Playing James

by Sarah Mason

  I march resolutely through to the office. I stride past the buzzing hives of desks and up to James, who is sitting filling in the never-ending forms.

  “James,” I state purposefully.

  “Holly,” he states back, without looking up.

  “Photographer. He won’t get in the way. What do you say?”

  Now he looks up and stares at me for a second, looking as surprised as if I had said, “You and me. Stationery cupboard. Five minutes’ time.”

  “Will he be as much trouble as you?”

  What’s a girl supposed to say to that? “No.”

  “Well, considering there is a wide gap between ‘no trouble’ and ‘as much trouble as you’, can I ask if he will be quite a lot less trouble than you?”

  “Lot, lot less. Lot, lot, lot less.”

  “Fine,” he sighs wearily, as though he were Canute up to his waist in water.

  I sit down suddenly at my desk opposite him. “Really?” I say in surprise.

  “Check with the Chief first. No photos of suspects,” he replies, turning back to his forms.

  “OK!” I grin at him. That was much easier than I had anticipated. “What are we doing this morning?”

  “Going back to see Mrs. Stephens from the second burglary. I just want to ask her some more questions.”

  We get up and start walking down toward the car pool.

  “Can I call the photographer and get him to meet us there?”

  “I suppose.”

  We arrive at Mrs. Stephens’ house to find Vince already parked outside. In fact, I spotted his car from the end of the road—he drives a souped-up VW Beetle, painted lilac. James pulls our no-nonsense gray Vauxhall into the curb. I jump out and run round to meet Vince who, as soon as he sees me, gets out. He is dressed in distressed tie-dye jeans teamed with his habitual elfin boots with chains around them and an itty-bitty coral mohair sweater. He has spiky black hair which is plastered with so much gel that he must have the entirety of Bristol’s hairdressers begging for his custom. He flings his arms wide open.

  “Ducks! How lovely to see you! How are you? Cooped up with all those handsome police officers all day; it must be driving you mad! We’re all desperately jealous!”

  I grin widely and hug him. James has got out of the car and is walking toward us. His face is a picture. He is trying to maintain a normal expression and yet, at the same time, trying to stop his mouth from hitting the ground.

  In the meantime, Vince and I have disentangled ourselves and stand waiting patiently for his arrival. He seems to be taking an inordinately long time to cover the two hundred yards between us.

  “Who. Is. This. Gorgeous. Man?” murmurs Vince under his breath. “You lucky, lucky thing.”

  “Hands off. He’s engaged,” I murmur back.

  James has regained some composure by the time he reaches us and I make the necessary introductions.

  “Vince, this is Detective Sergeant James Sabine. James, this is Vince, our photographer,” I gaily announce as though I am a hostess on a game show. James manfully thrusts out his hand.

  “Hello Vince, nice to meet you.”

  “Pleasure is all mine,” Vince coos as he shakes hands.

  I smother a grin. “Shall we go?”

  “Just need to get my gear out of the boot. You two go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Vince minces over to the rear end of the lilac love machine (as he calls it) and throws open the boot.

  James and I walk toward Mrs. Stephens’ house.

  “You could have warned me,” he whispers.

  “What about?” I ask innocently. He glares at me. “Well, you might not have agreed if you’d known you’d have Vince fluttering his eyelids at you all day.”

  “Holly, contrary to your opinion of me, I am not completely prehistoric. I have no objections to gay men. Mind the fruit pastille.” He points to the ground.

  We turn through the front gate and on to Mrs. Stephens’ pathway. Almost immediately James breaks into a run toward the house and yells, “STOP! POLICE!”

  I follow his line of vision and spot a figure in dark clothing leaping from the ground floor window and disappearing around the side of the house.

  “Vince!” I yell. “Come on!” and I run up the path after James and our suspect, dropping my bag onto the lawn on the way. From the sound of pounding feet behind me, Vince is not far behind.

