Judgement Call

by Nick Oldham

  Henry and FB shuffled along, neither under any illusion that the residents who spotted them would think they were anything but cops, or at least someone from the authorities. It didn’t help that they had de-bussed from a police van, but at least they’d done it off the estate.

  ‘So who exactly is he?’ Henry asked. ‘Other than his name, he wasn’t adequately described.’

  FB was already puffing, walking not being his favourite mode of travel. ‘He,’ he gasped, ‘is Manchester’s best armed robber over the last ten years. John Longridge, forty-five years old, a string of previous convictions since he was seventeen for pointing guns at people and relieving them of their hard-gotten gains. Been sent down four times and got out just over six months ago, just about the time the robberies on our patch started. That said, he’s more a planner than a doer these days.’

  ‘Is there anything to actually link him to our jobs?’

  ‘Nope … but even if he isn’t involved, he’ll know someone who is.’

  ‘So … just a speculative arrest?’

  FB merely raised his overgrown eyebrows at what was clearly a rhetorical question.

  The two men turned into a high-walled ginnel that led onto the estate and opened out behind the block of flats they were interested in.

  ‘We’re going to do a proper Lancashire job on him,’ FB said bigheadedly. ‘Sweat the fucker. He’ll know something, or we’ll stitch him up with something. Either way, good.’

  Henry groaned mentally, and they emerged from the alley and looked up at the flats. As the directions promised, they were at the back of the block in which John Longridge’s top-floor flat was to be found. The main entrance was at the front and led to a concrete stairwell and a lift that rarely worked.

  FB checked his watch. ‘Five minutes, spot on,’ he said, catching his breath. They looked up and saw that each flat had a small balcony and that from the top it was a good sixty-foot drop to the ground. Longridge’s flat was one of these back ones. ‘They should be knocking just about now.’

  Henry surveyed the block. Built in the 1970s, not much more than ten years ago, it was already showing very obvious signs of decay, crumbling concrete and exposed brickwork where exterior plaster had fallen away as the rain had penetrated shoddy workmanship.

  He was also aware of the almost complete lack of communication here. He and FB were equipped with Lancashire Constabulary radios, but these were limited to three or four channels, none of which synched with the channel used by the police in Salford. Nor did the Lancs radios have the range to be used here in Salford, which meant that he and FB had absolutely no clue whatsoever what was going on at the front or inside the block of flats, or even if this was the correct block, though Henry believed it was.

  This inter-force communication was a big problem, something that annoyed Henry. It was bad enough in-force with a radio system peppered with black spots, but working alongside another force was almost a joke, something that needed some serious strategic thinking.

  ‘Should be knocking,’ FB said again … hopefully.

  ‘But we have no idea if they are, or not,’ Henry said.

  ‘True. Not good, eh?’

  ‘Abysmal.’

  Henry scanned the balconies.

  Suddenly a male figure appeared on the left-hand balcony on the top floor. A young man, skin-headed, dressed in a black zip-up windjammer and black jeans, pulling a black balaclava hood over his head, giving the two cops below only a fleeting glimpse of his face.

  ‘Lift off,’ Henry said.

  The man straddled the balcony rail, grabbed hold of an outer soil pipe and without hesitation acrobatically swung down, his feet dangling in mid-air for a moment before he dropped onto the balcony below. And disappeared.

  Henry and FB stared, open-mouthed. Then Henry said, ‘He’s back.’

  The man had reappeared and carried out the same manoeuvre again, but this time shimmied down the soil pipe before swinging onto the next balcony below on the second floor and went out of sight.

  ‘It’s not Longridge. Too young,’ FB said, guessing from the stature of the figure.

  Once more the man reappeared and this time looked down at Henry and FB below, both of whom gave him a tiny wave.

  ‘The doors must be locked,’ Henry said. ‘I bet people are always appearing on their balconies.’

  Then the man did the same again, with great agility, dropping onto the next balcony, reaching the first floor.

