxhall Astras) in the rear car-park of the Swan’s Neck, had become a murder investigation.

  Initially, he had thrown a lot of resources at the incident but had got nowhere fast. Spencer Bartle came under the spotlight, but he was a slippery bastard, and although Henry was convinced he was the prime suspect, he’d got nowhere with it. Knowing someone had committed an offence was one thing; proving it was very much different.

  The result was that although resources – and that meant detectives – were still working hard on the case, it was definitely stalling. Henry was beginning to think he would be handing an unsolved case over to someone else when he retired – something he did not like the thought of at all. It didn’t help matters that the victim was a serving police officer.

  The incident room was at Lancaster police station, and once Henry had managed to squeeze his car into a tiny space in the tiny car park at the station, he made his way to the room which, not to his surprise, was deserted. It was just after seven a.m., and the first arrivals were not due until eight a.m.

  The room was on the fourth floor looking out across the cityscape towards Lancaster Castle and the River Lune. Henry wandered slowly around, then closely studied the flip-chart papers blue-tacked to the walls which gave the timeline of the night’s events.

  The call for assistance at the Swan’s Neck from the landlord, McCready, had come in at 11.02 p.m. Comms had called up Laura at 11.04 p.m., and she had responded immediately. Although McCready had phoned back at 11.10 p.m. to say the troublemaker had left the pub, because of the volume of incoming calls to the comms room, it had taken the operator another five minutes to call up Laura to give her the update, so that was 11.15 p.m., but she had not acknowledged that first call. It was assumed that by then she was well on her way to the pub and was probably in a bad reception area on the country roads.

  The operator established contact when Laura actually arrived at the pub at 11.21 p.m. when she said she was going to check it out anyway, which is what any good cop would have done. By which time Spencer Bartle had left the pub some eleven minutes earlier.

  Laura had gone into the pub and spoken to McCready, and according to him, she had spent about five minutes in the place before leaving, which would have taken the time to about 11.25 p.m.

  Neither she, nor her police car had ever been seen since.

  Henry looked at the timeline, his fists bunching angrily at the thought that it was many hours later before any of her colleagues had noticed she was missing. ‘Duty of care,’ Henry said under his breath, knowing the force would suffer greatly for this terrible lapse.

  Spencer Bartle had been interviewed. Henry had actually arrested him, but he’d had an alibi. A local taxi firm had picked him up from outside the Swan’s Neck at 11.15 p.m. – a taxi he had pre-booked; something the taxi firm confirmed – and driven him to Lancaster. The taxi driver and Bartle said they both remembered passing a police car coming in the opposite direction.

  Henry had seen some CCTV footage of Spencer Bartle in Lancaster city centre, though none of it was before 12.30 a.m., just into the following morning. Bartle claimed, and it was supported by the taxi driver, that he had been dropped off in Lancaster at about 11.35 p.m., which meant he could not have had any dealings with Laura.

  Bartle was – and remained – Henry’s chief suspect, and although the detective tried to keep an open mind about it, he still fancied him for whatever had happened to Laura.

  He sighed with frustration and thumped his forehead with the heel of his right hand, determined this one would not beat him.
/>   After a short briefing with the detectives at Lancaster, Henry next travelled to the custody office at Blackpool, where he linked up with Rik Dean, who was overseeing the processing of Wayne Oxford before his appearance at Blackpool Magistrates’ Court later that day. The police were going to apply for a ‘three day line-down’, which meant they could keep him in custody for up to that length of time and interview him further. There was an awful lot to talk to him about. Then he could be put before magistrates again to be remanded in custody to await trial.

  Henry parked on the lower level car park and walked through to the custody office, which was, as ever, heaving with prisoners and cops; it was a real sausage machine with over 12,000 prisoners processed every year. He entered the custody reception area and looked at the whiteboard on the wall behind the sergeant’s desk and saw that every cell was occupied, some doubled-up. Henry shook his head at the organized chaos that was the custody machine: a place where people who worked in it rarely had any respite and often went home at the end of a shift with a mushed brain and red-raw zombie eyes. Burn-out was quick and cruel in this environment unless you were able to mentally distance yourself from the bedlam.

