Influence

by Andrew Snadden

  There was no way Conan was going to let him reload to finish off him or his downed colleagues. As Jennings hurriedly to grab another full magazine clip, Conan spun on the door frame so that he and his Benelli shotgun were pointing into the room and fired one shot from it; it was all that was needed. The solid Hatton slug exploded out from the barrel of the shot gun, leaving in its wake a mixture of flame and smoke as it hurtled rapidly towards its target.

  The solid metal slug slammed into Jennings right arm with a force akin to a freight train, dumping all of its kinetic energy into him and sending a huge chunk of bloodied flesh into the air. Jennings fell to the floor letting out a banshee like scream of pain. Conan charged into the room, stepping over the strewn out bodies of his colleagues towards Jennings who was prostrate behind the kitchen table crying and clutching the shredded flesh that was his right arm. Conan squeezed the handle of shotgun with his right hand at the same time ripping off his helmet and mask with his left. This little bastard had just shot his friends, and maybe killed them, he needed to pay.

  Collins, after hearing the sound of automatic gunfire followed by screams, yelled at Jones to locate and support Marriot as he and Palmer continued to cover the four prostrate and terrified terrorists in the front room. Jones nodded and then moved through the downstairs as quickly as possible whilst still scanning for danger, if he missed a threat and was taken out he wouldn't be able to help anyone. He arrived outside the kitchen and was met by what looked like a hundred bullet holes in the wall opposite and screams from within.

  Jones stacked up against the door frame, took a deep breath and rapidly entered the kitchen. As his eyes scanned for threats he saw the sight of Marriot and Moore covered in blood and lying perfectly still six feet into the room. Remaining as professional as he could, Jones continued to assess the rest of the room in less than two seconds before his focus fixed onto Conan who was towering over a whimpering Jennings.

  Seeing that Conan had Jennings covered, he peered down at his fallen colleagues once again. Unable to deal with the shock of the sight that greeted him, he vomited inside his respirator. Struggling to breath and see, he ripped of his mask and fell to his knees as he sucked in a massive lungful of air before composing himself; it was time to man up and help them.

  “Check them! Please, please check them!” Conan said with a trembling voice that soon switched to pure venom as Jones pulled Marriot onto his back and away from the horrifying pool of blood that he had been face down in. Moore started to moan as he became semi-conscious again, however he would have to wait as Marriots silence indicated a bigger problem. Jones reached forward and touched the Sergeant's pale, clammy face; it was frozen. If the amount of blood on the floor wasn't categoric enough, his pallor and lack of pulse was, Marriot was beyond help. Only feet away Moore began to open his eyes so Jones swiftly moved across to him. He could see that blood was trickling from his overalls by his right shoulder. Jones tore into the material and applied a field dressing directly over the gaping wound, feeling relieved that it had been a clean entry-exit type of wound. With the bleeding stemmed, he carried out a search of Moore's body for further injuries. Amazingly there weren't any, only the remnants of the disintegrated extra ceramic chest plate that had saved his life.

  Jones looked up and told Conan that Moore and Marriot needed to be medically evacuated out of the scene as soon as possible. Conan took a moment before enquiring how bad Marriot was. Jones looked down at the floor fighting the urge to break down with emotion.

  “Fuck! I think he's dead Conan” he replied in shock.

  Conan started to breath heavily with anger as his finger moved towards the trigger, prompting Jennings to plead with Conan not to shoot him. Jones yelled at Jennings to shut up, knowing full well Conan was about ready to explode.

  “Don't do it Conan, don't give him the easy way out” Jones said calmly, hoping and praying that Conan wouldn't do anything crazy.

  “This little prick should die for what he's done. Prison's too good for this piece of terrorist shit” Conan replied through his tears.

  “You're wrong mate, prison will be hell for him, he's a British terrorist, in a British prison, he'll be brutalised daily for being a traitor.” Jones stated looking directly at Jennings who looked back at him with an expression of disbelief on his face at what the officer had just said.

