Judgement Call

by Nick Oldham

  ‘Mm,’ the DI said dubiously. ‘Anyway … what you need to know now, lad, is that the Valley is my patch, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘My patch. My way.’ His eyes locked onto Henry’s. ‘So before we discuss what’s going on here, let’s just cover the rules of the game. If you want to thrive, there’s a few things you need to have sorted up here.’ He tapped the side of his own skull. ‘First off, don’t go thinking that just because I’m not the highest-ranking officer in this station, that I’m not in charge. In all matters of a criminal nature, I am. I,’ he said forcefully, ‘am God and the devil. What I say, goes.’ He paused. Henry blinked. Fanshaw-Bayley took a breath, then said, ‘And don’t you forget it.’

  Henry’s time in Rossendale as a young cop had been one of learning, feeling his way, getting used to dealing with the public and working out which path his career might take. He had embraced everything and not shied away from any aspect of the job, but had gradually come to realize that what he enjoyed doing best, what gave him most pleasure, was locking people up. He had been prolific in terms of arrests, from drunks to thieves, and it had been his reputation and record that had got him a place on Task Force with only three and a half years’ service. TF had been the traditional stepping stone to a career on CID, which was Henry’s ultimate aim.

  But Task Force had been disbanded almost as soon as Henry was on it and he’d found himself on the newly formed Operational Support Unit, OSU, which was a divisionally based resource. It was similar to TF in some ways, but with one big exception. It was controlled and operated at a local level, whereas Task Force had been a force-wide resource, run from headquarters.

  Henry had tried to get a transfer to Blackburn OSU because he thought it offered more scope for eventual career development, but was unsuccessful, though he did manage to get a secondment to the CID in Blackburn, which had ended dismally, with him landing on his backside back in the backwater that was Rossendale.

  Up to then Henry hadn’t had too much interaction with the DI. It had been more by luck than judgement that he’d helped out on the young girl’s murder (the ramifications of which would come to haunt both men much later in their careers, although neither of them could realize that at the time). But now he sat meekly in front of a DI who professed to hardly know him, getting a sinking feeling about the way this man operated. ‘My patch, my way,’ he’d said ominously to Henry, who wondered just what that was supposed to mean when applied to that morning and the arrest of Vladimir Kaminski. Surely Henry had done nothing wrong by arresting an alleged rapist.

  As if reading his thoughts, Fanshaw-Bayley said, ‘Which brings me to this morning’s debacle.’

  ‘Debacle?’

  ‘I think that fairly sums it up.’

  ‘I’m not with you, boss. I’m investigating a rape.’

  ‘And that very word – rape – should always ring warning bells with you.’

  Henry’s uncomfortable body language communicated that he did not understand.

  ‘You don’t go, willy-nilly, locking people up on claims of rape made by hysterical females.’

  ‘I think you’d be hysterical if you’d been raped,’ Henry countered and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  ‘I’ll keep my cool, PC Christie,’ the DI said formally, ‘because that’s the way I am, but don’t you ever talk to me in that tone of voice again, do you understand?’

  Henry swallowed. His throat was really dry now.

  ‘You need to realize that you’re embarking on a fruitless exercise here, because Miss Lee has a history of making allegations and then withdrawing them and we, as police officers, cannot be seen to be wasting our precious time on petty domestic disputes.’

  Henry tugged his collar. ‘So we don’t do anything?’

  ‘Not with people like her, PC Christie. She’s a time-waster.’

  ‘I think she’s telling the truth.’

  ‘PC Christie … she’s a slapper.’

  ‘And?’ Henry wasn’t sure he was believing his ears. ‘Even slappers get raped.’

  ‘They bring it on themselves,’ Fanshaw-Bayley said painfully, as if he was imparting some deep-rooted truth.

  Henry’s fists were now bunched by his sides. He was close to raising them to this DI now, thinking how much this situation mirrored his experience in Blackburn.

  Fanshaw-Bayley glanced down, again seeming to read Henry’s mind. ‘And if you’re thinking of raising them to me, you’d better think again. Now go and get a statement from her saying she is sorry for wasting our time and that she wasn’t in fact raped, and then release Kaminski … Actually, do it the other way around. Release him, then get her statement of retraction.’