  ‘Last one,’ Henry said. ‘Let’s hope that door’s locked too.’

  Henry got a better look at the man this time. He was thick set and very strong looking, his build reminding him of someone he couldn’t quite place.

  Then, way above on the fourth floor, two of Henry’s colleagues leaned over the rail, looking down, gesticulating and shouting.

  Henry gesticulated back, pointing to the first-floor balcony, just as the escaping man reappeared at the rail, maybe twelve feet above Henry and FB, then as though he hadn’t even seen them, he vaulted over it, crashing to the ground, but allowing his knees to buckle and then to roll like he was landing from a parachute drop and although the air was audibly driven out of his body by the impact he was instantly up and running, heading towards the innards of the estate without a backwards glance.

  For a moment Henry and FB were dumbfounded, half-expecting him to have broken both legs.

  The guy was fast and agile. But Henry was faster.

  He had perhaps five yards on Henry, who powered after him with a roar of, ‘Police stop!’

  Within a couple of seconds, rugby-playing, squash-playing, five-a-side footballer and jogger Henry was on him, reaching out with his fingertips, but the man veered sideways at the last instant. He sprinted across a road and ran into the high-walled ginnel that Henry and FB had just walked through.

  Henry went after him.

  At about the twenty-yard point, the alley went right and if someone running down it didn’t turn, they would crash straight into the brick wall either accidentally or deliberately.

  The man Henry was pursuing crashed into it deliberately and Henry knew why.

  He came to a bone-jarring stop and instantly spun threateningly to face Henry, having realized that only one of the cops was right on his tail and he had managed to lure him into a very dangerous situation.

  One on one.

  In a tight alleyway.

  Suddenly he was armed with a flick knife that appeared from nowhere in his right hand. He lunged at Henry who, still propelled by his express-train momentum, was as good as running onto the blade and, of course, was wearing no form of body protection whatsoever.

  Henry saw the blade flash out, even heard the click as it locked into place, and his whole world slowed right down.

  He knew that if he ran into the man, the blade would be driven up under his ribcage into his heart and shred that internal organ and he would bleed to death very quickly. He knew he had to do something, or die in a Manchester alleyway.

  Somehow he sidestepped and contorted like a bull-fighter as the man thrust the knife up at him. Henry saw it glint by him as he turned ninety degrees and the knife whizzed up, inches away, the man staggering forwards as the blade flashed in mid-air and missed its connection with a human torso.

  Henry found himself side on to the man.

  Instinctively he brought up his elbow and smashed it into the centre of the man’s face, as hard as possible, bone crunching bone.

  The man staggered backwards, but then turned and drove the knife at Henry again.

  Henry contorted again, deflected the blow with his left hand whilst his right went for the man’s throat, the cleft between his thumb and forefinger going straight into the man’s very visible Adam’s apple and forcing him back against the alley wall. Henry’s left hand sought to grip the knife hand which remained just out of reach as he pinned him back.

  He managed to get hold of the thick wrist and smash the hand against the wall, twice. The knife clattered away and Hen
ry held him in place for a moment as if the two of them were freeze-framed in a violent Argentinian tango, virtually forehead to forehead.

  Henry thought he had him.

  But the truth was, Henry wasn’t really a fighter, certainly not in the street sense of the word. He was a grappler, an over-powerer. He could punch, but he wasn’t dirty, and in most of the police-related brawls he’d had, he had beaten people by the speed at which he could flick ’em round, trip ’em up, pin ’em down and get the cuffs on.

  He would never think of head-butting someone. Or kneeing them in the balls.

  But clearly the hooded man who he was now clinging on to did not think along those lines. He was a dirty street brawler.

  Because he kneed Henry so hard in the testicles he was certain that his balls had been smashed up into his lower abdomen with an instant pain so incredible that spread like wildfire up from his groin and seemed to grip his heart. It was an upward blow delivered with a hard, muscular thigh and Henry’s breath whooshed out of him like a ton weight had been dropped on his chest.