  Conan lowered his shotgun and Jones let out a sigh of relief. A solid slug from a Benelli would have blown Jennings' head clean off making it obvious that it had been an execution; hardly something that would be seen as proportionate.

  Jennings realising that he was now safe, grew a pair of balls and started shouting loudly with audacity about how Conan had tried to kill him. Jones interrupted him and explained that he'd not seen anything and to keep his mouth shut, otherwise he would put the word out in the prison community that he liked spending his spare time on his knees, servicing naked men. Jennings laid back down without saying another word. Conan may have wrestled with the idea of killing him, but he had still made sure that his size twelve boot was crushing Jennings arm pit to stem the flow of blood, paradoxically saving his life whilst he weighed up whether to execute him or not.

  Jones picked up his radio transmitter and requested urgent support and an immediate medical evacuation for Marriot, Moore and Jennings. Unfortunately though, Marriot's body would be left in situ for the Paramedics to officially confirm he was dead (something which police officers could not do, as obvious as it may have been) before it became part of the crime scene.

  Simpson responded over the radio that the upstairs was clear and that he would be sending Allen and Evans down to assist while he supported O'Keeffe's team. Jones copied his update, followed by Murray who sheepishly called over air that he and the Gold commander required an urgent situation report.

  O'Keeffe from his knelt down position next to Mahood, looked up at Foster whilst maintaining constant eye contact with him, and slowly updated Murray that Mahood had been shot and was believed to be dead. Downstairs, Jones glanced up at the ceiling and took a deep breath, before levelling his head and updating that Moore and Jennings were in a serious condition and needed urgent medical attention.

  Then came the hardest update he would ever have to give.

  “Sgt Marriot's.................”

  Snakes and Ladders

  Chapter Five

  DI Anaura sat behind his desk in the Vice unit office in the City's Central District Police Station. He looked down at his stylish Storm watch, and not for the first time that week he saw that it had gone past eight o'clock in the evening, three hours after the time he should have finished. Anaura rubbed his closely cropped hair while tilting his head to one side, his wife Laura was not going to be happy with him; again.

  Detective Inspector Peter Anaura, warrant number A001, was an unusual sight in the City's Police Force, not to mention the UK in general because of his unique appearance. Anaura, the product of a mixed marriage between his mother a British doctor, and his father a New Zealand Maori, was very distinguishable from those around him, something that had been a positive from time to time with the opposite sex.

  In nineteen sixty seven, Anuara's mother, Kate, had emigrated to New Zealand to practise as a physician after finishing university and feeling as though she had missed out on the opportunity to travel after spending seven years qualifying as a doctor in Southampton, Hampshire. Kate had seen the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, see another country and use her hard earned Ph.D. to finance it. After arriving in the country it hadn't taken long for her to become fascinated with the Maori people and their culture after treating a number of the interesting ethnic group in her hospital in Wellington.

  And on one weekend during a busy double shift in the Emergency room, she was met by the sight of a tall, good looking and colossal Maori named Mani Anaura. Mani had been playing rugby for a local team when his eyebrow had been torn by a stray boot stud from the opposition during a 'Forwards' maul. It would have been a
stretch to call it love at first sight but it was certainly lust at first sight; love came later. After a year of dating the couple married in a Christian church followed by a traditional Maori ceremony called a Karakea and moved into an apartment in the centre of Wellington.

  Peter Anaura was born on 13th August nineteen seventy one, a year after his parents union. And with what seemed to be a running trend in Peter's family, he was big, weighing in at over ten pounds, a fact that his mother reminded him of whenever he complained of an ache or pain. In her eyes whatever injury he had sustained, it could never have been as bad as what she had gone through giving birth to him. The approach meant that he would only ever moan if he was really hurt which was when his mother would rush to care for him. The family lived in New Zealand for a further twelve years before moving to Portsmouth, Hampshire in England when his maternal grandfather’s health had deteriorated. During the years in New Zealand, Peter had taken an interest in Rugby and Maori culture whilst never forgetting his Western roots, something his father had instilled in him. In his father's words he 'wasn't Maori or British; he was both.