  ‘What if she won’t make one?’

  Fanshaw-Bayley looked at Henry as though he was a dim child. ‘Oh, she will. Trust me.’

  TWO

  With Kaminski’s bright blue and white Adidas trainers in his hand, Henry slid the key into the cell door and turned it hard, the mechanism grating rustily as the door unlocked. He pulled the heavy steel door open – outwards – as most cell doors were designed. One that opened inwards could lead to all sorts of problems with a non-compliant prisoner. Opening out gave the incumbent no hiding place.

  This prisoner wasn’t hiding.

  He was sitting on the bench directly opposite the door and Henry could see him clearly. Henry stood on the threshold, framed by the door.

  Kaminski looked coldly at him. ‘What? You come to beat me up?’

  Henry allowed a beat to pass. ‘I wish,’ he said, and even as he spoke he could feel a tremor throughout his body at the rage he was experiencing at the prospect of letting this man walk free. He didn’t care that the prosecution against him might come to nothing. That was the way of the world. But he wanted to subject Kaminski to the process: interview, charge, remand in custody. Get him standing in front of a court. Let him know that the cops meant business, even if subsequently his girlfriend didn’t have the will or courage to see it through. Henry wanted to interview him, throw the allegations at him, take his fingerprints and photograph, and do what he had promised for the girl who, whether or not she was lacking morals, he was certain had been raped. It was probably all part of her existence, but a crusading Henry wanted to show her that it didn’t have to be like that.

  Just to let the smug bastard have his liberty, to be able to do it again – and again – was screwing the young constable up. Tight.

  Kaminski’s face turned to a grin.

  Henry took a step back into the cell corridor, made a sweeping ‘after you’ gesture with his right arm.

  Kaminski got to his feet and walked, bare footed, up to Henry, so they were standing only inches away from each other. Kaminski was slightly shorter, maybe five-eleven, but he was broader, his muscles bigger and more defined from countless hours spent with weights and steroids. Henry realized he had done well to pin him down earlier and he could see why Kaminski was the so-called cock of the town. His physical presence aligned with a violent streak would be enough to intimidate and beat anyone.

  ‘I told you, you can’t keep me.’

  ‘Maybe not this time,’ Henry said unsteadily. ‘But I’ll be back for you. And in the meantime, don’t be surprised if your hard-man reputation gets a big fat dint in it.’

  ‘How you mean?’

  ‘Trust me … people will find out that you’re a rapist and that you beat up women.’

  An expression of sheer ferocity filled Kaminski’s face – one of those expressions Henry had seen often in disaffected young men like Vladimir. Intense, primal hatred. Henry wasn’t fazed and he returned Kaminski a lovely smile. At the same time he imagined head-butting him to put him down. Not that Henry had ever head-butted anyone in his life. It was just a pleasant thought, that was all. He knew he would probably misjudge it anyway and end up breaking his own nose.

  ‘It’s incredible how such things can get out,’ Henry said.

  Kaminski’s body relaxed. ‘No
one would care, anyway.’

  ‘The ladies might,’ Henry said. But he knew the truth. The level of Rossendale society in which Kaminski lived and operated would probably regard him as a hero.

  Henry and Kaminski broke their deadlock glare and turned towards the station sergeant who had just entered the charge office, mug of tea in one hand. ‘I take it he’s en-route?’ the sergeant said of the prisoner.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Henry said, a word that made Kaminski smile victoriously. He handed Kaminski the trainers, pushing the footwear roughly into his chest. The prisoner bent over and slid his feet into them.

  His property was returned to him and he was released. Henry followed him to the back door, glaring at the tattoo etched across the back of his neck, then ensured he left the premises completely, including getting out of the rear yard and car park. Then he went back to the charge office.

  ‘Don’t worry, lad,’ Sergeant Ridgeson said. ‘He’ll come a cropper one day … but just for the moment you’ll have to remember the bigger picture.’

  ‘What do you mean, sarge?’

  ‘Sometimes you need a sprat to catch a marlin, if you get my drift?’