  I run around the side of the house, through an open wooden gate and into the back garden. I slow down momentarily to look for them and then spot James, agile as a cat, diving through a gate in the corner. Vince has taken advantage of my transient lull, overtaken me and is belting after them. “I really—pant—must buy—pant—a sports bra,” I gasp to myself as my breasts and I jig along together, unfortunately not in sync. I didn’t have this particular little scenario in mind while dressing this morning and thus I am wearing a tight-ish, straight, long gray skirt and a pair of strappy heels.

  I dive out on to the small narrow road that runs along the back of all the properties and spot everyone about one hundred yards ahead of me. They actually haven’t got too much of a distance on me. What I plan to do, if I ever catch up with any of them, I simply do not know. Yell “TAG” perhaps and run in the opposite direction. A stitch decides to assail me at this rather inconvenient moment. I clutch my side and slow down to a bit of a limp. I think I’m going to be sick. Just need . . . a . . . bit . . . more . . . oxygen. I pause for a moment and then make a concerted sprint toward them. The youth in dark clothing makes a leap for a wall at the end of the road. James leaps after him and, in a sort of vertical rugby tackle, grabs hold of one of his legs. Vince starts snapping away just as I arrive at the scene. James seems to have gained control of the situation but as I arrive next to him, the youth gives an almighty kick out with the captured limb. James doesn’t let go of his iron grip but his arm involuntarily jerks back and his elbow hits me—SMACK!—in the eye.

  I fall back slightly, my hand clasped over my eye. Shit. That hurt.

  “Holly!” James’ head swivels round over his broad shoulder while he continues to grapple with the young man. He turns his full attention back to the youth, and in one swift movement gives the leg a hefty tug. The boy falls to the ground and James niftily spins him over and cuffs him. He leaves him on the road and runs over to me.

  “Are you OK? Here, let me see. Will you stop that?!” he snaps at Vince, whose shutters simply have not stopped whirring.

  “Sorry,” says Vince sheepishly and walks over to me.

  James is trying to remove my hand from my eye. I think my eye will fall out if I take my hand away. James wins.

  “What the hell were you doing practically in my armpit?”

  “It hurts.”

  “I can see it hurts. Skin’s not broken though.”

  I squint through my good eye at the youth on the ground. Right now, I feel like giving him a good kick in the . . .

  “Sorry,” says James, shrugging. Obviously all in a day’s work for him.

  “S’OK,” I mumble, still viciously glaring at the prostrate figure. James gets him up and we all walk back toward the house. Vince has resumed snapping away and my hand has resumed its position over my eye. An old lady is walking up the road toward us and had my sense of humor not deserted me I might have laughed. She looks absolutely horrified and steers a very large berth around us. We must look a very motley crew. One sulky, handcuffed youth. One dusty detective. One gay photographer and one blond weirdo doing a good impersonation of Pudsy the Bear. Terrific. This is a day to look back on with fond memories.

  We walk into Mrs. Stephens’ back garden.

  “I live here,” says the youth sulkily, his eyes firmly fixed on the ground. We all stop in surprise and huddle around the saturnine juvenile.

  “You what?” says James.

  “I live here.”

  “Then why were you climbing out of the window?” James asks. Good question, well put.

  “Yes. Why were you climbing out of the w
indow?” I echo fiercely, my hand still firmly clasped over my throbbing eye.

  “Grandma doesn’t know that I’m home,” he mumbles. Grandma? GRANDMA?

  “Let’s go in and talk to her, shall we?” James says lightly. The group walk on, leaving me gnashing my teeth like Mutley behind them. I’ve got a black eye because he didn’t want to tell Grandma he’s home?

  James knocks loudly on the back door and after a few minutes Mrs. Stephens appears. From the surprise on her face I can tell our suspect really is her grandson. They all go inside, and then James pops his head back out. “Holly? Are you coming?”

  I trail my bitter body into the house and follow them down the back corridor and into the sitting room I was in a few days earlier. James takes the cuffs off the youth and we all sit down in a very civilized manner, in a strange contrast to the frenzied behavior of a few minutes ago.

  “Andrew, what are you doing? What’s happened?” asks Mrs. Stephens, her gentle face panic-stricken at the scene before her.

