Judgement Call Read Online Free PDF

the station sergeant who had just entered the charge office, mug of tea in one hand. ‘I take it he’s en-route?’ the sergeant said of the prisoner.
    â€˜Unfortunately,’ Henry said, a word that made Kaminski smile victoriously. He handed Kaminski the trainers, pushing the footwear roughly into his chest. The prisoner bent over and slid his feet into them.
    His property was returned to him and he was released. Henry followed him to the back door, glaring at the tattoo etched across the back of his neck, then ensured he left the premises completely, including getting out of the rear yard and car park. Then he went back to the charge office.
    â€˜Don’t worry, lad,’ Sergeant Ridgeson said. ‘He’ll come a cropper one day … but just for the moment you’ll have to remember the bigger picture.’
    â€˜What do you mean, sarge?’
    â€˜Sometimes you need a sprat to catch a marlin, if you get my drift?’
    Henry puckered his brow at the older, much more laid-back man. He reminded Henry of a genial Buddha, all seeing, all knowing, and full of bullshit philosophy. ‘All I know is that he raped his girlfriend and he’s walking away from it, sticking two fingers up at us as he does.’
    Ridgeson sighed heavily. ‘Maybe I’m not explaining myself properly … never mind.’ He gave the impression that Henry was a bit of a lost cause. He tapped his bulbous nose, making it wobble slightly obscenely. ‘Just forget him and concentrate on doing what young men of your age should be concentrating on – chasing tail – and make an older man vicariously very happy.’
    â€˜I’m really sorry—’
    Henry had been quickly rehearsing the words he was going to have to say to, he suspected, a rightfully irate Sally Lee when he returned to the waiting room. He’d been concentrating on his little speech, but not to the exclusion of catching the eye, again, of the policewoman who was sitting in the front office by the radio unit. She swivelled slowly on an office chair and tracked his progress across the floor, as he mumbled angrily to himself.
    Their eyes met and at the back of his brain, Henry registered the appraisal and half-smile she gave him.
    But then he was at the door of the waiting room, about to jump in and offer an immediate apology to Sally for allowing her violent rapist boyfriend to walk free, but that it wasn’t his fault, that blah! blah! blah! – but he was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight that greeted him on entering the room. He shut his mouth with a ‘pop’.
    DI Fanshaw-Bayley was leaning across the table, his face only inches away from Sally’s. His left hand supported his weight whilst his right, forefinger pointed, was jabbing at her.
    Sally looked at him horrified and distraught.
    Fanshaw-Bayley stopped abruptly in mid-rant and his head rotated slowly towards Henry, then swivelled back to the young woman who was staring open-mouthed at him. The DI said, probably reinforcing his message, Henry assumed, slowly and quietly now, ‘So you don’t go wasting our time … have you got that?’
    Cowed, she nodded. A tear trickled down her cheek.
    Fanshaw-Bayley stood upright and tugged his jacket straight, his point clearly having been made and understood. To Henry he said, ‘Take this little cow home.’
    Henry drove her in the unmarked Cavalier, turning out of the back yard of Rawtenstall nick, then right onto Bacup Road and up to the traffic lights at the big roundabout that was Queen’s Square. Much to his annoyance he saw Vladimir Kaminski standing at the bus station by the cinema, but Kaminski didn’t clock Henry’s car and seemed to be looking around for someone or something. He hadn’t gone far from the police station and Henry was past him in an instant, glancing into his rear-view mirror as Kaminski sprinted across the road to a car pulling in opposite