  Henry puckered his brow at the older, much more laid-back man. He reminded Henry of a genial Buddha, all seeing, all knowing, and full of bullshit philosophy. ‘All I know is that he raped his girlfriend and he’s walking away from it, sticking two fingers up at us as he does.’

  Ridgeson sighed heavily. ‘Maybe I’m not explaining myself properly … never mind.’ He gave the impression that Henry was a bit of a lost cause. He tapped his bulbous nose, making it wobble slightly obscenely. ‘Just forget him and concentrate on doing what young men of your age should be concentrating on – chasing tail – and make an older man vicariously very happy.’

  ‘I’m really sorry—’

  Henry had been quickly rehearsing the words he was going to have to say to, he suspected, a rightfully irate Sally Lee when he returned to the waiting room. He’d been concentrating on his little speech, but not to the exclusion of catching the eye, again, of the policewoman who was sitting in the front office by the radio unit. She swivelled slowly on an office chair and tracked his progress across the floor, as he mumbled angrily to himself.

  Their eyes met and at the back of his brain, Henry registered the appraisal and half-smile she gave him.

  But then he was at the door of the waiting room, about to jump in and offer an immediate apology to Sally for allowing her violent rapist boyfriend to walk free, but that it wasn’t his fault, that blah! blah! blah! – but he was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight that greeted him on entering the room. He shut his mouth with a ‘pop’.

  DI Fanshaw-Bayley was leaning across the table, his face only inches away from Sally’s. His left hand supported his weight whilst his right, forefinger pointed, was jabbing at her.

  Sally looked at him horrified and distraught.

  Fanshaw-Bayley stopped abruptly in mid-rant and his head rotated slowly towards Henry, then swivelled back to the young woman who was staring open-mouthed at him. The DI said, probably reinforcing his message, Henry assumed, slowly and quietly now, ‘So you don’t go wasting our time … have you got that?’

  Cowed, she nodded. A tear trickled down her cheek.

  Fanshaw-Bayley stood upright and tugged his jacket straight, his point clearly having been made and understood. To Henry he said, ‘Take this little cow home.’

  Henry drove her in the unmarked Cavalier, turning out of the back yard of Rawtenstall nick, then right onto Bacup Road and up to the traffic lights at the big roundabout that was Queen’s Square. Much to his annoyance he saw Vladimir Kaminski standing at the bus station by the cinema, but Kaminski didn’t clock Henry’s car and seemed to be looking around for someone or something. He hadn’t gone far from the police station and Henry was past him in an instant, glancing into his rear-view mirror as Kaminski sprinted across the road to a car pulling in opposite him.

  By that time Henry was at the lights, which were on green, and his attention was pretty firmly fixed on the blubbering Sally Lee in the passenger seat alongside him, whose vision was blurred with her tears.

  A couple of minutes later, Henry drew up outside her house on the estate.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said weakly.

  ‘It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault,’ she said, her face buried in the palms of her hands. She dragged it out, stretching her tear-stained features and smudging her heavily applied mascara even more.

  ‘Look,’ Henry began, feeling utterly useless.

  ‘No,’ she cut in, stifling a body-wracking sob. ‘You can’t do anything, you can’t change anything, so don’t bother trying … it’s just how it is.’

  ‘Doesn’t have to be,’ Henry insisted.

  ‘Just forget it,’ she said hopelessly. ‘I’m just a nuisance, I know. I just feel so … fucking trapped.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave him?’

  She snorted sarcastically. ‘You have no idea, do you?’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I’ve got a babbie, I’m on benefits, my mum hates me, so I can’t go there … I have literally nowhere to go.’

  ‘Tell him to leave,’ Henry said, thinking it sounded reasonable.

  She looked at him in hysterical disbelief. ‘Ooh, that’s a good idea, I never thought of that.’

  ‘OK,’ he relented, getting the message.

  ‘You live in another world, mate. You come on duty and dip into my life and make judgements and interfere, but you haven’t got a clue in hell what it’s like. I’m fucking trapped,’ she said again. ‘I have no way out.’

