By the time he was putting his arms into his leather jacket Henry had calmed down somewhat and was glad to be going home. Maybe some of the dubious words of wisdom from the great Burt Norman from last night were not far off the mark: do your tour, go home, forget about the job. There had spoken a man who felt he had been shafted by the organisation and now Henry was on the verge of agreeing with him because had Henry not also been shafted? The problem with Henry was that he loved the job. He had loved being a detective. And, if the truth were known, if FB had offered him an office cleaning job on a murder team he would have grasped it with both hands and kissed his feet in gratitude.
You sad bastard, he told himself.
Burt Norman, who had arrived for work at 5.40 a.m. that Tuesday morning, was out of the office, making his presence known over the radio, constantly giving orders to the troops. Sometimes Henry wished he was a bit more like that, with an assertive, almost aggressive management style. The truth was he felt uncomfortable dishing out instructions like a bloody general, leading from the front all the time. When it was necessary, yes. But overall he preferred a more laid-back approach, leaving the shouting and bawling to people who revelled in it. Like FB.
He put the man out of his mind.
The walk back to the flat on his tired, aching legs did not have great appeal. He squinted out of a window at the sky. The day was bright and clear, which lifted his spirits a little.
In his head he planned the next half-hour in fine detaiclass="underline" Stroll home via the newsagent’s, pick up a copy of the Daily Telegraph. Back to the flat, avoiding Fiona if at all possible. He craved silence. Into the shower to soap and shampoo off the night and get that fresh over-all feeling. Into the kitchen wrapped in his dressing gown. Tea and toast. Skim the headlines. Two Nurofen, then approach the bed. Slide in between the cool sheets by nine and then go for seven uninterrupted hours sleep and pray that Fiona would be too busy neutering dogs and spaying cats to have time to pay any attention to her overactive libido.
Henry knew he could not have responded, even if the flesh had been willing. For the first time in his life he did not want sex, he wanted sleep. The realisation startled him.
His plans were unfolding as he walked through the station and out through the back doors of the huge covered garage and he suddenly remembered that he had not yet got a conference pass. Must do that tonight, he thought.
The place was buzzing with cops and their vehicles, all for the conference.
Henry’s butterfly-like musings — the product of a tired mind — turned briefly to his ex-wife Kate and his two daughters, Jenny and Leanne. He longed to be going back to the marital home, with a doting wife who would once have done anything for him, gone anywhere with him, and the chaos of the two girls who adored him and would not give him a minute’s peace, demanded cash with menaces, drove him up the wall and gave him the most wonderful cuddles. .
Stop! Cease those unproductive thoughts. Live with the fact you have fucked up your life good and proper. There was no going back now. No restarts, either, he thought. Kate was all cried out of second chances and the business with Danielle Furness had effectively ensured that.
Which spun his thoughts to Danny — but all he could see was the last moments of her life, the twist of her head as her neck had broken and she had died with his unborn child inside her.
Stop! he told himself again. Move on! He put his hands over his ears and screamed silently. Stop this fucking nonsense.
‘Boss — can I give you a lift?’
At first the words did not register with Henry. He was still in that Tenerife bedroom watching Danny’s attacker, one arm around her neck, the other smothering her face. The man had broken her neck expertly in one flowing motion. He had probably done it a hundred times before, practising on prisoners held in Soviet prisons. One loud crack. Instant death. Danny was the last person that man ever killed. Henry had seen to that as he fired a bullet into the man’s throat. But it had not been a sweet revenge, just revenge. No consolation for the loss of the woman he had grown to love.
‘Henry?’
He stopped, snapped out of his depressing reverie and pulled his hands away from his temples. He shook his head and looked at the car crawling along by his side. The driver’s window was down, and Dermot Byrne’s face looked out. ‘Are you all right?’ There was real concern in his voice.
‘Yeah, course, just lost in thought.’
‘Want a lift?’
He didn’t really, but it would have felt churlish to refuse. He climbed into the back because PC John Taylor was in the front passenger seat, still looking very shaken and stirred.
‘Are you two only just finishing?’ Henry asked, realising he would have known the answer to that if he had been a better manager.
‘Just helped John to finish off his statement and stayed with him while a couple of detectives had a chat to him,’ Byrne said.
Now that was a good manager speaking, Henry thought. Byrne was a caring sergeant who would probably go far.
‘John’s going off sick, by the way,’ Byrne informed Henry over his shoulder.
The constable was hunched down in his seat, head bowed, hands clasped between his thighs as though he was freezing cold, utterly dejected and miserable.
‘It’s been a bit too much for you, hasn’t it, John?’ Byrne said sympathetically. The officer nodded.
Been too bloody much for us all, Henry said to himself, but kept his mouth tight shut. ‘Enough for anybody,’ Henry agreed, though the tone of his voice didn’t. He wondered why, other than the tiredness which permeated his body and soul, he did not feel especially affected by the events of the night. He had been dreading the return to work but despite the ups and downs of the tour he had found he had loved it like mad. The hurly-burly. The here and now. The immediacy of it all. The responding. All in all it had been a great experience, even if at the time it had been very tough. On reflection it had been fun. Not as much fun as being a detective, maybe. Henry hoped his appetite for the job had come back with a vengeance and that innate mechanism most cops had for distancing their emotions from the horrors they witnessed was back with him. On the other hand, Danny’s death still haunted him day and night, but that had been personal. What he had been through last night was not really personal, so yeah, he could cut himself off from it.
PC John Taylor apparently could not. Despite his length of service, it was getting to him. Sometimes that happened. No doubt he was experiencing great difficulty coming to terms with the death of the girl at the hospital, perhaps blaming himself for it.
‘Maybe it’s as well you have some time off,’ Henry said. ‘Get things back into perspective.’ He leaned forward and patted Taylor on the shoulder.
Taylor jumped at the touch, nearly leaping out of his clothes.
‘Yeah, thanks, sir,’ he said meekly.
‘Dermot, could you possibly be in for five tonight?’
‘Sure, why?’
‘I have to see FB to appraise him of our public-order plans.’
‘What public-order plans?’
‘Exactly,’ Henry said. ‘What public-order plans? We need to get something together, plus there’s some intelligence about the possibility of bomb attacks on some targets. We might have to do some warnings to licensed premises.’
‘Bomb attacks?’ Byrne exclaimed. Taylor lifted his head to listen. ‘Where’s that come from?’
Henry said, ‘I can’t say much about the source, but I’ll brief everyone properly tonight.’
‘Fine,’ Byrne said.
‘Drop me off here, will you? I’m going for a newspaper. Thanks for the lift.’
Henry watched them drive away and bobbed into the shop.
Because virtually all the CID resources had been channelled into the murder investigations, the file on Kit Nevison had been passed down the line like a hot potato, landing squarely in the lap of a probationer constable called Standring who, it was decided, was the only person with any time to deal with it. Fortunately he was approaching the end of his two-year probation and had the makings of a sound bobby. He bounced his few doubts and queries off his sergeant, got told to get on with it and went down to the custody office. The cell keys were tossed in his direction, the custody sergeant pointed to a tray bearing all the prisoners’ breakfasts and told Standring to dish them out before dealing with Nevison. Such were the pleasures of being at the bottom of the pile.