Unforgiving

by Nick Oldham

  Jake swivelled, bringing the gun around to the robber by the front window, and said, ‘Drop your weapon or I’ll shoot you.’

  Amazingly, the man responded immediately and dropped both his bag of loot and the gun and raised his hands in submission.

  Jake then spun to the third one, who was standing by Morton’s body.

  ‘You too,’ Jake said. ‘Drop your weapon.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ he yelled back, and brought his shotgun up and fired at Jake, who dropped into a crouch and returned two shots, one of which hit the guy in the shoulder, the other missing completely. The man screamed in shock at being hit, but still attempted to fire again, racking the shotgun.

  Jake fired once more, driving a nine mm slug into the guy’s upper right arm again, spinning him around, flecking blood everywhere. The robber dropped his gun and fled from the shop.

  Jake spun back to the other robber, who was standing there rigid with his arms still raised. He aimed the Glock at his chest and said, ‘You, face down, now, otherwise I’ll shoot.’

  As though electrified, he dropped to his knees, then tipped forwards on to his chest, splaying his arms.

  Jake stood in the middle of the shop floor, turning in a slow dream, seeing the body of the lead armed robber, and Dave Morton’s unmoving body, blood spreading out from underneath both.

  He looked at Anna, sitting there, quivering in terror.

  And in the distance he heard the two-tone horns.

  ELEVEN

  Jake Niven left the interview room at Blackpool police station just after ten p.m. that night, having endured eight hours of ferocious questioning from a DCI and a DI who had been dredged up from Greater Manchester Police by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the official body responsible for investigating police wrongdoings.

  Although Jake had not been formally arrested, he knew that if he had been foolish enough to stand up and try to walk out of the interview, he would have been hauled back by the collar.

  It had been better, then, to play along with it than end up tossed into a cell, which was always a distinct possibility in the circumstances – you shoot someone dead, you get locked up.

  So, after having had his uniform seized for forensic analysis and his gun taken from him (he was informed by the Superintendent Ops that he was hereby suspended from firearms duties), and after having dressed in a forensic suit and elasticated slippers, he went with it, kept his cool despite the tough questioning, answering truthfully, because that was all he had.

  In a nutshell, he and Dave Morton had been sent by comms to an attack alarm, had walked into an armed robbery in progress and had reacted to the situation.

  What complicated matters was that he and Morton were AFOs, and Jake had used his weapon, killing one of the robbers (who, Jake was only to learn later, was Fraser Worthington) and critically wounding another … and, of course, Dave Morton had received fatal gunshot wounds.

  Despite all these complications (and here, Jake knew it would have been much easier all round if neither he nor Morton had been armed and had simply walked into the robbery and then been shot dead by the robbers), Jake was one hundred per cent certain of his position in all this chaos.

  As far as he was concerned, it was cut and dried.

  He had reacted reasonably and with restraint in a horrible scenario that was not of his making and had used only the right amount of force to resolve it. He was expecting questions to be thrown at him that tried to make him out to be a gung-ho firearms officer who thought he was in a Wild West shoot-out. He realized they were questions that had to be asked in order to try to make him crack and admit to it. But it wasn’t true.

  Jake held steady.

  After six hours of pedalling this nonsense and going over and over things, trying to trip him up, the two detectives from GMP suddenly relaxed, broke into smiles, accepted what Jake said was true and eased up on him.

  They did try to make some mileage out of Anna being in the shop, but despite their questioning on that issue they eventually accepted that it was simply a coincidence and Jake didn’t even know why she was there.

  Two hours after that they were as satisfied as they could be and – magnanimously, it seemed – allowed him to leave, but with the less than subtle warning in his ear that other witnesses would be spoken to, and if their stories did not tally with Jake’s recollection of events, he would be dragged back in. He was also warned not to try and make contact with any of these people in the meantime.

  When Jake politely pointed out that might be a tad difficult as one of the witnesses was his wife, the DCI revealed that she had been interviewed already by another officer and her story matched his, so it would be OK to talk to her.