  Henry closed his mouth and swallowed, his eyes playing over her realizing she was feisty, very intelligent in a feral way – and, as she said, trapped.

  ‘And it doesn’t help that you think we’re second-, no, third-class citizens without any rights. So go on, bog off, go and catch your burglars and maybe me for shoplifting, cos you’ll do that, won’t you? And guess what, I’ll get hammered again and maybe I’ll call the cops and maybe I won’t. And he’ll rape me again … but let’s just hope he doesn’t kill me, eh? Then the shit would hit the fan, wouldn’t it? Eh?’ She sneered accusingly at the last syllable, opened the car door and without a backward glance stomped off towards her house.

  Henry watched her, feeling empty and ineffective. He knew he was an integral part of the vicious circle of violence in the home. Like the DI had said, it was just too much like hard work where the police were concerned because most of the complaints were subsequently withdrawn. Henry had to ask himself why that was, but he knew the answer – because the cops and the social services and the justice system had allowed it to get that way. Their stance had never been firm enough and victims rarely had the support they needed. He also understood it was way more complicated than that, but he knew one thing for certain. Although he didn’t have a lot of service in the cops – coming up to four years – he had already developed a strong sense of justice and had come to realize how unfairly and indifferently victims and witnesses were treated and not just in relation to domestic violence, it was across the board. He also knew he couldn’t change the world, but perhaps he could just chew away at his own little orbit of it.

  He jumped out of the car. ‘Sally,’ he shouted.

  She had reached her front door. She stopped, turned to watch him approach.

  ‘That retraction statement I just took from you … I’m going to rip it up. I want to come and get a proper one from you.’

  ‘Why, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Uh … not completely certain, haven’t quite figured that one out yet.’

  She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘OK.’

  ‘And, look, don’t be frightened to call in if anything else happens. In fact, you must.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I’ll come back soon and we’ll sit down to get a statement, OK?’

  Another unconvinced shrug.

  His mind churning,
Henry drove away. He headed straight back to the police station, where he made his way up to the DI’s office, the door of which was closed.

  He was glad of this. It gave time for one more run through things. He would have liked to have stormed in, but he reigned in his innate hot-headedness, knowing that such action would be counterproductive. He still wanted to be a detective and upsetting another DI was not the way to go about it because if the CID didn’t like you, you didn’t get in.

  He tapped on the door.

  And waited.

  He’d heard that Fanshaw-Bayley never answered a knock on the door straight away. He was a ‘One, two, three, four, someone’s knocking at the door; five, six, seven, eight, I think I’ll make ’em wait’ kind of boss. So Henry counted and as predicted the ‘Enter’ order came and he stepped inside Fanshaw-Bayley’s den.

  He was sitting at the desk, looking at some paperwork. He did not even glance up, but gestured with a ripple of his fingers for whoever it was to take a seat. He signed the bottom of a report with a flourish of his fancy fountain pen – an affected trademark – which he then laid down with a hint of ceremony, and only then raised his eyes to Henry.

  ‘Thought it would be you.’

  ‘Thought right, didn’t you?’ Henry almost retorted, but didn’t snap. He knew he was on precarious ground, had to tread carefully, so he just nodded affably, remembering how nasty the DI had been earlier.

  ‘I’d just like to know why Kaminski walked, that’s all.’

  ‘The trouble with the uniform branch is that they’re too … touchy-feely … always wanting explanations and reasons … Those days may come, PC Christie, but not today, which is why you should simply accept what I tell you. He walks, end of story.’

  Henry felt his heart rate increase dramatically. Fanshaw-Bayley was beginning to have that effect on him.

  ‘You want to be a jack, don’t you?’

  ‘Y-yes, that’s all I want.’

  ‘Then learn to take orders, lad, and learn something from this. Man up, is what I say.’

  ‘And I learn what?’

  ‘That you have to schmooze and weave.’ The DI began to move in his chair like a huge fat snake being charmed. ‘That sometimes you have to let things go, that it isn’t all black and white … That the world of crime and villains is a murky fucking place and as a detective you occasionally have to chew on your principles and sometimes they’re like swallowing a brick.’