  James interjects. “Mrs. Stephens, I saw him climbing out of a window. Naturally, I assumed he was a burglar. I yelled ‘Stop, police’ but he made a run for it. That normally tends to indicate that the person in question doesn’t wish to be caught. I’m sorry.”

  She clasps her hand up to her mouth and looks genuinely distressed. “ I’m sorry, Detective. For putting you to all this trouble.” I clasp my hand back up to my face in a pathetic attempt for the spotlight. Nothing. Everyone ignores me.

  Mrs. Stephens turns to the boy. “Andrew, why aren’t you at school?”

  “Didn’t feel like going,” he mutters sulkily at his shoes. Well, sunshine, we all feel like not doing things occasionally, I think to myself savagely. In fact, I feel like it every day at the moment.

  “Why?” she asks gently.

  “Dunno.” Absolutely riveting stuff.

  James gets up. “Well, as this seems to be a purely domestic dispute, we’ll be on our way, Mrs. Stephens. We did want to ask you a few questions, but I’ll come back another time when you’re less busy. Don’t worry about seeing us out,” he adds as she makes a move to get up.

  Vince and I similarly get up and shuffle over toward the door. I resist the urge to give Andrew a swift kick as I pass him.

  Once outside, I pick my bag up from where I dropped it during the chase and we stand around, strangely subdued. Vince says, “That was a bit strange, wasn’t it?”

  “Not really. Just a case of mistaken identity.” James shrugs.

  “Is that it for today?” Vince asks.

  “Yeah, I think so. In a pictorial sense anyway. Holly isn’t up to much else, are you?” says James with a grin, obviously finding it a little more amusing than I do. Oh sure, chortle away, laughing boy.

  “I don’t know how you do this every day, Detective Sergeant. I think I’m getting a migraine,” says Vince, clasping his hand to his forehead and wandering off toward his car.

  James guides me into the passenger seat of our car as though I am a suspect being taken in for questioning, and then walks around to his side. I tentatively unclasp my hand from my eye and blink slowly. The throbbing sensation has gone and now I am left with just a dull ache. We set off back to the station but stop after a few minutes at a small corner shop. James leaps out without saying anything. I immediately whisk down the passenger sunshield in order to survey the damage to my face in the mirror. Not as much swelling as I would like, but still I think it’s going to be a shiner.

  James comes back and, without saying anything, chucks a bag of frozen peas and a bar of chocolate onto my lap. In spite of myself I smile, and we wordlessly drive off.

  Back at the station, Dave-the-grumpy-git-desk-sergeant doesn’t say anything at all at the sight of me with a bag of peas stuck to my eye. I grin mindlessly at him. He raises his eyebrows.

  “Everything all right, sir?” he says to James.

  “Yes Dave. I, er, hit Holly in the eye. Accidentally, of course.”

  “Of course, sir. Accidentally,” he murmurs, managing to intimate that he wouldn’t have blamed James at all if he had just socked me in a non-accidental and rather deliberate fashion.

  We reach the office and Callum bounces over as soon as he sees us. James and Callum are back on talking terms.

  “Latest fashion accessory, Hol?” he asks doubtfully as soon as he clocks the peas.

  “James punched me in the eye.” A look of horror comes over Callum’s face as he stares at James.

  “I did not. Well, I did, but it was an accident.” James looks round at me. “Would you not use the verb ‘punched’? It sounds deliberate.”

  “How can a verb sound deliberate?”

  “Just don’t use it,” he snaps and walks off.

  I grin. I am now starting to enjoy this enormously and appreciate the pure potential of the situation—I could milk it for weeks! Callum and I work our way toward our desks and it takes an inordinately long time.

  Rest of the department (horrified): “Holly, what happened?”

  Me (gleeful): “James smacked me in the eye!”

  James (crossly, from by the coffee machine): “Accidentally!”

  Callum (disparagingly): “That’s what he says.”

  Rest of the department (wickedly): “Well, that’s not very Dick Tracy–like, is it?”

