Abduction in Dalgety Bay

by Ramsay Sinclair

  He mockingly saluted, though I had a feeling he wasn’t really listening.

  From there, we discussed potential cases over the next half an hour, sorting through a couple of old reports to see what we could pick up from them. Our inbox of fresh cases was drier than the Sahara. It was so bad that even Rebecca had slumped over in aggravation. As a woman who loved to work, having little to do was a form of torture.

  Cillian played an office favourite of ours, which was a game where we screwed up a piece of scrap paper and saw who could get it into the waste bin first. Tony kept score whilst McCall scolded them for ruining the office after they’d spent ages tidying up. It was a bemusing scene, to say the least.

  Eventually, a woman stepped into the office and seemed to be lost somehow. She was something of a cartoon character, soft around the edges and a polite grin on her face, complete with armfuls of folders. She didn’t say much, to begin with.

  “Front desk is that way, miss,” Cillian piped up helpfully and pointed left, assuming she was of a different department. “We usually dump all the useless files there, so we don’t have to deal with them.” He snorted at his own ridiculous joke.

  The woman just heaved a sigh. “DC Murphy, I presume? I’m DCI Harvey, the DCI who will be taking over from your last superior.” Dumping the folders down on the desk, he sat up straight and was clearly embarrassed at his mistake. “The superintendent warned me about you. Said you're a bit of a livewire.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said quietly, but she had hearing like a bat.

  “And you are?” she turned to face me.

  Clearing my throat, I stepped forward and offered my hand. “DI Cooper.”

  She shook it vigorously, with all the strength of a rugby player. Appearances certainly were deceiving.

  “Nice to meet you at last. I’ve heard a lot about you all. The superintendent has briefed me about the… situation I’m stepping into.” DCI Harvey started to make the rounds of handshakes and greetings. “I just wanted to start by saying that I’m not here to step on anyone's toes. My role is to hold this team together and complete our cases with the utmost professionalism. I like my teams to be conscientious, hardworking, and excellent at communication, and I don’t think that’s asking a lot of you.”

  McCall secretly gave me a thumbs-up when DCI Harvey’s back was turned, seemingly chuffed at our replacement. We chorused a few surprised ‘ayes’ at her efficiency.

  “I’d like to have a word with you in private first and foremost, DI Cooper,” DCI Harvey asked politely. “Whilst I’m doing that, I’d like the rest of you to continue with any ongoing cases that haven’t been wrapped up yet. Thanks.”

  5

  “Please, come in,” I said politely as I opened my personal office door for DCI Harvey.

  Ducking underneath my outstretched arm, she pulled out the chair intended for visitors. Sitting down complacently, she waited until I was settled to begin the interaction. The smell of expensive perfume filled the air, obviously a product of classy taste. Our chairs squeaked underneath the body weight, and I nervously clicked a biro pen that was left on the tabletop.

  “It’s refreshing to have a new face around the station.”

  DCI Harvey beamed, and it was a relief to know that she wasn’t as frightening as first appearances may have suggested.

  “Thank you. It was a slow handover period between your last DCI and me,” the lady expressed, getting straight down to business. Some people weren’t the type for beating around the bush, and DCI Harvey seemed to be one of them. “I’ve been waiting for a while to meet you all. The superintendent has caught me up to speed with everything needed to know about this department.” She gestured around with one hand, and her bakelite bangles jangled whenever any sort of wrist movement was made. Taking a moment to appreciate the surroundings, she nodded in surprise. “I must say I’m impressed with how clean everything is around here.”

  “Ah.” Attempting to be honest, I grimaced in reaction to the praise. “I’m afraid that has nothing to do with me.”

  My new superior followed my gaze towards the main hub, and she didn’t need any further explanation. “It was a cleanup effort because they knew I was arriving today.”

  “You sussed us.” I threw my hands up in the air. “It’s probably a good thing that you figured it out. Observation skills make a better DCI.”

