Demolition, page 12
‘So I’m going to spend all day reading?’ Blackstone whined as if she hadn’t heard a word.
‘As well as being my lackey.’
‘Great,’ she said glumly. ‘One minute I’m your boss; now I’m your bitch.’
Henry chuckled again and said, ‘The true order.’
Blackstone scooped up the files and said, ‘Bed. Reading. Night night.’
After she’d gone, Henry stretched, yawned and stood up. He was about to hit the sack when Ginny came in, looking just as whacked as he felt. She’d been up before him that day and worked just as hard throughout. Henry had kept her informed of developments – in that he’d accepted the job of running two murders – which would mean he wouldn’t be spending much time in the pub for a while. This didn’t faze or annoy her, mainly because it kept him from under her feet.
She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Busy boy,’ she said.
‘For a few days at least.’
‘Maude’s been in a few times, hoping to catch you. She seems very upset,’ Ginny told him.
‘I’ll pop round and see her when I’ve got time,’ he said.
‘You need to sort things out with her properly, you know? I hate to say it, but neither of you are getting any younger.’
‘I will, I promise,’ he said weakly.
Then he went to bed. Alone.
His mobile phone vibrated and his dream dissolved, which annoyed him because whatever the dream happened to be, it had been complex yet enjoyable.
The phone continued to buzz softly on the bedside cabinet, doing a little circular dance. He reached blindly for it. His searching fingers eventually caught it and he rolled on to his side as he answered it.
He spoke thickly. ‘Henry Chr—’
‘Henry, Henry,’ a whispering female voice interrupted him. Even then, still three-quarters asleep, Henry could hear fear and trepidation in a voice he didn’t recognize immediately.
‘Yuh … who?’
‘It’s me, Veronica … Mrs Gough.’
He pushed himself up on to an elbow. ‘What’s up?’ Now he was awake.
‘I didn’t know who to ring.’
‘That’s all right … What’s up?’
‘They’re here. In the house, I think.’
‘Who? Who’s there?’ he asked. He sat up and swung his legs out of bed.
‘Those boys, I think … I don’t know … I can hear banging and laughing downstairs, as if the kitchen’s being wrecked or something … Oh God, Henry, I’m so sorry to bother you … I’m so scared.’ She sounded terrified.
‘It’s fine.’ He’d clamped the phone between his shoulder and cheek as he hobbled about trying to hitch up his jogging bottoms. ‘Where are you in the house?’
‘My bedroom.’
Henry threaded himself into a T-shirt, then forced his un-socked feet into his trainers. ‘Front or back of the house?’
‘Front … Oh my, something’s smashed. Henry, I’m really scared.’
‘Look, you’re doing fine, Mrs Gough … I’m dressed now and I’ll be there soon … keep on the line and keep talking to me, OK?’
‘OK,’ she whispered.
Henry scooped up his car keys and dashed out of the bedroom, keeping the phone clamped to his ear.
He noticed a light under the door of the guest bedroom in which Blackstone had taken up residency. Henry hesitated. He knew Blackstone’s inner demons often meant sleepless nights for her, but he still wasn’t sure if he should disturb her. She could have been fast asleep with the light on for all he knew.
In the end, he didn’t have to make a decision because as he paused outside the door, it opened quickly, and Blackstone stood there looking ruffled but still fully clothed, just minus footwear.
‘Henry! What are you doing creeping around?’
He waggled his phone. ‘Intruders at Mrs Gough’s.’
Blackstone’s ‘Gotcha!’ was instant, and she was all business as she spun back into the room and slid her feet into her Doc Marten boots and grabbed her phone. She joined Henry as he went out into the pub and crossed to the front door. ‘She’s still on the line,’ he said over his shoulder as he pushed the door open and exited.
‘Henry … please hurry …’
‘I’m running to my car now,’ he assured Mrs Gough. To Blackstone, he said, ‘Two things: call Jake now, then do a treble nine, see what response we can get.’
‘On it,’ Blackstone said. She’d already found Jake Niven’s mobile number on her phone, and as she dropped into the front passenger seat of Henry’s car, she was calling him.
Henry fired up his Audi, accelerated off the car park and sped towards the village with his phone still lodged between his shoulder and cheek, although an instant connection was made between the phone and the car by Bluetooth, which helped.
‘Veronica, you still there?’
‘I am.’
‘You still hearing things?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice wavered. ‘I think they’re on the landing.’
‘Does your bedroom door have a lock?
‘No.’
‘Right … we’re only minutes away … keep calm, OK, and keep on the line.’
‘The door handle’s turning!’
‘Shit!’ Henry uttered as he careened through Kendleton, aware that Blackstone had connected to Jake and was talking urgently.
He negotiated the next two bends far too quickly and almost lost it, making Blackstone groan as she hurriedly explained the situation to a clearly groggy Jake who, in a very short space of time, she ended up shouting at.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Henry told Mrs Gough, skidding on to the small estate off the main road on the other side of Kendleton. In his mind, he tried to weigh up the best approach. Full on, headlights blazing, skidding into the driveway, engine revving, in a move designed to scare the intruders away; or a more subtle approach, engine off, lights off, cruising to a silent stop a hundred metres short of the driveway, going the rest of the way on foot, creeping up to the house.
