Where's the Detective

Prologue


Roundley was by far the largest town in the area. It was bordering on being a city. In fact, most of the local councillors had been arguing about this point for over a decade, mostly because of the massive influx of monies from the Government that would come with the title.
As the urban conurbation had expanded over the years, mainly due to a rise in hopeful immigrant workers to the grimy former mill town, so too had the crime levels. It was what most of the long-term residents now referred to as a shithole. Probably the very reason the various governments had consistently refused their application to raise the status of the drug-ridden territory. It hardly promoted the image of the hard-working blue-collar workers that had once been the pride of British industrialisation which had taken the world by storm.
Once the pride of northern work ethics, it had become a socially deprived, drug-strewn mixture of run-down houses and disused former business premises whose very roots were rotten to the core. All sense of neighbourliness and camaraderie had long since dissipated, leaving behind a feeling of loneliness and isolation.
Housing estates, once proudly heralded by the town’s chiefs as the future of the British economy, were now little more than war zones, with rival gangs marking their territory like medieval warriors. Elderly residents peered through net curtains, afraid to venture out into a nightmare scenario they thought had finished with the demise of Hitler. In fact, it had been safer in those days, as you could count both on your neighbours and the early warning siren of an oncoming blitz attack. No such luck these days!
Mills and factories that once employed the majority of the population either stood derelict (decaying monstrosities blighting the already unsightly landscape) or had been turned into designer flats. The problem with the latter being, this wasn’t Chelsea and the clientele showed their disapproval by way of the half-empty properties where developers ambitious proposals had fallen by the wayside, leaving the few frustrated buyers in limbo. Those who had ventured their life savings on buying one of these ‘dream homes’ as they were always advertised, had found they were now worth half the value, as the recession had set in and either the flats that hadn’t been bought remained empty or, worse still, those people who had taken the chance found it was one repayment too far and succumbed to the ever-growing rank of the unemployed. Grandiose ideas were shelved and the watershed had been met, as it was clear the town had been given over to decay. The white flag had been raised and anyone who held out any hopes of raising the town’s status had seen the warning signs and fled to greener pastures.
A few proud members still raised the battle flag, preening their gardens in the midst of rusting heaps of metal on their neighbours’ drives. It was a forlorn effort. For every one of these stalwarts who maintained that true British grit that had been fought for over two world wars, there were a dozen or so who had never heard of Gardeners’ World or indeed knew what a fuchsia was. Most likely they probably thought Hitler was a hero. If, that is, they had attended school long enough to take the odd history lesson.
This demise, understandably, left the owners who had worked all their lives, to achieve a degree of attainment, frustrated and angry at a system that meant their neighbours, who partied through the night and slept through the day, had climbed the same rung on the economic ladder with none of the effort. Whilst they had to climb groggy eyed, out of their beds every morning, waiting for the bus in the shelter – if that was what it could be called. Bearing in mind the protective glass had long been shattered one time too many for repair beyond the council’s overstretched budget. To return home worrying if their property would still be intact and what delights awaited them from their neighbours’ nightly escapades.
All the town’s entrepreneurs and with it the hopes of the town itself had long gone. All that was left was a conglomerate of unemployed, drug- and alcohol-induced people, with no hopes or aspirations for themselves or their children. The reducing population of honest, law-abiding citizens were caught in the trap. They would leave, but for the fact no one else would exchange vistas. There weren’t many selling points to a mid-terraced, well-kept property that was flanked by a scene from the Gaza Strip on either side. That was what the town was like.
As you extended out from the centre, the outskirts brought an element of relief. Poverty gave way to a modicum of middle-class achievement. Even here, however, it could be seen that the deprivation of the town had taken hold. Once sought-after areas had been dotted with rented accommodation where people were packed into houses that had been renovated into flats and then leased to the council to fill with drug dealers, alcoholics and general criminals who could no longer fit onto the inner estates. People who thought they were going to live out their days in peace and harmony found that the house next door had been bought by disreputable landlords who made it into as many apartments as possible. Building and safety regulations didn’t exist and seemed to be overlooked as more and more of society’s lower echelons were hidden away as a statistic who had been found housing. Thus, the homeless figures had been quelled. However, the downside was houses were then filled with the dregs of society, who had their rent paid for by the state – and their alcohol and their drugs!
So it seemed while resentful neighbours grew ever more despondent at what his and her endeavours had all been for – to bring their children up in a society they could add to and prosper in – peace and harmony had been exchanged for crack pipes and domestic violence!