  “That’s why I wish they didn’t announce my arrival beforehand.” She hit the arm of her chair expressively. “I like seeing teams in their natural states, flummoxed and messy. It gets us down to the nitty-gritty right away.”

  McCall would be disappointed to know the tidying effort was all in vain. If nitty-gritty is what was required, we could definitely accommodate that without even trying too hard.

  I chuckled lightly. “Well, I can tell you already that we are far from perfect.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” DCI Harvey shrugged optimistically. “Not with your department’s track record.” She appeared to be examining us from the offset if I didn’t know any better. “With an 85% ratio of solved crimes to unsolved, I’d say you guys are decent.”

  “We’re a small town. It’s to be expected. Most of it wasn’t just me alone,” I insisted. Credit was needed where it was due. “The team out there is the best team a superior could ask for.”

  The clarification came from the heart, for without our team, none of our crimes would’ve been solved. DCI Harvey primly scribbled notes onto a notepad.

  “They seem to respect you and DS McCall. It’s unspoken but obvious that they all look to you for leadership.” Her Roman-style nose crinkled around the bridge area when she grinned.

  Sitting erect in the seat and acting on my best behaviour, I was hoping to make a decent first impression. It was obvious to anyone peering through the windows that we were both on edge, each of us unsure of how to approach the other. Brushing my ungroomed hair behind my ear, the new DCI crossed her legs, seemingly nervous in spite of her cool and efficient exterior.

  “I wanted to clear the air and start off our working relationship on a positive note,” DCI Harvey began to explain the real reason for our gathering of two. “I know you’ve struggled to adjust to the passing of your previous DCI. Your super filled me in on the gaps. He seemed concerned about you. From what I know, your previous DCI sounded like a very…” She struggled to articulate anything of use.

  “You don’t have to be polite.” I stopped her there, unsure that I could take any pity, especially since she barely knew DCI Reid. She only knew of him.

  “He was very--” She still attempted to recover the sentence. “Anyway. I thought you should know that I don’t expect you to trust me right away, if at all. But what I do ask is that we work professionally and efficiently together. I’ll respect your space and vice versa if that’s what you’d prefer. I know you’ll need time to yourself, and I’m happy to give you time to get into the swing of things again.” DCI Harvey flailed her hands to communicate effectively.

  “I don’t need time,” I attempted to convince her. Weakness wasn’t an emotion I’d been taught how to show, sprouting from a young age when our father would insist showing weakness wasn’t masculine enough. He’d hide his true feelings from our family, and we children grew up believing being cold and unemotionally available is what a man should be. That it was desirable as an employee and partner alike to be miserable and tough.

  DCI Harvey hesitantly crossed a box on the drawn up checklist. “Well, if you’re certain? Perhaps we could work out an improved schedule if you wanted? You could drop a few days until you’re fully recovered from the ordeal of the explosion.” She jotted something else down, poking her pink tongue out in concentration.

  “I’m not in recovery. There’s nothing to recover from, and that’s that. What’s happened has finished, and I’m fed up with everyone treating me like an invalid. They think I can barely walk to the toilet by myself, excuse the crudeness. How am I supposed to get better if I’m getting
special treatment?” I ranted unfairly without thinking, and it must have sounded like I was snubbing her kindness, which wasn’t my intention.

  DCI Harvey licked her cherry lips silently, signifying the sudden outburst that appeared to be a sign of my lunacy. Those softened green eyes flicked towards the sheet of paper, and they contrasted her jet black bob spectacularly. DCI Harvey was reminiscent of Snow White from those picture storybooks. There was certainly nobody similar at CID, nor had I ever seen anyone of her sort in a DCI position.

  “You’re an adult, DI Cooper,” DCI Harvey sighed. “You can make your own decisions. Fine.” She ticked something off against her will. “I’ll put you on for your normal hours.” She prodded the air in front of me with her biro. “But if I see even a hint of this kind of behaviour again or any sign that you’re not coping well, I’ll send you home. Something tells me you’re a stubborn one,” she was correct there, “so I’ll make a compromise instead. DS McCall will be in charge of the majority of cases over the course of this month. That way, you get to stay at work, and I get my way by allowing you to rest too. From what I gather about you, DI Cooper, you don’t like my suggestion that you should take a bit of a back seat, huh?”