The fact was if Mrs Gough was right and intruders were now entering her bedroom, a subtle approach would give them time to attack or just scare the living crap out of her.
Henry did not want her molested in any way. And he didn’t want her frightened to death, either. Her safety was the first consideration.
Blackstone ended her call to Jake and was now on the treble-nine emergency line.
Just to be on the safe side, out of the corner of his mouth, Henry said, ‘Ambulance, too.’ Into his phone, he said to Mrs Gough, ‘Almost there.’
In response, she screamed a blood-curdling, terrifying scream.
The time for a subtle approach was long gone.
The entrance to her driveway was less than a hundred metres distant now. Henry braked at the last moment and swerved in between the gateposts, surging the last thirty-odd metres up the long driveway to the front of the house, skidding to a halt. Even before he’d stopped moving, he and Blackstone piled out of the car and were sprinting to the front door.
It was solid. Locked. Even a firm shoulder could not budge it.
‘Round the back,’ he said.
‘I’ll go that way,’ Blackstone said, peeling off left. Henry went right, checking all the windows for breakages and signs of entry as he hurried around, finally coming to the back of the house and meeting up with Blackstone in a pincer movement.
And here was the obvious weak point of the house.
Across the back was a rickety lean-to conservatory which, in its day, would probably have been great and genteel. Now, its timber frame was clearly rotting; the windows were all single-glazed with the panes easy to smash, and the whole construction seemed to have a slight lean to it. It looked as though one concerted push could have toppled the whole thing.
It had double doors halfway along. They had been kicked open.
Henry entered.
Another scream on the phone.
The next door facing Henry was the actual back door of the house. This was newer than the conservatory, made of UPVC. It had been jemmied open.
‘Shit,’ Henry said, stepping into the dining room beyond.
He went for the light switch and immediately the damage done by the invaders was clear. The dining-room table had been upturned, a sideboard pulled over and every plate once displayed on it was smashed to pieces on the floor. Several dining chairs had been stomped on and broken.
It was a rampage.
‘More than one of them,’ Henry said, then shouted, ‘POLICE! We are police officers entering this building. Come down and show yourselves!’
He went into the lounge which had also been brutally trashed. He swerved sideways through a door into the entrance hallway to see the flash of two shadows hurtling down the stairs, which caught him off balance.
The racing shadows split. One ducked one way past him, one the other way, like fast-moving phantoms. He twisted and grabbed for one but missed.
Behind him, Blackstone was just emerging from the lounge and she too grasped and spun as she tried to grab what were obviously – now – two black-clad teenagers. But they were quick and lithe, and they shot past her, spinning her like a top.
‘I’m going after them,’ she shouted to Henry. ‘You see to Veronica.’
‘Take care,’ he warned and contorted up the staircase, taking the steps three at a time, dinking around the chair of the stairlift at the top, coming up on to a wide landing. Several plant pots on stands had been kicked over, the plants and soil spilling everywhere.
‘Veronica! It’s me, Henry,’ he called out as he made his way to the only open door on the landing, pocketing his phone.
All he heard was a muted, moaning sound.
He flicked the light switch on the landing, becoming more aware of the heartless damage done, and went towards the bedroom door.
He toed the door further open.
And as it swung back, a black-clad youth came at him, screaming and armed with a machete.
Henry hadn’t been expecting this. Because two intruders had fled, he had stupidly assumed that was it, and his guard was down.
Seeing a curved blade slicing down at him was not what he expected, and somehow he had to recover from that millisecond of shock; otherwise (his brain calculated), his right arm would probably be hacked off at the shoulder.
He whirled away and actually felt the whoosh as the nasty blade sliced through the air, missing him by a fraction of an inch.
And in that moment he saw the snarling, feral face of the person attacking him under the shadow of the hoodie they were wearing.
There was no time to reflect on that because everything was now on a life-and-death footing. The blade was coming around again in an arc, and once more Henry had to take immediate, evasive action so as not to get slashed. The twist he had done in order to avoid the first attack was modified instantly into a kind of limbo-like backward sway, but it put him off balance, twisting on an ankle and tumbling away with a crash sideways just as the machete passed him a second time to be embedded into the door frame.
Henry rolled away as the youth tried to pull the knife out of the wood, but it had gone in too far, and after his first attempt to yank it free, he gave up, leapt over Henry’s outstretched legs, sprinted down the landing and flew down the stairs using the bannister to help him.
By the time Henry was up on one knee, the lad had gone.
Henry felt himself sag, completely winded, slightly disorientated for a moment before everything came back into focus as he shook his head and, using the door frame as leverage, pulled himself up. His eyes came level with the embedded machete, at which point he exhaled unsteadily while looking wide-eyed at the rusting, deadly instrument. But there was no time to reflect on how fortunate he’d been – that would come later – because a groan from inside the bedroom brought him back, and he stepped in, just as he heard Blackstone calling from downstairs, ‘Missed the bastards – couldn’t catch ’em.’