Chapter 1


The town centre streets were wet and slippery. The blustery, cold northerly breeze had brought a particularly strong shower with it, which blew the rubbish in mini cyclones around the many disused shop doorways.
The few hardy members of the public who battled the elements pushed their multi-coloured umbrellas into the stiffening wind. Their minds concentrated on avoiding the greasy debris underfoot, and youthful skateboarders and mountain bikers mounted pavements at will, regardless of the pedestrian’s right of way.
It seemed the norm for a mundane Monday afternoon and the bored counter staff member was studiously eyeing the clock in the centre of the voluminous stone architecture of the central bank. It was a beautiful Georgian construction that stood out against the dismal arena of boarded up businesses that had once flourished in the town. All that was left of the once flourishing town centre were takeaways and pound shops: the only things that seemed to keep the economy going in Roundley. Apart from the pubs that still seemed to flow with the usual array of drunkards and general has-beens, that is. Oh, and the sudden influx of pawnshops. Amazing how the majority of those people with a mass of items to sell carried them into the shop in a black bin liner and a hood covering their face. Strictly legitimate of course! It was just surprising how many laptops and mobile phones found their way through this gateway. Especially as it corresponded quite closely to the number of robberies, burglaries, or thefts from motor vehicles where similar items had been removed from their previous owners. It was even more amazing how the same person managed to have acquired a further laptop to sell the week after. Also, their ability to sign their name in the shop’s ledger seemed to waver as dyslexia kicked in.
An evening in Roundley was no longer the dream date. The town centre nightlife certainly wasn’t somewhere to take a girl out to impress her. The idea of wining and dining a girl on a first date in this arena was to dodge a few glasses in the local bars and end the night with a kebab in the multitude of misnamed takeaways, such as The Persian Paradise. If ever a place was misnamed, this was it. It was an idea to ensure your latest romance had more than a sniff of the barmaid’s apron before being presented with the ankle-deep layers of discarded polystyrene cartons and smashed bottles lining the pavement as you exited the shop with your cuisine. Hardly a candlelit meal for two to impress your new date!
In the bank, the cashier, a young, attractive, blonde girl, was still finding her feet having only been employed at the branch for a few weeks. She was one of the lucky ones who’d found employment almost straight from leaving school, albeit on a pittance of a wage. It was hardly enough to give her mum a few quid to help with the rent, but she’d made the effort and was proud of her role. Especially when she looked around at most of her mates who were still unemployed or even worse unemployed and pregnant already. She was speaking to an elderly customer. The lady was a regular, and the routine of her life wasn’t going to be broken by the onset of internet banking. The cashier had soon got the hang of how things worked and made small talk with the lady about the weather and how her pets were keeping as she put the weekly £10 donation into her savings account.
She had already decided that she would have to make something more of her life than being a cashier for the next half a century. Some of the other staff had been doing it forever and she couldn’t see it being her life. She had some ambition and wanted to travel, not be stuck in a two-up two-down with two kids and no father – which seemed to be the sum outlook for her friends. But, for now, she was grateful she had a job and could look forward to her future.
There were several other customers at the other tills and just one more person to serve. The cashier, while making the relevant small talk and assuring the lady that her savings were in the best place, was pondering over whether to spend the last of her monthly wages on a Monday night out with the girls or to get a bottle of wine on her way home as a surprise for her hard-working mum. She was still too young and naive to be peeved about the fact that the majority of the girls she turned out with managed to do so without holding down a job and even worse not having a job and somebody else looking after their young child. Invariably, this was not the father! He had usually long left the scene.
It was a second or so before she realised what was happening as she daydreamed her way through the last few minutes of her day.
‘Get the fuck down and stay on the floor!’
Three masked males had appeared from nowhere. One had stayed at the door while the remaining two had run to the till area. The elderly lady had spun round with amazing agility for her advancing years. She turned straight into the first attacker, who promptly gripped her arm and flung her across the room. Even in the shock of what was happening, there was a bewildered gasp from the terrified audience. One of the queuing customers, a similarly elderly male with a handlebar moustache, perfectly groomed – a remnant from his war years – made to assist her.
The offending male had a red-handled machete in his other gloved hand, which he swung around the room in order to put any wannabe heroes off. He gestured ferociously at the elderly male to desist with his bravado. Nonetheless, undeterred, he bravely went to her aid. Kneeling down at one side, he gently cradled her head while showing the attackers he had no intentions of going to interrupt their criminality.
The other assailant had a large sledgehammer, which he launched at the central till window with both hands. The young female behind was still frozen to her seat, unable to move. The security screen seemed to change colour as the thousands of splinters of glass held for a brief second, creating a rainbow effect against the glow of the interior lighting, before cascading onto the floor. She squealed in terror as her face turned red where shards of the glass had decorated her face. They were minimal injuries, but the sight of blood on her delicately made-up features caused fear and trepidation amongst her fellow cashiers and customers alike. This was exactly the response the robbers had desired in their efforts to buy them a few precious seconds and stall or deter any efforts by an overzealous hero.
The middle-aged male customer who had been patiently waiting in the queue, mesmerised by the sudden activity, lifted his arms at the same time. It was a movement of anguish and protection rather than anger or retaliation. The machete-wielding male, however, took this as a sign of dissension and whirled round. The bladed weapon struck the slightly built gent in the centre of his bicep. There was a sickening, grinding sound as the blade ploughed through bone and gristle. The male fell back to the ground, groaning as people all around screamed from their prone positions.
‘Now fucking stay down,’ the axe man repeated.
The sledgehammer had dropped to the floor after achieving its target as its owner hurtled over the counter into the staff area.
‘Open the safe, you soft bitch, or else you won’t be going home tonight!’ he screamed at the bloodstained blonde, as if reading her mind.
‘I can’t, I’m only a junior,’ she squeaked, all thoughts of her evening’s escapades ejected from her mind.
There was a standoff for what seemed like an eternity to the young blonde, but which was in reality just a few seconds. She looked briefly at the malevolent stare through the eyeholes and quickly looked away, fearing the worst. The silence was thankfully broken by the third male at the door, who appeared to be holding a handgun of some kind in his left hand.
‘Just get the cash from the tills, you fucking pricks,’ he bellowed in an increasingly tremulous voice at his accomplices. His was the first sign of panic within the group and caused the victims more anguish, as they feared an upturn in the already savage levels of violence.
His reason for the sudden concern were the distant sirens of the emergency services, who had been alerted by the panic alarms which had been set off from within the bank.
A mad scramble then ensued where the professional edge they had originally shown began to unravel in their haste to obtain their goal. Sledgehammer man rummaged through the eagerly opened tills and salvaged the wads of notes on show and crammed them into a red drawstring cotton bag that he pulled out of his camouflage jacket. The second accomplice prowled around the bank floor like a hungry hyena. His machete was raised above his head. Gloating in this heady feeling of power, he stalked the tiles while innocent, helpless victims lay cowering in fear on the floor. They offered no challenge and no resistance, but just to satisfy his own lustings, he swung the weapon perilously close to a particularly vulnerable veteran to ensure no thoughts of heroism entered his or anyone else’s head.
It was a matter of a few seconds more before they fled the building, leaving carnage and shattered lives behind. What had seemed like an eternity for these people going about their everyday lives had in fact been less than four minutes in total. A grand total of less than two hundred and forty precious seconds to a number of lives that, in some cases, would never recover from the trauma that had been presented to them. It was yet a further day of horror in their very own cesspit of a town they were obliged to call their home.




