Flynn held on. Callard managed to gut-punch him in the lower belly and the air shot out of Flynn.
Henry moved in to assist, grabbing the back of Callard’s donkey jacket, and forced him down until he was on all fours. Then, in a combined effort, he and Flynn completely flattened him. Flynn’s right knee dropped on to Callard’s spine right between the shoulder blades, pinning him to the bar room floor. Henry positioned himself on Callard’s legs, preventing any movement from them, and he dragged the man’s thick arms around his back, holding them together… at which point he would usually have applied handcuffs.
Callard continued to fight and squirm to try and break free, far from being subdued. Henry and Flynn caught their breath and looked at each other.
‘You’re the cop,’ Flynn said. ‘What’s the next move?’
‘Would this be of any help to you?’ Don Singleton was approaching them, reaching into his pocket and producing a tangle of plastic cable ties that he used for fastening around pipes, engine components, hedging, the type that ratcheted up tight.
‘Yeah, ta.’ Henry took one and looped it around Callard’s big wrists, pulling the free end tight as he dare without cutting into the skin, drawing the man’s hands together.
Flynn eased some of the pressure on Callard’s spine by taking some of the weight off his kneecap. He drew his palm across his face, wiping away the blood from the cut inflicted by the pint glass. It was a good inch long and would need medical attention. Flynn glanced at the blood, a sardonic twist on his lips, then wiped his hands on his jeans.
‘You OK?’ Henry asked.
‘Never better.’
Henry looked around the bar. Every face was aimed in his direction, expecting him to take the lead. One noticeable exception was that of Jonny Cain, who had done a smart U-turn back up the stairs.
‘What’re we — well, you actually — going to do with him?’ Flynn asked, smirking.
Henry barked a short laugh. ‘Good question.’ Hell of a good question, he thought. What the hell have I done to deserve this to happen to my day? A pleasant stroll across the moors that turned into an epic. A policewoman murdered. Trapped in a small village that should have been a peaceful place. Bumping into Steve Flynn… ugh! Now sitting astride the legs of a man who’d gone loopy in a bar — and, surely the glue that connected some of those strands together, Jonny Cain was in town.
‘Can’t let him go,’ Henry said. ‘Best option might be to get him out of here and take him up to the police station and tie him to a radiator, or something. You said the garage door was open?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘No buts. He’s under arrest for a very serious offence and I know it’s not ideal, but what’s the choice? Can’t just brush him down and let him go, because he might come back, or disappear, or whatever… I’ll start a handwritten custody record and keep him up there — somehow.’
‘Do you want to chuck him in the bucket?’ Singleton asked. He’d been listening in.
‘No, thanks for the offer, but we’ll take him up in the Shogun.’
Flynn nodded, eased a little more pressure off Callard’s back. Henry rolled forwards and spoke into Callard’s mashed ear. ‘Listen, Larry, we can do this easy or hard. Sounds corny, I know, but it’s how it is. You’re under arrest for attempted murder, plus loads of other things, so you’re going nowhere. If you want to make it hard, that’s your problem. I’ll gladly run your head into a brick wall, understand?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes. Now, me and my friend here’ — Henry cringed slightly at the use of the word ‘friend’ — ‘are going to help you to your feet. If you want to fight, that’s up to you.’
Henry and Flynn took an arm each and raised him slowly to his knees. It was no mean feat. The will to fight had evidently left Callard but he wasn’t exactly cooperating and they had to work hard, lifting an unresponsive dead weight, sullen drunk, unpleasant and still with the possibility of kicking off again if the chance arose. They heaved him to his feet and began to steer him towards the door.
As they passed the sawn-off shotgun, Henry scooped it up, gave Alison a nod, and also Donaldson, who had made his way through to the bar, annoyed at having missed a fracas. Henry told them, ‘We’ll take him up to the police house and decide what to do from there.’ The trio went out through the exit door next to the revolving one and virtually dragged Callard towards Cathy James’s Shogun, which Flynn had parked outside the pub.
Dispiritingly, the snow was still falling just as thickly and a gusting wind whipped it in flurries around them. They forced Callard into the back seat, then caught their collective breath.
‘How’s this going to pan out?’ Flynn asked. He wiped away more blood from the side of his face. It was streaming from the cut.
‘How should I know?’ Henry answered truthfully. ‘You need to get that seen to, though.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll try not to bleed on you.’
‘No — it needs sorting. There’s a doctor in there.’
Flynn shrugged. It was just a cut. He’d had worse injuries from fishing hooks and the fish themselves. But then Alison came out of the pub, hitching an outer coat on, a small zip-up bag in her hand.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she announced. She held up the bag. ‘First aid kit, and Dr Lott’s given me some butterfly strips, so I’ll fix you up,’ she said to Flynn. ‘The doctor’s too drunk to do anything. He’d probably stitch your eyelids up… I did used to be a nurse, in case you were wondering.’
‘Yeah, thanks,’ Flynn said gratefully. ‘It really needs sorting.’
Henry shook his head at Flynn’s sudden desire to seek medical attention.
‘I’ll follow in my car,’ she said and pointed to a Hyundai four-wheel drive. ‘I’ll bring that dog back up, too…’
‘What the fuckin’ hell you bastards doing?’ Callard demanded from his face-down position in the back seat.
Henry looked sadly at the Shogun, realizing that if the car did have any connection with Cathy’s murder, any evidence inside it was now completely screwed.
The police house was still in darkness, no sign of habitation. Flynn parked the Shogun in the snow-covered drive, wondering where the hell Tom James had disappeared to.
Henry was sitting alongside Callard in the back seat, having righted him for the journey. The shotgun had been placed in the front passenger footwell, out of reach. On the way Henry had made sure Callard understood exactly that he was under arrest and cautioned him, giving him the ‘full hit’, though the words did not seem to mean much to him at that stage. He hung his head miserably and avoided all communication. Henry had gone on to ask questions in a conversational way, but Callard stonewalled him, refused to speak and stared at his knees, his jaw rotating, his facial features angry and grim.
By the time they drew up to the house, Henry didn’t know anything more than what he had personally witnessed and been involved in: Callard pulling a shotgun from underneath his jacket and blasting it in the general direction of Jonny Cain, who had just appeared in the bar. That, again, was no coincidence, not one that Henry would ever believe. That Callard was just a madman with a festering grudge against society in general who’d decided to wreak havoc and death in the community in which he lived, a sort of Hungerford massacre… Was it simply fortunate that Henry and Flynn had been on hand to prevent it happening?
Henry doubted it. He was certain that if Ginny had not spotted him concealing a weapon, a bloodbath would have ensued, but only the eight pints in Jonny Cain would have been spilled.
Cain again, Henry thought. The catalyst, something it didn’t take a nuclear physicist to work out.
They heaved Callard out of the back seat and propelled him roughly up the drive. Whatever Callard’s motive had been, whoever his intended target had been, Henry still didn’t feel terribly warm and fuzzy towards him and he got a bit of pleasure from shoving him between the shoulder blades. Inside, he was still worked up about the incident and knew it would be quite hard to keep his hands off the prisoner, remain detached and professional. Hence the flat of the hand between the shoulder blades.