  Four prisoners waited sullenly in the holding cage, another was at the desk being booked in, whilst another, further along the desk, was being charged with something, and yet another was being led away to the cells and another being taken to an interview room.

  ‘Crikey,’ Henry said, then spotted Rik Dean emerging from the cell corridor looking pretty fresh and up for it. ‘How are we doing?’ Henry asked him.

  ‘OK.’ Rik had a Manila file in his hand. ‘He’s due in court later, and now he’s shitting himself about Fraser Worthington.’

  ‘In what respect?’

  ‘In the respect that he now regrets even mentioning his name and is terrified of reprisals.’

  Henry shrugged. ‘He’ll be OK for the next three days.’

  ‘Oh yeah – but after that, Risley,’ Rik said, naming the remand centre to which Oxford would be taken pending further court appearances. ‘Not the safest environment in the world. Something we need to look at.’

  ‘I’m sure we can fix up solitary,’ Henry said. ‘Have you mentioned anything to him about last night’s drive-by?’

  ‘No, but he’s been asking if anything happened.’

  ‘Don’t tell him the truth. It could be something we might use … Not sure how, yet. Has he been charged?’

  ‘No. I’m just preparing the paperwork. CPS has signed off the charges, so we’re ready to go.’

  Rik charged Wayne Oxford with the murder of Jamie Turner.

  Henry observed, keeping his eyes on Oxford, noting any body language. He had been brought up from his cell, listless and tired, but trying to give a tough guy, don’t give a shit impression. Henry saw him flinch as Rik read out the words from the charge sheet. Just a minor tic, but it was there. Not many crims truly don’t get bothered by it: one of those life-defining moments when the implications of an action, the taking of someone else’s life, hits them in the lower gut and the prospect of not seeing true daylight, other than through a wire mesh or bars, for a lot of years sinks in.

  Rik invited Oxford to respond to the charge, but he declined.

  The custody sergeant, overseeing the ritual like a priest, then told Oxford he was being denied bail (as all prisoners charged with murder were) and would be appearing at court later when the remand in custody to police cells would be applied for.

  ‘We’ll take him back to his cell,’ Henry offered.

  The sergeant eyed him warily, aware that detectives were not averse to pulling a fast one by carrying out illicit interviews in cell corridors or in the cell itself, both of which were definite no-nos. Henry stared him out, and the sergeant relented but said, ‘No funny business.’

  Henry tried to look affronted, but held back from saying, ‘Moi?’

  With Oxford between them, he and Rik steered him back to his cell, letting him go ahead of them into the concrete box.

  ‘How long will I get?’ Oxford asked.

  ‘For murder? It’s always a life sentence,’ Henry informed him.

  ‘What’s that mean, though?’

  ‘Hard to say. Play your cards right, maybe ten.’

  ‘Ten years? Out in five, then?’

  ‘No – twenty years, out in ten,’ Henry said, correcting his assumption.

  He slumped on to the bench miserably. ‘If I live that long.’

  ‘You will,’ Henry promised him.

  ‘I ratted on Fraser,’ he said dully.

  ‘We’ll ensure you’re safe,’ Henry promised. ‘And he doesn’t know you did.’

  ‘What happened last night?’

  ‘He didn’t turn up,’ Henry lied. ‘The guns are with us now, anyway.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll be OK, then.’ Oxford looked up. ‘Can I see Sophie’s body?’

  ‘No, not yet, if ever.’

  Oxford lurched across the cell and vomited into the steel toilet.

  That morning Jake was back in Division, carrying out his normal duties as an authorized firearms officer (AFO) on the Armed Response Vehicle. He worked from Blackpool police station, covering most of the Fylde region. As with all AFOs he spent every sixth week as part of a firearms team which trained and was on standby at HQ for any major incidents or prearranged operations, but now he was back on his day job. That meant patrolling and responding to routine policing incidents like any other cop, but with the addition of a Glock strapped to his waist and a safe in the Ford Galaxy containing two MP5 machine pistols, a shotgun, stun grenades and other equipment. Another team was at HQ, but in the event of any firearms incident occurring, Jake and whoever his partner was would be the first responders.