Chapter 2


It was even more than ever a particularly miserable, uninviting night. That swirling northerly wind had picked up as the evening had gone on and was whipping around the desolate-looking town. It was cold and that sort of damp that seeped into your every joint. A fine mist of rain that soaked you without you realising it pervaded through the musty air. It was that kind of spray, mixed with that artic feeling wind, that caused you to squint and lean forward as you tried to make headway into it, at the same time instinctively pulling any head coverings closer around the face in a protective manner. The few late shift workers battled their way home for their evening supper, intent on nothing but the bastions of a warm house.
It was strange how the cold, wet weather seemed to have got worse with the demise of the town. Was it that a shithole just looked that much worse in the rain, or that global warming was a reality? Whichever way it was, it didn’t much matter to the police officer just approaching his local nick.
Steve Welland was just starting the first one of his set of night shifts at Roundley police station. Oh! How he hated nights. Even the thought of them now made him weary. There was a time that he’d looked forward to them with relish. He’d sleep all through the day, getting up only to feed his face and then go back to sleep again, waking only to have a quick snack and get ready to start his shift again. On the odd day he’d even spend an hour down the local gym before replenishing his batteries with another hour or two’s kip prior to starting his shift. He’d been single then, and he could sleep the clock round. Now he was lucky if he could manage just five hours of fitful napping. The onset of old age, or middle age – it depended on your viewpoint – didn’t really help with this either. His now weakened bladder seemed to mean several regular visits to the loo just as he was in his deepest slumber. Two kids getting ready for school and his wife preening herself for work had also meant he didn’t sleep like he used to. The fact that he was grouchy about their necessity to prepare themselves for their day, just as his had finished, summed up his demeanour in general when he was on nights. The days of coming home and diving into bed without a care in the world had long gone. Now it was a good two hours plus before he’d have the serenity of the house to himself for a few short hours.
That said, he felt sorry for his long-suffering wife. She’d put up with his shift work for a good portion of his twenty plus years’ service. He knew he was a grumpy old sod. When he was on nights, it was even more so than usual. She tried to make token excuses to their kids and they accepted his moods with a knowing smile, but he felt guilty all the same. It wasn’t fair to them to be on the end of his bad-tempered moods, but it became harder and harder to be cheerful in front of them when he had a night shift to face. It wasn’t easy being Mr Happy when his eyes permanently felt as if he’d been standing in a Saharan sandstorm.
Still, eight more years and he’d be done with all this. No more shifts! Ever! He contemplated the bliss of never having to leave his wife and family at home on their own at night again. The comfort of it was overwhelming. He thought about his retirement more than he’d ever done, even though he tried his best not to. Not that he didn’t enjoy his job anymore. He still loved what he did and was proud that he was still as keen as ever, but as that golden chalice of his retirement, and with it his pension, drew ever nearer, he found himself counting down the days with relish. It was crazy really, because he didn’t even know what he wanted to do when, or even if come to that, he actually left this job. Yes, it was nice the thought that he could retire at a relatively young age and that he would have the security of a pension to go with it. In fact, he often thought that the idea of having the option to retire was better than the reality. He started to think what he would do with it, but then he often mused about the fact there were Premiership footballers who would draw more than its total value for one week’s efforts. Yet he’d have spent thirty years being sworn at, spat at, punched, kicked, scratched, bitten, and on one occasion stabbed.