Judgement Call (30 page)

‘What about Vlad?' Henry enquired. ‘Has he been locked up yet?'

‘Not so far, but it's only a matter of time,' FB said with certainty. He then swung away happily and disappeared, leaving Henry and the sergeant, who gave Henry that knowing look again.

‘He cut you out?'

‘To some tune.'

‘He's very focused.'

‘And selfish.'

‘Learn from it,' the sergeant advised. ‘That man will go far.'

‘Not far enough,' Henry grunted, ‘but cheers anyway.'

Henry hesitated, desperately wanting to be involved – at the very least to interview Constantine – but he didn't want to be seen to be begging. It was unbecoming. Already he was thinking ahead, planning how he would move on and get onto CID. He would not be battered down by this, no way.

He walked back to the report-writing room and put on his jacket, which he'd left slung over the back of the chair.

There was a little errand to make in the town centre, then he'd drop by to say hi to Kate in the insurance brokers, though he doubted if he'd be able to entice her to repeat their sexy encounter in the consulting room. Even Henry had to admit that, at least for today, he'd had enough sex in a scary place, that being Kate's kitchen. He didn't want to push it. After that he would have a brew and a toastie at a town-centre cafe, then go home, creep under his duvet and sleep.

That was his short-term plan.

He left the station via the back door and strolled into town.

As ever, Rawtenstall was fairly quiet and reasonably pleasant to saunter through. He dropped by Kate's workplace. She was busy with a client at the counter and although he caught her eye, it was clear she was unable to extricate herself, so he gave a wave and left, walking up Bank Street to complete his errand at another shop. The result was excellent and he thanked the manager, who shooed him away without having to pay, even though Henry did genuinely offer.

‘No,' the man insisted. ‘You're doing a good thing here, so I'll play my part in it.'

Henry thanked him and took the item which the man had slipped into a strengthened envelope. He then walked further along Bank Street to a cafe where he found an empty seat on a stool at the bar by the window and ordered a milky coffee and cheese-and-onion toastie. He sipped and ate whilst considering life, death and the universe.

He didn't manage to reach any firm conclusions about any of the subjects. He wasn't such a deep thinker.

But he enjoyed his coffee and food and watched life go by, including the slow cruise past of a couple of traffic cars and a couple of cops he recognized as authorized firearms officers in a plain car, no doubt part of FB's cunning plan for today's operation to discourage violent crimes. And it would seem that, with the success of the op so far, there wouldn't be an armed robbery.

‘Git,' Henry said between gritted teeth as his mind spun to FB. Again. The man infuriated him, but he could not stop thinking about him. Henry was pretty sure that Bill Ridgeson's prediction about FB's future would come true. Based on the way the man operated – if advancement came from stepping on others' heads – he was definitely going to be chief constable one day. A chilling thought.

Time for bed, Henry thought.

He finished his coffee, picked up his envelope, paid, and stepped onto Bank Street, pausing at the door for a few moments before setting off to his car. He didn't plan on showing his face in work again that day, nor the next, because it was a rest day.

Then he quickly stepped back into the cafe doorway.

The man across the street was wearing a green parka jacket, with a grey hood pulled up over his head. His left hand was tucked into the pocket, right arm hanging stiffly down by his side, the hand hardly visible, covered by the hem of the coat sleeve. He wore grey tracksuit bottoms but it was the blue and white Adidas trainers on his feet that clinched it, because not many days ago Henry had held them in his own hands and given them back to the person who was now walking down the main street.

His head was tilted forwards and he seemed to be staring at the ground as he walked up the opposite side of the street to where Henry stood. Not that there was anything bad about that. Lots of people walked with their heads down, looking at their feet, avoiding eye contact. That was just the way people were.

Henry knew this man was doing it for a specific reason. He knew that normally this individual would be lording it along, swaggering and cocky, hoping someone would be daft enough to bump into him or look into his mad eyes and give him a reason to start an argument that would lead to a fight.

Not today.