  After Callum has brought me a cup of hot sweet tea, I give myself up to the fact that I’m not going to get anything else done today and settle back to read the forensics reports from Mrs. Stephens’ burglary. Basically, they still don’t know what the mysterious substance is that keeps being found at the scene of the crime. As I know that the forensics department is hopelessly overstretched and we are way down on their list of priorities, reading between the lines I sense that unless the solution presents itself on a plate we are unlikely to ever know what this substance is. Opposite me, James gets on with some reports.

  Partly due to lack of other material and partly because I think it will make a good story (especially with Vince’s photos), I write up today’s escapade on my laptop for the diary, as well as the latest update on The Fox.

  James gets off the phone.

  “That was Mrs. Stephens. She was calling to apologize for this morning.”

  “Hmph.”

  “She’s sorted it all out with Andrew. Apparently he’s been missing his parents. Anyway, he’s agreed to go back to school and she says he seems a lot better after their chat together.”

  “Hmph.”

  “She asked how your eye was.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said it was bad. Very bad.”

  “Good.” He smiles and goes back to his work.

  Toward the end of the afternoon, after I have been down to see Robin to show off my black eye and generally been fed doughnuts and cosseted by everyone, I head off to the paper and once there go straight to Joe’s office.

  “That’s going to be a beauty,” he says as I waltz in after the habitual “COME!”

  “Got smacked in the eye.” I turn to examine it in the mirror hanging on the back of his door. Blimey. The bruise is already starting to come out. My eye is slightly closed and surrounded by purple and yellow tissue.

  “I know. Seen the photos,” he says, pointing down at his desk. I look at the colored spreads in front of him and he reads my diary installment while I pick the best ones out. I’m careful not to include Andrew in any of them. We then agree the photo choice between us and include a couple of great action shots of James’ elbow making contact with my face. That done, we both lean back in our chairs and Joe links his hands behind his head.

  “Had any more problems from the Journal?”

  I shake my head slowly. Joe chuckles to himself. “They couldn’t scoop us on this one anyway! One of their journalists wasn’t bashed in the eye during a chase!” he says triumphantly. “I think we’ve got them licked! You go home now, Holly.”

  I smile and nod thankfully. I am actually feeling a little tired. Must be
all the excitement.

  “Get that boyfriend of yours to look after you.” Some hope, but I suddenly remember that he’s due to be coming round tonight as Lizzie can’t make our usual Monday night ice cream fest. It’s not like me to ever forget Ben is coming round. I am normally soaking in three feet of soapy, scented water and frenziedly brandishing my razor by now. I suppose a lot has been going on today.

  “And don’t forget that TV thing on Friday.”

  I stare at him in horror. I had actually forgotten all about it.

  “I can’t go on TV with this.” I point at my half-closed eye.

  “Sure you can. Bruising will be down by then. Besides, it will be great publicity. It will show just how genuine the diary is. Go on, go home,” he says, waving his arms in a shooing motion. “Some of us have got work to do.”

  I can’t be bothered to argue and besides, the end of the week feels like years away. I make my way home and immediately start running a hot bath. Not for Ben particularly, just for me. I lie in it and let the comforting warmth of the scented water seep into my bones. The phone rings just as I am getting out. I quickly wrap my toweling robe around me and run to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Darling! How are you?” It’s my mother. I settle myself down cross-legged on the floor.

  “I’m fine except for the fact I’ve got myself a black eye.”

  “How careless. How did you manage that?”

  “Well, James . . . I mean Jack . . .” and I give her the whole story.

  “Darling, how absolutely thrilling! It sounds as though you’re having a fabulous time!”

  “Well, maybe not fabulous. I mean, it did hurt at the time,” I say doubtfully. “Anyway, you’ll see it all in the diary. We’ve got pictures too now! Oh, and I have a TV interview on Friday with the local TV station! Do you get it down there?”

  “No, I don’t think we do. How wonderful! You’ll have to make sure you record it for us!”

  “I will, I promise.”

  “Do as my director tells me. Enunciate clearly, remember your vowels and sit up straight.”