He wanted to sort out his return from sickness form first, which he did. He then checked the duty states, a huge sheet of paper compiled by hand by an inspector detailing every officer and their shifts in the valley for that day and the week ahead. He saw Jo was on an early shift which started at six, and she was presently out on patrol. Henry wanted to speak to her later and try to extricate himself as delicately as possible from any entanglement with her. It wasn’t something he was relishing, but it had to be tackled. After leafing through his in-tray, in which two Crown Court committal files had been returned by the prosecutions department for some follow-up work, he booked out a PR and then went up to the first floor to do some digging. Even though the armed robberies that had been committed by the Manchester gang in Rossendale were very serious crimes – particularly for an area perceived to be such a sleepy backwater (which of course was one of the reasons it had been targeted by the gang) – and all were increasing incrementally in violence, a dedicated incident room and police operation had not yet been set up to investigate.