Because today, Vladimir Kaminski wanted to hide his face.

Henry hadn't clearly seen the face, only a sliver of it. It was the overall body shape, broad, stocky, muscled, that Henry recognized and could not be hidden underneath a parka that looked a size too small anyway … Henry's mind flashed back … Could it be the parka he had seen hung in Sally Lee's hallway that first time he had met her?

And the trainers.

Henry remained where he was for a moment, then went back into the cafe and asked a waitress to look after the envelope for him, stepped out of the cafe onto the pavement and started to follow Kaminski at a discreet distance, about fifty yards behind him. Then Henry crossed over so he was on the same side as Vlad, having decided that he would be tackling him within the next few seconds. He plotted it through quickly: upping his pace, keeping as silent as possible, then a final surge – the shoulder smashing into the small of Kaminski's back to flatten him, knock the wind out of him, keep him down and then scream for someone to call for help.

Excitement shuddered through him – not just at the prospect of the physical encounter, but at the thought of seeing FB's face as he marched his prisoner into the charge office. A dream.

He turned onto autopilot as he surveyed Kaminski's broad back, working out exactly where his shoulder would connect, just at the base of the spine. Then he noticed the very stiff right arm again, hanging by his side as if it was false, or as if something was secreted up the sleeve and he was holding whatever it was in place with his fingers like a shoplifter hiding a bottle of stolen whisky.

Kaminski's pace increased slightly but noticeably.

Henry was certain that the guy had not spotted him.

Still heading along Bank Street, he crossed the junction with Grange Crescent, then the next one with Kay Street, the shops to his left as he walked.

Henry began a half jog, starting to speed up his pace. When he hit him, he wanted it to be as hard as possible and at full pelt and bring him down in one.

Kaminski then did a sharp left into the square that was the main shopping centre, sending a cold feeling of dread through Henry who hoped that he was wrong as he slotted things together, his thought processes working in parallel. Located on the square was the Rossendale Valley Building Society which had, earlier that day, successfully received a very large cash infusion. And suddenly Henry began to wonder just what the hell Kaminski had secreted up the right sleeve of the parka. A sawn-off shotgun? It could just about fit. Was Kaminski about to try and do a solo job on the building society, a rash act driven by several factors, his desperation to leave the country, that he could guess he was wanted for murder, would probably also know that Jack Bowman had been arrested and could be grassing on him at that very moment (such an irony, Henry thought) and the fact that the cops had started to round up his associates? The cash they'd planned to steal was now with the rightful owners and all it would need would be to shove the shotgun – if that's what he had – into the face of one of the tellers and get her to fill up a bag with nice new notes. About thirty thousand pounds' worth.

Rightly or wrongly, that was how Henry put it all together in those fleeting moments.

But it didn't actually matter what Kaminski's intentions were. What remained a necessity was to arrest him.

He was now about thirty yards ahead of Henry, almost outside the door of the building society.

And then he was at the door.

Kaminski stopped suddenly, pivoted ninety degrees and jerked his right arm a couple of times, and proved Henry right.

A single-barrelled sawn-off shotgun slithered out. He caught the stock with his fingers and his left hand came up to grip the short barrel as he flipped off the hood of his parka with a backwards jerk of his head, revealing for the first time that his features were distorted by the stocking mask pulled tight over his face. Old hat, maybe, but it was still one of the scariest sights ever, an armed robber with such a mask over his face, skewing the facial features grotesquely. Great, tried and tested psychology.

Then he set himself with a roll of his broad shoulders and charged to the door.

He had been so tunnel-visioned, so deep in getting himself in the right frame of mind to commit this act, that he did not see or hear Henry's approach from the side until it was too late.

Henry had been moving from the instant that Kaminski turned to face the door of the building society.

He had seen the shotgun slide down the sleeve, the hood get flicked off, all in the time he started to run at him, and had to completely reappraise his approach as he was now going to have to hit him sideways.

His arms pumped like pistons.