  ‘Right,’ Jake drawled at this news, unaware that Anna had been spoken to. He only knew she had been whisked to hospital for a check-up, then discharged after treatment and that was it. He had heard nothing further.

  ‘And she’s waiting for you out there,’ the DI added vaguely, ‘with a change of clothing and a suitcase,’ he concluded mysteriously.

  Exhausted and dehydrated Jake took his leave of the men and made his way through the largely deserted lower ground floor corridors of the nick until he reached the rear of the public enquiry desk with its entrance on Bonny Street.

  He sidled out from behind the desk into the public foyer, which was unusually empty with the exception of Anna who sat in the far corner with the mysterious suitcase at her feet and a plastic bag crammed with clothing on her lap.

  She stood up uneasily as Jake approached her, looking frail and ill. There were padded dressings on the facial wounds Fraser Worthington had caused by ramming and twisting the harsh end of the shotgun into her skin.

  ‘Anna, babe,’ he said and opened his arms.

  He expected her to fall into them.

  He was wrong.

  Instead she stood there, four feet away from him, making no effort.

  He let his arms fall limp to his sides. ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  She uttered a short, scornful laugh. ‘How do you think?’

  ‘Not great?’ he ventured, trying a half-smile. ‘Anna,’ he began feebly, but found himself unable to find the words to continue.

  ‘Look, Jake … I know this has been horrendous …’ she said, then stopped and looked at the ceiling, on the verge of losing her composure. She pulled herself together. ‘I know this has been awful, and I know they’ll be after your hide because that’s how it is—’

  ‘You pull a gun, you open a door …’

  ‘Something like that … but I know you’ll be OK because you did the right thing, but—’ She raised her left hand and twisted off her wedding and engagement rings and held them out for Jake, who let them fall into the palm of his hand, puzzled. ‘There’s something I can’t get over … I know all this was terrible and I know you were a hero today … but, Jake, you’re not a hero to me any more. You were once …’

  ‘Why were you there in the shop?’

  ‘A whim.’ She shrugged feebly. ‘Just seeing how much they’d bring.’ She gestured to the rings on the palm of his hand. ‘Seeing how much all those years of marriage were worth. As it happens, I didn’t get a price.’

  ‘Anna.’

  She held up a hand quickly. ‘Who is it?’ she asked simply.

  Jake hesitated.

  ‘No bullshit, Jake. Time for bullshit’s well past.’

  ‘Kirsten,’ he whispered.

  Anna inhaled unsteadily and nodded. She knew of her, but had never met her. ‘There’s a change of clothing.’ She pointed to the supermarket carrier, then at the suitcase. ‘And more stuff in there: shaving gear and such like, and more clothes.’

  ‘Anna,’ he said, desperation creeping in.

  ‘No.’ She turned to leave.

  Jake stepped quickly in front of her.

  ‘Don’t,’ she warned him. ‘Do not fucking come home, Jake. There’s enough in the cases for a few days … You can set up with her, can’t
you? Kirsten.’ She almost gagged on the name.

  ‘Anna, I love you.’

  ‘Well you’ve got a funny way of showing it. Now get out of my way, or I’ll knee you in the balls, Jake.’

  His mouth clamped shut. He stepped aside and watched her leave the police station, then sat on one of the plastic chairs in the waiting area.

  It did not seem very long since Henry Christie had been sitting alone in a pub, staring into a Jack Daniel’s, contemplating death.

  On that occasion he had been an up close witness to a man who had taken his own life, taken the decision to blast his own head off right in front of the stunned Henry. And that had been the gruesome foreword to a night of extreme violence resulting in further deaths and ultimately the demise of Robert Fanshaw-Bayley, the chief constable, a man Henry had known over thirty years.

  A night to forget, although Henry knew the ramifications of it could clatter on for years to come.

  Neither could he hope to forget it, either.