  After his arrival in Portsmouth in nineteen eighty three, Anaura enrolled at the prestigious Portsmouth Grammar School which was not far from the city's harbour. Although he was excited at the prospect of attending school in his mother's homeland, it didn't take long before his 'differences' were noticed. Looking more Maori than white quickly drew the negative attention of the older school bullies who felt the need to terrorise the new foreign boy. However, Peter was not your average sized twelve year old and gave the misguided, older pupils a good kicking, almost getting himself expelled in the process. Luckily for him, a P.E teacher saw potential in this five foot seven twelve year old and got him involved with the school's rugby team which diverted the head teacher’s wrath away. Four years later and in college, Anaura, who was now more disciplined, had decided that he wanted to follow in his maternal grandfather's footsteps by becoming a copper. The decision was welcomed by his parents who were concerned that his sole obsession with becoming an England Rugby player was a little unrealistic and at the time, not for pay!

  Fast forward twenty four years, and two years shy of that in the Police Service, Anaura was now a forty two year old, six foot three man, with a smile as big as his frame. Although being in his early forties, Anaura had a fresh, youthful and lightly tanned complexion that gave the impression he was ten years younger than he really was. And after years of playing Rugby and fitness training, he had a developed powerful body to go with it. These combined attributes were not wasted on the fairer sex with women becoming dizzy in his presence. Whether it was his female colleagues or women in the street, everyone noticed him, something which made his wife of 13 years, Laura, proud but equally jealous at the same time.

  Other women's desires aside, what made Laura the most jealous was his relationship with the 'job', a mistress that her and their two children, Anya and William had to battle with to get their fair share of his attention. Yet in difference to this perceived devotion to his job, Anaura's family was everything to him, and had Laura ever asked him to quit or be posted to a quieter department, he would have done it a heartbeat. Laura being who she was though, would never ask him do that.

  On this night like so many others before, with most of his staff gone, Anaura sat behind his office desk in his usual tie-less, brightly coloured shirt and a black suit. This favoured tie-less look of Anaura's had managed to piss his superiors off on a number of occasions as it was seen as an unprofessional look. In spite of this he would continue to rock this look to wind up the ambitious rank ladder climbing snakes in command (as he referred to them) because it was one of his favourite hobbies. In Anaura's opinion a lot of the command ranked officers had joined the job to become political desk jockeys and not true coppers. It was an unreasonable opinion but in some people’s case, it was very true.

  Tie or no tie, Annaura believed that he looked smarter, stylish and more approachable than they ever could with their ties and uniforms. Although it wasn't just the lack of a tie that wound them up the most, it was the way that he would listen to their orders, and then do his own thing anyway in spite. Command may have agreed that he had some great ideas, but they would never have let him know that. The constant battle between him and 'them' was a pointless waste of time but it was far too much fun to stop.

  Anaura was just finishing up reading through some statements concerning a spate of drug related robberies, when he heard the voice of DC Jennifer Valera, an extremely attractive detective of Portuguese descent, coming from the doorway of his office.

  “Goodnight boss” she purred, emphasising the 'night' part of the sentence in an attempt to make Anaura's brain think of nocturnal related 'activities'.

  In reply he pulled his genuine trademark smile and said bye in a warm deep voice that had a hint of his homelands accent which no one could ever place. Valera reciprocated with a cheeky smile and slowly turned around in the door way so that the shape of her pert backside could be seen through her pencil skirt prior to her leaving the Vice unit's office. Whenever she would carry out this 'ritual', Anaura would always laugh to himself, yeah she was stunning and had an amazing body but there was only one woman for him, and besides it all seemed like a big act with Valera. There was definitely more to her than she let on, a hidden vulnerability.

  Anaura's phone began to ring on the desk. Engrossed in his work he attempted to grab the phone without looking at it, something he soon abandoned when he failed to retrieve it after two attempts. Turning to answer it, he saw the picture of Laura with the kids on his desk. He suddenly remembered; he hadn't called her to say he was running late.