  He entered the station at 7.45 a.m., his mood bleak from his waking encounter with Anna who, amazingly, he had managed to avoid since their argument. He’d had a long shower, then dallied in the en-suite as he heard her banging around the bedroom, and when he got downstairs she was already gone. It was far too early for her work, and he assumed she had got out of the house to avoid him. The kids were up, getting ready for school, but had not emerged from their bedrooms then. Jake had to be in work for eight a.m., so he’d left them to make their own breakfasts and get to school under their own steam.

  He didn’t even say goodbye to them because he did not have the courage to look either of them in the eye.

  When he walked into the locker room, he found Dave Morton was already there, kitting up. His partner for the day.

  They eyed each other cautiously, then Jake said, ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘After being nearly shot to death? Surprised you actually give a shit.’

  ‘That’s unfair. You know I do.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Morton said peevishly.

  Jake busied himself with getting ready to turn out, and then they both checked in with the patrol sergeant, who logged them on via the computerized duty-states and updated them on the lack of progress regarding the shooting incident: the biker with the gun had vanished without trace.

  After this, Jake told Morton he was going to grab a quick brew from the canteen and asked if Morton wanted to join him.

  ‘Hardly … Be in the car in ten minutes.’

  Jake nodded and made his way to the lift, which took him up to the canteen. He joined the early breakfast queue whilst churning over the muddle that was his thoughts and trying to contain the feeling of dread in his guts.

  He was more afraid now than he ever was in his life, but the question that kept rising to the surface, one he could not push down, was: who had provided Anna with a copy of the custody record? His instinct was to make that person suffer.

  The slow moving queue shuffled along.

  He’d blamed Jackie Powers, but Dave Morton was an obvious suspect too, now he came to think of it. Morton’s feelings about Jake and Kirsten were obvious, but would he do something so sneaky and underhand, something that would potentially wreck a marriage
? Certainly, he was furious with Jake, but was it just the green-eyed monster at work, because Jake was sleeping with a much younger woman, the same one who had snubbed his advances? Surely, he wouldn’t tell Anna, knowing it would destroy her.

  The way Morton was coming across now made Jake think he just might, even though he had known Anna for many years.

  Nah, surely not, Jake assured himself.

  ‘Filter coffee to take out, please,’ Jake asked when he reached the till. He thanked the lady, took his Styrofoam cup and was moving across to the milk and sugar counter when he heard a familiar chuckle from the far end of the dining room. Stirring in the milk and fitting the lid he walked between the tables until he came to where Jackie Powers was sitting with her back to him, together with a couple of other ladies who worked in the comms room.

  Jake stood alongside her, silent, brooding.

  The other two ladies glanced at him, and Jackie turned her head to follow their eyeline. Her face broke into a grin. ‘Hi, Jake.’

  He accused her instantly. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

  To Jake, the look on her face was one of feigned innocence. ‘What was me?’

  ‘The custody record.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean, my love.’

  ‘Don’t you “my love” me,’ Jake said softly with an undercurrent. ‘Marriage wrecker.’

  Jackie drew back at the allegation. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she reiterated slowly.

  The other two women watched the exchange agog, their mouths actually open.

  ‘I think you do, Jackie.’ Jake bent forwards threateningly, unable to prevent himself. In a concurrent thought he knew he was acting out of character, yet could not stop this idiotic display. ‘If my marriage is screwed up over your do-good meddling, I’ll see you suffer.’

  Jackie drew away from him.

  ‘So fuck you, Jackie – a girl’s best friend.’ He raised his eyebrows and nodded pointedly at her, then stalked out of the canteen, his heart whamming, feeling as though he was enclosed by a swirling, out of focus mess and sure that every single eyeball in the room was fixated on him.

  He began to walk down the stairs, but on the first dog-leg twist, Jackie Powers caught up to him and spun him round. His coffee flipped out of his hand over the banister and hurtled down the gap in the steps, crashing five floors down to ground level, where it burst.