Danny’s tights looked as though her cat had been using them for scratching practice. Her skirt was ripped down one seam, her white shirt had lost several buttons and her white, functional bra and generous cleavage was on view for everyone to see.
She was severely pissed off by the whole episode — not least because that night, of all nights, she did not have a spare shirt or skirt in her locker. Rounding on Rupert who had been trailing at her heels like a puppy, she hissed. ‘Just tell me this — what the hell did you say to those lads?’
‘ I… er…’He hesitated.
‘ All they were doing was peeing,’ she remonstrated.
‘ Erm… I think it might have been something like, “Only dogs piss in the street”,’ Rupert admitted quietly.
Danny’s face sank in disbelief. She took a beat to prevent herself from blurting out something she might regret. ‘I think you need to work on your interpersonal skills, don’t you?’ Then she turned away from him with the word ‘Wanker’ playing on her lips.
‘ Danny,’ someone called from the Comms Room. It was one of the PCs who worked in there who was constantly hassling her for a date. ‘Can you deal with this one?’ He waved a message pad in the air. Danny opened her arms and invited him to look at the state of her. Lust clouded briefly across his face when he saw her bra and what was in it. She picked up the expression and quickly pulled her shirt together. The PC gulped, returned to normal and said, ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry — but there’s just no one else to go.’
Her shoulders drooped. ‘What is it?’I she asked with resignation.
‘ Report of a riot up on Fishmoor.’
‘ Ugh, that’s all I need.’
She pushed her way out of the Custody Office door which led to the car park and ran to her car, Rupert close behind, fired up by the prospect of a riot. As she manoeuvred out of the station yard the radio operator informed her that two further calls in quick succession backed up the first one. Fishmoor looked like it was kicking off.
Danny hit the rocker switch for the rather pathetic blue light which rotated dimly on the roof of her Metro, screwed the car in its lower gears and tried to coax maximum performance from a vehicle well past its sell-by date. Six minutes after leaving the police station she was on the Fishmoor council estate. She careered, almost on two wheels, into Fishmoor Drive to find… nothing. The streets were deserted.
She radioed her findings to Comms and cancelled other patrols who had since been deployed. A quick sweep of the estate confirmed it was a hoax. Fishmoor was as quiet as she had ever seen it. The Comms operator gave her the addresses of the people who had called in, and Danny and Rupert drove by their houses; each one was in total darkness. However there wasn’t much time to dwell on it as a genuine call came in: a punter had just had a beer glass screwed into his face in one of the town centre clubs. Big trouble was brewing.
Danny gunned the small car back into town.
Crane and his team entered the rear of the building next to the target premises. He knew it was not alarmed and the entry, therefore, was done with little finesse. It was the office of an insurance broker’s with nothing of interest or value kept there, hence the lack of protection.
The three men moved swiftly through the rear kitchen and into the front office. They went straight to the window, unrolled a large sheet of thick black polythene from their equipment bag and covered the glass quickly and smoothly in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre, running masking tape around the edges to ensure no light passed through the polythene.
Only when Crane was satisfied that the temporary blind had been correctly fixed, did he allow himself and the others to switch on their torches.
So far, so good. It was 12.30 a.m. Crane allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. He turned and looked at the dividing wall which separated the insurance broker’s from the Halifax Building Society office next door.
His target.
This was when the heavy work began.
A few moments later Crane and his men waltzed four heavy filing cabinets away from the wall to reveal an empty fireplace, the chimney of which had been boarded and blocked up many years ago.
Crane knew that set into the corresponding fireplace on the other side of the wall was a safe which — so he was led to believe — contained?60,000.
All he had to do was get through the wall, open the safe, steal the cash, escape. Easy. It was what he did for a living.
At the first opportunity, Danny raced to her flat, which was less than a quarter of a mile from Blackburn police station, to get a change of uniform. She emerged cleaned and pressed as a message came over the radio asking all patrols to make for the Army Recruiting Office in the town centre. A report from an anonymous passer-by had been received to the effect that what appeared to be a bomb was on the front doorstep of the premises. Patrols were asked to take the job seriously. The Provisional IRA were very active and this could be the real thing.
By the time Danny arrived with Rupert in tow, the night patrol Inspector had sealed the scene and cordoned off a 200-metre area away from the premises — as per minimum guidelines — and called out the Army Bomb Disposal squad. The latter were en route from their base in Liverpool, at least three-quarters of an hour away.
Which meant that a large number of police officers were going to be tied up for a long time doing absolutely rock-all other than preventing the drunk and the curious from breaching the cordon.
Danny and Rupert were designated a point.
‘ What if it isn’t a bomb?’ Rupert was saying. ‘What if it’s just another hoax?’
‘ We can’t take the chance,’ Danny said.
‘ I’ve a bloody good mind to march up to it and see for myself.’
Danny’s blood literally froze in her veins. ‘You will do no such thing,’ she said as icily as she felt. If it hadn’t completely dawned on her before, it did now: Rupert Davison was a liability. She never ever wanted to work with him again.
Rupert spun away from Danny and had a moment’s rumination.
Then, without warning, he ducked under the cordon tape and marched towards the Army Careers Office, oblivious to Danny’s shrieks.
There was no quiet way to get through into next door, not when using a hammer and chisel to dislodge the brickwork. The only saving grace for Crane and his team was that the row of shops was set far away from any residential property and on a road, which though busy with traffic, was not one many people walked down after midnight.
The men took it in turns, working hard for very short periods.
The first brick took about ten minutes to dislodge; others soon began to follow. After twenty minutes they had removed one layer of bricks and had an opening large enough for a man to crawl through.
There were more layers to come.
Crane was sweating profusely under his mask. He leaned back and took a swig from a bottle of mineral water. He checked his watch and smiled grimly.
The fireworks were about to begin.
‘ You are the most dangerous, idiotic, irresponsible individual I have ever worked with. You put yourself in danger and what is more, you put other people in danger — your colleagues, the public.’ Danny was seething, could not remember a time in her short life when she had been more angry. ‘I’m surprised the Inspector didn’t put you on paper there and then,’ she said, using colloquial parlance to describe the process of disciplining an officer. ‘I thought the poor man was going to have a heart attack!’
‘ I don’t know what everyone’s so het up about,’ Rupert murmured. ‘I saved a lot of time and effort doing what I did. I mean, it was obvious it wasn’t a bomb. Just a pathetic attempt to make people think it was. A lunchbox with a few wires sticking out of it and a couple of batteries strapped to it. I ask you!’
Danny slammed the brakes on and screeched to a stop.
‘ Rupert, you arsehole. The IRA makes bombs to look like that on purpose so that idiots like you will think it’s