  “Peter!?” Laura said, making a statement as opposed to posing a question.

  “I'm sorry gorgeous, you know........I lost track of time” he replied, his cheeks becoming flushed with the knowledge that she wasn't happy with him.

  Somehow despite his large stature and toughness, Laura had always managed to reduce Peter to a mere school boy whenever she gave him a look and said his name with an authoritative tone. It was this effect and power over him that was part of his attraction to her, he knew full well she had him wrapped around her little finger but there was no place he would have rather been. Laura was his dream girl, seven years younger than him with a stunningly beautiful face, lovely deep brunette hair and a toned but curvy figure. She was a firecracker behind closed doors but exuded an elegant and classy persona to the world that instantly drew people to her. A successful business woman, Laura had quit her high flying job in London to make sure that at least one parent was at home, making inference towards him when she suggested it. If there was one thing that was plainly obvious in their relationship, it was that she was unequivocally the boss; although in a nice way.

  Laura had fallen in love very quickly after they had met but did have one reservation about him, and that was that if they ever married, her surname would rhyme with her first name, something she said would sound ridiculous. However in the name of love, she accepted it.

  “Peter, I suggest you get your sexy, tanned arse home right now before I throw the lovely curry I made you in the bin!” She replied sternly to his usual feeble explanation for his lateness.

  “Yesssss sir! Ha ha, yeah see you soon, Bye” Anaura replied with a smile on his face. He hadn't eaten since the afternoon and his wife's amazing cooking would help soothe the hunger pangs he had been having for the past few hours; he had to get home. After hanging up, he wasted no time in tidying his desk and then switching his computer off. Just as he was about to stand up to put his suit jacket on, a figure appeared in his doorway.

  “Wife trouble Peter? Oh and I see the mystery of your disappearing ties continues!?” Peter looked up feeling a sense of repulsion welling up inside him. He knew the owner of the voice before he even looked up.

  There arrogantly leaning up against the door frame stood Chief Superintendent Robert Drayson, the former head of Serious and Organised Crime Unit
, aka SOCU, before he had stepped aside in preparation of a promotion to Assistant Chief. Drayson was a man in his early fifties, six foot' two tall with short sandy hair who liked to wear expensive Ozwold Boateng tailored suits most of the time, something which Anaura envied with his love of stylish suits and wondered how he afforded them. But that wasn't what made him dislike the chief superintendent.

  Drayson was one of the career ladder climbing snakes that Anaura despised, but the worst type, the type that still thought he as one of the boys, one of the team despite stepping on those below him to get ahead. In Anaura's eyes he was anything but one of the team. He didn't trust Drayson and although he couldn't put his finger on it, there was something wrong about him. Anaura was rarely wrong when it came to people, it wasn't quite a sixth sense, he just seemed to be able to sense what a person was about moments after meeting them and whether they were good or bad, or more importantly liars. However although he didn't trust Drayson, he wasn't as easy to read. The thing that pissed him off most with Drayson though, was his jack the lad style character and the way that he would front up to him whenever the two were standing in front of each other, in an attempt to display how hard he was. It didn't impress or intimidate Anaura one bit and although Drayson may have been a similar height, he was of a slim build and would have been knocked silly by him. Anaura may have had the warmest personality but underneath it he was one tough bastard who just didn't feel the need, unlike Drayson, to show it. If Anaura was ever asked what his opinion of Drayson was, the answer would be short and sweet “He's an arsehole!”.

  “Yeah, the same as usual I guess” Anuara answered.

  “Are you talking about the wife or the fucking tie Peter?” Drayson replied in an obnoxious tone.

  “Both Sir. Anyway, I'm late so I better get home to the old 'trouble and strife'. Always a pleasure to see you Sir” quipped Anaura with a sarcastic tone, making fun of Drayson's fake cockney affectations before pushing past him to make good his escape. For someone who was from Eastings, the chief superintendent sounded affected and more like someone born is the east end of London. Just as Anaura was reaching the exit, he heard Drayson call out to him.