cringe in agony.
The amusement was curtailed when a fairly fearsome-looking nurse stepped into the cubicle, pushing a trolley bearing an assortment of trays, instruments, dressings and needles.
‘ I’ve come to clean your ear up. The doctor wants to sew it back on. He’ll be here shortly.’
Henry was discharged two hours later, having had an X-ray which showed nothing broken, had his ear re- fitted and visited the firearms officer who had taken the bullet. The guy was in great pain, but stoical about the injury. He was about to go into surgery.
Henry also made a quick call home, told Kate briefly what had happened and that — God willing — he would be home as soon as possible. Bad as he felt, Henry wanted to get into Anderson’s ribs.
Siobhan drove him down to Lancaster police station in the surveillance van. She found a space on the lower parking area. Anderson’s Shogun had been seized and was parked in one corner of the yard.
‘ I drove it up,’ Siobhan explained, ‘but it hasn’t been searched yet. I thought perhaps you’d want to do that.’
Henry frowned doubtfully, then dismissed the thought that it should have been searched already. He happily accepted that she believed he would want to supervise a thorough search of the vehicle. She handed him the keys to it, then they climbed out of the van and walked to the Shogun.
‘ Oooh, I could do with a wee,’ she declared. ‘You get on with it, Henry, if you like. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve found a loo.’
She dashed off to the entrance to the Custody Office and was buzzed in through the security door, leaving Henry alone with the keys and the car. Thinking nothing of the situation, he inserted a key into the back door and turned it. As the door opened, Henry saw that a travel rug was laid out over something in the back.
He tugged it off and what was revealed made him puff his cheeks out in disbelief.
One sawn-off shotgun — an Italian SPAS 12.
And two mini-Uzis.
He did not touch them, merely stared at them in amazement. These were the last things he realistically expected to find in the back of Anderson’s vehicle — the tools of his trade and quite possibly the guns responsible for killing Geoff Driffield and five other innocent people. How could the man be so stupid?
‘ What’ve you found?’ Siobhan reappeared behind Henry’s shoulder, peeked into the Shogun and was awestruck by the discovery. She hissed the words, ‘Pure gold,’ into Henry’s good ear. ‘If these guns tied up ballistically…’ She did not need to say anything else.
Henry stayed silent, blinking at how easy it had been.
He called in a firearms officer to handle the weapons and disarm them as necessary, then after a full search of the Shogun which revealed nothing else, the guns were booked into the property store and locked in a safe.
DI Gallagher and DS Tattersall arrived at the station as Henry was about to have an initial interview with Anderson.
‘ Well done, you two,’ Gallagher said to them. ‘We need to thoroughly debrief what went on and, of course, go through the post-incident procedures for firearms incidents and consider counselling where necessary.’
He looked knowingly at Henry here, who, following a previous firearms incident had suffered a nervous breakdown caused by post-traumatic stress. Henry was fine at the moment but he knew these things had a habit of creeping up on people and addling their brains when they least expected it. He thought that Siobhan might benefit from counselling, although he didn’t suggest it. The choice rested with the individual.
‘ What you need to do now is get your statement done,’ Gallagher told him.
‘ We were going to chat to him now,’ Henry said.
Gallagher shook his head. ‘Bad practice. Me and Jim’ll do that. We’ve been involved from day one. It’s our pigeon.’
‘ It should be down to us,’ Henry persisted.
‘ No — and that’s final. You’ve done a good job, now leave it be and let someone else take it over.’
Henry’s nostrils flared. He was getting angry. He put a lid on it and nodded. ‘Did the other targets get arrested?’
‘ Two locked up, one still outstanding. They are in custody in Blackpool. We intend to interview Anderson up here though, then take him to Blackpool. They’ll be in court on Monday morning. Look, you’ve both done a superb job today,’ Gallagher concluded. ‘Get the paperwork done, then go home, relax, do whatever you fancy. Enjoy yourselves.’
The men’s clothing department in Debenhams, Preston, is in the basement. There was a vast array of clothes to choose from. Mind-boggling, really.
Munrow’s mind was totally boggled. He had already been treated to about six hundred pounds’ worth of gear from other shops in Preston and was therefore loaded with bags crammed to bursting with shirts, ties, trousers, jeans, shoes and chic sporting gear, and was frankly completely pissed-off. He stuck with it because he had not yet induced the woman to make that cash withdrawal he so desperately wanted. When she did and the money was in his fist, the shopping would come to an abrupt end.
He took a glance at his watch. Almost four. He groaned angrily. ‘We’ve missed the banks.’
She gave him a patronising look. ‘No, we haven’t, sweetie.’
‘ But they close at half-past three!’
‘ You have been away a long time,’ she chided him gently. ‘Five o’clock now, mostly.’ She took a breath and her eyes flickered a once-over. ‘You really need a suit.’
They browsed through the tailoring department, Munrow glumly at her heels. His body language mirrored his state of mind. Fed up with shopping, impatient for her to get her money out. Shoulders slumped. Dragging his feet. Stifling yawns between scowling at her back. He was like a husband being hauled around. He also felt ludicrously out of place.
‘ I’d really like you to get some bespoke tailoring,’ he heard her saying ahead of him. ‘Fit you out in a really nice, made-to-measure suit. But that’ll have to wait. For now, how about a couple off the peg?’
She stopped, turned unexpectedly, a broad smile of pleasure on her lovely lips. Her indulgence was making her extremely happy and at the moment she did not care who knew about it, or saw them. Even her husband.
Munrow thought he had changed his expression in time, but he was wrong.
‘ You’re tired, aren’t you, lovey?’ she said sympathetically, misreading the signs. ‘This is the last stop, promise. Then we’ll book into the Post House and have a fashion show. And then we shall fuck.’ She said those last five words in a dark, husky whisper. ‘How about that?’
‘ Sounds good’
‘ Now, what about this one?’ She unhooked a suit off the rail and held it up against him.
They finished the reports in about an hour, sitting in the CID office in Lancaster.
It was four o’clock. Henry was having trouble keeping awake. The week had shattered him anyway, but now his sore body and soul was the icing on the cake.
He yawned and slouched back in the chair, glancing very quickly through the statement he’d concocted.
‘ You look whacked, Henry,’ Siobhan said softly. She was sitting on the other side of the desk, gazing at him.
‘ I admit it. Been a long week.’
Yes, it had.
Beginning with kneeing Shane Mulcahy in the nuts last Saturday evening and ending here, almost a full week later, having been shot. And in between, what had there been? The murders in the newsagents. The dead girl on the beach. Boris the gorilla — Christ, he’d forgotten about the gorilla. The chase with Dundaven after Nina had been shot (Christ, he’d almost forgotten about her too). McNamara. Degsy dying. Long hours. Meeting John Rider for the first time. Virtually no sleep. Dead cops, injured primates. Gun finds and fights. Helicopters. Arguments with Kate. The NWOCS. Being teamed up with Siobhan Robson. That kiss… which seemed to make it all worthwhile.
Henry’s back was to the door. Siobhan looked past him and nodded at someone entering the office.
It was Gallagher, having completed the first interview with Anderson, who was being represented by a duty solicitor. Not surprisingly he’d said nothing. The interview sessions with him were going to be long and drawn-out, like pulling teeth, only much more painful. Henry was glad now that it was someone else’s problem. He enjoyed
