Judgement Call (3 page)

‘I've sat her down in the waiting room,' she told him.

Henry eyed her discreetly, a once-over. ‘How did she seem?'

‘The usual.'

‘She's a regular?'

‘Oh, yeah, seen her a few times … Is it true you flattened Vladimir?' Her gaze played rather obviously over Henry.

‘Uh, sort of.'

‘He's the cock of the town, you know?'

‘Doesn't mean he doesn't get arrested,' Henry said brazenly. ‘Maybe he needs locking up more often.' He grinned at her, sidled past, catching a faint aroma of pleasant perfume on her. At the front desk Henry stood aside to allow the station duty PC to enter the room. He was returning from his refs having visited the staff toilet accessed through the secure doors on the other side of the public foyer. He winked conspiratorially at Henry, folding a
Daily Express
under his arm and refitting his clip-on tie. Henry knew this PC was a bit of a legend and it was one of his horrible habits to leave what he called a ‘baby's arm' in the toilet bowl for the benefit – and horror – of the next user who, invariably (as this loo was a shared sex one), would be one of the young ladies from the admin office. Screams of disgust were regularly heard throughout the station in the mornings and had generated frequent memos from the superintendent, most of which ended up defaced and stuck on the toilet wall.

Henry ducked through the hatch and turned right into the waiting room. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a ferocious red-faced man entering the front door of the station, carrying a dog in his arms. A Jack Russell terrier. Henry recognized the nasty little canine as the one he'd brutally kicked out of the way after it had attacked him whilst chasing Kaminski. The dog saw him, made eye contact, must have recognized him, as it bristled, snarled, baring its teeth, then started yapping. Henry quickly went into the waiting room before the owner jumped to any conclusions.

Miss Lee had taken a seat on which she perched with her hands clasped between her knees, her head drooping, tears streaming down her battered face. She glanced up as Henry came in, and gently wiped her swollen cheek dry with her fingertips. Henry noted that her nails were long, sharp and painted bright red.

‘How are you feeling?' He lowered himself onto the chair on the opposite side of the screwed-down table.

She looked broken-heartedly at him. ‘Is he locked up?'

‘Yes.'

The news had an instant effect on her. ‘Brilliant.' She sat upright. She was still wearing the low-cut T-shirt exposing the upper half, or more, of her breasts. They wobbled whitely in a bra that was clearly a tight size too small for the job. Henry saw a tattoo on the right one: ‘VLAD'. It looked home-inflicted. There was also an evil-looking discoloured love bite on the right side of her neck.

‘Will he go on remand?' she asked hopefully.

Henry pouted. ‘That won't be my decision. I need to gather evidence first, then interview him. Then see.'

‘What do you mean, gather evidence?'

‘A statement from you … photos of your injuries … you'll have to be examined by a police doctor … that sort of thing.'

‘Oooh – I don't know about that.' Her face scrunched up sourly at the thought.

The detective inspector pushed away the prosecution file he'd been checking. He stood up and walked over to the full-length mirror hung discreetly on the back of his office door and gave himself a once-over.

As befitting the man who exercised the most influence in the station – regardless of what the uniformed superintendent and chief inspector might think – he, the highest ranking detective in the valley, was, as always, dressed immaculately. The suit he wore, from Slater's menswear in Manchester, where good deals could be had by savvy detectives, was of a light-grey Italian cut, with wide lapels. His slightly ostentatious tie was fastened with a massive Windsor knot against a dark-blue shirt, his highly polished black winkle-picker shoes had Cuban heels.

He looked the part.

His nostrils flared as he angled his face so that he looked down his nose at his reflection, a haughty smirk of superiority on his face. This was the look he gave most people, the ones he considered underlings: the look of contempt. Of course it would have been better had he been taller. Five-eight was only just high enough for him to join the cops, but the heels on his winkle-pickers did notch him up an extra inch and a half. It would also have been more effective if he wasn't so chubby, weight being a constant battle for him. CID boozing and bad food didn't help matters: the detective's lifestyle. A significant double jowl was also forming but he found that if he jutted his jawline out far enough, he could disguise it … to an extent.