  Subconsciously diverting our attention towards my fumbling and clammy hands, I couldn’t disagree. “Not overly. Work is a distraction from other things, I guess.”

  “You’ll still be doing the same amount of work,” DCI Harvey reassured me. “It’s just letting someone else handle the reins until you’re… stable. From my past experiences, someone that is perhaps suffering from shock needs some time to readjust.” The way in which she spoke made me realise I had no choice. “I’ve handled many men worse than you in terms of stubbornness, I’m afraid. You’re not quite at the top of my list yet. Your circumstances do give you a bit of leeway.” She regained that bright exterior displayed earlier.

  We dipped into a lull of silence. Those shrewd, emerald eyes screwed up at my obvious hesitation to overshare my most personal details with her.

  “I used to work for the anti-corruption command,” she mentioned randomly, in conjunction with the earlier topic of discussion about DCI Reid.

  “Metropolitan?”

  “Oh, yes. Scotland Yard. It all went a bit downhill in the end. I longed for a drastic change.” Now that the tall woman relaxed more, her accent was more obvious. It explained some of her abrasiveness and proficiency. People in Scotland were usually more relaxed than those officers that worked in the London stations. They generally had a faster-paced life than we in Dalgety Bay. “I moved up here with my partner a while ago.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Husband,” she corrected me conversationally. “Working for that place is an eye-opener. I know the lasting effect corrupt officers have on teams and the people in them. I just want you all to know that I’m nothing like that. They’re the reason I joined the force.” DCI Harvey’s tone was gentle. “I’m strict at times, but I also have a friendly personality behind the exterior. I just like teams that work efficiently, without all the secrets. Secrets stop us from doing our jobs, which is getting justice for our cases.”

  This was obviously a subtle reassurance that shutting us out and hiding things from us wasn’t DCI Harvey’s manner of working.

  “That’s a relief to hear,” I exhaled truthfully.

  “I bet it is. Your team has had a rough couple of months. Now, I really must get on. The super’s going to be breathing down my neck for the next couple of weeks and seeing how I fit in here.” Harvey held out one recently lotioned hand for me to shake, quite the expert at them.

  Silently praying that the sweat droplets weren’t noticeable on my skin, we gave a firm shake and got ready to go about our alternative business. “A pleasure to meet you, DI Cooper. Here’s to our new and improved team.”

  “Indeed.”

  Overall, DCI Harvey wasn’t at all how we’d imagined she would be. Poles apart from some of our previous superiors, she oozed charisma and, above all else, sincerity. A sense of understanding. Despite promising that I wouldn’t let myself be swayed again by a figure of authority, I warmed to her instantly as a person. There was something likeable about a meticulous and polished expert at their line of work. The entire team needed a DCI who could be trusted without question.

  Hearing her practical rubber-soled shoes retreating into the main hub, I clicked the office door closed and leaned thankfully against the cold wood.

  For the first time this morning, I fully inspected the office in which the team had tidied earlier. The cramped space certainly looked sparkling clean. They’d done a splendid job at sprucing up the tired room into somewhere where all of my files were easily accessible. Rebecca had even organised them into alphabetical order, her OCD clearly showing in the final result, and a potent smell of lavender air freshener filled my nostrils, too, taking over from the usually musky smell of cigarettes.

  “Right-o,” I pushed myself to find some tasks to do in order to fill the rest of the day. The only things lying around were a few binders of statements to look over for some domestic cases the team were working on months ago. I had a sneaky suspicion that McCall had been taking on some of my files since the explosion.

