He noticed the Lilton firearms enquiry on top of the pile.
Danny could not quite recall the exact words. They were along the lines of, ‘I wouldn’t trust him with a catapult, never mind a thirty-eight.’ A remark which set Danny’s alarm bells ringing.
She asked why.
The PC told her. ‘Always beating his wife up. Real volatile git.’ He handed her the enquiries and changed tack to a more favourable subject. He asked Danny out for the tenth time.
And for the tenth time, she politely refused.
He sighed despondently and waddled his short twenty-two-stone frame back into the radio room.
So that afternoon, before going out on patrol, Danny sat in the report room and leafed through all the messages, reports and any references whatsoever to do with Joe Lilton of Head Bank House, Osbaldeston, Blackburn.
She got the impression the overweight Constable had a point.
After she turned out from the station, she enjoyed half an hour tootling round the country lanes, not having a single deployment. Then she got bored and made her way to Osbaldeston, a quiet village close to the River Ribble.
There was a fair smattering of wealth in the area and Head Bank House was a large, detached building surrounded by a couple of acres of landscaped gardens. Danny knew from his firearms application form that Lilton described himself as a self-employed trader. Further digging had revealed he owned six shops which sold High Street seconds at knock-down prices.
Danny drove down the wide, arcing driveway laid with white chippings crunching under the tyres of the battered Ford Escort. She drew up outside the front door next to a brand-new Jaguar and a slightly older Mini. Danny was calling on spec. It looked as though she’d struck lucky.
As soon as she stepped out of the car she heard raised voices from inside the house. A big argument. Man and woman. She stood and listened and tried to work out what it was about. It seemed to be about infidelity.
She walked confidently to the front door and jammed her thumb on the doorbell. The shouting continued. She kept her thumb on. It rang loudly. The shouting stopped. Footsteps. The sound of crying. Footsteps getting closer to the door. The door opening.
The woman was very glamorous in a tacky sort of way. She was in her mid-thirties. Her mascara had run, making her look like a surprised owl.
This was Mrs Lilton, Danny assumed. She looked puzzled to see a uniform at her door. ‘What d’you want?’ she asked sharply. ‘No one’s called the police, have they?’
Danny shook her head. ‘I’m here on another matter… but are you all right? Do you need some help?’
The woman stared disgustedly at Danny. ‘Yeah, I’m okay — no thanks to you lot. As if you care.’ Her breath reeked of alcohol fumes. ‘You’ve never cared yet, have you? So what d’you want?’
‘ To see Joe Lilton, please.’
‘ Why? Won’t it wait?’
‘ Not unless he doesn’t want to get a firearms certificate.’ As she finished the sentence, Joe Lilton appeared behind the woman.
‘ Come in, come in,’ he said graciously to Danny. ‘There’s nothing going on here but a little family disagreement.’ He looked at Danny and their eyes locked ever so briefly and he knew she knew he was lying to his back teeth.
Danny remembered that face well, now, fifteen years later. Those pinched, mean features, now fleshed out by ageing.
At the door of the house in Osbaldeston, he had placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders. She had juddered visibly at the touch. ‘Come on,’ he said gently to her. To Danny he stated, ‘A misunderstanding, that’s all.’
Yeah, no mistaking it, Danny thought, closing her pocket-book.
It was the same Joe Lilton who was now Claire Lilton’s stepfather.
What a small world.
‘ Oh, fucking hell, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig, for God’s sake!’ the young, blood-covered prison officer screamed to the paramedics. ‘And he’s got internal bleeding too, for some reason,’ he blabbered. ‘Christ!’ he mouthed. ‘The bastard puked a whole gob-full all over me!’
The young man looked down his chest. He retched at the sight of the thick red globules all down the front of his uniform shirt which had once been white.
‘ God, I’ve never seen anything so foul. Taken a load of pills too.’
He was blithering these words to the green-jacketed paramedics whilst they stretchered the supposedly dying Trent expertly through the twists and turns of the prison, along walkways, down steep stairwells.
Finally they emerged at the yard behind the front gates of the prison where three ambulances, a couple of fire tenders and two cop cars were drawn up.
Trent was dumped in the back of the nearest ambulance.
Having listened to the screw babbling on, Trent was having difficulty keeping a straight face. He desperately needed to belly laugh, sit up and say, ‘Fooled you, you stupid set of cunts.’
Instead he continued to play the part of someone who has just tried to end his own life with a concoction of drugs and the old opening-of-veins ceremony.
When he heard the ambulance doors clunk shut, he was satisfied. Then more so when he experienced the forwards motion of the vehicle. Then orgasmically so, when through his rolling eyes, he saw the blue lights begin to flash and rotate.
He was on his way to freedom.
It had worked perfectly.
The prison officers, as Trent had rightly predicted, had reacted to the crisis like a bunch of headless chickens, running around the prison, not knowing whether they were coming or going. The fire in Blake’s cell, the discovery of the four bodies — two burnt-out in the cell, one knifed to death in the adjacent cell and the other toasted alive whilst suspended above an audience — had thrown them into utter confusion. No one seemed able to take control of the situation. Having a suicide attempt thrown in on top of all that was the last straw.
When they had seen how bad he was, Trent was certain they would not mess about by transferring him to the woefully inadequate medical wing. It did not have the staff or facilities to deal with someone who had tried to shred his arms and taken such a lethal dose of junk he was bleeding internally and puking blood.
He knew their reaction would be to get him out of the way, cart him off to the nearest Casualty unit.
Which is exactly what they did. And to speed things up in the chaos, they cut corners. Obviously they could not handcuff Trent because of his injured arms, but nor did they search him. They seemed happy to believe that the small penknife they found next to the bed was the one with which he had mutilated himself.
An absolute dream.
Having said that, the task of keeping a mouthful of pig’s blood ready to cough out onto a screw had created a few trying moments. That had been a case of mind over matter. It was a good job the screw had raced into the cell when he did (urged by Vic Wallwork, playing his part in the scenario), because Trent was about to puke anyway.
And now he was in the rear of the ambulance.
He moaned. He groaned. He writhed and twisted his body in agony, ensuring they could not quite find his pulse or clamp an oxygen mask on him or stick a tube up his arm.
‘ OOOARH — urgh,’ he uttered with deep pain, loving every moment of it.
‘ Come on, pal, keep still, you’ll be okay,’ the paramedic fussed caringly and tried to clean him up.
Less than thirty seconds later the ambulance had negotiated its way through the narrow prison gates, accelerating away smoothly, then screeching around a roundabout onto a dual carriageway.
The prison officer who had been tasked to remain with Trent — the one covered in pig’s blood — looked on with an expression of worry and repulsion. Over the paramedic’s shoulders he said, ‘I hope the bastard’s not got HIV, with all this fucking blood over me. He’s an arse bandit, you know.’
The paramedic put him straight immediately. ‘If you’ve had unprotected sex with this man and drunk a pint of his blood, you might have cause for concern. If not, don’t worry.’