  Once again, Henry was sitting in a pub – this time the Tram and Tower on the outskirts of Blackpool on the housing estate where not too long ago he had owned a house and lived with his wife, Kate. The house was now sold, occupied by another family, Kate now dead, but Henry was back at what had once been his local. He was not here because he was living in the past, but because the pub was in spitting distance of the motorway on his route home and he wanted a drink.

  He knew the landlord, Ken, and hadn’t seen him for some time, and because he was feeling shitty he thought he would call in, have a chat, throw a pint of Stella down his throat and a JD chaser.

  Unbeknownst to Henry, Ken had retired and gone to live in France, according to the new landlord, so Henry had no one to talk to. He ordered his drinks, perched on a stool at the far end of the bar and thought about death and how very fucking unpleasant it was to watch the life ebb out of someone, either quickly or not so quickly.

  The man who had blown his brains out in front of Henry had died instantly.

  Wayne Oxford had died not so quickly, and Henry had seen the life leave him as he tried to plug the knife wounds with the heel of his hands and failed miserably. As much as Oxford was a bad man, Henry had not wanted him to die, and he had tried to save him – mainly because he did not want the man who had plunged the little knife repeatedly into Oxford’s chest to become a murderer.

  That man had already suffered enough.

  He had lost his one and only son to a home-made bullet fired indiscriminately by Oxford and was grieving so intensely that all his focus had gone on revenge.

  Had Henry been thirty seconds earlier he would have prevented the attack, but that time-lag meant that Jamie Turner’s father had been able to stab Oxford over twenty times in a frenzy. He was now languishing in a cell on suicide watch, and only a lenient judge would ever set him free.

  Henry had been drenched in blood, getting soaked as he tried to save Oxford in the confines of the dock, watched by the uncaring eyes of the killer and the petrified eyes of the security guard peering through his fingers, crying like a baby.

  Henry only sat back on his haunches when he knew he had done what he could and that to carry on would be pointless.

  He had known anyway, but he’d had to try.

  Then he had looked around at the faces of the audience, which had gathered to peer into the dock as though it was some ghastly spectator sport.

  He had told the court clerk to seal the courtroom and, once sure that the crime scene was protected, that Mr Turner had been led away into custody, and that CSI were on their way, plus a police surgeon, Henry had then walked back to the police station in his blood-sodden clothing. He had gone to his car to retrieve the spare set of clothes he always carried, then went to the shower room and had a long, burning-hot shower, scrubbing the blood out of his short hair, off his skin, from under his fingernails. He spent a long time in the shower before getting into his fresh gear and bagging up the blood-soiled set for forensics.

  On his return to his office he learned about the shooting at the jewellery shop in Lytham, but there was no way he could even think about getting involved in that because of what had happened in court. Rik Dean was given that job.

  He sat in his office for a very long time after that before gathering up the courage to telephone Jamie Turner’s mother, the woman who had called and alerted him that her husband had gone off to court armed with a ceramic knife and murderous intentions.

  Calling her back had been a tough one.

  After that he kept an ear out to the situation at the jeweller’s, but he had to concentrate on what had happened in court which was a ‘fucking mess’, as the Divisional Commander succinctly described it.

  At 9.15 p.m. that night, sitting in his office, trying to get his head around the enormity of it all, a figure had appeared at the door, tapping gently.

  Henry stood up. ‘Boss.’

  It was Bernard Ellison, the acting chief constable, and from the expression on his face, Henry gleaned he was not the bearer of good news …

  Henry downed half of the Stella in one. He could easily have necked the whole pint, but he wanted to savour some of it. He sipped a little of the JD, wanting to save some of that, too. He knew he would be foolish to drink any more on an empty stomach and then drive all the way back to Kendleton.

  ‘Fuck,’ he mouthed despondently. He took out his warrant card and looked at it; the photo on it had been taken almost five years before, when he had been promoted to superintendent. He did not look that much younger, still had an air of weariness about him. ‘Fuck,’ he said again and tossed the laminated card on to the bar top, where it flopped on to a blob of spilled beer.

