‘Thanks everyone,’ FB said. ‘As you know, I’ve asked Henry to come in for two reasons … firstly,’ he cleared his throat, ‘for him to tell us firsthand what transpired a few hours earlier in Accrington; then for us to bring him up to speed, as a matter of courtesy, with some aspects of today’s operation that were, by necessity, not dealt with at the briefing.’ FB looked squarely at Henry. ‘That OK with you, Henry?’
‘Mm-yeah,’ he stretched out the word hesitantly, ‘so long as it’s all right for me to chuck in some personal observations, as well.’
FB shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not.’ One or two people shifted uncomfortably.
‘OK … I assume you know the task allocated to my team of officers, but in case you don’t, as part of the wider operation, the results of which I don’t know anything about yet, other than what I heard on Radio Lancashire, we were to enter and secure an empty terraced house in Accrington which was believed to have been used as some sort of meeting place for suspected terrorists … that’s about the long and short of it … a “nothing” job, really, and that’s what we did … except the intelligence was wrong and the place wasn’t empty.’ Henry’s eyes caught those of Dearden and Threlfall, the MI5/6 bods. Their eyes, however, would not meet his.
‘We followed instructions and found ourselves faced with one young man armed with a pistol and another packed to the ribs with high explosive.’ As he talked, he felt himself begin to tremble slightly, reliving the incident and realizing again how close he and others had come to being murdered by fanatics. ‘I need a drink, if that’s OK?’
He had left his horrible coffee outside.
‘Help yourself,’ FB said.
He found a clean polystyrene cup and poured a black coffee from one of the flasks, which he took neat. It was almost stone cold and tasted like River Wyre mud this time. When would he get a decent brew? he wondered, despairing. He put the cup on the table, noticing his fingers were trembling.
‘Henry?’ It was FB again, almost looking concerned. Almost.
‘Well, big do’s and little do’s, the two young men were disarmed, shall we say, and arrested. We then discovered there was evidence of a third person in the house which we partially searched, but found no one. And the front door was booby trapped, but no other devices were found. A neighbour came and told us that someone’d dropped through his loft hatch and done a runner. Seems that the lofts in the row of terraced houses are separated by breeze block walls which, it transpires, had all had holes knocked into them big enough for someone to slide through and the third person from the house used this as a pre-prepared means of escape. As the neighbour had seen him, we decided to do a street search to see if we could spot him-’
‘By “we”, don’t you mean “I”?’ Dave Anger interjected.
Henry looked quizzically at him, shrugged and said, ‘Whatever … but we ended up chasing a stolen BMW which crashed, severely injuring the occupant.’
‘And who was the occupant? The missing terrorist?’ Anger asked.
Henry licked his lips. ‘Unlikely … he was a local car thief, name of Spencer Crawford, a fourteen-year-old … he’s in intensive care now, but not likely to prove,’ he added, meaning there was a good chance the lad would live. He rubbed his tired eyes, which squelched, and shook his head.
‘So let me get this straight — you left the scene of a major incident, which you should have stayed on site to manage, and went gallivanting around town in some half-baked search which resulted in a Starsky and Hutch car chase and a near fatality which had nothing to do with the task you were given?’ Dave Anger had spoken these words and they rose in fury as he reached the end of them. He threw down his pen and looked away from Henry in disgust.
Most people at the table had their eyes averted, FB and the deputy chief being exceptions.
Henry sat back and closed his eyes, the combination of tiredness and the bollocking making him feel faint. He fought a wicked battle inside himself to remain calm, then reopened his eyes.
‘The only half-baked thing here is Operation Enid,’ he rejoined. ‘It seems to have been based on sketchy intelligence and poor planning.’ FB opened his mouth to speak, but Henry, having none of this, said, ‘Let me finish, boss … I won’t say anything I shouldn’t … at least that’s how it appears, particularly, as the radio reported that only two arrests were made from what, six raids? I presume those arrests were the ones I made …’
‘And what the hell made you tackle two heavily armed terrorists?’ Anger demanded.
‘I saw that the wire connecting the switch to the detonator had come free and the lad with the gun had been distracted by it,’ Henry explained. ‘But, what I’m saying is that officers were put in danger as a result of poor intelligence, which I won’t even ask where it came from. More work should have been done, more surveillance to ensure that unarmed officers were actually going to raid an empty house, not a bloody bomb factory!’
‘You have no conception of the complexity and scope of the work that went in to this operation, Chief Inspector,’ Threlfall, the Security Service guy piped up with a round, plummy, authoritative voice.
Henry held up a hand. ‘No, I think I do … do not patronize me.’
‘Henry!’ FB shot warningly.
Henry shrugged a submissive gesture. ‘I’ll back off, but only after I’ve said one more thing.’ He thought he heard a collective groan from around the table, but he was on a roll. ‘Which is … because it all went awry’ — here he refrained from saying “shit-shaped” — ‘it became a very fast-moving incident and yes, I made a judgement call in the way I dealt with it.’
‘So you’re saying your judgement shouldn’t be challenged?’ Anger asked. ‘Your judgement which has been, at the very least, suspect in the past.’
‘I’m not saying it shouldn’t be challenged-’ Henry’s mouth was still open when Anger cut him off.
‘In that case, I’ll challenge it.’
‘OK, OK, OK, enough’s enough,’ FB barged in through the crap with a chopping motion of his hand. ‘End of, OK?’ He shot Anger a cold stare. ‘Let’s save it for the formal debrief.’
‘All I’m saying is that if he’d done his job right and stayed at the scene and directed it all from there instead of swanning off, we might have had a result on the third guy, but no, he had to take it all on himself and now one of the world’s most wanted terrorists has escaped …’ Anger’s mouth snapped shut.
‘Enough!’ FB said again.
‘Cop in-fighting,’ Threlfall the spook chuckled.
‘Sooo professional,’ his female colleague added. They both shook their heads pityingly.
FB glared at them, but the smirks stayed on their faces. ‘Let’s pull all this back, please … Henry, despite the, er, questions, you did a brave thing earlier.’
‘Lucky, if you ask me,’ Anger said under his breath. ‘And stupid.’
‘I’ll have that, brave and lucky, they go together hand in glove,’ Henry said, raising his chin. ‘Maybe stupid, too.’
‘Well, whatever … by all accounts you put your life on the line and two terror suspects have been apprehended. So well done,’ FB said.
‘Thanks.’ It was a pretty muted word. ‘What do we know about these guys … kids?’ Henry asked, looking at the SB and spook contingent.
‘Not much yet,’ Detective Superintendent Greek — known behind his back as Prince Philip — spoke out. ‘They’re being taken to London for questioning by the Anti-Terrorist Branch.’
‘What’s your take on the thing, Henry?’ the deputy chief asked. She smiled pleasantly at him, a bright twinkle in her eye.
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ he asked, getting, as usual, a perverted kick from calling a woman ‘ma’am’. It was probably a domination thing and Henry was glad, for an instant, to let his mind wander to an imagined scene of debauchery behind her office door, involving him, her and maybe chocolate sauce. Her look hinted she might have had the same thought lines … or was he beginning to hallucinate?