Gallagher replied, ‘He might be honest, but he’s not stupid. He’ll know when the cards are stacked against him and I’m sure he’ll hold his hands up.’ He laughed.
‘ Siobhan?’ Morton raised his eyebrows to her.
‘ Go straight for him,’ she said in a brittle tone. ‘Lay it on the line. He’ll realise he hasn’t any choice and he’ll stick with us. He’s not stupid, as Gallie says.’ She nodded towards the DI. ‘He doesn’t want to lose his job and his wife.’
There was a knock on the door. ‘Come,’ said Morton. Superintendent Guthrie, Discipline and Complaints, poked his head through the door. He held up a finger. ‘Done and dusted,’ he said.
‘ Thanks, Will,’ Morton said. ‘See you later about it.’
Guthrie closed the door.
Morton clamped his fist tight triumphantly. ‘Right! This will be a difficult time, for us and him. His first reaction may be to go running to someone else and blurt everything out. If he does that, we need to be watertight. Are we?’
‘ I am,’ said Siobhan.
‘ Me too.’ Gallagher.
The laconic Tattersall merely nodded.
‘ Right. Let’s wheel him in, drop a few more bombshells on him, then see where we stand.’
Henry tapped without confidence on Tony Morton’s door. He had been summoned once more, probably, he guessed, to receive an update on the Siobhan affair. ‘Come,’ he heard Morton call out.
Henry pushed the door open, expecting to see only Morton. It knocked him sideways when he firstly saw Siobhan, then Gallagher, then Tattersall, sitting in there too. They were in a semi-circle facing Morton’s desk. At the open end of the semi-circle was an empty chair.
Henry had a quick look round for The Four Horses of the Apocalypse.
Overcoming an urge to run away and hide in a toilet, he entered the room. If he’d had a tail it would have been between his legs. His eyes avoided contact with Siobhan’s; his mouth was arid extra dry. Tattersall stood up and approached Henry. ‘Let me search you.’
‘ Eh?’
‘ You heard.’
Gallagher rose from his seat and without warning he and Tattersall hurled Henry against the wall.
‘ What the fuck’s going on here?’ Henry demanded. He flicked around and tried to pull himself out of their grasp.
Gallagher punched him hard in the chest with the base of his hand.
Henry bent double as the pain from the bullet-wound corkscrewed out through his heart and lungs.
Gallagher and Tattersall hoisted him up against the wall and searched him quickly and expertly. They then manhandled him to the chair and threw him onto it. His arms crossed over his breast and nursed the pain. He looked up at Morton, unable to speak for the moment.
Gallagher seized a handful of Henry’s fine hair and pulled his head back. He looked down at him and said, ‘That is to show you we are not pissing about, Christie.’
The two detectives sat down.
‘ What the fuck’s going on here?’ Henry struggled to say.
Morton took a deep sigh and stared coldly at him before he began sombrely. ‘There are a few things that have been brought to my attention since this morning’s complaint from DC Robson here.’
There was a sheet of paper on the desk top. Morton held it up for Henry to see. His watery eyes found it hard to focus. ‘This a photocopy of the firearms authorisation sheet used by the NWOCS. It clearly shows you booked a firearm out without my signature to authorise it.’ Morton indicated the offending blank space on the form.
‘ But she said,’ he turned hopelessly to face Siobhan, ‘it was OK to do that. That you’d automatically sign the form later.’ He looked at Morton again. Then back to Siobhan. ‘Come on, tell him. I did what you said.’
A warm trickle ran down Henry’s neck. He wiped it and saw blood on his hand. His ear had started bleeding again.
She remained silent, her eyes as cold as ice cubes.
‘ This is fucking outrageous,’ Henry spat, and got to his feet. ‘What the hell is this?’
Tattersall moved quickly, followed by Gallagher. A well-aimed blow to the kidneys from the DS brought Henry to his knees in front of Morton’s desk. Gallagher forced his head onto the desk, holding his cheek to the wooden surface, squelching his features, but allowing him to look up at Morton.
‘ A very serious discipline offence,’ he heard the Chief Superintendent say. Morton’s eyes lifted and looked at Gallagher. ‘Put him back on the chair.’
Two pairs of hands lifted him bodily back and deposited him like dumping a sack of rubbish.
‘ I don’t know what’s going on here, but as soon as I get out of this room every one of you is in deep shit.’
Morton laughed. ‘Henry, you’re splitting my sides. If you do anything like that, I promise you’ll face a charge of rape as well as a civil litigation suit for harassment. Both will stick. That’s a promise too.’
Henry had lost all sense of comprehension. His mind was being blown, like he was on some kind of hallucinogenic drug, and he was adrift on the Sea of Unreality.
‘ How did your D amp; C interview go?’
‘ What’s that gotta do with anything?’ As he was speaking he analysed the question. ‘You!’ he said.
‘ No, not quite,’ Morton said affably. ‘In essence, yes. But in reality — no. You did it, Henry. It was all your work. Bribing that poor custody officer to change the record so it read in your favour. You beat the living shit out of that defenceless young man — what’s he called — Shane. Just so he would retract his statement. All in all, you’ve been a very busy and naughty boy, Henry. What do they call it? Perverting the course of justice.’
‘ I deny it.’
‘ Well, you would, wouldn’t you? But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that we’ — here Morton indicated everyone in the room, including himself — ‘could, if necessary, prove you did. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it? So all in all you’re well and truly stitched up, as they say.
‘ Let’s look at it. Firstly there’s sexual harassment. Then there’s rape, or indecent assault at the very least. And we can find the necessary witnesses if we have to. Then there’s the discipline offence re the firearm. That in itself could lose you your job. Then there’s perverting the course of justice and, of course, planting evidence.’
‘ What the hell are you talking about?’
‘ Those guns found in Anderson’s Shogun. You were left alone with the car for a few short minutes and lo and behold, guns appear. Very neat, wouldn’t you say?’
Henry thought back to the incident. How Siobhan had gone to the toilet, leaving him to start the search of Anderson’s vehicle. And then him finding the guns.
‘ Fucking bad news all this,’ Morton said. ‘Individually they’re horrendous. Put them all together, pal, they’re devastating. You are a very corrupt and perverted individual, and we have done well to unmask you, wouldn’t you say? You will never recover from these allegations professionally or personally, once they start being investigated. What d’you say, Henry? Cat got your tongue?’
‘ I’m not guilty of any of those allegations,’ Henry replied stubbornly to Morton’s prodding.
‘ Doesn’t matter whether you are or not. I mean, I know you’re the cleanest cop in the world. Bet you don’t even have skid-marks on your undies, do you? What matters is that we will make sure that, at the very least, you will lose your job and your private life will go to rat-shit.’ The matter-of-fact way in which Morton spoke the words hit Henry like a hodful of bricks.
A hush descended on the room.
Henry stared past Morton’s left shoulder out of the window where he could see Blackpool Tower, now painted a garish blue colour to promote a fizzy drink. It was raining hard, driving against the glass, obscuring the view, distorting the Tower.