  Henry glanced along the bar and saw someone he recognized – who, at the same moment, glanced his way. Their eyes met.

  After Anna had gone, Jake sat hunched over in the waiting area for several very long minutes before re-entering the station and getting showered and changed.

  Ten minutes later he was knocking on the door of Kirsten’s flat in the Marton area of Blackpool.

  It took her a very long time to answer, and when she came to the door she looked tired and drawn, her hair pulled tightly back, a cigarette dangling from the fingers of her right hand, which also gripped a wine glass. He knew she had been off-duty that day, but she’d clearly heard about the robbery and Dave Morton.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  She glanced down tiredly at the small suitcase at his feet and rolled her eyes.

  He tried to smile. ‘I take it you know?’

  ‘About Dave, yeah.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’ve nowhere else to go.’ His stomach had already done a nauseating flip at her reaction.

  ‘Jake, your life’s going to be complicated enough, and I don’t want to get drawn into it – not under these circumstances. I was …’ she began, then hesitated.

  ‘Was what?’

  He saw her swallow. ‘I was going to call it quits, anyway … I’m not ready for this or anything like it. And to be honest it’s not really like you were going to leave your wife, was it?’

  ‘So that’s it?’

  She nodded, shrugged helplessly. ‘Guess so.’

  ‘You mentioned love,’ he accused her.

  ‘Nah.’ She stepped back and closed the door softly in his face.

  Five minutes later, purely by chance, Jake walked into the Tram and Tower and spotted Henry Christie propping up the bar.

  ‘May I join you?’ the acting chief constable had asked Henry Christie from his office door.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Henry replied awkwardly. You can go where you want, he thought. It’s all yours. He gestured to the chair on the opposite side of his desk.

  The acting chief sat. Bernard Ellison, a man with just over twenty years’ service, had reached this rank shortly after his forty-first birthday, a very quick rise to the top in police career terms. Henry didn’t know much about him,
other than that he had begun his career in Lancashire, transferred early to West Yorkshire, then had come back into Lancashire as an assistant chief constable and ended up first deputy chief, and then acting chief because of FB’s death. It was more than likely he would become the actual chief, with which Henry had no problem. Ellison seemed a decent enough fellow.

  Henry had not spoken to him since their conversation that Saturday after FB’s funeral, but it wasn’t a surprise to see him here, in Blackpool, after the day’s events. A cop getting shot was always certain to rouse the chief from his office.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ellison said. He sat, gave Henry a smile with compressed lips. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘OK.’ Henry nodded, sitting slowly back down. He sensed some tension from Ellison.

  ‘This shooting this morning – all very messy and tragic … Another police officer doing his job, shot dead by desperate villains. Awful scenario, even if there is a hero in there.’

  ‘Jake Niven.’

  The chief nodded. ‘Although PC Morton was a hero, too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Henry agreed gravely. ‘But Jake Niven did well – and for that his life has changed for the worse. I haven’t had chance to speak to him as yet, but I hear he’s being put through the ringer.’

  ‘Name of the game.’

  Oh, that fucking useless saying, Henry wanted to blurt. Some game. But he nodded: he’d been there, done that, got the badge, survived more or less intact. ‘Have you been to see Dave Morton’s family?’

  ‘Yes, been a very full-on day … Your DCI, Rik Dean? He’s pretty much kept it all together … Good man.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘And your day hasn’t been plain sailing?’

  ‘Nope.’

  The chief paused and licked his lips.

  Henry regarded him, thinking he knew what was coming next … He had that nasty little feeling he was about to be whacked by the proverbial wrecking ball.

  ‘Henry,’ the chief said at last, ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you since we last … chatted.’

  Here it comes. Henry braced himself, but decided to say nothing – but then he had no choice but to speak because, in the way of a true manager, Ellison asked an open question. ‘How do you think you’ve been going on?’