He smiled at himself because he knew that although appearance did matter, what was more important was attitude. You could look good but you needed that something more to carry it off – and this detective inspector had it bursting out all over, all the way up from his heel protectors hammered carefully into his Cuban heels (that clicked arrogantly as he strutted along the tiled corridors of the cop shop), right up to his meticulously trimmed moustache and nasal hairs, and the thick head of hair and long Dickensian sideboards curving down in front of his ears.

He looked the part, acted the part, but above all, and as far as he was concerned, was the real deal.

He shrugged himself into his jacket, pulled down his shirt cuffs to display the platinum cufflinks and stepped out of his office into the corridor.

It was time for DI Robert Fanshaw-Bayley to implement some clout and see what that jumped-up PC was up to. He tried to recall the lad's name but for the moment, couldn't.

‘If you'd be more comfortable speaking to a WPC, I can arrange that,' Henry suggested again.

‘No … like I said, I like you. I don't mind talking to you,' Sally Lee said. ‘You take me seriously … I don't mind you knowing intimate things about me.'

‘OK,' Henry said.

Her bottom lip quivered.

‘No need to cry, Miss Lee. We'll get this sorted.'

‘Thanks. I'm really grateful,' she gulped. She had changed her mood again and now her handkerchief was damp with tear stains. Her mascara had run around her uninjured eye, adding to the mess her face had become, with the swollen, ugly-looking left eye and puffed-out lips that looked like fat earthworms.

‘Could you manage a cup of tea?'

‘That'd be good. Four sugars and milk, please, full fat if you've got it.'

Henry rose and Miss Lee gave him a contorted smile. ‘Look … Sally … don't take this the wrong way, but I need to ask you something straight. Did Vladimir really rape you?'

‘Yeah, course he did, the bastard,' she said, insulted. ‘Last night.'

‘He's done it before, I believe? And assaulted you before?'

Suddenly she wilted visibly, realizing where this might be leading. Henry squinted at her and lowered himself back into the chair.

‘Don't you believe me?'

‘Yes, I do, and I'll do everything I can to help you. That's a promise, but you have to know this is a two-way street.'

‘Meaning?'

Henry chewed his bottom lip, wondering how to phrase the words, but before he could speak she said, ‘I live in fear of him, OK? Y'know? He beats me up, regular like … and rapes me … one day I reckon he'll bloody well kill me.'

‘
Oh, boo-hoo-hoo!
'

Henry and Sally jerked their faces around to the door which had opened so silently neither had noticed, and where DI Fanshaw-Bayley now stood, pretending to rub away tears from his eyes with his knuckles. He had obviously heard and disbelieved every single word of her story. He dropped his hands to his sides and said callously, ‘Boo-bloody-hoo!'

He jabbed a thick finger at Henry. ‘My office.' Then he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to underline the instruction. He looked at Sally Lee. ‘You stay here. I'll be back soon to talk to you, Miss Jugs.'

‘Sit down,' the DI said whilst easing his bulk into his office chair behind his impeccably neat desk. Henry sat on the indicated chair which, he could have sworn, had an inch shaved off each leg.

Fanshaw-Bayley shuffled his backside comfortable, like he was settling into a nest, leaned forwards and interlocked his fingers and gave Henry a tight, unpleasant smile.

‘What's your name again?'

Slightly taken back – nay, offended – Henry said, ‘PC Christie, Henry Christie.' His shock was because not very long before he had assisted the DI with a murder case and the two of them had had a lot of interaction – up to the point at which Henry had been cut adrift.

‘Ahh, that's right. You gave me a chuck-up with that young lass who'd been murdered, didn't you?' the DI confirmed.

‘Yeah, boss.'

The DI's eyes narrowed. ‘Aren't you the one who's just come back from a CID aide secondment in Blackburn … under a cloud?' Henry swallowed drily, said nothing. ‘Something about locking people up you were told not to? Had a big fallout with one of the DIs?'

‘Uh – sort of,' Henry acknowledged, but thought, ‘There's two sides to every story,' only problem being that with the CID being the most powerful, most ‘other sides' were squashed like bugs.

Fanshaw-Bayley nodded knowledgeably. ‘You raised your fist at him, didn't you?' Henry stayed dumb. ‘Bit of a loose cannon, a hot-head by all accounts. Lucky you're still in a job.'

‘Not really,' Henry said.

‘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.'