Henry entered the bedroom. ‘Christ!’ he said, crossing the room and crouching down where Mrs Gough was on her back, lying half in, half out of her big old bed, entangled in flannelette sheets and a candlewick bedspread as if she had been dragged out and thrown down. She looked a pitiful sight.
Her mobile phone was about six feet away from her fingers on the old, worn carpet.
Henry dropped to one knee to look. She was unmoving, although her eyes were wide open, and for a fleeting moment Henry thought she might be dead, but a big gulp of air seemed to bring her round and her eyes began to focus on Henry.
‘It’s me, Henry,’ he reassured her.
‘Henry … I have such a sharp pain across my chest,’ she gasped, and her right hand clamped down on her sternum. ‘And up my arm.’
‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ Henry said, hoping this was true, knowing the reality of the pressure the ambulance service was currently under because of the ongoing pandemic. ‘If I help you, do you think you can get back into bed?’
‘Holy shit!’ Blackstone appeared at the door, her face level with the machete in the frame.
‘Give me a hand here, Debs,’ Henry said, crawling around the half-prostrate figure of Mrs Gough and easing his hands under her bony back in order to get them under her armpits.
‘Christ!’ was Blackstone’s next expletive as she swooped across. Between them, they gently raised Mrs Gough on to the bed where she seemed to sink into her pillows. Henry pulled a blanket over her, looking at her worriedly. He could hear her lungs rasping as she breathed.
‘She might be having a heart attack,’ Henry whispered to Blackstone. Then, ‘Veronica?’
The old lady’s eyes popped open.
‘Can I get you anything?’
She pointed loosely towards the bedside cabinet. ‘The spray. It might help me.’
There were several sprays and inhalers on top of the cabinet, plus pill bottles and blister packs, a bottle of water and a glass.
‘Which one?’
‘Nitro-glycerine, for my angina.’
Henry found it and handed it to her. She opened her mouth and sprayed a puff under her tongue. It had an immediate effect, helping her to breathe more easily as the medicinal explosive opened her veins and arteries, allowing the blood to flow. From a pasty grey pallor, her complexion quickly gathered some colour, making her look much healthier within seconds.
‘Thank you.’ She handed the spray back to Henry. ‘That helps, but I’ve still got an awful lot of pain across my chest.’
Through the thin curtains, Henry saw the swish of rotating blue lights as Jake arrived, followed almost immediately by an ambulance.
Jake said, ‘I’ve an idea now who some of the kids are, but no one’s coming forward with names.’
He was responding to Henry’s berating about not having identified the youths who had assaulted Veronica Gough by the stream, which had then led to an escalation in the form of a violent home invasion – which could have led to her death and possibly still might.
Both men were at Royal Lancaster Infirmary, having followed the ambulance in their respective vehicles. They were now standing outside the A&E unit under a canopy in an ambulance bay, banished outside by staff. Blackstone was still at Mrs Gough’s house awaiting the arrival of an on-call joiner to secure the property.
‘You’re sure the lad with the machete was the same one that held her face under water?’ Jake probed.
‘Hundred per cent,’ Henry said firmly. ‘Saw his face, then I ducked out of the way to prevent my beheading. A nasty piece of work.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘She was luckier … so far,’ Henry said bleakly.
Mrs Gough had been swiftly and expertly transferred from her bed into the back of the ambulance by paramedics in an NHS wheelchair, with Blackstone holding her hand on the precarious journey down the stairs, preferring not to use the slower chairlift as they were well experienced in this sort of manoeuvre. Fifteen minutes later, after a journey at breakneck speeds along virtually deserted roads, she’d arrived at A&E.
Henry had grabbed a terrible coffee from a dispensing machine and was sipping it and wincing at the taste as he talked to Jake.
‘I’m not making excuses,’ Jake said, ‘but I spend less and less time on my own beat these days … and the two new estates that have sprung up in Thornwell, where I think these kids are from, are bloody huge, with folk coming in from all over the place to live in the county. I just don’t know anyone any more. I know these kids need to be nipped in the bud, as you say, but as much as I whinge to my sergeant, Lancaster’s problems outweigh Kendleton’s and Thornwell’s, unfortunately.’
‘This incident racks it up a few notches, though,’ Henry reasoned.
They stopped talking when the sliding doors to A&E opened and the two paramedics who’d arrived in the ambulance and conveyed Mrs Gough to casualty emerged and made back towards their transport.
‘How is she?’ Henry called. Mrs Gough had been in for about half an hour now.
The female paramedic peeled off to talk to them. ‘Not brilliant. She did have a heart attack, a fairly mild one, but at her age even mild is serious. They’re doing tests now.’
‘Can I go and see her?’
‘You can try.’ The paramedic nodded and re-joined her colleague.
Backed by the authority of Jake’s police uniform, Henry blagged his way past nurses acting like security guards and found Mrs Gough in a curtained cubicle. She was propped up and sipping a cup of tea. She looked much better but still sounded frail when she spoke in a low, scratchy voice.
‘Thank you again, Henry,’ she managed to say. ‘I’m sorry I bothered you, caused so much trouble. I didn’t know who else to call. I had you on speed dial.’
‘Speed dial?’
She gave him a sheepish look.