  And if that wasn’t enough to make Henry let go, the head butt was.

  The man’s head didn’t even rear back. One moment after the knee in the balls, and in the same movement, the man’s head smacked down onto the bridge of Henry’s nose, blinding him with pain that echoed around his cranium as blood gushed down his nose like a waterfall.

  Henry sagged to his knees, releasing the man and as his head hung and he shook it, spraying blood like a wet dog shaking itself dry, the man side-footed the side of Henry’s face with the sole of his shoe, sending him sprawling.

  The man then straddled him and bent low, hauling him up by his jacket. Henry’s vision swam as he tried to focus on the man’s wild eyes, but all he could see was the red slit of the man’s mouth.

  ‘I’ve already killed one,’ he growled. ‘You’re next, cop.’

  Henry’s mouth had filled with blood. He spat it into the man’s eyes, getting the reaction he wanted: disgust.

  Instinctively, the man threw him away and wiped at his face.

  Henry, making a huge effort, fighting the pain and disorientation, went for the man again, bringing him down by taking his legs from under him, but all the man did was kick Henry away and line himself up to kick him once more.

  ‘Oi!’

  The man’s head jerked up to look beyond Henry, giving the floored cop a glimpse of his neck.

  FB was pounding down the alleyway like a boulder in an avalanche.

  The man tore himself away from Henry, scrambled to his feet and ran, leaving Henry grasping air.

  FB came to a halt behind Henry, gagging for breath, bent over with his hands on his knees. ‘Why’d you let him go?’ he wheezed.

  Riven with pain extending from his balls to his brain, Henry turned and sat on his backside, wiping his face with the bottom of his shirt.

  ‘I don’t know, boss … why did I?’

  John Longridge was successfully arrested at his flat and none of the cops who entered had any idea that another man had shot out of the balcony window and scaled down the block like Spiderman.

  What they did find as Longridge opened the door for them, where he delayed them for a while, was that he had apparently been sitting alone, watching a Clint Eastwood video. It was only when one of the cops spotted two beer glasses and that the balcony door was open that they put these fairly basic clues together and concluded that he had not been alone. That was the point at which a couple of them rushed out onto the balcony and started shouting and pointing down at Henry and FB waiting below, who in turn shouted and pointed back. Longridge was arrested without any undue kerfuffle, coming quietly and smugly, denying that anyone else had been in his flat with him when the police knocked. He was taken back to Rawtenstall in the back of the personnel carrier, surrounded by a contingent of cops.

  But Henry had lost interest. At least for the time being.

  His balls hurt continually, throbbing deeply, and he wasn’t certain if his nose had been broken or not. He had heard and felt a crunch as the man’s forehead had connected, but he knew that noses were peculiar things, mostly gristle. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t but he spent a lot of the journey back to Lancashire with his head tilted back, or hung between his legs, with scrunched-up tissue stuffed into each nostril.

  It was a very uncomfortable journey and he was glad when they pulled into Rawtenstall nick. He just wanted to get home to bed and stuff himself with whisky and paracetamols. The thought of going to hospital never even entered his head.

  Just before six, Longridge was booked into custody and dumped into a cell.

  FB caught up with Henry before he left.

  ‘I’m going to let him stew overnight,’ he said, ‘soften him up a bit. Have a dig at him in the morning.’

  ‘OK,’ Henry said, his voice muffled by the kitchen towel he was holding over his face.

  ‘You going to be OK?’

  Henry nodded. ‘You know we let Jo’s killer go, don’t you?’

  ‘You did, not me. You had hold of him,’ FB pointed out.

  ‘OK, fair enough – I let him go. And he sounded and looked and sounded like the guy who threatened me with the shotgun.’

  FB grinned. ‘We’ll get him. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I think he wants to kill again. We need to catch him sooner rather than later.’

  ‘We will.’ FB sounded confident.

  ‘What do you reckon to Longridge?’