When he was about ten feet away from Kaminski he pitched himself into a low dive so his left shoulder would connect just above the villain's left hip whilst aiming to grab the shotgun at the moment of impact and keep his own head down and safe behind him, tucked into the small of Kaminski's back, and take him down.

Yet at that very last moment, Kaminski must have registered the blur and bulk of Henry flying at him from the corner of his eye and that he was coming through the air at him. He half-twisted, the shotgun swinging around at hip level.

And then Henry's mind's eye picture of what should have happened in the ideal world got smashed to pieces.

As Kaminski turned, the two men were now almost directly facing each other.

Henry in mid-air, Kaminski three-quarters turned, his finger on the trigger.

Henry's left shoulder connected at lower gut level. He was flying hard and anyone else would have been winded and possibly quite badly hurt, but Kaminski's steroid-assisted physical regime had moulded his stomach muscles into ridges of rock.

He didn't even overturn him.

Kaminski merely staggered backwards a few steps on his tree-trunk-thick legs, but fortunately the shotgun did jolt skywards as Henry, his whole body jarring, slammed onto his knees. A flash of memory recalled how hard it had been to overpower Kaminski after he had chased him from Sally Lee's house on that morning which now seemed a million years ago. With that thought was the realization that he had only been successful then probably because he had stamina and Kaminski, despite his physical prowess, had easily run out of breath. He was built for brute strength, the ‘here and now', not the long haul.

This troubled Henry.

In a fight in which Kaminski didn't start off exhausted and was probably on stimulants, he had to be the favourite. He had immense muscle power, and whilst Henry wasn't short of muscle and strength, his fitness was of a different type. He had more stamina and was rangy.

There would be no beating up the cock of the town that morning.

And because of the circumstances, for Henry this would be a fight for survival.

Kaminski wobbled back but kept his balance. And Henry, having failed to connect properly and keep a grip, hit the concrete with a thud, trying to get the gun at the same time. Kaminski kept the weapon out his reach, then twisted back, bringing the gun round as he did with the intention, Henry assumed, of blasting him at point-blank range.

Henry saw the gun arcing round and, thus motivated, scrambled like a runner starting a race on a muddy track and flung himself at Kaminski's thick legs, keeping his head low and wrapping his arms around his shins like a lasso, tightening the hold and heaving backwards.

This time the big man lost his balance and toppled like he'd walked backwards into a coffee table and in so doing, the gun jumped skywards again and his finger jerked the trigger back, firing it with the sound of a metal tray being whacked on a table top.

He fell over, but as he did he tried to crash the barrel of the gun across the back of Henry's head, catching it, but only with a glancing blow. It hurt, sending a shockwave through Henry's skull, but he held on tightly, keeping his head tucked in and shouting, ‘Call the police,' uselessly because his voice was muffled as his face was crushed into Kaminski's tracksuit bottoms.

Kaminski writhed, desperate to free himself from Henry. He felt incredibly strong. Henry could feel the outline of his huge iron-hard calf muscles, and could not prevent Kaminski successfully extracting himself from his clutches.

There was another blow from the gun which Kaminski was now using like a baseball bat, hitting Henry's back – but still he held on tight.

But with one huge surge of strength, he broke free and kicked Henry violently away, then he was up on his feet. But he didn't run. He came at Henry with a snarl and kicked him hard in the side, twice, and tried to stamp on his head.

He was still holding the shotgun in his left hand as he did this, and his right hand delved into his parka pocket, fumbling for something. A shotgun cartridge.

Henry rolled away, his hands covering his head. Kaminski silently and remorselessly pursued him, kicking, whilst at the same time he flicked open the breech of the shotgun, ejecting the spent cartridge and slotting the new one in place, then slamming the gun shut.

As Henry reeled whilst being assaulted, he had a rushed, unfocused vision of other people in the shopping centre who were witnessing the incident. As usual in Rawtenstall, there were not many folk about.

Two old women, scarves on their heads, old-fashioned wicker shopping baskets in their hands, stood rooted to the spot, mouths agape.