  Apart from the occasional check-in or offering of caffeine, the team abided by my wishes for a few hours and steered clear away from my private office. Huffing and hauling my weary, tiresome body from its seated position, I flicked the green button on an industrial type fan. The whirring machinery kicked into life, and a delicate flutter of cool wind circulated around the room. The dirty propellers were hypnotizing with their constant spinning as they mirrored the motions that were happening inside my stomach simultaneously.

  6

  The rim of my mug direly demanded cleaning after four cups of Rebecca’s watered-down tea, as the mixture contained more chalky remnants than caffeine. Tony had tried to wrestle my cup away from me.

  “It’s no problem, sir. I can do that for you.”

  “I’ve got two hands. I can do it myself,” I had reminded the rabble and proceeded to disappear out of sight into our adjoining staff kitchen.

  From the metallic sink, their murmured conversations regarding DCI Harvey were still audible, and the bored team shared an occasional exchange of inappropriate jokes. The plasterboard wall which separated us was only thin, and it was lucky that DCI Harvey had retreated elsewhere, inundated with a backlog of statements from our many weeks without an appropriate superior.

  At first, a stream of scalding water gushed from the leaking taps.

  “Ouch!” I flinched in reaction and immediately pulled away, mumbling incoherent profanities so nobody else could hear. Once the temperature eventually changed to lukewarm, I began to scrub the mug with a random scouring pad that had been abandoned on the worktop.

  That wasn’t all left behind on the tiny slither of the worktop. Apart from plenty of other teacups piled high, varying in height and widths, there was also a disgusting amount of stale pastries or bread that had been left there for god knows how long. It was Sod’s law that as soon as our team would settle down to eat, an urgent call would be dispatched across, or the superintendent would spring a surprise visit upon us.

  “Sarge?” DC Taylor called McCall from outside, and the serious tone of his voice alerted the rest of us too. Turning the tap firmly off, I strained to listen to their conversations.

  “Who are they?” I heard McCall reply, and she appeared to be concerned.

  All the team hushed immediately, and I couldn’t help but retreat from the tearoom to be nosy. There were two people trailing along behind DC Taylor’s lean frame, consisting of one man and another woman.

  Were they a couple, I wondered?

  Said woman sobbed heavy tears that stained her face a hot shade of salmon pink, whilst the middle-aged man had a heavy frown that manipulated all of his features.

  “Uh, oh.” Cillian took one peek at the crying woman and shied away, bottling it. He wasn’t exactly profici
ent in the art of comforting the ladies. “This is a job for you, Tones,” the lazy constable warned.

  “This is, uh, Mr and Mrs Carling.” DC Taylor checked with the couple to ensure he’d remembered their names correctly. “Their daughter was kidnapped on their way home from the school run. I caught them waiting at the front desk, but the Skipper is overrun with locals down there.”

  Coughing, I tried to speak above the racket. “Kidnapping is normally a uniform job.”

  DC Taylor seemed surprised at the interruption. “Er, yes, sir. They were called out to the scene this afternoon, straight after the kidnapping happened, but they found nothing of use--”

  “So it’s up to us to find a lead,” I finished having guessed where the story was heading.

  “I was with her,” Mrs Carling burst out, seemingly unable to stop herself from doing so. Her high pitched sobs didn’t take any mercy on my throbbing headache, and anyone could tell from a single glance that she was worried sick. Any sensible parent would be. “They snatched her right from my side. I should have put up more of a fight.”

  When she collapsed wretchedly into her husband’s chest, he faltered to comfort the weeping woman but stroked her forehead, nevertheless. Their affection for each other was almost robotic and a tad awkward for anyone watching.

  McCall snapped straight into action, having found her area of expertise. Dealing with people was something she’d always shone at, leagues above everyone else.

  “Rebecca, get them two coffees and some glasses of water. Cold water, preferably,” McCall specified.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Rebecca politely nudged past into the kitchen. After a couple of seconds, she quietly swore at the hot water tap too.

  “Please, sit yourselves down. It’s been quite a shock for you both, I’m sure,” McCall urged the couple and led them to a spare couple of seats.