  ‘He’s probably nothing to do with the robberies, but he’ll know who did them. I’m going to make him think he’s going to get stitched up for them – and Jo’s murder – unless he starts blabbing. Do you want to be in on the interviews?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘No, your bloody mother.’

  ‘Yes, boss, I do.’

  ‘Right then – back here at eight tomorrow, cleaned up, ready to rock.’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Who’s me?’

  ‘The bloke you performed a sexual act on in the insurance brokers, and no, I won’t buy my car insurance from them. I’m not susceptible to bribery. Corruption maybe, but not bribery.’

  Kate giggled.

  ‘I take it you like living dangerously?’

  ‘Up to a point … Why do you sound like you’ve got cotton-wool balls stuck up your nose?’

  ‘Because I have. I got nutted today.’

  ‘Oh God, are you all right?’

  ‘Got nutted in more ways than one, actually.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I have a swollen sack,’ Henry admitted.

  Kate laughed this time.

  Henry was using the phone in the report-writing room. He hadn’t yet gone home and was still covered in blood and his testicles hurt like hell. He couldn’t sit comfortably. The security tapes he had taken from the shops that had been robbed were stacked on the table in front of him.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I need to do some work tonight, but we could sort of do it together if you’re up for it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Watching security tapes,’ he posed hopefully. ‘I was wondering … I mean, I’ve got a VCR at the house, but it’s not a great one … so …’

  ‘Can you use my dad’s?’ Is that where you were meandering to?’

  ‘Spot on. Might be a bit boring, though. Hours of tedium.’

  ‘Well, I’ve actually got some good news on that score,’ Kate said. ‘Mum and Dad are out tonight – all night. Going to see a show in Manchester and staying over. I’ve got the house to myself.’

  ‘Party time!’ Henry said gleefully.

  He drove to his place first and got cleaned up there, throwing his T-shirt away, but scrubbing the dried blood off his leather jacket, which was too expensive to chuck. He had a shower, then inspected himself in the shaving mirror. He touched his nose gingerly, then waggled it. It was painful but he didn’t think it was broken, although it was strangely swollen and the bag under his right eye was a nice shade of pur
ple.

  He then held the mirror down to his genitals.

  His balls, too, were swollen and the same shade of purple as his eye. He didn’t dare touch them, they were so delicately and excruciatingly painful. He just hoped there would be no lasting damage.

  Twenty minutes later he arrived at Kate’s with an armful of videotapes, a small bouquet of flowers he’d bought from ASDA, a bottle of white wine and a couple of cans of beer for himself, plus some chocolate: a surfeit of comfort food.

  Kate was aghast at the sight of his face but he warned her to steel herself for when she eventually clapped eyes on his testicles.

  At her insistence and to assuage her piqued curiosity, Henry got that bit of the evening over with in the kitchen. He was reluctant but she made it happen and he stood before her with his jeans halfway down his thighs and his underpants rolled down so she could see the sorry looking state of things.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she uttered, recoiling and bringing her hands up to her face to cover her mirth. ‘They really are the colour of plums.’

  ‘If you think it’s funny, I’m off,’ Henry said, affronted and a little offended.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she gasped breathlessly, trying to contain hysterics. ‘Do you want me to massage them?’

  Henry haughtily, but carefully, pulled his underpants and jeans back up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to do anything. Just be careful around them and, y’know, a bit of sympathy wouldn’t come amiss.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, gaining some self-control. ‘Your face is a proper mess too.’ He allowed her to touch him gently on his cheek, but it was very painful and he drew quickly away with a sharp hiss. ‘Sorry,’ she said. She went onto tiptoe and kissed him on the lips. ‘Tea’s nearly ready.’

  It was an amiable meal. She was a good cook. Afterwards they retired to the living room in which a huge TV and VCR were located. They watched some early evening TV, including an episode of Tales of the Gold Monkey, which was Henry’s favourite. Then, beer and wine in hand, they started to watch the video footage from the shops.